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Weekly Update: Man drowns while scattering dad’s ashes
JOHANNESBURG: A South African man drowned when he swam out to sea to scatter the ashes of his father and apparently suffered cramp, the Johannes-burg-based The Star reported on Monday.
Jaap van Zyl, 57, set out to scatter his father’s ashes on Friday near Hermanus, about 60 kilometres south-east of Cape Town.
“Instead of witnessing the dedication ceremony from the beach, his family watched in horror as he drowned,” The Star said.
Van Zyl, an experienced diver of 35 years, swam out behind some rocks with his 20-year-old son Jaco, in rough seas when he began to cramp.
“He told Jaco that he had a cramp and the next minute, the water took him,” Van Zyl’s widow Betty told the paper.—AFP
First of two twin NASA robots due on Mars
WASHINGTON: The first of two twin robots sent to Mars by NASA is due to land as scheduled on the red planet at the weekend, according to information from the US space agency released on Tuesday.
The first robot: Mars Exploration Rover (MER-A) carried by the probe Spirit, will land on Sunday at 04:35 GMT, while its twin MER-B, carried by the probe Opportunity will reach the planet three weeks later.
NASA corrected Spirit’s trajectory on December 26 as it revved up its engines for 3.4 seconds in the fourth operation of its type since the June 10 launch.
“It seems unlikely we’ll have to do a fifth trajectory correction maneuver, but we’ll make the final call on Thursday morning after we have a few more days of tracking data,” said Dr Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, California.
The critical part of the journey comes during descent into the Martian atmosphere where a landing without damage to the robot is essential. The robots will then carry out their ambitious mission at a cost of 800 million dollars to find traces of life on Mars. — AFP
Major rescue operation at Mt Cook
TIMARU: A major rescue operation was launched on Wednesday on New Zealand’s notorious Aoraki-Mount Cook after at least six people were believed to be trapped in an avalanche, officials said.
Police have called for teams of search dogs and rescue helicopters to be sent to Mt Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak at 3,754 metres, which has been described as a playground for adrenaline junkies and attracts thousands of visitors from around the world each year.—AFP
Death toll from Iran quake could exceed 30,000
BAM: The death toll from the earthquake which struck the Bam region of southeast Iran could rise to more than 30,000, the provincial governorate said.
“We expect the number of dead to exceed 30,000,” said an official of Kerman governorate in the disaster zone.
Earlier, the governor’s office said 22,000 people had died in the earthquake that hit Bam on December 26, a provisional toll confirmed by the interior ministry.
Interior ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani also said that the search and rescue mission will continue until teams are certain they can find no more victims alive.
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 people have been pulled alive from rubble in the quake-devastated town of Bam, in southeastern Iran, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent rescue operations, Bijan Daftari, said on Monday.
More than 12,000 injured have been evacuated by air to other provinces since the quake hit on Friday, he added.—AFP
Ireland to protect huge coral reefs off its coast
DUBLIN: Several huge cold-water coral reefs deep under the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland are to be given special protection and listed as “national treasures” by the government.
Marine Minister Dermot Ahern said the move will mean that Ireland “will be one of the first countries taking steps to protect coral habitats in the EU”.
The reefs will be designated as Special Areas of Conservation under the EU Habitats Directive.
Some of the reefs are on mounds that have grown to heights of about 300 metres above the seabed.
The mounds are largely composed of the skeletons of hard coral. Some have built up over millions of years. On top are eco-systems of living reef-forming corals.
They are described by marine scientists as “spectacular” and an “underwater wonder world” which is teeming with life.
They are at depths of 500 to 1,200 metres between 80 to 240 kilometres off the coast. They have been mapped by a 27-million-euro study of the country’s seabed which the Geological Survey of Ireland has been carrying out since 1999.
The study covers over 400,000 square kilometres of seabed — about ten times the land area of the country.
The Minister called it one of the largest seabed mapping surveys undertaken anywhere in the world.
The four areas to be protected are expected to be on either side of the Rockall Trough, the Perseverance and Propellor complexes on the Porcupine Ridge and the Therese mound on the Porcupine Seabight.— AFP
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