The spinning vortex of Saturn...[ 3111 ]

•   The Rose  

The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second).

This image is among the first sunlit views of Saturn's north pole captured by Cassini's imaging cameras. When the spacecraft arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, it was northern winter and the north pole was in darkness. Saturn's north pole was last imaged under sunlight by NASA's Voyager 2 in 1981; however, the observation geometry did not allow for detailed views of the poles. Consequently, it is not known how long this newly discovered north-polar hurricane has been active.

The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 27, 2012, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light. The images filtered at 890 nanometers are projected as blue. The images filtered at 728 nanometers are projected as green, and images filtered at 752 nanometers are projected as red. In this scheme, red indicates low clouds and green indicates high ones.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 261,000 miles (419,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 94 degrees. Image scale is 1 mile (2 kilometers) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Powerful Blast in Prague...[ 3110 ]

Powerful Blast Injures up to 40 in Prague

PRAGUE April 29, 2013 (AP)

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A powerful explosion damaged an office building in the center of the Czech capital, Prague, Monday, injuring up to 40 people. Authorities believe some people are buried in the rubble.
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It is not certain what caused the blast in Divadelni Street, but it was likely a natural gas explosion, police spokesman Tomas Hulan said.
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The street was covered with rubble and was sealed off by police who also evacuated people from nearby buildings and closed a wide area around the explosion site.

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Zdenek Schwarz, head of the rescue service in Prague, said up to 40 people have been injured with at least four of them sustaining serious injuries.
Windows in buildings located hundreds of meters from the blast were shattered, including some in the nearby National Theater.
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"There was glass everywhere and people shouting and crying," Vaclav Rokyta, a Czech student, told the AP near the scene.
"I was in the bathroom, no windows, the door was closed, honestly, if I had been in my bed I would have been covered in glass," said Z.B. Haislip, a student from the U.S. state of North Carolina who was in a nearby building.
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The Faculty of Social Sciences of Prague's Charles University and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Sciences of Performing Arts are located next to the damaged building.
Prime Minister Petr Necas said in a statement he was "deeply hit by the tragedy of the gas explosion.

Two ships collide off Greece, 10 missing...[ 3109 ]

Two cargo ships collide off Greece, 10 missing


English.news.cn   2013-04-29 14:36:19    

ATHENS, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Two cargo ships collided early Monday off southwestern Greece, with 10 crew members missing, the Greek coastguard said.
One ship named "Piri Reis" under a Cook Islands flag sank after the collision, while the other carrier sailing under an Antigua-Barbuda flag was not seriously damaged and its entire crew of 16 is safe, according to the Greece coastguard.

"Piri Reis" was sailing with a 17-member crew on board in the Aegean Sea when it was hit under still unclear circumstances by the Antigua-Barbuda flagged freighter "Consouth".

Greek coastguard's speedboats supported by a C-30 aircraft and a helicopter are searching the area for the missing seamen.
Editor: Hou Qiang -

The flag on Iwo Jima ...[ 3108 ]

World War II vet who provided flag on Iwo Jima dead at 90

Published April 28, 2013 // Associated Press

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FILE: US Marines raise American flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima. (AP)

LOS ANGELES –  Alan Wood, a World War II veteran credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, has died. He was 90.

Wood died April 18 of natural causes at his Sierra Madre home, his son Steven Wood said Saturday.

Wood was a 22-year-old Navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima's shores Feb. 23, 1945 when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag that he could find.

After five days of fighting to capture the Japanese-held island, U.S. forces had managed to scale Mount Suribachi to hoist an American flag.

Wood happened to have a 37-square-foot flag he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor Navy depot. .

Five Marines and a Navy Corpsman later raised that flag in a stirring moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

Steven Wood says his father was always humbled by his small role in the historic moment.

In a 1945 letter to a Marine general who asked for details about the flag, Wood wrote: "The fact that there were men among us who were able to face a situation like Iwo where human life is so cheap, is something to make humble those of us who were so very fortunate not to be called upon to endure such hell."

In its story on Wood's death, the Los Angeles Times reported that over the years others have claimed that they provided the flag, but retired Marine Col. Dave Severance, who commanded the company that took Mount Suribachi, said in an interview last week that it was Wood.

"I have a file of more than 60 people who claim to have had something to do with the flags," he said from his home in La Jolla, Calif.

Wood went on to work as technical artist and spokesman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1985. Besides his son, Wood was survived by three grandchildren.

ROME :Two police officers were shot...[ 3107 ]

2 Officers Are Shot as Italy’s Government Is Sworn In

Simona Granati/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Police officers rushed to aid a fellow officer who was shot in the neck during an attack outside the Italian prime minister's office on Sunday.

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO // Published: April 28, 2013

ROME — Two military police officers were shot and wounded on Sunday in a crowded square outside the prime minister’s office close to where the new government of Enrico Letta was being sworn in.

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The shooting was broadcast live by the state broadcaster RAI, which had a television crew in the square in front of Palazzo Chigi, where the ministers were to go after the ceremony at the presidential palace. 

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 Italians who had tuned in to the swearing-in ceremony of the long-awaited government — finally formed nine weeks after national elections — watched the unfolding events. 

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What was supposed to be a day of celebration, marking the beginning of the new government, quickly turned into a national drama. The square in front of Palazzo Chigi was cordoned off, while ambulances and police cars blocked traffic in one of Rome’s busiest downtown areas. 

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Inside the palace, the ceremony continued undisturbed; most of the ministers were not made aware of the shooting, which occurred about half a mile away, until after the ceremony was over. 

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The man believed to have shot the two officers was caught. Authorities identified him as Luigi Preiti, born in 1964 in Calabria and a resident of Piedmont. 

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“I heard seven or eight shots,” said Enrica Agostini, an RAI reporter who was in the square when the shooting occurred, describing the subsequent panic. “I was pushed back into Palazzo Chigi. The police was screaming, ‘it’s an attack, it’s an attack.'”

One officer was wounded in the throat and the other in the leg, an official with the military police said. The wounds did not appear to be life threatening. Mr. Preiti was also shot, the official said. 

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A woman, passing by, was also hit but was not seriously injured, according to reports.

At a news conference, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said an investigation would be conducted but the incident appeared to be an “isolated gesture.” 

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Mr. Alfano said that the shooter, an unemployed 49-year-old man, had intended to commit suicide, but told officers that he was unable to do so because he had run out of bullets. 

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After the swearing-in, Mr. Letta met with ministers in a first scheduled cabinet meeting on Sunday afternoon. The new government will face a confidence vote in Parliament this week.

The former interior minister, Anna Maria Cancellieri, who was sworn in Sunday as justice minister, told reporters that the act had been carried out “by someone who is unbalanced.” 

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The shooting rattled Italy, already unsettled by a period of instability in the aftermath of inconclusive national elections that hobbled efforts to form a government. It also brought back memories of the so-called “years of lead,” the period of social and political turmoil in the 1970s and early 1980s marked by dozens of acts of terrorism carried out by left-wing and right-wing radicals. 

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In recent years, groups that modeled themselves after the Red Brigade terrorists of that time have carried out sporadic attacks, and have killed two Italian labor reform specialists. In recent years, too, a spate of homemade bombs have exploded at different tax agency offices, a protest against a fiscal system seen by some as too onerous. But there has been little social tension of the kind that marked Italy a few decades ago.

Rachel Donadio contributed reporting.