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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

On Monday, Ukrainian towboat “Chelyabinsk” ^{((uk))Ukrainian language: ???????????} ran its barge caravan into a bridge pillar on the river Danube at Baja, Hungary. The caravan broke up, but it continued its way downstream later that day. According to multiple sources, no casualties were reported.

The caravan consisted of six grain barges pushed by Chelyabinsk, a towboat of the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company. Its downstream route crossed the rail-road bridge at Baja over the Danube at about marker 1480.

The caravan moved too far left from the navigable passage and hit a pillar of the bridge around 12:54 CET (1154 UTC) while trying to turn right. Gyula Szabó, a nautical expert interviewed by TV2, attributed the event to pilot error. An eyewitness told TV2 heavy winds were a contributing factor.

The caravan broke up after the collision. Boats anchored at Baja caught the barges. A police inspection found no leaks on them and the re-assembled caravan left the scene the same day.

Talking to RTL Klub, another helmsman, Dávid Peth?, pointed out this section is hard to navigate through with this kind of setup: “[This was] a caravan of about 200 meters in length [and] 33 meters in width with a mass, together with its cargo, of about 10 thousand metric tonnes. Keeping in mind that the horizontal clearance [under] the Baja bridge averages at only 60 metres, this is very large and very bulky.” ^{((hu))Hungarian language: ?Kb. 200 méteres karaván, 33 méter a szélessége, és kb. 10 000 tonna az ? tömege, így megrakottan. Ez egy hatalmas nagy méret és egy hatalmas nagy súly ahhoz képest, hogy a bajai hídnak az átlag hajózó szélessége csupán 60 méter.} Peth? also told RTL Klub this bridge-crossing manoeuvre starts three kilometres upstream from the bridge, with no room for error.

No significant damage was reported on the bridge, and cross-river traffic did not halt. The police categorised the case as an administrative offence.

Monday, July 11, 2016

On Friday, Arsenal F.C. goalkeeper and Czech Republic football captain Petr ?ech announced retirement from international football.

Debuting fourteen years ago, ?ech made 124 international appearances and became his nation’s most capped player. The 34-year-old goalkeeper said, “This is a purely football-based decision. […] I’m now 34 and the next [international] tournament is in two years which, in football, is a very long time.”

?ech said his childhood dream was to play a match in the national jersey. He has conceded 115 goals. Debuting against Hungary, he played his last international match against Turkey in the UEFA Euro 2016 group stage.

?ech has played four Euro tournaments, winning the bronze medal in 2004. He was voted Czech Footballer of the Year eight times and won the golden ball ten times.

?ech plays for Arsenal in the Premier League. He has made 367 Premier League appearances for Chelsea F.C. and Arsenal.

Monday, January 26, 2009

A televised appeal for victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be shown by the BBC or by British Sky Broadcasting.

The BBC had announced last week that the appeal, from the thirteen-strong charity coordination body Disasters Emergency Committee, would not be shown, leading to a media storm and intense criticism of the decision. The BBC said that it had doubts over “the delivery of aid in a volatile situation” and also that the appeal might compromise its perceived neutrality in future news reports.

The BBC said the decision was made “because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story”.

Sky joined the BBC in rejecting the appeal today. The head of the Sky News channel, John Ryley, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that “the conflict in Gaza forms part of one of the most challenging and contentious stories for any news organisation to cover. Our commitment as journalists is to cover all sides of that story with uncompromising objectivity.”

The channel’s foreign news head, Adrian Wells, was quoted by AFP as saying on-air that “passions are raised on this story… and that is part of the backdrop of why we’ve made the decision we’ve made.”

The BBC’s decision led to demonstrations outside some of its buildings, including a sit-in at the Corporation’s Glasgow studios, and criticism from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Labour MP Richard Burden and 11,000 viewers. Mark Thompson, the BBC’s Director-General and Editor-in-Chief, has appeared on BBC television and BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme to defend the decision.

Commercial free-to-air channels ITV, Channel Four and FIVE have all agreed to show the appeal.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Apple announced Monday that it has sold over two million iPads, just two months after the device began shipping in the US and only days after its international launch.

Apple shares rose 2.9 percent (US$7.41) to US$264.29 Tuesday afternoon. Market analysts also upped price targets and sales estimates in response to the announcement. Shares for AT&T, who provides data plans for the iPad, also rose yesterday.

Prior to the iPad’s April 3 launch, many analysts had speculated about the viability and marketability of the device. However, iPad sales have been faster than anticipated. Although it was only expected to sell one million iPads for the whole quarter, Apple announced in early May that it had surpassed the one-million mark in just 28 days. It again surprised industry watchers, who were expecting about 1.6–1.7 million iPads to have been sold when Apple announced that it had passed the two-million mark. iPad sales may make up over ten percent of Apple’s revenue this quarter, a feat that took the iPhone twice as long to achieve. The iPad has been so popular and supplies of the tablet so low that Apple tried to place limits on the number of iPads a person can purchase earlier.

Apple had postponed sales of the iPad to Europe and Asia until last weekend due to strong demand for the tablet in the US. In addition to the US, it now sells the devices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K., and will begin shipping iPads to Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore in July.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Family First Senator Steve Fielding arrived at Parliament today, dressed as a beer bottle to raise awareness of a bill he intends to move in the Senate today. Senator Fielding will introduce a bill to establish a nationwide refund scheme for bottles and cans.

A similar scheme has operated in South Australia since 1977.

Family First wants a rebate of 10 cents per container, while the Australian Greens want 20 cents.

Speaking to reporters outside parliament dressed as a beer bottle, the Senator said the legislation would reduce litter by 25 per cent. “There’s a message in this bottle.”

“I am no longer trash, I’m cash.”

“We should get the litter off the streets and off the creeks and into recycling – that’s good for the environment and good for the community”

“It’s a win-win and I can’t understand why nationally we don’t have a scheme,” said Senator Fielding.

Senator Fielding said that recycling not only reduced litter, but also consumes less energy than making new containers from scratch. “Recycling a plastic bottle saves more than 80 per cent of the energy used to make a bottle from scratch and recycling aluminium cans uses just five per cent of the energy used making a can from scratch,” said the Senator.

Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Greens said while there were environmental benefits from recycling, it would also create thousands of new jobs.

“This is a very good way of recycling and reducing energy because a lot of energy goes into making cans and bottles,” Senator Brown told reporters.

“It will employ tens of thousands of people across Australia.”

Thursday, July 14, 2005

The Metropolitan Police released two photographs at 15:30 today as a result of an intense investigation into London bomb attacks of last week. The photographs show Hassib Hussain who is believed to be bomber of London bus #30. The first photograph is a passport photo of Hasib Hussain and the second shows is a crop of a CCTV image from Luton station at 7:20 on the day of the attack.

The Metropolitan Police claimed in a statement that they believe that the 18 year old traveled from West Yorkshire in the company of three men. He was seen at Luton Station at 07.20 on the morning of the bombings. Police are trying to gain more eyewitness information and have asked the public to call the telephone number: 0800 789321 (+44 800 789321 if outside the UK) if they saw Hussain last Thursday around the Kings Cross area.

The Metropolitan Police made a request for any additional information about Hasib’s whearabouts after he left Luton.

“We need to establish his movements between 8.26am at King’s Cross and 9.47am on the #30 bus when the explosion occurred.Did you see this man at King’s Cross? Was he alone or with others? Do you know the route he took from the station? Did you see him get on to a #30 bus? And if you did, where and when was that.”

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the San Jose, California-based joint venture of Japanese storage vendor Hitachi and U.S. technology giant IBM, has set a new record for storage density at 230 gigabits per square inch (Gb/in²). The company has developed technology to implement a recording method known as perpendicular recording, which allowed the increase in density above the current ~130 Gb/in² limit.

Techworld claims there is a race between Hitachi and Toshiba for who will get the first drives to market which use the technology. According to Hitachi, they expect, “to ship [their] first perpendicular recording product in 2005 on a 2.5-inch hard drive”. Toshiba is also planning to ship a drive in 2005 that uses perpendicular recording.

According to Techworld, Toshiba will ship an 80 GB, 1.8″ drive in 2005. Toshiba’s 1.8″ drives are used in portable electronic devices such as Apple’s iPod, which is currently available in sizes 60 GB and smaller.

While all commercially available hard drives to date use longitudinal recording, perpendicular recording has roots in research done in academic circles over 100 years ago.

Hitachi Tech has produced a Flash animation that explains the rudiments of perpendicular recording in a music-video style.

Inspired by the 1970s Schoolhouse Rock series of educational animation shorts, the flash movie features whimsical moments with data bits and disk platters that speak and sing (not possible with today’s technology), it also contains realistic details. Of no importance to the viewer, but perhaps of interest to some, the animation shows Texas Instruments’ UC5608DWP chips visible briefly in the background. While TI’s UC5608DWP 18-line SCSI terminator chips have been made obsolete by the new UCC5618, the chips are indeed designed for use in hard drives.