Worst Effects of Global Warming

Heat Waves



The deadly heat wave that swept across Europe in 2003, killing an estimated 35,000 people, could be the harbinger of an intense heat trend that scientists began tracking in the early 1900s [source: MSNBC].

Extreme heat waves are happening two to four times more often now, steadily rising over the last 50 to 100 years, and are projected to be 100 times more likely over the next 40 years [source: Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University]. Experts suggest continued heat waves may mean future increases in wildfires, heat-related illness and a general rise in the planet's mean temperature.


Heat waves not only make it seem difficult to function, they can be deadly as well. This man tried to cool himself with a water bottle during a 2008 heat wave in New York City.


Read More

MV Iceberg 1 – Interview with Hostages In 2011



The following is a report by Somalia Report - by Andrew Mwangura,

  

pirate prison somalia somaliThe Panamanian flagged Ro-Ro ship MV ICE BERG I was attacked and hijacked by armed pirates on 29th March last year while underway in position latitude 13:15 north and longitude 046:40 east in the Gulf of Aden at approximately 0930hrs. 

On March 29th, 2010 the MV ICEBERG 1 was only ten miles out from the port of Aden heading to the United Kingdom when she was attacked and seized by Somali pirates. Her cargo consists of generators, transformers and empty fuel tanks for a British power rental company, Aggreko International Power Projects.The ICEBERG 1, a RoRo ship with a multinational crew, is typical of much of the traffic in the region, but they became an example of the inhumanity dealt to innocent seafarers on behalf of piracy.

On December 17th the Captain of the vessel, Abdirazzak Ali Saleh, told Agence France-Presse, “The water we have is unclean and we have only one meal a day, boiled rice, that’s it. The crew is suffering physically and mentally,” in a phone interview. He added that they had been locked up in a lower hold approximately five meters square for close to nine months.

Earlier reports indicated that the negotiations were in progress, but the crew members now tell Somalia Report that nothing good is going on except hunger and starvation. A crew member also said that there are currently three crew members suffering from psychological problems.

Almost a year after being hijacked by pirates, the situation aboard MV ICEBERG I is very dark and gloomy, according to a phone interview with the crew members conducted by Somali Report. They are running out of ship stores, fuel and fresh water supply, and in their opinion, Dubai-based Azal Shipping, the ship owner has abandoned them.

They alleged that no negotiations are ongoing to secure the release of the vessel and her 23 multinational crew. They also claim that nothing is being done on behalf of their deceased mate who died on October 27, 2010. The Iceberg’s 3rd officer Wagdi Akram, father of four, jumped overboard and drowned. Crew members told Somalia Report that the deceased crew man had begun to suffer psychological problems after 7 months in captivity and knowingly ended his life.

The remains of the deceased Yemeni 3rd Officer are being kept in the vessel’s freezers but there is only sporadic generator power. The crew reported the matter to the ship owner, but the owner just gave instructions to take the body off the vessel. There have been no arrangements to fly it back to Yemen. “The body is still in the freezer but we have no diesel to run the generators,” the captain said.

 The multinational crew of the vessel is comprised of 8 Yemenis, 6 Indians, 4 Ghanaians, 2 Sudanese, 2 Pakistani and 1 Filipino.


 Read More

AIDS scientists optimistic of AIDS cure, for some


The experts have high hopes for a treatment that will be given to an AIDS patient at an early stage of infection.

Top AIDS scientists were optimistic of finding a cure for the disease that has claimed 30 million lives -- but said it might not work for all people.

The experts have high hopes for a treatment that will be given at an early stage of infection -- most likely a cocktail that includes an immunity booster and a virus killer.

But they said people with a long-running, untreated infection and a compromised immune system may never benefit from an envisioned "functional cure" -- which means a person retains traces of the virus but no symptoms.

"We have had some very interesting little lights at the end of the tunnel in individual studies," Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on the sidelines of a Paris conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the discovery of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"It is a difficult road, but a feasible road," he said.

Proof of vaccine feasibility lay with a Thai study dubbed RV144, which in 2009 demonstrated protection for 31 per cent of some 16,000 people given an experimental vaccine, said Fauci.

"I think we will likely have a (vaccine that works at) better than 31 per cent, but there's certainly the possibility that we won't have a 90 per cent," Fauci told reporters.

"And I think there is even a greater possibility that we won't have a pristine cure that would essentially cure everybody who is HIV infected.

"I think it's not only possible that that won't happen -- I think it is likely that that won't happen."

Fauci and other scientists point to the difficulties they have encountered to completely expunge the virus that destroys the immune system and exposes infected people to pneumonia, TB, and other opportunistic disease.

Antiretroviral drugs slow down virus reproduction, allowing people to live symptom-free lives and slowing transmission to others, but much of the virus hides away in "reservoir" cells only to reemerge and start spreading again once treatment stops.



Read More

 

Somali Pirates Release Crew of ‘Iceberg 1′



Somali pirates have released 22 hostages held since March 2010 aboard the M/V Iceberg 1, according to a statement by officials in Somali’s semiautonomous region of Puntland. The Iceberg 1, hijacked March 29, 2010 off the coast of Yemen, is the longest held vessel by Somali pirates.

“After 2 years and 9 months in captivity, the hostages have suffered signs of physical torture and illness. The hostages are now receiving nutrition and medical care,” the statement said.

To the right is a recent picture taken of the Iceberg 1, compared to the picture above taken sometime prior to its 2010 hijacking.

An operation to free the hostages was first launched almost two weeks ago by the Puntland Maritime Police Force. Three pirates were killed and three others were arrested in the attempt but the raid failed at releasing any of the hostages. Still, the PMPF were able to barricade the vessel in hopes that the pirates eventually surrender.

One of the pirate leaders said they only released the ship after negotiation with Puntland officials and local elders, Reuters reported.

“They kindly requested the release of the ship we held for three years,” a pirate known as Farah told Reuters. ”Puntland forces had attacked us and tried to release the ship by force but they failed. We fought back and defeated them.”

It is unclear if any ransom was paid for the hostages release.

At the time of the attack, the Panamanian-flagged Iceberg 1 had a multinational crew of 24 made up of 8 Yemenis, 6 Indians, 4 Ghanaians, 2 Sudanese, 2 Pakistani and 1 Filipino. The crew was quickly abandoned by the shipowner, Azal Shipping and Cargo, who went out of business soon after hijacking.

One of the crew committed suicide and another, possibly the captain, is believed to have been killed by the pirates.


Read More
 

Worst Effects of Global Warming

Shrinking Glaciers





You don't need special equipment to see that glaciers around the world are shrinking. Tundra once covered with thick permafrost is melting with rising surface temperatures and is now coated with plant life.

In the span of a century, glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park have deteriorated from 150 to just 35 [source: New York Times]. And the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Ganges River, which supplies drinking and irrigation water to 500 million people, are reportedly shrinking by 40 yards (37 meters) each year [source: The Washington Post].
Montana's Glacier National Park will lose some of its majestic beauty as surface temperatures continue to rise.




Read More

Pope Francis attacks 'cult of money' in reform call


Pope Francis

Pope Francis said the root causes of the economic crisis lay in acceptance of money's power over society. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Francis has hit out at unbridled capitalism and the "cult of money", calling for ethical reform of the financial system to create a more humane society.

In an impassioned appeal, the Argentinian pontiff said politicians needed to be bold in tackling the root causes of the economic crisis, which he said lay in an acceptance of money's "power over ourselves and our society".

"We have created new idols," he said in a speech in the Vatican. "The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal."

Attacking unchecked capitalism, the pope said the growing inequality in society was caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good".

Francis, who as a priest in Buenos Aires experienced his country's financial crisis, has made the rejection of riches and luxury the hallmark of his two-month pontificate. Days after his election as the Roman Catholic church's first non-European pope, he spoke of his desire for a "poor church".

On Thursday, he said: "A new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules."

Ethics, he said, were too often dismissed as a nuisance. "There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone," he said. "Money has to serve, not to rule."

The Vatican's own source of economic strife, the once scandal-ridden Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is itself reportedly preparing to implement certain reforms to put its troubles behind it.

Vatican Radio said the bank's new president Ernst von Freyberg told employees the institution was to launch its own website and publish an annual report in a bid to enhance transparency.

In Medical First, a Baby With H.I.V. Is Deemed Cured

Doctors announced [in March] that a baby had been cured of an H.I.V. infection for the first time, a startling development that could change how infected newborns are treated and sharply reduce the number of children living with the virus that causes AIDS.

The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 babies were newly infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than three million children globally are living with H.I.V.

If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world. That could give a lift to research aimed at a cure, something that only a few years ago was thought to be virtually impossible, though some experts said the findings in the baby would probably not be relevant to adults.

The first person cured was Timothy Brown, known as the Berlin patient, a middle-aged man with leukemia who received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor genetically resistant to H.I.V. infection.

“For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown,” said Dr. Deborah Persaud, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and lead author of the report on the baby. “It’s proof of principle that we can cure H.I.V. infection if we can replicate this case.”

Dr. Persaud and other researchers spoke in advance of a presentation of the findings on Monday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta. The results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Some outside experts, who have not yet heard all the details, said they needed convincing that the baby had truly been infected. If not, this would be a case of prevention, something already done for babies born to infected mothers.

“The one uncertainty is really definitive evidence that the child was indeed infected,” said Dr. Daniel R. Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Persaud and some other outside scientists said they were certain the baby — whose name and gender were not disclosed — had been infected. There were five positive tests in the baby’s first month of life — four for viral RNA and one for DNA. And once the treatment started, the virus levels in the baby’s blood declined in the pattern characteristic of infected patients.

Dr. Persaud said there was also little doubt that the child experienced what she called a “functional cure.” Now 2 1/2, the child has been off drugs for a year with no sign of functioning virus. 
 The mother arrived at a rural hospital in the fall of 2010 already in labor and gave birth prematurely. She had not seen a doctor during the pregnancy and did not know she had H.I.V. When a test showed the mother might be infected, the hospital transferred the baby to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where it arrived at about 30 hours old.

Dr. Hannah B. Gay, an associate professor of pediatrics, ordered two blood draws an hour apart to test for the presence of the virus’ RNA and DNA.

The tests found a level of virus at about 20,000 copies per milliliter, fairly low for a baby. But since tests so early in life were positive, it suggests the infection occurred in the womb rather than during delivery, Dr. Gay said.

Typically a newborn with an infected mother would be given one or two drugs as a prophylactic measure. But Dr. Gay said that based on her experience, she almost immediately used a three-drug regimen aimed at treatment, not prophylaxis, not even waiting for the test results confirming infection.

Virus levels rapidly declined with treatment and were undetectable by the time the baby was a month old. That remained the case until the baby was 18 months old, after which the mother stopped coming to the hospital and stopped giving the drugs.

When the mother and child returned five months later, Dr. Gay expected to see high viral loads in the baby. But the tests were negative.

Suspecting a laboratory error, she ordered more tests. “To my greater surprise, all of these came back negative,” Dr. Gay said. 

The True-Life Horror that Inspired Moby-Dick

Herman Melville, circa 1860.

In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales. That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod. Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined.

And on his last day on Nantucket he met the broken-down 60-year-old man who had captained the Essex, the ship that had been attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in an 1820 incident that had inspired Melville’s novel. Captain George Pollard Jr. was just 29 years old when the Essex went down, and he survived and returned to Nantucket to captain a second whaling ship, Two Brothers. But when that ship wrecked on a coral reef two years later, the captain was marked as unlucky at sea—a “Jonah”—and no owner would trust a ship to him again. Pollard lived out his remaining years on land, as the village night watchman.

Herman Melville drew inspiration for Moby-Dick from the 1820 whale attack on the Essex


Melville had written about Pollard briefly in Moby-Dick, and only with regard to the whale sinking his ship. During his visit, Melville later wrote, the two merely “exchanged some words.” But Melville knew Pollard’s ordeal at sea did not end with the sinking of the Essex, and he was not about to evoke the horrific memories that the captain surely carried with him. “To the islanders he was a nobody,” Melville wrote, “to me, the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble—that I ever encountered.”

Pollard had told the full story to fellow captains over a dinner shortly after his rescue from the Essex ordeal, and to a missionary named George Bennet. To Bennet, the tale was like a confession. Certainly, it was grim: 92 days and sleepless nights at sea in a leaking boat with no food, his surviving crew going mad beneath the unforgiving sun, eventual cannibalism and the harrowing fate of two teenage boys, including Pollard’s first cousin, Owen Coffin. “But I can tell you no more—my head is on fire at the recollection,” Pollard told the missionary. “I hardly know what I say.”
The trouble for Essex began, as Melville knew, on August 14, 1819, just two days after it left Nantucket on a whaling voyage that was supposed to last two and a half years. The 87-foot-long ship was hit by a squall that destroyed its topgallant sail and nearly sank it. Still, Pollard continued, making it to Cape Horn five weeks later. But the 20-man crew found the waters off South America nearly fished out, so they decided to sail for distant whaling grounds in the South Pacific, far from any shores.

To restock, the Essex anchored at Charles Island in the Galapagos, where the crew collected sixty 100-pound tortoises. As a prank, one of the crew set a fire, which, in the dry season, quickly spread. Pollard’s men barely escaped, having to run through flames, and a day after they set sail, they could still see smoke from the burning island. Pollard was furious, and swore vengeance on whoever set the fire. Many years later Charles Island was still a blackened wasteland, and the fire was believed to have caused the extinction of both the Floreana Tortoise and the Floreana Mockingbird.

Essex First Mate Owen Chase, later in life. 


By November of 1820, after months of a prosperous voyage and a thousand miles from the nearest land, whaleboats from the Essex had harpooned whales that dragged them out toward the horizon in what the crew called “Nantucket sleigh rides.” Owen Chase, the 23-year-old first mate, had stayed aboard the Essex to make repairs while Pollard went whaling. It was Chase who spotted a very big whale—85 feet in length, he estimated—lying quietly in the distance, its head facing the ship. Then, after two or three spouts, the giant made straight for the Essex, “coming down for us at great celerity,” Chase would recall—at about three knots. The whale smashed head-on into the ship with “such an appalling and tremendous jar, as nearly threw us all on our faces.”

The whale passed underneath the ship and began thrashing in the water. “I could distinctly see him smite his jaws together, as if distracted with rage and fury,” Chase recalled. Then the whale disappeared. The crew was addressing the hole in the ship and getting the pumps working when one man cried out, “Here he is—he is making for us again.” Chase spotted the whale, his head half out of water, bearing down at great speed—this time at six knots, Chase thought. This time it hit the bow directly under the cathead and disappeared for good.

The water rushed into the ship so fast, the only thing the crew could do was lower the boats and try fill them with navigational instruments, bread, water and supplies before the Essex turned over on its side.

Pollard saw his ship in distress from a distance, then returned to see the Essex in ruin. Dumbfounded, he asked, “My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?”

“We have been stove by a whale,” his first mate answered.

Another boat returned, and the men sat in silence, their captain still pale and speechless. Some, Chase observed, “had no idea of the extent of their deplorable situation.”

The men were unwilling to leave the doomed Essex as it slowly foundered, and Pollard tried to come up with a plan. In all, there were three boats and 20 men. They calculated that the closest land was the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands, and Pollard wanted to set off for them—but in one of the most ironic decisions in nautical history, Chase and the crew convinced him that those islands were peopled with cannibals and that the crew’s best chance for survival would be to sail south. The distance to land would be far greater, but they might catch the trade winds or be spotted by another whaling ship. Only Pollard seemed to understand the implications of steering clear of the islands. (According to Nathaniel Philbrick, in his book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, although rumors of cannibalism persisted, traders had been visiting the islands without incident.)

Thus they left the Essex aboard their 20-foot boats. They were challenged almost from the start. Saltwater saturated the bread, and the men began to dehydrate as they ate their daily rations. The sun was ravaging. Pollard’s boat was attacked by a killer whale. They spotted land—Henderson Island—two weeks later, but it was barren. After another week the men began to run out of supplies. Still, three of them decided they’d rather take their chances on land than climb back into a boat. No one could blame them. And besides, it would stretch the provisions for the men in the boats.

The whaleship Essex, “stove by a whale” in 1821.


By mid-December, after weeks at sea, the boats began to take on water, more whales menaced the men at night, and by January, the paltry rations began to take their toll.  On Chase’s boat, one man went mad, stood up and demanded a dinner napkin and water, then fell into “most horrid and frightful convulsions” before perishing the next morning. “Humanity must shudder at the dreadful recital” of what came next, Chase wrote. The crew “separated limbs from his body, and cut all the flesh from the bones; after which, we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again—sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea.”  They then roasted the man’s organs on a flat stone and ate them.

Over the coming week, three more sailors died, and their bodies were cooked and eaten. One boat disappeared, and then Chase’s and Pollard’s boats lost sight of each other. The rations of human flesh did not last long, and the more the survivors ate, the hungrier they felt. On both boats the men became too weak to talk. The four men on Pollard’s boat reasoned that without more food, they would die. On February 6, 1821—nine weeks after they’d bidden farewell to the Essex—Charles Ramsdell, a teenager, proposed they draw lots to determine who would be eaten next. It was the custom of the sea, dating back, at least in recorded instance, to the first half of the 17th century. The men in Pollard’s boat accepted Ramsdell’s suggestion, and the lot fell to young Owen Coffin, the captain’s first cousin.

Pollard had promised the boy’s mother he’d look out for him. “My lad, my lad!” the captain now shouted, “if you don’t like your lot, I’ll shoot the first man that touches you.” Pollard even offered to step in for the boy, but Coffin would have none of it. “I like it as well as any other,” he said.
Ramsdell drew the lot that required him to shoot his friend. He paused a long time. But then Coffin rested his head on the boat’s gunwale and Ramsdell pulled the trigger.

“He was soon dispatched,” Pollard would say, “and nothing of him left.”

By February 18, after 89 days at sea, the last three men on Chase’s boat spotted a sail in the distance. After a frantic chase, they managed to catch the English ship Indian and were rescued.

Three hundred miles away, Pollard’s boat carried only its captain and Charles Ramsdell. They had only the bones of the last crewmen to perish, which they smashed on the bottom of the boat so that they could eat the marrow. As the days passed the two men obsessed over the bones scattered on the boat’s floor. Almost a week after Chase and his men had been rescued, a crewman aboard the American ship Dauphin spotted Pollard’s boat. Wretched and confused, Pollard and Ramsdell did not rejoice at their rescue, but simply turned to the bottom of their boat and stuffed bones into their pockets. Safely aboard the Dauphin, the two delirious men were seen “sucking the bones of their dead mess mates, which they were loath to part with.”

The five Essex survivors were reunited in Valparaiso, where they recuperated before sailing back for Nantucket. As Philbrick writes,  Pollard had recovered enough to join several captains for dinner, and he told them the entire story of the Essex wreck and his three harrowing months at sea. One of the captains present returned to his room and wrote everything down, calling Pollard’s account “the most distressing narrative that ever came to my knowledge.”

Years later, the third boat was discovered on Ducie Island; three skeletons were aboard. Miraculously, the three men who chose to stay on Henderson Island survived for nearly four months, mostly on shellfish and bird eggs, until an Australian ship rescued them.

Once they arrived in Nantucket, the surviving crewmen of the Essex were welcomed, largely without judgment. Cannibalism in the most dire of circumstances, it was reasoned, was a custom of the sea. (In similar incidents, survivors declined to eat the flesh of the dead but used it as bait for fish. But Philbrick notes that the men of the Essex were in waters largely devoid of marine life at the surface.)
Captain Pollard, however, was not as easily forgiven, because he had eaten his cousin. (One scholar later referred to the act as “gastronomic incest.”) Owen Coffin’s mother could not abide being in the captain’s presence. Once his days at sea were over, Pollard spent the rest of his life in Nantucket. Once a year, on the anniversary of the wreck of the Essex, he was said to have locked himself in his room and fasted in honor of his lost crewmen.

By 1852, Melville and Moby-Dick had begun their own slide into obscurity. Despite the author’s hopes, his book sold but a few thousand copies in his lifetime, and Melville, after a few more failed attempts at novels, settled into a reclusive life and spent 19 years as a customs inspector in New York City. He drank and suffered the death of his two sons. Depressed, he abandoned novels for poetry. But George Pollard’s fate was never far from his mind. In his poem Clarel he writes of

A night patrolman on the quay
Watching the bales till morning hour
Through fair and foul. Never he smiled;
Call him, and he would come; not sour
In spirit, but meek and reconciled:
Patient he was, he none withstood;
Oft on some secret thing would brood.

Photos: Wikipedia 

Read More

Worst Effects of Global Warming

Rising Sea Level



Earth's hotter temperature doesn't necessarily mean the Miami lifestyle is moving to the Arctic, but it does mean rising sea levels. How are hotter temperatures linked to rising waters? Hotter temperatures mean ice -- glaciers, sea ice and polar ice sheets -- is melting, increasing the amount of water in the world's seas and oceans.

Scientists are able to measure that melt water from Greenland's ice cap directly impacts people in the United States: The flow of the Colorado River has increased sixfold [source: Scientific American]. And scientists project that as the ice shelves on Greenland and Antarctica melt, sea levels could be more than 20 feet (6 meters) higher in 2100 than they are today [source: An Inconvenient Truth]. Such levels would submerge many of Indonesia's tropical islands and flood low-lying areas such as Miami, New York City's Lower Manhattan and Bangladesh.


Read More

Hijacked fuel tanker recovered


 A Malaysian-flagged tanker has been recovered from pirates after being held captive for a week, ship owner Vast Alliance has confirmed.

The Arowana United was boarded by pirates while anchored off eastern Malaysia’s Labuan Island at about midnight on 19 October. The tanker docked at Labuan on 14 October to conduct bunkering but had to halt operations due to insufficient permits,” representative from ship- owner explained.

“The company had completed all paper requirements by 18 October and had scheduled the vessel to resume bunkering on 19 October. That’s when we received a call from our client to say vessel nowhere in sight”, added the representative from Vast Alliance.


Vast Alliance then alerted the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency about the missing tanker. The company official has further stated:” On 24 October, one of the crew were able to contact our head office to report that they had been taken hostage by more than 10 pirates armed with guns and knives.”

The pirates locked the five crew members in the cabin while the captain, chief engineer, and bosun were instructed to sail the vessel out of Labuan anchorage to Indonesia’s Pulau Natuna Islands. There, the tankers 650,000 litres of Marine Fuel, worth $3 393,000 was transferred to another vessel.

On 26 October Arowana United was spotted by the authorities off Pulau Natuna, whereupon it and its crew of eight were recovered.

“Some of the crew were slightly injured and had been robbed of their personal belongings,” said the company official.

The hijackers have changed the vessel’s name to Arow. The vessel docked at Port Klang, Malaysia, to allow its crew members to be questioned by police.


High Winds Damage French Ferry Napoleon Bonaparte





A passenger ferry is listing along a dock in Marseille after being wrenched from her moorings by 60mph winds that battered France's southern coast.

The Napoleon Bonaparte rotated before crashing into the wharf after some dozen ropes snapped in the early hours of Sunday morning, according to reports today.

The impact ripped a 30-metre long hole in the rear of the boat below the waterline, according to owners Nationale Corse Méditerranée (SNCM).

Water poured into two watertight compartments and the ship's keel now 'seems to rest on the bottom,' a SNCM spokesman told Metro France.

Today questions were being asked as to why the ship had not been moved ahead of the storm.



Questions: France's maritime union representative Yann Pantel said he was surprised the vessel had not been moved in light of an orange storm alert
 


France's maritime union representative Yann Pantel told Metro France of his surprise that the vessel had been left at the dock in spite of an orange storm alert.

The flooded boat, which can carry 2,650 passengers and 708 vehicles, was being 'stabilised' on Monday, Hugues Parant, the prefect of Marseille, told AFP.

The 16-year-old boat is due to be patched up and pumped out on Monday afternoon.

SNCM said there was no risk of pollution from oil because the ballasts containing fuel were not affected.

Violent winds swept through the region over the weekend causing damage and the Ligue 1 football match between Marseille and Lyon to be postponed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224764/French-passenger-ferry-Napoleon-Bonaparte-left-listing-ocean-moorings-snap-60mph-winds.html#ixzz2SdY0VFYJ

Top 10 Most Famous Ships in History: The Santa Maria



Santa Maria


Though less than 70 feet long and by all accounts a slow and hideous vessel, few can deny the fame the tiny Spanish boat  achieved when she brought Christopher Columbus to the new world.

While Columbus has acquired a bad rap of late for his brutality as governor of Hispaniola and other little foibles he was famous for, no one can deny his extraordinary seamanship or his courage in making the crossing not just once, but four times during his lifetime. Unfortunately, the sturdy little Santa Maria would not be making a repeat journey, as she ran aground on Christmas day, 1492, and was salvaged for her wood (which, interesting enough, went into the construction of another ship originally called La Navidad—Christmas—because the wreck occurred on Christmas Day).

While the original is long gone, no fewer than four replicas of the ship have been built since, all of them capable of putting to sea. Unfortunately, none of them are exact duplicates as no records of the ship’s original construction exist, resulting in a number of different configurations.


Read More

Almost 500 migrants rescued in 24 hours off Italian coast

As weather clears illegal migrants arrive in Italy


 

(Reuters) - The Italian coastguard rescued almost 500 migrants crammed into five small inflatable boats off the Sicilian coast in the Mediterranean Sea after receiving distress calls overnight, the coastguard said on Thursday.
Coastguard spokesman Marco di Milla said the migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, included some pregnant women and several people in need of hospital treatment.

"They were in inflatable boats of a maximum of 10 meters long, which can carry about 10 people safely. Instead, these boats were carrying up to 100 people," di Milla told Reuters. He said the boats had likely started their journey in the North African state of Libya.

Most of the migrants were taken to Lampedusa, a tiny island south of Sicily that receives thousands of immigrants each year.

Improved spring weather conditions have increased the numbers trying to make the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean, but thousands have died due to shipwrecks, harsh conditions and a lack of food and water.

An estimated 1,500 migrants lost their lives in the Mediterranean in 2011, many of them trying to escape the turmoil caused by the Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa, according to Human Rights Watch. It estimated the death toll in 2012 at more than 300.


Naw Kham Executed In China: State TV Shows Drug Smuggler Before Lethal Injection

 By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

 

BEIJING -- China executed four foreigners on Friday for killing 13 Chinese sailors in an attack on the Mekong River, following a live nationwide broadcast showing them being led to their deaths that harkened back to the mass public execution rallies of past years.

The attack on the sailors on the Mekong highlighted drug smuggling and extortion rackets along the vital waterway and led to a major expansion of Chinese police powers in the region.

Accused ringleader Naw Kham and accomplices Hsang Kham, Yi Lai, and Zha Xiha were found guilty of the killings. The four are of Myanmar, Thai, Laotian, and unknown nationality.

In the unusual live broadcast, state-run CCTV showed the four being led in shackles and handcuffs from their cells at a jail in southwestern Yunnan province's capital of Kunming prior to their execution by lethal injection. Their deaths were announced two hours later by the Yunnan provincial police department.

China has mostly abandoned the once-common practice of parading condemned criminals before crowds in stadiums and through city streets on the way to execution grounds on the edge of cities.

The broadcast was a response to widespread Chinese outrage over the killings, as well as an attempt to emphasize the heinousness of the crime and the efficiency of China's police and courts in doling out justice, said Prof. Yu Guoming of Renmin University's School of Mass Media.

"The brutality of Naw Kham in the killing really got ordinary Chinese people riled up. It's no wonder that it has attracted such huge attention from the public," Yu said.

The gang was accused of ambushing two flat-bottomed Chinese cargo ships on the upper reaches of the Mekong River on Oct. 5, 2011, in Myanmar waters infested with gangs that make their living from protection rackets and the production and smuggling of heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs. The Mekong flows south from Yunnan through the infamous Golden Triangle region, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, and provides a vital trade and transportation route between southwestern China and Southeast Asia.

The ships were recovered downriver later that day by Thai police following a gun battle with gang members, and the bodies of the 13 victims, some bound by the hands before being stabbed and shot, were fished from the river over the following days. Methamphetamine was found on the boats, leading to speculation they had been hijacked as part of a drug smuggling plot.

However, gang members later testified the killings were in retaliation for the ships refusing to pay protection money and allowing themselves to be used by Thai and Laotian soldiers in attacks on warlord bases. They said the drugs were placed on board to make it look like there had been a struggle between smugglers.

China's Public Security Ministry made the case a top priority, forming a 200-officer special investigation group and working with Thai, Lao, and Myanmar authorities to gather evidence and track down the perpetrators. Naw Kham was arrested in Laos last April and turned over to China the following month along with the other defendants. Because the killings took place on board Chinese-flagged vessels, Beijing, whose massive economy and powerful military give it considerable sway over its smaller southern neighbors, ruled the trials should take place in China.

The four were sentenced to death in November in a two-day trial, and the judgment was upheld by China's Supreme People's Court in Beijing following an automatic appeal in accordance with Chinese law.

In their testimony, the four said they had conspired with renegade Thai soldiers, nine of whom were arrested in October 2011 in Thailand and charged with taking part in the killings. They have yet to be tried or extradited, and remain in Thai army custody.

Months after the killings, China established a multinational river patrol headquartered in Yunnan which Beijing says has been effective in clamping down on such incidents.

"The case set a precedent that China would vigorously pursue criminals who commit crimes against its nationals. That's led to an expansion of Chinese police powers into the neighboring region and a big boost in Chinese influence," said Jin Canrong, associate dean of Renmin University's School of International Studies in Beijing.

China has devoted increasing attention to the safety of its nationals abroad as the Chinese economy continues to expand overseas. In recent years, Beijing has used navy ships and air force planes to help evacuate Chinese workers from fighting in Libya, and its diplomats have worked to free kidnapped workers and resolve local disputes across Africa and parts of Asia.

___
Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing and writer Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Carnival suffers court setback




The class-action suit filed by Costa Concordia passengers will proceed in Florida state court, not Italy, representing a major legal blow Carnival.

The cruise giant has sought to argue Costa Concordia cases at the US federal court level, where it can then ask that the suits be transferred to the Italian legal system. Last year, it successfully deployed this strategy to move a class action filed by Giglio Island residents from a US federal court to the Italian jurisdiction.

Carnival has subsequently attempted to use this legal strategy with the primary class-action suit filed by passengers. That suit is seeking at least $2M/passenger plus $590M in punitive damages. The class action was originally filed in Florida state court. Carnival sought to have it shifted to federal jurisdiction last September.

However, on 15 February US District Court Judge William Dimitrouleas ruled against Carnival and sent the suit back to Florida State Court.

In a statement, plaintiff’s counsel Marc Jay Bern affirmed: ”We are thrilled that we can now turn in our attention to litigating the facts of this case before a Florida state court where the plaintiff s can expect their interest will be protected, rather than in Italy, where the courts are notoriously slow and cases for mass torts such as shipwrecks have taken as long as 30 years without final decisions.