In finance, a foreign exchange option (commonly shortened to just FX option or currency option) is a derivative financial instrument that gives the right but not the.

South Korean vocalist BoA is a rarity in that she is as big a star in Japan, Asia's largest music market, as she is in her homeland. Often recording multiple versions of her songs in Korean, Japanese, and English, BoA has also won fans in China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Singapore.

As a teen pop phenomenon who made her debut at age 14 in 1999, BoA has inevitably been compared to Britney Spears. But her easy-on-the-ears dance-pop and American-style R&B, including a regular offering of ballads, means she is more often compared to Japanese pop's biggest stars, Ayumi Hamasaki and Hikaru Utada. Born Kwon Boa on November 5, 1986, BoA's career owes as much to serendipity as talent -- she followed her older brother to an audition at the offices of record label SM Entertainment (Korea's biggest record label and most reliable idol-makers), and while the older brother was overlooked, his 11-year-old sister was taken on. With an eye on nurturing a future pan-Asian star, BoA was quickly enrolled in an international school where she could study Japanese and English. In Korea during 2000, the 14-year-old BoA released her debut album, ID; Peace B, a mix of urban-sounding pop, slickly produced ballads, and upbeat dance tunes. The young singer's newly acquired language skills were soon put to the test when her international label, Avex, launched BoA's career in the United States, getting Janet Jackson remixer Jonathan Peters and songwriter Peter Rafelson (whose credits include Madonna) on board for the English-language release of ID; Peace B in 2001. During the summer of that year, BoA launched her career in Japan with 'ID; Peace B,' the single that had already been a big hit in her homeland.

A single collaboration with Kumi Koda followed before BoA's debut album in Japan, Listen to My Heart, was released early the following year. BoA's early career was characterized by her busy dance moves and breathy, youthful vocals -- less screeching than Hamasaki's, less histrionic than Utada's. Behind the music were some of the same songwriters who had penned hits for other idols in Japan, such as Hamasaki and Hitomi, both of whom are also on Avex. According to Oricon magazine, BoA became the first solo artist in more than 20 years to score a number one debut single and debut album in Japan, a feat that was all the more remarkable for an artist from outside of Japan. In January 2003, in the wake of a Korean boom in Japan triggered by the co-hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup between South Korea and Japan and a growing interest in mawkish Korean TV dramas, BoA released what remains her biggest-selling album to date, Valenti. The album featured several ballads that went on to propel the album to the top spot in the charts and helped it shift over a million copies. High-profile collaborations followed with respected Japanese house producer Mondo Grosso, Japanese hip-hop act m-flo, and Howie D of Backstreet Boys (on the Bratz single Show Me What You Got).

BoA ended 2003 with a change of direction of sorts, releasing a rock-oriented single titled, unsurprisingly, Rock with You, which also featured some more adventurous production. Although the accompanying album had its fair share of dance-pop, BoA's maturing vocals meant she was more confident taking on a range of material, including songs with a harder R&B sound.

The new sound was vindicated when BoA took home two MTV Asia Awards for Most Influential Artist and Favorite Artist Korea in 2004. BoA joined a select group when her fourth Japanese album release, Outgrow, went to number one.

Program Latihan Fisik Futsal Tactics. Only Namie Amuro, Misia, and Mai Kuraki had reached number one with their first four original albums when BoA did the same in February 2006. Typical for an idol with a high media profile in Japan, BoA's songs have appeared on anime television and film soundtracks. In summer 2006, she supplied the theme song to the Japanese release of the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge, a movie in which she also took a voice actor role in the Japanese release. ~ David Hickey View on Apple Music • ORIGIN Korea • GENRE • BORN Nov 5, 1986.

The fizzy, busy sound of Korean pop have conquered airwaves and over the past few years, but this week marks the escalation of a campaign to charm American listeners. First, Girls' Generation—arguably South Korea's most popular group—will perform on 'The Late Show With David Letterman' on Tuesday and 'Live With Kelly' on Wednesday. And then on Thursday, somewhere between airings of Rugrats and Full House, TeenNick will air a made-for-TV movie about the Korean five-piece Wonder Girls, documenting its members' fictional attempts to find fame in New York City. If those sound like small inroads to the American market, it's worth realizing how large these bands' ambitions are. The history of Asian pop stars attempting to crash the U.S.

Is one littered with artists who went from superstardom in their native country to anonymity in America, along with others who found success only when they morphed into actors or cartoon characters. But the latest contingent headed for the U.S. Comes equipped with innovative promotional strategies that may set them up for fame exceeding those of their predecessors'. Wonder Girls already stand on firmer footing than other coming-to-America Asian pop groups.

The act formed in 2007 as the result of an MTV reality show (think Making The Band) and soon became among Korea's most-popular songstresses courtesy of a hip-hop-inspired sound unafraid of borrowing from Euro-pop or '60s girl groups. In March 2009, its members dipped their toes into the American market by performing three concerts stateside, but their break came in June of that year when Disney moppets The Jonas Brothers selected Wonder Girls to open on their North American tour. Propelled by this exposure, Wonder Girls' inaugural English single 'Nobody' debuted at 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in October 2009, marking the first time a Korean artist ever charted in America. Since then, the pop outfit has played various live dates and even released a special promotional single titled ',' which celebrates ginseng and kimchi. In 2012, they hope to tap into the U.S.

Tween/teen market via their TeenNick movie and an English debut album. Girls' Generation, meanwhile, boast endorsements from a singular American tastemaker: Snoop Dogg, who appeared on a remix released this month of their English-language single 'The Boys.'

Another Korean contingent eyeing America is 2NE1, a quartet that raps and sings over often-aggressive beats. The Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am (who has talked the group up over the past two years) has been working on their debut album, clutch of music critics elected their song 'I Am The Best' into the top 100 singles in the Village Voice's 2011 Pazz And Jop survey, and the group's rabid fan base recently casting enough votes to declare them the 'best new band in the world' in an MTV Iggy poll. Whereas Utada and BoA presumed being big in Asia would equal sales in the U.S., Wonder Girls is being introduced specifically for the teen and tween markets. While these three Asian outfits are the latest to harbor U.S. Hopes, they aren't the first.

That distinction was awarded back in 1963, when Japanese singer Kyu Sakamoto's melancholy tune 'Ue o Muite Aruko' (retitled to 'Sukiyaki' in the West) became one of the most unlikely songs to top the Billboard charts. For three weeks, the sung-in-Japanese track stayed at number one, making Sakamoto the first Japanese artist to chart and the only one ever to reach the top spot. Yet the Asian artists following Sakamoto never approached his surprise success. The next group to test America was Japan's Pink Lady, a pop-disco duo that dominated their homeland's charts in the late 1970s.

Once their sales started slipping in Japan, they ventured to U.S. Pink Lady's journey started on a high note, as their single 'Kiss In The Dark' made the Billboard charts at 37 (the second and last time a Japanese artist would chart).

Looking to leverage this hint of stateside success, Pink Lady's management got the group a variety-show gig on NBC alongside comedian Jeff Altman. Pink Lady and Jeff was meant to showcase the duo's singing ability and personality, which proved problematic given that the pair didn't speak English well. NBC axed the show after five episodes, and the program torpedoed Pink Lady's U.S. Today, Pink Lady and Jeff is regarded as one of the worst TV shows ever. In the wake of the Pink Lady fiasco, Asian acts backed off of attempts to enter the American market.

During the 'alternative' boom of the early '90s, record labels took gambles on leftfield bands like psychedelic rockers Boredoms and the jazzy Pizzicato Five, yet these groups proved either too weird (the former) or too lounge-ey (the latter). It wasn't until the mid 2000's that two of Asia's biggest divas tried to make a splash in America.

First was Japan's Hikaru Utada, who made two of the top three best-selling albums in Japan over the last decade and was named as the 'most influential artist' of the '00s. She released her English debut in 2004, which featured production work from Timbaland and was greeted with indifference.

Four years later, the 'Queen Of Korean Pop Music' BoA also tried to crossover via an English album and a remix featuring hot-at-the-time Flo Rida. Her debut moved only 8,000 units, and she quickly refocused on the Korean and Japanese markets. The few Asian artists to achieve real success in America only stumbled upon it by moving away from music. The Japanese pop-rock duo Puffy (named Puffy AmiYumi in America following a cease and desist from Sean Combs) released several collections of their Japanese songs in America, but it wasn't until Cartoon Network turned them into animated characters for the show Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi did they become popular. Suddenly, their concerts were packed with kids who watched their show and they even had a parade float in the 2005 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Similarly, Korean superstar Rain was named one of the '100 Most Influential People Shaping Our World Today' by Time magazine and went on to appear in the film Speed Racer and star in the movie Ninja Assassin.

Yet despite building his fame in Korea on music, Rain never released any music in the United States. He sold out a few concerts, but he is ultimately more famous in America for having a than for any songs he has made. The forecast is more favorable for Wonder Girls, who mirror Pink Lady's appropriateness for the time, as their new American single 'The DJ Is Mine' features several dubstep-aping portions.

Although watching the for their movie can prompt cringes, their TeenNick flick shows that the folks marketing the group know how to zero in on a demographic. Whereas Utada and BoA just showed up in America and presumed being big in Asia would equal sales abroad, Wonder Girls is being introduced—or, for those who saw them open for The Jonas Brothers, further developed—specifically for the teen and tween markets. Given the music industry's hyper-segmentation, it's a smart move to focus on the same audience that turned artists like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato into household names. Girls' Generation, meanwhile, seem poised to repeat the mistakes of previous Asian artists.

They released 'The Boys' virtually void of promotion, and now will have to hope an established American rapper can give them a boost—although, to be sure, 'featuring Snoop Dogg' trumps 'featuring Flo Rida' any day. As for 2NE1, they just started their U.S. Push, so their stateside shelf life remains unknown. While all of these groups could wind up footnotes like the Asian acts before them, the smart money seems to be on Wonder Girls to have the best chance yet to finally break through and sustain success in the America. Even if that outcome doesn't materialize, becoming the Korean Cheetah Girls wouldn't be a bad gig either. Updated on December 20 at 3:21 p.m. Have you ever come up with what you think is the perfect Christmas gift—a well-chosen, carefully considered present—only for the recipient to react not just with indifference, but with outright hostility?

Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan can sympathize. Most Americans will save money under the tax bill that the Senate passed Tuesday night and the House passed Wednesday. The size of that benefit varies, but 80 percent of households in 2018. (The cuts shrink over time, eventually.) It’s not just that a plurality of respondents in a new say the cuts are a bad idea (41-24, with 35 percent unsure or holding no opinion), or might have bad long-term effects.

It’s that only 17 percent actually believe they’ll get a break. That result is in line with other polls that have shown similar skepticism about. Updated on December 20 at 2:05 p.m. ET President Trump has spent months exhorting Republican lawmakers to send him a tax-cut bill in time for Christmas—a $1.5 trillion stocking-stuffer for businesses and families. And on Wednesday afternoon, Congress delivered, as the House approved final passage of the GOP’s top legislative priority. But despite Trump’s impatience for tax cuts, he might not actually sign the landmark bill into law right away, White House advisers said. In fact, Trump might wait until the new year, pushing the outer boundary of the 10 days the Constitution gives the president to affix his signature to legislation passed by Congress.

The reason for the possible delay involves a complicated bit of legislative gamesmanship. Under a 2010 “pay-as-you-go” law requiring Congress to offset any new spending or lower taxes, the $1.5 trillion bill would trigger automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs—across-the-board reductions that Republicans don’t want to be responsible for letting take effect. By waiting until the calendar turns to 2018 to formally enact the tax bill, Trump would push the automatic spending cuts to 2019 and buy Congress another year to waive them. Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation.

Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage. Having grown up desperately poor at the turn of the 20th century, Lysenko believed wholeheartedly in the promise of the communist revolution. So when the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end.

It never did. But in a twisted way, that commitment to ideology has helped salvage Lysenko’s reputation today. Because of his hostility toward the West, and his mistrust of Western science, he’s currently enjoying a revival in his homeland, where anti-American sentiment runs strong.

Can training the mind make us more attentive, altruistic, and serene? Can we learn to manage our disturbing emotions in an optimal way?

What are the transformations that occur in the brain when we practice meditation? In a new book titled, two friends—Matthieu Ricard, who left a career as a molecular biologist to become a Buddhist monk in Nepal, and Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist—engage in an unusually well-matched conversation about meditation and the brain. Below is a condensed and edited excerpt.

Matthieu Ricard: Although one finds in the Buddhist literature many treatises on “traditional sciences”—medicine, cosmology, botanic, logic, and so on—Tibetan Buddhism has not endeavored to the same extent as Western civilizations to expand its knowledge of the world through the natural sciences. Rather it has pursued an exhaustive investigation of the mind for 2,500 years and has accumulated, in an empirical way, a wealth of experiential findings over the centuries. A great number of people have dedicated their whole lives to this contemplative science. President Trump and congressional Republicans have just taken the same leap of faith that Democrats did when they passed the Affordable Care Act. When then-President Obama and the Democratic House and Senate majorities muscled through the ACA in 2010, the bill represented a big policy victory, but an even bigger political gamble. Though Obamacare fulfilled the party’s decades-long goal of providing (nearly) universal health care, the immediate backlash in the 2010 election helped propel Republicans to the biggest midterm gain in the House for either party since 1938 and gave them a majority in the chamber they still haven’t relinquished. Republicans could face a similar equation of costs and benefits from the tax bill they just passed.

The legislation will advance the preeminent GOP goal of cutting taxes, particularly on high earners and businesses. But it could represent an even greater bet than the ACA because polls show it faces substantially more public opposition. Just when Orrin Hatch thought he was out, Donald Trump pulled him back in. After months of quietly laying the groundwork for his own retirement, the 83-year-old Utah senator has signaled to Republican allies in recent weeks that he’s having second thoughts about leaving office when his term ends next year. Interviews with 10 people familiar with the situation—some of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly—suggest that President Trump’s efforts to convince Hatch to seek reelection have influenced the senator’s thinking.

This perceived about-face by the seven-term senator has enraged loyalists to Mitt Romney, who had been planning to run for Hatch’s seat (at the senator’s urging no, less). Meanwhile, many Utah Republicans have grown impatient and aggravated with Hatch as he repeatedly postpones announcing his reelection decision.

On Monday morning the conservative-media world woke up to in National Review on the Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. The outburst might seem a textbook case of the narcissism of petty differences within the conservative world. Both the author of the denunciation, Charles C. Cooke, and its target, Rubin, are right-leaning skeptics of Donald Trump. What on earth could they be arguing about? And does it matter?

I think it does—a lot. Cooke criticizes Rubin—a friend of mine, but one with whom I’ve from time to time —for taking her opposition to Trump too far. “If Trump likes something, Rubin doesn’t. If he does something, she opposes it. If his agenda flits into alignment with hers—as anyone’s is wont to do from time to time—she either ignores it, or finds a way to downplay it. The result is farcical and sad. Twin Usb Driver Windows 7 here. ”.