Mediterranean migrant boat tragedy: 41 go missing
17 April 2015 5:50 AM IST
As many as 41 migrants drowned after a small boat carrying refugees sank in the Mediterranean, Italian media said on Thursday, days after 400 were lost in another shipwreck.
Four survivors told Italian police and humanitarian organisations that their inflatable vessel sank not long after leaving the coast of Libya for Europe with 45 people on board.
According to the men picked up by the Italian navy vessel “Foscari” after they were spotted by an aircraft, the old inflatable boat quickly began losing air forcing the migrants into the water. The four -- a Ghanaian, two Nigerians, and a man from Niger -- arrived in Trapani in Sicily on Thursday with 600 other migrants picked up by the Italian navy and coastguards as they tried to make the perilous crossing.
The new tragedy happened as Italian police said they had arrested 15 people over allegations that Christians had been thrown from a migrant boat during an attempted crossing to Italy.
NASA Probe Nearing Encounter With Unexplored Pluto
The first spacecraft to visit distant Pluto, a dwarf planet in the solar system’s frozen backyard, is still three months away from a close encounter, but already in viewing range, newly released photos show. The New Horizons probe blasted off from Florida in January 2006 for a 3-billion-mile (5-billion-km) journey to the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system located beyond Neptune.
During that time, Pluto once known as the ninth planet in the solar system, was demoted to dwarf planet status after the discovery of similar icy bodies in eccentric, distant orbits around the sun. New Horizons will pass will pass about 7,750 miles(12,500 km) from Pluto’s surface on July 14. With a diameter of just 1,430 miles (2,302 km) - roughly two-thirds the size of Earth’s moon - Pluto still looks like a bright dot in color images released by NASA on Tuesday.
For now, the pictures have more value to engineers than scientists. They are serving as a road map for control teams to tweak New Horizon’s approach.
Four survivors told Italian police and humanitarian organisations that their inflatable vessel sank not long after leaving the coast of Libya for Europe with 45 people on board.
According to the men picked up by the Italian navy vessel “Foscari” after they were spotted by an aircraft, the old inflatable boat quickly began losing air forcing the migrants into the water. The four -- a Ghanaian, two Nigerians, and a man from Niger -- arrived in Trapani in Sicily on Thursday with 600 other migrants picked up by the Italian navy and coastguards as they tried to make the perilous crossing.
The new tragedy happened as Italian police said they had arrested 15 people over allegations that Christians had been thrown from a migrant boat during an attempted crossing to Italy.
NASA Probe Nearing Encounter With Unexplored Pluto
The first spacecraft to visit distant Pluto, a dwarf planet in the solar system’s frozen backyard, is still three months away from a close encounter, but already in viewing range, newly released photos show. The New Horizons probe blasted off from Florida in January 2006 for a 3-billion-mile (5-billion-km) journey to the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system located beyond Neptune.
During that time, Pluto once known as the ninth planet in the solar system, was demoted to dwarf planet status after the discovery of similar icy bodies in eccentric, distant orbits around the sun. New Horizons will pass will pass about 7,750 miles(12,500 km) from Pluto’s surface on July 14. With a diameter of just 1,430 miles (2,302 km) - roughly two-thirds the size of Earth’s moon - Pluto still looks like a bright dot in color images released by NASA on Tuesday.
For now, the pictures have more value to engineers than scientists. They are serving as a road map for control teams to tweak New Horizon’s approach.
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