Missing Malaysia airlines flight plane MH370
THROWN AROUND LIKE A FIGHTER JET IN ATTEMPT TO DODGE RADAR
THERE HAVE BEEN CLAIMS THE MISSING MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT WAS ‘THROWN AROUND LIKE A FIGHTER JET’ IN A BID TO DODGE RADAR
The missing Malaysia Airlines flight was “thrown around like a fighter jet” in a bid to dodge radar detection after it disappeared, Malaysian military investigators reportedly now believe.
An unnamed source cited by The Sunday Times added that officials are now convinced that the plane was “flown very low at a very high speed”.
The source concluded: “And it was being flown to avoid radar.”
It is also possible that the flight surged to 45,000 feet – 10,000 above its normal cruising altitude of 35,000 feet – after disappearing, before dropping to as low as 5000 feet, reports by investigators have suggested.
The low altitude would fit in with a report by Malaysia’s New Straits Times newspaper that co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid tried to make a mid-flight phone call shortly before the plane disappeared.
In order for the phone signal to reach the reported telecommunications tower near the Malaysian city of Penang, the plane would needed to have been flying under 7000 feet.
The newspaper report said the signal ended abruptly before contact was established.
Brendan Howlin confident cuts in Irish health budget will be met
Minister Howlin responds to the revelation that HSE expects a shortfall of €200m.
Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin has expressed confidence the budgetary targets on health spending will be met.
His comment follows the revelation in The Irish Times yesterday that the Government has been told close to €200 million in health savings for this year will not materialise.
The Minister, speaking today on RTÉ’s The Week In Politics, said the Haddington Road agreement on pay and productivity in the public service pay was a “negotiated enabler’’ of real savings.
“Every line department in the HSE directly was involved in the negotiations and signed off on it,’’ he added.
“Like every other department, I know that it is going to live up to the targets because it is part of the overall budgetary arithmetic.’’
Last week, senior Department of Healthand HSE officials provided a confidential consultancy report to Mr Howlin’s department setting out the potential shortfall in the figures.
Under the HSE’s service plan for the year, the health service was expected to generate savings of €290 million under the Haddington Road agreement which came into effect last July.
The plan also earmarked further pay savings of €108 million to be achieved by additional measures.
However, the report, drawn up by PA consultants, suggested none of the €108 million euro in savings was likely to be delivered and the €290 million euro basic target would not be fully reached.
Students from Sligo Institute of Technology help autistic teens in Valhalla campus
The interns are currently living and volunteering at St. Christopher’s Jenny Clarkson campus, a residential treatment center that helps teens with behavioral and learning disabilities.
VALHALLA – A college exchange program is allowing five students from Ireland to help autistic teens in Valhalla.
The interns are currently living and volunteering at St. Christopher’s Jenny Clarkson campus, a residential treatment center that helps teens with behavioral and learning disabilities.
The volunteers attend Sligo Institute of Technology back in Ireland and have plans to work in social care.
The college in Ireland has been sending students to St. Christopher’s Jennie Clarkson campus every year for nearly a decade.
The goal of the program, which lasts three months, is to expose both sides to different cultures and create meaningful bonds.
A hostile world that turns its back on the elderly
An 89-year-old woman recently decided to end her own life because she could no longer cope with the pace and reach of an impersonal digital world. So how can the aged cope?
Marie O’Gorman, who turns 80 this month, taught her grandchildren in Armenia to knit using Skype. Having won the inaugural ‘Silver Surfer’ award – an Age Action and Google initiative to recognise older people who have made the internet part of their everyday lives – Marie’s prize was a laptop and she has used it since then to keep in touch not only with her five children, 20 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, but with nieces and nephews scattered around the globe.
“My daughter Edel and her family moved to Armenia 10 years ago,” explains Marie, a widow. “It was hard at first because it would often take weeks for their letters to arrive and the phone signal was bad, so a friend said to me, ‘Why don’t you learn to do emails?’ I went on an Age Action computer course and it gave me a whole new life. Now I email family members all over the world, from London to Los Angeles. I have five grandchildren in Armenia and when the older ones wanted to know how to knit some fancy lace scarves, I showed them on Skype. They were thrilled and went off to show their Armenian friends how to knit too.
“They text me to let me know when they want to Skype and they line up all the things they want to show me on a table. And when my youngest grandchild, baby Lois, was born a few months ago I got to see her on Skype too.”
Marie’s enthusiasm for new technology, though inspiring, is most unusual for a woman her age. If anything, older people often see themselves as disconnected from the ‘global village’ of the worldwide web and their sense of isolation can have tragic consequences. Last month, an 89-year-old English woman took her own life at a Swiss euthanasia clinic after complaining that she felt left behind by the digital age.
In a world where over half of the planet’s adult population now spend most of their waking hours plugged in to the internet, telephone, TV or other technology, the retired art teacher who wanted to be known only as Anne, lamented what she called a “lack of humanity” in the modern world.
“We are becoming robots,” she said. “Adapt or die, they say. At my age, I feel I can’t adapt, because the new age is not an age that I grew up to understand.”
‘It’s the kind of story that stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder, is this where the world is heading?” says Seán Moynihan, CEO of the voluntary organisation ALONE. “And if it is, we need to tread cautiously.
“Now more than ever we need to help older people stay connected and linked in with the community. The world is full of virtual friends, but nothing can replace human contact.”
The suicide of this disillusioned pensioner throws into stark focus the isolation that many older people feel in an age where texting, tweeting, blogging and Instagramming are the status quo. Technology now drives almost everything we do, from paying household bills, booking flights online and downloading books, to the GPS systems that allow us to find our way anywhere without ever having to stop and ask for directions.
Scientists have already developed robots that can serve you tea and mow your lawn, yet the closer we get to technology, the wider the generational divide becomes. While more and more business and government services are moved online, thus reducing operating costs, figures show that over half of 60 to 74-year-olds in the Republic of Ireland have never used the internet (CSO 2012) and most don’t know how: 46pc of the over-65s cited lack of skills as the main reason they didn’t go online (Eurostat).
There are numerous initiatives to help older people get to grips with technology, such as Age Action’s Getting Started programme, which delivers training on computers, the internet and mobile phones to the over-55s, BT’s Connected Communities initiative and the Google-sponsored Get Your Folks Online,an online Age Action course that makes it easy for people to pass on internet skills with others, as well as a variety of local, community-based classes taking place in local libraries, techs and parish halls across the country.
Yet for every pensioner who has taken to the web, there are many who remain resolutely disconnected.
“Many older people feel there is no role for them anymore,” says Eamon Timmins, Head of Advocacy and Communications with Age Action. “I recently spoke to a woman who pointed out that if her daughter wants a recipe for apple pie, she can get it on the internet. I had to remind her that it wouldn’t be her apple pie, the one her daughter remembers and loves the best.
“The real motivation for older people to embrace technology is to keep in contact with their families. It’s the Irish granny who has breakfast every Saturday with her grandchildren in Sydney thanks to Skype, or the old man who builds a connection with his grandsons through swapping game Cheats. If people are willing to take the plunge, technology can bring endless opportunities.”
According to Michael Foley, Public Affairs Manager with Age and Opportunity, the benefits of engaging with the internet are enormous at any age.
“I taught an older Jewish man living in Dublin how to do basic things on the computer and once he realised that he could sit down with a cup of coffee and read the Jerusalem Post online, he was delighted.” “Now, tablets have made things even simpler. You don’t have to sit at a desktop pressing keys on a keyboard – all you have to do is swipe and point. It takes away all the scary, unfamiliar aspects of using the internet. Older people may face a bigger hurdle because they haven’t grown up with technology, but it’s never too late to learn.”
THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION… HOW THE ELDERLY LOSE OUT
According to Eamon Timmins of Age Action, there are major obsacles facing older people in today’s digital world.
Getting information: “Older people taking our computer training classes complain that many advertisements now feature only website, Facebook or email details for those who want further information,” he says.
“They feel that companies don’t want to talk to them and if they do phone, they’re often frustrated by automated systems”.
Banking and paying bills: “Many banks and utility providers no longer have a local office and some banks have curtailed counter services.
”For older people who are not online, the trek to get to a bank branch can involve a lot of hardship.”
KNOWING YOUR RIGHTS:
“There is a lot of information out there, but most of it is on the internet. Many older people struggle to find out about their rights, especially as their needs change and they become eligible for new supports and assistance.”
The positives: “The internet offers huge opportunities for those housebound by disability or poor health to share interests with like-minded individuals.
‘Blood moon’ attracts stargazers, amid conspiracy theories
Stargazers and fans of eerie, prophetic-like omens will be in for a treat early Tuesday morning when a total lunar eclipse will occur, turning the full moon red.
Also called “blood moons,” total lunar eclipses happen about twice a year when the moon passes directly behind the Earth into its shadow, or umbra.
But what’s up with the creepy red glow that gives the lunar event its nickname?
Well, the red color is actually not unlike a sunset, but from the moon’s perspective NASA describes it as “seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once.” And that red glow from behind the Earth gets projected onto the moon.
This total lunar eclipse will be the first in a series of four appearing every six months, a phenomenon called a “tetrad” – something not particularly rare for this century, according to NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak. (Via CNN)
While a total lunar eclipse is an interesting sight for stargazing hobbyists, for others the oncoming blood moon and tetrad brings something else – tidings of doom.
CTV News writes that, “Conspiracy websites draw parallels between lunar eclipses and historical events, like the fall of Constantinople and the founding of the State of Israel,” and that the last blood moon occurred when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004.
But perhaps the biggest proponent for any conspiracy concerning the upcoming blood moons is Pastor John Hagee, who released a book titled “Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change in 2013.” (ViaThe Christian Broadcasting Network)
With all four blood moons being viewable from the U.S., New York Daily News notes Hagee claims that “the four blood moons that will soon appear in the skies over America are evidence of a future ‘world-shaking event.’”
In an interview with Fox News, Hagee emphasized the significance that each blood moon will occur during a Jewish holiday as well.
“To have a blood moon, and then for those blood moons to be on this exact date, is something that just is beyond coincidental.”
As noted by Think Progress, Hagee has caused some controversy before; in 2008 he suggested a connection between God’s wrath toward a gay pride rally planned for New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.
The next three blood moons will be viewable on Oct. 8, followed by April 4, 2015 and Sept. 28, 2015.
‘CO2 levels at 402 parts per million (ppm,) higher than at any time in last 800,000 years
Carbon dioxide levels last week were higher than at any time in at least the past 800,000 years.
For two consecutive days last week, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere exceeded 402 parts per million (ppm,) higher than at any time in at least the past 800,000 years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Carbon dioxide levels tend to peak in May, which means that they are likely to rise even more. According to an article in Mashable, a news and tech website, the latest figures “put humans into uncharted territory.”
Just last month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a damning report that illustrated the growing dangers of global warming. The panel focused on carbon dioxide emissions and warned about the dangers of inaction.
While some global warming can be attributed to natural trends, the sharp increase in CO2 levels since the advent of industrialization indicates that much of it is man-made; the UN report affirmed with 95% certainty that humans have “been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
Over time, high CO2 concentrations can lead to rising sea levels, heat waves, droughts and floods, posing great risk to coastal communities and human food supply. Experts believe that these worsening environmental conditions could exacerbate existing civil conflicts regarding land, food and water.
“Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last month.
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