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Researchers say mercury buried in ancient rock provides the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes caused the biggest mass extinction in the history of the Earth.
The extinction 252 million years ago was so dramatic and widespread that scientists call it “the Great Dying.” The catastrophe killed off more than 95 percent of life on Earth over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
Paleontologists with the University of Cincinnati and the China University of Geosciences said they found a spike in mercury in the geologic record at nearly a dozen sites around the world, which provides persuasive evidence that volcanic eruptions were to blame for this global cataclysm.
The study was published this month in the journal Nature Communications.
The eruptions ignited vast deposits of coal, releasing mercury vapor high into the atmosphere. Eventually, it rained down into the marine sediment around the planet, creating an elemental signature of a catastrophe that would herald the age of dinosaurs.
“Volcanic activities, including emissions of volcanic gases and combustion of organic matter, released abundant mercury to the surface of the Earth,” said lead author Jun Shen, an associate professor at the China University of Geosciences.
Special report on the history and science of “herd immunity.”
The mass extinction occurred at what scientists call the Permian-Triassic Boundary. The mass extinction killed off much of the terrestrial and marine life before the rise of dinosaurs. Some were prehistoric monsters in their own right, such as the ferocious gorgonopsids that looked like a cross between a sabre-toothed tiger and a Komodo dragon.
The eruptions occurred in a volcanic system called the Siberian Traps in what is now central Russia. Many of the eruptions occurred not in cone-shaped volcanoes but through gaping fissures in the ground. The eruptions were frequent and long-lasting and their fury spanned a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
“Typically, when you have large, explosive volcanic eruptions, a lot of mercury is released into the atmosphere,” said Thomas Algeo, a professor of geology in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences.
“Mercury is a relatively new indicator for researchers. It has become a hot topic for investigating volcanic influences on major events in Earth’s history,” Algeo said.
Researchers use the sharp fossilized teeth of lamprey-like creatures called conodonts to date the rock in which the mercury was deposited. Like most other creatures on the planet, conodonts were decimated by the catastrophe.
The eruptions propelled as much as 3 million cubic kilometers of ash high into the air over this extended period. To put that in perspective, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington sent just 1 cubic kilometer of ash into the atmosphere, even though ash fell on car windshields as far away as Oklahoma.
In fact, Algeo said, the Siberian Traps eruptions spewed so much material in the air, particularly greenhouse gases, that it warmed the planet by an average of about 10 degrees centigrade.
The warming climate likely would have been one of the biggest culprits in the mass extinction, he said. But acid rain would have spoiled many bodies of water and raised the acidity of the global oceans. And the warmer water would have had more dead zones from a lack of dissolved oxygen.
“We’re often left scratching our heads about what exactly was most harmful. Creatures adapted to colder environments would have been out of luck,” Algeo said. “So my guess is temperature change would be the No. 1 killer. Effects would exacerbated by acidification and other toxins in the environment.”
Stretching over an extended period, eruption after eruption prevented the Earth’s food chain from recovering.
“It’s not necessarily the intensity but the duration that matters,” Algeo said. “The longer this went on, the more pressure was placed on the environment.”
Likewise, the Earth was slow to recover from the disaster because the ongoing disturbances continued to wipe out biodiversity, he said.
Earth has witnessed five known mass extinctions over its 4.5 billion years.
Scientists used another elemental signature — iridium — to pin down the likely cause of the global mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. They believe an enormous meteor struck what is now Mexico.
The resulting plume of superheated earth blown into the atmosphere rained down material containing iridium that is found in the geologic record around the world.
Shen said the mercury signature provides convincing evidence that the Siberian Traps eruptions were responsible for the catastrophe. Now researchers are trying to pin down the extent of the eruptions and which environmental effects in particular were most responsible for the mass die-off, particularly for land animals and plants.
Shen said the Permian extinction could shed light on how global warming today might lead to the next mass extinction. If global warming, indeed, was responsible for the Permian die-off, what does warming portend for humans and wildlife today?
“The release of carbon into the atmosphere by human beings is similar to the situation in the Late Permian, where abundant carbon was released by the Siberian eruptions,” Shen said.
Algeo said it is cause for concern.
“A majority of biologists believe we’re at the cusp of another mass extinction — the sixth big one. I share that view, too,” Algeo said. “What we should learn is this will be serious business that will harm human interests so we should work to minimize the damage.”
People living in marginal environments such as arid deserts will suffer first. This will lead to more climate refugees around the world.
“We’re likely to see more famine and mass migration in the hardest hit places. It’s a global issue and one we should recognize and proactively deal with. It’s much easier to address these problems before they reach a crisis.”
Millie Weaver and Kaitlin Bennett join Alex Jones live via Skype to talk about how they were harassed by Bernie Sanders’ campaign workers.
Source: InfoWars
A photo of Kenyan George Kabau who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash is seen before a news conference where his family’s lawyers announced they plan to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against Boeing, at the Serene hotel in Nairobi, Kenya April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
April 16, 2019
By Katharine Houreld
NAIROBI (Reuters) – A Kenyan family has filed a lawsuit in Chicago against American aviation giant Boeing over a March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people, lawyers and family members said on Tuesday.
Siblings of 29-year-old engineer George Kabau said they wanted to force the company to release documents and emails relating to its 737 MAX 8 model, which was grounded worldwide after two major plane crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
A preliminary report released earlier this month indicated Ethiopian Airlines pilots wrestled with a computer system that repeatedly ordered the nose down because of faulty sensor data. The same system was a focus of the preliminary report into the October Lion Air crash in Indonesia, which killed 189 people.
Dozens of families are already suing Boeing over the Lion Air crash, and three lawsuits have already been lodged over the Ethiopian Airlines crash, by the families of two Americans, including consumer activist Ralph Nader’s great niece, and a Rwandan.
Lion Air’s co-founder on Monday lashed out at Boeing’s handling of the accidents.
Kabua’s sister, Esther Kabau-Wanyoike, choked up as she told a press conference that she wanted to use her brother’s death to improve aviation safety.
“He didn’t leave a child. My mum is devastated,” she said. “We can use his demise to ensure safer travel for all.”
U.S. lawyer Nomi Husain, who is also representing one of the American families, said the lawsuit was filed in Chicago late on Monday. The family was seeking to hold Boeing accountable, he said.
“We want to let the litigation process play out,” he said. “When you put profits over safety, you will be held accountable and you will pay a price.”
Boeing, which has previously declined to comment on individual lawsuits, and directed enquiries about the crash to investigating authorities, had no immediate comment on the latest case.
Kenya had the largest number of citizens on the flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. At least 32 Kenyans were on board, the airline said at the time, although that number may be larger because some of the travelers were dual nationals and the full manifest has still not been released.
(Additional reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)
Source: OANN
A few years ago, shortly after the 2008 subprime lending disaster, the Fed sent a public relations team around the country to conduct supposedly “educational sessions” about how the Fed works and the wonderful things it does.
The public was invited, and there was a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. One such session was held in Des Moines, Iowa. At the time I was teaching a course in Austrian economics at the University of Iowa, so I lusted at the prospect of hearing complete nonsense and having a shot at asking a question. I was not disappointed.
The educational part of the session lasted about an hour, and it became clear to me that the panel of four knew almost nothing about monetary theory. They may even have been hired especially for this grand tour, because all were relatively young, well scrubbed, and very personable–let’s face it, not your typical Fed monetary policy wonks or bank examiners! The panelists discussed only one of the Fed’s two remits–its remit to promote the economic advancement of the nation. Its other remit is to safeguard the monetary system. However, the panelists did touched upon the Fed’s control of interest rates and ensuring that money continued to flow to housing and other high profile areas of the economy.
Finally, at the end of the presentation, those with questions were asked to form a queue and advance one at a time to a microphone. I was last in a line of about a dozen. Here’s my recollection of what followed:
Me: You say that you (the Fed) have the power to increase the money supply. Is that right?
Fed: Yes.
Me: And you have indeed increased the money supply. Is that right?
Fed: Yes.
Me: And the money that you create was generated out of thin air. It wasn’t there before, but it’s there now. Is that right?
Fed (Getting nervous): Yes.
Me: And you say that creating this money out of thin air is beneficial to the economy. Is that right?
Fed (Now nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof): Yes.
Me: Then why do you prosecute counterfeiters?
(The audience, after a few seconds’ delay,: Yeah, why DO you prosecute counterfeiters?)
Fed: This meeting is closed.
My point is that there is no difference in the economic consequences to society between the Fed creating money out of thin air and a counterfeiter doing the same thing. The difference is solely legal and one of scale. Private counterfeiters are punished, and rightly so, whereas the Fed is lauded for its actions.
Counterfeiters are punished because printing money is the same thing as stealing. A counterfeiter does not print money only to stuff it under his mattress in order to feel wealthy. He knows that he needs to pass his fake money on to someone else in exchange for some valuable good or service. In this recent Mises Wire article,Frank Shostak refers to such action as getting something for nothing. Richard Cantillon observed that the first receivers of the new money benefit at the expense of all subsequent receivers — the Cantillon Effect. In arecent Mises Wire article Carmen Elena Dorobat explained that the Cantillon Effect can extend internationally. Therefore, nations accepting dollars for payment in the later stages of fiat money expansion suffer a transfer of wealth to the early receivers of the new dollars, mostly the banks and their customers in the US.
Some may respond that, “Yes, it is true that the government abrogates to itself and itself alone the power to print money out of thin air, but it abrogates many powers to itself and itself alone. The power to print money out of thin air is just one of them.” Let’s take two examples — the power to wage war and the power to force some to fund welfare for the benefit of others . The difference is one of ethics vs. consequences.
No civilized government allows its citizens on their own volition to kill foreigners. Yet in times of war government will order its citizens to kill foreigners and actually reward them — usually with honors rather than money — for doing so. Likewise no civilized government allows its citizens to decide for themselves that the wealthier members of society must pay the less fortunate. In other words you or I cannot approach a wealthy person and force him, at the point of a gun, to hand money over to some who are less wealthy. Society would collapse into a Hobbesian anarchy of a war of all against all.
Ethics vs. Consequences
Yet most of us accept, even if reluctantly, that government can force us to go to war and force us to pay taxes to fund welfare programs. The key is that government does not claim that the consequences are different; i.e., if Americans kill foreigners, the consequences are the same whether as a private citizens or as a soldier — foreigners die. Likewise, if as a private citizen I play Robin Hood and take from the rich and give to the poor, the consequences are the same if the government does it via taxes. But in the case of money printing out of thin air, the government claims that only good results accrue from its actions yet bad results accrue from private actions. Have you ever heard a government official claim that, yes, money printing does indeed cause misallocation of resources and, yes, it does indeed cause a net loss to society, but its actions are necessary in order to benefit…fill-in-the-blank? Of course not. One only hears how wonderful the Fed is that it has created money out of thin air in order to prime the economic pump, so to speak, or some such nonsense. The private counterfeiter steals from others for his own or his cohorts’ benefit, but the Fed claims that it’s absolutely similar actions have only good results for everyone in society.
Hiding the Truth with Statistics
The Fed tries to mask the wealth destructive effects of its money printing by focusing on the benefits accrued to some targeted economic sectors, such as housing. Statistics will show that the targeted beneficiary did in fact gain from monetary expansion. But the Fed ignores the cost to the rest of the economy, which is widespread and nearly impossible to measure. This is commonly referred to as concentration of benefit and dispersion of cost. One can quantify the former but not the latter. In reality no net wealth was created. In fact wealth was destroyed. Money printing disrupts the structure of production and causes malinvestment that must eventually be liquidated and never recovered. In other words, the losers on aggregate lose more than the winners gain.
The Cantillon Effect and resultant temporary boom are apparent when the counterfeiter acts locally. He buys big, flashy cars and lives large until merchants realize that they have accepted phony money. They are the losers. Even if the counterfeiter’s money is not detected but continues to pass from hand to hand the same as other legal tender, the structure of production will be permanently disrupted and capital will be consumed. Just remember Professor Shotak’s lesson that, since counterfeiters get something for nothing, wealth will be consumed.
The pernicious effect of the local counterfeiter pales in comparison with the Fed. A local counterfeiter may be able to pass several thousand dollars or even a million dollars of phony money, but in the nineteen years from January 2000 to January 2019 the Fed has increased the monetary base — bank reserves plus cash in circulation, over which the Fed has absolute control — from $0.591 trillion to $3.323 trillion. That’s an increase of almost three trillion dollars! Yet the Fed tours the country touting its wonders to mostly fawning audiences…except perhaps in Des Moines, Iowa.
Millie Weaver and Kaitlin Bennett join Alex Jones live via Skype to talk about how they were harassed by Bernie Sanders’ campaign workers.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: A Libyan displaced woman, who fled her house because of the fighting between the Eastern forces commanded by Khalifa Haftar and the internationally recognised government, reacts at Bader School, which is used as a shelter, in Tripoli, Libya April 14, 2019. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah/File Photo
April 16, 2019
By Ulf Laessing and Ahmed Elumami
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Qatar called on Tuesday for a blocking of foreign arms supplies to eastern Libyan forces commander Khalifa Haftar, whose push to seize the capital Tripoli is causing rifts around the Gulf and Europe.
Nearly two weeks into its assault, the veteran general’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) is stuck in the city’s southern outskirts battling armed groups loyal to the internationally-recognized Tripoli government.
Yet Tripoli’s roughly 2.5 million people were maintaining a semblance of normality – even as the occasional artillery boom echoed across the city.
“We are still carrying on, thank God. What else can we do?” said Mohamed Taha, 23, in a street where students still packed a nearby school. Cafes and shops also remained open and busy.
Foreign powers are worried but unable to present a united front over the latest flare-up in the cycle of anarchy and warfare that has gripped Libya since dictator Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011.
The conflict has brought a growing humanitarian toll – 174 people, 756 injured and 18,250 displaced according to latest United Nations tallies – and sunk for now an international peace plan.
It threatens to disrupt oil flows, foment migration across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, and allow jihadists to exploit the chaos.
Qatar said an existing U.N. arms embargo on Libya should be strictly enforced, to prevent Haftar, 75, from receiving arms.
The Benghazi-based Hafter enjoys the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, who view him as an anchor to restore stability and combat Islamist militants. Those three nations cut ties with Qatar in 2017, accusing it of support for militants and Iran.
Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Italian daily La Repubblica that a postponed U.N. peace conference should be rescheduled and Haftar’s troops forced to withdraw.
The arms embargo must be implemented “to prevent those countries that have been providing ammunitions and state-of-the-art weapons from continuing to do so,” he said.
Past U.N. reports say the UAE and Egypt have both supplied Haftar with arms and aircraft, giving him air superiority among Libya’s multiple factions. East Libyan authorities say Qatar and Turkey back rival, Islamist-leaning factions in western Libya.
FRANCE, ITALY DIVERGE OVER HAFTAR
The Gulf diplomatic divisions echo those in Europe, where former colonial ruler Italy and France have sparred over Libya.
Paris has given Haftar support in the past, viewing him as the best bet to end the chaos since a NATO-backed rebellion to end Gaddafi’s murderous four-decade rule.
Italy, with considerable oil interests in the OPEC member, supports the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and was furious with French reluctance to back a recent European Union resolution urging Haftar to halt his advance.
Nevertheless, Serraj has managed to keep the LNA at bay, thanks largely to armed groups who have rushed to aid them from other western Libyan factions.
Though Haftar presents himself as a champion against what he calls terrorism, opponents cast him as a would-be dictator in the mould of Gaddafi. About 70 people protested against him at the central Algiers Square in Tripoli on Tuesday.
“We are against Haftar and military rule,” said demonstrator Assam Dirbiq.
Haftar was among officers who helped Gaddafi rise to power in 1969, but fell out with him during a war with Chad in the 1980s. He was taken prisoner by the Chadians, rescued by the CIA, and lived for about 20 years in Virginia before returning in 2011 to join other rebels in the uprising against Gaddafi.
The U.N. migration agency said on Tuesday that 6,900 migrants were still trapped in government detention centers in Tripoli despite efforts to move some to safer places.
The migrants, mainly from Africa and Syria, have been apprehended arriving through the Sahara with the intention of crossing the Mediterranean to Italy and elsewhere.
Some in one detention center close to clashes have refused relocation, saying they want permanent solutions to their plight, International Organization for Migration spokesman Joel Millman said in Geneva on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Valentina Za in Milian, Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Source: OANN
Children play near damaged houses in Kobani, Syria April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
April 16, 2019
By John Davison
KOBANI, Syria (Reuters) – A community of Syrians who converted to Christianity from Islam is growing in Kobani, a town besieged by Islamic State for months, and where the tide turned against the militants four years ago.
The converts say the experience of war and the onslaught of a group claiming to fight for Islam pushed them towards their new faith. After a number of families converted, the Syrian-Turkish border town’s first evangelical church opened last year.
Islamic State militants were beaten back by U.S. air strikes and Kurdish fighters at Kobani in early 2015, in a reversal of fortune after taking over swaths of Iraq and Syria. After years of fighting, U.S.-backed forces fully ended the group’s control over populated territory last month.
Though Islamic State’s ultra radical interpretation of Sunni Islam has been repudiated by the Islamic mainstream, the legacy of its violence has affected perceptions of faith.
Many in the mostly Kurdish areas of northern Syria, whose urban centers are often secular, say agnosticism has strengthened and in the case of Kobani, Christianity.
Christianity is one of the region’s minority faiths that was persecuted by Islamic State.
Critics view the new converts with suspicion, accusing them of seeking personal gain such as financial help from Christian organizations working in the region, jobs and enhanced prospects of emigration to European countries.
The newly-converted Christians of Kobani deny those accusations. They say their conversion was a matter of faith.
“After the war with Islamic State people were looking for the right path, and distancing themselves from Islam,” said Omar Firas, the founder of Kobani’s evangelical church. “People were scared and felt lost.”
Firas works for a Christian aid group at a nearby camp for displaced people that helped set up the church.
He said around 20 families, or around 80 to 100 people, in Kobani now worship there. They have not changed their names.
“We meet on Tuesdays and hold a service on Fridays. It is open to anyone who wants to join,” he said.
The church’s current pastor, Zani Bakr, 34, arrived last year from Afrin, a town in northern Syria. He converted in 2007.
“This was painted by IS as a religious conflict, using religious slogans. Because of this a lot of Kurds lost trust in religion generally, not just Islam,” he said.
Many became atheist or agnostic. “But many others became Christian. Scores here and more in Afrin.”
MISSIONARIES AND CRITICS
One man, who lost an arm in an explosion in Kobani and fled to Turkey for medical treatment, said he met Kurdish and Turkish converts there and eventually decided to join them.
“They seemed happy and all talked about love. That’s when I decided to follow Jesus’s teachings,” Maxim Ahmed, 22, said, adding that several friends and family were now interested in coming to the new church.
Some in Kobani reject the growing Christian presence. They say Western Christian aid groups and missionaries have exploited the chaos and trauma of war to convert people and that local newcomers to the religion see an opportunity for personal gain.
“Many people think that they are somehow benefitting from this, maybe for material gain or because of the perception that Christians who seek asylum abroad get preferential treatment,” said Salih Naasan, a real estate worker and former Arabic teacher.
Thousands of Christians have fled the region over decades of sectarian strife. From Syria they have often headed for Lebanon and European countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to help minorities fleeing the region when he imposed a travel ban on Muslims in 2016, but many Christians were denied asylum.
“It might be a reaction to Daesh (Islamic State) but I don’t see the positives. It just adds another religious and sectarian dimension which in a community like this will lead to tension,” said Naasan, a practicing Muslim.
Naasan like the vast majority of Muslims rejects Islamic State’s narrow and brutal interpretation of Islam. The group enslaved and killed thousands of people from all faiths, reserving particular brutality for minorities such as the Yazidis of northern Iraq.
Most Christians preferred not to give their names or be interviewed, saying they fear reaction from conservative sectors of society.
The population of Kobani and its surroundings has neared its original 200,000 after people returned, although only 40,000 live in the town itself, much of which lies in ruins.
(Editing by Tom Perry and Alexandra Hudson)
Source: OANN
People visit a cemetery in al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
April 16, 2019
By Angus McDowall
ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – A mantle of gold smothers Aleppo’s ruins, hiding the rubble and filling the craters with wild flowers that for a moment seem to transform a landscape scarred by war, destruction and death.
After an unusually wet winter, the warm days of spring have suddenly brought an abundance of color and life to a weary Syria, blooming in city and desert.
But they blanket a scene of war. The hummocks and dells are piles of debris, barricades, craters and trenches. The flowers grow where people once lived, fought, died.
Eight years of conflict have killed perhaps half a million people, destroyed whole towns and city districts and made half of all Syrians homeless.
In most parts of the country, the fighting is now over – at least for now. President Bashar al-Assad holds most of Syria, including the city of Aleppo, taken after months of bitter fighting in 2016.
However, Kurdish-led groups hold northeast Syria, and, in the northwest near Aleppo is the frontline with the last big rebel stronghold, where there has been bombardment in recent weeks.
The war destroyed much of Aleppo’s beautiful Old City and many poor eastern districts, leaving neighborhoods of rubble and fallen stone.
In the remains of the Attariyeh section of the souk, where the stone roof collapsed, a young couple sat on a pile of stones courting in the warm evening air, the sun illuminating the yellow flowers and picking out the woman’s red headscarf.
The steep sides of the ancient citadel’s round hill in the center of the city are thick with blooms and families gather at sunset to stroll or sit.
“It’s God’s message to make everything beautiful after mankind destroyed everything,” said Majd Kanaa, 35, standing at the end of a souk alleyway where he was repairing his late father’s shop, ready to reopen.
BUTTERFLIES, SWALLOWS, FROGS, STORKS
Clouds of butterflies, russet, black and white, flutter from the undergrowth and bees hum round the flowers. Flocks of swallows flit from the sky to roost in the ruins.
At night, in the fields and olive groves just outside the city, a cacophonous croaking of frogs drowns out the noise of cars from a road lined with cypress and pine trees.
Along the road from the south, precariously held for years by the army with rebels on one side and Islamic State on the other, the fighting left a chain of fortifications.
The war has moved far from here and these are now mostly deserted. Grass and flowers grow thick between the oil drums, sandbags and stacked tires guarding the old gun emplacements and concrete boxes.
Yellow broom, purple thistles and fat red poppies spring from the desert floor and paint it a psychedelic swirl of color. In one place, a huge patch of ground seems to bleed with thousands of poppies springing from the softly undulating earth.
“In Syria we believe that poppies are the blood of the martyrs,” said Aleppo lawyer and historian Alaa al-Sayed, explaining that their Arabic name comes from a dead king. “There are so many martyrs,” he added.
In the hills beyond the poppies are the pretty pointed mud domes of traditional “beehive” villages and young shepherds watching flocks of sheep and goats.
When the strong west wind ruffles the ground in the late afternoon, it makes the grass shimmer. Flocks of small birds suddenly rise from the ground and bob in the air. Migrating storks beat their wings in the distance.
Little electricity means little light, and at night the heavens are lit by a sharp crescent moon and brilliant constellations of stars. A fox slinks across the desert road in the light of car headlights.
But from time to time they also illuminate the burnt-out wrecks by the roadside, the remains of battles past, while two heavy trucks bear tanks onwards to today’s front line.
(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: An aerial photo shows Boeing 737 MAX airplanes parked on the tarmac at the Boeing Factory in Renton, Washington, U.S. March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
April 16, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s aviation regulator said on Tuesday that it had set up a task force to review design changes to the Boeing Co 737 MAX that had been submitted by the planemaker after the fleet was grounded last month.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has reverted to Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on issues regarding the aircraft’s airworthiness and is waiting for their response, the Chinese regulator said in a statement on its website.
China was the first country to ground the newest version of Boeing’s workhorse 737 model last month following a deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10.
Boeing filed an application on March 15 through the FAA to obtain an airworthiness certificate from CAAC, the Chinese regulator said in the statement that summarized remarks from a monthly briefing.
CAAC said it had since set up a task force to review changes submitted by Boeing in accordance with a bilateral agreement between the United States and China.
The Chinese regulator did not specify the changes submitted. Boeing is planning to update the software on an anti-stall system linked to the Ethiopian Airlines crash and an earlier one of Indonesia’s Lion Air but the planemaker has not yet submitted the update to FAA for approval.
CAAC is one of several regulators taking part in an FAA review panel on the 737 MAX which is expected to start this month.
The Chinese regulator said one of its pilot experts and one expert on aircraft certification would join the panel.
CAAC said it would make sure that every 737 MAX undergoes the necessary design changes and every pilot receives the necessary training before the fleet returns to service.
Chinese airlines operated 97 of the 371 737 MAX jets in service before the grounding, the most of any country, according to Flightglobal data.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Brenda Goh; Editing by Jamie Freed and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa Airbus A321-100 airplane takes off from the airport in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, July 29, 2018. REUTERS/Paul Hanna
April 16, 2019
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s biggest airline Lufthansa posted a loss for first three months of the year, hurt by rising fuel cost and overcapacity in Europe.
The company said in a statement on Monday evening that adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) fell to -336 million euros (-$380 million), compared to 52 million euros a year earlier.
Earnings were hit by a 202-million euro rise in fuel costs, as well as a strong comparison to the previous year when the airline benefited from the loss of capacity due to Air Berlin’s insolvency, Lufthansa said.
The airline said it expected unit revenues at constant currency to increase year-on-year in the second quarter, helped by favorable booking levels and a clear slowing of the market-wide capacity growth.
For 2019, Lufthansa said it still expected to report an adjusted operating profit margin of 6.5-8.0 percent.
Shares of the airline were indicated to open 5.5 percent lower in premarket trade on Tuesday morning at 0535 GMT.
(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Uttaresh.V)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: An Asiana Airlines Boeing 747-400 taxis at San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, California, Feb. 7, 2015. REUTERS/Louis Nastro
April 16, 2019
SEOUL (Reuters) – Creditors of Asiana Airlines aim to come up with a financial support plan for the debt-laden South Korean carrier by April 25 to help relieve its liquidity problems, the chairman of its main creditor, Korea Development Bank, said on Tuesday.
KDB Chairman Lee Dong-gull also told a briefing the creditors plan to sign a preliminary deal on the support measures in late April or early May.
Kumho Industrial, the top shareholder of Asiana, said on Monday that it plans to sell its entire 33.5 percent stake, worth 500 billion won ($440.08 million) at the closing price, as the cash-strapped airline seeks creditor support.
Lee said it is “desirable” that Asiana should also sell its units, which include two budget carriers, Air Busan and Air Seoul.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Visitors check NIO ES8 displayed during a media preview of the Auto China 2018 motor show in Beijing, China April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj
April 16, 2019
By Norihiko Shirouzu, Paul Lienert and Nick Carey
BEIJING/DETROIT (Reuters) – It took one 330 kilometer trip from Chongqing to Chengdu in his Nio ES8, a seven-seater all-electric SUV, for its owner Wang Haichun to be consumed with buyer’s remorse.
Despite being billed as capable of going 335 km on a single full charge, the ES8 didn’t get anywhere near that when driving on freeways at speeds above 100 km per hour (60mph), he said, adding that after 180 km, there was only 50 km of range left.
“We had to recharge the car once and drove with a high level of anxiety throughout, constantly having to keep an eye on the range meter,” the 44-year-old manager of a property firm said. Toward the end of the trip, he shut off the air conditioner and audio system to preserve power.
“I wouldn’t want to do that kind of trip again – ever.”
So unhappy was Wang, who paid 481,000 yuan ($71,700) for the vehicle, he sold it. He and his wife have since bought a Lexus NX300h gasoline-electric SUV.
Asked to comment on Wang’s experience, Nio Inc said in an e-mailed statement the ES8 can travel more than 200 km when constantly driven at a 100 km per hour and that battery swap stations are available for quick recharging. The statement did not address Nio’s advertising of 335 km on a single full charge.
In real world conditions, all-electric cars can sometimes fall far short of advertised ranges, car engineers say. That’s particularly so when driving at length on freeways or hilly terrain and in hot or cold weather.
The problem adds to drawbacks which have hindered wider acceptance – EVs have shorter driving ranges than gasoline vehicles anyway, are more expensive and take a long time to recharge.
China, Europe and the U.S. state of California have set ambitious requirements for automakers to dramatically increase EV sales over the next 5-10 years, but those goals are at risk unless EVs can come close to matching gasoline engine cars in cost and ease of use.
CHINESE AMBITIONS
In China, the country most aggressively pursuing the adoption of EVs and home to the world’s largest auto market, some of the industry’s biggest names believe pure battery electric cars will be as cheap as gasoline counterparts by 2025.
Those making that prediction include Ouyang Minggao, executive vice president of the EV100 forum, a think tank which is widely seen as the de facto voice of government policy.
“The turning point is coming. We believe that around 2025, the price of pure electric vehicles will achieve a big breakthrough,” he said in a speech in January.
Ouyang cited a reduction in battery costs to $100 per kilowatt hours from $150-$200 currently and a planned tightening of emissions rules in China which will make gasoline vehicles there more expensive.
But others in the EV industry are less optimistic.
“Chinese policymakers think EVs will become more like conventional gasoline cars as early as 2025. But that’s naive and all automaker engineers would agree with me,” said a veteran EV engineer at Honda Motor Co.
“Sure, there’s an EV boom but hybrids and plug-in hybrids will be needed as bridging technologies,” he said.
The engineer was one of five interviewed by Reuters for this article who believe it will take a decade before battery EVs achieve cost and performance parity with gasoline cars. Most were not authorized to speak to media and declined to identified when describing the shortcomings of EV technology.
But pressure to deliver parity will only grow as China rolls back subsidies while setting quotas for sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs). China wants NEVs – which also include hybrids, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles – to account for a fifth of auto sales by 2025 compared with 5 percent now.
CUTTING COBALT
For most automakers, battery cells cost around $200/kWh, the engineers said, although costs for Tesla Inc are believed to be around $150/kWh, partly due to its much greater scale of production. Tesla declined to comment.
To cut costs, firms are working on slashing the use of cobalt, the most expensive part in lithium-ion batteries.
Firms such as China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), BYD Co Ltd and South Korea’s SK Innovation Co Ltd are developing NMC 811 technology.
It uses 80 percent nickel, 10 percent manganese, 10 percent cobalt, while a conventional lithium-ion battery uses 60 percent nickel, 20 percent manganese and 20 percent cobalt. NMC 811 also delivers more energy density, meaning batteries will cost and weigh less.
Others are developing similar technologies with slightly different ratios. Batteries jointly produced by Tesla and Panasonic Corp substitute manganese with aluminum and use less cobalt than NMC 811.
Less cobalt and more nickel increases the risk that a battery cell will catch fire – a problem still being worked on. Even so, South Korean battery makers say the next generation of batteries due in three years or so will cost much less and offer much greater driving ranges.
But the engineers who spoke with Reuters caution that even if battery unit costs are brought down to $100/kWh, this would not necessarily translate into a steep decline in vehicle costs.
That’s because the investment to improve battery quality needs to be factored in, while the cars also need sophisticated battery management systems to prevent overheating and overcharging – adding thousands of dollars to their cost.
Toyota Motor Corp, which does not have a pure EV on the market currently, says it is concerned about battery durability. Battery capacity can drop by half over 5-10 years – the reason for low EV resale values, said Shigeki Terashi, executive vice president in charge of Toyota’s EV strategy.
“Falling EV battery capacity is not a major issue in China now because sales there have only recently begun, but in time this problem will likely become more evident,” he told Reuters in a interview.
RECHARGING TIMES
A longer term effort to improve batteries are solid state batteries, where the liquid or gel-form electrolyte in a lithium-ion battery is replaced with a solid. That could help double a battery’s energy density.
“That’s the holy grail,” says consultant Jon Bereisa, a former GM engineering director who spearheaded much of the automaker’s early lithium-ion battery development.
Many in the industry believe the technology is at least a decade away from mass-market commercial use.
“There are a lot of limitations to solid state drive..it will be very difficult to adopt the technology in the automotive applications used by the general public,” said YS Yoon, president of SK Innovation’s battery business.
Advances in recharging are also key to making electric vehicles mainstream. A big obstacle is heat, which increases resistance and in turn reduces the current.
Most EVs can get a partial charge in under half an hour, although several models due out in the next year can get close to a full charge in 20 minutes.
TE Connectivity is working with automakers to cut charging time to as little as 5 minutes and Chief Technology Officer Alan Amici says that goal may be attained in five years.
But others are sceptical. Bereisa thinks battery costs could achieve parity with gasoline cars by the late 2020s but his verdict on fast fueling parity is “maybe never”.
“It’s physics,” he said, adding that to charge an EV with the same amount of energy in the same amount of time as a gasoline car, you’d need a charger powerful “enough to run a small city”.
($1 = 6.7119 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing, Paul Lienert and Nick Carey in Detroit; Additional reporting by Yilei Sun and Beijing newsroom; Joe White, Hyunjoo Jin and Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Naomi Tajitsu, Maki Shiraki and Makiko Yamazaki in Tokyo; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Source: OANN
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