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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Chinese officials have said that their country’s exports surged last December to edge out Germany as the world’s biggest exporter.

The official Xinhua news agency reported today that figures from the General Administration for Customs showed that exports jumped 17.7% in December from a year earlier. Over the whole of 2009 total Chinese exports reached US$1.2 trillion, above Germany’s forecast $1.17 trillion.

Huang Guohua, a statistics official with the customs administration, said the December exports rebound was an important turning point for China’s export sector. He commented that the jump was an indication that exporters have emerged from their downslide.

“We can say that China’s export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports,” he said.

However, although China overtook Germany in exports, China’s total foreign trade — both exports and imports — fell 13.9% last year.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Officials from France’s aviation accident investigation agency, the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), announced on Tuesday that they had recovered the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of Air France Flight 447. It was located and brought to the surface by a Remora 6000 unmanned submarine, then taken aboard the Île de Sein, one of the vessels taking part in the recovery and salvage efforts.

This came two days after an announcement on Sunday that the crash-survivable memory unit of the flight data recorder (FDR) of the aircraft had been located and brought to the surface. The chassis of the FDR was located on April 27, with the memory unit missing. It was found a short distance from the chassis. It was also brought to the surface by the Remora 6000.

With the recovery of both recorders, which are reported to be “in good condition”, French officials hope to determine what caused the Airbus A330-200 to crash into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, when it departed Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão International Airport before it was lost 600 miles (965 km) off the coast of Brazil en route to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport with 228 passengers and crew on board.

The leading theory at the moment is that the crew received incorrect air speed readings from the aircraft’s pitot tubes, devices which measure how fast the aircraft is traveling. Experts say the tubes may have become iced over, causing the crash. The plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) sent out 24 messages over a four-minute long period stating numerous problems and warnings, including incorrect air speed warnings occurring aboard the aircraft, just prior to it going down.

However, chief operating officer of the International Bureau of Aviation, Phil Seymour, speaking to CNN, believes the memory unit will not be of much use to investigators saying because of the depth it was located at, “If you were to throw a computer into the ocean, imagine how all the parts would eventually split and you have the corrosive effects of seawater and the depths involved.” Seymour believes the wreckage will help reveal what happened as more is recovered.

“It may be that the more wreckage they find will help them to piece it all together, which bit by bit could help them build a picture of what caused the plane to come down,” he added.

A BEA spokesperson had agreed with that possibility a few days earlier when speaking to the Associated Press about the recovery of the flight data recorder. “We can’t say in advance that we’re going to be able to read it until it’s been opened,” the spokesperson said. As

The wreckage of the Airbus A330-200, was found back on April 8 at a depth of 3,800 and 4,000 meters (2,070 to 2,190 fathoms or 12,467 feet and 13,123 feet), by a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, using a Remus robotic submarine and its side-scan sonar. After the wreckage was found, another Remus robot submarine with cameras was sent down to the site, where it filmed bodies in the wreckage. The location of the recorders were localized within 2 square miles (5 square kilometers) of the flight’s last position last year.

In March, a French judge placed the European aircraft maker Airbus and Air France under investigation for possible involuntary manslaughter charges in the 2009 crash. Both are paying the cost of the search which is estimated to be $12.7 million (nine million euro). The crash is the deadliest in Air France’s history.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been buried in the town of Janzur, west of the Libyan capital Tripoli. He was the only individual convicted in association with the Lockerbie bombing of 1988. He died at his residence Sunday, aged 60.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York resulted in 270 fatalities, including all 259 of the airplane’s occupants and eleven individuals on the ground. 189 of those who died in the incident were US citizens. The death toll for this terrorist incident is larger than that for any other which has occurred in the United Kingdom thus far.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was placed on trial in May 2000 in the Netherlands alongside Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah. While Fhimah was found not guilty on all charges placed against him, al-Megrahi was found guilty of his and sentenced to at least 27 years imprisonment. Having been initially placed in HM Prison Barlinnie, al-Megrahi was transferred to Greenock in 2005.

In 2002, an appeal against his conviction was unsuccessful. Five years later, senior judges in Scotland were to review his case, but he dropped the appeal. Due to suffering from prostate cancer, he was granted a compassionate release from Scottish prison two days later.

Current UK Prime Minister David Cameron commented on his belief that al-Megrahi “should never have been released from prison” and said his death was an occasion “to remember the 270 people who lost their lives in what was an appalling terrorist act”. According to Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing is ongoing. Salmond also called for remembrance of those killed. Prosecutors, he said, had always thought there were others besides al-Megrahi involved in the attack.

US citizen Susan Cohen, the mother of one of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing, thought of al-Megrahi as “a mass murderer” who “deserved to die”, adding to CNN: “I feel no pity around him. He got to die with his family around him. My daughter [Theodora], at age 20, died a brutal, horrible death”. However, UK citizen Jim Swire, father of another victim of the bombing, believes al-Megrahi was not guilty. He described al-Megrahi’s death as “a sad time”, telling the BBC he was “satisfied for some years that this man was nothing to do with the murder of my daughter”.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has consistently denied responsibility for the attack. In his final recorded interview in December 2011, he insisted he was “an innocent man” who was “about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family.” His brother Mohammed al-Megrahi claimed “[t]here never was exact proof” and said al-Megrahi’s “pain is over now – he is with God”.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

On Sunday, NASA announced on twitter its man-made helicopter Ingenuity survived its first freezing night on the surface of Mars. Ingenuity is a part of Perseverance’s mission, which primarily focuses on astrobiology, and Ingenuity is planned to fly and explore Mars and gather rocks samples looking for signs of life.

Ingenuity has previously been in the belly of Perseverance, a car-sized rover which landed on Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18. Perseverance charged Ingenuity and kept it warm. Ingenuity left the rover on Sunday, after which the rover moved away to expose Ingenuity’s photovoltaic array to direct sunlight.

The NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a statement saying this was the first time Ingenuity survived the night by itself while being exposed to the planet atmosphere directly. In the statement NASA wrote this has confirmed they have “the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team.” The temperatures could go as low as -90 °C (-130 °F), the statement said. The helicopter used the energy from its solar array to power a small heater and protect its electronics from the cold.

Mars just has 1% of atmosphere as compared to Earth. Ingenuity’s propeller had to rotate about three times faster for flight on the Martian atmosphere as compared to flying on Earth, ABC News reported. Ingenuity has been designed to be light to make the takeoff easier. Its mass is about 1.8 kilograms. Tim Canham from NASA said “The processor on the helicopter is about 100 times more powerful than the processor on the rover itself”.

The next step would be a blade movement test scheduled for today, CNN said. If successful, it would be followed by first flight test, which can take place by Sunday. That would be the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Five flights were expected to occur in the next 31 days. If successful, they would be followed by further movement of the helicopter, as it would collect samples of rocks, and collect photos of its observations. Throughout the entire duration of research, Ingenuity would also measure its temperatures and battery recharge performance.

Perseverance rover is to deliver images from Ingenuity to Earth, reportedly a few hours after they were captured. NASA said the rover travelled a distance of 471 million km to reach the crater.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

The Tax Policy Center has published a table that states that taxpayers earning more than $10,000,000 in 2004 paid lower tax rates than taxpayers earning between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000. Among other things, it breaks down the average tax rate by cash income into various income tax categories.

According to the Tax Policy Center, the average tax rate paid by the 9,000 taxpayers earning over $10,000,000 in 2004 was 20.1%, more than 2% lower than the nearly quarter million taxpayers earning between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000. If taxpayers earning over $10,000,000 were taxed at 22.3%, the rate of those earning between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000, the federal government would have received an additional $4.8 billion in revenue.

Taxpayers who earned more than $10,000,000 paid a lower average rate than any category of taxpayer earning over $100,000. Although taxpayers in the $75,000 to $100,000 range paid 18.9% of their income in taxes, 1.2% less than those making over $10,000,000, taxpayers in the $100,000 to $200,000 range paid an average of 20.6%, or 0.5% more than those making over $10,000,000.

Furthermore, the Tax Policy Center’s analysis is described by David Cay Johnston, New York Times columnist and author of Perfectly Legal as “understating the real economic gains of those at the very top, who have perfectly legal ways to defer reporting income for tax purposes.”

The Tax Policy Center is a nonpartisian joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution and comprised of nationally recognized experts in tax, budget, and social policy who have served at the highest levels of government.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

John Ogilvie is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Carleton—Mississippi Mills riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.