Solar Powered Plane in Successful Test Flight

In what the team are describing as a "milestone" for solar powered air transport a plane landed near the Swiss capital Berne this morning at 7am GMT after a 26 hour flight time. The plane had taken off from the same the same airport at 5 GMT, the previous day.

This is the longest length of time a plane powered by solar energy has stayed airborne for and reaching an altitude of 8,700m it is also the highest altitude reached by any such aircraft. The team responsible for the feat is called Solar Impulse and one of the team's co-founders is Bertrand Piccard who achieved the world's first circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon in 1999.

Ban on Burqa in France?

Today the French Government began a debate on the banning of Muslim-garments which cover a woman's face or  body. Such garments include the Burqa, which covers a woman's entire body and face and the niqab, which covers the face and neck. The vote in the French Parliament was called after the French Council of Ministers approved the measure in May.


This is only one step in a process that has been taking place over the course of the past year when a group of lawmakers recommended the ban and in May they passed a non-binding resolution which noted the full face veil was entirely contrary to the French Constitution.

Pointless Presidency

Today will mark the ascension to power of  the next routinely elected Polish after the death of the country's last President in a plane crash on April 10th last. The winner with 95 percent of the votes counted is expected to be Bronislaw Komorowski,  the man who has acted as interim President for the past couple of months.
While reading the story it got me wondering about the nature of Presidency in some countries. The role of the Irish President and Polish President are similar in nature. There duty is to act as a representative of the State abroad but both importantly have the power to veto certain laws they find to be unconstitutional pending supreme court review. However, while this seems significant in the 13 years that our President Mary Mc Aleese has been in power she has done this just once. No Irish president has ever dissolved Government. It begs the question, what is the point?

Google V China Continues

In January of this year the world's most populous country came to blows with the world's most popular superpower, online behemoth, Google. The conflict originated over the Chinese Government's attempt to hack into G-mail accounts belonging to human rights workers in the country. The search engine also took issue with China's censorship of certain content online such as the Tienanmen Square massacre.

While the story did make headlines across the world and the search engine operators were lauded for not bowing to the pressure of the rising superpower to heavily censor its results. Since January Google.cn has remained accessible from the Chinese mainland however, beginning March 22nd users of Google in China were redirected to google.com.hk where users could attain entirely uncensored search results.

Me and Studio Ghibli:Part 3

As promised, here is part three of my Studio Ghibli feature. If you need to catch up here is the link to part one (covering Naussica and Laputa) and here is part two (where I write about Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbour Totoro). Today I have two more delectible morsels of Ghibli magic.

1989-Kiki's Delivery Service

Released in Japanese cinemas on the 29th of July Kiki's Delivery Service is Miyazaki's  second children's film and as Totoro is completely his own work, written and directed by the Anime genius.

Do as we Say and as we Do

Site Note: Hey again guys. I'm back home from my couple of days at the beautiful house of a great friend so this post will be out live. I apologise for some of the recent quality issues with some of my posts. They have been edited. But now back to the news

As a very willing student of socio-linguistics the story I am writing about today is something somewhat close to my heart.The persecution of people and discrimination against certain languages is something that I am must staunchly against.

According to our lecturer it was the policy of the former Republican administration to ensure the workplace remained a place of English only.  The treatment of four Philipino nurses in Baltimore. The group of 4 allege that the sole reason for their April 16th was the that they were heard speaking in their native Tagalog tongue while on a lunch break in the ER in which they were working.

South Africa: Doctor Invents New Condom

While this is a news story that may have been doing the rounds for quite some time now, I wanted to post about it giving the content of my recent blog post about troubles such as rape in South Africa.The condom was invented by Sonnet Ahlers after her harrowing experiences dealing with rape victims in her native country.

The condom has been in existence since 2005. However, it has been redesigned in 2009 and made big waves in the media again of late with the inventors plans to distribute 30,000 of the invention to women in the lead up to the World Cup. She has sacrificed a lot to get to where she is today having sold her car and houses in order to fund the project. She hopes that when on sale in the future the device will cost just $2.