Monday 28 October 2013

Spain: Suspected methane gas leak kills six miners, ten trapped


A methane gas leak at a coalmine in northern Spain has been blamed for the deaths of six miners.

The deaths occurred at the Santa Lucia mine near the town of Pola de Gordon, according to the 112 regional emergency service of Castilla and Leon.

Five others people were injured, four seriously. They were taken to the hospital in Leon, the regional capital.

Ten other workers remain trapped inside the mine, according to El Pais newspaper.

The civil guard reported that there was no explosion and the probable cause of death was poisoning from gas leak.

The mine is 694 metres (2,300ft) deep and is operated by the Basque Leon Coal Company.

Some 400 people work in the mine. The last mining tragedy in Leon was in 1995 when a 32-year-old worker died and other four were seriously injured in a mine gas explosion.

The gas leak happened so quickly that the miners did not have time to put their protective masks on, said Jose Antonio Colinas, who represents miners at the local branch of the UGT trade union.

"They really did not have time to react, the atmosphere was invaded by methane," he told reporters at the scene.

It is the worst accident at a Spanish mine since 14 miners were killed on August 31, 1995, due to a methane explosion at a coalmine near Mieres in the northern province of Austurias.

Spain's coal mining sector has been contracting for decades, with a reduction in government mining subsidies hastening the closure of unprofitable mines.

Around 40 coalmines are still in operation, mainly in the north of the country, employing some 8,000 miners.

Like other European countries, Spain has committed to gradually close unprofitable coalmines in the next few years.

Monday 28 October 2013

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/517632/20131028/spain-mine-gas-leak-6-dead-castilla.htm

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/19585417/six-dead-in-gas-leak-at-spain-coalmine/

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Niger migrants 'die of thirst' crossing the Sahara


Dozens of people traversing the Sahara desert on their way to Europe are feared to have died of thirst in Niger, officials say.

Five bodies have been found, while a further 35 are missing after their vehicle broke down and they set off to seek help, said the Agadez governor.

Agadez lies on one of the main migrant routes from West Africa to Europe.

Hundreds of migrants have died this month when their boats sank as they tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

Agadex mayor Rhissa Feltou said two vehicles had left the town of Arlit, north of Agadez, earlier this month, carrying "at least" 60 migrants.

The convoy was heading for Tamanrassett, an Algerian town in the heart of the Sahara, he said.

The mayor of Agadez said that after one vehicle broke down, passengers went to look for spare parts and bring them back for repairs.

He said the migrants broke up into small groups and started walking.

Days later, the survivors who reached Arlit, a centre for uranium mining, alerted the army, but troops arrived too late at the scene, he added.

The authorities have called off the search for the missing.

They consisted of "entire families, including very many children and women," Azaoua Mamane, who works for the non-governmental organisation Synergie in Arlit, told the AFP news agency.

The bodies found are of two women and three girls aged 9-11.

Monday 28 October 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24713609

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May 29, 1944: WWII plane slammed into Mt. Whymper hillside


It was a lonely place to die, out on a jagged hillside near Mt. Whymper, at the headwaters of the Nanaimo river.

This was where a B-25 Mitchell bomber ended its voyage on May 29, 1944. It had set off that morning from the Boundary Bay 5 Operational Training Unit on a routine navigational exercise.

Though two other aircraft completing the same exercise came back without incident, plane No. 345 never returned to base.

It is uncertain what variety of trouble the plane and its five Royal Canadian Air Force crew members encountered, but the trip ended in disaster when the plane slammed into a mountainside and exploded into flames. The remains of aircraft smoldered for five days, and when rescuers finally arrived, it appeared that all the crew inside had perished.

What body parts they could retrieve were loaded onto two stretchers, which rescuers gingerly packed down the mountain and then buried in a makeshift grave nearby.

The rescue itself was a gruelling effort that lasted for a month, according to one participant, due in part to the complications that arose from other extenuating circumstances.

In the days following the crash, a blimp airship was deployed by the U.S. Navy to assist with the rescue. However on June 5 it got caught in a down draft and was blown down onto the treetops next to the site, where it became snagged.

However, all nine U.S. Navy members and two RCAF liaisons on board the blimp car survived.

Eventually the case was put to rest, but that wasn't the end of the story.

Two years after the crash, a crew member's mother went to see a psychic in Toronto and was told her son was still alive, and along with two companions, was roaming the densely forested hills around the site. She raised enough doubt in the other parents' minds that in their grief, they too began to wonder if their sons had possibly ejected from the plane prior to impact.

Their concerns caused a wrinkle in the story that forced the case to reopen, using considerable resources as officials went on a wild goose chase to investigate the veracity of the psychic's predictions.

Now almost 70 years later, amateur historian Rod Szasz has taken an interest in the story.

Helped along by Steve Stupich at Island Timberlands, the logging company that owns and manages the property, he has located not only the site of the crash, but managed to discover pieces of shredded reinforced fabric in a nearby location that pinpoint where the blimp subsequently collapsed.

It's not a site that many have accessed. In the blimp's case the location is virtually unknown and it is Szasz's mission, working in conjunction with Veteran's Affairs and local officials, to have the unmarked site and fallen soldiers commemorated with a memorial plaque.

"When I grew up, I had this uncle who lived in Ladysmith, who was the last registered cougar bounty hunter on Vancouver Island. His name was Clem Ingram," said Szasz as we barrelled down Jump Creek Main in his truck, en route to the crash site. "He would always tell me this story of the plane crash up on Mount Whymper, and that there was an airship up there, too."

Knowing his uncle's propensity for telling stories, Szasz said he figured it was a myth, but as he began to come across more details about the crash, he began to hear stories of the blimp, too.

Experienced in finding and documenting battle sites on an informal basis throughout the Asia Pacific region, Szasz figured he was up for a local adventure and began his search.

"I thought 'well, let's find this bomber,' because it's the only one that's not commemorated," he said. "There's two more around here that are commemorated officially - one with 14 dead, one with six dead. This is five, but there's nothing."

During the Second World War, Canada was a hive of military activity with its wide-open prairies and relative geographic safety, it was an ideal place for training exercises.

"Canada's greatest contribution to World War II was something called the Commonwealth Air Training program," said Szasz.

The concept of the program was that all the Commonwealth airmen and women would be shipped into Canada for training.

"They trained people from all over - New Zealand, Australia, South Africa. Even Americans," said Vancouver Island Military Museum vice-president Brian McFadden, who added that there were approximately 30 to 35 crashes on Vancouver Island alone between 1939 and 1945.

More than 100 bases were built all across Canada to facilitate this training; the primary ones on the West Coast being at Patricia Bay in North Saanich and at Boundary Bay, just outside of Vancouver. In his research, Szasz came across the Canadian Deptartment of National Defence file on the incident.

It detailed how it had taken four days for a rescue team to locate the site of the plane, which had "exploded with violence so great that half inch armour plates were found over a wide area, broken into small pieces," reported RCAF Casualties Officer W.R. Gunn.

Though unclear on exactly what happened, the first assessments concluded that the aircraft appeared to have spun in at a very steep angle, as indicated by the break in the trees, and then struck the base of a rock bluff.

Gerald Herbert Lee, a Command Air Search and Rescue officer who was first on the scene on June 3, said the destruction was so complete he had thought explosives were on board, but that was not the case.

Another witness on the scene described how the engine parts had been broken into such small particles that it was impossible to determine if there had been an engine failure.

In the midst of such carnage, the crew had also not fared well.

"Parts and bits of human bodies were found scattered in all directions," said RCAF hospital assistant Cpl. Charles Edward Hale, who was also first on the scene. It was impossible to identify

who the parts belonged to, or how many people it constituted in total, he added.

In Joe Garner's book Never A Time to Trust, game warden and rescue team member Jim Dewar recounted how, when they arrived at the smoldering crash site, the scene was "sickening."

"The smell was so bad none of the crew ever kept breakfast down for more than an hour," said Dewar in the interview, conducted in 1948. "Many of the body pieces had been carried off by buzzards and ravens, but they did manage to find a flying boot with the foot still in it. The stripped leg bones stuck up out of the boot almost to where the knee had been. The next-largest (piece) was part of a hip and pelvis with some underwear still on it."

With what pieces they could gather, four of the crew members carried the body parts on stretchers down from the 3,500-foot elevation to a lower area where both a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest brought to perform the last rites were stationed.

They had been unable to proceed any further on the rough terrain.

An on-site doctor determined that what remains they had constituted parts from the five crew members. With that information the rescue crew conducted a military funeral in among the large Douglas fir trees for Harold Whitlock, Leonard Schell, Harold Manson, Bruce McGregor and Clarence Johnston.

According to an RCAF document from 1946, Harold's father W.M. Manson visited the grave with his eldest son and installed a brass plaque at the site that listed the names of all the victims. He also embedded a full account of the crash inside a brass cylinder into the newly mixed concrete.

Harold's remains were the most definitively identified, as a piece of upper jawbone found at the site was later determined to have likely been his. It was the general conclusion of the RCAF that, despite not finding all the body parts, no other crew members had bailed out prior to the crash.

In the years following, that belief would be challenged.

"What happens is, they tell the relatives that all their loved ones are dead, and one of the relatives doesn't believe it and goes to a clairvoyant in Toronto who says, 'Your son is still alive and living in a lean-to tent somewhere on Vancouver Island,'" said Szasz. "So this lady then starts petitioning her friend, who happens to be a member of parliament, to open up the search again."

The woman was Cornelia Johnston, downed crew member Clarence's mother. In September of 1946, the official response to her questions was summarized in a letter, again from RCAF wing commander Gunn.

In the letter, he acknowledged the pain of a mother, and the hope that rises at the possibility of a son being alive, but cautioned that "information which is based solely on the turn of a card cannot be considered to constitute scientific or reliable information."

After some insistence and perseverance that lasted several months, they reopened the investigation for some time in which none of the original conclusions about the nature of the crash were changed. Cornelia eventually admitted defeat and let her son go.

Szasz parks the truck and sets off, seemingly randomly, into the forest. After a 20-minute hike up the mountain, the first piece of riveted metal glints out from beneath a growing coat of moss, a wing with faded blue marking still visible.

The trees open out onto a steep bluff littered with loose, jagged stones scattered with plane debris. A twisted propeller, its one remaining blade twisted and broken at the tip, leans against a boulder. A caution to not insert fingers into the hub compartment is still legible on its end. Other pieces emerge - landing gear, an engine mount, an armoured pilot seat sheared in half - some pieces burned so hot the aluminum is visibly melted - all bearing mute testimony to the true story of that day, but revealing little.

"The crash engineer from the Royal Canadian Air Force said. .. he couldn't find enough wreckage to make up a plane, so he thinks the tail came off on a ridge," said Szasz. "Somehow they got lost in the fog, they don't know, maybe one engine was out already, maybe that's why they lost elevation."

It's not likely it will ever be known, said Szasz. It soon becomes clear that today all that remains of that fateful spring flight are the twisted and rusted metal remnants of the bomber, thrown like dice down the mountainside. Szasz hopes that will change, and that the site can be commemorated in a visible place, though he is cautious about having it too close to the wreckage for risk of encouraging curiosity seekers and thieves. Andrew Farrow, former president of the Branch 10 Legion, also hopes the site will receive recognition, and considers it a community effort.

Monday 28 October 2013

http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/news/plane-remnants-in-nanaimo-watershed-1.674591

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The Great Storm of 1987: How the 'hurricane' claimed 18 lives


Today's storm was predicted to be the worst since the Great Storm of 1987, which battered England and Wales leaving 18 people dead and causing £1.5billion worth of damage to the economy.

In the early hours of October 16 winds peaked at more than 120mph, damaging buildings and felling 15million trees in the south east of England.

Millions of homes were left without power for at least a few hours, with some having no electricity for days as trees fell on power lines, disrupting supplies.

Whilst most of England and Wales experienced wet and windy weather that night, it was southern and eastern parts of England that were worst hit.

The highest gust recorded from the storm was at Gorleston, Norfolk, hitting 122mph.

Veteran weatherman Michael Fish bore the brunt for famously telling the nation there was no hurricane in the offing, just hours before it arrived.


At the time Mr Fish told viewers tuning into the broadcast: ‘Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t, but having said that, actually, the weather will become very windy, but most of the strong winds, incidentally, will be down over Spain and across into France.’

But in 2011, one of his former colleagues finally stepped forward to take the blame for the Met Office’s botched forecast. Bill Giles, who was chief forecaster at the time, admitted that he was in fact responsible for the lunchtime broadcast on October 15 in 1987.

It was the worst storm since 1703 and a public enquiry was announced shortly after the storm and an internal enquiry was conducted by the Met Office.

The official forecaster wrote: 'We now know that the strength of the storm was boosted by a phenomenon known as the ‘Sting Jet’, where cold dry air descends into storms high in the atmosphere.

'Rain or snow falling into this jet of air evaporates and cools the air further, adding more energy which translates into stronger winds. By the time this ‘sting in the tail’ reaches the ground it can produce winds of 100mph which are concentrated over a small area.

'In 1987, no-one knew sting jets even existed, but now they are well understood and included in forecast models. The storm which affected Scotland in December 2011 was boosted by a sting jet, explaining the maximum gust speed of 164mph recorded on top of Cairngorm.'

Monday 28 October 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478167/The-Great-Storm-1987-How-hurricane-claimed-18-lives-flattened-15million-trees-caused-damage-costing-1-5billion.html

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New mass graves raise hope for the missing in Bosnia


Suad Zeric stares expectantly at a corpse exhumed from a gaping, freshly-dug hole where hundreds of Muslims and Croats massacred in the Bosnian war were tossed two decades ago.

The body, surrounded by forensic experts, may be his uncle or his cousin, both of whom disappeared in the ethnic-driven mayhem of the 1992-95 conflict that followed the breakup of the old Yugoslav federation.

"I hope with all my heart that they will be found here," said the 57-year-old, a survivor of the most notorious Serb-run detention camps set up during the war.

The grave was discovered in April in a disused mine in the village of Tomasica in the northwestern region of Prijedor. Exhumation work started in September in what is the biggest mass grave found in the region.

"One of my four uncles who were murdered by cowards, Fehim, was discovered here, thank God," he said in a whisper, his voice breaking with emotion.

"Kasim, his son Emsud, my uncle Salih and another, Latif, are still missing," said Zeric, whose father's remains were only found a few years ago in another mass grave.

The Bosnian, who now lives in the eastern French town of Mulhouse but returns home two or three times a year, was held in both the Omarska and Keraterm camps. These, with the Trnopolje camp, formed what became known as the war's "triangle of horror" from which many detainees never reappeared.

Bosnian Serb forces set up the three camps, all in the northwest, at the start of the war, which claimed 100,000 lives and left a legacy of ethnic and political divisions that carry on today.

It was photographs of emaciated prisoners at Omarska -- reminiscent of Holocaust victims in Nazi death camps -- first broadcast in the summer of 1992 that shocked the world and drew international attention to the Serb campaign of so-called "ethnic cleansing".

Zeric was detained in May 1992 in Kozarac, near Prijedor, a month after Bosnian Serbs began their siege of Sarajevo.

He was first sent to Keraterm camp then transferred a week later to Omarska, a site in an old iron mine he describes as "hell". Later on he was taken to Manjaca, another camp set up by the Bosnian Serb wartime authorities.

The grave at Tomasica, which lies 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city of Prijedor, was discovered by the Bosnian Institute for Missing People based on information from former Bosnian Serb soldiers.

The Institute is still searching for 1,200 people from the 3,000 who went missing in the area during the war.

"Since the start of exhumation work, on September 3, we exhumed 240 victims, and among them 170 complete bodies," the Institute's spokeswoman Lejla Cengic told AFP.

She said incomplete skeletons were those of victims moved from Tomasica to another grave in nearby Jakarina Kosa to try to cover up the crimes.

The remains of 373 people were exhumed from that grave in 2001, said Cengic, who said the bodies had been shattered by bulldozers used by Bosnian Serb forces during the move.

'A desire to kill'

Forensic experts continue to exhume "hundreds of victims" at the Tomasica site, said the spokeswoman, saying it is not only the biggest mass grave found in the region but may become the largest ever found in Bosnia.

The biggest gravesite so far was discovered in 2003 in Crni Vrh, in the country's east, where the remains of 629 people were recovered.

Bosnian Serbs took control of the Prijedor region in April 1992, forcing non-Serbs to leave their homes which they then destroyed.

Families were separated and thousands of people were thrown into detention camps, held in squalid living conditions, many tortured, many executed.

In the Prijedor area alone more than 1,500 people died in the camps of Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm.

Twenty years on, some of the bodies at Tomasica are surprisingly practically intact, said forensic expert Mujo Begic.

"This is due to the composition of the soil and also because the bodies were very deep. They were found 10 to 12 metres (33-39 feet) under the earth," he said.

Still traumatised by his time in Omarska where he said he was regularly beaten, Zeric, a Muslim, has found peace in his faith.

"I will never understand this desire to kill," he said.

"An animal stops when it catches its prey. They (the Serb forces running the camp), never had enough of death. I hope that no one else on the planet lives through what we have lived," he said.

Monday 28 October 2013

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/131028/new-mass-graves-raise-hope-the-missing-bosnia

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