A giant oil slick threatened yesterday to pollute the fragile wetlands of Louisiana, as officials said that toxic crude was pouring into the Gulf of Mexico five times faster than previously thought.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal called on the US government for emergency help to stave off an environmental disaster after a sudden change in the wind direction turned week-long response efforts on their head.
In another massive blow, the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that more than 757,000 liters of oil a day were now thought to be streaming into the sea from the debris of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which sank off the US southern coast last week following a deadly explosion.
British energy giant British Petroleum (BP), which leases the rig and has been leading the response to the disaster along with the US Coast Guard, acknowledged the new leak, but said it believed the flow of oil was unchanged at 1,000 barrels, or 159,000 liters, a day.
Jindal said NOAA reports also suggested that a portion of the slick, which has a 965km circumference, had broken off and because of strong onshore winds could hit coastal nature reserves as early yesterday.
“At this time, the Pass-A-Loutre Wildlife Management Area is expected to see the first impact of the oil spill,” he said, adding that he had spoken to US Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano to seek additional assistance.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing