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New Delhi, India – It was on August 7, when two Panamanian cargo ships collided off the Mumbai coast causing an oil spill from one of the two vessels that is threatening the Mumbai coast.

Indian Coast Guard officials said no casualties were reported to the 33 crew members who were rescued after the incident.

According to Coast Guard officials, the outbound merchant vessel from Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), collided with MV Khalijia-III, five nautical miles from the shores at 9:50 am when the latter was sailing towards Mumbai Port Trust (MPT), off Mumbai harbour, for berthing.

A senior Coast Guard official said on condition of that the spill was “significant” but claimed the situation was “under control”. However, shipping lanes off India’s commercial hub Mumbai may be closed for another two days because of the oil spill.

The collision left the Panamanian vessel tilting in the water, although it has now been stabilized with no more oil leaking from containers on its deck, according to S.S. Dasila, an Indian coast guard commandant.

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Continue reading »]]> Air France Flight 447 sent out 24 automated error messages — including one saying the aircraft’s autopilot had disengaged — before it vanished with 228 people on board, aviation investigators said Saturday.

But even as they analyzed the error messages and satellite images of the doomed flight’s path, investigators said they still have a lot of work to determine what caused the plane to go down.

“I would just like to ask you to bear in mind that all of this is dynamic and there are a lot of question marks,” Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France’s accident investigation bureau told reporters.

“We don’t know how the aircraft entered the water. We don’t know how these pieces of debris entered into the water and that you have to take into account the current … and the shape of the ocean floor.”

The error messages suggest that the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through the stormy weather it encountered before the crash, officials said.

In addition, investigators have said the plane’s autopilot disengaged, cabin pressure was lost and there was an electrical failure before the disaster.

The jet’s manufacturer, Airbus, sent a Telex to operators of Airbus models reminding them of what to do when speed indicators give conflicting readings.

The spokesman said the notice does not mean there is any major flaw in the aircraft, but is simply a reminder to pilots of what to do in the cockpit if they get conflicting information about air speed.

All 228 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 330 are presumed to have died when the plane disappeared northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil.

The flight originated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was en route to Paris, France.

Search teams were still trying to find debris from the jet Saturday, two days after a Brazilian Air Force official said debris plucked from the ocean was not from the Air France jet.

Official: Missing plane sent 24 error messages

Continue reading »]]> An Indonesian military plane has crashed, killing at least 97 people.  As Daniel Schearf reports from

The military transport plane crashed into homes near an air force base Wednesday morning as it was coming in for a landing.

Over one hundred military personnel and their families were on board the Hercules C-130 plane when it went down in an area of East Java.

Witnesses reported seeing parts of the plane falling from the sky and hearing explosions.

Indonesian television showed burning wreckage scattered across rice paddies.  The tail was the only section of the plane left intact.

First Marshal Bambang Sulistyo is a spokesman for the air force.  He says there is an investigation under way to determine what caused the crash.

He gives the death toll and says it may rise, but so far there are 15 survivors.

Indonesian authorities said the plane, which had been scheduled to fly on to Indonesia’s Papua province, was almost 30 years old.

Indonesia’s air force has suffered a series of deadly crashes.

In April, 24 military personnel died when their Fokker aircraft crashed into a hangar at an air base in West Java.

Indonesia’s commercial aircrafts have also in recent years suffered deadly crashes.

The poor safety record led the European Union to ban Indonesian airlines from its airspace.

Indonesian Military Plane Crash Kills At Least 97

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Continue reading »]]> An Alaskan volcano 100 miles (160km) south-west of the state’s largest city, Anchorage, erupted overnight, sending a plume of smoke up to 15,000 metres (50,000ft) into the air.

Mount Redoubt experienced four large explosions late on Sunday and early today, according to geologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The observatory has issued a red alert, meaning eruption is imminent or under way, with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere likely.

The current wind patterns are taking the ash cloud away from Anchorage and instead heading toward Willow and Talkneetna, two communities near Mount McKinley, North America’s largest mountain in Denali national park.

Geophysicist John Power said no cities have yet reported any ash-fall from the volcano, but noted that it was still early.

Using radar and satellite technology, the National Weather Service (NWS) is predicting ash to start falling later today .

Dave Stricklan, a hydrometeorogical technician with the NWS, said he expected very fine ash: “Just kind of a light dusting”. He said the significant amount of ash probably dropped immediately, right down the side of the volcano.

“The heavier stuff drops out very quickly, and then the other stuff filters out. There’s going to be a very fine amount of it that’s going to be suspended in the atmosphere for quite some time, but nothing to really affect anything such as aviation travel.”

Redoubt is a steep-sided cone-shaped volcano, about 6 miles in diameter, which last erupted nearly 20 years ago.

Observatory geologists monitored the eruption and posted updates in real-time last night. At 10.35pm, they reported: “At these heightened levels of seismicity, there could be a quick escalation to eruptive activity.”

Three minutes later, the first explosion took place, followed by a second about 20 minutes later. The third occurred 15 minutes after midnight and the final explosion was registered at 1.39am.

Geologists noted an increase in seismic activity at the volcano last week. Last Monday they reported a small explosion and “plume of gas and ash that rose to about 15,000ft above sea level” did not herald a significant eruption in the short term, but added: “Conditions may evolve rapidly.”

Alaskan volcano Mount Redoubt erupts

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An oil spill in eastern Australia has forced officials to declare a 60 kilometer stretch of the Queensland coast a disaster zone amid warnings that legal action could be taken against the operator of the cargo ship that lost its fuel in stormy seas.

Australian authorities originally said about 30 tons of oil were lost when 31 containers of fertilizer slipped from the Hong Kong-flagged “Pacific Adventurer” ship and punctured fuel tanks in the hull as the ship was battered in cyclone-stirred waters.

Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said Friday the spill was larger than had been reported but did not say exactly how much oil was shed.

The authorities have declared large stretches of normally white-sand beaches along the popular surf region of the Sunshine Coast a disaster zone, as well as Moreton and Bribie islands, which are national parks.
At the beach resort of Coolum, north of the Queensland state capital of Brisbane, dark brown waves rolled ashore instead of the usual whitecaps and aqua waters of the Coral Sea.

Anna Bligh says the causes of this environmental disaster will be thoroughly examined.

“This will be the subject of a full investigation. If there is any evidence that any government agency could have or should have done better, we will certainly be taking all relevant action to address that,” said Bligh. “At this stage my priority is to have teams of people out there cleaning this mess up to protect wildlife in what may well be the worst environmental disaster that Queensland or the south-east of our State has faced.”

Bligh says the ship’s operators would be held liable for the costs of the massive cleanup operation.

The lost 31 containers that held hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer have not been found.

The ship was on its way to Indonesia to deliver its shipment when the accident occurred.

Its owner, Hong Kong-based “Swire,” may face fines of up to $1 million if found guilty of environmental breaches.
Conservationists have warned that oil could be washed up for weeks to come along Queensland’s popular coastline.

Hundreds of people are involved in the clean-up and are trying to stop rivers from being contaminated.

The Queensland government has defended its response to the disaster thus far amid accusations that it failed to act quickly enough.

VOA News – Australia Declares Oil Spill Area Disaster Zone

Continue reading »]]> The search for 16 oil workers missing after their helicopter crashed into the Atlantic off Newfoundland has now been called off.

Officials say it is unlikely the missing workers could have survived.

Rescue officials say the mission is now one of recovery.

A spokesman says the search ended after 34 hours, adding that it has gone beyond the 24-hour life expectancy time for someone in a survival suit.

One body was recovered and one man was rescued. He is listed in critical but stable condition in hospital.

The case now goes to the Transportation Safety Board.

The lead investigator says plans are already underway to lift the helicopter to the surface some time next week.

It is about 120 metres down and a remote submersible equipped with cameras will be sent to the ocean floor, possibly as soon as today, to examine the wreck.

Canadian chopper crash search called off

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A fire swept through Bangladesh’s largest shopping mall Friday in the capital, Dhaka, killing at least one person and injuring several others.

Authorities were still battling the blaze several hours after it began on top floors of the office tower at the Bashundhara City complex. Helicopters were used to douse the flames from the top floor of the 21-story building.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the mall. Authorities are trying to determine if people are still trapped inside.

The cause of the fire is not known.

The multi-purpose complex includes more than 2,500 shops, restaurants, cinemas and offices. It is located near Kawran Bazaar, a major commercial hub in the capital.

Fire Sweeps Through Bangladeshi High Rise

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Rescue workers are searching for up to four people still missing after a building housing archives collapsed on Tuesday in the German city of Cologne.

Witnesses said there may have been two people inside a car parked outside the archive and another two in a nearby building that subsequently collapsed.

The area must be stabilised before rescue teams can move into the rubble.

Cracks and groaning noises had alerted staff and visitors at the archive, all of whom escaped before it collapsed.

Work was being carried out nearby on a new underground railway, but the company involved said there had been no recent tunnelling.

‘Spreading cracks’

Gregor Timmer, a spokesman for the city of Cologne, said on Wednesday morning that rescue workers had to assume that between two and four people were still missing underneath the rubble of the archive and two neighbouring buildings.

“There are reports on two inhabitants of the building next to the archive that collapsed and two people who were inside a car in front of the building at the time of the tragedy,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Up to nine people were initially reported missing after the collapse, but several have since contacted city officials, police said.

The archive building dated from the 1970s and contained 65,000 original documents, some of them dating back more than 1,000 years.

There has been no word on the condition of the collection, which includes manuscripts by Communist philosophers Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels and items left to the city by figures such as the Nobel Prize-winning author, Heinrich Boell.

Mr Timmer said rescuers needed to stabilise the remains of the structures before moving into the rubble to determine whether anyone was trapped inside.

“The buildings to the left and right of the collapse site are severely damaged and are in danger of partly falling down. That is why rescuers are currently unable to step onto the rubble,” he added.

On Tuesday evening, concrete was pumped into the ground to firm it up. Two hundred rescue workers are still at the scene.

The six-storey building collapsed at about 1400 local time (1300 GMT), bringing down two other neighbouring buildings.

One witness said the scene resembled a Hollywood movie as cracks slowly spread up the building’s facade before it collapsed in a cloud of dust.

It is not yet clear what caused the buildings to collapse, officials said.

Authorities in Cologne have evacuated buildings within a 150m radius around the site, including two schools and a retirement home.

German archive building collapses

Continue reading »]]> Chile’s Chaiten volcano, which erupted spectacularly last year, spewed a vast cloud of ash on Thursday in what appeared to be a partial collapse of its cone.

Television footage showed a could of ash billowing into the sky over the town of Chaiten, which lies about six miles (10 km) from the crater.

Authorities evacuated about 160 people from the area. Most of the town’s 4,500 residents were evacuated last year after the volcano, dormant for thousands of years, erupted. The government is planning to relocate the town.

“There has been a significant resumption of activity of Chaiten volcano,” Deputy Interior Minister Patricio Rosende said. “Our security team have observed an increase in the size of a column of ash and smoke, with a deformation to one side.”

“That leads us to presume that there is a collapse of one of the cones,” he added. “This is more proof of the imminent risk in the area. It is a time-bomb.”

National emergency office Onemi said that while there was a large volume of ash, there had been none of the earth tremors or groaning sounds that accompanied activity last year.

The government insists on moving the entire town, but some residents are resisting the plan — to the exasperation of emergency officials.

“The volcano has always been in a state of eruption (since May), that has to be made clear,” an Onemi official said, asking not to be named.

“We have repeatedly said that there is a red alert and that people should not be there, and if that had been respected, then police would not be evacuating people.”

A cloud of debris soared as high as 20 miles (32 km) into the air when the volcano erupted in May and was kept aloft by the pressure of constant eruptions for weeks, covering towns in neighboring Argentina with volcanic ash. (Reporting by Monica Vargas and Simon Gardner)

Chile’s Chaiten volcano spewing ash again | Reuters

Continue reading »]]> A volcano near southwest Colombia’s border with Ecuador erupted on Saturday, leading the government to issue a “red alert” for the region.

There were not believed to be any fatalities or injuries in the blast, which happened at about 7:10 p.m. ET (12:10 a.m. Sunday GMT), said Carlos Lineras of the Colombia Institute for Geology and Mines.

The institute issued an evacuation order for about 7,000 people living near the Galeras volcano.

The volcano is not in a heavily populated region.

Galeras has erupted several times since it became active again in 1989. The only fatalities were in 1993, when nine people — all scientists or tourists in or near the volcano’s crater — were killed.

Volcano eruption sparks alert in Colombia