Fire in the SkyS


Meteor

Air France censors Le Figaro newspaper


Polskie Radio
Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:54 UTC
Air France is censoring information about the Airbus 330 crash published by French daily Le Figaro.

The French airline has sent a fax to airports in several countries, among them to Warsaw's Frederic Chopin Airport, forbidding its staff to give passengers a French daily Le Figaro.

Air France has imposed a ban on Le Figaro after the daily published an article in which it accused the French carrier of not having replaced faulty airspeed sensors in its planes. Le Figaro claims that defective aircraft speed monitors caused serious, although not catastrophic, problems in other Air France planes - Airbus A330 and 340 models - in the past. Air France ordered the replacements in April and received them three days before the crash.
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Meteor

Meteor Shower over English Channel Causes Confusion

Tudor Vieru
Softpedia
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:46 UTC
Captains have reported distress signals in the sky

A number of captains, sailing their ships in the crowded waters of the English Channel on Monday night, signaled to the coastguard services in France and the United Kingdom, saying that they noticed warning flares in the night sky. The lights, they reported, were either white or bright green, and they urged authorities to take steps to save the ships in distress. The cause of the strange phenomenon, which began at around 21:30 BST (2030 GMT), was quickly found to be an expected meteor shower, of which the boat captains in the area had no idea.
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Newspaper

Autopsies suggest Air France jet broke up in sky

Stan Lehman and Emma Vandore
Associated Press
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:21 UTC
Air France 447 debris
© Associated Press/ECPADThis photo released Wednesday June 17, 2009 by the French army shows soldiers approaching a piece of debris believed to be part of Air France flight 447, during continuing searches for debris and bodies on Friday June 12, 2009 in the Atlantic Ocean
Autopsies revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, a Brazilian official said Wednesday. Experts said those injuries - and the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic - strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air.

There have been no visible signs of burning or charring on bodies or wreckage, though that doesn't rule out an explosion somewhere outside the passenger cabin, these crash experts told The Associated Press.

A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told the AP that the fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.

Comment: The above evidence strengthen the hypothesis that a Tunguska Type Event brought down Air France 447 flight.

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Meteor

Meteors cause flare alert calls?


BBC News
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:02 UTC
Image
© UnknownCoastguards said three meteor showers had been forecast
Reports of strange lights in the sky and distress flares being fired in the English Channel actually turned out to be a meteor shower, coastguards say.

Calls were made to coastguards across England's south coast, including Cornwall, Devon and Hampshire, reporting white and green flares.

Reports were also made to coastguards in Jersey and France for about 30 minutes from about 2130 BST on Monday.

Solent coastguards said three such showers had been forecast.

Meteor showers are caused by debris from a comet burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
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Meteor

Australia: Perth, Western Australia - A Large Bright Light and a Fireball

John Hayes
UFOINFO
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:48 UTC
Posted: June 15, 2009

Date: May 23, 2009
Time: Approx: 6:00 a.m.
Number of witnesses: 2
Number of Objects: 1
Shape of Objects: Round

Full Description of Event/Sighting: Saw what looked like a really large bright star in the sky. We were looking in a easterly direction. My husband left and I continued to look up at the bright light. It suddenly started to fade away like it was something flying away.

We also saw a meteor or something enter the atmosphere around the time of the Lyrid meteor shower. It has a fireball tail. We both saw it. It was around 3:00am in the morning on I think the 22 April 2009. These are most probably both natural phenomenon?
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Meteor

Meteor shower sparks coastal alerts along English Channel


Press Association
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:37 UTC
Image
Reports of strange lights in the English Channel overnight have been put down to a meteor shower, coastguards said.

Calls were made to stations from Hampshire down to Brixham in Devon and across to Jersey and France at about 9.30pm on Monday, with people saying they were seeing white and green flares in the sky.

A Solent Coastguard spokesman said: "There were reports of flares all down the coast which went on for about half an hour but there was a forecast for a meteor shower."
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Meteor

Air France Flight 447: First bodies had minimal clothing, no burns

Andrea James:
blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace
Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:13 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Brazil's Air ForceNavy sailors recover debris of the missing Air France Flight 447 from the Atlantic Ocean on June 9.
Beyond an increasing body count, little new information emerged on Friday from official sources regarding the crash of Air France Flight 447.

(By official sources, I mean the Brazilian military's official bulletins, France's investigations unit BEA, Air France and Airbus.)

Brazilian military searchers pulled three more bodies out of the ocean on Thursday night, bringing the total body count to 44. The French Navy has also found an undisclosed number of bodies, according to Brazilian military bulletins.
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Blackbox

Air France plane crash: six more bodies found


The Guardian
Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:41 UTC
Six more bodies have been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean where an Air France jet crashed killing 216 passengers, Brazilian officials said yesterday, bringing to 50 the number of bodies found since the crash on May 31.

Almost two weeks after the crash, Brazil's military said the search is becoming increasingly difficult, and a they gave a tentative date of 25 June to halt their efforts. The bodies were found on the same day that wreckage from the crash was found washed ashore in Brazil.

The wreckage included two plane seats, oxygen masks, water bottles, and several parts of the Airbus A330's structure.

The plane's black boxes - which have yet to be located and whose emergency beacons begin to fade after 30 days - along with debris and bodies from the jet, all contain crucial clues as to how and why Air France Flight 447 went down en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
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Meteor

Best of the Web: 14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite


The Telegraph
Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:04 UTC
Gerrit Blank
© unknownGerrit Blank survived a direct hit by a meteorite as it hurtled to Earth at more than 30,000 mph
A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.

A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.

The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

Comment: Actually, these incidents are not as rare as we are made to believe. From our Comets and Catastrophe installment, read: Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls

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Meteor

Germany: Meteor Hits Boy on Way to School


The Local
Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:26 UTC
A pebble-sized meteorite crashed and burned into Earth, grazing 14-year-old Gerritt Blank while on his way to catch the school bus.

Meter
© Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
"At first, I only saw a big, white ball of light. Then, my hand hurt, and then it slammed into the street," he told daily Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. "After I saw the white light, I felt something on my hand."

The result was a 10-centimetre burn on the back of his left hand, but Blank knew something special had happened to him.

"I thought the meteor struck me, but it could also be a result from the heat as it went by me," he said.

After the intial shock, Blank looked at the glowing rock that left a sizable crater in Brakeler Wald Street. He then took the iced tea from his school lunch and doused his glowing pebble and took it to school with him.

"At school, I told the story. My classmates believed me," he said. His parents didn't get to hear the story until the end of the school day.
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