derek jeter Red Bull Stratos Redbull Stratos steve mcnair vice presidential debate Martha Raddatz Chris Lighty
Monday, March 25, 2013
C. African Republic president flees rebel attack
BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) ? Central African Republic's President Francois Bozize fled the capital early Sunday, hours after hundreds of armed rebels threatening to overthrow him invaded the city, an adviser said.
The rebel alliance, known as Seleka, issued a statement referring to Bozize as the country's "former president."
"Central African Republic has just opened a new page in its history," said the communique, which was signed by Justin Kombo Moustapha, secretary-general of Seleka.
"The political committee of the Seleka coalition, made up of Central Africans of all kinds, calls on the population to remain calm and to prepare to welcome the revolutionary forces of Seleka," it said.
The rebels had reached the outskirts of Bangui late Saturday. Heavy gunfire echoed through the city Sunday as the fighters made their way into the heart of downtown and seized the presidential palace, though the country's leader of a decade was not there at the time.
"Bozize left the city this morning," said Maximin Olouamat, a member of Bozize's presidential majority. The adviser declined to say where the president had gone.
Coverseas Worldwide Assistance, a Swiss-based crisis management firm that has contacts on the ground, said it believed Bozize was headed toward neighboring Congo.
Bangui is located along the Oubangui River that separates the two countries.
Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende, however, said he had no knowledge of Bozize crossing into Congo.
Rebels from several armed groups that have long opposed Bozize joined forces in December and began seizing towns across the country's sparsely populated north. They threatened at the time to march on Bangui, but ultimately halted their advance and agreed to go to peace negotiations in Libreville, the capital of Gabon.
A peace deal was signed Jan. 11 that allowed Bozize to finish his term that expires in 2016, but the rebels soon began accusing the president of failing to fulfill the promises that were made.
They demanded that Bozize send home South African forces who were helping bolster the country's military. And they sought to integrate some 2,000 rebel fighters into Central African Republic's armed forces.
The deal unraveled more than a week ago, with the rebels again taking control of two towns and threatening to advance on the capital.
Late Saturday, Bangui was plunged into darkness after fighters cut power to much of the city. State radio went dead, and fearful residents cowered in their homes.
An unspecified number of French citizens have taken refuge in the French Embassy, a diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to be publicly named according to Foreign Ministry policy.
"For us, there is no other solution than the departure of Francois Bozize," Eric Massi, a rebel spokesman, said from Paris by telephone late Saturday.
Massi said the rebels were securing the city, and he called on residents to remain calm and avoid looting amid the chaos.
South African Brig. Gen. Xolani Mabanga, the country's military spokesman, said there had been "intense" fighting this weekend between the rebels and South African forces.
"Our base was attacked by the rebels as they were advancing toward the capital," he said. South African forces suffered casualties from the fighting Saturday night, he said.
"We have suffered some casualties," he said. He declined to provide the number of casualties, pending the outcome of an investigation.
He said the situation for South African forces was "relatively calm" on Sunday afternoon.
"There are no threats at this moment," he said.
The growing unrest is the latest threat to the stability of Central African Republic, a nation of 4.5 million that has long been wracked by rebellions and power grabs.
The president himself took power in 2003 following a rebellion, and his tenure has been marked by conflict with myriad armed groups.
___
Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Christopher Torchia in Johannesburg and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/c-african-republic-president-flees-rebel-attack-095132455.html
steelers scarlett johansson tim tebow survivor snl peter frampton smokey robinson
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Defendant puts on scrubs, walks out of NM hospital
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? A man arrested in a drug case is back in custody after donning scrubs and then walking out of an Albuquerque hospital where a police officer had left him unattended.
The Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/ZHpwst ) reports that the officer didn't handcuff 39-year-old Jonathan Kahl at University of New Mexico Hospital because he had swollen hands.
Suspicions were raised when Kahl was seen pushing a hospital cart while wearing blue jeans under the scrubs, but he had already left the hospital by the time the exits were secured.
That happened last weekend. He was back in custody after being arrested Tuesday on suspicion of shoplifting.
Associated Presshow to cook a turkey emma stone Frys tryptophan BestBuy.com Kohls Black Friday www.walmart.com
The Story Behind Qualtrics, The Next Great Enterprise Company.
Editor?s note:?Derek?Andersen?is the founder of?Startup Grind, a 35-city event series hosted in 15-countries that educates, inspires, and connects entrepreneurs.?He also founded Commonred and is?ex-Electronic Arts. I met Ryan Smith about nine years ago in a college apartment in Provo Utah. We were both attending school, and after asking him what he was working on he replied, “I’m building an?online research company with my dad called Qualtrics.” Nine years later Qualtrics?has 5,000 customers, $70MM in funding, and turned down a $500MM acquisition offer last year in a bold attempt to build a billion dollar company. Qualtrics was well described last year when Sequoia Capital partner?Bryan Schreier called them the “largest software company you haven’t heard of yet.” That is changing quickly.?If you don’t know, Qualtrics?was created by Ryan and has dad as a way to help schools and companies?gather feedback and data on students/customers through surveys. They have?5,000 customers including FedEx, Hewlett-Packard, JetBlue, Microsoft, PepsiCo and Zappos. The company was started by Ryan and his dad.?I recently interviewed Ryan at Startup Grind Utah and learned how it all happened. In the summer of 2001 while doing an internship at Hewlett-Packard, Ryan’s dad Scott called him and said he had throat cancer and would begin treatment?immediately? so Ryan returned home and took a semester off school. While at home he found that his dad, who Ryan describes as a “super early adaptor,” had built the technology that was the beginning of Qualtrics. Each day after Scott returned from chemotherapy they would work on the product. By the time Scott had returned to full strength, Ryan had signed up 20 customers and they had hired a small team to build out the product. The first customers were in?academia. Ryan realized that he could easily find key decision makers’ contact information online, and since it worked for one it seemed only natural that it would work for others. ?The first customer was a professor at the?Kellogg School of Management. Ten years later the first ten Qualtrics customes are still customers. All of this was literally?happening from Ryan’s parents’ basement in Provo Utah in 2002 and 2003. Ryan’s first big hire was a friend that he convinced to turn down a $60,000 job to make $8,000 at Qualtrics. Don’t worry – after?over delivering he made $12,000 the next year. By 2004 they had 20-people and there were so many cars on their street that neighbors
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/N1smq_rowSA/
Sally Field The Oscars Searching For Sugar Man george clooney Zero Dark Thirty Academy Awards 2013 Django Unchained
SpaceX company fixes Dragon capsule problem
The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 1, 2013. The rocket is transporting the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware and science experiments. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 1, 2013. The rocket is transporting the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware and science experiments. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 1, 2013. The rocket is transporting the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware and science experiments. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
This Jan. 12, 2013 photo provided by NASA shows the Dragon spacecraft inside a processing hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. where teams had just installed the spacecraft's solar array fairings. The California company known as SpaceX is scheduled to launch its unmanned Falcon rocket on Friday morning, March 1, 2013, carrying a Dragon capsule containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware and science experiments. (AP Photo/NASA, Kim Shiflett)
The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 1, 2013. The rocket is transporting the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware and science experiments. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
The unmanned Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 1, 2013. The rocket will transport the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware and science experiments. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ? A commercial craft carrying a ton of supplies for the International Space Station ran into thruster trouble shortly after liftoff Friday. Flight controllers managed to gain control, but were forced to delay its arrival at the orbiting lab.
The earliest the Dragon capsule could show up is Sunday, a full day late, said top officials for NASA and the private company SpaceX.
"We're definitely not going to rush it," said SpaceX's billionaire founder Elon Musk. "We want to make sure first and foremost that things are safe before proceeding."
The Dragon, owned and operated by SpaceX, holds considerable science experiments for the space station as well as food and spare parts.
Musk said six hours into the flight that all four sets of thrusters finally were working. "All systems green," he reported via Twitter. The problem may have been caused by a stuck valve or a line blockage. The thrusters are small rockets used for maneuvering the capsule.
An hour later, the Dragon was raised with the thrusters to a safe altitude. "Dragon back on track," he said in a tweet.
It was the first serious trouble to strike a Dragon in orbit. None of the four previous unmanned flights had any thruster issues, Musk told reporters by phone from company headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.
He said it appeared to be a glitch versus a major concern.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to make a dozen deliveries to restock the space station. This is the third trip by a Dragon capsule to the station; the first Dragon flight, in 2010, was a solo test.
NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini said at least three groups of thrusters on the Dragon need to work before the capsule can come close to the complex. That's a safety rule that will not be waived, Suffredini said.
Engineers for both SpaceX and NASA plan an exhaustive study before allowing the rendezvous to take place. The Dragon could hang around at least a month before linking up with the station, Musk said. It's supposed to spend more than three weeks there, in large part to accommodate science samples that will be on the return trip.
SpaceX is in charge of the flight until it gets near the space station. Then NASA calls the shots.
"If we can convince ourselves the data's good, I suspect we can find an opportunity on Sunday, but again, we have to go look at it," Suffredini said.
The fresh apples aboard Dragon ? straight from the family orchard of a SpaceX employee ? will be applesauce or worse the longer the delay. There's other fresh fruit as well for the six station astronauts.
Musk acknowledged it was scary for a while.
"Yes, absolutely, it was a little frightening there," said Musk, whose fortune came from co-creating PayPay.
He stressed that the company's Falcon 9 rocket performed "really perfectly" and that the thruster problem was isolated to the Dragon.
On the previous flight in October, one of nine first-stage engines on the Falcon rocket shut down too soon. A communication satellite hitching a ride was lost.
SpaceX hopes the resupply venture will lead to transporting astronauts to the space station in the Dragon capsule in just a couple years.
If thrusters stalled like this on a manned mission, Musk said, the outcome wouldn't necessarily be grim. The capsule is designed to return to Earth with just two good sets of thrusters and, in "a super worst case situation," conceivably just one although it would be "a bit of a wobbly trip."
The space station was orbiting 250 miles above the Atlantic, just off the New England coast, when the Falcon soared. Astronauts will use a hefty robot arm to draw the Dragon in and dock it to the station.
Also on board with the fruit: 640 seeds of a flowering weed used for research, mouse stems cells, protein crystals, astronaut meals and clothing, trash bags, air-purifying devices, computer parts and other gear.
NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, said using commercial providers is more efficient for the space agency. It's part of a long-term program, she noted, that has NASA spending less money on low-Earth orbit and investing more in deep-space missions. That's one reason why the space shuttles were retired in 2011 after the station was completed.
The goal is to have SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corp., and other private firms take over the job of ferrying astronauts to and from the space station. Russia does that now ? for a steep price.
Competitor Orbital Sciences Corp. has yet to get off its Virginia launch pad. The company plans to launch a free-flying test of its Antares rocket and Cygnus supply ship in April, followed by a demo run to the space station in early summer.
Russia, Japan and Europe regularly make station deliveries as well. But only the Dragon is designed to bring back substantial amounts of research and used goods. The other supply ships burn up upon re-entry.
The newest Dragon is scheduled to spend more than three weeks at the space station before being cut loose by the crew. It will parachute into the Pacific with more than a ton of medical samples, plant and cell specimens, Japanese fish and old machinery, and used spacewalking gloves and other items.
SpaceX plans to launch its next Dragon to the station in late fall.
More than 2,000 guests jammed the Cape Canaveral launch site Friday morning to watch the Falcon take flight. It wasn't much of a show because of all the clouds.
The successful separation of the Dragon from the rocket was broadcast live on NASA TV; on-board cameras provided the unique views nine minutes into the flight.
Then the trouble struck, and the coverage ended.
"It's looking like we're going to be back on track here," Musk later assured everyone.
___
Online:
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/index.html
SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/
Associated Presselton john janelle monae MBTA national signing day Solomon Islands Mary Leakey Side Effects
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)