He saw the object from the Waikato University tennis courts and said it was heading west toward Raglan.

It was visible for about 30 seconds before dropping out of sight.

Hamilton Astronomical Society member, and past president, Carol Thompson said the streaking object could have been a meteor.

Meteor sightings were not uncommon, she said.

It was impossible to say where it might have landed although it could have burnt up before hitting the Earth or landed out to sea, she said.
Advertisement
Advertisement

Earlier this month a meteor was seen racing across the Canterbury skies and was accompanied by a sonic boom as it travelled at an estimated 40,000km/h.

Mrs Thompson said anyone who saw yesterday's streaking object should contact the Hamilton Astronomical Society and fill out a fireball-meteor report form.

Grigory Prezent, deputy coal department director of Mittal Steel Temirtau, told reporters at the scene it was "almost certain" that 41 people had been killed.

"Thirty-two bodies have been found. They are being recovered at the moment. Another nine are in a dead-end coal face... But it's obvious that they are dead," he said.

The steel plant in the central region of Karaganda, 200 km (125 miles) south of the capital, Astana, continued to work as normal, a company source said, and the accident would not affect customers.

Small groups of tearful relatives, many of them women who brought their children, gathered outside the mine's offices in the town of Shakhtinsk, anxious for news. Others went to the local hospital where three men were in intensive care.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a former blast furnace operator at the Soviet-era steel plant, offered his condolences to the relatives of the dead miners.

"At this somber moment all citizens of Kazakhstan keenly feel the pain that has befallen the miners of Karaganda," he said on his Web site www.akorda.kz.

Local police said in a statement the blast occurred at a depth of 620 metres and 324 miners working underground were able to scramble to safety. They launched a criminal investigation.

HIGH TEMPERATURES

Mittal's Prezent said that high temperatures from a fire raging in the mine had prevented rescuers from reaching the coal face where the last nine miners were trapped and believed dead.

As well as the three men in intensive care, a further four had been admitted to hospital, he said.

"They have burns to the upper respiratory system, fractured ribs, fractured collarbones and fractured shoulders," he said.

"It's clear this was a methane blast," he said. "Either there was a sudden release of coal and gas that led to the explosion, this will be clear at the coal face. Or, if not, there was an accumulation of gas throughout the shaft."

The Lenin mine, a labyrinth of seven shafts, was commissioned in 1964 and was the scene in November 2002 of a gas explosion in which 13 miners were killed.

Wednesday's accident was the deadliest since Kazakhstan became an independent state in 1991. An explosion at another Mittal coal mine in the Central Asian state in 2004 killed 23.

Mittal shares were trading down 0.11 percent percent at 26.87 euros on the Paris stock exchange at 1502 GMT (11:02 EDT).

The Temirtau steel plant accounts for about four percent of Kazakh gross domestic product and is the nation's single largest corporate employer with a 55,000-strong workforce.

Mittal's Indian-born billionaire owner Lakshmi Mittal paid about $400 million for the steel plant, formerly known as Karmet, in 1995. By 2007 it had planned to have invested around $1.4 billion modernising the site, which ships about 40 percent of its production to China.

Temirtau has an annual design capacity of 6 million tonnes of steel, while the plant's coal mining units can extract up to 12 million tonnes annually.

Homer residents reported the two discrete plumes rising from an area south of Mount Douglas. Lanny Simpson, a 20-year Homer resident and photographer who runs Alaska Mountain Images, said he took a series of photos of the plumes from the bottom of Main Street near Bishop's Beach at about 7:40 p.m. Sunday.

"I was excited to see it. I've never seen anything like that from Cape Douglas," he said.

In an information release, AVO said analysis of satellite images showed the plumes coming from Fourpeaked Glacier, located between Fourpeaked and Douglas volcanoes, both ancient volcanoes AVO classifies as extinct. Fourpeaked and Douglas last erupted over 10,000 years ago. Douglas is about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage and Fourpeaked is 7.5 miles southwest of Douglas.

Unlike Augustine Volcano, Fourpeaked and Douglas don't have scientific equipment to measure seismic or other activity. Seismometers around the Katmai group of volcanoes and on Augustine did not record any unusual activity.

Analysis of satellite images did not show any ash in the two plumes. Wessels said one person west of Mount Douglas reported seeing what she thought was ash coming out of the sky. AVO is developing ash and wind models to see if ash could have come from other volcanoes.

Douglas has a small lake-filled crater and an active fumarole field on the northeast crater wall. One theory scientists are looking at is that there might be a hydrothermal system under Fourpeaked Glacier, and that the glacier has receded or thinned enough to release pressure, Wessels said.

But they don't know.

"Until we see with our own eyes or a clear satellite image, we're kind of in a holding pattern," he said.

If the weather clears this week, AVO will fly over the area to get a better image. Pilots or anyone who sees more steam coming from Fourpeaked or Douglas are asked to contact AVO at (907) 786-7497.

For updates on those or other volcanoes, visit AVO's Web site at www.avo.alaska.edu.

The TU Delft research findings should be a relief for people living at or near the Atlantic coasts of the US, Africa and Europe. Six years ago, geologists proposed that La Palma is so unstable that it might lose one of its flanks during a volcanic eruption in the near future. This would cause a 'mega tsunami' with massive waves up to hundreds of meters in height. Cities like New York, Boston, Lisbon and Casablanca would be all but wiped from the face of the planet, according to the more pessimistic estimates.

But according to the new TU Delft research, the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island simply isn't large enough to fall apart... yet. In a first of its kind study, the Dutch researchers modelled the inside of the flank and then simulated several volcanic eruptions and watery 'steam explosions'. In every simulation, the volcanic flank stayed firmly in its place. 'This is simply a very stable island', says team leader professor Jan Nieuwenhuis in the September edition of the TU Delft science magazine Delft Integraal.

According to Nieuwenhuis' calculations, it would take the strength of about 600 million modern fighter jet engines to pull the flank apart: at least 12,000 to 28,000 billion Newton. That is much more than can be expected from a volcanic outburst on La Palma, the team concludes. Only under very extreme conditions, the flank could become unstable, Nieuwenhuis has calculated. This would require unusually heavy rainfall during an exceptionally strong magmatic outburst, or some other highly unlikely combination of circumstances. 'Based on what we know now, so many things must go wrong that a disaster seems very, very unlikely', says Janneke van Berlo, who recently graduated in the group of prof. Nieuwenhuis.

Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)

La Palma Holidays
Houses, Apartments & Hotels to rent throughout La Palma

Reisen La Palma
Clever reisen mit TUI Buchen Sie Ihren Traumurlaub

Mietwagen La Palma
Wochenpreis ab 130 Euro inkl. Vollkasko ohne Selbstbeteiligung
The researchers calculate that the surest way to cause a landslide is to wait for at least another 10,000 years. The Cumbre Vieja volcano steadily grows and this causes the flanks of the volcano to become steeper and less stable. 'A combination of substantial vertical growth and eruption forces will most probably act to trigger failure. To reach substantial growth, a time span in the order of 10,000 years will be required', Van Berlo states.

At a glance, La Palma doesn't look very solid even today. It has lost chunks of its flanks at least twice in prehistoric times already. And during the last eruption, in 1949, a two kilometer long rip appeared at the top of Cumbre Vieja's southwestern flank. But the Delft researchers point out that the cut is nothing more than the result of an innocent, shallow phenomenon, for example local adaptive settlements of the volcano. What's more, the ancient collapses are good evidence La Palma is stable now: the collapses only occurred when La Palma was much higher than today, at least 2,000 and 2,500-3,000 meter respectively.

Even if the volcanic flank did become critically unstable, it isn't likely it will go with a splash. 'Of course the flank won't go in one piece, but break up first', Nieuwenhuis said. 'And it could very well slide down a little and then settle in a more stable configuration, just like our dykes in Holland often do when they go unstable.' The plunge won't be a fast and sudden event, Nieuwenhuis stresses. 'It will more be like a steam locomotive powering up. The first meter of movement should take several days.'

The unit said the epicentre of the tremor, the effects of which were mainly felt in the Red Hills and Liguanea areas of St Andrew, was located near Forest Hills, St Andrew.

Since the start of the year, there has beenone quake in February, one in March, one in April, one in May, one in July and two in August.

Seismic analyst at the Unit Raymond Stewart told the Observer that the strongest quake since the start of the year occurred offshore in February, with a magnitude of 4.3.

"There is an increase in mass loss and it is significant," said Isabella Velicogna, of the University of Colorado and
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

"Los Angeles County uses about one cubic kilometer a year, so it is a lot of water," she added in an interview.

The findings, based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, and published in Nature magazine, are consistent with earlier results showing increased melting due to rising temperatures blamed on global warming.

But Velicogna and her colleague John Wahr go a step further because their analysis is very recent, up to April 2006, and shows the accelerated rate of loss is almost entirely in southern Greenland.

"It was losing quite a bit of mass before 2004 but there is a very strong acceleration, which means things are changing," said Velicogna

"It is more than we have been observing in the last century," she added.

Scientists predict that global average temperatures will rise by between one and six degrees Celsius this century unless urgent action is taken now to cap and reduce carbon emissions.

A rise of three degrees could cause a large rise in sea levels, loss of species and increase famine and disease.

Greenland's ice sheet is so huge that if it melted entirely sea levels across the world would rise by about 7 meters (yards), Tavi Murray of the University of Wales in Swansea said in a commentary on the research.

Murray believes the GRACE results could help scientists re-evaluate the rates of loss that can be expected from global warming.

"Uncertainties remain, but the GRACE results provide one of the best estimates of overall mass balance of the ice sheet," he added.