Month: August 2018

UPDATE: Bangladesh’s cabinet on Monday approved raising the maximum jail time for rash driving deaths to five years from three, the law minister said, as students protested for a ninth day over the deaths of two teenagers killed by a speeding bus in Dhaka.

“As per the proposed law, an accused has to face five years of jail for negligent driving (leading to death),” Law Minister Anisul Huq told reporters after a cabinet meeting chaired by Hasina.

The deliberate running over of people will draw murder charges and carry the death sentence, he added. Parliament’s approval for the proposal to become law is seen as a formality, since Hasina’s ruling Awami League has an overwhelming majority.

Original story follows:

DHAKA — Bangladesh’s cabinet on Monday will consider capital punishment for

traffic accident

deaths, a law ministry official said, as tens of thousands of students protested for a ninth day over the deaths of two teenagers killed by a speeding bus in Dhaka.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who faces an election due by the end of the year, has accused her political rivals of trying to stir up anti-government sentiment using the deaths as a pretext. The opposition has denied involvement.

The crowded capital of 18 million has been paralyzed by angry school and college students demanding changes to transport laws following the July 29 deaths, after a privately-operated bus ran over a group of students.

“In this amendment it has been proposed to award the highest level of punishment if it is killing by an accident,” said the law ministry official, who has been briefed on the matter but declined to be identified ahead of a decision.

Handing down the death penalty for accidents is rare anywhere in the world, and Bangladesh transport officials listed measures ranging from 14 years in Britain in extreme cases to two years in

India

.

Three years in jail is the current maximum in Bangladesh.

Defying government warnings to end the protests, students in school uniforms have blocked most of Dhaka’s roads, setting up checkpoints that let through only emergency vehicles.

Police said they were still investigating Sunday’s attack on a car carrying the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh by a group of armed men, some riding

motorcycles

. There were no injuries but two vehicles were damaged.

The U.S. embassy said it was not in a position to comment until the investigation was complete. Ambassador Marcia Bernicat was returning from dinner at the time of the attack.

Earlier the embassy had criticized the police crackdown on the protesters, whom it described as having “united and captured the imagination of the whole country”.

Police had fired tear gas to break up the protests on Sunday and last week beat up some students in a bid to get them to disperse.

ARREST

Police detained social activist and photographer Shahidul Alam who had posted comments that a student wing of Hasina’s ruling party was trying to attack the protesters.

Alam’s organization, Drik Picture Library, said 30 to 35 men in plainclothes swept into his Dhaka apartment building, saying they were police detectives, and took him into custody.

Alam was screaming as he was forced into a car, it quoted security guards at the building as saying.

Dhaka’s additional deputy commissioner of police Obaidur Rahman said Alam was picked up for questioning, but gave no details.

Rights group Amnesty International called for Alam’s immediate and unconditional release, saying he had been detained following an interview to Al-Jazeera English on the Dhaka protests.

“There is no justification whatsoever for detaining anyone for solely peacefully expressing their views,” Omar Waraich, Amnesty’s deputy South Asia director, said in a statement.

“The Bangladeshi government must end the crackdown on the student protesters and people speaking out against it.”

More than 4,000 people die in road accidents each year in Bangladesh, one of the world’s highest rates. Traffic laws are poorly enforced and the students blame the private bus network for mishaps in a city choked by massive traffic jams.

Sheikh Shafi, a polytechnic student injured in a protest on Saturday, said one problem was that bus drivers must work long hours as they do not receive monthly salaries but are paid commissions based on passenger numbers instead.

“Our demand is that the owners must appoint them and they will work a maximum of 10 hours. The commission-based system must be eliminated,” said Shafi, whose brother died in a road accident in 2015.

Reporting by Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul.

Related Video:

BERLIN — A

Munich-based start-up

has taken advantage of the strong Bavarian sun this summer to test the final development of the charging system of its Sion car, an all-electric

solar

vehicle that lets you charge as you drive.

Germany will likely miss its target of putting 1 million

electric cars

on the road by 2020 but the government said in April it was ready to offer support to companies that make batteries for

electric vehicles

.

Sono Motors

, founded in 2016, is developing the Sion, a fully-electric vehicle that has solar cells integrated into its bodywork. It can be charged via solar power, from conventional power outlets or other electric cars.

The Sion also features moss integrated into the dashboard for air filtration and humidity regulation. Sono says the moss needs no water or other special care to maintain.

Production will start in the second half of 2019 at one of its German plants and the company has around 5,000 orders which it aims to start selling at 16,000 euros ($18,540) next year.

Sion will have 330 solar cells attached to the vehicle’s roof, bonnet and sides and its battery system will offer a range of around 250 km (155 miles) before it needs recharging.

“We have a seat heater, there is air conditioning, there is a large infotainment system where I can also connect my phone interactively, which means I really have a full vehicle which is very simple, has no frills,” Laurin Hahn, co-founder and chief executive of the startup told Reuters.

Reporting by Riham Alkousaa.

Related Video:

HOUSTON — After years of vehicle development and building anticipation, NASA has now put the crew in commercial crew spacecraft.

The space agency on Friday (Aug. 3) announced nine men and women who will launch on the first crewed test flights and missions of new commercial spacecraft built and operated by The Boeing Company and SpaceX.

The eight active NASA astronauts and one former astronaut-turned-corporate crew member will launch on Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2019. The missions will mark the first crewed launches from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle program seven years ago. [Crew Dragon and Starliner: A Look at the Coming Astronaut Taxis]

The commercial crew members took to the stage during an event led by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, 48, and Douglas Hurley, 51, will fly together as SpaceX’s first Dragon crew. Veterans of two spaceflights each, Behnken and Hurley will lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A — the same Florida launch pad where the space shuttle left Earth for the last time in July 2011 with Hurley as pilot.

NASA astronauts Eric Boe, 53, and Nicole Mann, 41, will join the commander of that same final space shuttle mission, former astronaut and now Boeing executive Christopher Ferguson, 56, as the crew of the Starliner test flight, launching atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Ferguson, who has been involved from the start in the Starliner’s development, flew three shuttle missions as a NASA astronaut. Boe piloted two shuttle flights. This will be Mann’s first launch, having joined the astronaut corps in 2013.

Behnken, Hurley, Boe and Mann are NASA’s first astronauts to be named to the test flights of new U.S. spacecraft since the March 1978 announcement of the space shuttle’s first orbital flight test crews. Ferguson will become the first former NASA astronaut to return to orbit as a company’s crew member when he flies.

Prior to their maiden crewed missions, both Boeing and SpaceX plan uncrewed test flights in late 2018 or early 2019. Both companies will also conduct abort system test flights to ensure the astronauts can safely escape should their rockets go awry.

In addition to naming the crews of the test flights, NASA also announced on Friday the four astronauts who will fly aboard the first operational Starliner and Dragon missions to the space station. Both vehicles were developed in cooperation with NASA to deliver crew members to and from the orbiting laboratory.

Josh Cassada, 45, will fly with Sunita (“Suni”) Williams, 52, aboard NASA’s first contracted Starliner mission. It will be Cassada’s first spaceflight. Williams previously logged 321 days in orbit on two stays aboard the space station, most recently returning to Earth in 2012.

Victor Glover, 42, and Michael Hopkins, 49, will fly on the first operational mission of SpaceX’s crewed Dragon. It will be Glover’s first time in space. Hopkins logged 166 days aboard the space station in 2014.

The two pairs of NASA crewmates will fly to the station with Russian cosmonauts and international astronauts to be announced at a later date. Between the end of the space shuttle program and the start of commercial crew operations, NASA’s crew members have and are continuing to launch to the space station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Behnken, Boe, Hurley and Williams were named in 2015 as NASA’s “commercial crew cadre” and have been working with Boeing and SpaceX on the development of the spacecraft and the simulators that will be used to train astronauts to fly. The two companies have also developed new spacesuits, modified their launch pads and established mission control teams to support the upcoming flights.

With the start of four-person commercial missions, the International Space Station crew is slated to grow by one to a seven-person residency in order to maximize the science that can be conducted on board. Boeing’s and SpaceX’s commercial spacecraft may also open the space station — and more broadly, Earth orbit — to more privately-funded visitors and spaceflight participants from countries that do not have their own domestic crewed spacecraft and rockets.

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