Skydiver Baumgartner sets YouTube live view record

15 October 2012 Last updated at 10:18 GMT

Highlights from Felix Baumgartner's leap into the record books

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Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner smashed a number of records with his "edge of space" stunt - including for live streaming.

More than eight million people flocked to their devices to watch the 43-year-old break the speed of sound live on Google's YouTube site.
It is the largest number of concurrent live streams in the website's history, Google UK confirmed to the BBC.
Mr Baumgartner also broke the record for the highest freefall.
He jumped from a capsule taken to 128,100ft (24 miles; 39km) above New Mexico in the US by a giant helium balloon.
It took nine minutes for him to reach the ground.

Footage from a camera on Baumgartner's chest shows out-of-control spin

The adventurer plummeted at an estimated 833.9mph (1,343km/h), hitting Mach 1.24.
"On the step, I felt that the whole world is watching," Mr Baumgartner said after the jump.
"I said I wish they would see what I see. It was amazing."
The capsule from which the skydiver fell was equipped with cameras to provide a live internet feed to millions of people around the world.
A Google spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that the number of viewers simultaneously watching the Red Bull Stratos stunt live on YouTube was the site's highest.
"We congratulate Felix Baumgartner and the entire Red Bull Stratos team for their successful mission, and for creating a live stream with the most concurrent views ever on YouTube," the company said on its blog.
In comparison, about 8.3m people accessed the BBC's sport website on the first day of this year's Olympic Games.
Invaluable data Other technology used to record the event will have a more long-term application. Mr Baumgartner's body was monitored during the jump using equipment from Equivital, a small UK company.
A system strapped to the skydiver's chest wirelessly transmitted data about his heartbeat, respiration, skin temperature and other vital signs.
"It's a major coup for Equivital, which, despite its small size - currently only 25 employees - provides the US Army with its human body monitoring system," the company told BBC News.
The Red Bull Stratos scientists said the stunt had provided invaluable data for the development of high-performance, high-altitude parachute systems, and that the lessons learned would inform the development of new ideas for emergency evacuation from vehicles, such as spacecraft passing through the stratosphere.
"Part of this programme was to show high-altitude egress, passing through Mach and a successful re-entry back [to subsonic speed], because our belief scientifically is that's going to benefit future private space programmes or high-altitude pilots, and Felix proved that today," said Art Thompson, the team principal.

Profile: Skydiver Felix Baumgartner

Austrian Felix Baumgartner has set skydiving and Base-jumping records from Malaysia to Brazil

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Felix Baumgartner has made history by breaking the world record for the highest-ever skydive, jumping from a balloon more than 39km (128,000 ft) up in the stratosphere.

The daredevil skydiver and helicopter pilot has made a career out of pushing the boundaries of human flight, always seeking to go faster, higher, further.
Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1969, he began skydiving when he was 16, polishing his aero-acrobatic skills in the Austrian military's demonstration and competition team.
In the 1990s, he moved from traditional skydiving to Base jumping, leaping off fixed objects and using a parachute to break the fall. The acronym stands for the categories of fixed objects aficionados can jump from: buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs, mountains).
There followed a series of high-profile jumps off very famous - and often very dangerous - landmarks.
Highs and lows In 1999, he set the world record for the highest parachute jump from a building when he jumped from the Petronas Towers in Kaula Lumpur, Malaysia.
The twin skyscrapers were the tallest buildings in the world at the time, only overtaken by the Taipei 101 in 2004. Naturally, in 2007, he also jumped off the Taipei 101.

After jumping off the world's highest building in 1999, he went to Rio the same year for the world's lowest ever Base jump

For his next stunt, he went to the opposite end of the scale, completing the world's lowest ever base jump from the 30m-high arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.
At the time, the organiser of that jump, Stefan Aufschnaiter, described Baumgartner as "the craziest base jumper in the world".
"Normally, you need 50m or 60m. It's extremely dangerous," he said.
Having survived that leap, placing flowers on the statue's shoulder first as a sign of respect, he went on to become the first person to literally fly across the English Channel in 2003.
Using a pair of specially-made carbon fibre wings, Baumgartner leapt from a plane above Dover, landing 22 miles (35km) away in Cap Blanc-Nez near Calais just 14 minutes later.
"You're totally alone, there's just you, your equipment, your wing - and your skills. I like it," he said.
'Big accomplishment' The former mechanic goes through a rigorous training programme before all his flights, which are sponsored by Red Bull. For the Channel glide, he strapped himself to the top of a speeding Porsche.

The 43-year-old trains intensively before his skydives

Despite the training, the jumps and dives remain highly dangerous.
Baumgartner's mother could be seen at the site of his "space dive" in New Mexico wiping away tears, unable to avert her gaze from the skies her son would soon come tumbling out of.
Along with his father and brother, she had travelled to see him complete his most daring stunt yet, the first time they had ever been out of Europe.
He says he is motivated in part by scientific endeavour, the desire to see what the human body can achieve. But Baumgartner is also spurred on by the desire to see what no-one else has seen, to be alone at the highest reaches of the skies.
"It's almost overwhelming," he told the BBC of an earlier test jump. "When you're standing there in a pressure suit, the only thing that you hear is yourself breathing, and you can see the curvature of the Earth; you can see the sky's totally black.
"It's kind of an awkward view because you've never seen a black sky. And at that moment, you realise you've accomplished something really big."

Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one

By Joe Matthews Journalist

How the second missile crisis unfolded

Contrary to popular belief, the Cuban missile crisis did not end with the agreement between the US and Soviet Union in October, 1962. Unknown to the US at the time, there were 100 other nuclear weapons also in the hands of Cuba, sparking a frantic - and ingenious - Russian mission to recover them.

In November 2011, aware that the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous few weeks in history was less than a year away, my Russian colleague Pasha Shilov and I came across several new accounts that changed our perspective on the Cuban missile crisis and how much we thought we knew about it.
Growing up in Berkshire, England, through the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan's Cruise and Pershing missiles stationed only 30 miles away from my family home, I was inculcated with a keen awareness of Cold War brinkmanship.
Pasha grew up in Moscow and described how it was from the Soviet point of view - equally frightening by his account.
But what we've now learned about the chilling events of October and November 1962 has put our own experiences into perspective - and maybe given rise to a few more grey hairs along the way.

Nuclear disaster averted

• Cuban missile crisis ignites when, fearing a US invasion, Castro agrees to allow the USSR to deploy nuclear missiles on the island
• The crisis was subsequently resolved when the USSR agreed to remove the missiles in return for the withdrawal of US nuclear missiles from Turkey

• Timeline: US-Cuba relations
• BBC Archive: Cuba and the Cold War

Our investigations took us to St Petersburg and the Soviet Submariners Veterans' Society via the National Security Archive in Washington DC, where Svetlana Savranskaya, the director of the Russian archives, told us an incredible story.

There had been a second secret missile crisis that continued the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war until the end of November 1962.
This extended the known missile crisis well beyond the weekend of 27-28 October, the time that had always been thought of as the moment the danger finally lifted with the deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev to withdraw the Soviet missiles in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba.
The secret missile crisis came about through an unnerving mix of Soviet duplicity, American intelligence failures and the mercurial temperament of Fidel Castro.
The Cuban leader, cut out of the main negotiations between the superpowers over the fate of the long range Soviet missiles stationed in Cuba, began to cease cooperation with Moscow.
Fearing that Castro's hurt pride and widespread Cuban indignation over the concessions Khrushchev had made to Kennedy, might lead to a breakdown of the agreement between the superpowers, the Soviet leader concocted a plan to give Castro a consolation prize.
The prize was an offer to give Cuba more than 100 tactical nuclear weapons that had been shipped to Cuba along with the long-range missiles, but which crucially had passed completely under the radar of US intelligence.
Khrushchev concluded that because the Americans hadn't listed the missiles on their list of demands, the Soviet Union's interests would be well served by keeping them in Cuba.

• In pictures: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Watch JFK's famous speech during the crisis

Kremlin number two, Anastas Mikoyan, was charged with making the trip to Havana, principally to calm Castro down and make him what seemed like an offer he couldn't refuse.

“Start Quote

Mikoyan was forced to use the dark arts of diplomacy to convince Castro”

Mikoyan, whose wife was seriously ill, took the assignment knowing that the future of relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were on the line. Shortly after arriving in Cuba, Mikoyan received word that his wife had died, but despite this, he pledged to stay in Cuba and complete negotiations with Castro.

In the weeks that followed, Mikoyan kept the detail of the missile transfer to himself while he witnessed the mood swings and paranoia of the Cuban leader convinced that Moscow had sold Cuba's defence down the river.
Castro particularly objected to the constant flights over Cuba by American surveillance aircraft and, as Mikoyan learned to his horror, ordered Cuban anti-aircraft gunners to fire on them.
Knowing how delicate the state of relations were between the US and Russia after the worst crisis since World War II, US forces around the world remained on Defcon 2, one short of global nuclear war until 20 November.
Mikoyan came to a personal decision that under no circumstances should Castro and his military be given control of weapons with an explosive force equal to 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
He then extricated Moscow from a seemingly intractable situation which risked blowing the entire crisis back up in the faces of Kennedy and Khrushchev.

Anastas Mikoyan (far right, in 1938) took the all-important mission

On 22 November 1962, during a tense, four-hour meeting, Mikoyan was forced to use the dark arts of diplomacy to convince Castro that despite Moscow's best intentions, it would be in breach of an unpublished Soviet law (which didn't actually exist) to transfer the missiles permanently into Cuban hands and provide them with an independent nuclear deterrent.
Finally after Mikoyan's trump card, Castro was forced to give way and - much to the relief of Khrushchev and the whole Soviet government - the tactical nuclear weapons were finally crated and returned by sea back to the Soviet Union during December 1962.
This story has illuminated a chapter in history that has been partially closed for the past 50 years.
But it leaves us with a great respect for Mikoyan and his ability to judge and eventually contain an extremely dangerous situation which could have affected many millions of people.
Joe Matthews is a producer for Wild Iris TV, which has made a short film about the "secret" Cuban missile crisis

Israeli air strike kills leader of Palestinian militant group

An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed the leader of a militant Salafist group as he rode on a motorbike, Palestinian security sources said on Sunday. The Israeli army later confirmed they had successfully targeted a "terrorist squad".

 

A leader of a hardline Islamist group that has claimed a spate of rocket attacks on Israel in recent days was among three Palestinians killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, sources on both sides said on Sunday.
Sheikh Hisham al-Saedini, 43, also known as Abu al-Waleed al-Maqdisi, one of the founding members of Salafist group the Mujahedeen Shura Council, was killed in a strike late on Saturday on the north Gaza town of Jabaliya, Palestinian security sources said.
Fellow Salafist militant Fayek Abu Jazar, 42, died with him as they rode a motorbike. Two other people, one of them a 12-year-old boy, were wounded.
A second air strike early on Sunday killed Yasser Mohammad al-Atal, 23, of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the sources said. One other person was wounded.
An Israeli military statement said that its "aircraft targeted a terrorist squad in the southern Gaza Strip in its final preparations to fire rockets at Israel. A hit was confirmed."
The strike came hours after Gaza militants fired a rocket that exploded in an open field in the Eshkol region of southern Israel, a military spokeswoman said.
Born in Egypt but a Jordanian national, Saedini was considered one of the most important Salafist leaders in Gaza.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council, a recently founded Salafist coalition, has claimed a spate of rocket attacks on Israel in recent days.
Saedini was detained by the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza following the kidnap and murder of Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni last year but was released in August following Jordanian intervention.
The Salafist groups accuse Hamas of weakness in the face of Israel and of failing to apply Islamic law.
The Israeli army said that Saedini's organisation was implicated in a series of attacks, including one in January 2009 that killed an Israeli soldier, and that Saedini himself was "responsible for terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip including firing of rockets and the placement of explosive devices."
"Since his release and in recent days, Saedini had been planning a complex attack to be carried out along the Sinai border, a collaboration between Gaza-based militants and Salafi operatives in Sinai," a statement from the military read.
The latest wave of tit-for-tat violence on the Gaza-Israel border began a week ago, when Israeli warplanes raided the southern city of Rafah, targeting two men the military said were "global jihad activists".
The two were critically wounded and one later died. Another eight people were wounded, among them five children.
Following that strike, the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of fire at southern Israel in a rare show of force given that the two groups normally observe a de facto truce on rocket fire on Israel.
On Wednesday the Israeli air force struck targets in northern Gaza after rocket fire that was claimed by the Mujahedeen Shura Council.
And on Thursday, Israeli warplanes raided a training camp of the Hamas military wing, several hours after Gaza militants fired two rockets into southern Israel.
The last time Hamas militants fired on Israel was during a flareup in June when militant groups fired more than 150 rockets, wounding five people, and Israel hit back with air strikes that killed 15 Palestinians.
According to the Israeli military, more than 500 rockets and mortar rounds have been fired at southern Israel from Gaza this year.
(AFP)

Tunisia sets date for landmark presidential election

Tunisians will head to the polls to elect their new president on June 23, 2013, the ruling Islamist Ennahda party announced Sunday. Parliamentary elections will also be held on the same day with a presidential runoff vote set for July 7.

 

Tunisia will hold presidential and legislative elections on June 23, 2013, the ruling Islamist Ennahda party said early on Sunday.
A second round in the presidential ballot will take place on July 7, it said in a statement that was also signed by the other two parties in the current coalition, the leftist Ettakatol and the secular centre-left Congress for the Republic (CPR).
The three parties have also agreed on the political system to be enshrined in the constitution of the North African country that sparked the Arab Spring protests when it ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.
The parties have agreed "on a mixed political system in which the president will be elected by universal suffrage for a better balance of power, including at the heart of executive branch."
Disagreements over the nature of the political system has been delaying the drafting of the new constitution by Tunisia's interim parliament.
The Islamist Ennahda has been pushing for a purely parliamentary system, while the other parties have wanted important powers to remain in the hands of the president.
A first draft of the constitution is due to be submitted to the Assembly in November, and then each article is to be debated between December and January before parliament votes on the text.
(AFP)

Belfast's first abortion clinic reignites bitter divide

The opening of the first private abortion clinic in Northern Ireland, set for October 18, has unleashed a flurry of campaigns on both sides of the abortion divide and exposed the murky status of anti-abortion laws in the region.

By Leela JACINTO (text)

 

Over the past few years, a familiar drama has repeatedly unfolded almost every day on Shaftesbury Square in the heart of Belfast, capital of the British region of Northern Ireland.
Women - and men - trying to enter the Belfast offices of the Family Planning Association (FPA), a British sexual health charity, have been heckled and sometimes harassed by a raucous picket of anti-abortion activists wielding grisly photographs of apparently aborted foetuses.
The FPA motto is “Talking sense about sex”. But when it comes to abortion, sense often gives way to inflamed sensitivities in this largely self-governed region of the UK.
So, when Marie Stopes International, a London-based NGO, announced its plans last week to open Ireland's first abortion clinic on October 18, a backlash was widely expected.
The reactions came in fast and hard, dominating the airwaves, newspapers and new media forums inside and outside this territory of roughly 1.8 million inhabitants.
The issue went viral on social media sites such as Twitter, with supporters and opponents of the clinic directing followers to various online polls and petitions. Groups as diverse as “Catholics for Choice” and “IrelandProLife” provided links to sites such as a Belfast Telegraph poll, which at last count, had a close 53 percent opposing the clinic and 47 percent supporting it.
On Facebook, administrators of a page titled, “We Are Fully Against the Marie Stopes Clinic in Belfast” vainly attempted to keep the discourse polite.
Security fears and a not-so-secret location
Days before the planned opening of what they are careful to note is a sexual health - and not just an abortion - clinic, Marie Stopes International officials conceded that security was a concern.
“I would be reckless if I said I was not concerned,” said Tracey McNeill, vice-president and director of Marie Stopes UK and Europe, in a phone interview with FRANCE 24. “The safety of the men and women who come to us and our team members is an absolute priority. A few days ago, I had planned to contact the police, but in fact we were contacted by the police force in Northern Ireland and they came and checked the premises and assured us of security arrangements.”
Initially, Marie Stopes International kept the location of the new clinic secret. But word gets around in this city of about 200,000 inhabitants, and over the last few days, media teams have been stationing themselves outside the Victoria Street premises.
Despite the public outcry and the security concerns, Marie Stopes officials are determined to keep their message on target.
“Honestly, I’m not thinking of all the publicity and backlash,” said McNeill. “I’m focused on making sure we deliver first-class health services. I’m not a politician, I’m a healthcare professional.”
‘Making the journey’ for an expensive procedure
But in Northern Ireland, it’s hard to distance politics from an issue overseen by murky laws that are kept in place by politicians and lobby groups that claim to be attuned to public opinion.
Northern Ireland has some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. Although it’s a British territory, the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act legalising abortions was never extended to Northern Ireland. Abortion in Northern Ireland is still covered by the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act and sections of the 1945 Criminal Justice Act.
Terminations of pregnancy are only permitted in Northern Ireland if a woman’s life is deemed at immediate risk. Abortion is illegal in cases of rape, incest or abnormality. Under the current laws, women face life in prison for having an illegal abortion.
The strict rules see thousands of Northern Irish women travelling to England to access abortions in what it is euphemistically known as “making the journey”.
For decades, tens of thousands of women from Northern Ireland - as well as the Republic of Ireland, which has equally restrictive abortion laws – have “made the journey” to England.
But while Northern Irish women are British citizens, their abortions are not covered by the publicly funded National Health Service (NHS) under vaguely defined guidelines that are still under review, forcing them to pay an estimated 2,000 British pounds (around 2,500 euros) for the procedure.
“It’s a matter of equality and discrimination against women in Northern Ireland,” said Audrey Simpson, director of the FPA in Northern Ireland, which is backing the new Marie Stopes clinic.
Bridging the sectarian divide
But anti-abortion activists, such as Bernadette Smyth, founder and director of the Belfast-based Precious Life, maintain that, “there is no will to change the law in Northern Ireland. It’s a well known fact that it’s very different, very unique here. Even though Northern Ireland is part of the UK, we’re still Ireland in terms of our medical policies.”
Some pro-choice supporters dispute the claim that the majority of Northern Ireland’s residents are opposed to legalising abortion, citing a 2012 poll that found 59 percent of respondents supporting the legalisation of abortion in rape cases.
Both sides, however, concede that in a region deeply divided between Protestants and Catholics, abortion is the one issue that unites politicians on both sides of the religious divide.
After decades of sectarian strife - known as the Troubles – between the mainly Protestant Unionists and mainly Catholic Republicans, Northern Ireland finally saw the establishment of a power sharing government in 2007 under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday agreement. But the main political parties on both sides of the sectarian divide - the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) founded by the Rev. Ian Paisley, as well as the largely Catholic Sinn Fein – remain officially opposed to the legalisation of abortion.
In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Northern Ireland’s Health Minister Edwin Poots, a DUP member, questioned the legal position of the centre, warning Marie Stopes International to “observe the law in Northern Ireland”.
“It is a legal matter, not a health matter,” said Poots. “It will come to the attention of the Attorney General, and it will be for the Attorney General to take whatever actions he deems necessary. If they break the law, they will be prosecuted.”
Marie Stopes representatives maintain that the clinic complies with Northern Ireland’s laws. “We have been working in partnership with many organisations, including healthcare professions. We started working on this project two years ago and it’s taken us almost a year to understand the regulatory and legal environment,” said McNeill. “We are working within all relevant laws and guidelines.”
But Smyth, director of the anti-abortion group Precious Life, is not convinced. “Our legal team is investigating this. We also have a lobby campaign at the moment that is lobbying our local representatives and we’re very confident that our elected representatives will take care of this. We’re taking decisions moment by moment and all I can say is, watch this space.”
Whatever the outcome of the legal investigation, there’s little doubt the new clinic space on Belfast’s Victoria Street will indeed be closely watched – raising questions of how secure or comfortable many women in Northern Ireland may feel about accessing the controversial new clinic’s facilities.

Syria bans Turkish civilian flights from its airspace

Syria has banned any Turkish passenger flights from crossing over its territory, the country’s state news agency announced on Saturday. Damascus said the move, which comes just days after Turkey grounded a Syrian passenger plane, was "retaliatory".

 

Syria has banned Turkish passenger flights from Syrian airspace from midnight (2100 GMT) Saturday, state news agency SANA said, citing the foreign ministry.
            
The decision, "in accordance with the principle of reciprocity", was in retaliation for Turkey's decision to stop Syrian civil aviation flights over its territory, SANA said.
            
The Turkish government has not announced a similar ban for Syrian civilian aircraft.
            
However, Turkish jets forced a Syrian passenger plane en route from Moscow to Damascus to make an emergency landing in Ankara on Thursday on suspicion it was carrying weapons.

Rebels down Syrian jet Syrian rebels shot down a fighter jet in the northern province of Aleppo on Saturday, a monitoring group and a military defector said. "The rebels shot down the fighter jet in the west of Aleppo province, where fierce battles are taking place," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. "The jet was bombarding the village of Khan al-Asal."   A defected military officer in the province confirmed the reports, adding that what he said was a MiG jet was shot down some 10 kilometres (six miles) west of Aleppo, scene of fierce battles since July 20.   Amateur video shot by activists and distributed by the Observatory showed groups of people gathering around a pile of embers, and smoke rising from the scene, as men fired their weapons into the air in celebration. (AFP)

            
Both Damascus and Moscow denied the claim, and the plane was allowed on Friday to continue on its journey.
Syria’s decision to close its airspace to Turkish planes comes amid escalating tensions between the two countries after sporadic cross-border skirmishes in recent weeks.

On Saturday Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for reform of the UN Security Council to help resolve the crisis, since Russia and China have repeatedly used their veto powers to block resolutions condemning Syria.

             

"It's time to change the structure of international institutions, starting with the UN Security Council," Erdogan told reporters, calling for "wider, fairer and more effective representation".

 

"By failing to implement an effective policy towards events in Syria, the Security Council is rapidly losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the oppressed elsewhere in the world," he argued.

 

Reform of the council should take into account the growing strength of countries including Turkey, Brazil, India and Indonesia, he said. "The West is no longer the only centre of the world."

 

On the same day, Turkey's leaders also met international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

             

After his meeting with Westerwelle, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu repeated Turkey's position that they would not tolerate any further border incidents.

             

"Fresh border violations can take place and we will hit back without hesitation if we believe Turkey's national security is in danger," he told reporters.

 

But FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Ankara Jasper Mortimer believes the Turkish people will not back all-out military action against their neighbour.

 

“The Turks don’t want war, that has been very clear in opinion polls, anti-war demonstrations and even a debate in parliament ten days ago, so it will depend on the level of response,” Mortimer said.

 

“The people will expect the retaliation to be in proportion to the violation by Syria. If the retaliation is out of proportion to what Syria has done, then the government will come under criticism,” he added.

 

(FRANCE 24 with wires)