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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.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

The Non-Disclosure agreement for companies working with the UK Government on the National identity card has been leaked on WikiLeaks. The document states, among other things, what rights the Government has to search the properties of companies involved and the obligations on the companies to keep information secret.

Section five of the document states that if a company fails to comply with the agreement, or in other cases at the “sole discretion” of the Home Office, the government may search the property, records and computers of the company. The anonymous individual who leaked the documents has stated that “no search warrant or judicial oversight would be required,” to carry out the search.

The leaker also states that individuals working for the company may have their computers searched “without any suspicion of a crime having been committed,” although the document does require that these searches may only take place “for the purposes of ensuring that all National Identity Scheme information and associated copies are secure in accordance with this agreement or have been destroyed permanently or removed from their possession.

Section two of the document requires that the document is secured in accordance with policy set out by the government, and requires that the information is only disclosed to those who need to have access as part of the identity card programme.

Section four of the document states that it shall be liable to the government for any breach of the agreement, and that, except for obligations required by the Official Secrets Act, the requirements shall no longer apply 25 years after the signing of the agreement, which took place in 2007.

The individual leaking the document has stated that he did so “to bring attention to the manner of construction of the ID scheme and the highly secretive approach being adopted by the UK government.”

Despite the criticism of the scheme, the Home Office has stated that the cards are required to “help protect people from identity fraud and theft,” and “disrupt the use of false and multiple identities by criminals and those involved in terrorist activity.”

A compilation of brief news reports for Monday, July 8, 2013.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Ray Scott is running for the Family Coalition Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Algoma-Manitoulin 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.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

With two by-elections coming up in Australia, many minor parties and independents will be looking to gain a seat in the House of Representatives. Stephen Murphy is one of the independents.

Mr Murphy is a computer programmer from the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick.

“After growing up in South-East Melbourne I studied Science at Monash with first class Honours, worked in Europe for 10 years and have recently returned to Australia. I work in finance as a computer programmer and speak five languages,” Mr Murphy said.

Wikinews reporter Patrick Gillett held an exclusive email interview with Mr Murphy, candidate for the Division of Higgins.

((WN)) Why do you want to get into parliament?

Stephen Murphy: I am standing up for what I believe is the correct course of action on the biggest issue in Australian politics in 100 years – Kevin Rudd’s flawed emissions trading scheme (ETS).

((WN)) What would the three main policies you are taking into this by-election be?

SM: I will oppose the emissions trading scheme, ensure that all government policy is based on accurate scientific evidence and return common sense to Canberra

((WN)) How would you address these policies?

SM: By asking for a Royal Commission into climate change so that the facts (such as that global warming stopped in 2001 and the emissions trading scheme will not change the climate one bit) are openly presented to the Australian people.

((WN)) Sending asylum seekers to Indonesia: good or bad?

SM: Any government policy that does not properly consider all implications (be it emissions trading, or any other issue) is a bad one.

((WN)) Is the Australian dollar’s near parity with the US dollar a sign that the Australian economy is healthy, the US economy in chaos or both?

SM: It’s a sign of both. Many countries around the world look with envy at how well (relatively) Australia is doing, to our credit! It is of concern that the American economy is in such bad shape and that their levels of debt seem unsustainable.

((WN)) How do you rate the governments economic stimulus package?

SM: The economic stimulus package was poorly targeted and poorly carried out. When we could have been building roads, dams, railways and hospitals yet instead we were paying for tattoos, PlayStations and overseas holidays.

((WN)) Should it be wound back?

SM: The question about levels of stimulus spending is a complicated one and requires expertise in economics, however one could say in general terms that all government spending should be well targeted and spent in the most efficient way.

((WN)) Is Kevin Rudd a better Prime Minister than John Howard?’

SM: Australian voters are the best judge of that and we will know in 2019 🙂

((WN)) Is the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme an effective solution to climate change? Why?

SM: Absolutely not. The CPRS will not change the climate by any amount that we can measure – it’s just a new tax that will hurt Australians and drive businesses and jobs overseas. Since 2003 there has been mountains of new scientific data which contradicts the popular theory that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing significant global warming. Recently, many of the scientists who wrote the IPCC report (on which the ETS / CPRS is based) have been reported as manipulating scientific data to create scary global warming scenarios. The science is definitely not settled

((WN)) Is there a better solution?

SM: We can very easily refocus the momentum and goodwill that has been generated on climate change and channel this energy into other worthwhile environmental projects in Australia that will make a difference.

((WN)) Why should the electorate vote for you?

SM: I will oppose the ETS and support responsible environmental policies instead of radical environmental policies that could end up costing every Australian taxpayer $4550 per year in new taxes.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.