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China rushes to clean up oil spill on Yangtze: state media

The Iranian-registered vessel identified as the Zoorik with a crew of 37 onboard on the brink of capsizing, after running aground in heavy weather at the mouth of China's Yangtze river, near Shanghai on November 1, 2009. A rescue operation airlifted 37 crew members after helicopters dispatched by China's transport ministry succeeded in pulling the multi-national crew of Iranians, Bangladeshis and Malaysians off the distressed ship. Photo courtesy AFP.

Los Alamos waste moves toward aquifers
Toxic waste from New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory is trickling toward the state's underground water aquifers, officials say. The deadly waste is leaking from underground burial sites used to store the radioactive waste generated by the building of nuclear bombs, with some of it reaching to within several hundred feet of the edge of the Rio Grande River, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest United States, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Monitoring sites set up by the New Mexico Environment Department have detected organic compounds such as perchlorate, which is used in rocket propellant, as well as the radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission, the newspaper said. Although the levels of contamination found aren't high enough to trigger health warnings, state officials say no one knows how the waste is slipping through scrambled layers of rock on the 40-square-mile Los Alamos complex. Laboratory officials told the Times the waste isn't jeopardizing anyone's health. "We are seeing no human or ecological risk," Danny Katzman, director of the lab's water stewardship program, told the newspaper. (UPI Report)
by Staff Writers
 Beijing (AFP) Nov 2, 2009
 Authorities in China rushed to clean up an oil spill at the mouth of the Yangtze River after an Iranian-registered ship ran aground in bad weather, state media said Monday.

The freighter 'Zoorik' was stranded Sunday at Luhuashan in eastern Zhejiang province and the 37 people on board -- including a two-year-old boy -- were airlifted to safety, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

But fuel began spilling out of the ship shortly after the accident, and Xinhua pictures published online of the stranded freighter showed a large oil slick covering the stretch of water between the vessel and the coast.

Authorities dispatched 30 workers on four boats to clean up the spill, but the operation was hindered by winds of up to 100 kilometres (60 miles) an hour, Xinhua quoted the maritime bureau in nearby Zhoushan city as saying.

More workers were to be sent to the scene once the wind subsides, the report said.

The accident came the same day a ship laden with 100 tonnes of hydrochloric acid sank farther up the Yangtze, in central Hubei province, after colliding with another vessel, Xinhua reported.

The report did not say if the acid was contained on the sunken ship or had contaminated the water.

However, the agency cited officials from the provincial environmental protection department as saying tests on the water revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Neither the Zhoushan maritime bureau nor the environmental protection bureau in Ezhou city, which is responsible for the salvage of the ship in Hubei, were immediately available for comment.

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