Search Underway For Missing Plane Near Birmingham, USA
Federal aviation officials say they are searching for a small plane that lost contact with air traffic controllers during its approach to Birmingham’s airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna 210 went missing after 10 p.m. Friday about 13 miles northeast of Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.
Authorities say the flight had departed from Jackson-Evers International Airport in Jackson, Miss. It wasn’t immediately known how many people were on board the small plane.
A search for the plane was continuing Saturday in the Trussville area northeast of Birmingham.
Trussville Police Chief Don Sivley tells Al.com that the plane had been circling over the area and looking for a place to land.
Commuter Plane Makes An Emergency Landing At Salina Regional Airport, Kansas, USA
No serious injuries reported to plane’s two crew members
Officials at Salina Regional Airport are investigating the belly landing of a small commuter plane with only the pilot and co-pilot on board.
Kansas Public Radio reports the SeaPort Airlines Pilatus PC-12 turboprop plane came down with its landing gear up shortly after 10 a.m. Friday. Medical personnel reported no serious injuries to the two crew members.
A spokeswoman for the Salina Airport Authority says it isn’t yet known whether pilot error or equipment failure was to blame.
SeaPort Airlines is based in Oregon and flies to nine states.
Part of a Dorset beach has been cordoned off following a “large” cliff fall, Portland Coastguard has said.
The landslip on East Cliff Beach, West Bay, happened at about 14:30 GMT.
Coastguards, the fire service and police were at the scene and people have been urged to stay away from the cliffs.
It is not yet known if anyone was hurt. A coastguard helicopter was used “to determine the state of the remaining cliffs”, Solent Coastguard said.
Watch manager Andy Jenkins said: “We did have a report that two people were missing in the area, but they have now been accounted for.”
He added Dorset County Council were sending a geologist to assess the site.
The slip at the East Cliff of East Beach is about a mile along the coast from where Charlotte Blackman, from Derbyshire, died in the Burton Bradstock landslip in 2012.
Another slip at Burton Bradstock happened in January.
Deadly Pig Virus Suspected On Prince Edward Island
A national agency is reporting the first suspected case of a deadly pig virus in Prince Edward Island.
The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network issued a bulletin on Thursday that says a case of suspected porcine epidemic diarrhea virus was detected by a veterinary lab on the Island overnight Wednesday.
The agency — which distributes information to the industry and government departments — says in a memo the regional test has been sent to the National Centre of Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg for confirmation.
The email says investigations have already started in P.E.I. to find out how the virus arrived on the farm, as it “initially appears there is no direct link with other cases in Canada.”
The intelligence network says Ontario was the first province to report a case of PED on Jan. 22, and as of Friday had 13 confirmed cases.
Manitoba also reported a case Thursday night.
The disease poses no risk to human health or safety.
However, the virus is highly contagious and it has already killed millions of piglets in the United States.
Chris Byra, manager of the swine intelligence network, said in an interview the confirmation by the federal lab in Winnipeg is likely to come swiftly.
He also said in an interview that the pigs on the infected farm will likely be slaughtered at an abattoir and then the slaughterhouse will be disinfected.
Byra said the infection spreads through manure that pigs swallow as they’re feeding.
In Ontario and Manitoba systems have been created to isolate the infected pigs at abattoirs and Byra said he expected Prince Edward Island would create a similar process.
Byra said it’s important to swiftly control the spread of the disease.
“We have a pretty good opportunity to eradicate it from our industry, but it’s going to take some months and it’s going to take some discipline among the producers,” he said.
The intelligence network doesn’t release the name of the farm or its exact location.
Vietnam has banned import of poultry over the border with China after the FAO and WHO sounded a warning following a meeting Thursday that the new and virulent H7N9 bird flu strain could enter the country from China at any time.
Pham Van Dong, head of the Animal Health Department at the agriculture ministry, said at the meeting held by the ministry that the virus has infected fowls and people in Guangxi, the Chinese autonomous region that shares a border with four Vietnamese provinces.
The virus was first detected in China in March last year and has since killed 73 out of 330 people who contracted it, including 130 this year, in Beijing, Shanghai, and many provinces as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where patients brought the disease back from mainland China.
Officials from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization said at the meeting that Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar face high risk.
A FAO official said communications programs are very important, especially in some vulnerable areas where poultry markets are concentrated.
The official said any hygiene or disinfection program needs to suit the conditions in a place, and when the virus is first detected, Vietnam has to work hard not only to get rid of it but also to find out how it got there.
Vietnam needs to have some long-term plans since there are more virus strains that are threatening the region. H10N8, a strain commonly found in poultry, was first discovered in humans in China last December and has killed at least two, while H9N2 was also detected in Chinese people in January.
Dong said H7N9 has not been reported in Vietnam and the ban on Chinese poultry is the best way to keep it out.
Local authorities and animal health agencies have been ordered to beef up surveillance, taking samples regularly for testing from poultry markets in the northern region.
Minister of Health Cao Duc Phat said a 25 percent fatality rate shows that the virus is very dangerous.
Dealing with it would be harder than with H5N1, the strain that has been ravaging Vietnam since 2003 and killed three persons this year, he said, since unlike H5N1 the new virus does not show symptoms when it infects fowls or kills them.
There is no vaccine yet against it.
Animal health authorities have meanwhile been providing H5N1 vaccines to poultry farmers.
Nguyen Ngoc Son, a farmer with 2,000 chickens in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum, said vaccination will prevent the birds from laying eggs or cause them to lay fewer, but it is not worth taking the risk.
“My entire fortune is in the chickens. If they get H5N1, we are done for,” he said.
H5N1 claimed a third life in Vietnam this year when Huynh Thanh Tuan, 30, of Nha Trang died Thursday.
The ministry in January reported two other human deaths from the disease – a 52-year-old man from Binh Phuoc Province and a 60-year-old woman from Dong Thap Province, both in the south.
The disease has claimed 65 lives so far in Vietnam, one of the highest fatality rates in the world, according to the WHO.
There have been 649 human infections since it re-emerged in 2003, with 385 of them dying.
Three Taken To Hospital After Plane Makes Hard Landing In Oconto, Wisconsin, USA
An airplane has made a hard landing at the Oconto airport Thursday afternoon, February 13th.
The Federal Aviation Administration says the plane was coming from Rochester, Minn. It was headed to Menominee, Mich., but had a problem and needed to land in Oconto.
The plane overshot the runway.
Five people were on board. The Sheriff’s Department says there were minor injuries, and three people were taken to the hospital.
MAGNITUDE 5.0 ANTOFAGASTA, CHILE
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=359944
Subject To Change
Depth: 100 km
Distances: 520 km SW of Sucre, Bolivia / pop: 224,838 / local time: 08:52:37.0 2014-02-15
222 km NE of Antofagasta, Chile / pop: 309,832 / local time: 09:52:37.0 2014-02-15
36 km E of Calama, Chile / pop: 143,084 / local time: 09:52:37.0 2014-02-15
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