Five-meter high waves smashed a Russian tanker in half yesterday, spilling 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil into the Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine, officials said.
Two other cargo ships, each carrying some 2,000 tonnes of sulphur, sank in the area and eight crew members from one of the vessels were reported missing amid worsening weather in waters between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Some 300km further west, the high winds sank a cargo ship carrying scrap metal with 17 sailors on board off Ukraine's Black Sea coast. Two crew members were rescued and 15 were still missing, officials said.
As wind speeds in the area reached 108km per hour, several other ships were reported stranded in and around Kavkaz, a busy Russian commercial port some 1,200km south of Moscow.
Forecasters said the storm conditions would worsen in the coming hours.
A total of 42 vessels have been evacuated from the port and 17 others have been forced to stay because of the risky weather conditions, Russian news agencies reported, citing a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.
There have been no reports of any deaths or injuries from the storm.
Russian environmental campaigners were quoted as saying that the oil spill and the sinking of the two ships carrying sulphur would cause an "ecological catastrophe" in the area.
"This is a serious environmental accident that will require a large amount of work," Oleg Mitvol, head of the Russian government's environmental monitoring agency Rosprirodnadzor, said on the Vesti-24 news channel. "This problem may take a few years to solve."
Prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry for pollution, reports said.
The prow and the stern of the oil tanker, called Volgoneft-139, tore apart in the storm and "around 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil were spilled," a transport ministry spokeswoman said.
The 13 crew members who were earlier stranded in the stern of the tanker were not in danger but rescue efforts to limit the oil spill were being hampered by harsh weather conditions.
The spill is relatively small compared to the Prestige disaster off the Spanish coast five years ago, when 64,000 tonnes of fuel oil spilled into the Atlantic Ocean.
In November 2002, the Liberian oil tanker Prestige broke up and sank off Spain, spewing fuel oil and fouling the Atlantic coast of France, Spain and Portugal.
Russia and Ukraine have set up a joint crisis center to deal with yesterday's disaster and aircraft were on standby to fly to the area as soon as the weather allows.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS