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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion