N.Europe airports paralysed due to heavy snow[ 1935 ]

Europe airports battle snow backlog

 

Trains have taken the strain as stranded air passengers opted to travel overland instead

( BBC )  22 December 2010 Last updated at 05:10 GMT

European airports are struggling to help thousands of passengers stranded after severe wintry weather paralysed parts of Europe's transport network.

Freezing temperatures, snow and ice has grounded flights, trapping travellers returning home for Christmas.

Airport operators defended their handling of the crisis amid criticism from the European Commission.

Officials at the worst-affected airport, London's Heathrow, rebuffed offers to bring in the UK Army to help.

Since Saturday, when 12.7cm (five inches) of snow fell in just one hour, Heathrow airport - the world's busiest - has cancelled hundreds of flights.

The airport said it planned to operate two-thirds of its scheduled flights on Wednesday.

Delays at Heathrow also had a knock-on effect on other northern European airports.

In Ireland, the Dublin Airport Authority said the airport would be closed until at least 0800GMT on Wednesday, the The Irish Times reports.

'Unacceptable disruption'

Tents have been erected at Heathrow airport to accommodate waiting passengers

In Germany, Frankfurt airport cancelled 550 of almost 1,300 flights on Tuesday because of the bad weather. 

Air France said that some 5,000 people spent the night at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport on Tuesday - 4,000 of whom were trying to fly into London, according to Le Monde.

While in Sweden, Scandinavian airline SAS said flights to London's Heathrow were the most problematic.

"It is the absolute worst there," SAS spokeswoman Elisabeth Manzi told The Local.

"From Frankfurt and Paris, things are running smoothly and we are getting passengers out. In London, we currently have about 5,000 to 6,000 SAS customers."

Many passengers sought to travel by rail instead of plane, causing Eurostar to recommend that passengers trying to leave from London should cancel their tickets and stay at home.

But rail expert Christian Wolmar said the real problem was not bad weather but bad management.

"Eurostar ought to be ashamed of themselves," he told Associated Press.

"It would seem possible to put on extra trains, but they can't get the crews or they can't get the trains in place. It's inexplicable."

The European Commission said it was "extremely concerned" about the level of disruption caused by the severe snow, saying that it was "unacceptable and [...] should not happen again".

But Airports Council International (ACI), the professional association of European airport operators, said 88% of flights to and from European airports had been operating.

It said airports in northern Europe found it easier to cope with severe weather because the temperatures there remained largely below freezing, so the condition of the runways did not change, whereas the fluctuating temperatures in western Europe had caused problems.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "frustrated" it was taking so long to get Heathrow fully operational again.

"If it's understandable that Heathrow had to close briefly, I'm frustrated on behalf of all those affected that it's taking so long for the situation to improve."

Inside the terminal, passengers who had spent several days waiting to catch their flights home were equally angered. Some were being accommodated in tents on the edge of the terminal.

"It's not even snowing!" 19-year-old Candie Sparks, who was trying to get back to Santa Fe, New Mexico, told AP. "It's crazy."

Japan,bamboo wheelchairs at airports [ 1934 ]

JAL to introduce bamboo wheelchairs at airports for easier use through metal detectors

Former baseball player Norihiro Akahoshi tries
a bamboo wheelchair at Haneda Airport\, 

(Mainichi Dec 21,2010)

(Mainichi Japan) December 21, 2010

Japan Airlines is set to introduce bamboo wheelchairs at two domestic airports next year, making it easier for wheelchair passengers to pass through metal detectors, the company has announced.

The new bamboo wheelchair has been developed jointly by the air carrier, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and custom-made furniture maker Sun-so-ing based in the Oita Prefectural town of Hiji.

While a conventional wheelchair sets off metal detectors, requiring wheelchair users to go through a lengthy security screening, the bamboo wheelchair is completely metal-free, with its wheels, axle, brakes and all other parts being made of non-metal materials.

Furthermore, the hand rims are also made of bamboo, while the material's flexibility has been used to enhance the strength of the wheelchair's footrest and overall framework.

It took nearly four years for the developers to complete the metal-free wheelchair.

As it usually takes a month to make each bamboo wheelchair by hand, producing large volumes of the device is difficult.

Each wheelchair costs as much as 600,000 yen and former Hanshin Tigers player Norihiro Akahoshi and his charity organization have volunteered to support the project.

JAL will introduce one bamboo wheelchair at Oita Airport in January next year and two others at Tokyo's Haneda Airport the following month on a trial basis.

Click here for the original Japanese story

(Mainichi Japan) December 21, 2010

Νuclear inspection....?_...[ 1933 ]

China urges North Korea to accept nuclear inspectors

1 / 39

Armed North Korean soldiers stand guard on the banks of Yalu River near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, December 21, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

By Wee Sui-lee and Sylvia Westall

 

BEIJING/SEOUL | Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:57am EST

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - China on Tuesday urged North Korea to follow through on its offer to allow U.N. nuclear monitors into the country as a way to alleviate international tensions during a standoff with the South.

China, North Korea's only major ally, has continually urged dialogue to resolve the crisis and has been reluctant to blame its neighbor for the shelling of a South Korean island last month, in which two Marines and two civilians were killed.

South Korea held further live-fire drills on the island on Monday, raising fears of all-out war, but the North did not retaliate. Instead, it offered to accept nuclear inspectors it has kicked out of the country before.

"North Korea has the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but also at the same time must allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors in," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing.

"All parties should realize that artillery fire and military force cannot solve the issues on the peninsula, and dialogue and cooperation are the only correct approaches."

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said on his return from a visit to Pyongyang, where he acted as an unofficial envoy, that North Korea had promised to allow in inspectors to make sure it is not processing highly enriched uranium.

He told reporters North Korea had shown a "pragmatic attitude" in his unofficial talks.

"The specifics are that they will allow IAEA personnel to go to Yongbyon to ensure that they are not processing highly enriched uranium, that they are proceeding with peaceful purposes," Richardson said in Beijing, referring to the North's main nuclear site.

But analysts said it was unclear how much access IAEA inspectors would really get because North Korea has limited their oversight in the past. They also said the major worry was whether there were other nuclear sites hidden outside of Yongbyon.

"The question that remains is whether this is the only facility. A uranium enrichment programme is much easier to hide than a plutonium one," said Andrei Lankov at Kookmin University in Seoul.

South Korea and the United States suspect North Korea has more sites geared to enriching uranium outside Yongbyon, the complex which is at the heart of the North's plutonium weapons programme.

It consists of a five-megawatt reactor, whose construction began in 1980, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium reprocessing plant, where weapons-grade material is extracted from spent fuel rods.

Lankov said the North's suggestion of compromise after provocation was a "usual tactic" of the impoverished state that had worked in the past to win aid.

"They create a crisis, they show that they are dangerous and drive tensions high," he said. "Then they show they could make some concessions."

If IAEA inspectors were allowed to carry out such monitoring, it could help to address a key concern about North Korea's uranium enrichment work because highly-enriched material can be used in atomic weapons.

NASA Image of the Day, Dec 20th..[ 1932 ]

    The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Sotra Facula, Titan

A total lunar eclipse is seen as the full moon is shadowed by the Earth on the arrival of the winter solstice, Tuesday, December 21, 2010 in Arlington, VA. 

The eclipse lasted about three hours and twenty-eight minutes. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth lines up directly between the sun and the moon, blocking the sun’s rays and casting a shadow on the moon.

As the moon moves deeper and deeper into the Earth's shadow, the moon changes color before your very eyes, turning from gray to an orange or deep shade of red. 

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Δευτέρα, 20 Δεκέμβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

NASA Image of the Day, Dec 20th..[ 1931 ]

   The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.   

Sotra Facula, Titan

Based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, this image shows an area of Saturn's moon Titan, known as Sotra Facula. Scientists believe Sotra is the best case for a cryovolcano, or ice volcano. The flyover shows two peaks more than 3,000 feet (about 1,000 meters) tall and multiple craters as deep as 5,000 feet (1,500 meters). The image also shows finger-like flows, which also indicate the presence cryovolcanism. The 3-D topography comes from Cassini's radar instrument. Topography has been vertically exaggerated by a factor of 10. 

The false color in the initial frames shows different compositions of surface material as detected by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. In this color scheme, dunes tend to look relatively brown-blue. Blue suggests the presence of some exposed ice. Scientists think the bright areas have an organic coating that hides the ice and is different and lighter than the dunes. 

The finger-like flows appear bright yellowish-white, like the mountain and caldera. The second set of colors shows elevation, with blue being lowest and yellow and white being the highest. Dunes here appear blue because they tend to occupy low areas. The finger-like flows are harder to see in the elevation data, indicating that they are thin, maybe less than about 300 feet (about 100 meters) thick.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/University of Arizona

Δευτέρα, 20 Δεκέμβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ