Operation Marham:India rushes aid to Indonesia

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The Indian government has begun to send humanitarian aid to the earthquake hit Yogyakarta region of Indonesia. The relief effort, named Operation Marham involves the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy and aims to deliver aid materials to the victims.

Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee was away on an official visit to China and Japan – a result of which the Indian response was initially delayed. Mr. Mukherjee, however, on Sunday night asked the Defence Ministry to make preparations to dispatch aid to Indonesia immediately.

On the sea, the naval vessel INS Rajput has been redeployed from the South China Sea to Jakarta. It is expected to reach the Indonesian capital with 7 tons of relief material today. The INS Tabar will leave the port of Chennai, India, today carrying additional aid.

In the air, an I.A.F cargo plane carrying 35 tons of relief material has been sent to Indonesia. Another airforce plane, an IL-76, will fly out from India today carrying a similar quantity of relief material.

Among the supplies India is sending to the victims of the Indonesian earthquake are tents, medical equipment and rice. Military doctors may also be sent to aid the casualties.

The Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh conveyed their condolences to the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

New safety procedures are to be implemented after an American Airlines Boeing 777 came close to colliding with two U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft off the coast of New York, United States, last month. Radar data indicates the aircraft came within 1 miles (2 km) of each other before the flight crew of the Boeing 777 took evasive action as an alarm sounded in the cockpit of the jet.

An aviation official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the traffic collision avoidance system alarm which sounded in the cockpit of the passenger jet, which had 259 people aboard, “may be what saved the day,” since C-17 cargo aircraft are not highly manoeuvrable. Investigators have reportedly found the aircraft would have collided head-on.

The National Transportation Safety Board has launched a “major investigation” into the incident, and confirmed there were no injuries in the incident. The Federal Aviation Administration, the government department responsible for aviation in the U.S., said in a statement air traffic controllers are “reviewing a variety of procedures including the handling of formation flights, aircraft near sector boundaries.”

Saturday, August 2, 2008

A 54-year-old German farmer who lost both arms in a farming accident six years ago has become the first patient to receive a complete double arm transplant. The patient, whose name has not been released, underwent the operation at the Klinikum rechts der Isar, part of the Technical University of Munich (Technische Universität München), last week; he is said to be recovering well.

The operation lasted 15 hours and was performed by a team of 40 specialists in Plastic Surgery, Hand Surgery, Orthopedics and Anesthesiology, under the direction of the head of the Plastics and Hand Surgery department, Prof. Hans-Günther Machens, Dr. Christoph Höhnke (Head of Transplants, Senior Physician; Plastics and Hand Surgery) and Prof. Edgar Biemer, the former Chief of Plastic Surgery at the Clinic.

In a press statement released by the clinic, it was revealed that the patient had been thoroughly physically checked and had psychological counselling prior to the surgery to ensure he was mentally stable enough to cope with the procedure. Since completion of the surgery, the patient has been on immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent rejection of the new limbs.

Following the surgery, the press release from the clinic’s press manager, Dr. Tanja Schmidhofer, included the following statement:

Without the immuno-suppressant drugs given to the patient, the risk of there being a Graft-versus-Host Reaction or GvHR, would have been significant due to the upper arm containing a large amount of bone marrow, consisting of ICC’s or Immuno-Competent Cells, which would have triggered a near total rejection of the new limbs. A GvHR is a condition which results in the cells from the transplant attacking the immune system of the body.

Indications from the clinic suggest that the double attachment went well, although it could be up to 2 full years before the patient is able to move the arms.

The donor arms came from an unnamed teenager, who is believed to have died in a car accident.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

On Monday, Australian telecommunications company Telstra has introduced dual carrier HSPA+ standard for broadband Internet business customers in the Next G network. This is the first time this technology is being introduced on national scale. The bandwidths the users can deploy increased into two to three times, with Telstra becoming the world’s fastest national mobile broadband service. The switch started with enabling the service for premium users. After some feedback, Telstra may expand the plan.

The higher speeds for wireless are intended to simplify and ease multitasking of users.

John Paitaridis, Telstra’s executive director, network products and services in Enterprise & Government, said “One of the reasons we decided to launch first to Enterprise And Government and Business customers is that clients are saying that their ability to access applications quicker makes a difference to their business and when they start to equate time savings and doing calculations around productivity it does become a return on investment.”

Telstra Business Group Managing Director Deena Shiff also stated that the efforts aren’t as sudden as it might seem, having feedback of many users as the base.

Australians are telling us they can’t afford to be tied to the desk all day and these new speeds mean they can now access mobile broadband at speeds typically reserved for the office. We have been deploying the high-speed capability in the network since December 2009 and now, with the launch of the new Ultimate USB Modem, these new speeds are available to customers across all capital city CBDs and associated airports, selected metropolitan areas and in more than 100 regional locations. These high-speed zones cover approximately 50 per cent of the Australian population and match the areas of highest customer demand and will make the frustration of waiting around for files to download a thing of the past. In other metropolitan and regional areas, the Telstra Ultimate USB Modem offers typical download speeds ranging from 550kbps up to 8Mbps… Our customers have told us that they want higher speed mobile broadband so they can work more flexibly outside of the office and we are delighted to be the first in the world to offer these new blistering speeds on a national network. The new Telstra Ultimate USB Modem provides customers with the speeds needed to handle large files, multi-task and update cloud-hosted applications effortlessly on the go when they are in a coverage area.

Previous modems were able to reach peak speed 21Mbps, with real life speeds ranging from 0.5Mbps to 8 Mbps. The theoretically expected maximum of the new technology is 42Mbps with user speeds varying between 1.1 and 20 Mbps. The new speed is twice as fast. This is caused by that the dual-carrier “Evolved High-Speed Packet Access” technology allows networks to send and receive wireless data using two channels simultaneously. This technology can be deployed on Next G networks. Telstra switched to them in February, thus making the switch to HSPA possible now.

Telstra delayed the implementation of the new technology until elections end. This decision was intended to avoid wrong interpretation of them by Coalition. Coalition’s claims include that wireless networks can be an alternative to the Labor party “fibre-to-the-home” proposal to introduce more expensive wired Internet. The announcement of the new technology, initially planned on August 25, was delayed, with Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton explaining, “We just didn’t want to feel like we were influencing the [telecommunications] debate.”

The political parties have different plans on development and funds on the Internet. The Labor party aims to spend AUD 43 billion to bring 1 Gbps wired Internet nationwide, and the Coalition plans to spend AUD 6 billion to introduce a variety of improvements including upgrade of existing copper Internet as well as expansion of wireless Internet to support 12Mbps. Opposition leader Tony Abbott has said in the past that Australians shouldn’t assume wireless technologies won’t ever be comparable to fixed-line technology. Telstra’s upgrade shows that wireless broadband is reaching the 100 Mbps minimum speeds promised by Labor’s national broadband network.

Telstra has only 2000 devices which support the new technology. This is why the opportunity to try it out is being given only to the Business plan customers, and they receive it for the same price as they were paying for the previous NextG plan. Since October 5, the device will be available for sale, with the Business customers able to buy it with 75% discount and a prepaid data allowance. The upgrade is expected to cover roughly 50% of the population. This is happening at the same time as one of Telstra’s competitors Vodafone is doubling data download quotas on mobile cap plans.

As some testing showed, real life download speeds reached only about the half of the maximum. Telstra executive director of wireless Mike Wright explained that the predicted figures were the estimates, with real life speeds lower due to interfering environmental conditions: “It’s possible to achieve better than the typical user speed claims, but those claims occur in the ideal network environment with good signal quality. When you’re out on the streets you get a lot of variation where the network is subject to signal quality, your location and the network load.”

Saturday, March 1, 2008

While nearly all coverage of the 2008 Presidential election has focused on the Democratic and Republican candidates, the race for the White House also includes independents and third party candidates. These parties represent a variety of views that may not be acknowledged by the major party platforms.

Wikinews has impartially reached out to these candidates, throughout the campaign. We now interview independent Presidential candidate Frank Moore, a performance artist.

Monday, August 27, 2007

A hot air balloon caught fire and crashed in western Canada. Two people were killed and 11 were injured.

The disaster occurred as the airship was preparing to take off from Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. An unknown source caused a fire in the basket of the tethered balloon, which then broke free and rose into the air.

Of the 12 passengers and one pilot on board at the time, 11 escaped the balloon with severe burns and other non-life-threatening injuries by jumping out in mid-air. The balloon then collapsed, crashing into a motorhome park with two people still trapped on board, who were killed in the subsequent fire. Four static caravans and two cars were also destroyed in the blaze.

The two deceased are believed to be a mother and daughter. Their family was on scene during the disaster and watched as the balloon burnt up and crashed.

Witness Don Randall, who photographed the accident, said the thing went up about 400 feet (122m) in the air at which point it melted enough of the balloon it collapsed.”The basket was basically a fireball. It just dropped like a stone. I’m just thinking, ‘Oh geez, I hope there’s nobody in that thing. It’s basically a burning death up there.”‘

Bill Yearwood, an investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, told reporters what preliminary information was available: “The crew loaded 12 passengers and was preparing to launch when a fire erupted. The pilot asked the passengers to get out of the basket. The balloon was tethered at the time, but then broke and came loose. The balloon climbed into the air before collapsing in a residential area in the park. They were all trying to get out. I can’t tell you what exactly happened when the balloon was loosened from the tether.”

Injured survivor Diana Rutledge questioned the pilot, Steve Pennock,’s actions after the fire broke out, pointing out that he was first off the balloon. “He was in perfect shape,” she said. “I thought, what is this all about? Wouldn’t he have stayed on to try to stop the fires?”

Joyce Genest, a resident at the park, also questioned procedure that day. “I stopped to watch the balloon get inflated,” she said. “Normally it takes 25 minutes and it’s quite gorgeous to watch. They are never in a big hurry. This time they took about ten minutes.” She said the passengers then got straight into the balloon, an unusual occurrence. “Normally the pilot gets in and tests the gun twice and then everybody gets in.” As soon as everybody was in, he hit the gun and the flame went sideways.”

Saturday, July 25, 2020

The following is the second edition of a monthly series chronicling the 2020 United States presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

This month’s spotlight on the campaign trail includes interviews with the vice presidential nominees of the Prohibition Party, Reform Party, and the Life and Liberty Party.