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Σάββατο 17 Ιανουαρίου 2015

Raw: Peshmerga Forces Depart for Kobani

Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 15 Ιαν 2015
A third batch of Peshmerga soldiers departed from Irbil in Iraq on Thursday bound for Kobani in Syria to fight alongside Syrian Kurds against the Islamic State group. (Jan. 15)


Revolution in Burkina Faso: The Fall of Compaoré

Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 15 Ιαν 2015
In late October, the landlocked African nation of Burkina Faso saw the end of its president’s 27-year-long reign. A popular revolution terminated Blaise Compaoré’s term after he tried to change the constitution so that he could run for a fifth consecutive term.

Cornered by an angry mob in his presidential palace, "Beau Blaise" fled the country along with his entourage as protesters torched the National Assembly and other symbols of the old regime.

Now in exile, Compaoré is rumored to be living in luxury on the Ivory Coast. In Burkina Faso, a new transitional government has emerged, led by President Michel Kafando and his prime minister, Lieutenant-Colonel Yacouba Isaac Zida.

VICE News went to the streets of Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou in the midst of the revolution to document the final hours of Compaoré’s reign.


Παρασκευή 16 Ιανουαρίου 2015

New Horizons

Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 16 Ιαν 2015
NASA’s New Horizons is the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt of icy, rocky mini-worlds on the solar system’s outer frontier. This animation follows the New Horizons spacecraft as leaves Earth after its the January 2006 launch, through a gravity-assist flyby of Jupiter in February 2007, to the encounter with Pluto and its moons in summer 2015.


Mercedes Self Driving Truck Driving Itself Mercedes Future Truck 2025 Co...

The spectacular Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 study will be providing a visually exciting and technically feasible take on the long-distance Mercedes Self Driving Truck of tomorrow at the 2014 International Commercial Vehicle show (IAA). In ten years' time, Self Driving Truck s could be driving autonomously on motorways. Transport efficiency will increase, traffic will be safer for all road users, and fuel consumption and CO2 emissions will be further reduced. To do this Mercedes Self Driving Truck connects existing assistance systems with enhanced sensors to the "Highway Pilot" system. Mercedes Self Driving Truck / Autonomous driving is already possible at realistic speeds and in realistic motorway traffic situations. The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 provides a glimpse of the future shape of trucks.
The Mercedes Self Driving Truck technology of tomorrow is already reality at Daimler Trucks. The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 constitutes a revolution in efficiency, safety and networking, a revolution for road traffic and its infrastructure, for professional driving and for the road transport sector. This is not a new truck, but rather the key element in the interconnected transport system of the future. Mercedes Self Driving Truck is being developed as part of the "Shaping Future Transportation" initiative by Daimler Trucks to conserve resources and reduce emissions of all kinds. Other aims for Mercedes Self Driving Truck are to ensure the highest possible level of traffic safety and to boost networking with intelligent data management considerably for tailor-made vehicle and service solutions.
The prototype demonstrated the exciting capabilities of the Future Truck 2025 back in the summer at speeds of up to 80 km/h in realistic traffic situations on a section of the A14 motorway in Magdeburg, Germany. Now the thrilling exterior and interior of that same vehicle are being revealed. The tractor unit combined with an aerodynamically optimised trailer celebrates its world premiere as a study at the International Commercial Vehicles show (IAA).
The technology behind this exciting façade is no less impressive. The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 is not, for instance, part of a platoon. It does not need to be daisy-chained to other vehicles either. Radar sensors and camera technology enable the Future Truck to drive autonomously, independently of other vehicles or central control stations. Its technical features are thus crucial in giving the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 its outstanding capabilities as an autonomous vehicle. For Mercedes-Benz the culmination of this is the highly intelligent "Highway Pilot" system, which resembles the autopilot on an aircraft.
A radar sensor in the lower area of the front end scans the road ahead at long and short range. The front radar sensor has a range of 250 m and scans an 18-degree segment. The short-range sensor has a range of 70 m and scans a 130-degree segment. The radar sensor is the basis for the proximity control and emergency braking safety systems already available today.
A stereo camera installed above the instrument support behind the windscreen keeps the area ahead of the vehicle in view. This is currently the location of a mono-camera if optional Lane Keeping Assist is ordered. The range of the stereo camera is 100 m, and it scans an area of 45 degrees horizontally and 27 degrees vertically.
The stereo camera of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 identifies single- or two-lane roads, pedestrians, moving and stationary objects, all objects within the monitored area and also the road surface. The camera recognises everything that contrasts with the background, and is therefore also able to measure clearances precisely. The front stereo camera also registers the information on traffic signs.
In addition to object and distance recognition, the stereo camera recognises lane markings as a major function for autonomous lane guidance.
The road surface to the left and right of the truck is monitored by radar sensors installed in the sides. They are located on the left and right, ahead of the tractor unit's rear axle. The sensors have a range of 60 m and cover an angle of 170 degrees in the longitudinal direction.
For Mercedes-Benz, the planned introduction of Blind Spot Assist over the next few years is a major step paving the way for the Future Mercedes Self Driving Truck and underlines Mercedes-Benz's role in pioneering maximum road safety.




Flash Flood Suddenly Appears In Desert

Israel’s Zin river comes alive in this dramatic natural recording! Onlookers gathered to watch as the water gushed rapidly across the beautiful landscape and even appears to creep right up to the camera!



Comet Lovejoy Appears Over Chinese Mountain | Time-lapse | Video

EXCLUSIVE: How the FBI Foiled a 2012 Plot to Bomb the US Capitol

EXCLUSIVE: How the FBI Foiled a 2012 Plot to Bomb the US Capitol

PHOTO: ABC News obtained exclusive surveillance video from 2012 showing would-be terrorist, Amine El-Khalifi, plotting to attack US government sites.

AUTO START: ON OFF
The arrest Wednesday of an Ohio man who allegedly plotted an all-out assault on the U.S. Capitol was not the first time the FBI nabbed someone for such a plot through an undercover operation – and surveillance video, exclusively obtained by ABC News from that earlier case, shows just how far homegrown radicals are willing to go.
“Let’s do it man, I don’t want to keep thinking about it too much,” 29-year-old Amine El-Khalifi said inside a hotel room in February 2012, just days before he planned to launch his attack with a suicide vest strapped to his chest and a MAC-10 automatic gun in one hand. “Let’s do it.”
That commitment to his cause came just minutes after Khalifi tried to familiarize himself with the submachine gun that a man he thought was an associate of al Qaeda had just handed him. In fact, the supposed al Qaeda operative was an undercover FBI agent.
“It’s a striking moment,” the current head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Assistant Director In Charge Andrew McCabe, told ABC News’ Pierre Thomas in an exclusive interview. "Theme that you have to take away from seeing a tape like this is the understanding that these folks are out there.”
McCabe said “recent developments around the world,” such as the deadly assault on a satirical magazine in Paris two weeks, further highlight the evolving threat from terrorists.
“It’s a significant problem,” he said. "There is a population of young folks, largely young men, who connect with that extremist message. They are inspired by it.”
PHOTO: ABC News obtained exclusive video of a 2012 undercover FBI operation to foil an attack on US government sites.
ABC News
PHOTO: ABC News obtained exclusive video of a 2012 undercover FBI operation to foil an attack on US government sites.
Before becoming enchanted with the radical messages of al Qaeda leaders posted online, Khalifi enjoyed “going to bars, drinking alcohol, using cocaine and ecstasy, and spending money on flashy clothing and accessories,” according to court filings in his case.
Weeks before he was to carry out his attack, Khalifi went with undercover FBI agents to a quarry in West Virginia, where they were to test a bomb they had supposedly built.
After the bomb goes off, Khalifi can be heard on surveillance video saying: “Brother, this is not strong enough.”
In his interview with ABC News, McCabe said the FBI currently has dozens of such undercover investigations underway.
“We don’t even consider the use of these sorts of undercover strategies until we are convinced that the [suspect] clearly intends to do what they said they intend to do,” McCabe said, adding that suspects are always “many, many opportunities to back away from their plans.”
“And time and time again, the subjects we’re most concerned about say very clearly they intend to go forward,” according to McCabe.
McCabe rebuffed any suggestion that the FBI “entrapped” Khalifi, a Moroccan citizen who was in the United States illegally.
“Just watch that tape,” McCabe said. “I think it’s clear from the way he expresses himself what he’s committed to do and the actions that he took to get there.”
Even Khalifi’s attorney acknowledged in court filings that his client wasn’t entrapped.
“However, he ... was enabled by the FBI, who, as part of its ‘sting,’ helped Mr. El-Khalifi with the means, method and motivation for the attack,” federal public defender Ken Troccoli wrote in a memo to the federal judge overseeing the case. “This included monetary incentives (paying his debts and promising ‘martyrdom payments’ to his parents), the provision of weapons and explosives with training on how to use them, logistical advice, and religious reinforcement by a cadre of (supposed) like-minded Islamists.”
In June 2012, Khalifi pleaded guilty to one count of trying to use of a weapon of mass destruction, admitting that over more than a year he hatched a plan to attack U.S. government sites, ultimately deciding to strike the U.S. Capitol.
In the surveillance video obtained by ABC News, Khalifi can be seen buying nails from a Home Depot outside Washington.
“I got thick ones, not thin ones. The one [that is] going to make damage,” he says in video from later that day.
In the video he also says of U.S. senators: “I want those people.”
ABC News was able to obtain only a small portion of the hours of surveillance video created during the investigation into Khalifi. ABC News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for all of the surveillance video, but that request was denied. An appeal is pending.
Troccoli, Khalifi’s defense attorney, declined to comment beyond what he said in court filings in 2012. In those filings, he said Khalifi “bears no ill-will against the American people.”
In fact, Trocolli wrote, Khalifi “is relieved that his attempted crime was foiled and that no one was actually injured.”
Khalifi is currently serving a 30-year sentence.
On Wednesday, the FBI arrested Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, Ohio, for allegedly plotting an ISIS-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol, where he hoped to set off a series of bombs aimed at lawmakers, whom he allegedly considered enemies. He has been charged with attempting to kill a U.S. government official.
The FBI first noticed Cornell several months ago after an informant notified the agency that Cornell was allegedly voicing support for violent “jihad” on Twitter accounts. The informant then helped the FBI build a case against Cornell.

Volcán de Colima Gran explosión del 11 de enero 2015 10:10am