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Without Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. investors and customers are asking a big question: Can it continue to turn out innovative products without its co-founder and design visionary?

The answer may lie with Jonathan Ive, an Apple executive little known outside the technology industry.

Mr. Ive is Apple’s design chief. Since taking charge of the company’s design team in 1996, Mr. Ive and his group have been responsible for coming up with the physical look and feel of products that have helped set Apple apart from competitors.

The demands on Mr. Ive likely will grow with the death of Mr. Jobs. Apple depends on just four product lines─computers, music players, smartphones and tablet computers─to drive the lion’s share of the more than $100 billion in annual revenue the company is expected to take in this fiscal year. That means Apple relies on frequent product-cycle refreshes to generate the excitement for its devices.

To date, Mr. Ive’s emphasis on elegant design has helped Apple products become consumer status symbols. The Ive-designed iPad─a simple slate of glass on an aluminum body─has defined the tablet-computer market. The latest generation of the iPad held 68% of global tablet shipments in the June quarter, outrunning rivals from Research in Motion Ltd. and others.

Backed by slick marketing, Mr. Ive’s creations have powered a remarkable growth spurt that has made Apple the most highly valued technology company in the world.

The sleek iPhone has become Apple’s single-biggest revenue driver, while the company’s line of Macs is the fastest-growing segment of the personal-computer market. The spare iPod, which anchored Apple’s renaissance with its debut in 2001, popularized digital music for the consumer market.

Mr. Ive’s Apple role is so important that he reports directly to the chief executive. The reporting line underscores Apple’s emphasis, burnished under Mr. Jobs, on design and aesthetics.

Apple declined to make Mr. Ive available to comment for this story. Mr. Ive didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.

Mr. Ive was born in 1967 in London and studied design at Northumbria University. He worked at a U.K. design agency, Tangerine, that consulted for Apple in the early 1990s. In 1992, Mr. Ive joined Apple and quickly became head of its industrial design team.

Since joining, Mr. Ive has worked in the background while Mr. Jobs and other executives served as the company’s public face. Mr. Ive’s design team has spearheaded a revitalization of Apple’s products, which were once gray or beige boxes. Among his most notable products: the candy-colored line of iMac computers and the glass-and-aluminum iPhone.

People who work with Mr. Ive say he is both brilliant and quiet. Unlike other designers, who often seek to become brands of their own, Mr. Ive avoids the limelight.

‘In the design world, he’s famous for having won awards and not showing up to collect them,’ said Don Norman, who worked with Mr. Ive in the 1990s and is the co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group consultancy. ‘You don’t see any ego at all.’

His effect, however, has been profound.

Analysts say Mr. Ive’s attention to seemingly small details set Apple’s apart from competitors. Charles Golvin, who tracks consumer technology for market watcher Forrester Research, says setting the keyboard on the Macbook deep on the machine’s base to create a palm rest was one such decision.

‘It seems like a simple thing,’ Mr. Golvin said. ‘It’s that kind of elegance I associate with him.’

Mr. Ive’s designs are often compared to those of Dieter Rams, the German industrial designer who conjured products, such as calculators and radios, for Braun in the 1960s.

Those products, like Mr. Ive’s at Apple, were known for their simplicity, elegance and ease of use.

‘They share a design philosophy of ‘don’t overwork things, don’t make it complicated,” said IDC mobile-device and technology trends analyst William Stofega.

‘Most people think design is about making things look pretty, but it’s about much more than that,’ said Sophie Lovell, a Berlin-based writer on design, who said Mr. Ive’s passion for design was abundant when they met last year when she interviewed him for a magazine article. ‘That’s something that both Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive have understood.’

Mr. Ive’s efforts have elevated Apple’s computers and cell phones into works of art. The first-generation of Apple’s iPod is one of six Ive-designed gadgets that are part of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, according to the museum’s web site.

Where’s the growth?

It’s certainly not in Europe: revised figures out Tuesday are likely to show the euro-zone economy barely expanded in the second quarter. There isn’t much to speak of in the U.S., where growth is struggling to maintain a 2% pace. That leaves emerging markets like China, India and Brazil. Yet now, these economies too are slowing.

Last week, Credit Suisse downgraded its estimate of Chinese growth to 8.2% from 8.5% for 2012. That is a significant slowing from the near-11% growth rate the nation averaged from 2003 through 2010. It is even well below the 9.2% rate it experienced during the depths of the global recession in 2009, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Brazil’s central bank, meanwhile, unexpectedly cut interest rates, citing a ‘retreat of projections’ for economic growth and a ‘disinflationary bias’ likely in the months ahead.

A slowdown in emerging markets will make it increasingly difficult for heavily indebted countries like the U.S. to export their way to growth, as figures this week are likely to show. First up on Tuesday is the Institute for Supply Management’s index of nonmanufacturing, or service-sector, activity, which is expected to fall to 51 in August from 52.7 in July. The subindex of new export orders fired a warning shot in July when it dropped eight points to 49, below the 50 level that indicates expansion.

It would take a substantial rebound in August to prove that decline wasn’t just a one-month blip. And that seems unlikely, given that the ISM survey of manufacturing activity, released last Thursday, showed a similar drop in export orders. This subindex fell to 50.5 in August from 54 in July, the lowest level since July 2009, and just barely still in expansionary mode. Separately, the Commerce Department is out with July trade figures on Thursday that, barring a sharp rebound, are likely to show U.S. exports remain below their recent April peak.

This is troubling since exports, which account for just 14% of the U.S. economy, have punched above their weight throughout this recovery. Without them, the U.S. economy’s average 2.4% growth rate since mid-2009 would have been sliced in half. Investors are right to be on edge.

There’s often a long lag between China signaling financial reform and the reform actually happening. But the wait for an international board in Shanghai an idea first floated in 2009 ─ is becoming China’s version of Waiting for Godot, with officials repeatedly dropping hints that foreign companies might soon be allowed to list yuan-denominated shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange only to fall silent when pressed for details.

Some clarity is starting to seep through, however.

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, Hu Ruyin, head of the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s research department said that the board would help route part of the country’s massive foreign exchange reserves overseas.

“China is facing a large imbalance in its international payments, while the international board will be supportive in easing the pressures arising from growing forex reserves as foreign companies could convert the yuan funds raised in the country into foreign currencies and remit such funds overseas,” Mr. Hu said.

Alleviating the pressure of China’s unceasing build up of foreign exchange reserves is a key concern for Beijing, and the board could be as useful tool in meeting that goal. Given the size of China’s economy, it may one day be the case whereby foreign companies flock to Shanghai to raise money for projects elsewhere in the world in the same way as they do in the U.S. Given how many Chinese firms have gone overseas to list, as China’s financial markets develop Beijing might hope that a reversal of that flow would follow.

But despite China’s pressing needs, in the short term the foreign firms lining up to list in China might be more focused on keeping their funds here.

Looking at the who’s who of foreign firms that have expressed an interest in listing here a group that includes HSBC Holdings PLC, Coca-Cola Co. and General Electric ─ most will have capital needs in China for quite some time to come. Raising funds in yuan just to move them elsewhere in the world doesn’t make a make much sense yet.

Moreover, given Chinese investors’ relatively low levels of sophistication, asking them to judge the merits of investing in, say, HSBC Holding’s plans to develop their operations in India, is probably a little premature. That would seem to be an opinion shared by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which only allows punters to invest in overseas listed stocks via fund managers.

Chatter about the imminent launch of the board has grown in the local media in recent months. In April, the 21st Century Business Herald reported on a set of draft rules for the international board (in Chinese), saying that foreign firms would be able to use their yuan proceeds either in China or other countries, although overseas remittance might need approval from the Chinese foreign exchange regulator.

But the wait is becoming ridiculous. In May hermes birkin at the Lujiazui Forum an annual conference in Shanghai involving Chinese senior financial figures banking regulator Liu Mingkang made a passing reference to the international board in his speech. Following Mr. Liu, China Securities Regulatory Commission Chairman Shang Fulin whose agency would be responsible for the board seemed to be skirting the issue until he thanked Mr. Liu for his interest in the board.

The room held its breath. Was this the announcement everyone’s been waiting for?

“We are ever closer to the launch of the international board,” declared Mr. Shang, clearly enjoying the anticipation.

The whole room laughed.

Flamengo’s star midfielder Ronaldinho failed to finish the team’s training on Wednesday due to a blister on his right foot. The athlete participated in the practice for twenty minutes, but left the exercises due to pain.

Flamengo held its team practice on the beach in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Barra de Tijuca. Due to his injury, Ronaldinho was taken out of the team’s workout and focused on a muscular workout inside of the team’s hotel.

Despite the discomforts of the blister, Ronaldinho is expected to return to the practice field on Thursday.

Flamengo is preparing for the final round of the second half of the Rio de Janeiro state championship against Macae in the city of Volta Redonda on April 16.

Flamengo currently stands in second place of Group A of the second half of the state tournament.

The Obama administration is in advanced stages of preparing for a government shutdown as Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill struggle to broker a spending package before a deadline Friday at midnight. Here is what is likely to happen in the event of a shutdown.

Federal employees: 800,000 of the roughly 2 million civilian employees would be furloughed, meaning they would be sent home without pay and prohibited from working in their government jobs.

Defense Department: Military operations would continue, though service members wouldn’t receive pay during the shutdown. Civilian employees would be furloughed.

Central Intelligence Agency: The CIA would ‘draw down accordingly,’ a U.S. official said, though the official wouldn’t elaborate on which operations could be affected.

Social Security Administration: The program would continue issuing checks, but people filing for new benefits would face delays.

Medicare and Medicaid: Both would largely continue operating without disruption.

Internal Revenue Service: Filers could face delays receiving refund checks on paper applications. Returns filed electronically shouldn’t be delayed. Revenue owed to the government would still be collected and deposited.

Treasury Department: Would continue issuing debt as needed.

Federal Reserve: Wouldn’t be affected.

National parks and the Smithsonian Institution: Closed.

U.S. Postal Service: Open.

Visas and passports: Applications would face major delays.

Unemployment benefits: Not expected to be affected.

Food and drug safety: Officials deemed essential for food and drug safety would continue working, though some inspectors could be furloughed. This could lead to delays in food production.

Air travel: Air-traffic controllers would continue working.

Law enforcement: Would continue, as would criminal probes.

National Institutes of Health: Clinical center wouldn’t admit any new patients or initiate any new clinical trials.

Capitol Hill: Many aides would be furloughed, but lawmakers would continue to work.

Small Business Administration: Applications for SBA-backed loans would be delayed.

Federal Housing Administration: Applications for FHA-guaranteed loans would be delayed.

The winner of the the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, Chinese author Bi Feiyu, almost didn’t attend the awards ceremony Thursday.

‘When I was on the shortlist,’ Mr. Bi said last night when he accepted the award, ‘my friends and the media in China were all saying, ‘Impossible, there’s no way a Chinese writer can get a third one,” he said, referring to the fact that two of the previous three winners of the Man Asian Literary Prize 岸 Jiang Rong (for ‘Wolf Totem’) and Su Tong (‘The Boat to Redemption’) 岸 were also Chinese. ‘They said, ‘Don’t even bother going to Hong Kong.’ But I had to come because＃I had to show my son that if I did not win, I would still stand there and take it like a man.’

This was the first year that a published novel won the Man Asian prize a cash award of US$30,000. In the previous three years, only unpublished manuscripts were eligible and the award was then US$10,000.

Mr. Bi’s winning novel, ‘Three Sisters,’ is set in the time of the Cultural Revolution. It starts with the birth of a long-awaited son 岸 the eighth child in the Wang family. But the story centers on three of the boy’s sisters.

David Parker, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and chairman of the board of directors of the Man Asian Literary Prize, said, ‘In its understanding of women trapped by the petty cruelties of provincial life, ‘Three Sisters’ reaches the heights of the great Russian play its title echoes.’

Mr. Bi received the honor during a black-tie dinner at the Peninsula Hong Kong hotel. Shortlisted Indian authors Manu Joseph (‘Serious Men’) and Tabish Khair (‘The Thing About Thugs’) were on hand for the event; Japanese writers Kenzaburo Oe (‘The Changeling’) and Yoko Ogawa (‘Hotel Iris’) could not attend and were represented by the translators of their books, Deborah Boehm and Stephen Snyder, respectively.

‘Picking a winner from the selection of novels as rich and varied as those before us has made for an embarrassment of riches,’ said judge Homi K. Bhahba in a speech shortly before the winner was announced. ‘For the house of fiction, as the novelist Henry James once called it, is a wondrous thing. Each window looks out on a different view. Each room provides an alternative way of living. Each door opens onto another country. We readers have unprecedented rights of access to complementary and contradictory worlds.’

English translators of Mr. Bi’s book, Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, also won a cash prize of US$5,000 each. Mr. Goldblatt also translated the two previous winning Chinese novels, ‘Wolf Totem’ and ‘The Boat.’

British man Steven Cloak had been the victim of an assault by Jack Hobbs, a 16-year-old who attacked him simply because he did not like the way he looked at him. Then he lost a quarter of his skull in surgeons. But today with his “normal” head into which was inserted a titanium plate, Steven can finally see his attacker on February 10.

Rising consumer prices in China have caused some sizable brawls of late: between students & catering companies, between the government & newspapersand now between Hangzhou & Boston.

The stakes in this latest battle? Cost of living bragging rights.

While not exactly a scientific study, Wang admits, the exercise reveals that a surprising 10 of the food items, including green beans & bananas, were more pricey in China. In Hangzhou, a scenic coastal city near Shanghai, the price of beef brisket per 1.1 pound, or 500 grams, & the cost of a dozen eggs were both double the prices of louis vuitton outlet present in Boston. A liter of milk, meanwhile, was triple.

According to Beijing-based business news magazine Caixin, the contest is closer than you might think. In a post published on the Caixin web-site Monday [ in Chinese] one of the publication’s bloggers, Wang Pei, teamed up with a mate in Boston & set out on the streets with identical grocery lists, including 19 food items & six types of gasoline. The mission, to reply to the query: ‘How pricey is China?’

The average per capita income in Hangzhou in 2009 was 26,864 yuan, or $4,024, according to the Hangzhou local government. Boston’s was $32,255.

Hangzhou’s premium gasoline was also 23% more pricey, & the general price of the whole basket of goods bought there was 8% higher.

That’s a stark contrast to the U.S. market, where the index rose 0.1% in November, up 1.1% from 2009.

China’s inflation has been skyrocketing these days. In November, the consumer price index rose 5.1%, the steepest climb since July 2008.

Inflation is also apparent in the housing market, where Wang also drew a comparison, taking a look at a 99 square meter apartment near Harvard University with an 89 square meter flat at Zhejiang University. The Harvard apartment, listed at 2.75 million yuan, or roughly $411,000, was a bargain when measured against the 3.5 million yuan Zhejiang flat, that, while equipped with a flatscreen TV (in the pictures at least), lacked the oven, fire, wood floors, & porch included with its Ivy League counterpart.

The sizable culprit in China’s CPI rise was the cost of food, which jumped 11.7% last month & 10.1% in October. Food prices in the U.S. barely moved, crawling 0.2% in November.

China’s government is intent on battling its inflation issue. it’s already ordered producers of cooking oil to cap pricesand appears likely tighten credit in the upcoming months.

actual estate has for years given most people sticker shock, but the inflation is beginning to trickle down to every day goods, like gas & grub, & that’s when people start to notice it, says Patrick Chovanec, an economics professorat Tsinghua University.

With more comparisons like Wang’s possibly on the way, the government may not have much time to lose. ‘This is just a demo study,’ they says, ‘but it’s a reminder to all that the prices of things in China are higher than everyone thinks they are.’

North Korea’s attack on a South Korean island is forcing Seoul into an agonising debate on how many violent provocations it can tolerate before it has to retaliate.

The question is of rising urgency as analysts argue that North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-il, is smoothing the succession of his inexperienced third son, Kim Jong-eun, by helping him build political capital with a series of “victories” over the South.

North Korea’s bombardment of Yeonpyeong island, close to the North Korean coast, left two South Korean servicemen dead and injured more than a dozen soldiers and civilians.

Although South Korea fired dozens of shells in response, it stopped short of launching a full military counter-attack. However, it warned there would be a serious retaliation in the case of a second bombardment.

“We will sternly respond with a punishment in case of another provocation,” said Hong Sang-pyo, secretary to the president.

The North Korean attack has wrong-footed the South in the same way as the torpedoing of the Cheonan warship in March, which killed 46 sailors. In that case, Seoul did not strike back but warned Pyong-yang it would do so if pushed again.

Kim Jong-il has now decided to call Seoul’s bluff in an extremely risky attack that is in effect an act of war.

Since the sinking of the Cheonan, South Korea has dreaded that Pyongyang would raise the stakes with an attack on civilian targets. Tuesday’s attack is the most flagrant act of aggression to hit civilians since the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987, which killed 115 people.

Choi Choon-heum, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification, said Pyongyang had calibrated its attack to avoid a conflagration.

“Unless North Korea fires a missile into the mainland – and not into a disputed maritime area or island – South Korea will not strike the North with force in retaliation,” said Mr Choi.

But he added that the shelling was a turning point and suggested Seoul might have to revise its rules of engagement so that troops would no longer have to wait for instructions from the president before taking counter-measures.

Andrew Gilholm, a north Asia analyst at the consultancy Control Risks, agreed that South Korean officials – who held an emergency meeting in the presidential war bunker – would have to take tough decisions about how long to tolerate provocations.

“I would not like to be in the presidential war bunker deciding how to respond. It is a question of when the risk of doing nothing becomes greater than the risk of escalation.”

So far, South Korea does not seem to have arrived at the point where inaction becomes unpalatable. It is conscious of the impact of conflict on its financial markets and its position as Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.

Mr Gilholm argued the latest attack fell into a “nasty in-between zone”. An attack in the Yellow Sea is seen as part of a traditional cycle of clashes between the Koreas, even though the bombardment of civilians is new.

“The cycle of provocation is moving into a higher orbit,” he added, arguing the North Korean leader could be seeking to win his way back to international negotiations from which he wants to win concessions such as security guarantees.

Only days ago, North Korea unveiled a new uranium enrichment plant that was seen as a political gambit to associate the younger Mr Kim with a significant technological breakthrough.

“This [attack] has something to do with the succession process in the North,” Song Young-sun, a member of the national defence committee in South Korea’s parliament told South Korean television.

Despite the severity of the attack, the mood in Seoul remained composed and South Koreans made their habitual jokes about the “crazy” North.

Still, by late evening, many people were unusually transfixed by rolling television coverage of the smoke billowing from Yeonpyeong island. A rumour is circulating that Kim Jong-il has died and that this is the regime’s reflex.

South Korea’s foreign minister has said the case could be referred to the UN Security Council.

Mr Gilholm said it would be hard for China and Russia, which refused to condemn Pyongyang over the loss of the warship, to gloss over this attack.

Searra, an eight-year-old brain tumor patient, was a “regular” in the Radiation Oncology Department, much like the other patients who came to the cancer center everyday for a five- or six-week period. With my office located near the main entrance, I could hear Searra, also called CC, coming from a distance.
Sure enough, she popped her head in every morning around 10:00 A.M. to say “hi” or, more important, to check out the toys and coloring materials I had stashed in my office. Several steps behind, CC’s grandmother, also called Mommie, since she served as her guardian, would trail in as she tried keeping up with CC’s anxious pace.
CC was not the least bit interested in hearing more about her cancer or her hair loss. When she walked into the department, it was time to socialize with the staff, who became her instant friends, and to see what kind of masterpiece she could color for Mommie before she was called back for her treatment.
I was taken aback by the love CC had for Mommie. Whenever I asked her about home life, school work or how she was feeling, every response referred to her time spent with Mommie, the funny stories they shared and how much she loved her. On numerous occasions, CC made it clear that Mommie was the center of her world.
When CC was first treated with radiation therapy, the therapists told her that they would give her a quarter each day if she promised to keep her head still on the treatment table. Certainly, after six weeks of therapy, she had a pocketful of quarters! So on the last day, the therapists wanted to know what big toy she was going to buy with all her change. CC replied, “Oh, I am not going to buy a toy. I am going to buy something for Mommie because of all the nice things she does for me.”
CC’s sincerity, unselfishness, warmth and loyalty to Mommie taught me about what is really important in life. She constantly showed that loving others with true commitment is the best gift you can give another-whether a family member or a friend. Certainly, CC has an excuse to complain or be angry at the world for a childhood totally different from the other children’s in her third-grade class. I have never heard her complain about her bald head, swollen face and body (as a result of the steroids), or low energy level, which keeps her from playing outside. CC continues to live her life the way she chooses, and that includes giving of herself to make the world a better place for others, especially Mommie.
CC reminds me to not take those people I love for granted and to look beyond the superficiality that is often found in day-to-day living. I am reminded to be more thankful for what I have today and to not dwell on what is behind me or what lies ahead. CC, just like many other cancer patients, is a true example that we aren’t always dealt the perfect hand, so we have to make the best of what we have today.