2022 World Cup will be in Japan

Tokyo  – FIFA officials who examined the Japanese candidacy to host the 2022 World Cup gives thumbs up at the main soccer stadium outside Tokyo, according to the chairman of Japan’s candidacy. Five-member team from world soccer’s governing body had visited the 64 000 seat stadium in the satellite town of Saitama, north of Tokyo, after being two days in the city of Osaka. Saitama Stadium, which has been used in the nine-year-old World Cup 2002, organized jointly by Japan and North Korea, and became the headquarters of J-League club, Urawa Red Diamonds, who won the Champions League Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 2007.

Fifa’s team, led by President of the Chilean Football Federation Harolds Mayne-Nicholls, check out the stadium, which is one of the 13 stadiums are included in the nomination list of Japan, about an hour and check the condition of the field, seating, and locker room.

“They check everything is rincidan seemed very impressed,” said President of the Japan Football Association, Motoaki Inukai, who led Japan’s nominating committee, told reporters. FIFA inspectors arrived in Japan Monday for a four-day visit. The visit is the first visit of the tour two months to nine candidates for World Cup 2018 and 2022.

A total of 24 officials of the FIFA executive will choose the host on December 2 in Zurich. In Osaka, they used a helicopter to inspect the field the former central railway station of the city, a place that will build the stadium with a capacity of 83 000 seats and will use solar-powered electricity and will be used for the opening and final matches in the year 2022.

They also attended the presentation of the candidacy of Japan, including a plan to serve football fans around the world to watch live matches are broadcast in three dimensions. In Tokyo, they visited the convention center in downtown, The Tokyo International Forum, before meeting with Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

The next visit was to South Korea, Australia, Holland and Belgium jointly nominate, Russia, UK, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Qatar. Japan, South Korea, and Qatar only nominate for the 2022 World Cup, while the lainnnya tried to nominate himself for the World Cup in 2018 or 2022.(AFP)

solar-powered airplane designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions successfully made its first test flight above the Swiss

A solar-powered airplane designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions successfully made its first test flight above the Swiss countryside on Wednesday.The Solar Impulse, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its wings, is a prototype for an aircraft intended to fly around the world without fuel in 2012.It glided for 87 minutes above western Switzerland at an altitude of 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) with German test pilot Markus Scherdel at the controls.”Everything went as it should,” Scherdel told Reuters Television at Payerne military base after landing.

It took six years to built the carbon fiber aircraft, which has the wingspan of an Airbus A340 and weighs as much as a mid-size car (1,600 kg).The prototype made a “flea hop” in December 2009, flying a distance of 350 meters one meter above the runway of a military airbase near Zurich. It was then transported to Payerne airfield in the west of Switzerland for its maiden flight.The propeller plane is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving energy from its solar cells in high-performance batteries.

It is ultimately expected to attain an average flying speed of 70 kms per hour and reach a maximum altitude of 8,500 meters (27,900 feet).Bertrand Piccard, one of the Swiss pilots behind the project, is best known for completing the first non-stop, round-the-world flight in a hot-air balloon in March 1999.

The other main pilot, Swiss engineer Andre Borschberg, has described it as “ten times lighter than the very best glider.””Such a large wingspan for so little weight is something completely new in the world of aviation,” he said on the initiative’s website http://www.solarimpulse.com.

The project’s budget is 100 million Swiss francs ($94 million), 80 million francs of which has been secured from sponsors, according to spokeswoman Rachel de Bros.Belgian chemicals company Solvay, Swiss watchmaker Omega, part of the Swatch group, and German banking giant Deutsche Bank, are the three main sponsors.Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of two Swiss federal polytechnical universities, is scientific advisor.(Reuters)