The Mysterious Air Crash

And it was all over the news this morning, I’ve been receiving different texts from my friends about the plane crash but I didnt know the case is very different. I woke up and turned on a news channel and I was astounded to know that a massive passenger plane has collided Margalla hills surrounded by Islamabad. I had no idea at that time about the massive holocaust of humanity in the name of Plane crash. By the after-noon it was evidently declared that nobody survived the plane crash, Thus killing all 152 people on board.

I’ve been deeply analysing the plane crash as it was for the first time that a big jet with so many passengers on board has crashed into the area where planes are not allowed to go. Beside this, so many questions are still unanswered. I’ve been thinking why the plane was directed to move towards the Blue Area side of Islamabad, as that area is usually regarded as VIP area where no plane can fly. Plus it has all important buildings of Pakistan like Supreme Court, Parliament House, Prime Minister House and the President House. This is still an unsolved mystery for me that why the plane was sent to ‘No Go Area’. Please dont forget that Naval Headquarters and PAF complex is also located in that Area.

That was one aspect of my vision and analysis about the plane crash, however on the other side of coin, Air Pocket could be the other reason. May be a lot of us are unfamiliar with this term ‘Air Pocket’ which is also known as Air Turbulence. Air Turbulence is a phenomena in which an aeroplane can descend as low as 10,000 feet in the time period of few seconds. Air Turbulence is basically a stream of air in irregular motion that normally cannot be seen and often occurs unexpectedly. It can be created by a number of different conditions. The most common encounter is flying in the vicinity of thunderstorm. In fact, a flight through a patch of cloud will often jostle the airplane. Flying over mountainous area with a prevailing wind is another major cause of air turbulence. Other causes come from flying near to jet streams at high altitude, in a frontal system or where temperature changes in any air mass in the sky.

Two third of turbulence-related accidents occurs at or above 30,000 feet. Generally, flying through turbulence of the milder nature, if prolonged, can be fairly uncomfortable to the passengers. If such turbulence were detectable by the weather radar or from weather forecast, pilots would avoid them by deviating off track. There were number of air planes which experiences air crash because of Air Turbulence but they were rare in nature.

According to aviation consultancy Ascend. Examples include the crash of an Austral airlines McDonnell Douglas in Uruguay with the loss of 69 passengers and five crew in 1997. A Fokker aeroplane crashed shortly after taking off from Rotterdam airport in 1981, killing 13 passengers and four crew. One of the earliest cases involved a BOAC (later British Airways) Boeing 707 near Mount Fuji in Japan. The BOAC flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong flew into extreme turbulence and crashed in March 1966, killing 113 passengers and 11 crew. An investigation reported that the likely cause of the disaster was that “the aircraft suddenly encountered abnormally severe turbulence which imposed a gust load considerably in excess of the design limit.”

The mystery still remains unsolved and the questions are still there to answer but initial investigations has to under-go in order to fetch out the conclusion. I’ve extreme sympathy with the families of passengers who were on board. There’s nothing that can compensate human loss but yet when there is loss, it should be investigated so that no-one else in future face something like that.

Profiles of 100 million Facebook users leaked online

New York: A security researcher on Wednesday released a file containing the names, profile addresses and unique identification numbers of more than 100 million Facebook users.

The information was corralled via a public directory Facebook makes available that lists users who are sharing at least some of their profile information with everyone on the Internet. It was collected and uploaded by Ron Bowes, a security researcher with Skull Security.

Although the information in the file is freely available online through search engines and Facebook's own directory, the organized list of names and identification numbers in it could make it easier for others to compile users' e-mail addresses, location or other data they have made available. The 2.8-gigabyte BitTorrent file also includes the programming code that Mr. Bowes used to scan the directory list.

Facebook issued a statement via e-mail noting that the list of users' names is not a threat to those who are comfortable sharing publicly:

People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want. Our responsibility is to respect their wishes. In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher. This information already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook. No private data is available or has been compromised. Similar to the white pages of the phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook. If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications.

Facebook has said in the past that a large portion of its users change some of their privacy settings on the Web site. Some users choose not to change their privacy settings and happily share personal images and content with the whole Web. But some fail to change their settings due to a lack of understanding of the available options.

Mr. Bowes said in a blog post that he decided to compile the list of user information and share it onlineto show that there is "a scary privacy issue" at play with the way people share their information with the rest of the Web through Facebook. It was not clear what his motives were for publicly sharing the the list online.

In the past Mr. Bowes has also written about Facebook's privacy policy and the ease with which hackers can find personal information through the site.

Facebook users who want to keep their information off of the wider Internet should go into theFacebook privacy settings tab and change the "Sharing on Facebook" options to "Friends only." Those who want to keep their profiles from being found in search engines like Google should also click the "Edit your settings" link at lower left and change the setting for "Public Search."


Source: NDTV

Air Blue rules out technical problem in plane crash

ISLAMABAD: Chief Executive of Air Blue Airline Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said that the bodies of 102 passengers, killed in the Wednesday’s plane crash in Margalla Hills, have been handed over to their heirs, while samples for DNA tests of 62 individuals have been sent to the laboratory. Talking to media-persons here on Friday he said that the airline would pay insurance money to heirs of the plane crash victims, for which registration has begun. He asked the relatives of victims to get themselves registered with the airline through internet or report to the nearest Air Blue office. Abbasi said that search for the black box of the plane was underway. "At the time of the crash, the plane was flying at a height of 1000 feet. The black box has not yet been found because the wreckage spread far and wide", he said. He said that six personnel of Air Blue were also members of the investigation team tasked to find the causes of the incident, adding "We want to make public the details of the investigative report." Brushing aside the rumours that the pilot of the airliner was suffering from fatigue, he said the pilot had rested for 36 hours before the flight. He said Pervaiz Iqbal Chaudhry, the pilot of the ill-fated plane was a seasoned pilot, who had 25000 hours experience to hi credit. The chief executive said that the pilot was 61- year- old, while the standard at the international level is 65 years. Abbasi said that Flying Officer Mujttahid Chughtai was 34-year- old and he had served in Pakistan Air Force as a F-16 jetfighter pilot. He had 1700 hours experience including the 300 hours in the crashed plane. He did not agree that there was any technical problem that resulted in airliner's crash and added there was also no report of any terrorist act. Even, the Interior Minister Rehman A. Malik hadalready ruled out the possibility of any act of terrorism, he said. To a question he said that rules and laws of the Civil Aviation Authority were very strict and it was evident from the six years' record of Air Blue that it strictly followed those rules and never committed a violation. He claimed that the Air Blue was the first airline in Pakistan, which started issuing boarding cards to passengers after checking their ID Cards.

Mobiles have more germs than toilets

LONDON: Mobile phones are writhing bug factories that can harbour 18 times more bacteria than a flush handle in a men's toilet, a new study shows. With iPhone 4 fever about to hit Melbourne, a researcher who swabbed 30 mobiles found at least seven had unacceptably high levels of bacteria. The results point to potentially poor hygiene among millions of mobile phone users that could result in stomach upsets, or worse. "The levels of potentially harmful bacteria on one mobile were off the scale," said UK hygiene expert Jim Francis. "That phone needs sterilising." The microscopic nasties ranged from enterobacteria, a group of bacteria that includes bugs such as salmonella, to food poisoning bugs e.coli and staphylococcus aureus. Even if a phone owner is scrupulously clean, beating the bacteria may not be so simple. Handing your phone to others so they can view holiday snaps or marvel at a cool new iPhone app is an invitation for bugs to get on board. Researcher Ceri Stanaway said most phones in the study didn't have any bacteria that would make users sick straight away, but they were grubbier than they need be. "The bugs can end up on your hands, which is a breeding ground and be passed back to your phone," she said. "They can be transferred back and forth and eventually you could catch something nasty." Researchers said the study showed how easy it was to come into contact with bacteria. "People see toilet flushes as being something dirty to touch but they have less bacteria than phones," Ms Stanaway said.

Running may not always work to loose weight

LONDON: Running might not be the identical form of exercise, especially when you want to loose weight. Says Greg Brookes, a London-based personal trainer: "Lots of people start running to lose weight and it doesn't always work - and this is why." "Fat is one of our body's favourite sources of energy," says Brookes. "The more you run, the more your body prepares itself for your next run. You will actually start to hold on to more fat," a UK daily newspaper quoted him as saying. According to him, running is also bad for joints. "When you run, two-and-a-half times your bodyweight is transmitted through your joints." "If that force is repeated over and over, eventually your weakest joint will give out. Usually the ankles or the knees are the first to go," he adds. Contrary to popular belief that any exercise will speed up your metabolism, running can, says Brookes, do the opposite.

Madhuri upset by fake twitter accounts

MUMBAI: Bollywood once sought after actress Madhuri Dixit Nene wants to establish contact with her fans but unfortunately, she is not able to do so. She is finding difficulty to prove her real identity in the social networking site, ‘Twitter’. There are so many fake accounts in her name that fans are having a hard time to track the real Madhuri and chat with the ‘Dhak Dhak’ lady. As per report, Madhuri has joined the social networking site on May 30. Verification of the same is taking time and Madhuri is feeling frustrated. She contacted the head office to track the fake accounts and put the things in the proper order, “I am waiting for verification of Twitter because I don't want my fans to be confused.” The actress has submitted required documents for verification. She is very excited to join the site but at the same time extremely disappointed for the delay in verification, “Verification is taking long because I'm in USA & the confirmation from Twitter India is taking long. Honestly. I'll be happier when Twitter confirms it,” said Madhuri, who is currently residing in Denver with her family.

Pentagon unhappy over leaked military documents

PENTAGON: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says he has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, to assist in the probe into the leak and publication of classified military documents. Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen spoke about the issue at a press conference at the Pentagon on Thursday, several days after the Internet website WikiLeaks posted tens of thousands of documents about the war in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Gates told reporters that problems highlighted in the leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan have been publicly known for some time. But he did not downplay the possible damage caused by the release of what he called "a mountain of raw data and individual impressions" that is "devoid of context or analysis." "The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world," said Robert Gates. Gates said intelligence sources and methods as well as military tactics will become known as a result of the leak. Gates underscored that he believes the United States has a moral obligation to help Afghans whose security might have been jeopardized by the breach. "That is one of the worst aspects of this, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "Will people trust us? Will people whose lives are on the line trust us to keep their identities secret? Will other governments trust us to keep their documents and their intelligence secret?" Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen said he is appalled and outraged that the documents were leaked and published on the WikiLeaks website. He lashed out at WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange and anyone who provided that website with the classified information.

England 354 all out against Pakistan

NOTTINGHAM: England, after winning the toss, were bowled out for 354 on the second day of the first Test against Pakistan at Trent Bridge here on Friday.Mohammad Asif took five wickets for 77 runs as England lost their last six wickets for just 17 runs in 51 balls following a fifth-wicket stand of 219 between Eoin Morgan (130) and Paul Collingwood (82).This is the first of a four-Test series.