People in American Samoa were given only eight minutes warning that a tsunami, which killed 32 people in the unincorporated territory, resulting from the 2009 Samoa earthquake, was approaching. A report published by the United States Congress admits that the warning was issued sixteen minutes after the 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Samoa. The tsunami killed nearly 200 people in American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga.
The report, written by the National Research Council, describes the length of time between the earthquake and the initial tsunami warning being issued as “relatively long”, and states that the standard time for such a warning to be issued to be around two minutes. The study also revealed that one third of tsunami sensors are not working at any given time.
John Orcutt, a seismologist and head of the committee that wrote the report, described the delay as a “major concern”, but he also said that “a large number of people” in American Samoa “didn’t understand and there were lives that were lost because people simply didn’t take the action to get away from the shore when they felt this huge earthquake. People have to understand the signs of a tsunami and head to higher ground.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities, and the Government of American Samoa did not respond to e-mails regarding the news.
A court in Mombasa, Kenya has sentenced a group of seven Somali pirates to five years each in jail, according to a statement by the European Union. Anti-piracy mission EU Navfor said the septet were arrested by Spanish navy sailors after attacking Malta-registered cargo vessel Anny Petrakis.
Presiding over the conviction and sentencing, Timothy Ole Tanchut told the men he “…[had] concrete proof that you attacked a vessel in the high seas and I order you to serve five years in prison,” ruling that they will be deported to Somalia after serving their sentences. They have been in custody since May 7 last year when a Spanish crew captured them coming to the aid of the Anny Petrakis. The arrests followed warning shots fired by a naval helicopter.
This is the third pirate gang jailed in the last two years, bringing the total serving sentences in Kenya to around 15; around 100 suspects await trial in custody. Trials have been difficult to arrange owing to issues around finding locations; Kenya has international agreements with the EU, the United States and Denmark, as well as a separate treaty with EU-state the United Kingdom. These allow Kenya to try pirates like these ones handed over by Spain in exchange for support of the nation’s judicial system. The United NationsOffice on Drugs and Crime, the European Union, Australia and Canada have all chipped in with donations to fund the court.
US officials are investigating how a child was apparently allowed to direct planes at New York’s JFK airport – one of the country’s busiest.
The probe comes after an audiotape caught the boy directing several pilots preparing for take-off last month.
In one exchange, the boy is heard saying: “JetBlue 171 contact departure.” The pilot responds: “Over to departure JetBlue 171, awesome job.”
The child – whose age is unknown – was reportedly under adult supervision.
The adult was apparently his father – a certified air traffic controller.
The adult is later heard saying with a laugh: “That’s what you get, guys, when the kids are out of school.”
The incident happened on 17 February, when many New York pupils were on a week-long break.The names of the child and the adult on the audiotape were not immediately known.
‘Not indicative’ incident
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement: “Pending the outcome of our investigation, the employees involved in this incident are not controlling air traffic.”This behaviour is not acceptable and does not demonstrate the kind of professionalism expected from all FAA employees.”
The BBC reports that an Australian woman, attacked by a shark, has survived, despite the loss of 40% of her blood volume, and with her sense of humor entirely intact.
An Australian grandmother has survived a shark attack by repeatedly punching and kicking the animal after it “ripped off” part of her body.
Paddy Trumbull, 60, suffered deep bite wounds and lost a huge amount of blood in the incident while snorkelling near the Whitsunday Islands, Queensland.
Doctors say Mrs Trumbull is fortunate to be alive after suffering such a ferocious mauling.
At hospital, she joked about now having to get a “remodelled bottom”.
Speaking from her hospital bed to local media, she said that while snorkelling from a chartered boat with her husband and others, she felt “the most almighty huge tug” and “knew immediately what it was.”
“I turned around and I saw this huge shark.”
Mrs Trumbull said: “I then thought ‘this shark’s not going to get the better of me’ and I started punching it on the nose, punching, punching, punching.
“And then it got me under the water, but not much because I started kicking at its neck.”
She said she had “a bit of a tug of war” with the 1.5m (5ft) shark, knowing that it had ripped her flesh as she could see blood, but she felt no pain.
She was pulled on board the boat and given first aid, before being airlifted to Mackay Base Hospital where she underwent surgery.
Surgeon Mark Flanagan said: “We can estimate that she lost about 40 per cent of her blood volume from the degree of shock that she had when she came in, and the fact that we required to give her several units of blood.”
Mrs Trumbull said she was happy to be alive. “I think they’re going to get me a counsellor on Monday, to sort of sort it out, and I have to have a new, remodelled bottom, so that’s a positive.”
Iran is experiencing surprising setbacks in its efforts to enrich uranium, according to new assessments that suggest that equipment failures and other difficulties could undermine that nation’s plans for dramatically scaling up its nuclear program.
Former U.S. officials and independent nuclear experts say continued technical problems could also delay — though probably not halt — Iran’s march toward achieving nuclear-weapons capability, giving the United States and its allies more time to press for a diplomatic solution. In recent months, Israeli officials have been less vocal in their demands that Western nations curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
Indications of Iran’s diminished capacity to enrich uranium arise just as the Obama administration begins to take sterner action to compel Iran to abandon enrichment. On Wednesday, the Treasury Department announced new U.S. sanctions against companies it says are affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key player in the country’s nuclear and missile programs.
Beneath this rhetoric, U.N. reports over the last year have shown a drop in production at Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant, near the city of Natanz. Now a new assessment, based on three years of internal data from U.N. nuclear inspections, suggests that Iran’s mechanical woes are deeper than previously known. At least through the end of 2009, the Natanz plant appears to have performed so poorly that sabotage cannot be ruled out as an explanation, according to a draft study by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). A copy of the report was provided to The Washington Post.
The ISIS study showed that more than half of the Natanz plant’s 8,700 uranium-enriching machines, called centrifuges, were idle at the end of last year and that the number of working machines had steadily dropped — from 5,000 in May to just over 3,900 in November. Moreover, output from the nominally functioning machines was about half of what was expected, said the report, drawing from data gathered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
A separate, forthcoming analysis by the Federation of American Scientists also describes Iran’s flagging performance and suggests that continued failures may increase Iran’s appetite for a deal with the West. Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the federation’s Strategic Security Program, said Iranian leaders appear to have raced into large-scale uranium production for political reasons.
“They are really struggling to reproduce what is literally half-century-old European technology and doing a really bad job of it,” Oelrich said.
The findings are in line with assessments by numerous former U.S. and European officials and weapons analysts who say that Iran’s centrifuges appear to be breaking down at a faster rate than expected, even after factoring in the notoriously unreliable, 1970s-vintage model the Iranians are using. According to several of the officials, the problems have prompted new thinking about the urgency of the Iranian nuclear threat, although the country has demonstrated a growing technical prowess, such as its expanding missile program.
“Whether Iran has deliberately slowed down or been forced to, either way that stretches out the time,” said Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.
But analysts also warned that Iran remains capable of making enough enriched uranium for a small arsenal of nuclear weapons, if it decides to do so. Iran has announced plans to build 10 new uranium plants, and on Monday the government said it would begin increasing the enrichment level of some of its uranium, from a current maximum of 3.5 percent to 20 percent. Enrichment of 90 percent is considered weapons-grade.
