Latest news with #IAC
Time of India
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Time of India
Indian Auto LPG Coalition urges push for clean fuel policy
As World Environment Day nears, the Indian Auto LPG Coalition (IAC) has reiterated its appeal to the government to expedite clean fuel policies. The coalition has highlighted Auto LPG's role as a viable alternative to reduce vehicular emissions , which remain a major source of air pollution in Indian cities. With over 33 crore vehicles running on petrol and diesel, the IAC stressed that vehicular emissions continue to be a significant contributor to air pollution. Auto LPG, which powers around 2.4 million vehicles in India and over 27 million globally, is being positioned as a low-emission alternative requiring minimal infrastructure changes. 'India stands at a fundamental crossroads in its battle against air pollution and climate change,' said Suyash Gupta, Director General of the Indian Auto LPG Coalition. 'With over 33 crore petrol and diesel vehicles on our roads, an outright ban or phase-out is simply not feasible in the short term. By incentivising and streamlining retrofitment to Auto LPG, we can convert millions of vehicles into clean, low-emission alternatives almost overnight.' He added that Auto LPG can offer operational cost savings and reductions in carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emissions compared to conventional fuels. Policy support and retrofitment appeal The IAC has urged policymakers to prioritise clean fuel solutions and support large-scale retrofitment initiatives . It has also called for the inclusion of Auto LPG in India's clean fuel narrative and urged OEMs to offer more Auto LPG variants. Additionally, the coalition has asked the government to lower the GST on conversion kits from 28% to 5% to make retrofitting more accessible. Citing international examples, the coalition noted that countries such as Ukraine, Poland, Korea, and Russia have successfully integrated Auto LPG into their transport systems with supportive policy measures. The coalition's statement comes amid reports that the government may consider phasing out pure petrol and diesel vehicles in Delhi-NCR. Given the scale of the current vehicle fleet, the IAC argues that retrofitting existing vehicles with Auto LPG offers a practical and timely solution. 'This World Environment Day, it's crucial for policymakers to champion clean fuel solutions and support large-scale retrofitment initiatives that can make our cities cleaner, safer, and more sustainable,' Gupta added.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
IAC announces Softball MVPs for the 2025 Season
SECTION IV, N.Y. (WIVT/WBGH) – As the spring sports seasons are being narrowed down in the southern tier, the IAC has named their softball MVPs for the season. From our area, Whitney Point's Olivia Somers was named the IAC Softball North Large Division MVP. She helped the team both at the plate and on the mound as the team's ace this season. She helped the Eagles to a Class B sectional appearance, where they topped Spencer Van Etten/Candor before being knocked out by top-seeded Susquehanna Valley. The IAC Softball South Small Division MVP is RaeAnne Feeko from the Tioga Tigers. She led the team in batting, with a .662 batting average, and helped the Tigers reach a sectional title game, where they will face off against Deposit/Hancock. Across the season, she's tallied 7 homers, scored 40 runs, and driven in 37. Also, all season long, she has only been struck out 3 times. Of her 43 hits all season long, 22 of them, over half, were for extra bases. The IAC Softball North Small Division MVP is Union Springs' Gracie Chalupnicki, and the IAC Softball South Large Division MVP is Thomas A. Edison's Kailey Ripley. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Ex-hostage: Fight for freedom of captives is ‘most Israeli, Jewish, human thing we can do'
Former hostage Eliya Cohen urged the public to continue fighting for those still held in Gaza, calling the mission 'the most Israeli, the most Jewish, and the most human thing we can do." On the 600th day since Hamas abducted 251 people from Israel, former hostage Eliya Cohen urged the public to continue fighting for those still held in Gaza, calling the mission 'the most Israeli, the most Jewish, and the most human thing we can do,' according to a statement released by the Israeli-American Council (IAC). Cohen, 26, was kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, and was held in Gaza for 505 days before being released in February 2025. During the attack, Cohen and his fiancée, Ziv Abud, sought refuge in what later became known as the 'death shelter' near Kibbutz Re'im. Abud survived by hiding under the bodies of other victims for six hours. Cohen, meanwhile, was abducted, shot in the leg, and subjected to brutal conditions in Hamas's underground tunnels. Despite the trauma, Cohen reportedly performed kiddush before Shabbat and maintained a routine of prayer, even while in captivity, as revealed by messages passed on by released hostages. He was unaware that his fiancée had survived until he returned to Israel after his release, as part of a ceasefire agreement. 'I may be here, but part of me is still in Gaza,' Cohen said during the 'Israel United: Celebrating Israel at 77' mega event Tuesday night at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. 'You have united, together, to call for the release of the hostages. You told our stories. You stood up for us. For 505 days, you were fighting for me, while I was in the tunnels under Gaza. And since my release, I've been joining you in that fight. Because the hostages still need your help. It is possible to bring them home — just like I came home.' The event was organized by the IAC, Jewish Federation Los Angeles, the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, and StandWithUs. It marked 600 days since the October 7 Hamas massacre, which left more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals dead and 251 kidnapped. 'Today, we mark 600 days — 600 days that our brothers and sisters are in captivity. Six hundred days that Am Yisrael [the people of Israel] has not been able to heal. Six hundred days of pain and waiting. There are still 58 hostages. We cannot give up. We cannot lose hope,' Cohen said. He added, 'Independence is more than a date on the calendar — it's the ability to live freely. The fact that I survived, and that I am standing here before you tonight — that is a miracle. After 505 days in captivity, I know the true meaning of freedom.' Also speaking at the event was IAC CEO Elan Carr, the former US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. In the IAC statement, Carr described Israel's founding as a transformative moment in global history. 'May 1948 was a watershed moment for human history,' Carr said in the statement. 'Just as the Biblical Exodus from Egypt inspired America's founding and the US Civil Rights movement, the creation of Israel was history's greatest story of national self-determination. Israel has done more to elevate the human condition than almost any other country.' Other dignitaries in attendance included Israel's Consul-General in Los Angeles Israel Bachar, Congressman Brad Sherman, Jewish Federation Los Angeles President and CEO Rabbi Noah Farkas, StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein, and Australian media personality Erin Molan. The evening featured performances by Israeli singer Itay Levi and American actor and comedian Elon Gold. Levi brought Cohen onstage and dedicated a song to him and to all the remaining hostages. According to the IAC, the event aimed to celebrate Israel's 77th Independence Day while honoring the unity of the Jewish people and renewing the call for the release of all hostages.
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Elon Musk's SpaceX Mars Vision Hits Different Now But Matters Even More
Elon Musk, chief executive officer for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), pauses while ... More speaking during the 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016. Musk's vision for building a self-sustaining city on Mars will require full rocket reusability, refueling the spacecraft in orbit and propellant production on the Red Planet. Photographer: Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg It's been almost a decade since Elon Musk stood in front of a crowd in Guadalajara, Mexico and unveiled his magnum opus of a plan to take us all, or at least our species, to Mars. Today, ahead of the latest Starship test launch, he updates that plan with a new timeline that might see humans on the Red Planet by 2029 and a few more specifics, including a robot named Optimus. Musk's plan to make humanity multi-planetary is running several years late, but that's probably no surprise to much of anyone, including Elon himself who has often acknowledged his tendency towards aspirational timelines. The more significant surprise over the past decade has been the shift in Musk's politics and his controversial rise to prominence in that sector, from his purchase and pivot of Twitter to X to his chainsaw-wielding antics at the head of DOGE earlier this year. These are just a few branches on the great oak tree of Musk's public persona that will make him one of the more historic figures of the 20th century. But all his accomplishments and all the controversies will be swept into the background of his biography if he actually pulls off his Mars vision on anything like the scale he's proposed (which is, by the way, a Martian city of up to a million humans). Still, the boat-load of baggage that follows Musk around makes it prudent to wonder if he is truly the best man to lead us to another planet for the first time in thousands of years of human history. Everything I want to believe about people, the world and the way that I'd like it to work makes me think he's not the right man. This feeling isn't rooted in any of his most high-profile political antics of late, but instead in moments like one in particular in late 2020 when he gave the order to launch a Starship prototype without final safety approvals from the FAA. This led to a delay of the next test flight and an odd resolution between the company and the regulator that was not publicly disclosed but amounts to a slap on the wrist. TOPSHOT - A person looks on as SpaceX's huge Super Heavy-Starship is unstacked from the booster as ... More it sits on the launchpad at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on November 16, 2023, ahead of its second test flight posponed to November 18. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on November 15, 2023 authorized SpaceX to carry out its second launch of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, after a first attempt in April ended in a spectacular explosion. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP) (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images) Musk has clashed with regulators in numerous ways over the years and leveled criticisms of outdated bureaucracy that may be justified and surely inform his later efforts at DOGE. Nonetheless, the way Musk chooses to fight back against bureaucratic bloat often seems hubristic and reckless. This is simply not the man I want leading a societal experiment on a new planet. And yet, it is hard to argue with the results he has produced at the helm of SpaceX. While behind on his own aspirational timelines, the development of Starship and the family of reusable workhorse Falcon rockets like Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy has run circles around NASA's contractors and revolutionized the space industry. It's uncomfortable to admit, but I think that while Musk is not suited for any role near governance and civil society, he might be the best if not the only person realistically able to provide us with the transportation to another world in this generation. And this is a journey worth undertaking. Musk's central argument that we need Mars as a sort of lifeboat for humanity is not particularly a strong one, especially in the short term. Even if humanity is in the process of actively making Earth uninhabitable as some of the more extreme activists argue, and at the same time we were to begin actively terraforming Mars to be more habitable, it will still be centuries (if it is even possible at all) before any rational life form might prefer life on Mars. And yes, I'm including even worst case scenarios like fallout from nuclear war on Earth. research station on planet Mars And yet, going to Mars is worthwhile because of the many technological breakthroughs that will likely result in order to achieve the goal, and the dividends that those advancements will pay on Earth to improve well being for all of us. I've often cited how the original space race between the US and Soviet Union gave us a number of innovations; just one of these is the satellite revolution that now underpins our entire globalized society of instantaneous communications and data transport, sharing and availability. This thought alone makes me root for Elon to succeed, despite how so many of his other actions leave my neck sore from shaking my head repeatedly. But I do also buy into the vision of a multiplanetary species over the very long term, likely well beyond my lifespan. Mars may never be another Earth, but the idea of an escape hatch or a pressure valve for our planet is logical. I frequently hear the argument that it doesn't make sense to build on another planet and inevitably ruin it as humans have done to the Earth. Or the cousin to this argument that the resources would be better spent preserving Earth. But the logic fails because being truly multiplanetary in the Muskian vision would actually take pressure off of Earth's ecosystems and again, innovation driven through space exploration is also likely to bolster sustainability on Earth. Not to mention that diverting the resources currently going towards Starship development and using them for environmental restoration is a gross oversimplification of how capital allocation actually works. WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 9: Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Blue Origin and owner of The Washington Post ... More via Getty Images, introduces their newly developed lunar lander "Blue Moon" and gives an update on Blue Origin and the progress and vision of going to space to benefit Earth at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. (Photo by Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images) Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin actually has a very inspirational vision for how space exploration could benefit Earth by moving much of heavy industry off the planet and preserving Earth as a 'garden planet.' The point is - you may not like Musk for a number of reasons, but the notion of humans expanding beyond our home planet is not his novel idea and it's not a bad one. It may actually be a necessary one. It comes down to what you think about humans. On balance, are we a destructive or constructive species? Is the pre-industrial medieval world preferable to the globalized, modern mixed bag of today? There's an interesting discussion to be had there, but the answer to me is a pretty obvious no and I'm interested to go farther. Perhaps with Elon. But when it comes to Mars, I draw more inspiration from the vision of a planetary scientist named John Lewis who was at the University of Arizona and whom I saw speak over a decade ago. He posed a simple question: if you think the modern society we have built is at all interesting or impressive, just imagine what a few quadrillion humans spread out across the solar system can accomplish.
Khaleej Times
27-05-2025
- General
- Khaleej Times
Kuwait prepares for crescent Moon sighting, unveils likely Eid Al Adha date
Kuwaiti authorities will sight the Dhul Hijjah crescent Moon after sunset on Tuesday, as Muslims worldwide prepare for announcements that will determine when will Eid Al Adha be marked this year. The Kuwait Joint Committee for Crescent Sighting, which is a group of volunteers specialising in the observation of crescents and Islamic timings in the country, announced that it will gather to spot the crescent Moon after 6.40pm local time. The event will take place on Sheikh Jaber bridge in the Northern Island, the committee which operates in parallel with the official Sharia Moon-Sighting Committee in the Gulf country clarified. Likely Eid dates The committee said the spotting the crescent Moon today will not likely be possible in Kuwait. In a statement, it added: "The crescent Moon will be born on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, at 6.02am local time. It will remain visible for 43 minutes after sunset, but sighting it will be difficult." "On the following night, the crescent will remain for 111 minutes, and it will be visible to the naked eye." This means that Thursday, May 29 will be the first day of the Hijri month of Dhul Hijjah, Eid will be celebrated starting Saturday, June 7 and the Day of Arafat will fall on June 6. This prediction differs from what astronomers in the UAE said as the International Astronomical Centre (IAC) predicted that the crescent Moon will be spotted today. Islam follows a lunar calendar composed of 12 months based on the moon's cycle where each month begins with the sighting of the new crescent moon. Click here to know more about the process of crescent Moon sighting in Muslim countries.
