The
ISS SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System or ISERV - a
camera aboard the International Space Station - captures an image of
her hometown. ISERV was designed and built at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
ISERV provides useful images
for disaster monitoring and assessment and environmental decision
making. A system like ISERV could aid in delivering imagery and data to
help officials in developing nations monitor impacts of disasters such
as floods, landslides and forest fires. Its images also could help
decision makers address other environmental issues. Image Credit: NASA/SERVIR/ISERV
A
Soyuz rocket with Expedition 36/37 Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of
the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Flight Engineers Luca
Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Karen Nyberg of NASA,
onboard, launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the
International Space Station. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will
remain aboard the station until mid-November, 2013. Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Notification Was absentdue toan accident (fall) from12/5 to24/5whenleft thehospitalaftersurgery on the left hip, having temporarilydisabling problems. - Γνωστοποίηση Απουσίασα
λόγω ατυχήματος (πέσιμο) από τις 12/5 μεχρι 24/5 οπότε εξήλθα από το
νοσοκομείο κατόπιν επέμβασης στον ΑΡ γοφό, εχοντας προσωρινά κινητικά
προβλήματα.
Link to video: Genoa cargo ship crash: search for survivors
. . Up to 10 people are feared dead after a container ship smashed into
the 50-metre (170ft) port tower of Genoa, bringing it crashing down. Four
people, including a pilot and two coast guards, are confirmed drowned.
On Wednesday morning, the death toll was reported to have climbed to
seven. Another three people were missing. . Some of the victims were
pulled from the vast quantity of rubble that landed partly on the
quayside and partly in the water after the accident. The tower stood at
the entrance to the so-called Old Port near the centre of Genoa. . Mud
churned up by the falling masonry made conditions unusually difficult
for fire brigade and coast guard divers who worked through the night in
an attempt to find survivors, the rescue services said. Some of the
missing were thought to have been in the tower's lift at the moment of
impact. . During the night, the sound was heard, from deep inside
the rubble, of a mobile telephone ringing. But the ringing stopped after
a short while, before the searchers could use the call to pinpoint the
telephone. Four people were reported injured, two of them seriously. .
The port tower at Genoa before a container ship smashed into it.
Photograph: Massimo Cebrelli/AFP/Getty Images
. A security guard at the port who declined to give his name was
reported as saying he was on duty at a checkpoint when two young men
came racing past shouting: "The tower! The tower!" He added: "I went out
and the tower was no longer there. In its place, there were the bows of
a ship." According to other accounts, however, it was the stern
of the vessel – a 40,594-tonne container ship – that brought down the
tower. The ship involved in the collision was the Jolly Nero ("Black
Joker"), belonging to Ignazio Messina & C. . Stefano Messina,
the managing director, said: "We are very upset – more than that. It is
something that has never happened before. We are distraught." The
head of the port authority, Luigi Merlo, said the ship was coming out of
the port when it struck the tower. There was no obvious explanation for
the disaster, he said. "It was a perfect evening. The sea was calm.
There was no wind. Visibility was perfect." But he added: "The manoeuvre
ought not to have been carried out in that area." . One theory
voiced on Wednesday was that one of the Jolly Nero's two engines might
have jammed, making the ship impossible to control. The coast
guards operating from Genoa's imposing port tower were responsible for
the northern sector of the Tyrrhenian sea. Radar installed in the
operations room at the top of the tower could detect ships up to 40
nautical miles away. The tower hosted the offices of the coast guard and
the pilots who guided ships in and out of the port.-
Robbers impersonating police staged airport diamond heist in February
The Associated Press
Posted:
May 8, 2013 6:53 AM ET
Last Updated:
May 8, 2013 4:06 PM ET
Passengers planes are parked on the tarmac of
Zaventem's international airport near Brussels, scene of one of the
biggest heists the industry has seen. (Eric Vidal/Reuters)
23
33
Unlike the brilliant thieves in Ocean's Eleven, it appears
that those behind the clockwork-precision, $50 million US diamond heist
at Brussels Airport may not get a Hollywood ending. After three months of virtual silence on the matter, authorities
struck this week, detaining at least 31 people in a three-nation sweep
and recovering so many diamonds from the loot Antwerp traders lost that
they are still figuring out the exact value. . Officials said that among the people held in Belgium, France and
Switzerland on Tuesday and Wednesday are some with violent criminal
pasts; the one person held in France is believed to have been one of the
robbers at the airport. The evidence seized includes large sums of
cash, precious stones and luxury cars. . "It was a total surprise for us," said Caroline De Wolf of the
Antwerp World Diamond Center, whose traders lost millions in the Feb. 18
heist. "But we were delighted when we heard." . Six to eight people were detained in Geneva, and 24 in and around
Brussels. It was unclear exactly what roles each suspect may have
played..Some 250 policemen were involved in the dawn raid in the Belgian
capital, and many of the two dozen suspects were being interrogated late
Wednesday. It could take at least another day before it's clear how
many will be placed under arrest, said Anja Bijnens, a spokeswoman for
the prosecutor's office. . Perhaps the most important discovery was in Geneva of stones that
could immediately be linked to the cache spirited away from the airport. That theft ranks among the biggest diamond heists of recent times, and many liken it to the plot of the 2001 Vegas heist movie, Ocean's Eleven, which stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, for its clinically clean execution. . "In Switzerland, we have found diamonds that we can already say are
coming from the heist, and in Belgium large amounts of money have been
found. And the investigation is still ongoing," said Jean-Marc Meilleur,
a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office. He said police had
also found luxury cars. . Meilleur was scant on detail, yielding no clues as to how police got on the trail of the suspects. In Geneva, prosecutors said in a statement that "a very large
quantity of diamonds was seized" during the sweep "coming from the
spectacular heist at Brussels airport." While Belgian authorities spoke
of six detentions in Switzerland, Geneva prosecutors put it at eight,
including a businessman and a lawyer. . The value of the diamonds recovered was still being estimated. It was
unclear how many of the other stolen diamonds are still missing. The Feb. 18 heist was stunning and brazen. The stones from the global diamond center of Antwerp had been loaded
on a plane bound for Zurich when robbers, dressed in dark police
clothing and hoods, drove through a hole they had cut in the airport
fence in two black cars with blue police lights flashing. . They drove onto the tarmac, approached the plane, brandished machine
guns, offloaded the diamonds, then left in an operation that barely took
five minutes. Later that night, investigators found the charred remains
of a van most likely used in the heist. . Despite this week's developments, De Wolf of the Antwerp World
Diamond Center said that a full resolution could still be some time off. . `'When they were stolen, the diamonds were all in different parcels.
Maybe now they have all been mixed up," De Wolf said. "You need quite a
bit of expertise to check them all — size, color, purity. It doesn't
happen in one-two-three."
