Miscellaneous News

MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) — Federal accident investigators are headed to a desert crash site where a winged spaceship designed to give wealthy tourists a high-altitude view of Earth broke up during a test flight, killing one pilot and badly injuring another.

Also going to the area about 120 miles north of downtown Los Angeles was British billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, whose SpaceShipTwo blew apart after being released from a carrier aircraft Friday. It was the second fiery setback for commercial space travel in less than a week.

Branson, said it was "among the most difficult trips I have ever had to make" but that he wants to be "with the dedicated and hardworking people who are now in shock at this devastating loss."

"Space is hard — but worth it," Branson wrote. "We will persevere and move forward together."

Branson has been the front-runner in the fledgling race to give large numbers of paying civilians a suborbital ride that would let them experience weightlessness at the edge of space.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a "go team" Saturday to the crash area about 20 miles from the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the flight originated.

One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

The accident occurred just as it seemed commercial space flights were near, after a period of development that lasted far longer than hundreds of prospective passengers had expected.

Branson once envisioned operating flights by 2007. Last month, he talked about the first flight being next spring with his son.

"It's a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space any time soon," said John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University.

Friday's flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rockets fire after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mothership or functioned as a glider after release.

At 60 feet long, SpaceShipTwo featured two large windows for each of up to six passengers, one on the side and one overhead.

The accident's cause was not immediately known, nor was the altitude at which the blast occurred. The first rocket-powered test flight peaked at about 10 miles above Earth. Commercial flights would go 62 miles or higher.

The problem happened about 50 minutes after takeoff and within minutes of the spaceship's release from its mothership, said Stuart Witt, CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Despite the disaster, Las Vegas resident Baxter said he was confident that the flight will happen one day.

"It's very sad for the test pilots, but I'm ready to go into space with Richard Branson," he said.

Friday's accident was the second this week involving private space flight. On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff in Virginia.

SpaceShipTwo is based on aerospace design maverick Burt Rutan's award-winning SpaceShipOne prototype, which became the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space in 2004.

"It's an enormously sad day for a company," Burt Rutan told The Associated Press in a phone interview from his home in Idaho, where he lives since retiring.

Friday's death was not the first associated with the program. Three people even died during a blast at the Mojave Air and Space Port in 2007 during testing work on a rocket motor of SpaceShipTwo.

Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers David Koenig in Dallas, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Seth Borenstein in Washington, and John Antczak, Christopher Weber, Tami Abdollah and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles also contributed to this report.

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An Ottawa hospital is challenging the legality of gene patents that hamper the ability of doctors to freely screen for potentially deadly genetic diseases without fear of being sued for patent violations.

On Monday, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) started a legal process in Federal Court that could decide if human genes can be patented in Canada.

"The core position really is that no one should be able to patent human DNA," said Alex Munter, president and CEO of the Ottawa-based CHEO. "It would be like patenting water or air."

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"It’s about whether Canadian hospitals can provide genetic testing to Canadian patients and really give them the top quality of care," said Richard Gold, a lawyer and intellectual property expert at McGill University in Montreal, who is advising the hospital pro bono.

hi-dna-model-852-cp-is
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that naturally-occurring human genes can’t be patented but there's been no similar gene patent case in Canada.

Currently, some genetic tests can’t be done in Canada because U.S. companies hold patents on the tests and the genes and have threatened legal action if the patents are violated by doing the tests in Canada, rather than the U.S.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that naturally occurring human genes can’t be patented and threw out patents held by Myriad Genetics Inc. to look for mutations on the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes associated with much greater risks of breast and ovarian cancer, including a mutation that actor Angelina Jolie revealed she inherited.

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CHEO’s case centres on patents for genes associated with long QT syndrome, an inherited heart rhythm disorder that typically presents for the first time as a fainting spell or seizure during exercise or tragically in sudden death, said Gail Graham, head of medicine genetics at the Ottawa hospital.

"Genetic technology is just exploding. It's increasingly embedding itself at the heart of medicine," Graham said in an interview.

"Genes are not inventions. They belong to all of us," she added during a news conference.

Long QT syndrome is treatable, but it often results in sudden death of a young person. With genetic screening, doctors aim to treat it before tragedy strikes.

The hospital is not allowed to screen for genes associated with long QT syndrome because a U.S. company has patented the test and the genes.

"One of the licensees that's holding these patents wrote a letter to Ontario and said, ‘By the way, we have a patent here: stay away," said Gold. "So Ontario did stay away. And so we have a very concrete example of this patent holder trying to hold up Ontario labs and hospitals from being able to deliver this test."

Beyond the specific example of long QT syndrome, CHEO hopes the Canadian legal case will also clear the way to allow more advanced genetic testing that can screen thousands of genes linked to human genetic conditions.

For example, if a newborn in the neonatal intensive care is thought to have a genetic condition that can’t be identified conventionally, it’s now possible to take a blood sample from the baby and read through about 5,000 genes that are associated with genetic diseases.

"If we were to incidentally discover that that child would have long QT syndrome, that wasn't what we were looking for, but we found that it was there, we would be prevented from learning that information and prevented from transmitting it to the patient and the family because of the existing patents," Graham said.

"What we are trying to achieve from a broader perspective is a court ruling that says, ‘No, these particular patents are invalid or would not be infringed by the type of testing we would like to do.’"

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"Everything is all set for Nov. 9," says a senior Catalan regional government official as the region prepares to defy both the central government and the country's highest court and proceed with a much-disputed weekend vote on whether to secede from Spain. And while the Spanish government has not specified what legal consequences Catalan leaders, poll workers or voters might face Sunday, when they go to vote, The LA Times reports that Madrid has reportedly readied thousands of Civil Guard police officers to travel to Catalonia this weekend if needed.
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Saudi oil minister says falling oil price is 'purely business'

Don't be fooled by falling crude prices says Saudi Arabia's oil minister, it's all part of the plan

Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali Naimi has finally broken his silence on falling oil prices declaring it’s "purely business" and that recent declines are not a scheme engineered by the kingdom to either bankrupt Russia, or shut down the US shale industry.

Speaking to Reuters in Mexico, Mr Naimi said: “Saudi oil policy has been constant for the last few decades and it has not changed today.” He added that: “We do not seek to politicise oil...for us, it’s a question of supply and demand, it’s purely business.”

However, his remarks did little to settle the market with Brent crude falling almost 1pc lower at just under $81 per barrel.
The benchmark has lost 28pc since achieving a year-long high in June of $115 per barrel amid concerns that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) was keeping its pumps open in response to losing market share in the US to shale oil frackers.

"We want stable oil markets and steady prices, because this is good for producers, consumers and investors," said Mr Naimi. "It is therefore vital that Opec and non-Opec nations, producers and consumers, continue their dialogue."
Opec, which pumps about a third of the world's oil, is due to meet on November 27 to decide on production quotas heading into the deepest months of winter in the Northern hemisphere when demand usually rises.

Mr Naimi is the most influential voice in the oil industry due to Saudi Arabia vast resources and excess production capacity. The kingdom, which is the world's largest exporter, can open its spigots and pump 12.5m barrels per day (bpd) if required, making it the world's swing producer.

"Talk of a price war is a sign of misunderstanding," Mr Naimi told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Acapulco.
Las week Opec said that the current dip in prices could be short-lived. In its annual World Oil Outlook, the group said that oil prices will average $177 per barrel by 2040 and the world will need to find an additional 21m bpd of crude over the next 25 years to meet demand from rising global populations and rapid economic growth in Asia.

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US sailors ambushed by nationalists in Istanbul (VIDEO)
Published time: November 12, 2014 21:45
[video]http://rt.com/usa/204963-american-sailors-attacked-turkey/[/video]

Three American sailors in civilian clothes were attacked on camera Wednesday in Istanbul by a Turkish nationalist youth group that threw balloons of red paint and barked slogans such as “Yankee go home!”

Around 20 members of the Turkish Youth Union, or Türkiye Gençlik Birliği, were captured on film participating in the ambush, which targeted a trio of sailors who had just disembarked from the USS Ross.

The sailors safely returned to the missile cruiser after the attack, but not before the demonstrators hurled insults and attempted to douse the Americans in paint meant to symbolize blood while calling the victims “murderers.”

We want you to get lost and we are using our right to protest” and “Down with US Imperialism,” the group was heard saying. Other members of the youth movement tried to force sacks on the heads of the Americans in an apparent tip of the hat to a 2003 incident in which US forces arrested Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq and subjected them to similar treatment.

In a statement published in Turkish and translated by the New York Times, the union said Wednesday that the protest was staged in dedication “to our martyrs and to the millions of innocent people slaughtered by the imperialism in the Middle East."

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solarz said:

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It's mind-boggling that the Patent system, originally intended to encourage inventions, has been twisted into a tool for making money through litigation, all the while hindering the advancement of technology. Worse, in this case, it is putting countless lives at risk for the sake of profit.

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