Monthly Archives: March 2023

Monday, August 27, 2012

London, England — As Paralympians ready for the Games which are set to open later this week, they have access to a world class fitness center inside the Paralympic Village which is designed to maximise their pre-Game preparations.

According to volunteers staffing the center, instead of being a single large room, as in Beijing, the building has numerous rooms. It, along with the adjacent Village Services Centre, is designed to be converted into a school after the games conclude. Rooms have been structured as a gym, an auditorium, and science laboratories.

Gym equipment is supplied by Technogym, an Italian firm that has supplied gym equipment for the Olympics since 2000. Equipment has been provided not just for for the Fitness Centre, but for gyms at all the Olympic venues. The newest equipment is oriented toward maximum flexibility, allowing athletes to exercise the particular muscles that they most require for their sport.

In addition to the equipment, the Fitness Centre also provides instructors trained in the use of the equipment, the likes of which athletes from many countries have never seen before. There are also a number of instructors available to provide motivational training.

Friday, August 5, 2016

On Wednesday, an Emirates Boeing 777 crash-landed in Dubai with 282 passengers and 18 crew on board, according to the airline. This resulted in the death of a firefighter, Jasim Issa Mohammed Hassan, who died fighting the fire at the crash. The Director-General of the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority, Saif Al Suwaidi, praised Jasim Issa Mohammed Hassan’s sacrifice in saving hundreds of passengers.

According to passenger accounts, the pilot announced an emergency landing minutes before the crash. Then the airliner, flight EK52, was engulfed in smoke at landing and soon after burst into flames. Passengers spoke of their fear.

The airport was shut down for four hours after the incident and all crew members and passengers on the flight from India were accounted for and safe, with fourteen reported hospitalised with minor injuries.

The cause of the crash has not been officially announced, however reports indicate the plane’s landing gear may not have deployed as the plane landed. An aviation safety consultant, in remarks to Australia’s ABC News, noted safely and efficiently evacuating all the passengers was a significant achievement, considering the size of the aircraft.

The airline said two people on the flight were Australian, eleven from the United Arab Emirates, 24 from the the UK, and 226 from India. The co-pilot of the crashed plane was an Australian with approximately 7,000 hours flying experience, according to Emirates chairman Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who also said the crash was not due to any fault in security.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

A Saturday, July 26th, meeting of the United States Senate resulted in the passing of a $300 billion housing aid bill designed to help homeowners facing foreclosure by providing financial aid. In addition, the bill created a government emergency fund for mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The legislation is expected to benefit up to 400,000 homeowners. The Congressional Budget Office said that between now and December 31, 2009, that if any bailout for the companies was needed, they expected it to be less than $25 billion.

The House on July 23th, passed the bill with a final vote of 272 in favor and 152 against. The final vote in the Senate was 72 in favor and 13 against. President Bush had initial woes about the bill based upon a $3.9 billion part of the legislation allowing for repurchase and improvement of foreclosed homes by the stricken neighborhoods.

The Bush Administration believed that this could be a potential problem, because it created a incentive for mortgage companies to foreclose homes. Bush has since changed his mind on the matter and is expected to sign the bill in the near future.

The bill has been considered one of the most important pieces of housing legislation in years. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said that “this bill is going to make a difference almost immediately.” Despite the bill’s overwhelming support, it has had its dissidents. “We are pretending to chain a monster here and we are, instead, letting that monster loose,” said Arizona Representative Jeff Flake. Originally a supporter of the bill, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has changed his opinion because of the addition of the emergency fund for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “This bill has fallen prey to the special interests on Wall Street and K Street at an unjustifiable expense to taxpayers and homeowners on Main Street,” said Grassley.

Monday, August 4, 2008

The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has announced it will take the unprecedented step of conducting a special review of flag carrier Qantas after three separate emergencies in two weeks.

In the latest incident, a Boeing 767 headed from Sydney to Manila was forced to turn back yesterday after ground staff at the airport noticed what they believed to be smoke emanating from the jet’s wing as it departed. It turned out to be fine spray from a hydraulic fluid leak, and the aircraft brought its 200 passengers back down safely at around 3:00 p.m., with ARFF trucks on standby.

Despite the aircraft being forced to turn around, the pilot did not request a priority landing and so Qantas refused to describe the event as an emergency landing.

Qantas has a largely good safety record, having never lost a jet aircraft or had a fatality on board one. Their last fatal accident was in 1951. However, recently two other events have led to some questioning of Qantas from within the aviation industry.

Last Monday, a Qantas Boeing 737-800 returned to Adelaide after experiencing pressurization problems caused by the failure of an undercarriage door to retract properly. This followed the July 25 accident on board Flight 30, a Boeing 747 headed from London to Melbourne that had just made a stopover in Hong Kong, in which an exploding oxygen cylinder caused an explosive decompression. An emergency landing was performed in Manila, with a hole blown in the aircraft’s side.

According to Qantas staff, the problems are not a new thing. Qantas flight attendants have asked senior management for an emergency meeting over these latest events. The Flight Attendants’ Association of Australia’s president Steven Reed said “We want some assurances from the company that these are isolated incidents. Or are they something we should be concerned about? We need to meet with the company at a senior level to have these assurances.” Such a meeting is said to be likely within a week.

Qantas engineers have been complaining for some time about maintenance issues, saying that cost-cutting and outsourcing are compromising the quality of maintenance. Much work is now being done in countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Philippines. According to one engineering union official, recent incidents linked to outsourced maintenance include a failure of emergency lighting and flight attendants in the galley being electrocuted by faulty wiring.

According to the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers’ Association’s assistant federal secretary, Wayne Vasta, there has been a recent “change in culture” at Qantas, although he did say it would be inappropriate to blame only outsourcing. He said that while previously Qantas engineers had simply attempted to do the best they could, “Now it appears we have got to do the best job we can possibly do, within a budget.” He also expressed a welcoming of the CASA probe.

Qantas’ engineers are currently lobbying for a pay rise, and say the airline is risking safety with cost cuts.

Peter Gibson, spokesperson for CASA, said no trouble had been spotted in recent safety audits of Qantas, but they felt it ‘prudent’ to investigate given the recent string of incidents. He acknowledged that the review is unprecedented in CASA’s history, and announced the probe would be headed by senior official Mick Quinn.

“We want to look at their safety systems to make sure that the systems are operating the way they should. All these things are stated in manuals. We want to make sure that what is in the manuals is being done,” Gibson told reporters. He said the investigation should take around two weeks.

Friday, June 22, 2012

According to documents leaked to the press, Conservative education secretary Michael Gove intends to drop GCSE exams as part of a sweeping reform of the school exam system in England and replace them with exams based on the traditional “O-level” system that GCSEs replaced in the 1980s.

As leaked, Gove plans to phase out the current General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams, with students taking exams in the replacement courses in the summer of 2016. Combined science courses would be split out into separate qualifications in physics, biology, and chemistry. Gove has said reforms to the examination system are needed to fight against what he perceives to be a “dumbing down” of academic standards.

The top ‘A’ grade in mathematics would require advanced topics such as Calculus, and English literature exams would no longer allow access to the set text.

The leaked document also notes the government intends to scrap the National Curriculum at the secondary school level “and not replace it”. Instead, school headteachers would be able to decide what to teach in order to prepare pupils for the examination.

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said the plans were “self-evidently not policy that has been discussed or agreed within the coalition”.

Justice minister Ken Clarke suggested on BBC programme Question Time the leak originated within the Department of Education rather than from Gove personally: “If the secretary of state for education leaked it I would feel very strongly about it, but I don’t think he did”.

Conservative MP Graham Stuart has questioned the timing of the plans given reforms to GCSEs last year. “This has come out of the blue”, he said to BBC Radio 4. “Just last year, the government was ramping up its new GCSE target and now a year on we are having to change back to the future, and back to O-Levels.”

Kevin Brennan, Labour’s shadow schools minister, said Gove’s proposals were a move “back to the 1950s”.

Andrew Adonis, a Labour Peer, criticised the plans on Twitter: “I can hardly think of a worse education reform than ‘bringing back the CSE’ – dead-end exams for children treated as second rate.” Nick Clegg mirrored this complaint, saying he would oppose any plan “that would lead to a two-tier system where children at quite a young age are somehow cast on a scrap heap”.

Dr Wendy Piatt from the Russell Group, which represents a number of top-end British universities, agreed with Michael Gove that there is a problem: “the current system needs improving”, she told ITV’s Daybreak, because “some GCSEs really don’t stretch the very brightest”. Piatt warned “there is a real danger here… there is a worry that at a very early age you will be pigeonholed and then put on a course that is not really suitable for you and then you won’t be able to change to the more academic course”.

Dr Kevin Stannard from the Girls Day School Trust challenged the plans, suggesting since “able pupils” are already going to continue studying some subjects, “why not require them to take exams at 16 only in the core subjects that they propose to drop? That would encourage breadth in learning to 16, while also giving students the space for deeper learning.”

Leighton Andrews, the Education Minister in Wales, said Wales “certainly won’t be bringing back O-levels” and leaking the plans to the newspapers was a “bonkers way of proceeding”. Instead, he vowed the Welsh would make decisions as to curriculum and exam reform “in our own time on the basis of evidence supplied to us”.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Portions of a DC-10 jet registered to the Miami, Florida-based Arrow Cargo company fell from the sky over a residential area in the city of Manaus, Brazil on Thursday.

Parts of one of the turbines of the aircraft caused some damage to a car and a few houses, but no injuries were reported. The airplane was traveling to its destination of Bogota, Colombia. According to the Brazilian Defense Ministry, the parts that detached are the rear exhaust diffuser and a section of the exhaust. The involved plane, registered N526MD, was built in 1978.

“I opened the window after I heard this huge boom and I see this thing up in flames, right in front of my doorway,” said Aparecida Silva, a local resident, to Globo TV. “I had no idea what it was, I thought it was some weird, ugly thing or a UFO or something.” ^{((Translated from Portuguese))Portuguese language: ?Estava no melhor do sono, ouvi uma pancada, abri a janela e vi algo pegando fogo. Aí eu não sabia o que era e disse: é um bicho feio, um extraterrestre ou algo assim.}

Rai Marinho, a representative for the Arrow Cargo in Manaus, said that the jet, which was carrying an engineer and three crew members, had engine difficulties soon after taking off. It was able to keep flying, but was obliged to divert to Medellin due to inclement weather, where it landed without incident. The representative added that his company would pay residents for the damage.

Saturday, November 4, 2006

On November 13, Torontoians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Trinity—Spadina (Ward 19). One candidate responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Nick Boragina, Joe Pantalone (incumbent), George Sawision, and Hïmy Syed.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.