Moscow: Meteor-1, the Soviet Union’s first fully operational weather satellite, will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere after more than four decades in orbit, the web site of the US Strategic Command said.

The Meteor satellite series was developed in the Soviet Union during the sixties. On March 26, 1969, a Vostok rocket launched Meteor-1, the very first version of the Soviet Meteor satellite network, into orbit. The satellite terminated operations in July 1970, according to NASA information.

The spacecraft is expected to begin falling at 3:13 a.m. Moscow time on 27 March with debris estimated to fall into the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka, the US Strategic Command said. Read More

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — The company that makes "pink slime" suspended operations Monday at three of four plants where the beef ingredient is made, saying officials would work to address recent public concern about the product.

Beef Products Inc. will suspend operations at plants in Amarillo, Texas; Garden City, Kan.; and Waterloo, Iowa, according to Craig Letch, the company's director of food safety and quality assurance. The company's plant at its Dakota Dunes, S.D., headquarters will continue operations.

"We feel like when people can start to understand the truth and reality then our business will come back," Letch said. "It's 100 percent beef."

Federal regulators say the ammonia-treated filler, known in the industry as "lean, finely textured beef," meets food safety standards. But critics say the product could be unsafe and is an unappetizing example of industrialized food production. Read More

The captain of a US airliner was tackled by his own passengers after he ran up and down a packed jet screaming about bombs and al Qaeda.

The JetBlue plane, en route from New York's JFK airport to Las Vegas, was forced into an emergency landing in Amarillo, Texas, as the pilot was pinned down.

Alarmed passengers became aware of the incident when the co-pilot, seemingly worried by his colleague's erratic behavior, locked him out of his own cockpit when he left to use the toilet.

The captain - believed to be Clayton Osbon - responded by banging angrily on the flight deck door, before running up and down the aisle screaming, "Say your prayers!" according to the New York Post.

A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) statement said: "The co-pilot became concerned that the captain exhibited erratic behavior during the flight.

"The captain had exited the cockpit during the flight, after which the co-pilot locked the door.

"When the captain attempted to enter the locked cockpit, he was subdued by passengers. Read More

(Reuters) - Hydrofluoric acid (HF) leaked from an alkylation unit at BP Plc's 406,570-barrels-per-day refinery in Texas City, Texas on Tuesday morning, triggering alarms in the plant and warnings to area residents, company and city officials said.

No injuries were reported at the refinery, the fifth-largest in the United States, or in the surrounding community, the officials said.

"We have a small leak of hydrofluoric acid at the refinery," BP spokesman Tom Mueller said shortly after 10 a.m. local time. "Water is being sprayed on it. We expect to secure the leak shortly." Read More

Emergency workers have rescued a man submerged in suffocating mud on a Georgia building site for nearly an hour.

Dramatic video showed that when firefighters arrived at the scene in Atlanta they were barely able to see the man, who had sunk deep into the thick mud.

"He couldn't get himself out because he was too weak," one firefighter said.

"The suction on the mud was holding the individual down and his airway was compromised.

"One of the Grady (Memorial Hospital) medics was able to get out to him and get his airway open and move the mud away from his face to keep him breathing."

But the rescue very nearly took a terrifying turn when a firefighter also became trapped. He was pulled out by colleagues.

Eventually, enough rescue workers were able to get to the man, who has not been named, and pull him from the cloying mud.

"We were able to get him out with just brute manpower and put him in the basket and get him up," the firefighter said.

The man was taken to hospital and treated for hypothermia, local news channels said. Read More

An exclusion zone has been put in place around a North Sea oil and gas well, where a plume of gas was seen rising above the water after a "serious" leak.

The potentially explosive natural gas is escaping from Total's Elgin platform, and officials have admitted it could take up to six months to plug the leak.

The well, which normally has 238 workers, has been evacuated and the facility powered down.

Ships have been told not to pass within two miles of the rig and an air exclusion zone extends to three miles around the location, which is 150 miles off the coast of Aberdeen.

As well as the gas cloud, a sheen of oil was visible on the water.

Oil Spill Response (OSRL) have carried out two aerial surveillance flights to assess the situation and two further flights are planned. Read More

A plane from New York to Las Vegas had to be diverted to Texas after its captain "went nuts" and began yelling about a bomb.

The JetBlue flight 191, which had 135 passengers on board, had been airborne for around three and a half hours when the pilot began running down the aisles.

He had reportedly been locked out of the cockpit by concerned colleagues and an off-duty captain who happened to be a passenger on the flight took over and landed the plane.

JetBlue said in a statement that the diversion to Amarillo followed "a medical situation involving the captain".

Witnesses reported the captain shouting: "Say your prayers", while the word "bomb" could be heard during YouTube footage of the incident.

He was reportedly seen banging repeatedly on the cockpit door and demanding to be let back in.

But witnesses say he was eventually restrained by passengers on the plane. more

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A 17-year-old has died of bird flu in Indonesia. He is the country's sixth fatality from the virus so far this year.

Health ministry spokeswoman Murti Utami said Tuesday the boy from eastern Lombok island developed symptoms early this month after coming into contact with sick chickens.

He died March 9 after one week's hospitalization.

Utami says laboratory results came back several days ago confirming he had the deadly H5N1 virus. Read More

Lanzarote and Fuerteventura see their tourism-dependent economy threatened by plans for exploratory wells in Atlantic

Plans approved by the Spanish government this month to start prospecting for oil off the Canary Islands have triggered protests nationwide.

Despite large-scale opposition and the danger drilling presents to whales and other marine life that migrate through this part of the Atlantic, Madrid gave the go-ahead to the Spanish company Repsol to start exploration at nine locations, at depths between 1,500 and 3,000 metres, less than 60km off Lanzarote and Fuerteventura in the Canaries.

Spain currently imports about 80% of its energy. The industry, energy and tourism minister, José Manuel Soria, argues that it can no longer afford the luxury "of holding back business or wasting natural resources".

Estimates suggest substantial reserves in the area, sufficient to produce 100,000 barrels of crude a day, equivalent to one-tenth of national demand. Read More

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s defense ministry says an air force helicopter has crashed off the island’s southeast coast and five crew members are missing.

The ministry says the S70-C chopper disappeared from radar screens shortly after 9 p.m. (1300 GMT) Monday while on a mission to aid a fisherman who had apparently suffered a heart attack.

It says one crew member has been rescued and efforts to locate the five missing men continue. The ministry didn’t say whether the fisherman was rescued.

The crash occurred some 13 miles (20 kilometers) west of Orchid Island, a Taiwanese territory populated largely by members of the local aboriginal community. Source

Reuters) - A cloud of explosive natural gas boiling out of the North Sea from a leak at Total's abandoned Elgin platform forced wider evacuations off the Scottish coast on Tuesday as the French firm warned it may take six months to halt the flow.

Dubbed "the well from hell" by a Norwegian environmentalist who said the high pressure of the undersea reservoirs in the field made it especially hard to shut off, a plume of gas was visible over the platform, officials said, and a sheen of oil, also produced from the rig, was spreading over the water.

Officials imposed an air and sea exclusion zone around the platform, which had been pumping 9 million cubic meters of gas per day or three percent of Britain's natural gas output and lies some 150 miles east of the city of Aberdeen.

A senior Total manager said the firm was looking at two main options - drilling a relief well, which could take six months, or the faster - potentially riskier - alternative of sending in engineers to "kill" the leak affecting a platform that also accounts for some 5.5 percent of Britain's total oil production.

But, Total manager David Hainsworth added: "The well itself could die on its own. This is the dream option." Read More

A luggage room at one of Logan Airport’s terminals was evacuated Monday morning after a strange odor was detected in a bag.

Authorities cleared out the screening room at terminal A, which serves Delta and Continental Airlines, after security searched the piece of luggage and found a chemical around 8:30 a.m.

It turned out to be camphor, which can be used for a number of things.

The owner of the bag was taken off his flight and questioned. He told investigators he was flying to Beijing, China and was going to use the camphor as rat repellent.

A hazardous material team was called in, along with state police and the fire department, as a precaution.

MassPort spokesman Phil Orlandella told WBZ-TV four TSA employees were taken to the hospital for treatment. more

(Reuters) - A massive cloud of explosive natural gas boiling out of the North Sea from a leak at Total's abandoned Elgin platform forced wider evacuations off the Scottish coast on Tuesday and an air and sea "exclusion zone" was declared.

Dubbed "the well from hell" by a Norwegian environmentalist who warned that the high pressure of the undersea gas exploited by the French firm made it especially hard to shut off, clouds of gas were seen by workers over the platform and a sheen of oil, also produced from the rig, was spreading over the water.

Total said it was unable to predict when or how the gas - and oil - leak would be contained. With memories still fresh of the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 blowout at a BP oil well, managers and British officials assured the public that there was little immediate threat.

Total said shipping had been ordered to come no closer than two miles from the Elgin platform and aircraft no nearer than three miles if they flew lower than 4,000 feet - effectively shutting out helicopters but not affecting airline traffic.

Shell cut staffing at two of its nearby facilities, the Shearwater production platform, which continued pumping oil, and the Noble Hans Deul exploration rig, which suspended drilling. Read More

(CNN) -- The Deepwater Horizon oil spill damaged coral formations deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and miles from the ruptured well at the heart of the disaster, researchers reported Monday.

Scientists using remote-controlled probes and the venerable research submersible Alvin spotted a coral colony covered in "black scum" about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of the undersea gusher, Penn State University biologist Charles Fisher said. Another nearby formation was covered in a gooey brown and white mix of oil and organic materials from the coral, he said.

"What this does tell us is there was acute damage to a reef 7 miles away," Fisher said. "It tells us it's likely this oil hit a lot of other areas of the seafloor."

Fisher was the chief scientist for an expedition that surveyed the area in November and December 2010 with funding from the National Science Foundation. Some of the findings are being published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Samples taken from the coral beds, located at a depth of about 4,300 feet, matched the chemical fingerprint of the oil from the Macondo well, said Helen White, the lead author of the paper documenting the results. Read More

Two New York Police Department officers rushed to hospital on Sunday after their patrol car crashed into a lamppost in Brooklyn.

The car was sent ploughing into the pole when it was struck in the side by a lorry driver who sped through a red light.

The white lorry's cab smashed into the cruiser’s driver’s-side door in a Cypress Hills intersection at about 7.30 am. Read More

The federal government has slowly been demolishing the erstwhile mining town of Pincer, Oklahoma, after decades of aggressive mining left the area one of the most toxic in the nation.

In 2009, residents were given checks from the federal government so they could relocate from the crumbling town, though a resolute resident or two stayed behind.

The slow exodus began in 1983 when the Environmental Protection Agency declared it the most hazardous Superfund site in America.

People were given the harrowing choice – leave, or sacrifice your health.

A report released in the 1990s showed that a third of the town’s children were found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood.

Teachers realised their students were slow, not because of their intellect, but because of the pollutants in the water.

For decades, before Picher became a town, miners carved miles of tunnels under its land, and the bounty of lead ore they recovered made bullets for both world wars. Read More

Reintroducing predators such as dingoes and tasmanian devils into landscapes may help protect Australia's diminishing biodiversity, researchers say.

A new paper to be published in the May edition of Trends in Ecology and Evolution suggests dingoes and tasmanian devils could control invasive species, such as cats and foxes, as well as overabundant herbivores.

"We need to be quite bold and allow predators back into the landscape and see if they can reverse some of the damage we've done," said Dr Euan Ritchie, ecologist at Deakin University in Melbourne and lead author of the paper.

Since European settlement, humans have drastically altered the Australian environment, resulting in one of the highest rates of species loss in the world.

Cats and foxes have wreaked havoc on small wildlife species, while larger natives, such as kangaroos, have multiplied. Read More

ROME -- Venice appears to have more nicknames than street names. It’s known as the "Queen of the Adriatic," the "City of Water," "City of Masks," "City of Bridges," "The Floating City," and "City of Canals."

But is Venice destined to become "The Divers' Paradise" much faster than we thought? New research by U.S. scientists suggests it is sinking more than five times faster than experts in Venice believe.

Saying that the city is sinking is just about as obvious as saying that the wind will always blow in Chicago. It’s just a thing of nature. And there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it. Read More

A federal judge Thursday turned down a request to halt the killing of California sea lions at Bonneville Dam, clearing the way for wildlife officials to remove up to 30 animals this year.

The Humane Society of the United States had asked for a temporary restraining order while it proceeds with a lawsuit against the practice. Wildlife officials, intending to reduce sea lions' consumption of salmon and steelhead, have trapped and removed 38 sea lions since 2008. They've killed 28 and shipped the other 10 to zoos and aquariums. The killings are controversial, however, and the legal fight is continuing.

Bonneville Dam, in the Columbia River about 140 miles inland, is the first obstacle for migrating salmon and steelhead. They pool up below the dam, making them easy pickings for sea lions that have followed them up river. Read More

ELK GROVE (CBS13) – You’ve heard the saying smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. But if you got ‘em and you live in an apartment complex in Elk Grove, the luxury of lighting up may soon go up in smoke.

“i think it’s a pretty good idea,” one apartment resident said.

He’s talking about the possibility of banning smoking in all apartment complexes in the city.

A Sacramento-based trade association that works with landlords is against the idea, however.

“We don’t think it’s necessary,” said Cory Koehler with the Rental Housing Association. We support an owner’s right to choose the policy that’s in the best interest of their particular property. But what we don’t support is a new law by local government forcing the owner to do that.” Read More