Arrivals..unfortunatelly none for Flight 477

On 1 June 2009, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-203 (registration F-GZCP) from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on-board lost contact with air traffic control while over the Atlantic Ocean, 300km (186 miles) north-east of the Brazilian city of Natal. Brazilian rescuers confirmed the wreckage found in the sea is that of the Air France jet. It was a fast-travelling rumour for some 1-2 days that the planed just vanished. Well, it seems it didn’t exactly teleport itself to another plane. Still, a bit of mystery floats over this story as most of the people are not to be found. Some of them had cell phones turned on (usually that is prohibited aboard flights, but some still keep them on – or maybe they did so before the plane fell and sank) and families could actually reach contact to the network.

Laurent Bouveresse, CEO of CGED: “Branch managers have met most of the families of those people that disappeared and what we want to do is first have contact with them.”

Another dear person of a victim, Aine Rooney, friend of Eithne Walls, says: “The shock is just unbearable to be honest.” Some of them are still waiting in the Airport, a gesture of both pain and hope.

Flying in the eye of the storm

Also,  the French Minister in charge of Transport has announced that “pessimism is overwhelming at this point. . .”. A rather wrong move I’d say, but on the other hand politics are one thing and chess another. I prefer chess, needless to say.

Here is the statement on cell phone coverage:

Says Patricia Coakley (wife of victim Arthur Coakley):  “Maybe today, I’m realising he might not come back. But I kept phoning him on his mobile and he’s pretty useless with mobiles, he hates them. You know, he’d like a tin of Heinz baked beans and a bit of string. But he never has his switched off, on rather. But his is switched off and I haven’t tried it today, but yesterday it was ringing so maybe they’re not at the bottom of the sea. That’s my hope but I think it’s maybe fading today.”

As an anonymous visitor states on a community forum blog: Mother Nature will always be in charge. How many of us have felt like “nothing” during horrific turbulence?! All you can do is take some deep breaths and pray. Going in to Vegas in April 2009 was the worse I have ever experienced. Even the pastor on-board was praying out loud.

The whole world, but victim’s families and friends first and foremost, await updates on this terrible accident and weird event. More on the Air France 477 case as it evolves. The story is not over…

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After Chrysler filed for bankruptcy one month ago, it was the turn of General Motors to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 protection. Today at 8 A.M. local time, General Motors declared bankruptcy at the federal court in Manhattan after they reported $81 billion losses in the last four years. GM is the biggest car manufacturer in the US, and the future of the 235,000 employees worldwide now lies in the hands of Judge Robert Gerber.

The GM bankruptcy is the largest industrial insolvency in the history of the USA, and now the 101-year-old carmaker is under court protection. Now there are two from the top three US carmakers under Chapter 11 protection, and President Barack Obama is expected to hold a press conference today to speak of the matter.

General Motors manufactures brands like Cadillac, Chevrolet, Opel, Hummer, and Vauxhall, and although they’ve gone bankrupt, the company will keep on producing cars. GM officials hope that the US Government will give them another hand, and the company will be back, but in a smaller “shape” in the next 60 to 90 days.

Although it’s the largest industrial company to file for bankruptcy, GM is the third largest company to go bankrupt. Lehman Brothers, and WorldCom are the first and second. The former is an investment bank, while the latter is a telecommunications company.

Those familiar with the matter expected General Motors to go bankrupt sooner or latter, but some believed that the carmaker will recover thanks to the $19 billion aid from the Treasury, and $30 billion from the US government.

GM put heir hopes into Judge Robert Gerber’s hands who took care of bankruptcies for companies like Adelphia, and Global Crossing.

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Today, the Air France flight AF447 left the Rio de Janeiro airport, and it should have landed at the Paris airport at 09:15 GMT, however, the plane is missing. The pilots of the Airbus A330-200 plane reported a technical fault at the electric circuit, and that they are experiencing turbulence. After that, the AF447 flight has gone missing and there are no news yet. Air France officials said that they don’t know where the plane is at the moment, and they are hoping that all people aboard and the crew are OK.

The AF Airbus A330 had 216 passengers and 12 crew, and the Brazilian officials said that the pilots last reported something at 11 P.M. local time when they were near the island of Fernando de Noronha. This is at about 1,5000 northeast of Rio de Janeiro, between the city of Natal and the island of Ilha do Sal.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said that he is deeply concerned, and he assured people that he will do the utmost to find the Airbus A330-200 plane. I remind you that the missing Air France flight AF447 was carrying 228 people aboard, and we surely hope that all of them are OK.

The Airbus A330-200 is considered one of the safest planes, and such aircraft didn’t have a fatal commercial flight crash. According to experts, the A330 shouldn’t go down in flight or when climbing to the flight route as accidents happen when landing or when planes take off. Also, the Air France didn’t have a fatal crash since July 2000 when a Concorde plane crashed, but the supersonic airplanes aren’t used for commercial flights anymore.

We will keep you updated with the Air France Flight AF447 status, and we hope that the passengers of the Airbus A330-200 will be found safe and alive.

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Carlo Ancelotti, 49, has been officially appointed as the Chelsea FC manager. Ancelotti left AC Milan yesterday after a 2-0 win away at Fiorentina, and today he was confirmed as Chelsea coach. Although the Italian manager had one more year contract at Milan, he decided that it was the perfect time to leave Milan after 8 successful years which saw the club becoming the most awarded intercontinental club in the world.

Ancelotti signed a three-year deal with Chelsea and he will start as of July 1, while the Milan’s new coach is Leonardo. Although he doesn’t speak English, Carletto thinks this is a very big challenge and he shouldn’t miss the opportunity in coaching one of the best teams in the best soccer league in the world. It has been rumored for a long time that the former AC Milan manager will go to Chelsea, but so far Roman Abramovich didn’t convince Carlo to come to London.

Abramovich wants his team to have a personality and Ancelotti is the perfect man to make Chelsea a team with a certain syle of play. The Russian owner of Chelsea likes the personality of teams like rivals Manchester United or even like AC Milan where Ancelotti won two UEFA Champions League titles, lost another CL final, one Coppa Italia (Italian Cup), one Seria A title (Italian league), one Italian Super Cup, two European Super Cups, and one Club World Cup championship.

The Italian manager won 8 titles in 8 years with Milan, and he previously coached Parma and Juventus Torino. Yesterday’s game was the final game not only for Carlo Ancelotti as Paolo Maldini retired from professional football after playing 25 years at Milan, with more than 900 appearances for the club and 126 caps for Italy’s national team.

It is rumored that Ancelotti will take a few players from Milan to Chelsea. Andrea Pirlo, Clarence Seedorf, and Ricardo Kaka are the most likely to go to the London outfit, however, Milan won’t let go Pirlo because it’s an important part of the team while Kaka stated the he won’t leave Milan and he will probably become the captain after Maldini’s retirement. Milan would allow Seedorf to leave as he isn’t among fans’ favorites and at 33 years he is considered old and dispensable.

The rumors will continue, however, it is now certain that Carlo Ancelotti signed a three-year contract with Chelsea FC and we should hear more about the Stamford Bridge team soon.

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Phylogenetic analyses of the Lujo Virus

Travellers to African countries will have to worry for another virus called Lujo. According to a team of scientists, the Lujo Virus is very similar to the Ebola virus as it’s lethal and it causes massive bleeding to infected people. The Lujo Virus infected five people from Zambia and South Africa as of September last year.

According to Dr. Ian Lipkin, epidemiologist at the Columbia University, the virus is found in rodents, but for the moment it is very unclear how the first person go infected with Lujo. Lipkin says that the virus spreads from a person to another person when entering in contact with Lujo-infected body fluids.

The first person to be infected with the Lujo virus was a female travel agen from Lusaka, Zambia who complained of fever-like symptoms that affected her badly. In order to determine what caused the disease and treat her, she was transported to Johannesburg, South Africa, but she eventually died.

Before she was sent to Johannesburg, she infected a paramedic who treated her. He was also transported from Lusaka to Johannesburg, but he died from the Lujo virus. Things got worse at the Johannesburg hospital as three other health care workers got infected, and two of them died. The third person seems to be fine after taking a medicine prescribed by the doctors.

A full paper about the Lujo virus or LUJV was published in the PLoS Pathogens online journal. According to Dr. Lipkin, the virus is really aggressive, but you can read the full research article here.

Note that the publication is free of charge and it doesn’t require a subscription.

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After Sir Alex Ferguson’s team conceded the goal, they were devastated. Manchester United didn’t manage to enter Barcelona’s half of the pitch as Per Guardiola’s team played a great passing game. In order to preserve their lead, Barcelona passed the ball a lot and it was hard for Ronaldo & Co. to get their feet on the ball. Barcelona missed a few more opportunities before the break, while Manchester sat back quietly.

Everybody was thinking that Sir Alex Ferguson will manage to wake up and push for the equalizer, however, Barcelona played a great game. Thanks to a very good tactic by Guardiola, Barcelona’s players kept their cool and minded their own business. Although Carlos Tevez replaced Anderson soon after the beginning of the second half, he didn’t do too much on the pitch, and what can you do against a midfield consisting of Xavi (a great leader with a great vision), Iniesta (a player with an incredible technique and speed), and Sergio Busquets who didn’t let anything go past him?

Barcelona were the better team thanks to a great defense – even if Dani Alves and Abidal missed the UCL Final, Puyol did well on the right side, Sylvinho did well on the left, while Yaya Toure and Gerard Pique (a former Manchester United player) were rock solid in the center. Also what can we say about Barca’s offensive trio? Although Henry was quiet throughout the game, Eto’o scored first in the 10th minute, while Leo Messi scored with a great header following a cross from Xavi.

Lionel Messi was probably the best player of this season’s Uefa Champions League and even in the final, he was unstoppable. He didn’t score after one of his renowned personal action, but Xavi’s cross from the 70th minute was world-class.

Dimitar Berbatov and Paul Scholes entered the pitch for Manchester but they were powerless against a perfect Barcelona team. It was a clearly deserved win, and the Red Devils couldn’t have done more. They did their best. Congratulations to Barcelona, and more importantly congratulations to Josep Guardiola who at his first season on the biggest soccer stage demonstrated that he is a great coach.

P.S. This year’s Barcelona team can be compared to Cruyff’s team in the past which is well-known for playing “total football” or “total soccer” for us.

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Zune

It seems like the competitors for iPod Touch/phone’s throne are multiplying. Until now there was Palm Pre but it seems that from this fall another gadget will be joining the duo. Zune HD is produced by Microsoft and it is, of course, yet another touch-screen enabled device.

Aside from being just another nit gadget device, the biggest surprise (and I mean that in the good way) comes from the association with Xbox. According to Engadget, the Zune HD will have Xbox Live connectivity which is quite a big deal on such a smaller device.

A promising start for Zune HD especially if Microsoft will successfully combine Xbox Live, Xbox 360 and the Zune HD is one super high-tech device. So the ball is now in Apple’s court and we cannot be happier because this kind of completion on the market will only bring customers newer, better and cooler devices.

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1. Microsoft Begins Pushing Windows Phone 7 NoDo Update

Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg

Apparently not everything that we do is harmful for our planet and gets in the way of its delicate ecological balance. Furthermore, one huge ship that served the U.S. Air Force in the World War II is going to be sunk to become one of the planet’s biggest manmade coral reefs.

The Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a huge ship last used in the 1960s is going to be sunk a few miles off the coast of Key West, Florida, on Wednesday. The 17,000 tones, 523 foot long battleship will sunk almost 140 feet to become the newest home for ocean life.
According to Reefmaker project manager Joe Weatherby, the ship will be sunk using explosive charges placed exactly beneath its hull, this way protecting the integrity of the structure. The actual sinking will last less than three minutes.

This huge project did not come cheaply. All the purchasing, cleaning and subsequent sinking costs were set at an impressive $8.6 million USD. However, the resulting manmade reef is expected to create annual revenue of almost $8million USD, mainly from dive-based tourism

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Lucy Gordon

She hung herself in her Paris apartment, her dead body was found at la Rue des Petites Ecuries after her boyfriend alerted a nearby shopkeeper. A local detective

“It was an horrific scene. The

Her very last role and piece of work was the film about the singer Serge Gainsbourg in which she played British actress Jane Birkin. Filming were only recently finished, and she accomplished to fully satisfy the producer and director with this last role. T railers for the movie were broadcast at the Cannes Film Festival.

To quote director Joann Sfar and producers Marc du Pontavice and Didier Lupfer: ” The film owes a lot to the generosity, gentleness and immense talent of Lucy Gordon.” The title is set right now to be ” Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque “.

See a small preview of the movie on YouToube.

Lucy Gordon’s filmography (source WikiPedia and IMDB.com)

• 1999: 2point4 children (episode “After the Fox”) as Lampety Jones
• 2001: Perfume as Sarah
• 2001: Serendipity as Caroline Mitchell
• 2002: The Four Feathers as Isabelle
• 2005: The Russian Dolls as Celia Shelburn
• 2007: Serial as Sadie Grady
• 2007: Spider-Man 3 as Jennifer Dugan
• 2008: Frost as Kate Hardwick
• 2009: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men as Hitchhiker
• 2009: Cinéman as Fernandel’s friend
• 2010: Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque as Jane Birkin

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2010 Olympic Torch

The Olympic officials of course deny all these accusations and it seems that the desired look was supposed to be of the snow and ice marks left behind by an Olympic skier or skater. Could be, I’m not saying no, but what if he was smoking a joint? This way, everybody wins. Mark Busse, an Industrial designer, said that the designers were certainly going for a look that inspires ergonomics, sleekness, modernity and any other resembling is just by accident.

New interpretations of the 2010 Olympic Torch are coming continually. David Schamader said the torch looked like a pregnancy test that reveals you’re having Satan’s baby. So what do you think?

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