Swiss pioneering plane hosted by Morocco as construction begins on world’s largest thermo-solar power plant
Andre Borschberg climbs out of tiny cockpit after more than 17 hours at the controls of Solar Impulse (photo©2012 Solar Impulse / Jean Revillard)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – André Borschberg flew Solar Impulse for 17h 3min 59s Thursday 24 May, to land the experimental solar plane at Madrid’s Barajas airport. He flew from the Payerne aerodrome in Switzerland over the Massif Central towards the city of Toulouse in France, then over the Pyrenees at an altitude of 7,833 metres.
Borschberg called the flight “extraordinary”, noting that “it was incredible to fly alongside the barrier of clouds during most of the flight and not need to hesitate to fly above them. This confirms our confidence in the capacity of solar energy even further.”
His partner Bertrand Piccard will pilot the second leg of the flight, to Rabat in Morocco, after a three-day technical layover in Madrid. The Spanish stop was also a key part of planning for the plane to handle landings in major airports, crucial to planning Solar Impulse’s 2014 round-the-world flight using only solar power.
The team is being hosted in Morocco by the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), which is responsible for Morocco’s solar energy plan. The team says in a statement Friday:
“Solar Impulse’s presence in Morocco is meant to participate in Masen’s commencement of construction activities, in the Ouarzazate region, of the solar complex which will hold the world’s largest thermo-solar power plant. Of a capacity of 160 MW, the plant is part of Morocco’s energy plan whose goal is to build, by 2020, five solar parks with the capacity of 2000 megawatts, reducing CO2 emission of 3,7 million tons. Solar Impulse supports this pioneering project which is in line with its own message and its philosophy of renewable energies.”
Solar-powered plane makes first intercontinental flight, must pass over Pyrenees
Solar Impulse made its first international flight in November 2011, to Paris
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Solar Impulse, the elegant airplane powered only by solar cells, left Payerne shortly before 08:30 Thursday 24 May, and headed towards the Jura and into France.
Pilot André Borschberg expects to land this evening, after midnight, at Madrid Barajas Airport where the plane will have a three-day technical check before flying on to Rabat in Morocco, 28 May at the earliest, for its first intercontinental flight.
By 10:00 the plane was flying at 3,880 metres, at close to 100kph.
The flight can be followed live.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Four bodies were found and other people are known to have drowned, says the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva, after the Moroccan Royal Navy guard rescued 53 people from a boat that sank off the coast near Dar Kabdani.
The vessel was carrying more than 60 people and included several pregnant women and children under age 10. UNHCR staff identified two of the bodies, a Congolese woman and her daughter, both of whom were registered refugees.
The rescue was just one of several in the region last week, reports the UNHCR. “The Libyan coast guard has reported that up to four hundred people were rescued from boats off the Libyan coast in recent days. It now seems that migrants and refugees are once again attempting to use Libya as a transit route to Europe. In years gone past it was rare to see boats attempting to make the perilous crossing during the winter.”
Two sailing boats with about 80 people of different nationalities, mostly Afghans, were rescued by the Italian coastguard on Monday after a week at sea. The boats had left from Greece. The people on board were dehydrated and had no food and water left.
A boat with 44 people, many reportedly Somali, that left from the Libyan coast over the weekend was rescued by the Maltese Armed Forces overnight.
MOROCCO – At least 78 people were killed when a Moroccan military transport plane crashed into a mountain in the south of the country during bad weather, said the state news agency, MAP.
“Seventy-eight people were killed, and three were seriously injured following a crash, on Tuesday, of a C-130 aircraft of the Royal Armed Forces northeast the southern city of Guelmim,” the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) said in a statement to the state news agency.
King Mohammed VI sent messages of condolence to the families of the victims.
The crash is Morocco’s worst known air disaster since 1973, when 105 people were killed after a Royal Air Maroc aircraft crashed near the capital Rabat.
Further details: MAP.
Max shades her 3 new young ones, who bring the number of her offspring to 26 in 9 years (photo ©2011 Heidi Buergermeister)
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Good news for Max the Swiss stork fans: a third baby bird has been spotted in the nest, making Max’s 2011 family the same size as her usual ones. Only two young ones had been spotted before this week until official photographer and neighbour Heidi Buergermeister saw a third head.
Happy Mother’s Day this week to Max!
The three little ones bring to 26 the number of offspring she has had, in 9 years.
One of Switzerland’s best-loved families could well be Max the stork and her annual crop of babies. Max, who will soon be 12 years old, has been banded and tracked longer than any other bird in the world. She migrates every fall to southern Spain or northern Morocco, then returns to the Swiss-German border area, Tuefingen, on the north side of Lake Constance, to mate and have her young.
She was born in 1999 in Avenches, canton Vaud, and the Museum of Natural History in Fribourg follows her movements closely and keeps her growing fan club informed.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Foreign Affairs Department Sunday confirmed to Swiss media that two men missing after an explosion at a cafe in Marrakesh, Morocco last Thursday were killed by the blast. Moroccan authorities were unable to identify the bodies until Sunday.
The two, ages 23 and 25, had been sitting at the cafe with two women friends, ages 25 and 27, who were brought back to Switzerland by Rega Saturday and immediately hospitalized. Both are in critical condition.
The four were all from canton Ticino, although the 23-year-old man was Portuguese and the other man was Swiss, as are the two women.
They were in Marrakesh as tourists.
The explosion, which is still under investigation, killed 16 people, 13 of whom were tourists. In addition to the two Swiss, the Moroccan interior ministry announced that the group includes eight French citizens, three Moroccans, a Canadian, a British citizen and a Dutch person.
Another two dozen people were injured.
Hundreds of Moroccans turned out for a peaceful protest in Marrakesh Sunday, with some demanding a more rapid transition to democracy, according to several media sources with reporters on the scene. Other Moroccans are concerned about the loss of tourism, an important source of income.
La Chataigneraie - Int'l School of Geneva in Founex
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A group of students who are in their next to final year at La Châtaigneraie in Founex are safe, according to the International School of Geneva, after arriving in Marrakesh Thursday morning 28 April and finding themselves only a few hundred metres from the blast that shook the Arguna Cafe and killed at least 14 people.
La Châtaigneraie is one of four campuses of the International School of Geneva. The students are on an International Baccalaureate programme geography field trip and in a letter being sent to parents today the school says that “all of our students are safe and well and though they were aware of the explosion [they] were at no time in any danger. The group are now in the hotel and will stay there whilst the details and cause of the explosion are determined.”
School officials say they are “keeping an open mind about the continuation of the trip. As and when further information becomes available we will review it, make a final decision.”
The cause of the blast is not yet clear, although Morocco’s Interior Ministry said early Friday on state television that it was a terrorist act.
The official death toll is 14, but local TV reports in Morocco say 15 people died, including six French citizens, five Moroccans, a Russian and a British citizen, but the government has not officially confirmed the nationalities. France has confirmed the deaths of its citizens.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Unconfirmed reports by hospitals to media groups indicate that six French tourists may be among the dead after an apparent bomb blast at a popular cafe in Marrakesh, Morocco Thursday noon 28 April, and that two Swiss may be among the 20 or more persons injured.
TSR television says the Swiss government could not confirm the news Thursday evening.
The death toll has now risen to 15. Earlier story, GenevaLunch
A huge blast Thursday 28 April at the popular Argana two-storey cafe in Marrakech’s Place Jamaâ El Fna, a Unesco World Heritage site, killed 14 people and injured another 20, according to initial figures released by the Moroccan government. Reuters says it was told initially that gas cannisters might have caused the lunchtime blast, but officials now appear to be giving more weight to the possibility that it was the work of Islamists.
Foreigners are reportedly among those killed, but officials had not yet confirmed this early Thursday evening.
Morocco has been relatively untroubled by terrorism since a bomb killed 45 people in 2003, but it has suffered by a drop in tourism, a key industry, from the global economic recession.
Links to other sites: AP/The Australian, The Independent, Reuters
Correction Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The US has granted Wipo, the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, $50,000 for a six-month programme in Kenya, Morocco and the Philippines to help local authorities raise awareness about the risk of counterfeit products. The programme, to be administered by Wipo, which is matching the grant, will involve a series of seminars.
US Ambassador Betty E King, speaking at an event in Geneva with John Tarpey, head of communications for Wipo, said that “trademark infringement and counterfeiting raise very serious health and safety concerns, such as those attributed to counterfeit medicines, food, automotive parts and electrical products.”
Tarpey notes that half of all drugs sold on the Internet, for example, are counterfeit. The funding will allow Wipo to run workshops to develop a toolkit that will help intellectual property authorities in the three countries conduct more effective outreach campaigns, he says.
A judge in Paris has ordered former French President Jacques Chirac,77, to stand trial on charges of misuse of public funds and abuse of trust, while he was the mayor of Paris from 1977-1995. It is the first time that a former head of state is ordered to stand trial.
Chirac has always denied any wrong-doing, and issued a statement from Morocco, where he is on holiday with his family, saying that he faces the charges with serenity and determination to prove his innocence. Dominque Paille, a spokesman for the ruling UMP party said it was “regrettable” that Jacques Chirac should be sent to stand trial at the end of his life.
Chirac was elected president of France in 1995, and as reports began to surface that the Paris mayor’s office had illegally financed his RPR political party in the early 19990s, he ran again in 2002, assured of immunity from prosecution by a controversial new law. He was re-elected by a landslide, only because many voted for him to exclude his far-right opponent in the run-off, Jean-Marie LePen.
Max and her partner, nesting, summer 2009
Fribourg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Max, the white stork who has been tracked for longer than any other bird of her kind, 11 years, may have completed her winter migratory trip, and she is now 110 km south of Madrid.
Max and mate, June 2009, © Heide Bürgermeister
Lunel, France (GenevaLunch) – Max, a white stork born in 1999 and tracked via radio signals in a ring around her leg that are picked up by satellite, is underway again on her yearly migration.
She left her nest in Tuefingen, Germany near Lake Constance last Thursday 27 August, and after a slow start, crossed Switzerland Saturday 29 August and spent the night 30 August in Lunel in the south of France, a flight of 450 km in a day, thanks to northerly winds down the valley of the Rhone.
Eleven people died in Rabat, Morocco Saturday 23 May, the closing night of the eight-day Mawazine music festival in Morocco, but details about what caused the stampede are sketchy, although The Times, UK, reports that a wire fence collapsed, provoking the stampede. At least 30 people were injured. The festival was held in several locations and featured several well-known singers, including Stevie Wonder and Kylie Minogue. CNN, and Mawazine festival site, in French
Geneva, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – Two people who are political refugees in Renens, Switzerland are reported by 20 Minutes, which interviewed them, to have been turned back at the airport in Marrakesh, Morocco after one of them was searched.
