Marcus Ching (Page 254)

China has denied media reports that its investigation into alleged lip syncing by a popular Taiwanese rock band is politically motivated.

The reports alleged that Beijing asked Mayday to make pro-China comments and that when the band refused, the inquiry was started to put pressure on them.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office has dismissed the reports as “fake news” and a “complete fabrication”.

Taiwan says it is looking into the claims.

China’s National Radio and Television Administration asked Mayday to publicly declare its support for Beijing’s position that self-ruled Taiwan is part of China, Reuters news agency reported on Thursday, citing an internal Taiwan security note.

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be under Beijing’s control, while Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland, with its own constitution and democratically-elected leaders.

Mayday, known for their “positive rock music”, are among the most successful Taiwanese acts in mainland China. Reports alleged that Beijing wanted to use the band to sway voters, particularly the youth, ahead of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on 13 January.

The requests for Mayday to issue statements in Beijing’s favour went on for a few months and reportedly coincided with the start of the band’s tour of China in May, CNN reported, citing a recent briefing on Taiwan’s security affairs.

Officials at the security briefing claimed that when Mayday did not agree to the requests, Chinese authorities coordinated with state media to stir up discussion on Mayday’s alleged lip-syncing and threatened the band with a penalty.

Commercial regulations in China prohibit lip syncing before paying audiences because it is “deceptive”. The offence is punishable by a fine of 100,000 yuan ($14,110, £11,240). Artists can also be banned from performing and their show organisers could have their licences revoked.

However, the ban is rarely enforced and lip syncing is not uncommon for performers in China. This led some Chinese social media users to question why Mayday appeared to have been singled out when many performers, even those who appear on state television, are believed to lip sync.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said it was investigating the allegations and that if they were true, they would worsen “negative impressions” of the Chinese Communist regime among Taiwanese youth.

Taiwan’s main political parties criticised Chinese authorities for alleged political interference.

Opposition party Kuomintang said it “strongly condemns such actions” if the allegations were true.

“Not only will fans reject such interference, but it will also seriously harm the feelings of people in Taiwan and does nothing to enhance cross-strait exchanges,” said its spokesman Wang Min-shu.

The reports show that China will “stop at nothing to intervene in [Taiwan’s] election”, said the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office condemned the accusations as a deliberate move by Taiwanese authorities to “create rumours”.

“This is insidious and malicious political manipulation. I hope our Taiwan compatriots will recognise their schemes and will not be deceived,” said Chen Binhua, a spokesman for the office.

The investigation against Mayday was made public in early December. The band and its music label have denied that they lip synced, but had said they are cooperating with Chinese authorities.

China has been ramping up military and political pressure ahead of Taiwan’s pivotal presidential race, such as by sending a record number of military planes near the island.

A plane crash in Nepal that killed 72 people, including two infants, was most probably the result of its pilots mistakenly cutting the power, said a report by government-appointed investigators.

This caused a loss of thrust that led to an “aerodynamic stall”.

The Yeti Airlines flight was flying from the capital Kathmandu to the tourist town of Pokhara on 15 January.

It is the country’s deadliest plane crash in 30 years.

The flight on 15 January, which involved an ATR 72, was the flight crew’s third sector of the day, shuttling between Kathmandu and Pokhara.

The privately owned plane crashed in the Seti river gorge just 1.5km (0.9 miles) from the airport, prompting a rescue operation that involved hundreds of Nepalese soldiers.

“Due to its momentum, the aircraft flew for up to 49 seconds before hitting the ground,” aeronautical engineer Dipak Prasad Bastola, a member of the investigating panel, told Reuters.

The pilots had likely put the condition levers, which control power, in the feathering position instead of selecting the flap lever, he explained. Mr Bastola explained that this caused the engine to “run idle and not produce thrust”.

“Following the un-intentional feathering of both engine propellers, the flight crew failed to identify the problem and take corrective actions despite the Crew Alerting Panel cautions,” the report said.

The report also listed a lack of appropriate technical and skill based training, high workload and stress, and non-compliance with standard operating procedures as contributing factors to the accident.

It added that the aircraft had been properly maintained, had had no known defects and that the cockpit crew had been qualified in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

More than a dozen investigators from the US, Canada, France and Singapore were involved in the investigation.

Local resident Divya Dhakal told the BBC in January that she had rushed to the crash site after seeing the aircraft plunge from the sky shortly after 11:00 (05:15 GMT).

“By the time I was there the crash site was already crowded. There was huge smoke coming from the flames of the plane. And then helicopters came over in no time,” she said.

For the past decade, the European Union has banned Nepalese airlines from its airspace over safety concerns.

Aviation accidents are not uncommon in Nepal, often because of its remote runways and sudden weather changes that can make for hazardous conditions. Last May, Tara Air Flight 197, owned by Yeti Airlines, crashed into a mountainside, killing 22 passengers and crew.

In India, 2023 will be remembered as the year we went to the Moon.

On 23 August, massive celebrations broke out across the country when Chandrayaan-3 touched down in the lunar south pole region – an area on the Moon’s surface that no-one had reached before.

With this, India also joined an elite club of countries to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

In the following months, India continued its stride into space – by sending an observation mission to the Sun and then by carrying out a key test flight ahead of its planned mission to take astronauts into space in 2025.

We look back at an eventful year when India’s strides into space made global headlines.

It was “20 minutes of terror” for scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) as the Vikram lander, carrying the Pragyaan rover in its belly, began its descent to the Moon’s surface.

The lander’s speed was gradually reduced from 1.68km per second to almost zero, enabling it to make a soft landing in the south pole region where the surface is “very uneven” and “full of craters and boulders”.

“India is on the Moon,” a triumphant Isro chief S Somanath announced – and with that the country entered the history books.

Over the next 10 days, space scientists – and the rest of the country – followed every move made by the lander and the rover as they gathered data and images and relayed them back to Earth for analysis.

So we saw images of the six-wheeled rover sliding down from the lander’s belly and taking its first steps on the lunar soil. Moving at a speed of 1cm per second, it “traversed over 100m [328 feet]” and at times re-routed to avoid falling into craters.

Some of their findings that show a sharp difference in temperatures just above and below the lunar surface and confirmed presence of a host of chemicals, especially sulphur, in the soil have enthused space scientists and the scientific community at large.

A proud Isro said the mission had not just completed its goals but also exceeded them.

One of the highlights, Isro said, was Vikram’s “hop experiment”. The agency said that when the lander was “commanded to fire its engines, it rose up by about 40cm [16 inches] and landed at a distance of 30-40cm”. This “successful experiment” means the spacecraft could be used in future to bring samples back to the Earth or for human missions, it added.

And earlier this month Isro said it had successfully brought back into Earth’s orbit a part of the rocket that carried Chandrayaan-3 to Moon.

The “propulsion module”, which had detached from the Vikram lander after ferrying it close to the Moon, had re-entered Earth’s orbit after a series of complex manoeuvres.

Together, the hop experiment and the return of the propulsion module to Earth’s orbit are crucial for Isro’s future plans to bring back samples or return astronauts from Space.

Just days after the Moon landing, India launched Aditya-L1 – its first observation mission to the Sun.

The rocket that took off on 2 September is on a four-month 1.5 million km (932,000 miles)-journey from the Earth and is expected to reach its destination next week.

That destination – called L1 or Lagrange point 1 – is at 1% of the Earth-Sun distance. It’s the exact spot between where the gravitational forces of two large objects, such as the Sun and the Earth, cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to “hover”.

Once Aditya – named after the Hindu god of Sun – reaches this “parking spot”, it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. From this vantage point, it will keep an eye on the Sun 24X7 and carry out scientific studies.

The orbiter is carrying seven scientific instruments that will observe and study the solar corona (the outermost layer); the photosphere (the Sun’s surface or the part we see from the Earth) and the chromosphere (a thin layer of plasma that lies between the photosphere and the corona).

Isro says the studies will help scientists understand solar activity, such as the solar wind and solar flares, and their effect on Earth and space weather in real time.

The agency has already shared some of the scientific data collected by the orbiter – and images taken by its camera have been watched millions of times on X (formerly Twitter).

That’s the key question that India’s space agency tried to answer when it launched the Gaganyaan spacecraft on 21 October, the first in a series of test flights ahead of its planned mission to take astronauts into space in 2025.

India has said it plans to place three astronauts into low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 400km for three days and the Isro chief has said Gaganyaan is their “immediate priority”.

“Send an Indian to space and bring them back safely – this is our immediate big-ticket target,” Mr Somanath said.

The test flight in October was to demonstrate whether the crew can safely escape the rocket in case it malfunctions.

So, once the rocket had travelled about 12km in the sky, its abort systems were activated and a series of parachutes were deployed which brought it down safely in the waters of Bay of Bengal from where it was fished out by Indian navy divers.

Since the test was successful, Isro has said it will first send a female humanoid – a robot that resembles a human – in an unmanned Gaganyaan spacecraft before finally sending astronauts into space.

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