The pride of the European aviation industry, a giant composed of four million components from thirty different countries, is coming to an end. The hangar of the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has left the last model of the A380, the largest airliner in the world. Another will not be produced by Airbus, the reason being the low demand of airlines.
While the first jumbo, produced by 1,500 companies, was removed by Singapore Airlines in 2007, the last A380 will expand Emirates’ fleet. All that remains of the machine is to paint and install motors on it. Emirates is the largest operator of the A380, currently using 115.
Production is thus terminated fifteen years after its start. The development of a unique machine for up to 853 passengers, while Airbus cost an astronomical $ 25 billion.
“It is a painful decision. We have invested so much effort, resources and sweat in the plane, ”said Airbus boss Tom Enders last February. The manufacturer incorrectly estimated the market requirements. By 2019, it had delivered 234 A380s, less than half of the estimated six hundred.
“It turns out that the A380 and the superjumba concept have not prevailed and will be replaced by much more efficient and smaller types of aircraft,” Petr Kováč, an aerospace industry expert from EY, commented for E15 earlier.
The fate of the A380 was decided by the weak demand of carriers even before the coronavirus crisis, but the retreat of these large aircraft was accelerated by the pandemic, he says.
“Air France-KLM is a good example. The airline is definitively decommissioning the A380. Although this will mean an accounting write-off of about five hundred million euros, the saved lease payments will currently strengthen the airline’s key liquidity, “he added.
Take a look at the photos of the E15 Diary from the Emirates airline training center:
Casablanca – The bond loan on the international financial market (MFI) of 1 billion euros (Md €), issued Thursday by Morocco, is “considered” and “reasonable”, allowing both to rebalance the budget of the ‘State at an acceptable level and support foreign currency reserves, stressed economic analyst Mehdi El Fakir.
This borrowing is at a “resilient” level, which reflects the confidence Morocco enjoys internationally in relation to its solvency, Mr. El Fakir noted in a statement to MAP.
The analyst qualifies the rates of return on this loan as “exemplary” in the sense that they are not impacted by a risk premium which could possibly reflect a doubt about Morocco’s solvency.
And to continue that the added value of this program lies in its maintenance of “favorable” conditions so that the State can “play its role of supporting growth”, but “especially to maintain the ingredients of a revival”, in particular the confidence that investors have in the strength of the national economy.
“This is an arbitration and not a deliberate choice, because the conditions were normal and at a resilient level, having regard to the imperatives and the singular character of the context”, explained Mr. El Fakir.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Administration Reform announced that Morocco has successfully issued a bond on the international financial market of 1 billion euros (€ bn) in two installments of 500 million euros (M €) each.
The first tranche with a maturity of 5½ years has a price of 99.374% and a rate of return of 1.495%, i.e. a coupon of 1.375%, while the second tranche with a maturity of 10 years has a price of 98.434% and a rate of return of 2.176%, or a coupon of 2%.
MILANO – 21 shots to 10, 66.6% of ball possession, 90% of passes versus 76%, 21 crosses to 6, 5 corners to 1, 51 duels to 42, 651 passes to 326. You look at the numbers and basically you think that you can’t find yourself under 2-3 at home in the 87th minute of the first season. But football is not mathematics, it is not statistics and tables. Inter-Fiorentina, the Nerazzurri’s first official match, was about to turn into a shocking start, with a home defeat. But more than numbers, in fact, can character, desire, determination, constancy in pursuing the goal.
The final 4-3 is not the result of chance, and has matured with plays built in the final with great clarity despite it being the first match of the season. Just look at the trajectories and constructions of the last two networks: geometric, studied, thought out, classy. Belle. Conte’s Inter starts with three points and does so despite a clever and shrewd Fiorentina: having exploited Franck Ribery’s class so wisely allowed Iachini to travel on consolidated tracks, that is to attract the opposing defense on the French, capable of sucking several opponents on himself and then overturning the action with painful blows, freeing the fast Kouamé and Chiesa into space. In addition to the always precious, punctual and pungent insertions of Castrovilli.
Inter have had to do in blocking these situations, despite having had the ball for most of the match, with a construction from the bottom that had in Sticks the pivotal man, with 101 passes, 96 of which successful. Kolarov and D’Ambrosio participated with great presence in all the Nerazzurri’s actions and all three central players finished on the podium of the Nerazzurri players for kilometers covered: 11.5 D’Ambrosio, 11.3 Kolarov, 10.8 Bastoni. The prize came in the final with the header of D’Ambrosio, author of a capital test: 19 total duels and 7 possessions earned.
The scoreboard of the opportunities created highlights the participation of many: 3 chances each invented by Young, Brozovic and Barella, fundamental with the restart and assists of the first goal. Eriksen activated Lautaro on the second goal, Hakimi churned out the 3-3 assist, Sanchez illuminating the 4-3 but also to activate Hakimi in the equalizer.
Choral and group, Inter found answers from everyone, even the newcomers and rookies contributed to the success. However, the impact of Lautaro Martinez on the match should be exalted: third consecutive goal from outside the area, protagonist also in the second goal, fourth Nerazzurri for km traveled, a raging bull.
Researchers have established the “apparent presence” in the cloud layers of Venus of a gas which on Earth is associated with life, a discovery described by the NASA chief as “the most important event” in the search for life extraterrestrial.
The discovery, led by an astronomer at Cardiff University in the UK, was published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
This is the first time that this compound has been discovered in one of the four terrestrial planets of our solar system, “the Earth apart,” Jane S. Greaves, professor of astronomy and main author of the article.
Phosphine was detected by observing the Venusian atmosphere using two radio telescopes. It “could come from unknown processes of photochemistry or geochemistry, or, by analogy with the biological production of phosphine on Earth, thanks to the presence of life”, explains the study.
This compound is found in the gas giant planets of the solar system, such as Saturn, but it is not of biological origin, that is to say of the living. The traces of phosphine present in the Earth’s atmosphere, on the other hand, come exclusively from human or microbial activity.
“Of life on Venus? The discovery of phosphine, a by-product of anaerobic biology, is the most important event to date in the search for life outside the Earth”, said Jim Bridenstine, administrator of The NASA.
“It’s time to prioritize Venus,” he said, as past life research missions focus today on Mars, beset by American and other probes and robots.
For Professor Alan Duffy, an astronomer at Swinburne University in Australia, the discovery is “one of the most exciting signs I have ever seen of the possible presence of life outside of Earth.”
The presence of phosphine, a highly toxic compound, does not mismatch in the hellish atmosphere of the second planet closest to the sun. Also known as the Shepherd’s Star, its atmosphere of carbon dioxide, at 97%, bathes in a surface temperature of around 470 ° C with a pressure more than 90 times greater than ours.
But it is in the thick layer of hyper acidic clouds, covering the planet up to around 60 km of altitude, that the team of Jane Greaves supposes that the molecules of phosphine can be found.
“There the clouds are + temperate + around 30 degrees Celsius”, according to the study, which does not exclude that the gas forms at a lower and warmer altitude before rising.
“Venusian clouds”
But where does it come from? Prof. Greaves “hopes to have taken into account all the processes likely to explain its presence in the atmosphere of Venus”. Unless you identify a new one, there remains the hypothesis of a form of life.
If so, “we think (this life form) should be small, to float freely,” says the scientist, whose study “insists that the detection of phosphine is not a robust proof of life, only of an abnormal and unexplained chemistry “.
Phosphine is made up of one atom of phosphorus and three of hydrogen. Phosphorus is one of the six chemical elements of living things, but “even if a planet contained an abundance of phosphorus, it might lack another condition necessary for life, such as other elements, or its environment might be too hot, or too dry, ”warns Jane Greaves.
A priori, the atmosphere of Venus, “extremely dehydrating and hyper acidic”, is not conducive to life. But maybe its cloud layer could be.
NASA also discovered a decade ago microbial life in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.
This is why Pr. Greaves and her colleagues are calling for a more in-depth observation of the phenomenon. Ideally by freeing itself from the “filter” of the Earth’s atmosphere, thanks to a space telescope. And why not with a new visit, by probe.
The renewed interest in this long neglected planet is general: two of the four missions competing for the next exploration program of the NASA solar system concern Venus, recalled Thomas Zurbuchen, scientific director of the agency. The selection will take place next year.
No more tickets to the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. And no more visitors. To access the museum, a card will be used which will make those who enter a member. This was announced by director James Bradburne.
The transformation
Starting from Tuesday 15 September instead of the usual ticket there will be a kind of subscription – free until 31 December – which will allow you to visit the galleries but also to have access to the digital content of Brera Plus. In this way, one of the dreams of the critic comes true recently passed away Philippe Daverio who had repeatedly spoken of a need to introduce slower and more contemplative ways of using museums.
The goal of this change? As the director of the museum explained, it is a “transformation of the concept of the museum and an opportunity to bring it closer to its community. Visitors have no voice, but members do. Freedom is participation”.
From January, when the pass is no longer free, you will enter at the same price as the old ticket, Bradburne guaranteed. The novelty lies in the fact that instead of entering only once, you can do it as many as you want and you can also view the online contents, including events and initiatives.
“Mass tourism – explained the director – is no longer sustainable and reliable, as we had already seen with the Guggenheim in New York after 11 September”. The idea is therefore to focus on visitors who are involved and committed to the life of the museum who, due to the coronavirus emergency, as reported by Bradburne, have lost about 3 million euros on the budget.
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“We are not the only museum in this situation – explained the director – and it is not clear how the government will manage all this, we are sailing under the stars of uncertainty. It is the impact of the terrible year we have experienced”.
Tens of millions of inhabitants of African cities are threatened by a species of malaria vector mosquito native to Asia and particularly adapted to the urban environment, warns a study published Monday, as malaria in Africa is concentrated today in rural areas.
Malaria is a disease triggered by a parasite (Plasmodium falciparum or vivax) transmitted mainly by around forty species of mosquitoes. About 400,000 people died in 2018, mostly children, especially in Africa.
On this continent, one of the main mosquitoes is Anopheles gambiae, nicknamed the most dangerous animal on Earth, but it does not like polluted puddles in cities and has not learned to lay its larvae in urban clean water reservoirs.
In her study published by the American scientific journal Pnas, medical entomologist Marianne Sinka, a researcher at the University of Oxford, maps the expansion of another species, the Anopheles stephensi, native to Asia, and which, she has learned to exploit the water reservoirs of cities, where she slips through the smallest hole to deposit her larvae (especially those made of cement and bricks).
“It is the only species to have succeeded in penetrating central urban areas,” the scientist told AFP.
Stephensi caused the first outbreak in Djibouti in 2012, a city where malaria hardly existed, and has since been observed in Ethiopia, Sudan and elsewhere.
Marianne Sinka used a model to predict the places in Africa where the environment was most suitable for the introduction of this imported mosquito: places with high density, where it is hot, and of course with sufficient rainfall.
The study concludes that 44 cities are “highly adapted” to the insect, and that 126 million Africans who are spared today are at risk, mainly in the equatorial region.
“The 40% of people who live in urban areas could suddenly be vulnerable and infected with malaria, it would be very serious”, warns the researcher.
How to protect yourself from it? Unlike African mosquitoes, which like to bite humans when it is cooler so at night, bed nets would be less effective, she says, because stephensi likes to bite in the evening, when it is still hot. Better to install mosquito nets on the windows, soak the walls with insecticides, and cover the body.
But the most essential measure is to target the larvae and thus remove any stagnant water, as well as to close any water reservoir tightly. This is what worked in India, recalls Ms. Sinka.
Almost 50 years after exploding the Watergate scandal, investigative journalist Bob Woodward continues to win the Unes and shake the White House, whose most secret doors he is having opened.
American journalist Bob Woodward pictured on June 13, 2012 in Washington
Last coup: in his book “Rage”, to be published on September 15, the 77-year-old writer-reporter reveals that Donald Trump told him in February that he was aware of the seriousness of the new coronavirus.
“I always wanted to minimize” the danger, also confessed to him in March the Republican president, much criticized for his management of the pandemic which has killed more than 190,000 people in the United States.
As in 1974, when he brought down President Richard Nixon thanks to a high-ranking FBI source nicknamed “Deep Throat”, Bob Woodward succeeded in gaining the confidence of his interlocutor.
From December to July, he interviewed the president on almost 20 occasions, recording with his endorsement their nine hours of exchanges. Then, meticulously, he met his entourage, consulted the meeting notes, retrieved official documents.
This is how a young reporter for the Washington Post, he had investigated with his colleague Carl Bernstein into the robbery of a Democratic Party office in the Watergate building, and revealed the dirty tricks of the president’s re-election campaign. Nixon.
The two men made a book from it, “The President’s Men”, whose film adaptation in 1976 with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman earned them notoriety far beyond the American borders.
“Whatever”
In reality, Bob Woodward, by his own admission, has few similarities to the energetic Redford. He speaks quietly, often wears a shapeless jacket and tie, and calls himself “boring.”
With the regularity of a metronome, every two years he publishes a work that reveals the wings of American power to which he has unparalleled access.
His highly factual style pen, sometimes criticized for his attention to secondary details, has dissected the workings of the Supreme Court, the CIA or the Central Bank. But it is to relate the mandates of presidents that it is the most verbose.
The last tenants of the White House have all received one (George Bush), two (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) and even four (George W. Bush) chronicles of their presidency. Before “Rage”, Donald Trump was portrayed in “Fear”, published in 2018, as a paranoid and uneducated leader.
“It’s rubbish,” thundered the impetuous president, who at the time had not been questioned by the journalist.
Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the president’s close allies, admitted that he then advised Donald Trump to speak to Bob Woodward, as George W. Bush had done on several occasions during his tenure.
“I told him, he’s a recognized presidential author, it’ll give you an opportunity to give your side of history, and the president has agreed,” he told Daily Beast.
“A tragedy”
By accepting, Donald Trump may not have measured the great strength of his interlocutor: “his ability to make responsible adults pour themselves out”, according to former CIA boss Robert Gates who, in 2014, had estimated that the journalist would have made a very good spy.
The former reality TV presenter no doubt felt as early as August that he had opened up too much. “Bob Woodward’s book will be BIDON as usual,” he tweeted preemptively.
On Thursday he counterattacked: “Bob Woodward had my statements for months, if he thought they were so bad and dangerous why didn’t he immediately make them known to save lives?”
Before him, several voices were raised, especially on the internet, to reproach the journalist for having put the promotion of his book before the health of Americans.
The person, faithful to his reputation for rigor, defended himself by explaining that he wanted to check what the president knew exactly and on what date, before publishing.
He who has always prided himself on avoiding making judgments, to concentrate on the narration of the facts, however, made a departure from this rule. The president’s freedoms with the truth are “a tragedy,” he said in an interview to appear on CBS on Sunday.
Several people have been victims of a counterfeit money scam in recent days in the Charleroi region. Complaints have been filed but it remains to be seen whether it is the wrongdoing of the same person. In any case, the description of the individual made by the victims leads to a teenager.
Getting handed a fake ticket is always a very unpleasant experience. And for several days, several counterfeit 20 euro bills have been circulating in Charleroi.
The headaches, confusion and delusions experienced by some Covid-19 patients could be the result of a direct invasion of the brain by the coronavirus, according to a study published Wednesday.
Research is still preliminary but provides clues to support what was only a largely unproven theory.
According to the study, led by Yale University immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, the virus is able to duplicate itself inside the brain, and its presence deprives neighboring brain cells of oxygen. The frequency of this situation is not yet clear.
S. Andrew Josephson, head of the department of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, praised the techniques used in the study, saying that “understanding whether or not there is direct viral involvement in the brain is extremely important. important”.
He added, however, that he would remain cautious until the research was peer reviewed.
It wouldn’t be entirely shocking if Sars-CoV-2 was able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, a structure that surrounds blood vessels in the brain and tries to block foreign substances.
But doctors until now believed that the neurological consequences seen in about half of hospitalized Covid patients could be the result of an abnormal immune response – “the cytokine storm” – causing inflammation of the brain, rather than a invasion of the brain by the virus.
Professor Iwasaki and her colleagues decided to approach the issue in three ways: by infecting lab-created mini-brains (brain organoids), by infecting mice and by examining the brains of patients who have died from Covid-19.
In brain organoids, the team found that the virus was able to infect neurons and then “hack” into the neuron cell’s machinery to duplicate itself.
Infected cells caused surrounding cells to die by depriving them of oxygen.
One of the main arguments against the theory of direct brain invasion was that the brain does not have high levels of a protein called ACE2, to which the coronavirus clings, and which is found in abundance in d other organs such as the lungs.
But the team found that the organoids had enough ACE2 to facilitate the entry of the virus, and the proteins were also present in the brains of deceased patients.
The team also looked at two groups of mice: one was genetically engineered to have ACE2 receptors only in the lungs, the other only in the brain.
Mice infected with the lungs had lesions in this organ; the infected animals in the brain quickly lost weight and died quickly, a potential sign of increased lethality when the virus enters the brain.
The brains of three patients who died of severe complications from Covid-19 also showed traces of the virus, to varying degrees.
Militant, submerged in pain, in love with the challenge of conventions … Women and the fight for feminism are at the heart of many films competing for the Golden Lion, which will be awarded on Saturday in Venice (Italy).
(Left to right) Italian director Susanna Nicchiarelli and British actors Romola Garai
and Patrick Kennedy during the presentation of the film “Miss Marx” at the Venice Film Festival (Italy), September 5, 2020
The festival, criticized in recent years for its lack of parity, seems to have changed gear for its 77th edition, with eight directors in official competition out of a total of 18 filmmakers.
More broadly, the debate on the place of women, central since the #MeToo wave, continues to agitate the world of cinema in recent years. At the Mostra, strong and outstanding heroines have been omnipresent since the opening of the competition on September 3.
By the grace of the 7th art, Eleanor Marx, daughter of the famous theorist of communism Karl Marx, comes out of the shadows of history with a biopic, “Miss Marx”, in competition. This film by the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli is a hymn to feminism mixing contemporary music and images from the 19th century and balancing, like her heroine, between reason and feelings.
The youngest child of Karl Marx was one of the first feminist activists to combine, at the end of the 19th century, class struggle and fight for gender equality.
Born in London in 1855, cultured and brilliant, she believed in the liberating power of culture and art. She committed suicide at 43, against a backdrop of romantic setbacks.
“Telling Eleanor’s life is talking about themes so modern that they are still revolutionary today”, according to the director, for whom this story highlights the “difficulties and contradictions” of the emancipation of women.
Two roles for Vanessa Kirby
Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic at the presentation of her film “Quo Vadis, Aida?” at the Venice Film Festival (Italy), September 3, 2020
As for actresses, the British Vanessa Kirby, one of the stars of the series “The Crown”, is illustrated by her interpretation of the leading roles in two films.
She plays a woman in 19th century rural America, who must escape the jealous vigilance of her husband to live out his passion for her neighbor (Katherine Waterston), in “The World to Come”.
This film by Mona Fastvold, one of the rare American works present this year in Venice, puts the question of emancipation at the heart of its remarks: “It was not so long ago that women could not choose this what they did with their days and even less who they could love, “said Vanessa Kirby.
The actress hopes to carry a larger message: “Briefly, in their life (these women) were able to have a little bit of intimacy, a connection, which we all deserve in our lives”
The interpreter of Princess Margaret in The Crown is also in competition in “Pieces of a Woman”, directed by a man, the Hungarian Kornel Mundruczo, but co-written with his wife Kata Weber.
She plays there, alongside the American Shia LaBeouf, a mother who loses her child at birth. The home birth scene, shot in sequence over almost 40 minutes, is an actress performance.
The film questions the emancipation of a mother, in front of her husband, her family and the rest of society, after such a trauma. Trying to stay true to the pain of women in these situations was “very scary” on the set, Vanessa Kirby said.
But one of the “strongest” female figures projected on the Lido screens is arguably the Bosnian Jasna Djuric, who plays the heartbreaking role of a mother desperately trying to save her family from the Srebrenica massacre (more of 8,000 deaths in July 1995), in “Quo Vadis, Aida?”, by Jasmila Zbanic.
War is a “men’s game”, on which the director, also Bosnian, explains having wanted to cast a “feminist” look.
A female point of view also claimed, but in a completely different genre, by the French filmmaker Nicole Garcia, who films in “Lovers” the torments of a young woman (Stacy Martin) struggling with a love triangle.
Her heroine, unlike many others in this Mostra, struggles to have control over her destiny and seems to be subject to men’s decisions. “I’ve always made films where female characters are (…) afraid of men, of being humiliated by men, of being constrained by them,” she remarks.
