Calif: Marine Dies During ‘Routine’ Operation At Camp Pendleton

2:07 AM – Thursday, April 25, 2024

The U.S. Marine Corps announced on Wednesday that a U.S. Marine was killed during an operation at the air base at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California. Oceanside is almost 40 miles away from San Diego, CA.

The announcement states that the Marine passed away on Tuesday at around 5 p.m. local time. However, the individual’s identity has not been disclosed. Family members must first be informed of the death of their loved one.

The Marine’s cause of death was also not disclosed by the military branch, and what activity the unit was carrying out at the time of the incident is unknown as well.

This marks the “Marine Corps second death in less than a week, according to a press release from the service,” Military.com reported. Last week, a parachuting accident in North Carolina claimed the life of a Marine at Camp Lejeune.

The Camp Pendleton Marine was “stationed with the Marine Light Attack Helicopter Training Squadron 303, Marine Aircraft Group 39, which is part of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing,” according to NBC San Diego.

Although the nature of the military action at the time of the death was unclear, the USMC regarded it as “routine.” According to an official, the UH-1Y Venom and AH-1Z Viper helicopters are flown by the helicopter training squadron.

It is not known if other personnel were involved. However, no other injuries were reported.

https://www.oann.com/newsroom/calif-marine-dies-during-routine-operation-at-camp-pendleton/

French police arrest teenager allegedly planning suicide attack at Paris Olympics

April 25, 2024

Law enforcement officials in France have arrested a 16-year-old boy who was allegedly planning to carry out a suicide attack at the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris this summer. The teenager was taken into custody by French anti-terror police after he publicly announced his intentions on social media.

According to a French official's statement to Reuters, the suspect "was arrested after he publicly announced on social media that he planned to create an explosive belt to become a martyr." The arrest took place at the teenager's parents' home following the discovery of his posts on Telegram, which were reported to the authorities.

During a search of the suspect's home, investigators reportedly found handwritten notes declaring his support for the Islamic State. The Paris Games are scheduled to begin with the opening ceremony on July 26, and French President Emmanuel Macron has indicated that he may scale down the size of the ceremony if there are any serious security risks, the Daily Wire reported.

The arrest comes amidst heightened concerns about antisemitism and terrorism in France. In a separate incident this week, a 32-year-old man was arrested for allegedly kidnapping and raping a Jewish French woman to "avenge Palestine," according to local media reports.

The suspect in the kidnapping case allegedly sent threatening text messages to the woman's mother, stating, "Good luck, you will never find your daughter again, you will never see her again, I will prostitute your daughter." He also reportedly expressed a desire to "avenge Palestine" in a text message.

Police used forensic investigators to geolocate the approximate location of the woman's phone and then employed more advanced techniques to pinpoint her exact location. The suspect acknowledged the death threats but claimed they were merely "provocations." He was released from jail with his trial set to start in several weeks and was barred from having further contact with the woman.

France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, many of whom are migrants, has seen an increase in antisemitism over the past few months.

Last November, a Jewish woman in Lyon was stabbed, and a swastika was painted on her door. In December, several suspected extremists were arrested in Meurthe-et-Moselle for allegedly planning terrorist attacks on a Christmas market.

https://www.rebelnews.com/french_police_arrest_teenager_allegedly_planning_suicide_attack_at_paris_olympics

Southwest Airlines To Lay Off 2,000 Employees, Halt Service At 4 Airports

1:16 PM – Thursday, April 25, 2024

Southwest Airlines has announced that they will be laying off around 2,000 employees and closing operations at four different airports across the globe.

The popular airline announced the news on Thursday, prompting worry in Southwest Airlines workers in the U.S.

This comes after American Airlines and Southwest Airlines both reported major financial losses in the first quarter of 2024. Both airlines have had to deal with higher labor costs and delays in getting new planes from Boeing, which is limiting their ability to add more flights at a time of high demand for travel.

American Airlines reported that it lost $312 million as labor costs rose 18%, and Southwest reported a loss of $231 million, with the airline’s CEO saying that the company was acting quickly and dealing with delayed deliveries of new planes.

Southwest will be closing operations at Cozumel International Airport in Mexico, Syracuse Hancock International Airport in New York, Bellingham International Airport in Washington state, and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.

“While it is disappointing to incur a first quarter loss, we exited the quarter with healthy profits and margins in the month of March,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a statement. “We are focused on controlling what we can control and have already taken swift action to address our financial underperformance and adjust for revised aircraft delivery expectations.”

“The recent news from Boeing regarding further aircraft delivery delays presents significant challenges for both 2024 and 2025,” he continued.

“We are focused on achieving our financial prosperity goals and creating value for our Shareholders, while we adjust to changes in our aircraft delivery plans, Customer travel patterns and preferences, higher fuel prices, and other cost pressures,” Jordan added.

Southwest Airlines expects to have 802 aircraft by the end of the year, down from the earlier presumption of 814 planes.

https://www.oann.com/newsroom/southwest-airlines-to-lay-off-2000-employees-halt-service-at-4-airports/

Legendary Musician Is the First Passenger Onboard the AirCar Flying Car

25 Apr 2024, 03:49 UTC

Jean-Michel Jarre, who has also been referred to as the godfather of electronic music, became the first civilian passenger onboard the world's only flying car. It's a prototype of a flying car, but a flying car nonetheless – so none of the eVTOL (electric takeoff and landing aircraft) business here.

AirCar was formally introduced in 2019 as the creation of Stefan Klein, who is also the co-founder of the company that built it, Klein Vision. The AirCar is a proper flying car, a vehicle designed for dual-mode transportation: it's a car on land and a light two-person aircraft in the air.

In January 2022, the AirCar received a Certificate of Airworthiness and has since completed over 130 hours of flight, making 520 successful takeoffs and landings. As of this week, it has added another notch on its belt by taking the first civilian on another – its second, so far – intercity flight. The fact that the civilian in question was a music legend only adds weight to the impressive achievement.

Klein Vision notes that Jean-Michel Jarre flew on the AirCar from Piestany to Nitra (in Slovakia), where he performed as the opening act of the 2024 Starmus festival, aptly called "The Bridge from the Future." Sir Brian May of Queen was also present – for the musical event, not the historic flight.

The AirCar also went on display at Starmus, offering attendees a good look into what Klein Vision describes as the future of mobility.

Because of its dual mode of transportation, the AirCar aims to cut travel times by a half, for the simple reason that you can drive it to any airport, take off in it, and then take it back on the road once you arrive at your destination. Inventor Klein believes it will bring the same kind of freedom the automobile brought in its early days, just as much as he believes that the production-ready version will hit the market sometime next year.

The AirCar being used now is Prototype 1 and it's powered by a 160-hp BMW engine mounted in the rear and a propeller mounted behind the cockpit in a pusher configuration. It can cruise in the air at speeds of 119 mph (190 kph) and altitudes of 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), but figures for its road use were never advertised.

Prototype 2 will be able to fold the wings into the body for road transportation and will feature a 300-hp engine with a variable pitch propeller. At least in theory, Klein says it will be faster and with a longer range – 186.5 mph (300 kph) and 621 miles (1,000) km, respectively. He's also considering making 2 and 4-seater variants, and maybe even an amphibian version at some point.

For the time being, though, the AirCar is jumping through hoops to get proper aircraft certification. Even if it does make it to market sometime in 2025, its use will still probably be limited because regulation for flying cars is non-existent.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/legendary-musician-is-the-first-passenger-onboard-the-aircar-flying-car-232864.html#

ALICE gets the green light for new subdetectors

25 APRIL, 2024

Two detector upgrades of ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have recently been approved for installation during the next long shutdown of the LHC, which will take place from 2026 to 2028. The first one is an upgrade of the innermost three layers of the Inner Tracking System (ITS3), and the second is a new forward calorimeter (FoCal), optimised for photon detection in the forward direction of the ALICE detector.

High-energy collisions of heavy ions like lead nuclei at the LHC recreate quark–gluon plasma: the hottest and densest fluid ever studied in a laboratory. Besides studying the properties of quark–gluon plasma, the ALICE programme covers a broad array of topics involving strong interaction, such as determining the structure of nuclei and the interactions between unstable particles, as presented in "A journey through the quark-gluon plasma and beyond".

Inner Tracking System (ITS3)

ALICE’s current Inner Tracking System, installed for the ongoing LHC run, is the world’s largest pixel detector to date, with 10 m2 of active silicon area and nearly 13 billion pixels. The new Inner Tracking System, ITS3, builds on the successful use of monolithic active pixel sensors and takes this concept to the next level.

“ALICE is like a high-resolution camera, capturing intricate details of particle interactions. ITS3 is all set to boost the pointing resolution of the tracks by a factor of 2 compared to the current ITS detector,” said Alex Kluge and Magnus Mager, the project leaders of ITS3. “This will strongly enhance the measurements of thermal radiation emitted by the quark–gluon plasma and provide insights into the interactions of charm and beauty quarks when they propagate through the plasma.”

The ITS3 sensors are 50 µm thick and as large as 26×10 cm2. To achieve this, a novel stitching technology was used to connect individual sensors together into a large structure. These sensors can now be bent around the beampipe in a truly cylindrical shape. The first layer will be placed only 2 mm from the beampipe and 19 mm from the interaction point. It can now be cooled by air instead of water and has a much lighter support structure, significantly reducing the materials and their effect on the particle trajectories seen in the detector.

Forward Calorimeter (FoCal)

The FoCal detector consists of an electromagnetic calorimeter (FoCal-E) and a hadronic calorimeter (FoCal-H). FoCal-E is a highly granular calorimeter composed of 18 layers of silicon pad sensors, each as small as 1×1 cm2, and two additional special layers with pixels of 30×30 μm2. FoCal-H is made of copper capillar tubes and scintillating fibres.

“By measuring inclusive photons and their correlations with neutral mesons, and the production of jets and charmonia, FoCal offers a unique possibility for a systematic exploration of QCD at small Bjorken-x. FoCal extends the scope of ALICE by adding new capabilities to explore the small-x parton structure of nucleons and nuclei,” said Constantin Loizides, project leader of FoCal at the ALICE collaboration.

The newly built FoCal prototypes have recently been tested with beams in the CERN accelerator complex, at the Proton Synchrotron and Super Proton Synchrotron, demonstrating their performance in line with expectations from detector simulations.

The ITS3 and FoCal projects have reached the important milestone of completing their Technical Design Reports, which were endorsed by the CERN review committees in March 2024. The construction phase of ITS3 and FoCal starts now, with the detectors due to be installed in early 2028 in order to be ready for data taking in 2029.

https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/alice-gets-green-light-new-subdetectors

>>20778867

FCC Reinstates Net Neutrality In A Blow To Internet Service Providers

April 25, 2024 9:16am

Major internet providers once again will have to abide by a set of robust rules of the road, prohibiting them from blocking or throttling traffic, as the FCC today reinstated net neutrality regulations.

The commission voted 3-2 along party lines to adopt the rules, which broadly prohibit Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and other providers from favoring some types of internet traffic over others.

The latest net neutrality rules resemble those adopted in 2015, when the FCC voted to reclassify internet service like a common carrier, or the same regulatory designation given to phone service. The commission, with a majority of Democratic members, sought reclassification as a way to give the FCC the regulatory authority to establish significant net neutrality rules.

But less than three years later, after Donald Trump became president, a Republican-controlled FCC reversed net neutrality, to protest online and outside the FCC offices.

Opponents of net neutrality argue that even without such regulation, the great fears that the internet would devolve into a tiered system of fast lanes has not materialized.

Supporters, though, note that a bevy of new state regulations has tempered the conduct of major internet providers.

Congress has been unable to pass legislation that would codify net neutrality, even though there have been numerous attempts over the past 15 years to reach a legislative compromise.

“Four years ago the pandemic changed life as we know it. We were told to stay home, hunker down, and live online, said FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, who headed the push to reinstate the rules. “So much of work, school, and healthcare migrated to the internet. If we wanted to engage with the world, we needed to do it all through a broadband connection,” she said at the hearing.

“It became clear that no matter who you are or where you live, you need broadband to have a fair shot at digital age success. It went from nice-to-have to need-to-have for everyone, everywhere. Broadband is now an essential service. Essential services—the ones we count on in every aspect of modern life—have some basic oversight.”

https://deadline.com/2024/04/net-neutrality-approved-fcc-vote-1235893572/