Aram Pan, a Singapore photographer, has managed to capture the world’s first ever 360-degree video of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. The photographer used the Entaniya 280 camera setup to take the 360-degree videos of the city and he had also taken with him three extra cameras to capture photos and video. We all know, North Korea is well known for preventing filming and photographs. Aerial photos of Pyongyang have up to now been banned. However, it seems like Pan had been given the go because he has a more positive attitude towards the people of North Korea. Take a look at the video
Credit: wiired
Tesla founder, Elon Musk seems positive that he can rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid with batteries and solar power from his company.
“The Tesla team has [built solar grids] for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too,” Musk tweeted on Thursday. “Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR.”
The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR.
The Hill reports, Tesla can really do this, they have already done similar project with the American Samoa and Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative in Hawaii. Though the population was much samller than Puerto rico but Musk assured that his operation can be scaled up to meet the demand
As of now, less than 10 percent of the island is powered. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló made an announcement the other day that electricity restoration could take one month to only a quarter of households in the territory.
however, Puerto rico has already received hundreds of Tesla Batteries to help with storing of power.
theepochtimes.com
Due to the deteriorating air quality in China, two sisters just proved that an “air-for-sale” scheme is actually a legitimate business.
These two ladies from China's Xining, the provincial capital of the country's western Qinghai, have launched an online start-up business through which they sell fresh air,
The big question is, Where do they collect the air from?
They are collecting fresh air from the Tibetan Plateau, which is a vast, high plateau in Central Asia and It covers most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Qinghai Province in China, and Ladakh in Kashmir, Pakistan. Here is a video to show you how the process is done. Also, the buyers have a choice of air depending on their preference; either from the mountain or the valley f the Tibetan Plateau.
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So far, they have sold more than 100 bags at the cost of $2.5 per bag.These two ladies claimed that their project is just an environmental campaign to remind people on the importance of protecting the environment, with that being said, making money is not their prime goal.
Well, I have been looking for a unique business idea, here I got one. I will also be selling fresh air from Mount Kilimanjaro.
Credit; Hubstatic.com
It sounds odd, but this lake really exist. Even the majority of Tanzanians will go doubting this story.
Lake Natron in northern Tanzania petrifies birds and bats who frequently slam into its highly reflective surface of the lake
tinypic.com
The lake that turns animals into statues and by the way it has an alkalinity ranging from pH 9 to pH 10.5, meaning its water is basic
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The lake got its name "Natron" because it contains natron, a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate and around 17% sodium bicarbonate with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate that comes from volcanic ash from the Great Rift Valley.
Surprisingly despite its deadly characteristics, Lake Natron is the main breeding ground for lesser-flamingos. Algae grows on a salt area like Natron, the birds nest on them and feed off them
Actually, no one knows for certain exactly how and why they die, but it seems like the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them
An Air France Airbus A380 engine is seen during an emergency landing in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
Air France A380 makes emergency landing with damaged engine Retired policeman held over fake Air France bomb: Legal source Paris-bound flights from US diverted after anonymous threat, lands safely.
A team of investigators and engineers headed to Canada today to inspect an Airbus A380 superjumbo operated by Air France which was forced to make an emergency landing after an engine explosion. The double-decker aircraft carrying 496 passengers and 24 crew had taken off from Paris yesterday bound for Los Angeles and was several hours into the flight when the blow-out occurred. Passengers recounted hearing a loud bang followed by violent shaking, with video and photos posted on social media showing extensive damage to the outer starboard engine.
An Air France spokesman said today that officials from France’s BEA air crash investigation unit and engineers from Airbus and the US-based engine maker were flying to Goose Bay in eastern Canada where the plane landed.
“The cabin started vibrating. Someone screamed, and from there we knew something was wrong,” passenger Sarah Eamigh told Canadian broadcaster CBC News about the incident in the skies above Greenland yesterday. “We saw the cabin crew walking through the aisles quickly, and we heard an announcement from the captain that said one of our engines had an explosion,” she added. All passengers were expected today morning to complete their journeys to Los Angeles aboard two planes sent by Air France to the Goose Bay military airport, which is used as an emergency landing spot for transatlantic flights. “All of the 520 people on board were evacuated with no injuries,” the spokesman told AFP. The cause of the problem was not immediately clear, but David Rehmar, a former aircraft mechanic who was on the flight, told the BBC that he thought a fan failure may have been to blame. “You heard a loud ‘boom’, and it was the vibration alone that made me think the engine had failed,” he said. Rehmar said that for a few moments, he thought “we were going to go down”. In 2010, a Qantas A380 was forced to make an emergency landing in Singapore when one of its Rolls-Royce engines failed, causing the airline to ground its fleet of the superjumbos for weeks. Another passenger on the Air France flight, John Birkhead, told the New York Times that he and his wife had just stood up to stretch when they heard an explosion. “We were just stretching and talking, and suddenly there was an enormous bang, and the whole plane shook,” Birkhead, 59, said. “We were lucky we weren’t tossed to the ground.” Passenger Miguel Amador posted video footage apparently filmed from a window of the plane showing the damaged engine. “Engine failure halfway over the Atlantic ocean,” he wrote.
Passenger " 'Pamela Adams' said everything on the flight had been normal and suddenly it felt like we had run into a jeep in the middle of 35,000 feet high”, she told CBC News. She said she was “jostled” and the plane dipped slightly “but the pilots recovered beautifully”. “There wasn’t the panic that I would’ve expected,” she said, praising the pilots for the way they handled the incident.
Air France operates 10 Airbus A380s, the largest passenger planes in the world.
Hurricane Maria swept the Caribbean island last week, leaving huge lose to the people of Puerto Rico. Houses were blasted away, roads washed out to sea, and the electricity grid totally destroyed. Outside of the San Juan which is the capital city, many people are still struggling without power or communication, and clean drinking water and medical aid is also scarce.
what is Trump doing? Organizing assistance to be sent? Or simply offering his condolences? Nope, he’s tweeting that Puerto Rico should be dealing with its debts instead.
Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble..
A remote small Chinese village has been in the spotlight because of a mysterious cliff face that is said to lay 'eggs' situated in south-east China, regularly produces large round rocks as heavy as 660 pounds, according to the locals. About once every 30 years, the 19 foot 8 inch high cliff appears to “shed” an egg and it falls to the floor. The eggs are no more than 8 to 16 inches in diameter. According to the locals, there are other smaller "stone eggs" nearby So what could explain the strange cliff?
As of now, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh are being hit by the most flood calamities seen in the region for more than a decade.The damage done to the infrastructure and agricultural lands is very severe with1,200 people known to have diedso far, while more than 40 million have been displaced but also there are fatal landslides in Nepal, destruction of entire villages in Bangladesh, and buildings collapsing in India.It is also thought that some 1,000,000 acres of agricultural land has been washed away, it will severely limit many peoples' access to food over the coming months.
Heavy monsoon is what has caused flooding, so far estimated 30 quadrillion liters of water has covered on Bangladesh alone. Compare this to the 86 trillion liters that has so far fallen on Houston.
A third of Bangladesh is already under water, it doesn’t look like things are going to get better anytime soon. Not only is the monsoon season expected to last this year until the end of September, but even when the flood waters drain away the impact will be catastrophic.
“Even though flood waters are receding in some parts, it provides little respite,” said Thomas Chandy, the CEO of Save the Children, who are working in the region. “The mammoth recovery operation is only just beginning. The challenge now is to prevent potential outbreaks of disease like cholera or diarrhea.”
Crossing the Arctic was the ultimate challenge back in the days. From Franklin to Peary, the Arctic didn’t make it easy.A Russian ship just made one of the fastest sail along an Arctic shipping route without the help of a chaperone icebreaker ship.
Obviously this can be a good news for sailers but turns out to be bad news to environmentalists because of diminished Arctic sea, likely as a result of climate change. The ship made it through the ice because the ice is no more thicker as it used to so its easy for a ship to break through.
On Aug. 17, the Russian tanker, the Christophe de Margerie, carried over 75,000 tons of liquified natural gas (LNG) from Norway to South Korea, according to a statement by the Northern Sea Route Administration.The tanker crossed from Norway to South Korea in just 19 days only, 30 percent faster than taking the usual route through the Suez Canal, traversing the Russian Arctic section of the route in just six and a half days.
The Department for Homeland Security has sided with Donald Trump's idea, Trump's border wall could possibly break numerous laws and fail various environmental reviews but that isn't an obstacle at all. Geographical Studies have suggested that the border wall is a threat to the surroundings . also wastage of resources which will be used to build up the walls, it will also interrupt the life of the living things/animals and plants that occur around the area it will be built, environmentalists have warned. The Department for Homeland Security insisted it will soon publish in the Federal Register a notice that allows the government to be exempted from the National Environmental Protection Act, as well as a whole host of other laws. Congress passed the law to try and stop similar challenges when government came to build walls elsewhere in the US land. It allowed George W Bush to build hundreds of miles of fencing across the US-Mexico border. Last week the House of Representatives approved the administration's request for $1.6 billion to start building the wall, which would include replacing 14 miles (22 kilometers) in San Diego covered by the latest waiver and building 60 miles (96 kilometers) of new barriers in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. It was unclear if or when Homeland Security would issue waivers for Texas, which is currently the busiest corridor for illegal crossings in the US. Homeland Security said the San Diego waiver falls within the scope of the 2005 law and that the area is a high priority for construction of border barriers and roads.
The Border Patrol's San Diego sector logged nearly 32,000 arrests last year — 8 percent of the total on the U.S. border with Mexico — and seized more than 4 tons of marijuana and more than a half-ton of cocaine.
The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable landmarks on the planet. If you were asked to describe it, one of the first things you'd likely mention would be its distinctive blue-green color.
But it wasn't always this color. As a new video from the American Chemical Society explains, the original color of the Statue of Liberty has changed since it was gifted to the US by France in 1885. It was originally a rather magnificent copper.
The statue during its transition from copper to green-blue. Wikimedia Commons.
"In her first few decades in the Big Apple, the statue slowly turned from that shiny copper color to a dull brown and then finally to the blue-green, or as they say back in France, 'verdigris', that we see today," the American Chemical Society explains in their video.
The color change is the result of oxidation and air pollution. It wasn't just one reaction that caused this particular shade, but a combination of reactions over the years. The first color change occurred when the copper on the statue reacted with oxygen in the air. The copper gave up electrons to the oxygen, leading to the mineral cuprite, which is a pinkish red.
After that, the cuprite gave up more electrons to oxygen, forming tenorite, which is black, causing the statue to become darker still. But, of course, it didn't end there.
The water in the atmosphere, when mixed with sulfur, turns to sulfuric acid. When this was mixed with copper oxides on the statue, it began to turn its distinctive green color. Chloride from the sea spray added to this, making the statue even greener.
The statue has remained this color for over 100 years because the exposed copper is now chemically stable, but underneath that layer, it is still the original bronze. It's likely to remain this shade of green now that the outside is fully oxidized.
When it was suggested that the color be restored to the original copper shade, the public protested the move, as they were now used to the iconic blue-green shade.
The World Health Organization has issued a warning, after 35 people died from measles across Europe in the past year. Measles is entirely preventable with a vaccine, but continues to spread and contribute to deaths around Europe.
Since 2016, there have been over 3,300 cases of measles in Italy alone. The latest fatality came from that very region – a boy that was just six years old.
“Every death or disability caused by this vaccine-preventable disease is an unacceptable tragedy,” said Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO regional director for Europe, in a press release. “We are very concerned that although a safe, effective and affordable vaccine is available, measles remains a leading cause of death among children worldwide, and unfortunately Europe is not spared.”
In the past 12 months, there have been deaths in Italy, Germany, and Portugal, though the majority of the deaths (31 in total) were in Romania.
Since the measles outbreak has begun, lawmakers across Europe have been looking to tighten their laws on vaccinations. Italy recently announced that vaccinations will become mandatory for schoolchildren, and Germany are inspecting their own laws.
“I urge all endemic countries to take urgent measures to stop transmission of measles within their borders, and all countries that have already achieved this to keep up their guard and sustain high immunization coverage,” said Dr Jakab.
Anti-vacination groups are thought to be one of the reasons why some people avoid the measels vaccination. Despite study after study proving that autism is not caused by the measels vaccine, including one funded by anti-vaxxers themselves, there are many people who refuse to get their children this life-saving vaccine on the misguided belief it causes more harm than good.
The WHO recommends that every eligible child receive two doses of the measles-containing vaccine. They also encourage adults who are not fully immunized, or who are not sure of their immunity status, to get vaccinated.
“Working closely with health authorities in all European affected countries is our priority to control the outbreaks and maintain high vaccination coverage for all sections of the population,” Dr Jakab.
Worldwide deaths have significantly dropped off since the introduction of the measles vaccine. Between 2000 and 2015, there has been a 79 percent drop in measles deaths around the world, though the number of mortalities still remains unnecessarily high. In 2015, there were 134,200 deaths worldwide.
