A light sheen of oil extended about 3km from a wrecked cargo ship that split in two over the weekend, but the damage so far appeared small compared with the environmental disaster created when the vessel ran aground in October, New Zealand authorities said yesterday.
About 150 cargo containers also spilled from the Rena and officials were warning beachgoers to stay away from the debris. Some people have been seen scavenging bags of powdered milk from the beach, but authorities warned the food might be unsafe.
Bruce Fraser, a spokesman for Maritime New Zealand, which oversees shipping, said it estimated that less than 100 tonnes of oil remain on the wreck.
Photo: EPA, Maritime New Zealand
The Rena spilled about 400 tonnes of fuel oil when it ran aground on Oct. 5 on the Astrolabe Reef, 22km from Tauranga Harbour on the North Island. That spill, considered the worst maritime environmental disaster in New Zealand history, fouled pristine beaches. Authorities found 2,000 dead seabirds from the spill and estimate 10 times as many might have perished.
Since then, salvage crews have removed about 1,100 tonnes of oil from the ship, along with almost 400 20-foot and 40-foot containers. However, it was a slow process to remove cargo from the wreck and hundreds of containers remained by the time pounding seas broke it apart.
The two pieces of the ship are now too precarious for crews to attempt further salvage efforts, at least until the seas calm. Salvage crews are now focused on preventing more of the shipping containers from washing ashore.
Tugs have pulled some containers away from the coast. Some containers have had buoys or locator beacons attached so they can be more easily recovered when sea conditions allow.
The debris that has washed ashore includes milk powder, timber, plastics and paper.
Waihi Police Sargent Dave Litton said police closed public access to popular Waihi Beach yesterday morning after four cargo containers and other debris from the vessel washed ashore. He said police received calls about people driving off with some of the bags of milk powder that are strewn along the beach.
Authorities say the milk and other items washed ashore could be health hazards.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the