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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

According to East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme Kenyan chapter head, Andrew Mwangura, the Greek freighter MV Captain Stephanos and all its 19 crew, consisting of 17 Filipinos, one Chinese and a Ukrainian, had been released late Monday, after 78 days in captivity. It was unclear, however, if any ransom was paid. The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said that “there are [still] 91 Filipino seafarers on board six ships still with Somali pirates.”

Somali pirates seized the Bahamas-flagged vessel on September 21 near the Horn of Africa, as the bulk carrier, was cruising in the Gulf of Aden en route and transporting coal to Europe. The captors locked the crew inside the vessel and they were not fed well. The vessel is now headed to Italy and will sail from there to Greece, to meet the ship owners.

Reuters reported that “a surge in attacks at sea this year in the busy Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean off Somalia has pushed up insurance costs, brought the gangs tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, and prompted foreign warships to rush to the area.”

Friday, November 2, 2007

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona is currently locked down while security teams are doing a sweep of the area after a pipe bomb was found this morning.

Arizona Public Service Company (APS) spokesman Jim MacDonald said a contract worker was stopped at the main gate of the facility for a routine security sweep and a suspicious looking device was reportedly found in the bed of the worker’s pickup truck. APS owns the station, which is located in Wintersberg, Arizona.

According to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO), the suspicious looking device was a pipe bomb.

“MCSO bomb squad tests later determined that the capped pipe was a credible explosive device,” said APS in a written statement.

The worker was taken into custody, and the entrance to the plant was immediately closed. The suspect, only described as a white male, lives in a Phoenix apartment complex, is reportedly an engineer who works with computers, and is cooperating with police.

Three schools in the Saddle Mountain Unified School District were locked down voluntarily, affecting about 1,500 students.

According to Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security‘s operations center was monitoring the incident.

MacDonald said the plant nor the public are at risk, “We have a large and well-trained security force that followed the procedures exactly the way they’re supposed to.” The incident, which was classified as an “unusual event” — the lowest emergency classification, is not believed to be terrorist related.

The FBI and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department are investigating.

The Palo Verde plant is about 35 miles west of Phoenix and is the largest nuclear electric generating site in the country, producing as much electricity as nine Hoover Dams.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

An explosion has been reported at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after its cooling system was damaged by a massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit off the North-East coast of Japan on Friday. The explosion occurred at around 3:00pm local time (6:00am UTC). According to the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, four workers were injured in the explosion.

The explosion occurred as workers were attempting to cool a reactor by injecting water into its core. Local media are reporting that the plant’s exterior walls have been destroyed and only a skeleton structure remains.

More than 45,000 residents within a 10-kilometre radius of the plant have been evacuated.

Television reports show white smoke coming from the plant. Local authorities are warning residents in the vicinity of the plant to stay indoors, turn off air-conditioners and not to drink tap water. According to Japan’s nuclear agency, radioactive caesium and iodine has been identified at the plant. Authorities speculate that this indicates that containers holding uranium fuel at the site may have ruptured and are leaking.

Friday, August 10, 2012

After two days of mourning, the West African nation Ghana is giving its late president John Atta Mills a state and military burial today at Geese Park, a bird sanctuary near the seat of government, Osu Castle, along the Atlantic Ocean.

His mortal remains, which were moved from the Banquet Hall in Accra, currently lie in a Ghana flag-draped casket at Ghana’s Independence Square (Black Star Square). The burial ceremony is ongoing as thousands have gathered to bid him farewell.

Eighteen heads of state; President of the ECOWAS Commission, Kadre Quedraogo; and Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State are among the dignitaries present for the ceremony.

The Chief Officiating Minister of the ceremony the Most Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante, in an interview with Radio Ghana earlier, has congratulated Ghanaians for uniting to mourn the dead leader.

Mills was 68.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Government officials have predicted that by 2020, all US states will have bans on indoor smoking in private sector bars and restaurants, the chief sources of secondhand smoke, if the current rate of progress in enacting smoking bans continues.

In a press release issued yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that by December 31, 2010 there were 26 states with broad indoor smoking bans, covering workplaces, bars and restaurants, while an additional 10 states had banned smoking in one or two specific indoor areas. Cumulatively, these restriction cover almost one half of the country’s population, 47.8 percent, while a remaining 88 million nonsmokers are still exposed to secondhand smoke yearly, including half of all children over three years old.

In comparison, in 2000 there were no states that had broad indoor smoking bans.

Some states have enacted less restrictive laws, such as requiring separate ventilation systems for smoking areas. Southern and western states are lagging in implementing smoking bans. Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina have banned smoking in two of the three sectors. Currently there are only seven states having no state wide restrictions on indoor smoking, although some have local ordinances. These are Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming, according to the CDC.

The full report was published in this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Secondhand smoke is a known cause of a number of diseases including lung cancer and heart disease. The Surgeon General’s report of 2010 says, “tobacco smoke damages every organ in the body, resulting in disease and death.”

In the press release, Ursula Bauer of the CDC, said that secondhand smoke is the cause of 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 lung cancer deaths yearly in nonsmokers. “Completely prohibiting smoking in all public places and workplaces is the only way to fully protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke exposure,” she said.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC said, “Eliminating smoking from work sites, restaurants and bars is a low-cost, high-impact strategy that will protect nonsmokers and allow them to live healthier, longer, more productive lives while lowering health care costs associated with secondhand smoke.”

The American Heart Association issued a statement: “We must zero in on those areas that continue to lag despite studies that show smoke-free policies benefit public health and the local economy with lower health care costs.”

Gary Nolan of the Smokers Club, a smoker’s rights group, said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if they prevailed.” He noted that heavy pressure is being applied to bars and restaurants by public health officials to ban smoking. “It’s just a little bit more liberty slipping away at the hands of big government.”