Tokyo court convicts New Zealand anti-whaling activist

TOKYO A Tokyo court on Wednesday convicted a New Zealand activist of assault and obstructing Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic Ocean, and sentenced him to a suspended prison term.Peter Bethune was also found guilty on three other charges: trespassing, vandalism and possession of a knife. He had pleaded guilty to all but the assault charge when his trial started in late May.The court sentenced Bethune to two years in prison, with the sentence suspended for five years – meaning he will not be jailed.The assault conviction was for throwing bottles of rancid butter at the whalers aboard their ship, including one that broke and gave several Japanese crew members chemical burns.

Bethune, 45, climbed onto the Shonan Maru 2 in February from a Jet Ski to confront its captain over the sinking of a protest vessel the previous month. He slashed a protective net with a knife, which the court said he possessed illegally, to enter the ship.The former activist for Sea Shepherd, a U.S.-based conservation group, was held on board the ship and arrested when it returned to Japan in March.

The group has been protesting Japan’s whaling for years, often engaging in scuffles with Japanese whalers. Sea Shepherd claims the research whaling mission, an allowed exception to an international whaling ban, is a cover for commercial hunting.Judge Takashi Tawada said Sea Shepherd has been engaged in “acts of sabotage” against the whalers, and that the use of such violence should not be tolerated.

Bethune “assaulted the crew members and interfered with their mission and the impact was extremely serious,” Tawada said. “His actions are based on his selfish beliefs.”However, Tawada said there was room for leniency given that Bethune had acknowledged what had happened, indicated that he wouldn’t return to similar protest activities and had no criminal record in Japan.Bethune did not make a statement in court Wednesday, but flashed a message written on a notebook to his lawyers saying he wanted to go home as soon as possible, one of his attorneys said.The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of attacks by ultra-rightwing activists, said Bethune would not appeal the ruling. Bethune is expected to be deported within days.

In Wellington, New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully welcomed Bethune’s suspended sentence. Arrangements have been made through consular officials for his return home, McCully’s spokesman, James Funnell, told The Associated Press.”What a relief all right,” Bethune’s wife Sharon said of the ruling. She credited her husband with raising awareness of Japanese whaling, but added, “We don’t want him to be doing it again, though.”In his tearful closing statement June 10, Bethune apologized for the trouble and said he never intended to hurt anyone.During earlier trial sessions, Bethune said he just wanted to confront the ship’s captain and hand him a $3 million bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil, a Sea Shepherd vessel that sank during a collision in January.Outside the court Wednesday, about 30 right-wing protesters chanted and held up placards, including one that said, “Give Sea Shepherd terrorist capital punishment.”Shuhei Nishimura, one of the protesters, called the sentence “too lenient.”Sea Shepherd recently said it expelled Bethune because he violated its policy against carrying weapons. The group said he had a bow and arrows with him while he was aboard the Ady Gil, although he never used them.

Still, on Wednesday, the group called Bethune “a hero” and said his mission helped save hundreds of whales which were to be killed by Japan.Sea Shepherd also said it is free to return to the Antarctic, vowing to be “more effective next season.”Japan, Norway and Iceland hunt whales under exceptions to a 1986 moratorium by the International Whaling Commission. Japan’s whaling program involves large-scale expeditions to the Antarctic Ocean, while other whaling countries mostly stay along their own coasts.

Separately, Japan has said the leader of Sea Shepherd, Canadian citizen Paul Watson, 59, is now on an Interpol wanted list for allegedly ordering Bethune’s actions as part of the group’s disruption of Japanese whaling in the Antarctic. Watson was placed on the Interpol list in late June at the request of Japan, which accuses his group of risking whalers’ lives during their expedition.(AP)

Tungurahua volcano erupts, Ecuadorean villagers evacuate

the second volcanic eruption in Latin America on Friday, loud explosions shook the ground and rattled windows near the volcano known as Tungurahua in the indigenous Quechua language, 130 km (81 miles) southeast of Quito, officials said.Residents close to the 5,020-meter (16,500 feet) volcano were evacuated from Cusua and Juive Grande villages, the president’s office said in a statement.

Officials in the area said hundreds of families had been moved, while Ecuador’s aviation authorities closed the airport in coastal Guayaquil and altered the routes of some flights to avoid the ash cloud.”The eruptive column is some 10 km (33,000 feet) high,” Hugo Yepes, director of Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, told reporters.

Tungurahua has been classed as active since 1999 and had a strong eruption in 2008. It is one of eight active volcanoes in the country.Yepes said ash plumes could “easily” reach the 35,000 to 40,000 feet at which long distance flights operate. “As such there should be at least a diversion for international routes,” he said.Ash particles can cause serious damage if sucked into airplane engines. An Icelandic volcano caused widespread disruption and major losses for airlines after flights were grounded for days in Europe in mid-April.The authorities temporarily closed the airport in Guayaquil, where the runway was covered in ash, and diverted planes heading there to Quito and Manta.

Officials also altered some flight routes to avoid the plume, including Lima-Quito and domestic routes between the capital and Guayaquil and the Andean city of Cuenca.The national director of civil aviation, Fernando Guerrero, told Reuters that the Guayaquil airport would reopen later once the runway had been cleared.

The authorities have moved to safety about 500 families in five communities close to Tungurahua, officials said, while an unknown number of people left the area of their own accord.”At the moment we are keeping a yellow alert in effect for the area,” said Fausto Chunata, mayor of the nearby town of Penipe, adding that they might order more evacuations later.

Banos, a town popular with foreign and local tourists, was among the places evacuated voluntarily, officials said.In Guatemala, another geologically volatile Latin American country, villagers fled and the international airport was closed after the Pacaya volcano erupted close to its capital.

Icelandic volcano forced airports in Ireland to close for a fourth day

SHANNON, Ireland, May 7 Ash drifting from an Icelandic volcano forced airports in Ireland to close for a fourth day Friday, disrupting plans for thousands of air travelers.Airports in Shannon, Sligo, Knock, Gal way, Donegal and Kerry were temporarily closed because of a huge ash cloud drifting from recent activity in Eyjafjallajoekull volcano, CNN reported.”The restrictions are required as the increased level of recent volcanic activity has created a massive ash cloud stretching 1,000 miles long and 700 miles wide,” the Irish Aviation Authority said.

Northerly winds were keeping most of the ash cloud over the Atlantic Ocean, the IAA statement said, but the size of the cloud has increased and “is encroaching on Irish airspace along the west coast of Ireland.”Airports in Ireland, Northern Ireland and western Scotland were closed earlier this week because of the ash. Last month, ash from the volcanic eruption disrupted European air travel for six days.

Euro control, Europe’s air traffic management agency, said the ash accumulation poses a new navigational obstacle because the cloud is climbing to 35,000 feet into the typical cruising altitude of transatlantic aircraft, The Daily Telegraph reported. Until recently, the ash was below 20,000 feet.Euro control said Thursday it would reroute flights between Europe and North America to avoid flying over the ash cloud off Ireland’s west coast.(UPI)

volcanic eruption in Iceland on Thursday ,volcanic eruption in Iceland on Thursday

volcanic eruption in Iceland on Thursday spread out across Europe and resulted in travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US.Thousands of passengers were stranded at Mumbai’s Sahar international airport with their eyes glued totelevision screens for updates. Many were clueless about the reason behind the cancellations and were seen inquiring at other airline counters for flight options. Some passengers were provided accommodation by airlines, others asked to fend for themselves.

A hassled Ruud De Boer, 56, was furious. “I was told that my flight was cancelled after waiting for more than two hours on Thursday. The airlines did not bother to explain the reasons for the cancellation or tell us about the volcanic eruption,” lamented Ruud.

Ruud, managing director of a private firm in Netherlands, was then scheduled to fly by Delta Air Lines flight DL-239 Mumbai-Amsterdam at 8pm on Friday. But he was seen struggling to hire a prepaid taxi outside the terminal late in the evening.

“I got to know that the flight was cancelled when I reached the airport at 5pm. I don’t like the manner in which the airline has handled the issue. They gave us hotel accommodation till Friday and said we would have to stay back at our own expense,” said Ruud. He has now booked tickets for a Swiss Air flight, which plans to take a different route.

Air India passengers Bruce Gery, 25, and Rosie Hanley, 25, however, are glad that the airline provided accommodation. The two were on a two-week holiday in India and were set to return to the UK on Friday. “We left Goa at 5am by train to catch our afternoon flight to London from Mumbai.” said Rosie.

Though the AI0131 flight was cancelled, Bruce said, “We were lucky that the airline gave us hotel accommodation. We want nothing more.”There were chaotic scenes at international airports too. Airports in much of Britain, France and Germany remained closed and flights were set to be grounded in Hungary and parts of Romania as well. Airlines and travel operators were losing hundreds of millions of dollars over the grounded flights due to the ash from the eruption of volcano Eyjafjoll in Iceland. The volcanic ash poses a threat to safety because it can get sucked into jet engines and cause them to cut out. The World Health Organisation in Geneva said that the ash could also have potential health impacts if it settles.

Dutch Airlines had Start flying the aircraft

Amsterdam  One by one airline in Europe began to be done, following the cessation of bursts of volcanic ash from the mountain in Iceland, which last week led to the European aviation paralyzed. Three flights started from Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam on Monday (19/4/2010) evening for Shanghai, Dubai and New York by airline KLM.”Three flights scheduled to leave tonight”, said a spokesman for the airline KLM, Saskia Kranendonk as reported by AFP on Tuesday (20/4/2010). The plane left the airport around 8:30 pm local time or 18:30 GMT.According to Saskia, is the type of aircraft flown by Boeing 747 each carrying 275 passengers, and the Airbus 330 can carry 243 passengers.

Previously, airlines in the Netherlands closed on Thursday, April 15, 2010 because of volcanic ash clouds from Iceland disrupt the flight path the country windmills.Previous Dutch Minister of Transport has also announced that the plane will be landing at Schiphol, Amsterdam on Tuesday (20/4/2010) morning.KLM airlines reported losses due to flight delays are between 5-10 million Euros (U.S. $ 6,7-13,4).

Katla volcano showing signs of going the coughing will erupt

Not to mention the dust caused by the eruption of volcanic Eyjafjallajökull Europe disappeared from the air, a mountain which is also located in Iceland already showing signs of going the coughing will erupt. “Learn from history, the eruption of Mount Eyjafjallajökull an impact on the surrounding mountains,” said the volcano expert Clive Oppenheimer, University of Cambridge home.The same thing, as The Sun proclaimed Sunday (18/4/2010), also said Dr. Dougal Jerram. “The eruption will be sustained even months,” said the expert from the Department of Earth Sciences University of Durham’s.So from that, the European fixed set of high vigilance regarding volcanoes in Iceland are.

Eyjafjallajökull Skogar located in the north, Iceland, has a height of 1666 meters or 5466 feet. In the note up to 1100 years back, this mountain has erupted four times ie in 920, 1612, and between 1821 and 1823. Because the area covered by a vast frozen, the eruptions caused the great ice avalanches.Actually, this year, has twice erupted Eyjafjallajökull ie on Saturday (20 / 3) and Wednesday (14 / 4). Pad eruptions in March, approximately 500 residents forced to evacuate.

Katla mountain which was situated close to Eyjafjallajökull aka “only” eight miles to the west, according to the experts to have greater strength when they erupt. Impacts arising from these eruptions are flooding the ice avalanches in the area.

updated

The dramatic volcanic eruption that belched out the ash plume responsible for grounding much of Europe entered a new phase Monday  producing less smoke but bubbling with lava and throwing up chunks of molten rock.Less ash is potentially good news for stranded travelers, but scientists who are monitoring the mountain’s explosion warn the eruption is not finished, and may still set off other eruptions at nearby volcanoes.The first sighting of glowing magma in the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was made on Monday, though the lava is not flowing down the mountain, Icelandic geologists said.

“It is sputtering and bubbling and will probably create a cone formation” as the lava spills over and freezes into rock, said Kristin Vogfjord, geologist at Iceland’s Met Office in Reykjavik.The volcanic eruption has been particularly explosive because it has surged under a 200 meter- (yard-) thick glacier. Melting ice pouring into the crater helped create plumes of ash that rose as far as nine kilometers (5.5 miles) into the air.

Now that the crater ice has mostly melted away, the ash cloud has decreased to below three kilometers (1.8 miles) in height, though the eruption continues. “The plume is lower but the tremors are slowly increasing, which means more magma is flowing,” said Vogfjord.

She is one of several dozen geoscientists and meteorologists who are monitoring Eyjafjallajokull’s violent moods.Seismometers and GPS stations are planted close to and around the volcano to measure tremors and land movement that can herald eruptions.

The GPS units  plastic cylinders on short poles  show the land around Eyjafjallajokull has swollen as much as 8 centimeters (3 inches) in recent months and then contracted slightly following the eruption, much like a bubble popping.

The seismometers, all of which are connected to computers and relay information automatically to a central data center in Reykjavik, check for tremors which indicate that magma is breaking through the crust to surface at the crater.The sound of these tremors can now be heard up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the mountain.

Vogfjord said some the instruments are vulnerable to the ash, however, and may break down.The ash, made up of sand and tiny abrasive glass-like particles, is very fine and can penetrate machines like computers and cameras — and, officials fear, jet engines.

That makes flying dangerous because the ash tends to stick to a jet engine’s interior parts, such as the turbines, where it melts to form a glassy coating.

Vogfjord’s team also monitors the volcano with the help of satellite imaging, a radar beam from the airport that sees anything above an altitude of three kilometers (1.8 miles), as well as Coast Guard flights when weather permits.While the current eruption may be stabilizing, geologists warn that any further ones on Iceland could again bring European aviation to a standstill. Even a volcano that is not covered by a glacier can shoot the same abrasive ash to altitudes used by commercial airliners.

That happened in 2000 at Mount Hekla and in 2004 in Grimsvotn, both located north of the current eruption. The difference then was that the wind carried the ash to unpopulated polar regions northeast of Iceland, rather than southeast to Europe’s main air travel hubs.Besides Mount Hekla, which is typically active every 10 years, scientists are also closely watching the Oraefajokull volcano and the massive Katla, both of which are under glaciers.

“The activity of one volcano sometimes triggers the next one, and Katla has been active together with Eyjafjallajokull in the past,” said Pall Einarsson, professor of geophysics at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland.The glacier over Katla is more than twice the thickness of Eyjafjallajokull’s, so its eruption would produce a vastly larger plume of ash and possibly ground flights for a much longer period of time.So far, Katla shows no signs of activity, but it explodes roughly once a century and its last eruption was in 1918, causing massive flooding, and lasted for a year.

17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland

A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano spread out across Europe on Friday causing air travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11 attacks.About 17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland, aviation officials said. Airports in Britain, France, Germany, and across Europe were closed until at least Saturday.”I would think Europe was probably experiencing its greatest disruption to air travel since 9/11,” said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain’s aviation regulator.”In terms of closure of airspace, this is worse than after 9/11. The disruption is probably larger than anything we’ve probably seen.”

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.

Vulcanologists say the ash could cause problems to air traffic for up to 6 months if the eruption continues, but even if it is short-lived the financial impact on airlines could be significant.The fallout hit airlines’ shares on Friday with Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair down between 0.8 and 2.2 percent.The International Air Transport Association said only days ago that airlines were just coming out of recession.

“LIMITED COMMERCIAL SIGNIFICANCE”

The flight cancellations would cost carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa about 10 million pounds ($16.04 million) a day, transport analyst Douglas McNeill said.

“To lose that sum of money isn’t a very pleasant experience but it’s of limited commercial significance as well,” he told BBC TV. “A couple of days like this won’t matter too much. If it goes on for weeks, that’s a different story.”The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (4 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.Officials said it was still spewing magma and although the eruption could abate in the coming days, ash would continue drifting into the skies of Europe.

Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock that can damage engines and airframes.

In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, gliding toward the ground before it was able to restart its engines.The incident prompted the aviation industry to rethink the way it prepared for ash clouds.

Of the 28,000 flights that usually travel through European airspace on an average day, European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said it expected only 11,000 to operate on Friday while only about a third of transatlantic flights were arriving.The British Meteorological Office showed the cloud drifting south and west over Europe. Eurocontrol warned problems would continue for at least another 24 hours and an aviation expert at the World Meteorological Organization said it was impossible to say when flights would resume.”We can only predict the time that flights will resume after the eruption has stopped, but for as long as the eruption is still going on and still leading to a significant eruption, we cannot say,” said Scylla Sillayo, a senior official in the WMO’s aeronautical meteorology unit.

AIRSPACE CLOSED

Britain’s air traffic control body said all English airspace would be closed until 8 p.m. EDT on Friday although certain flights from Northern Ireland and Scottish airports were being allowed to take off until 1800 GMT.”When the experts give us the all-clear we’ll get the operation back up and running,” Paul Haskins, head of safety at National Air Traffic Service, told BBC radio.

There were no flights from London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which handles some 180,000 passengers a day, while officials at Germany’s Frankfurt airport, Europe’s second busiest, said flights would be suspended from 2 a.m. EDT.Around 2,000 people slept overnight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a spokeswoman said, adding they did not expect airspace in the Netherlands to reopen soon.

Eurocontrol said airspace was closed over Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the north of the Czech Republic, northern France including all Paris airports, and at airports in northern Germany, Austria and parts of Poland.

Polish officials said if the disruption continued, it might force a delay in Sunday’s funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife who were killed in a plane crash last Saturday.Airlines across Asia and the Middle East have also canceled or delayed flights to most European destinations.

However, as the ash plume drifted south over Europe, Irish officials said most of the airspace over Ireland had reopened.The air problems have proved a boon for rail companies. All 58 Eurostar trains between Britain and Europe were operating full, carrying some 46,500 passengers, and a spokeswoman said they would consider adding services if problems persisted.(Reuters)