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Thursday 27 February 2014

Dozens of armed men 'patrol' airport in Ukraine's Crimea

The armed men arrived at the airport in the early hours of the morning

Ukraine crisis

Armed men in military uniforms are patrolling the main airport in Ukraine's Crimea region, amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
It follows the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanokovych, who is now in Russia.
It is not immediately clear who the men in the airport are, nor the reason for their presence at the airport.
On Thursday, pro-Russian armed men stormed the parliament in Crimea, Ukraine's only Russian-majority region.
Tensions have heightened in the autonomous region since the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych last week.
The men, said to be armed with assault rifles, are going in and out of the control tower at the airport, Reuters reports.
'Normal operations'
Armed men patrol at the airport in Simferopol, Crimea on 28 February 2014 It was unclear who the men were - they arrived at the airport in the early hours
Armed men patrol at the airport in Simferopol, Crimea on 28 February 2014. The airport was said to be operating normally
Witnesses told Interfax-Ukraine news agency that around 50 men had arrived carrying Russian navy flags.
The airport is said to be operating as normal.
A man called Vladimir told Reuters he was a volunteer helping the group, though he said he did not know where they came from.
"I'm with the People's Militia of Crimea. We're simple people, volunteers," he said.
"We're here at the airport to maintain order. We'll meet the planes with a nice smile - the airport is working as normal."
On Thursday, a separate group of unidentified armed men entered Crimea's parliament building by force, and hoisted a Russian flag on the roof.
The Crimean parliament later announced it would hold a referendum on expanding the region's autonomy on 25 May.
Recent developments in the Crimea region - which traditionally leans towards Moscow - heightened tensions with Russia, which scrambled fighter jets to monitor its borders on Thursday.
US Secretary of State John Kerry called on all sides to "step back and avoid any kind of provocations" on Thursday.
The US has sought assurances from Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered snap military drills to test the combat readiness of troops in central and western Russia, near the border with Ukraine earlier in the week.
Mr Kerry said he had spoken to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who vowed to respect Ukraine's "territorial integrity".
Crimea - where ethnic Russians are in a majority - was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954.
Ethnic Ukrainians loyal to Kiev and Muslim Tatars - whose animus towards Russia stretches back to Stalin's deportations during World War Two - have formed an alliance to oppose any move back towards Moscow.
Russia, along with the US, UK and France, pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in a memorandum signed in 1994.
Map of Crimea with focus on Simferopol
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Nymphomaniac to Noah: Films to watch in March

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson’s latest film had rave reviews when it premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. Set at a central European hotel between the two world wars, the screwball comedy from the director of The Fantastic Mr Fox and The Royal Tenenbaums has an ensemble cast: Ralph Fiennes stars alongside Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe and Anderson regulars Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. Playing a concierge blamed for the death of an octogenarian widow, Fiennes embarks on a madcap chase through the Alps; the film is full of Anderson’s quirky visual motifs, with a rich colour palette and shots of miniature models. Released 7 March in the US, 20 March in Singapore, and 27 March in Argentina. (Fox Searchlight)

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P1, the unlikely Porsche pioneer


Icons and Innovators

P1, the unlikely Porsche pioneer

HIDE CAPTION
Electric relic
Porsche has affixed glass bodywork to the P1, so as to not obscure the car's mechanicals. (Porsche Cars)
Evidence of a young Ferdinand Porsche sowing wild oats has emerged. His previously unknown automotive creation was discovered in an Austrian warehouse – 111 years after he stored it there.
This new prologue to the German carmaker’s illustrious history stars an ancient protagonist found in staggeringly good condition, a testament to how well Porsche packed away this, his first-ever car, for posterity’s sake.
Porsche built the car – really an electrically powered wagon – in 1898 at the request of Ludwig Lohner, then Austria’s leading coach builder. “He could already see the age of the horse soon would be over,” explained Dieter Landenberger, head of historical archives for the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.
Lohner approached Porsche, an engineer for Austria’s Edison electric power subsidiary, and asked him to convert a Lohner carriage to electric power. The 22-year-old produced the P1, so-called because Porsche stamped his initial and the numeral on all the major components, to indicate this was his first car.
The P1 is propelled by a 287lb electric motor producing a nominal three horsepower.  In “overboost” mode it can crank up the power to five steeds. The car’s gearbox features 12 ratios, including a reverse gear, and under full chatter Porsche estimates the P1 would have attained a top speed of 21mph.
The 1,000lb battery pack contained 44 cells, which produced 80 amps of 110-volt power for the motor. Appropriately for a Porsche – which, despite a concerted move towards the centre of the sport-luxury market, has retained some idiosyncrasies – the power switch to turn the P1 on is mounted to the left of the steering wheel.  “It was already a true Porsche!” quipped Landenberger.
The 2,977lb car could drive 49 miles on a charge, comparable to the range of many of today’s purely electric wonders on a cold day. In 1899, Porsche entered the P1 in a 40km (24-mile) electric vehicle race in Berlin and won by a margin of 18 minutes against a field of competitors that saw more than half fail to finish.
The Porsche Museum is celebrating its fifth anniversary with the display of this ur-Porsche, which was discovered in 2013 by a classic car specialist in Austria. Landenberg said the finder requested anonymity, so the question of how one loses a Porsche in a warehouse that doesn’t also contain the Ark of the Covenant will go unanswered for the time being.
But Landenberger said the reason for it being packed away was obvious: Porsche already recognised its historical significance in 1902. That, he said, would explain his stamped initials on the car’s parts, and that’s why he would have left hand-written instructions on the driver’s seat for the car’s storage.
“I think Ferdinand Porsche was really proud of his construction,” Landenberger said.  By the time the car was placed in storage in 1902, Porsche was pressing forward with more advanced projects, but he wanted to preserve his first effort.
Typically, early prototypes are either destroyed or recycled into subsequent improved versions, so few such cars tend to survive, Landenberger noted.
And the P1 was a keeper. Consider its advanced dual-circuit brake system. In addition to mechanical brakes acting on the rear wheel, the car also had electric brakes that could stop the car using the motor.
It also rolled on Dunlop pneumatic tires, unusual for the time. The tires were needed to cushion the ride because the P1’s Tudor batteries had fragile glass sides.
Porsche’s storage instructions for the P1 were clearly effective, as the car is almost perfectly preserved. “It was really in mint condition,” marvelled Landenberger. “It has some patina, you can see that, but it is amazingly good.”
In the state it was discovered, the car looked like little more than a rolling chassis, because the coachwork was absent. For the museum exhibit, Porsche has reconstructed its original bodywork from period photos, but fashioned it from glass so that the original parts are not obscured by a reproduction body.
Lohner carriages were built with bodywork mounted by six bolts so that owners could, for example, swap on enclosed coachwork for the winter. The P1’s coachwork was likely removed for use on another Lohner carriage, even one pulled by horses, Landenberger said.
The car was also stored without its batteries, but they were a simple design that would be easily duplicated if the car were ever to be driven. And its Dunlop tires have long since dry-rotted to oblivion. Porsche has commissioned a set of replacements from a vintage tire specialist in England, but it will be a year before the set is ready. “It is pretty difficult to get new tires,” Landenberger noted.
Such are the challenges – and joys – of meeting a long-lost relation for the first time.
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