Popes set for historic Vatican saints ceremony

Images of the saints-to-be abound in the streets of Rome

Two leading popes of the 20th Century - John Paul II and John XXIII - are to be declared saints at an unprecedented open-air ceremony in Rome on Sunday.

A Mass co-celebrated by Pope Francis and his predecessor Benedict will be witnessed by one million pilgrims and a vast TV and radio audience.
Nearly 100 foreign delegations are due, including royal dignitaries and heads of state and government.
It is the first time two popes have been canonised at the same time.
Correspondents say the move is being seen as an attempt to unite conservative and reformist camps within the Roman Catholic Church.

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"We've been counting down the days. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience”

Polish pilgrim in Rome

Rare appearance

Pilgrims have been pouring into Rome and special bus, train and boat services are expected to ferry many more into the city early on Sunday morning for the two-hour ceremony which starts at 10:00 local (0800 GMT).

Some had bagged places to sleep overnight as close as possible to St Peter's Square, hoping to be among the first in when it opens to the public.
Giant screens have also been erected in nearby streets and elsewhere in the city for those unable to get into the square.

Vigils are taking place during the night and impromptu prayer sessions are also expected

Popes past and present: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (right) and Francis (left)

Papal relics will also have a role to play in Sunday's ceremony

"We've been counting down the days. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience," said one pilgrim from Poland, John Paul II's home country.
"We're already hoarse from singing!" he told AFP.
The Vatican confirmed on Saturday that 87-year-old Benedict XVI - now officially titled Pope Emeritus - would make a rare public appearance alongside his successor.
"He will co-celebrate, which does not mean he will go to the altar," a Vatican spokesman said.
"We will all be happy to have him there."
Benedict XVI resigned for health reasons a year ago, sending shock waves around the world.
No pope had resigned for 600 years.
'Fast-tracked' The process of saint-making is usually long and very costly.
But John Paul II, whose 26-year reign ended in 2005, has been fast-tracked to sainthood in just nine years.
Many among the huge crowds that gathered as he lay dying cried out "Santo subito!" (Make him a saint immediately!)
By contrast Italian-born John XXIII, known as the Good Pope after his 1958-63 papacy, had his promotion to full sainthood decided suddenly and very recently by Pope Francis.
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says there was a political dimension to this.
By canonising both John XXIII - the pope who set off the reform movement - and John Paul II - the pope who applied the brakes - Francis has skilfully deflected any possible criticism that he could be taking sides.

Vatican set to canonize revolutionary pontiff along with John Paul II

Paintings of late pope John XXIII by Italian artist Angelo Capelli are displayed in his birthplace in Sotto il Monte Giovanni XXIII on April 15, 2014. While he may not be widely known internationally, pope John XXIII holds a special place in the heart of many Italians and nowhere more so than in his homeland of Bergamo where he was born into a farming family. 

VATICAN CITY -- On the night of Oct. 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII did something so natural that it's astonishing it was so revolutionary at the time. He came to the window of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace and spoke to thousands of candle-bearing faithful below - not in the arcane, scripted words of pontiffs past but in those of a father and pastor looking out for his flock.
"Going home, you will find your children. Give them a caress and tell them 'This is the caress of the pope,'" John said to the torch-lit cheers from St. Peter's Square.

Pope John Paul II being cleared for sainthood: Vatican

While much of the focus of Sunday's dual canonization will be on the globe-trotting, 26-year papacy of Pope John Paul II and his near-record sprint to sainthood, many older Catholics will be celebrating the short but historic pontificate of the "Good Pope," John XXIII. John's words, delivered on the opening night of the Second Vatican Council, came to define his papacy. The speech epitomized how John captured the hearts of Catholics with his simple, paternal affection while using his intuitive cunning to launch Vatican II and bring the 2,000-year institution into the modern world. It's a combination embodied by the current pope, Francis.
"He was courageous. A good country priest, with a great sense of humor and great holiness," Francis told reporters last summer when asked about John's attributes. "He was one of the greats."
Born in 1881 to sharecroppers in northern Italy, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected pope on Oct. 28, 1958, naming himself after his father and in the process correcting the accident of history that was the 15th-century anti-pope John XXIII. During the Western Schism of the early 1400s, John XXIII was one of three men who claimed the papacy at the same time, though he later renounced it.
Elected at age 76, the legitimate Pope John XXIII was expected to be a transitional, relatively uneventful pope following the 19-year reign of the World War II-era Pope Pius XII.
John had other plans. Less than three months after being elected, he announced that he would convene Vatican II, the first ecumenical council in a century. Vatican II went on to allow use of the vernacular rather than Latin for Mass. It called for greater participation of lay faithful in the life of the church and revolutionized Catholic relations with Jews. It also crystalized the divisions between traditionalist, conservative Catholics and the more progressive wing of the church that are still alive today.
None of the faithful who gathered in St. Peter's Square the night it opened knew what was in store, but they were hopeful. John's words seemed to herald something new: They were spontaneous when popes usually spoke in stiff, prepared paragraphs. They were grandfatherly when popes were supposed to sound regal. And perhaps most importantly, they were beamed into living rooms around the world on the relatively new medium of television.
"Up until then, television had been used mostly to represent the splendor of power, both ecclesial and political," said Alberto Melloni, John's biographer who runs the foundation in Bologna where his papers are kept. "His way of speaking off-the-cuff that night broke this scheme of video as a demonstration of power."
The speech is now fondly called the "Speech to the Moon." At the start, John marveled at the size of the crowd below and said it seemed almost as if the moon had come out early just to see the spectacle.
Though John didn't live to see the council through - he died of stomach cancer June 3, 1963 - he is credited with having had the courage to launch the process that has defined the 20th-century Catholic Church, renewing church doctrine for modern times.
The Rev. Robert Wister, a church historian at Seton Hall University, said John's "roly-poly appearance" - often cited in the well-meaning but inaccurate caricature of John as a simpleton - belied a steely diplomat who handled some of the church's toughest assignments before becoming pope.
Roncalli was the Vatican envoy to Turkey during World War II, and is credited with having saved thousands of Jews fleeing Europe by forging their birth certificates. He was then named ambassador to France just after its liberation.
"You don't send the village idiot to deal with Charles de Gaulle," Wister said. "You send a sharp diplomat."
At the same time, John was very much a basic parish priest: His first Christmas as pope, John left the Vatican to visit children at Rome's main children's hospital. The next day, he visited inmates at Rome's main prison. Sundays he devoted to visiting parishes in the capital's peripheries. In all, he "escaped" from the Vatican 152 times during his 4 1/2-year papacy compared to the one spontaneous outing by Pius XII to visit a neighborhood devastated by a wartime bombing raid.
Aside from Vatican II, John is perhaps best known for his last encyclical "Peace on Earth," issued in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis which had erupted just three days after Vatican II began. The document elaborated a new type of teaching of the church as promoter of world peace. It was the first encyclical addressed not just to clergy but to "all men of good will" in a sign of John's openness to the world outside the Vatican walls.
"He was a man who was able to transmit peace," Francis told a delegation from John's hometown of Bergamo on the 50th anniversary of his death last June. "He transmitted peace because he had a profoundly peaceful soul."

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan told WCBS 880's Rich Lamb that John XXIII and John Paul II were both peasants.
"A peasant, as poets use that word, meaning a man of the earth. A man of common people. Somebody who grew up the hard way," said the cardinal.

Ancient Assassin Flies Found in Amber

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A scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History discovered and named a new 100-million-year-old …

An extinct species of assassin fly that lived during the age of the dinosaurs has been discovered inside a translucent tomb of amber.

A male and a female of the newfound species, now called Burmapogon bruckschi, were preserved in pieces of Burmese amber from Myanmar's Hukawng Valley. The specimens measure less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) in length and are about 100 million years old, researchers say. 

B. bruckschi joins more than 7,500 species of assassin flies that are alive today. The insects get their name from their precise and gruesome way of killing: After a mid-flight ambush, assassin flies stab their prey's exoskeleton and inject digestive juices so that they can suck out the liquefied insides like a milkshake, leaving an empty hull behind. 

But apparently, these two tiny predators weren't immune to oozing droplets of resin. Insects can become trapped in amber when they are engulfed in resin flowing from trees. Hardened amber droplets can thus provide rare snapshots of prehistoric life — and some of them are surprisingly rich scenes, like aspider attacking a wasp caught in its web.

Previously, the history of assassin flies had been recorded only in limestone fossils. The amber-encased B. bruckschi specimens provide a rare 3D view of the ancient creatures' bodies.

"The transparency of these amber fossils gives researchers a new window into the ecology of theCretaceous Period, and sheds light on the evolutionary history of a family of flies that has withstood the test of time for millions of years," Torsten Dikow, a scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who discovered the species, said in a statement. "The fossils of these ancient flies are so well preserved that you can almost imagine them flying around in our world today."

Dikow identified a few features that set B. bruckschi apart from its living cousins: flattened antennae, a V-shaped eye structure, spiny hind legs and bristles covering its piercing mouthparts.

The species, along with another type of ancient assassin fly, Cretagaster raritanensis, was described in yesterday's (April 21) edition of the journal American Museum Novitates. This second creature was only recently identified as a new species; it was originally found in a chunk of amber in New Jersey in 1999.

Is this whale-shaped plane the future of airliners?

 Jack Stewart

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AWWA Sky Whale (Oscar Vinals)

Airliners have become steadily bigger in an effort to take fit in more passengers and drive down the cost of tickets. Could a new outsized design change the way we fly?

Spotting an Airbus A380 at an airport can still create great excitement. The giant, double-decker plane can seat between 500 and 850 people, depending on how much space is given to space-saving economy class, and how much goes to higher-paying passengers with all that extra leg room. It’s an aviation giant, the biggest passenger-carrying aircraft ever to fly the skies.

But the A380 could be become small fry if another, even more outsized design takes to the skies.

The AWWA Sky Whale is a concept aircraft from Spanish designer Oscar Vinals. With three decks for passengers, it looks like a cross between a tropical fish and a sci-fi space shuttle. Does this huge design herald the future of air travel?

Bigger means better in the world of airliners; the dawn of the jet age brought in the likes of the Boeing 707, an aircraft capable of carrying more passengers quicker and faster than any propeller-driven design. In the ensuing decades, airliners have grown larger and larger. The advent of “jumbo” designs, characterised by Boeing’s 747, meant more passengers per flight, and therefore cheaper seats.

The plane would have swivelling engines for shorter take offs

“Travelling in the Sky Whale could be like a travelling in your private ‘theatre seat’, enjoying what happens around you; hearing some air flow noise, but feeling safe inside a big and intelligent structure,” Vinals says.

The design would use advanced technologies such as self-repairing wings, swiveling engines to enable a near vertical take-off, and hybrid propulsion.

“The engines and batteries are fed by a turbine inside the wings, like a high-speed and powerful dynamo,” says Vinals.

The design also calls for a system to redirect air flow to intake engines and to control laminar flow – in other words, to reduce turbulence around the plane and reduce drag.

None of these technologies are feasible on a large scale at the moment, but all are possible, says Vinals.

“I did this because I am an aerospace and aviation enthusiast – the technology, development and evolution,” he explains. “I would like to contribute, with my vision, about these.”

Perhaps that vision from someone outside the aerospace industry, without preconceptions, is what is needed to revolutionise plane design. Vinals told me he did “years” and “terabytes” of research. It’s an approach that some in the field appreciate.

“I think that’s where these concepts come in,” says Dr Michael Jump, lecturer in aerospace engineering at the University of Liverpool. “It’s people challenging through their imaginations. It’s the engineering community’s opportunity to either say ‘that’s a good idea, let’s try and make it happen’, or ‘it’s less of a good idea, and this is the reason why’”.

He says there are three factors to consider when evaluating the design of an aircraft, collectively known as the Breguet Range equation. This can be used as an estimate of efficiency.

The design would limit turbulence around the wings, thus decreasing drag

They are: propulsive efficiency (how efficient are your engines?); aerodynamic efficiency (is lift maximised and drag minimised?); and structural efficiency (how much payload can you carry?).

Generally airlines want to fly as far as possible, with the biggest load (or largest combined weight of passengers) possible, while using as little fuel as possible. If you can maximise all three, you technically have a better aircraft design. The major airliner manufacturers have made tweaks to this equation, but have largely stayed faithful to a tried-and-trusted design.

“The likes of Boeing and Airbus have a lot of experience of building aircraft that look like a tube and two wings,” says Jump.

“When it comes to a new airframe that they want to design, it makes sense to evolve rather than revolutionise.”

A cylinder is also a structurally efficient way to contain pressure, which aircraft must do to maintain the right air pressure for passengers when flying at high altitude.

The Airbus A380 (left) is currently the biggest airliner in the world

Mark Drela, professor in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, agrees. “The airplane fuselage is a pressure vessel,” he says. “It really needs a circular cross section for that. You don’t see scuba diving tanks that are rectangular. If it’s round, then it’s light.” On a plane, of course, weight is everything.

“Airplanes look the way they do, not because of some stylistic decision, but almost entirely for technical reasons,” he says. “Form follows function.”

For that reason, Drela doubts the usefulness of design exercises like this one. “It’s more of a stylistic concept,” he says.

What’s more, for a manufacturer to be able to sell a new aircraft, it has to demonstrate that it is safe. The safety regulations have evolved over a century of manned flight, but with a radical design it would be much harder to demonstrate safety.

“The optimised airplane is like a grand set of compromises, and it’s a colossal exercise to balance everything,” says Drela.

“Airbus went with the huge A380, Boeing put its money on the smaller airplane with 787. And it is not obvious which is the better approach yet.”

But, Vinals says, Albert Einstein might have the last word on this: “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions”.

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A prehistoric step: 9-year-old trods on 10,000-year-old mastodon tooth

By Lorenzo Ferrigno, CNN

April 20, 2014 -- Updated 1601 GMT (0001 HKT)

(CNN) -- Mastodons -- elephant-like beasts that lumbered across North America more than 10,000 years ago -- are long extinct, but apparently it wasn't tooth decay that did them in.

A 9-year-old Michigan boy stumbled across something -- literally -- that, it turns out, is a mastodon tooth.

"I was walking down at the creek last summer. I felt something that I stepped on so I picked it up and everybody in the neighborhood thought it was pretty cool," Philip Stoll told CNN on Friday.

Philip Stoll told CNN he always thought he might want to be a paleontologist.

2013: Ancient bone found in Iowa

2012: Kid discover ancient beast's bone

2012: Boy brings ancient fossil to school

Affectionately called "Huckleberry Phil" in his neighborhood near Lansing because of his penchant for exploring outside, Philip took the lump home and washed it off in the kitchen sink, and checked to see if it was magnetic, his mother, Heidi Stoll said. It wasn't.

The peculiar object was about 8 inches in length, brown, and had six peaks.

"I was holding it in my hands for a few minutes and then it gave me the creeps so I put it down on the desk," Heidi Stoll told CNN. "It looked like a tooth. It looked like there was something like gum tissue, a little bulgy thing around the top."

After researching "large tooth object" on the Internet, mother and son reached out to James Harding, a herpetologist -- an expert on reptiles and amphibians -- at nearby Michigan State, who told them it was the tooth of one of the long-gone beasts that roamed the area millennia ago.

"This is indeed a mastodon tooth," Professor Harding confirmed in an e-mail. "Apparently (it is) the upper surface, broken off at the roots."

Philip told CNN that he always thought he might want to be a paleontologist -- a scientist who studies prehistoric life -- but now feels that more than ever. And with summer approaching, there's more exploring to be done.

"It's going to be hard to get him run around with shoes on or come inside to do his schoolwork," Stoll said of her son.

S. KOREA FERRY DISASTER: Divers enter sunken Korean ferry

News Desk

The Nation

Publication Date : 19-04-2014

As of yesterday evening , 28 of the 475 passengers were confirmed dead, while 268 remained unaccounted for.

Divers from South Korea's Navy and coast guard yesterday entered the interior of the capsized ferry for the first time since the 6,825-tonne vessel sank on Wednesday.

However, they failed to find any survivors.

They had initially injected air into the ship and installed buoys to keep it from sinking further.

As of yesterday evening, 28 of the 475 passengers were confirmed dead, while 268 remained unaccounted for. Among the passengers, 325 were students from Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, who were on a trip to Jejudo Island.

The school's vice principal, surnamed Kang, who had been rescued from the ferry earlier, was found dead in an apparent suicide yesterday afternoon. Police said Kang apparently hanged himself from a tree on a hill near a gymnasium in Jindo, South Jeolla Province, where a disaster information centre has been set up for the victims' families.

In the morning, four massive cranes arrived at the scene to back the ongoing rescue efforts. In addition, 108 naval ships, 61 civilian ships and 535 personnel including military and civilian divers joined the search.

The rescue authorities chose not to salvage the vessel until all victims have been pulled up from the ship, as any mistakes in the rescue effort could lead to the loss of air and bodies in the ship, given the strong tidal currents. The victims' families have also opposed the salvaging of the ship.

Announcing an interim result of its probe, an investigation team of prosecutors and police said the ferry's captain, surnamed Lee, had handed the ship's wheel to an inexperienced third mate before the vessel began sinking. Yesterday an arrest warrant was issued against Lee, who underwent questioning for a third consecutive day.

Lee has been criticised for being the first to jump ship, while hundreds of passengers tried to save themselves.

"We need to investigate where the captain was when the ship sank, as accounts are still conflicting," Lee Sung-yun, who is leading the investigation team, said at a press conference.

As for the cause of the disaster, authorities said they were looking to see if the person behind the wheel had changed the direction normally or too sharply.

Investigators suspect that the ship took a sharp turn when only a gradual change was required, which caused the ship to lose balance and ultimately capsize.

Prayers for South Korea

In Bangkok, Nation TV Channel 22, a sister organisation of The Nation newspaper, held a "Pray for South Korea" event yesterday to express its solidarity with South Korea.

The event, which featured live music and a large banner for people write their condolences on, was held on the open area next to Siam Discovery shopping mall. Nation TV has a new studio on the ground floor.

Nation Multimedia Group (NMG) chairman Suthichai Yoon said Thais and people of different nationalities gathered at the event yesterday to express their support for the victims and their families.

"We want to let South Korea know that friends from across the world are standing by them," Suthichai said.

Meanwhile, South Korean Ambassador to Thailand Jeon Jae Man thanked the well-wishers.

NMG editor-in-chief Thepchai Yong said everybody in Thailand was praying for a miracle.

"We are praying for [more] survivors," Suthichai added.

Siriti Kongpaen, 20, a first-year student majoring in Korean language at the Thai Chamber of Commerce University, said she had joined the event to offer her condolences and to give moral support to South Korea.

"Even though I can't do anything to help, at least I can pray that everybody is reunited with their loved ones," said Siriti, who began using #prayforkorea on Twitter on the first day of the tragedy.

She added that she found the photographs of the distraught parents deeply moving and had developed a deep dislike for the ship's captain, who apparently left the ship early to save himself. "I hate him," she declared.

Kamolchanok Boonsoros, a Business Administration freshman at Nation University, said the news was disturbing.

The student added that the vast coverage of the disaster had raised the Thai public's level of sympathy.

Yesterday's event attracted the attention of Korean media, with the Korean Broadcasting Corporation at hand to interview participants.

Nation TV has also sent a crew to South Korea to cover the disaster. The team will work with the English-language daily Korea Herald, which is part of the Asia News Network.

Saudi Arabia to build world's tallest tower, reaching 1 kilometer into the sky

By Daisy Carrington, for CNN

April 18, 2014 -- Updated 0940 GMT (1740 HKT)

For buildings of this stature, wind load could also put stress on the structure. To battle this, the design of the structure will change every few floors.

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(CNN) -- Dubai, long champion of all things biggest, longest and most expensive, will soon have some competition from neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Dubai's iconic Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, could be stripped of its Guinness title if Saudi Arabia succeeds in its plans to construct the even larger Kingdom Tower in Jeddah -- a prospect looking more likely as work begins next week, according to Construction Weekly.

Consultants Advanced Construction Technology Services have recently announced testing materials to build the 3,280-feet (1 kilometer) skyscraper (the Burj Khalifa, by comparison, stands at a meeker 2,716 feet, or 827 meters).

The Kingdom Tower, estimated to cost $1.23 billion, would have 200 floors and overlook the Red Sea. Building it will require about 5.7 million square feet of concrete and 80,000 tons of steel, according to the Saudi Gazette.

Building a structure that tall, particularly on the coast, where saltwater could potentially damage it, is no easy feat. The foundations, which will be 200 feet (60 meters) deep, need to be able to withstand the saltwater of the nearby ocean. As a result, Advanced Construction Technology Services will test the strength of different concretes.

Wind load is another issue for buildings of this magnitude. To counter this challenge, the tower will change shape regularly.

"Because it changes shape every few floors, the wind loads go round the building and won't be as extreme as on a really solid block," Gordon Gill explained toConstruction Weekly. Gill is a partner at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the design architects for the project.

Delivering the concrete to higher floors will also be a challenge. Possibly, engineers could use similar methods to those employed when building the Burj Khalifa; 6 million cubic feet of concrete was pushed through a single pump, usually at night when temperatures were low enough to ensure that it would set.

Though ambitious, building the Kingdom Tower should be feasible, according to Sang Dae Kim, the director of the Council on Tall Buildings.

"At this point in time we can build a tower that is one kilometer, maybe two kilometers. Any higher than that and we will have to do a lot of homework," he told Construction Weekly.

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NASA discovers Earth-sized planet that may sustain life

By Josh Levs, CNN April 17, 2014 -- Updated 2134 GMT (0534 HKT) |

An artist's rendering of Kepler-186f, the first discovered Earth-sized planet that may be habitable

(CNN) -- It's like finding a needle in a universe-wide haystack. Researchers have located a planet roughly the size of Earth that could be habitable.

Designated Kepler-186f, the planet is 490 light-years away. But in the search for worlds similar to ours, nothing has come closer.

"This is the first definitive Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone around another star," said Elisa Quintana of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute at NASA. "Finding such planets is a primary goal of the Kepler space telescope.

"This discovery not only proves the existence of worlds that might be similar to our own but will undoubtedly shape future investigations of exoplanets that could have terrestrial surface environments," the institute said in an announcement Thursday.

After spotting it, the institute wasted no time searching for emissions that could indicate the presence of ETs. So far, no emissions have been found.

The size -- estimated to be 10% larger than Earth -- and distance from its star don't just make for interesting factoids. They give scientists hope that Kepler-186f might sustain life as we know it.

Of nearly 1,800 "confirmed exoplanets" that have been found, approximately 20 orbit their host stars within habitable zones, where it's believed surface water would not freeze or boil. In 2011, NASA announced that Kepler had observed five planets approximately the size of Earth and in the habitable zone.

But the "previously discovered worlds are larger than Earth, and consequently their true nature -- rocky or gaseous -- is unknown," the SETI Institute said in a written announcement on Thursday. "On the basis of the observed dimming of starlight from Kepler-186, the authors estimate that this newly discovered planet is roughly the same size as the Earth."

Theoretical models and observations tell scientists that planets the size of Kepler-186f likely have a composition of iron, rock and ice, like Earth, Quintana told reporters Thursday.

Even if Kepler-186f is rocky, it's not necessarily habitable, scientists warned Thursday. First, a lot would depend on the atmosphere, if it has one, Thomas Barclay of NASA's Kepler mission said. And scientists right now don't have the technology to know what the atmosphere is.

The star's size -- it's an M-dwarf star, smaller and less hot than our sun -- also could come into play. Because it is smaller, the habitable zone is closer, so radiation could prevent life if the atmosphere isn't dense enough, said Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington Virtual Planetary Laboratory.

But the Webb space-based telescope, now under construction, should be able to gather images of planets around closer dwarf stars and study their atmospheres.

Scientists are especially keen about checking dwarf stars because their habitable planets are more easily detectable, and because they are the most abundant type of star in our galaxy, Barclay said.

For researchers, the discovery of Kepler-186f is like a beginning. It's a first but "not a record we wish to keep," Quintana said. "We want to find more of these."

It's likely they will. Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii, using data from Kepler, estimate there are tens of billions of Earth-size, possibly habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy.

CNN's Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

Russia and Ukraine

Insatiable

The cost of stopping the Russian bear now is high—but it will only get higher if the West does nothing

FIRST Vladimir Putin mauled Georgia, but the world forgave him—because Russia was too important to be cut adrift. Then he gobbled up Crimea, but the world accepted it—because Crimea should have been Russian all along. Now he has infiltrated eastern Ukraine, but the world is hesitating—because infiltration is not quite invasion. But if the West does not face up to Mr Putin now, it may find him at its door.
The storming of police stations in eastern Ukraine over the weekend by pro-Russian protesters (see article) is a clever move, for it has put the interim government in Kiev in an impossible position. Mr Putin has warned that Ukraine is on the brink of civil war. If the country’s government fails to take control, it will open itself to charges that it cannot keep order within its own borders. But its soldiers are poorly trained, so in using force (operations were under way as The Economist went to press) it risks escalation and bloodshed. Either way, it loses.

In this section

The West has seen Russia brush off its threats and warnings. It looks feeble and divided. Yet, after the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, even doves should grasp that the best chance of stability lies in standing up to Mr Putin, because firmness today is the way to avoid confrontation later.

Red lines and green men

Russia insists that it has played no part in the seizure of towns such as Sloviansk and Gorlivka. This is implausible. The attacks were co-ordinated, in strategically useful places that had seen few protests. Just as in Crimea six weeks ago, troops in unmarked uniforms and with Russian weapons carried out the initial assaults. Russian agents have turned up in custody and in reporters’ notebooks, organising the protests and, some say, paying for them. Russia has been meddling in eastern Ukraine for weeks, occasionally with results from the pages of Gogol. On April 6th “local people” stormed what they thought was the regional administrative headquarters in Kharkiv only to find that they had taken control of the opera house.
Russian diplomats counter that they cannot be behind what is going on, because instability in eastern Ukraine is not in Russia’s interests. True, normal countries benefit from peace and prosperity next door. However, mindful of its own claim to power and the outlook for Russia’s stagnant economy, the Kremlin has much to fear from the pro-European demonstrations that toppled Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych. It appears determined to see the new Ukraine fail.
There are several reasons why Russia might want to destabilise Ukraine. One motive could be to stop the presidential elections, due on May 25th. That would deprive Ukraine of the elected leadership it needs to restore order. A second could be to justify overt Russian intervention. Mr Putin is capable of exploiting either anarchy or bloodshed as a pretext to move his troops, camped in large numbers across the border, into Ukraine as “peacekeepers”. But occupation would come at a heavy cost (see article), so the Kremlin might prefer a third result: civil conflict that destroys the authority of Kiev, followed by a parallel government for eastern Ukraine. There is nothing wrong with federalism in principle, but this would be a formula for Russian domination.
Some would leap at such a deal as the least bad on offer. Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs might be happy, because they could go on stealing. The West could take comfort that the Russians had not actually invaded. But it would be a terrible outcome for the Ukrainian people, especially those who risked their lives in the Maidan for a chance of something better. For the West to accept such a result with relief would constitute a grave misreading of Russia’s mischief-making.
Mr Putin has used the Ukrainian crisis to establish some dangerous precedents. He has claimed a duty to intervene to protect Russian-speakers wherever they are. He has staged a referendum and annexation, in defiance of Ukrainian law. And he has abrogated a commitment to respect Ukraine’s borders, which Russia signed in 1994 when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons. Throughout, Mr Putin has shown that truth and the law are whatever happens to suit him at the time.
Mr Putin has taken to arguing that Russian values are fundamentally at odds with Western liberal ones. He now has the tools to intervene on his borders and beyond so as to upend the post-Soviet order. That might be in Transdniestria, a slice of Moldova that has hosted Russian troops since the early 1990s. Or in Kazakhstan, which has a large Russian population in the north. Or even in the Baltic states, two of which have large Russian-speaking minorities and all of which depend on Russian gas. Because the Baltics are members of NATO and the EU, a Russian move against them would be a challenge to the entire West. A miscalculation by either side could be disastrous.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

That is why the West needs to show Mr Putin that further action will be costly. So far, its rhetoric has marched far ahead of its willingness to act—only adding to the aura of weakness. Not enough is at stake in Ukraine to risk war with a nuclear-armed Russia. And European voters will not put up with gas shortages, so an embargo is not plausible. But the West has other cards to play. One is military. NATO should announce that it will hold exercises in central and eastern Europe, strengthen air and cyber defences there and immediately send some troops, missiles and aircraft to the Baltics and Poland. NATO members should pledge to increase military spending.
Another card is sanctions, so far imposed on only a few people close to Mr Putin. It is time for a broad visa ban on powerful Russians and their families. France should cancel the sale of warships to Russia. A more devastating punishment would be to cut Russia off from dollars, euros and sterling (see article). Such financial sanctions, like those that led Iran to negotiate over its nuclear programme, would deprive Russia of revenues from oil and gas exports, priced in dollars, and force it to draw on reserves to pay for most of its imports. They would be costly to the West, especially the City of London, but worth it. Impose them now, and give Mr Putin reason to pause. Do any less and the price next time will be even higher.

The crashes that changed plane designs forever

By Jonathan Glancey

(Thinkstock)

The tragedies that were part of a long and fraught process that has helped make flying as safe as it is today.

An aircraft with a lace-like structure may not seem like the best way to fly, but it is one of a range of radical ideas about how we may travel in the future.

At any one time hundreds of thousands of us are cocooned in pressurised cabins scything through the cold upper reaches of the troposphere. Soon enough, this figure will rise to a million: a million passengers, flown safely, if not always comfortably, across countries and continents, and with little call for comment.
Before engines could lift heavier-than-air machines convincingly off the ground, any attempt at flight had been dangerous, and yet for hundreds of years, adventurers strapped wings to their arms, and leapt off hilltops and towers in the vain hope of flying. Even when a part of the science of flight had been understood, men like Otto Lilienthal, a 19th Century German pioneer who experimented with gliders, were doomed, their contraptions too heavy and too unresponsive to allow their brave pilots to chase birds or even to get much above ground.
Sacrifices were made in great numbers in the early days of powered flight.  Aeroplanes suffered a catalogue of catastrophic construction and engineering failures compounded by bad weather and pilot error. These tragedies were part of a long and fraught process that helped make flying as safe as it is today.
Today, the Rolls-Royce logo on the engines of an airliner is taken as a guarantee of smooth-spinning and reliable power; yet, 32-year-old Charles Rolls himself was killed at Bournemouth in July 1910 when the tail of his Wright Flyer fell off. He was the first to die in a British air accident. Roy Chadwick, the designer who gave us the legendary Rolls-Royce Merlin-powered Lancaster and the striking Vulcan V-bomber died in August 1947 when his prototype Avro Tudor airliner crashed in the Lake District, the result of a maintenance error.
Chadwick crashed and died at the very time a new post-war aviation industry was taking flight. Before the Second World War, civil aviation was strictly the realm of the wealthy, adventurers, government officials and lucky journalists. Airliners had been small, if charmingly fitted out at their best like first class ship’s cabins or Pullman railway carriages. Now, the industry was to expand rapidly, its future looking towards carrying untold numbers of passengers and prodigious amounts of freight worldwide. This new chapter was to be told by jet airliners, by those who designed and tested them, and those fare-paying passengers who took to the air in these new and unproven machines.

Three Comets broke up soon after taking off in 1953 and 1954 (Getty Images)

The development of fast jet flight led to the death of legions of test pilots, notoriously during the 1950s. But these accidents led to technical improvements and changes in operations and legislation that were to make civil aviation increasingly safe.
Among the most shocking were the three occasions, within a year, when brand new de Havilland Comet airliners broke up in flight. Launched into service with BOAC in 1952, the Comet was the world’s first jet airliner. It was a beauty. It could cross the Atlantic in style and, for a moment, it looked as Britain might truly lead the Jet Age. And, yet, because the nature of metal fatigue, new construction techniques and repeated re-pressurisation of airliner cabins was little understood, early Comets were to fail in spectacularly fatal fashion.
In 1953 and 1954, three Comets broke up soon after taking off killing all on board, two over the Mediterranean as they climbed in January and April that year from Rome’s Ciampino airport, and a third caught in a thunder squall on the Calcutta to Delhi leg of a BOAC flight from Singapore to London. Comet flights were suspended, and production of the British jet was halted.
The investigation that followed broke new ground in aviation safety. Led by Sir Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, a team of engineers and scientists rebuilt recovered wrecks and, subjecting one of the aircraft hulls to pressurisation tests in a giant water tank, discovered what had gone so very wrong. Cracks had developed in the fuselages of the ill-fated Comets, around doors and window apertures as the aircraft were subject to repeated pressurisation cycles - where the fuselage is pressurised for passenger comfort at the start of each flight and depressurised when the engines shut down - and as the particular form of riveted construction couldn’t contain the stretching forces at work on the aircraft’s stressed hull. The Comets had blown apart at the seams.
Improved construction techniques, the fitting of rounded rather than square windows (these, too, caused cracks) and other improvements ensured that later Comets were safe. Indeed, the final development of the jet – the air-reconnaissance Nimrod – was in service with the RAF until June 2011, more than 60 years after the maiden flight of the Comet 1 in 1949.

After the Comet suffered a series of accidents, airliners switched to the Boeing 707 for long-distance flights (Getty Images)

Engineers in the United States, however, took note of the RAE’s findings and were able to incorporate these into the hugely successful jetliners made by Boeing and Douglas that were to dominate not just transatlantic but global long-distance services. Effectively, fare-paying Comet passengers had been used as research and development guinea pigs, a horrible thought. Sad, too, was the fact that Comet and other British jet sales never really took off after these early accidents. Even BOAC, Britain’s international airline and first champion of the Comet, was quick to swap to the Boeing 707 for long-distance flights. If only de Havilland had got things right in 1952, we might have seen 800-seat Comet 2000s under construction today.
Meanwhile, the deep-sea aircraft salvage, reconstruction and investigation techniques developed by the RAE at Farnborough are still very much in use, as are specific lessons learned from fatal air accidents since then. A collision over the Grand Canyon in June 1956, for example, between a TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 – the first commercial crash numbering more than a hundred deaths – led to upgraded forms of air traffic control.
The major change came in 1958 with the formation of the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). This new body was given total authority over American airspace, including military flights, ensuring that all were mapped and charted. At the same time, the latest radar and radio technology meant there were no “dead” areas over regular flight paths where contact with crews could be lost, a frequent occurrence into the mid-1950s. Radio transponders were soon tracing aircraft in flight, while collision warning systems and, finally in the 1970s, GPS (Global Positioning System] helped to make aviation so much safer. In the past half century, and with 30,000 flights made each day, no airliners have collided over the US.

A Japanese Airlines Boeing 747 crash in 1985 highlighted the importance of knowing the exact structural state of a specific aircraft (Getty Images)

Other notable accidents led to such helpful developments as Cockpit Resource Management (crews working as a cross-checking team at all times), smoke detectors and automatic fire extinguishers in lavatories and cargo-holds, wind-shear detectors, transponders and flame-retardant materials. Even then, airlines have pushed reliable jets too far on occasions expecting such winged workhorses as the Boeing 737 (8,000 built) to fly around the clock.
In April 1988, part of the fuselage of an Aloha 737 flying from Hilo to Honolulu failed at 24,000ft. One flight attendant was swept overboard, while everyone else survived, despite passengers flying with nothing between them, their safety belts, and thin air. It was found that the hard-pressed Boeing had undergone a total of 89,000 re-pressurisations – the first Comets had failed at between just 900 and 3,060 re-pressurisations.
As a result, the FAA set up its National Aging Aircraft Research Program, employing its new full scale Aircraft Structural Test Evaluation and Research Facility in New Jersey; this allowed for predictive testing for structural fatigue, corrosion and many aspects of the operation of aircraft to increase the long-term safety of civil airliners not just in the US, but worldwide.
The vital importance of knowing the exact structural state of a specific aircraft was highlighted in August 1985, when a Japanese Airlines Boeing 747 flying from Tokyo to Osaka lost all cabin pressure, along with its hydraulic fluids and its vertical stabiliser. The crew struggled valiantly to find a way to bring the stricken aircraft down to land, yet in the event it crashed, killing 520 of those on board; there were – rather miraculously – four survivors.

Concorde’s accident in July 2000 led to its retirement three years later (Getty Images)

The Jumbo had always seemed such a safe aircraft, yet on this occasion a bodged repair made several years earlier, and very much not to Boeing specifications, to the rear pressure bulkhead - separating the passenger cabin from the tail – broke apart much as the fuselages of those early Comets had done.
There has always been something new to learn, and ever-tighter safety standards to be upheld. A Swissair MD-11, for instance, caught fire and exploded, killing all 229 on board, on a flight from New York to Geneva in September 1998. The cause was a fire in the aircraft’s entertainment system. New flameproof materials were introduced.
In July 2000, a loose piece of metal dropped on the runway from a Continental Airlines DC-10 cut one of the tyres of a Concorde taking off at the Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris. The debris caused a pressure wave that ruptured a fuel tank, its contents ignited, most probably, by a severed electrical cable. The plane caught fire and crashed into a hotel, killing all 100 passengers, nine crew and four hotel employees. It was the first fatal accident in the Mach 2 aircraft’s super-safe history; and, although, fuel tanks and tyres were upgraded, it was also the blow that triggered Concorde’s retirement three years later.
While our air travel is now incredibly safe, it's only because some very hard lessons were learned along the way.