Sunday, 30 June 2019
The News,World
WA small twin-engine passenger plane crashed in Texas in the United States on Sunday, killing 10 people, officials said."The Dallas County Medical Examiner has confirmed 10 fatalities and no survivors," a spokeswoman for the town of Addison told AFP.The plane was heading for St. Petersburg, Florida and was carrying two flight crew and eight passengers, Vice Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Bruce Landsberg said.There were few details on what caused the crash, which the NTSB is investigating, he said."There are any number of possibilities that could occur," Landsberg told a press conference. Video broadcast by US media showed a massive column of black smoke pouring out of a building at the airport in Addison, as firefighters directed streams of water toward the blaze.The NTSB investigator in charge of the accident, Jennifer Rodi, said the plane, which had changed ownership recently, hit a private hanger at the airport.CBS News quoted sources as saying the aircraft lost an engine on takeoff and veered into the hanger.wd/cs/rma
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Saturday, 29 June 2019
Friday, 28 June 2019
The News,World
KLAIPEDA: The UK pledged to boost defence of the Baltic states to deter a "more assertive" Russia as the British navy held its largest drills in the Baltic region, which includes a Russian territory, in more than a century.Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt said the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a rapid response unit, has reached a "new scale" in the exercise that included nearly 4,000 people and 44 vessels from nine nations.Mordaunt called the exercise "the largest Royal Navy deployment in the Baltic for more than a hundred years", speaking to reporters aboard a British warship in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, which is just a stone's throw from the militarised Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.The exercise was meant to reassure eastern flank NATO allies and to demonstrate that they are "aligned and ready"."Russia is becoming more assertive, we see her deploying more forces and new weapons, and we can imagine scenarios that may play out in the future," Mordaunt said."So it is important and right that we stand together with our allies."In a separate interview with the Baltic News Service, Mordaunt said Britain wanted "to do more" to "build security and resilience in the Baltic states and the region", including exercises and regular patrols, but declined to elaborate.The British defence secretary's visit to Lithuania, a vocal critic of Russia, came on the same day as outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May met Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan.May told Putin that normal relations will not be restored until Moscow ends its "irresponsible and destabilising" activity, according to a Downing Street spokesperson.Alongside Lithuania, another seven northern European nations are part of the Joint Expeditionary Force, including fellow Baltic states Latvia and Estonia and non-NATO member Sweden.
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Thursday, 27 June 2019
The News,World
WASHINGTON: For its next mission in our solar system, NASA plans to fly a drone copter to Saturn´s largest moon Titan in search of the building blocks of life, the space agency said Thursday.The Dragonfly mission, which will launch in 2026 and land in 2034, will send a rotorcraft to fly to dozens of locations across the icy moon, which has a substantial atmosphere and is viewed by scientists as an equivalent of very early-era Earth.It is the only celestial body besides our planet known to have liquid rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, though these contain hydrocarbons like methane and ethane, not water."Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionize what we know about life in the universe, " said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. "This cutting-edge mission would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, but we´re now ready for Dragonfly´s amazing flight."NASA said the vehicle would have eight rotors and fly like a large drone."During its 2.7-year baseline mission, Dragonfly will explore diverse environments from organic dunes to the floor of an impact crater where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together for possibly tens of thousands of years," NASA said in a statement. "Its instruments will study how far prebiotic chemistry may have progressed. They also will investigate the moon´s atmospheric and surface properties and its subsurface ocean and liquid reservoirs. "Additionally, instruments will search for chemical evidence of past or extant life."The craft will land first at the equatorial "Shangri-La" dune, exploring the region in short trips before building up to longer "leapfrog" flights of five miles (8 kilometers).It will stop along compelling areas to collect samples before finally reaching the moon´s Selk impact crater, where there is evidence of past liquid water, organic materials and energy: a potential primordial stew.The hope is the lander will eventually fly more than 108 miles (175 kilometers).Titan´s atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen, like Earth´s, but is four times denser. Its clouds and rains are methane.The second-largest moon in the solar system, Titan has a thick water ice crust, beneath which is an ocean made primarily of water. The underground ocean could harbor life as we know it, while the hydrocarbon lakes and seas on the moon´s surface could contain life forms that rely on different chemistries -- or the body could be lifeless.Titan is about 886 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) from the Sun, with surface temperatures of around -290 degrees Fahrenheit (-179 degrees Celsius) and surface pressure about 50 percent higher than Earth.
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The News,World
BAGHDAD: Bahrain said it had recalled its envoy to Iraq after protesters upset by Manamas's hosting of an American Middle East peace conference torched its flag in Baghdad.Some 200 protesters also burned Israeli flags while hoisting the flags of Iraq and Palestine in a demonstration outside Bahrain's embassy in the Iraqi capital, a police official said.Iraqi security forces broke up the rally and protesters did not enter the embassy compound, the official said.But the government of Bahrain said it had "decided to recall its ambassador... for consultations" and held Baghdad responsible for its embassy security, according to a statement from its official news agency.It condemned the incident as an "attack" which it said had led to "damaging acts in the embassy building."US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner on Wednesday launched a long-awaited Middle East initiative with a two-day conference in Bahrain, where leaders touted his plan to jumpstart Palestinians' economy.But the Palestinian Authority boycotted the conference, accusing the unabashedly pro-Israel Trump administration of trying to force its solution on them.Trump has taken a series of landmark steps to benefit Israel including recognizing bitterly divided Jerusalem as the Jewish state's capital in 2017, which led the Palestinian Authority to cut off formal contact.
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Wednesday, 26 June 2019
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