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Sunday, January 6, 2008

A Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain owned and operated by Servant Air has crashed shortly after takeoff from Kodiak Island, Alaska, United States. Six people were killed and four others were rescued.

The flight was a 100 mile scheduled domestic charter flight from Kodiak to Homer. Servant Air are a small local airline that serves Kodiak, which has a population of around 6,000. The airline was founded in 2003 and currently operates seven planes. The plane took off at 1:48 p.m. local time Saturday and subsequently crashed in a shallow harbor 50 yards from the runway.

Dean Andrew, who was piloting a float plane taxiing on the water nearby, was able to rescue four people from the crashed plane. “Once I got them in they were really cold, and they were just pretty hysterical because they had told me that their family’s in that plane,” said Andrew, who the International Tribune Herald reports operates his own small air service, although the Seattle Times reported that he flew the plane for Trident Seafoods.

Alaska State Troopers and Kodiak Police divers were called in to retrieve the bodies of four others. A fifth was pulled out the water after attempting to swim 300 yards to shore, but he had already succumbed to the cold.

The passengers were Russian Orthodox Old Believers who had chartered the flight home in order to celebrate Russian Christmas, which is celebrated on Monday. The deceased have been identified as Homer citizens Stefan F. Basargin, 36; Pavel F. Basargin, 30; Zahary F. Martushev, 25; Iosif F. Martushev, 15; Andrian Reutov, 22 and local pilot Robin Starrett, 50. The survivors, who have not been identified, are all in good condition or out of hospital. Two were flown to Anchorage for treatment and two remained in Kodak; in both cases one was released and one remains.

Andrew described the moments leading up to the crash: “I heard Servant Air’s Navajo taking off, and shortly after he took off, he said, ‘I need to return to the airport.’ I know the pilot, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that it was probably something serious.”

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has opened a full investigation. NTSB investigator Clint Johnson told reporters it’s possible that mechanical problems with the plane caused the accident.

Ted Panamarioff, spokesman for Servant Air, said of Starrett “Very humble, very caring. Very detail oriented. Very precise in the way he did things. He was an excellent family man. Excellent co-worker.” He also said that Starrett had served in the Coast Guard, and that those involved were regular customers well known with the small airline. “We’re all family and friends here. We knew these customers for several years. This is really, really tragic.”

Monday, June 23, 2008

An Australian air safety group claims that Yogyakarta International Airport was opearating illegally with no license when Garuda Indonesia Flight 200, a Boeing 737, crashed at the airport, killing 16 Indonesians and five Australians.

Flight Safety Pty Ltd had been asked to carry out an independent investigation by an anonymous client after the March 2007 disaster, which occurred when the aircraft landed at excessive speed and shot off the end of the runway. Flight Safety has now announced that they have found Yogyakarta International had been granted a five year license but this would be withdrawn after twelve months if several conditions were not met. Since these conditions remained unchanged, the license effectively voided six months before the disaster, claim Flight Safety. One of the conditions was extension of the runway and provision of an adequate Runway End Safety Area (RESA).

The group adds that it also conducted checks on Solo International Airport and Semarang International Airport, and that these airports also had invalid Airport Operating Certificates. The final report was not released at the time as the client in question felt it ‘too sensitive’, and Flight Safety says that it was rapidly covered up three months later when it leaked in Indonesia.

The group says it notified the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), and that they in turn said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) – who assisted in the crash investigation – was in control of the situation. However, Flight Safety claim that when approached, the ATSB denied knowing about it. Allegedly, the ATSB had missed the licensing discrepancy because they only checked the front page of the airport’s license and did not conduct a detailed analysis of the small print.

Flight Safety claim that the Indonesian Director of Aviation Safety told them that the situation had been rectified. However, the group have now conducted a re-audit and say Solo and Yogyakarta airports both remain illegal. They go on to accuse the ICAO, ATSB and Indonesian Director of Aviation Safety of “keeping quiet” and described them as ‘compromised’.

Flight Safety go on to claim that the survivors of the crash and relatives of the deceased have not been informed either, and say that this will have a serious effect on the compensation process and on any insurance claims. Crikey, an Australian news service, also suggested that AU$12 million of aid promised by Australia to help Indonesia improve air safety is also being misused. All Indonesia’s air carriers are currently on the list of air carriers banned in the EU.

An official statement by Flight Safety head Chris Weir concluded “It [the group’s findings] should now be exposed as the safety issues remain unresolved.”

Mardjono Siswo Suwarno of the National Transport Safety Committee, the body responsible for investigating the disaster, denied that Yogyakarta Airport was illegal, saying “At that time [the license] was still valid, but the RESA was not long enough… But still in the [Garuda] case, even if the RESA length was adequate, the plane would have still overrun because the speed was 1.8 times normal speed.”

The final report found that the pilot-in-command, who has been arrested and charged over the crash, attempted to land after fifteen Ground Proximity Warning System activations to tell him he was landing too fast, and says that although a longer runway and full-sized RESA wouldn’t have stopped an airliner traveling at such excessive speed it could have reduced the toll of deaths and injuries.

The directors of Yogyakarta and Solo airports claim that since the re-audit they have taken steps to improve safety and rectify any problems, but have not actually admitted their airports were illegal. Indonesian director general of air transportation Budi Mulyawan Suyitno said that although local budget limitations have prevented some airports from being improved there are no problems currently at Yogyakarta, with improvements including declaration of a RESA for 140 metres of the 2,250 metre runway and stationing Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting trucks at the airport.

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Copenhagen, Denmark – The Danish Integration Minister Rikke Hvilshøj’s car was set ablaze outside her family-home on the morning of Wednesday 8 June. From there, the fire spread to the family’s garage, and further on to the side of the house, damaging the roof above the kitchen and children’s room.

At the same time, an e-mail was sent to several media agencies, where a group calling themselves “Action Group Beate” claimed responsibility, saying it is a “protest against the racist immigrational laws of Denmark”. The police found the computer used for sending the mail within a few hours, and closed down the cybercafé whilst removing the computer.

Throughout the Danish political system politicians from both the ruling party and the opposition have expressed their outrage over the terrorism.

The insurance company is currently assessing the amount of damage done to the home, but so far they have made an estimate of £27.000, just for the house damages.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

At 12:50 pm on January 3, a ski chairlift ride cost a German skier’s life and another German woman was left with serious injuries after the lift cable derailed from the mast sheaves in a windstorm. The derailed chairlift is the two-seater Fallboden lift at Kleine Scheidegg, next to the Jungfrau mountain in Switzerland.

Two more Australian tourists were lightly injured. About 20 further people had to be evacuated from the stopped chairlift. Wind velocity peaking at 90km/h prevented a helicopter from rescuing the trapped passengers, complicating the rescue.

According to 20min.ch, the lift was manufactured by Garaventa AG, a major Swiss ski lift company, now a part of an international group Doppelmayr/Garaventa. When contacted no one was available for comment.

Shortly before the accident, a wind alarm was activated few times by a 60km/h wind. The operator decided to close the lift and waited for the lift to unload all passengers; at the moment of the catastrophe the bottom station of the lift was already closed, but 75 passengers were still on the lift.

According to the Swiss law, every chair lift must be designed to withstand a lateral wind load of 250 newtons (approx. 25kg) per square meter. However there is no law limit at which wind speed or lateral loads the chair lifts have to be stopped. This safety aspect is left to the responsibility of the operator. The safety of the lift was checked by the Swiss Federal Office of Transport in January 2006. This chairlift accident is said to be the worst in Switzerland for the last 8 years.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

A man named George Schultz in Parksville, British Columbia is selling the boat from old TV series Gilligan’s Island at the cost of $99,000. The cruiser, originally cost about $290,000 in the 1960s.

“There have been a couple of modifications, so it doesn’t look exactly like the original,” said Shultz, a boat broker who’s selling the 36-foot Wheeler Express Cruiser for fellow Parksdale resident Scotty Taylor. “But it’s still the original boat.”

Originally, the boat’s name was The Blue Jacket.

“Just for the show, for a stage name, it was called the S.S. Minnow,” Shultz said. The name was a reference to Newton Minnow, once chairman of the FCC.

“He just liked the boat, he wanted to restore it, it was a nice looking boat, a wooden boat, a classic and he likes classic boats,” said Shultz. “The hole in the hull was actually the least of the repairs – the interior needed a lot more work”.

Someone later stole the plaque on the boat, but the 46-year-old boat still has the round life preserver with S.S. Minnow emblazoned on it and the skipper’s chair.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

What was once the most widely sold contraceptive for millions of women, the Today® Sponge, has been re-approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be brought back for sale to the American marketplace, as early as this summer.

The reintroduction of the sponge, demanded by many women for years, is noteworthy because it offers certain distinct advantages versus other forms of contraceptive:

• It does not interfere with the natural sensations of intercourse, compared with male or female condoms.
• It does not require multiple applications of contraceptive gel or cream, unlike the diaphragm.
• It remains effective at preventing pregnancies for up to 24 hours after insertion, even with several acts of sexual intercourse.
• It will legally be made available over-the-counter an estimated price of $7.49 to $8.99 for a package of 3.

The sponge does not, however, protect against sexually transmitted diseases, and it carries with it certain minor risks which should be noted by potential users.

• There is a minor risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome, a risk also carried by certain other female hygiene products, such as tampons.
• Product should not be inserted during menstruation, and should be removed after no more than 30 hours of continuous use.

The sponge has also been found less effective as a form of birth control than oral contraceptives, Depo-Provera injections or an intrauterine device (IUD), although similar in effectiveness to the male condom. A pregnancy rate of 13 to 16% is expected from a year of “typical use” as a standalone method of birth control. The product varies in effectiveness depending on if the woman forgets to insert the device before intercourse, uses the device incorrectly, or fails to wait at least 6 hours after intercourse before removing the device.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Recently, Finnish open-source video game developer Perttu Ahola discussed Minetest, his “longest ever project”, with Wikinews.

Started in October 2010, Minetest was an attempt by Ahola to create a sandbox game similar to Minecraft. Minecraft is a multi-platform commercial game, which was in alpha version when Ahola challenged himself to create something similar to it from scratch, he told Wikinews.

Minetest is an open-source game, which is free for anyone to download and play. It is written in the C++ programming language, and the source code is available on code-hosting site GitHub. According to Ahola, Minetest attempts to run on older hardware, with limited graphics, but to be accessible to more people: those who have outdated technology, and making it available for no cost. Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid game, currently costing USD 26.95 for its computer version. Minecraft is currently owned by Microsoft, and performs poorly on older hardware.

A correspondent from French Wikinews contacted Perttu Ahola via Internet Relay Chat a few weeks ago, discussing Minecraft. This interview is built on top of the previous interview, as we take a deeper dive into knowing more about this free game which is about to turn ten years old in a few months.

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

On Monday, United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak revealed in a media briefing that he will confirm in his Budget, scheduled for half-noon Wednesday, an end to the partial pay freeze on 2.6 million public sector employees introduced last November, alongside a 6.6% increase to the National Living Wage.

Sunak used the fall in wages during COVID-19 to justify his “pause” in public sector employees’ pay that exempted 2.9 million National Health Service workers and those earning under GBP24 thousand per year, but applied to 2.6 million teachers, police, civil servants and members of the British Armed Forces. While a pay rise is in order from spring next year, the precise details are pending consultation by independent advisers and pay review bodies, according to the i. The Guardian writes some 5.7 million public sector employees could see a pay rise.

In addition, about two million on minimum wage, including some from the above 5.7 million, could benefit from an increase in the national minimum and national living wages. According to the i and The Guardian, the National Living Wage applicable for over-23s will increase by 59p to GBP9.50 an hour from next April, about GBP1000 for a full-time worker, in line with recommendations from independent advisory board the Low Pay Commission. The National Minimum Wage for those aged 21 to 22 will rise 82p to GBP9.18 an hour, and the Apprenticeship Rate will go up 51p to GBP4.81 an hour.

However, according to senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies Tom Waters: “While this boosts earnings for full-time minimum wage workers by over £1,000 a year, those on universal credit will see their disposable income go up by just £250 because their taxes rise and benefit receipt falls as their earnings increase.” Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury and Labour MP Bridget Phillipson said the offer was “underwhelming”, and “[m]uch of it will be swallowed up by the government’s tax rises, universal credit cuts and failure to get a grip on energy bills”. UK inflation rose 2.9% the year to September, according to the Office of National Statistics.

Phillipson contrasted Sunak’s measures with those of a Labour government, according to The Independent: “With a new deal for workers, exploitative practices like zero hours contracts banned, Fire and rehire outlawed, a minimum wage of at least £10 an hour and fair pay agreements, a Labour government will transform work and raise standards.”

However, the Daily Mirror says Mr Sunak is considering a rise to GBP10.50 an hour, and the qualifying age for the National Living Wage lowered from 25 to 21 by the next election in 2024. This would match or exceed Labour’s pledge of “a decent income that you can raise a family on”: an increase of the “minimum wage to at least £10 an hour”.

Mr Sunak said during the media briefing that Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle would later call “riding roughshod” over parliamentarians, that it was “[t]he economic impact and uncertainty of the virus” that led to the “difficult decision to pause private pay”, which “[a]long with our Plan for Jobs, this action helped us protect livelihoods at the height of the pandemic. And now, with the economy firmly back on track, it’s right that nurses, teachers and all the other public-sector workers who played their part during the pandemic see their wages rise.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced at the Conservative Party conference his intent to create a “high-pay, high-skill economy” after Brexit, but it may take years for salary growth to catch up with mounting financial pressures, according to the i.

According to The Guardian, analysis by the Resolution Foundation indicates those impacted by the freeze earned nearly 8% less than their private sector counterparts. The differential widened to 0.6% for all public sector employees, including those exempt. The Office of National Statistics writes total private sector pay grew 8.3% from June to August 2021, while public sector pay grew only 2.5%.