– The World Health Organization is calling an emergency meeting of health ministers from 11 countries next week in hopes of coming up with a plan to combat the worst outbreak of Ebola the world has ever seen. So far more than 390 people have died in the outbreak, which is stretching across Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, Bloomberg reports. That far exceeds the 280 killed when the disease debuted in 1976. "This epidemic is out of control," a Doctors Without Borders official said this week, according to the Guardian. This outbreak is proving especially deadly because it involves the most devastating of the five Ebola viruses; Zaire ebolavirus kills 79% of those infected, Vox explains. It's also the first major outbreak to hit West Africa, and workers there aren't sure how to deal with it—many hospitals, for example, are releasing infected patients. Among the general populace, education is even worse. In Sierra Leone, for instance, young people have burned drugs and supplies, believing that it was the medicine killing the patients. At its meeting next week, the WHO will seek to form a multi-country team to close that information gap. On the bright side, "the chance of Ebola spreading out of West Africa is very, very low," one specialist tells NPR—although if it did it would likely hit Paris next, because 10% of Guinea's air traffic out of its Conakry airport heads there.

Expand this summary.

Staff of medical aid organization Doctors without Borders carry the body of a person killed by viral haemorrhagic fever, at a center for victims of the Ebola virus in Guinea.

 The deadliest Ebola outbreak in recorded history is happening right now. The outbreak is unprecedented both in the number of cases and in its geographic scope. And so far, it doesn't look like it's slowing down.

 The outbreak has now hit three countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. And the virus — which starts off with flu-like symptoms and often ends with horrific hemorrhaging — has infected about 600 people and killed an estimated 367 since this winter, according to the numbers on June 26 from the World Health Organization.

 On June 23, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders sent out a distress call. As the only aid organization treating people with Ebola, the group said it was "overwhelmed," that the epidemic was out of control, and that it couldn't send workers to new outbreak sites without getting more resources.

 Ebola is both rare and very deadly. Since the first outbreak in 1976, Ebola viruses have infected roughly 2,400 people and killed about one-third of them. Symptoms can come on very quickly and kill fast:

 Journalist David Quammen put it well in a recent New York Times op-ed: "Ebola is more inimical to humans than perhaps any known virus on Earth, except rabies and HIV-1. And it does its damage much faster than either."

 So why is Ebola doing so much damage right now? Here's a primer on what's going on.

 Why is Ebola back in the news?

 Ebola tends to come and go over time.

 Every now and again, the disease spills over from animals to humAns

 The viruses are constantly circulating in animals, most likely bats. Every once in a while, the disease spills over into humans, often when someone handles or eats undercooked or raw meat from a diseased ape, monkey, or bat. An outbreak can then happen for several months. And then it becomes quiet, again.

 Ebola can completely disappear from humans for years at a time. For example, there were zero recorded cases of Ebola in 2005 or 2006.

 Where is the current Ebola outbreak?

 This outbreak started in Guinea sometime in late 2013 or early 2014. (The majority of cases have been in that country.) It has since spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia, including some major capital cities. It's the first time Ebola has ever reached a state capital.

 Why is this particular outbreak so deadly?

 First, this outbreak concerns the most deadly of the five Ebola viruses — Zaire ebolavirus, which has killed 79 percent of the people it has infected. (The virus is called that after the formerly named Zaire, which, along with Sudan, experienced the first Ebola outbreak back in 1976.)

 There are also social and political factors contributing to the current disaster. Because this is the first major Ebola outbreak in West Africa, many of the region's health workers didn't have experience or training in how to protect themselves or care for patients with this disease.

 What's more, an NPR story suggests that people in these countries tend to travel more than those in Central Africa (where outbreaks usually occur). That may have helped the virus disperse geographically, and it made it difficult to track down people who might be infected.

 MANY OF WEST AFRICA'S HEALTH WORKERS DIDN'T HAVE TRAINING DEALING WITH EBOLA

 Meanwhile, as an editorial in the medical journal Lancet noted, social stigmas and a lack of awareness may be preventing people from seeking medical care (or even actively avoiding it). Another often-cited problem is that some people have had direct contact with victims' dead bodies during funerals and preparations for burial, which can spread the disease.

 In many ways, how well a country can deal with an Ebola outbreak comes down to basic health-care practices and public education. With enough resources poured into the effort, people should be able to contain this outbreak. So far, however, these countries are struggling.

 Does Ebola really make people bleed from their eyes?

 Yes. Bleeding from orifices is one of the more unusual and memorable symptoms of viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola. In later stages of the disease, some people bleed from the eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and rectum. They may also bleed from puncture sites if they've had an IV.

 External bleeding can be one of the main symptoms that can help people realize they're dealing with a case of Ebola, since other signs — first fevers and headache, then vomiting and diarrhea — can be caused by any number of illnesses. Internal bleeding can happen, as well.

 But it doesn't always happen. For example, this study of a 1995 outbreak found external bleeding in 41 percent of cases. And bleeding didn't correlate with who survived and who didn't.

 What actually kills people is shock from multiple organ failure, including problems with the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system.

 Symptoms come on abruptly after an incubation period of 2 to 21 days. And people generally die between day 6 and 16 of the illness.

 Why is Ebola so deadly?

 One of the main things that seems to make Ebola viruses especially deadly is that they seem to be able to evade much of the human immune system. Among other problems, white blood cells from the immune system are often seen to die off in patients. And if the body can't fight fully back, the virus can just keep taking over.

 Scientists are still figuring out exactly how this happens, and they have several promising leads. One is that the virus is making proteins that act as decoys, interfering with the body's ability to fight back.

 How hard is it to catch Ebola?

 Ebola is relatively hard to catch. Unlike measles or the flu, it's not spreadable over the air through casual contact.

 In order to get Ebola, someone must touch the blood or bodily fluids (including sweat, urine, and semen) of a person or animal who's infected (alive or dead). People can also catch it through indirect contact with victims' fluids, such as via bedding or medical equipment.

 People generally aren't infectious until they get sick.

 This limited transmission ability is one of the main reasons why Ebola outbreaks can often be stopped within weeks or months. What it takes is public education and good health-care hygiene like patient isolation, sterilization procedures, and the use of gloves and masks.

 What are the chances of Ebola spreading to the US?

 The ebola viruses known today don't spread from person-to-person well enough to have much risk of causing a wide pandemic across several continents. The risk of Ebola coming to the US is very low.

 How do you treat Ebola?

 Patients are treated for symptoms, including IV fluids for dehydration. It's important to remember that some people do survive an Ebola infection.

 Hopefully, in the future there will be more options. For example, researchers are working to find drugs, including a recent $50 million push at the National Institutes of Health. And scientists are working on vaccines, including looking into ones that might be able to help wild chimpanzees, which are also susceptible to the disease.

 Update: Incorporated the newest case counts from the WHO on June 26. ||||| Public Health

 Could The Ebola Outbreak Spread To Europe Or The U.S.?

 i itoggle caption Nir Elias/Reuters/Landov Nir Elias/Reuters/Landov

 Ebola headlines this past week make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

 "Ebola Epidemic In West Africa 'Out Of Control,' " CNN said Monday. "Doctors Aren't Sure How To Stop Africa's Deadliest Ebola Outbreak," Shots reported.

 And it's true: The outbreak in West Africa is the largest in history. Nearly 500 people have caught the hemorrhagic virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The death toll so far is 338, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

 So should Europe and the U.S. begin worrying about the virus?

 "The chance of Ebola spreading out of West Africa is very, very low," says infectious disease specialist Kamran Khan, with St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. "But if it did spread, Paris is probably the first city on the list."

 Paris? Why single out that city?

 To answer that, let's back up a bit.

 Khan and his team have spent years figuring out how viruses and bacteria move around the globe. "We look at many outbreaks and decide what paths they're going take," he tells Shots. "The big question is whether sick people are going to get on a plane and spread the disease."

 That answer, he has found, depends largely on two factors: How many people are infected, and the degree of travel from the outbreak area.

 Take SARS, for example, the respiratory virus that can spread through water droplets when a person coughs or sneezes. When SARS first appeared in 2002, it was isolated to rural China. So it spread slowly.

 After about four months, a doctor brought SARS to Hong Kong. The outbreak quickly worsened.

 "The airport in Hong Kong is a major, major international hub," Khan says. "You could see SARS start spreading rapidly around the world from there."

 The virus jumped from Hong Kong to Vietnam and Thailand. It crossed the Pacific Ocean to Canada and the U.S. Eventually, it reached several countries in Europe. More than 8,000 people caught the virus.

 But critical differences between SARS and Ebola make the Ebola virus much less threatening, Khan says.

 The major city affected by the Ebola outbreak is Conakry, Guinea, home to about a million people and an international airport. But it's not a central hub, like Hong Kong International Airport or Chicago O'Hare.

 "The volume of travel in the Conakry airport is low," Khan says. "Most of the flights are local. But 10 percent of the traffic goes to Paris." That would make Paris the likeliest place for Ebola to arrive.

 And it is a possibility. After a person is infected with Ebola, symptoms could appear within two days — or take up to 21 days, Khan says. So a person infected in Guinea could hop on a plane and bring Ebola to, say, France or another international destination.

 Even if that happens, the odds of fellow passengers catching the virus are extremely low, says Dr. Mark Gendreau, who specializes in aviation medicine at Lahey Medical Center in Peabody, Mass.

 Several cases support this claim.

 In 1996, a Gabon man with clear symptoms of Ebola boarded a plane to Johannesburg to seek medical treatment. He had a fever above 105 degrees Fahrenheit and signs of internal bleeding.

 The man eventually made it to a hospital in South Africa. He did not infect anyone during his flight or other travels, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported.

 Why? Unlike SARS, Ebola doesn't pass easily from person to person. "Transmission requires very close contact with bodily fluids, like blood or mucus," Gendreau says. "You need prolonged contact with somebody."

 There's another case that argues against Ebola spreading because of airline travel.

 In 2004, a businessman visiting Sierra Leone flew to London and then the U.S. He had a fever, diarrhea and back pain. When he reached his hometown in New Jersey, he went straight to a hospital.

 The diagnosis was Lassa fever — another hemorrhagic virus that, like Ebola, is transmitted through bodily contact. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked down 188 people who had close contact with the man during his travels, including 19 passengers on the flight from London to Newark. The CDC reported that none of them caught the virus. ||||| Health authorities struggling to control the worst outbreak of Ebola on record said drastic action is needed to prevent more deaths.

 More than 390 people have died in the outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the World Health Organization said in a statement today. That toll is greater than the 280 people killed in 1976, when the virus was first identified near the Ebola River in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 The WHO plans to meet with health ministers from 11 countries July 2-3 in Accra, Ghana, to agree on a plan to bring the outbreak under control. Health workers will have to tackle resistance from local people who are hiding infected family members, destroying medicines intended to help and adhering to rituals that fuel the spread of the virus.

 “This is no longer a country-specific outbreak but a sub-regional crisis that requires firm action by governments and partners,” said Luis Sambo, the WHO’s regional director for Africa. “WHO is gravely concerned of the ongoing cross-border transmission into neighboring countries as well as the potential for further international spread.”

 The outbreak is expected to last another three to four months, focused around the “hot spot” in the rural border areas where the three countries meet, said Francis Kasolo, the WHO’s director of disease prevention and control for Africa.

 Crossing Borders

 “What we are seeing is a lot of cross-border movement,” Kasolo said in a telephone interview. “When somebody comes in contact with a sick person in Guinea and crosses into Sierra Leone, as long as they don’t report having come into contact with an Ebola patient, there is a grave possibility that that person will transmit the disease.”

 At next week’s meeting, the WHO will discuss forming a multi-country team that will share information daily on Ebola cases and people who have come into contact with those infected, Kasolo said. The Geneva-based organization has deployed more than 150 people to fight the epidemic, with tasks including surveillance, communication, infection control, logistics and data management.

 The virus is also spreading because some hospitals are allowing infected patients to leave. Unsafe burial practices are also contributing.

 Effective communication of safe measures to local communities is a major challenge that will be discussed in Accra, said WHO spokesman Daniel Epstein.

 Educational Effort

 “If there isn’t a strong public-health information and education component to the control activities, then people don’t understand and end up infecting themselves and doing things they shouldn’t be doing,” said David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who has studied Ebola since the first outbreak in 1976.

 Guinea has pockets of resistance, mainly in the town of Gueckedou, the epicenter of the disease, said Remy Lamah, the country’s health minister.

 “There are always citizens who remain attached to their rites, their traditions and others do not even believe that Ebola exists,” he said by phone today from Conakry, Guinea’s capital. “We want to use teachers and students during the holidays for awareness caravans in their communities.”

 The WHO is also recruiting Ebola survivors to speak at next week’s meeting and share their experience with their own communities to try to end resistance to control efforts.

 ‘Denial Barrier’

 “That’s one of the ways of trying to break the denial barrier of saying Ebola is just another disease,” Kasolo said. “We want them to be advocates within the communities where they come from on this particular disease.”

 Suspicion of health workers’ motives has thwarted initiatives in some places. In Sierra Leone, youths in Kailahun burned drugs and other supplies, claiming the medicines were meant to kill Ebola patients, the country’s ministry of health and sanitation said this week.

 Some households in Sierra Leone’s Kenema district are also hiding infected family members until they become very ill, health minister Miatta Kargbo said in an interview. Bogus vaccination programs are also causing undue confusion.

 “The ministry wishes the general public to know that there is no vaccine for Ebola and it has not instituted any Ebola vaccine immunization in schools,” the ministry said in a statement. “The act of spreading this misleading and scaring information is a criminal offense and people involved in this act are warned to desist forthwith.”

 In Liberia, traditions of waiting to bury bodies for months and touching the dead have made controlling the spread harder, Tolbert Nyesuah, assistant minister for health said. Denial that that disease exists has also complicated containment, he said.

 Neighboring Countries

 There is low risk at present that the outbreak will spread to other nations, Kasolo said. Still, officials from neighboring countries such as Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Gambia have been invited to attend the Accra meeting in case the disease spreads, he said. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda will share their experiences dealing with past outbreaks.

 “We still think we have another three to four months to go with the epidemic, but the duration will be influenced by how national governments and affected communities respond,” Kasolo said.

 For Related News and Information: Sierra Leone Youths Burn Drugs Claiming to Prevent Ebola Deaths

 To contact the reporter on this story: Makiko Kitamura in London at mkitamura1@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net David Risser, Kristen Hallam ||||| MSF warns that doctors are struggling to contain second wave of disease in region amid poor monitoring and communication

 The Ebola epidemic in west Africa is "out of control" and will be contained only if politicians, religious leaders and aid agencies urgently improve their response to the unprecedented outbreak, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned.

 The disease, which is continuing to spread through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, has so far claimed 350 lives, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The total number of confirmed, probable or suspected cases stands at 567, with the disease identified in more than 60 locations across the three countries. The disease, which can kill up to 90% of those who become infected, was first reported in Guinea in March.

 Dr Bart Janssens, MSF's director of operations, said the charity had already treated 470 patients and was struggling to cope. "The epidemic is out of control," he said. "We have reached our limits. Despite the human resources and equipment deployed by MSF in the three affected countries, we are no longer able to send teams to the new outbreak sites."

 MSF said that civil society and political and religious authorities were failing to recognise the scale of the epidemic, adding that prominent figures had to do more to promote the fight against the disease. Amid the panic, it said, key messages were not getting through and people were continuing to attend funerals where there were no infection-control measures in place.

 Janssens said Ebola now had to be viewed as a public health issue throughout west Africa.

 "The WHO, the affected countries and their neighbouring countries must deploy the resources necessary for an epidemic of this scale," he said. "In particular, qualified medical staff need to be made available, training in how to treat Ebola needs to be organised and, contact tracing and awareness-raising activities among the population need to be stepped up."

 On Saturday, the WHO said a failure to gauge the severity of the initial outbreak and a subsequent relaxation of counter-measures had helped give rise to a "second wave" of the disease.

 "When the epidemic started, it was a little underestimated, so that the states took a while to really prepare themselves," said Pierre Formenty, a WHO specialist.

 "At the end of April, we started to see a decrease in the number of cases and we maybe saw a relaxation by the teams in the three countries, and this relaxation allowed things to restart. In addition, there were some problems with the affected populations which were sometimes not fully listened to."

 In an interview with AFP, Formenty said that the WHO, MSF and others had mobilised dozens of experts but doctors alone would not be able to contain the epidemic.

 "The most important things are monitoring and communication," he said. "States are getting better but the problems of communication continue. The medical corps on their own cannot stop this epidemic. It is only with the help of the population that we can fight this epidemic and stop it."

 Formenty admitted that more needed to be done to explain the dangers of infection to those attending funerals or caring for the sick.

 "One case can restart an entire epidemic," he said. "In an area where the quality of health services is not optimal, the populations have struggled to understand why we were asking them to make such an effort and probably we have not been able to explain both the disease and the means of control to the populations." |||||


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More than 150,000 gallons of water tainted with toxic Air Force firefighting chemicals was released into the Colorado Springs Utilities sewer system last week, Peterson Air Force Base confirmed Tuesday.

 The release came from a holding tank that was designed to corral the firefighting chemicals at a Peterson training area.

 The base's use of the firefighting foam containing the chemical is a key suspect in the contamination of wells in Security, Widefield and Fountain that left thousands of residents scrambling for bottled water.

 The release last week posed no threat to Colorado Springs drinking water.

 The base said the release was discovered Oct. 12. The cause hasn't been determined, but Fred Brooks, Peterson's environmental chief, said the holding tank was designed to be difficult to discharge.

 "It's not a direct connection," Brooks said. "This tank would have to have numerous valves switched to actually discharge."

 Was it intentional?

 "That's a possibility," Brooks said.

 The chemical in the water is a perfluorinated compound, a substance that the Environmental Protection Agency warns can cause ailments including liver and kidney damage and may trigger cancer. The EPA adjusted its maximum safe exposure to the chemical in water to 70 parts per trillion just this year. Testing on the Widefield Aquifer found levels as high as 2,000 parts per trillion.

 An investigation has been opened to determine the cause of the discharge, said Col. Doug Schiess, who commands Peterson's 21st Space Wing, in the statement.

 Colorado Springs Utilities said the chemical-laden water passed through the utility's Las Vegas Street sewage treatment plant and was released into Fountain Creek. The plant does not have the capacity to remove the chemical.

 The tank that resulted in the unplanned water discharge from a Peterson fire training area during a press conference outside the Peterson Air Force Base on Tuesday, October 18, 2016. About 150,000 gallons of water being held in a fire training area retention tank was discharged into the CSU sewer system last week. The dome shaped tank in the center of this photo held water that contained an elevated level of perfluorinated compounds, a residual component of a firefighting foam historically used at the base for emergency response. Peterson authorities discovered the discharge during a routine tank inspection on October 12. The tank is part of a system used to recirculate water to the fire training area. Photo by Stacie Scott, The Gazette

 "There was no risk to the drinking water," said Steve Berry, a Utilities spokesman. "This did not impact the drinking water, the finished water system, in any way. It went directly into the wastewater system."

 While Peterson notified Colorado Springs, base officials didn't warn others downstream. Brooks said the base isn't required to issue a wider notification, noting that the chemical is "unregulated" - a term used for substances that haven't drawn enforceable drinking water standards.

 The new spill left Mary Fletcher, who has lived in the Widefield area for 30 years, with a sense of resignation.

 She called the toxic chemicals in her tap water a "pain in the ass," saying the latest spill is "unbelievable."

 "What do you do?" Fletcher said. "As a homeowner, this is your whole world right here, and now all of your water's screwed up. What do you do? It's absolutely terrible."

 Fletcher, 59, lives along Southmoor Drive - an area long exposed to the chemicals, and that still receives fouled tap water, according to a state health department map. She has been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and she wonders whether the water caused it.

 Peterson had scheduled a public firefighting demonstration on Oct. 12, the day the discharge was discovered. The fire training exercise was canceled, with a spokesman at the base blaming the delay on a "bad valve"

 Brooks, the base environmental officer, said two mechanical valves and an electric one must be switched to allow water to flow out of the tank, which held the outflow from fire training exercises dating back as far as 2013.

 He said the water wasn't tested for levels of the firefighting chemical.

 A second tank on the base holding fire training residue wasn't discharged.

 The Air Force banned use of the foam outside fire emergencies last year and last month announced a plan to replace the product at all of its bases around the globe. Brooks said the foam at Peterson will be replaced in about two weeks.

 The water contamination in Security, Widefield and Fountain has drawn a pair of lawsuits against the manufacturers of the firefighting foam alleging they sold it to the Air Force despite its toxic risks.

 Although downstream, no drinking water supplied to Pueblo residents by the Pueblo Board of Water Works comes from Fountain Creek, said Paul Fanning, the agency's spokesman. The Pueblo Reservoir does not pull from Fountain Creek.

 The Widefield Water and Sanitation District is the only water system immediately downstream of the treatment plant now using the Widefield Aquifer, which leaches water from Fountain Creek, where the chemicals flowed.

 Widefield officials have previously said they plan to shut off their wells by sometime in October.

 Other communities have shut off their wells to the tainted aquifer.

 All the water flowing to homes supplied by the Security and Fountain water systems now comes from the Pueblo Reservoir - meaning that last week's spill should not affect those communities.

 "The long-term effects would be concerning," said Roy Heald, Security water district's general manager. "But short-term immediate effects - there wouldn't be any for us."

 The EPA said it wasn't involved with the spill.

 The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment gave the Air Force a vote of confidence despite the chemical discharge.

 "The Air Force has demonstrated its commitment to identifying and addressing (perfluorinated compound) contamination at Peterson Air Force Base and facilities nationwide," the state agency said.

 -

 Contact Tom Roeder: 636-0240

 Twitter: ||||| U.S. Air Force officials Tuesday disclosed a 150,000-gallon spill of wastewater laced with invisible toxic perfluorinated chemicals, discharged at least six days ago from a tank at Peterson Air Force Base, into the Colorado Springs sewer system.

 The spill, which Air Force officials said they’re investigating, happened as the Air Force increasingly faces scrutiny as a source of groundwater contamination nationwide.

 The surge of waste containing elevated perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) — used at military airfields to douse fuel fires and linked by federal authorities to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, low birth weights and other health problems — flowed through a Colorado Springs Utilities wastewater treatment plant before crews could try to block it. Then it trickled into Fountain Creek.

 “Even if we would have been able to head it off at the plant, we’re not equipped. I don’t know of any wastewater plants in the country equipped to remove PFCs,” utilities spokesman Steve Berry said. “We would not have been able to remove that chemical before it was discharged back into the environment from our effluent.”

 Fountain Creek flows south toward Pueblo and into the Arkansas River.

 Pueblo Board of Water Works spokesman Paul Fanning said Pueblo didn’t hear about the spill until reporters made inquiries Tuesday.

 “We don’t use any groundwater or surface water from Fountain Creek. We use water from the Arkansas River taken upstream from where Fountain Creek flows in,” Fanning said. “But it is not a good thing to have those contaminants anywhere in our water. There are some reported health effects. It is in our interest to protect our public.”

 Air Force officials couldn’t be reached to discuss the spill.

 “We take all environmental concerns seriously and have opened an investigation to determine the cause of the discharge and prevent it from happening again,” Col. Doug Schiess, commander of the 21st Space Wing at Peterson AFB, said in a prepared statement.

 The PFC-laced waste was held in a tank at a firefighter training area on the base, located at the southeastern edge of Colorado Springs. PFCs are a component in the aqueous film-forming foam used to extinguish fuel fires.

 Air Force officials said in the statement that they discovered the spill Oct. 12 during an inspection. They notified Colorado Springs Utilities the next day. The tank was part of a system used to recirculate water to a firefighter training area.

 PFCs at levels exceeding a federal health advisory limit already had contaminated groundwater and public drinking water systems south of Colorado Springs, an area that is home to an estimated 80,000 people. Peterson AFB is suspected as one source. Federal Army Corps of Engineer officials conducted an initial investigation.

 Air Force officials have said the military’s past use of PFCs for firefighting was legal, but that crews are discontinuing their use except in emergencies. PFCs are not regulated under federal law. Air Force civil engineers are in the process of assessing PFC contamination around the country. They say they’ll put out a report in the spring.

 The PFC-tainted area south of Colorado Springs ranks among the hardest-hit of at least 63 areas nationwide where PFCs have been measured in public water systems at levels the Environmental Protection Agency deems dangerous.

 In Colorado, government well test data show PFCs have contaminated groundwater throughout the Fountain Creek watershed, nearly as far south as Pueblo, at levels up to 20 times higher than that EPA health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion.

 Public-water authorities in Fountain, Security and Widefield have scrambled to provide enough alternative water. Security has been purchasing millions of gallons of diverted Arkansas River water from Colorado Springs, installing new pipelines and minimizing pumping from contaminated municipal wells. Since Sept. 9, Security has not pumped any water from wells, water and sanitation district manager Roy Heald said. “This spill does not affect us immediately,” Heald said. “Our only concern would be the long-term effect on Fountain Creek and the Widefield Aquifer.”

 Some parents south of Colorado Springs began paying for bottled water — to be safe. A contractor delivers emergency bottled water to at least 77 households.

 The Air Force has contributed $4.3 million to help communities deal with the contamination.

 Colorado Springs utilities crews will work with the military “to keep PFCs out of our system. That is the goal,” Berry said. “How do we protect our customers and our system from this chemical? That is the focus. It goes beyond the Air Force. It is any industrial process that may use that chemical.”

 El Paso County Public Health “takes this discharge seriously and will coordinate with the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to collect water samples along Fountain Creek, if warranted,” spokeswoman Danielle Oller said.

 CDPHE has been informed, agency spokesman Mark Salley said, adding: “It is under investigation by the Air Force, and the department is waiting for information. … The Air Force has demonstrated its commitment to identifying and addressing PFC contamination at Peterson Air Force Base and facilities nationwide.” |||||

– Some 150,000 gallons of water contaminated by toxic firefighting chemicals were discharged from a Colorado Air Force Base into a city sewer system, and authorities can't explain why. Peterson Air Force Base has confirmed that water containing perfluorinated chemicals—PFCs—flowed through Colorado Springs Utilities wastewater treatment plant before ending up in Fountain Creek, which leads to the Arkansas River. PFCs, which have been linked to health problems such as liver and kidney damage, had already been found at up to 20 times safe limits in the area south of the base, the Denver Post reports. A base spokesman tells the Colorado Springs Gazette that the discharge, which was discovered Oct. 12. came from a tank that held outflow from training exercises from as far back as 2013. He says the tank is designed to be difficult to discharge, suggesting the release was an intentional act. The Air Force says it has stopped using firefighting foam containing PFCs, except in emergencies. The Post notes that PFCs have been found at levels deemed dangerous in 63 areas nationwide, with the area south of Colorado Springs among the worst. The Air Force, which has contributed $4.3 million to help area communities deal with the contamination, plans to put out a report on the issue next year.


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– We get it. You've always dreamed of owning Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted human skull, or maybe his diamond-encrusted baby skull, but you just don't have the scratch. Well if you swing by Damien Hirst's new exhibit at the Tate Modern, you can now have the next best thing: a plastic skull doused in "household gloss" paint. Dubbed Hallucinatory Head, the skulls are supposed to reference both Hirst's famous skull and his spin paintings, and they're on sale in the gift shop for just $58,370, the Telegraph reports. There are 50 "unique multiples" of the head to choose from, which you can see at the website of Other Criteria, the company that makes all of Hirst's limited edition souvenirs (others available include a $16,660 set of plates, a $761 spotted skateboard, and a $1,110 roll of butterfly wallpaper). Hirst co-founded Other Criteria, but Time points out that it's unclear how much influence he has in making these items.

The skull, daubed with "household gloss" paint, is entitled Hallucinatory Head and comes in a limited edition run of 50.

 The eye-watering prices were unveiled days after critic Julian Spalding dismissed Hirst's work as "con art" and urged owners of his spot paintings to sell quickly before "the penny drops" and they plummet in value.

 For those who cannot stretch to the £36,800 skull, there is a set of 12 china plates for £10,500, a spotted skateboard for £480, a deckchair for £310 and a butterfly-print umbrella for £195. Butterfly-print wallpaper costs £700 a roll.

 The gift shop is the final room in the Hirst exhibition, the first major retrospective of the artist's work in Britain.

 It includes all of Hirst's greatest hits, from the shark suspended in formeldahyde to the bisected animals and spin paintings.

 Visitors will be assaulted by the smell of A Thousand Years (1990), an installation in which flies emerge from maggots and feed on a rotting cow's head. They can also catch a whiff of Horror at Home (1995), consisting of a giant ashtray filled with cigarette butts.

 In And Out Of Love (1991) features a room filled with live butterflies feeding on bowls of fruit. On the preview day for the show, at least one butterfly escaped by settling on a visitor's coat and accompanying them out.

 Downstairs in the Turbine Hall, visitors queue to enter a pitch-dark room housing two security guards and For The Love Of God, the human skull covered in 8,601 diamonds and said to be worth £50 million.

 Hirst, said to be Britain's richest living artist, defended the price of his work.

 He said: "A painting probably has the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for. But you'd never look at a Rembrandt and say, 'That's just wood and canvas and paint - how much?!'

 "It’s all about how many people want it. It works on a pair of jeans as well - they're just material and stitching and as soon as you walk out of the shop, they’re worth nothing."

 Asked if the gift shop skull would hold its value, he replied: "Maybe on eBay you might be all right for a bit."

 :: Damien HIrst runs from 4 April - 9 September ||||| Other Criteria Hallucinatory Head, by Damien Hirst

 What would you pay for a plastic skull covered in house paint? If the name Damien Hirst is on it, a minimum of £36,800, or about $58,000, appears to be the asking price. That’s how much the limited-edition skulls will be selling for in the gift shop of the artist’s latest exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.

 According to the Telegraph, the garishly colored skulls titled Hallucinatory Head are styled off of Hirst’s “spin” paintings, and are just one of many featured items inspired by the Englishman’s famous art pieces. Other items include a £10,500 ($16,650) set of plates and a £700 ($1,110) roll of butterfly wallpaper.

 Hirst co-founded Other Criteria, which produces his limited-edition items. How much influence the artist himself had on creating the souvenirs remains to be seen, but the mere connection to his name seems basis enough for the starting prices. The gift shop is the final room in Damien Hirst’s first major UK exhibition.

 (MORE: 10 Questions for Damien Hirst)

 His most famous works will be on display, including The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which showcases a shark suspended in formaldehyde. A Thousand Years features a rotting cow’s head with feeding maggots, while For the Love of God presents a platinum human skull covered in 8,601 diamonds, said to be worth an estimated £50 million ($79 million), and perhaps the inspiration behind the limited-edition souvenir skulls.

 The exhibit opens after a scathing review from critic Julian Spalding, showing the controversy surrounding Hirst goes beyond his souvenirs. Spalding dismisses him as a con artist, advising the buyers of his work to “sell while they can.”

 Hirst defended his art to the Telegraph. “A painting probably has the most shocking increase in value from what it costs to make to what you sell it for. But you’d never look at a Rembrandt and say ‘That’s just wood and canvas and paint- how much?’ said the artist. “It’s all about how many people want it.”

 And clearly, people want Hirst, who is said to be Britain’s richest living artist.

 PHOTOS: Damien Hirst Ascendant |||||


Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) reduced its earnings forecast for the second time this year and said it will cut as many as 10,000 more jobs and shut production and research sites in Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop’s biggest overhaul.

 The stock fell 18 percent to the lowest level since 1996, pushing Nokia’s market value below $10 billion. As part of the changes, sites in Finland, Germany and Canada will be closed and executives Niklas Savander, Mary McDowell and Jerri DeVard will leave, Espoo, Finland-based Nokia said today.

 Elop, who took over as CEO in 2010, is reorganizing Nokia after market-share gains by Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co. devices led to a slump in sales and four straight quarterly losses. The company risks going out of business in as little as two years unless it reduces expenses, said Alexander Peterc, an Exane BNP Paribas analyst in London.

 “They are trying to survive,” said Peterc, who has an underperform rating on the stock. “They can’t continue like this.”

 Nokia said the second-quarter adjusted operating margin at the devices unit will be worse than a loss equivalent to 3 percent of revenue in the first quarter. Nokia had projected margins to be “similar to or below” the first-quarter level.

 Nokia fell 39.6 cents to 1.83 euros at the close of trading in Helsinki, bringing the stock’s decline in the past 12 months to 58 percent. The company has a market value of 6.8 billion euros ($8.6 billion), down from a peak of more than 300 billion euros in 2000.

 Cash Burn

 The job cuts, 3,700 of which will take place in Finland, amount to almost a fifth of the total excluding a joint venture with Siemens AG. (SIE) Elop had already announced more than 10,000 job cuts across the company. He said in April that Nokia would speed up a cost-cut program and take further actions if needed.

 “This is harder than we thought and we’re having to make deeper changes,” Elop said today on a conference call. He said Nokia has enough net cash to go through the transition and “the scope of today’s changes is designed to ensure this remains true.”

 A substantial drop in sales could be enough to burn through most of the company’s cash and “bring into question Nokia’s very survival,” Societe Generale said last month. Nokia, which had its ratings cut to junk by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings in April, said it had net cash of 4.9 billion euros as of March 31.

 Takeover Target?

 The cost of insuring Nokia bonds using credit-default swaps rose to its highest since May 25, when it reached a record. It jumped 87 basis points, or 11 percent, to 853 basis points, according to Bloomberg prices. Swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements.

 Nokia has lost more than 70 billion euros in market value since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, taking the lead in smartphone innovation. While Nokia’s falling value brings it closer to becoming a takeover target, the company needs to stabilize its business to attract suitors, said Lars Soederfjell, an analyst with Bank of Aaland in Stockholm.

 “Would you buy into this, with these type of fundamentals?” he said. “There’s too much uncertainty.”

 Lumia Demand

 To challenge Apple and handset makers using Google Inc.’s Android software, Elop adopted Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows Phone, abandoning Nokia’s homegrown Symbian operating system. Nokia shipped more than 2 million Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone last quarter, while Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones.

 Elop today reiterated Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone, saying however that progress with the products has been “slower than we would like.”

 Nokia’s total handset shipments declined 24 percent in the first quarter, allowing Samsung to overtake the company as the world’s biggest mobile-phone maker. Nokia’s operating margin for mobile phones plunged to 3.7 percent last year from more than 20 percent before Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.

 “We don’t have Nokia returning to profitability in devices in the foreseeable future, not this year and not next,” Peterc said.

 The job cuts are are aimed at accelerating Nokia’s cost- reduction efforts. The company now targets additional savings of about 1.6 billion euros, aiming to bring annual expenses at its devices business to about 3 billion euros by the end of 2013. That’s down from 5.35 billion euros in 2010.

 Killing Projects

 The company will close a manufacturing plant in Salo, Finland, and facilities in Ulm, Germany, and Burnaby, British Columbia. The cuts and closures will result in expenses of about 1 billion euros, Nokia said.

 The biggest share of cuts will come in research and development, where Nokia is killing whole projects to preserve others that are more important, Chief Financial Officer Timo Ihamuotila said on a call. Sales is the second-biggest area affected and general overhead is third, he said.

 Elop promoted Timo Toikkanen, Nokia’s head of business development, to take over from McDowell as executive vice president for low-end phones. Tuula Rytilae will become chief marketing officer, replacing DeVard. Savander’s title was executive vice president of markets.

 Chris Weber, who introduced the Lumia line in North America as the head of U.S. operations, will become executive vice president of sales and marketing. Juha Putkiranta was named to a new job of executive vice president of operations.

 The company also agreed to sell its Vertu luxury-phone unit to Swedish private-equity firm EQT Partners AB, without disclosing terms. The companies were discussing a deal at about 200 million euros, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this week.

 Nokia had 53,553 workers at the end of March, excluding the network-gear joint venture with Siemens. Including Nokia Siemens Networks, the company employed 122,148 people, down 6.7 percent from a year earlier.

 Nokia Siemens, which also is struggling to return to profit, is cutting 17,000 jobs worldwide to save 1 billion euros in annual operating expenses and production costs by 2013.

 To contact the reporter on this story: Diana ben-Aaron in Helsinki at dbenaaron1@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net ||||| 1 of 5. Jekaterina Kapanen (R) leaves the Nokia mobile phone plant, after Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop's statement that was relayed by video link to employees in Nokia locations around Finland, in Salo, south-western Finland, June 14, 2012. Loss-making Finnish cellphone maker Nokia plans to cut another 10,000 jobs globally in its biggest revamp in recent history, while it warned the second-quarter loss from its cellphone business would be larger than expected. The cuts, which include the closure of Nokia's only plant in Finland, bring total planned job cuts at the group since Elop took over as chief executive in 2010 to more than 40,000.

 PARIS (Reuters) - Nokia plans to cut 10,000 more jobs, bringing the total to one in three staff, as it loses market share to cellphone rivals Apple and Samsung and burns through cash, raising new fears over its future.

 In a second profit warning in nine weeks, Nokia said on Thursday that its phone business would post a deeper-than-expected loss in the second quarter due to tougher competition, which it expected to continue.

 Once the world's dominant mobile phone provider, Nokia was wrongfooted by the rise of smartphones and is struggling to keep up with Apple, Samsung and Google. It is also losing market share in cheaper, more basic phones.

 Chief Executive Stephen Elop is placing hopes of a turnaround on a new range of smartphones called Lumia, which use largely untried Microsoft Corp software. But Lumia sales have so far been slow, exasperating investors who have seen its stock crash more than 70 percent since it announced the software switch in February 2011.

 "The job cuts and profit warning underline the seriousness of the challenges Nokia is facing, particularly in light of the eye-watering competition from Apple and Samsung," said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

 Nokia, whose cash position is increasingly scrutinized by investors, also said restructuring-related cash outflows would be around 650 million euros in the remaining three quarters of 2012 and around 600 million in 2013.

 With the cost of Nokia's debt rising, the most bearish of analysts in a Reuters poll last month said the company could even be at risk of default if it fails to slow its cash burn.

 Over the past five quarters, the onetime darling of mobile telcoms has eroded its cash pile by 2.1 billion euros - a rate that would wipe out its entire 4.9 billion reserves in a couple of years.

 Analysts at JP Morgan said on Thursday they expect operating losses, combined with restructuring outflows, to leave Nokia with 1.63 billion euros cash at the end of next year.

 "This is not a comfort zone for a company as large as Nokia," the analysts said.

 Nokia's five-year credit default swaps (CDS) were at a new all-time high of 933 basis points on Thursday according to Markit. This means it costs $933,000 annually to buy $10 million of protection against a Nokia default using a five-year CDS contract and implies a default probability of 55 percent.

 Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said he expects the company to have minimal net cash position at the end of its restructuring.

 "We therefore see continued potential downside to the recent stock price and maintain our underperform rating," Ferragu said.

 Shares in Nokia were down 16 percent to 1.87 euros, below the psychologically important 2 euros mark, not seen since 1996.

 Analysts have said that even with the dramatic fall in the share price, the worsening outlook made it hard to judge how much lower the shares could go.

 "I won't comment on the stock price anymore, since it's been seen over and over, that there is no definitive bottom," said Evli analyst Mikko Ervasti.

 "People are worried over Lumia sales. I think expectations for the third quarter will be cut," said Nordea analyst Sami Sarkamies.

 The 10,000 job cuts, which include the closure of Nokia's only plant in its homeland Finland, bring total planned cuts at the group since Elop took over as chief executive in 2010 to more than 40,000 staff, or every third worker.

 Of the latest job cuts, 3,700 will take place in Finland, where the firm will also close its plant in Salo - the last major cellphone manufacturing site in western Europe, the cradle of the global industry.

 "This is a major blow. This is due to the operational mistakes made already during the previous CEOs. Maybe the signs of success are running low for Elop too," said Antti Rinne, chairman of labor union Pro.

 Nokia said it expects its operating margin in the second quarter to be below the negative 3 percent level reported in the first quarter due to pressure on its smartphone business. It previously forecast it would be similar to or below that level.

 On average analysts forecast the second-quarter phone unit margin to be at -4.6 percent, narrowing to -2.2 percent in the third quarter.

 Nokia also said it would sell luxury phone business Vertu to venture firm EQT and revamp its management team. ($1 = 0.7953 euros)

 (Additional reporting by Eero Vassinen and Terhi Kinnunen in Helsinki; Editing by Erica Billingham) |||||

Write a summary.

– Even rose-colored glasses can't make Nokia's situation look any brighter. The company today announced that it would cut another 10,000 jobs, which Reuters points out is one out of every five slots at its once-formidable global cellphone business. The news was accompanied by the warning that its main mobile devices unit would post an even bigger operating loss than expected, as Nokia faces competition from Apple and Google that it admits affected it "to a somewhat greater extent than previously expected," reports the Wall Street Journal. The cuts will be made by the end of 2013, and will add up to $2 billion in cost reductions by the end of that year. The overhaul, CEO Stephen Elop's biggest to date, extends to the top, with the company's CMO and heads of markets and mobile phones to step down by month-end. Bloomberg reports that sites in Finland, Germany, and Canada will also be shuttered, and notes that the stock has hit its lowest price since 1996. Since Elop took over in the fall of 2010, nearly 40,000 jobs have been eliminated; Nokia currently employs 122,000, some 53,000 of which work in its mobile devices unit.


News article:

Researchers say methane rising to the surface of the ocean could explain the sudden loss of ships in the western North Atlantic. And anywhere else, for that matter

 Name: The Bermuda Triangle

 Age: 52 years.

 Appearance: Then all of a sudden … disappearance!

 Location: Between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda (approx).

 What is it? Well, according to Vincent Gaddis, who first coined the phrase in a pulp magazine article in 1964, the Bermuda Triangle is an area of the western North Atlantic where ships and planes are strangely likely to vanish without trace. It’s also a terrible song by Barry Manilow.

 I see. Leaving Manilow aside for now, why would things southwest of Bermuda suddenly vanish? Some suggest the involvement of aliens, the devil and the lost city of Atlantis. Some say that the magnetic properties of the rocks might scramble compass readings, others that giant bubbles of methane might sink ships when they reach the surface.

 Hilarious! Actually, that last one might be true. Researchers at the Arctic University of Norway have just discovered huge underwater craters off the coast of Norway, which they consider “probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas”. The craters that is, not Norway.

 Goodness. And ships certainly could sink suddenly if the water beneath them turned to foam, which these craters – measuring up to 45m deep and 800m wide – could be capable of doing.

 So that solves the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle? Nope.

 Why not? First, it isn’t clear whether gas blowouts happen in the triangle area. Second, even if they did, it isn’t clear how they would make planes vanish from the sky above. Third, several of the incidents attributed to “the Bermuda Triangle” involve people vanishing from ships, rather than whole ships vanishing. Fourth, there isn’t anything mysterious about the Bermuda Triangle to start with.

 What? Gaddis’s original article, and others that followed it, were total cobblers. Some supposedly vanished boats were later found. Other vanishings, such as the disappearance in 1945 of the five Flight 19 training planes, just aren’t difficult to explain. (They got lost and ran out of fuel.) Indeed boats and planes only vanish in the Bermuda Triangle about as often as they vanish everywhere else.

 So you could say that the Bermuda Triangle itself is … a phantom mystery? Erm, yes, if you feel like it.

 Do say: Did aliens make people believe that ships were going missing in the west Atlantic?

 Don’t say: Attack of the killer sea farts! ||||| Methane bubbles from the sea floor could, in theory, sink ships and may explain the odd disappearances of some vessels, Australian researchers reported Tuesday.

 The huge bubbles can erupt from undersea deposits of solid methane, known as gas hydrates. An odorless gas found in swamps and mines, methane becomes solid under the enormous pressures found on deep sea floors.

 The icelike methane deposits can break off and become gaseous as they rise, creating bubbles at the surface.

 David May and Joseph Monaghan of Monash University in Australia said they had demonstrated how a giant bubble from one of these deposits could swamp a ship.

 “Sonar surveys of the ocean floor in the North Sea (between Britain and continental Europe) have revealed large quantities of methane hydrates and eruption sites,” May and Monaghan wrote in their report, published in the American Journal of Physics.

 “A recent survey revealed the presence of a sunken vessel within the center of one particularly large eruption site, now known as the Witches Hole.”

 “One proposed sinking mechanism attributes the vessel’s loss of buoyancy to bubbles of methane gas released from an erupting underwater hydrate,” they wrote. “The known abundance of gas hydrates in the North Sea, coupled with the vessel’s final resting position and its location in the Witches Hole, all support a gas bubble theory.”

 No one has ever seen such an eruption, and no one knows how large the bubbles coming off a methane deposit would be.

 May and Monaghan created a model of a single large bubble coming up under a ship. They trapped water between vertical glass plates, launched gas bubbles from the bottom and used a video camera to record what happened to an acrylic “hull” floating on the surface.

 “Whether or not the ship will sink depends on its position relative to the bubble. If it is far enough from the bubble, it is safe,” they wrote.

 “If it is exactly above the bubble, it also is safe, because at a stagnation point of the flow the boat is not carried into the trough. The danger position is between the bubble’s stagnation point and the edge of the mound where the trough formed,” they concluded.

 © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. ||||| Go to the Legal Help page to request content changes for legal reasons. ||||| Explosions of trapped methane gas are thought to account for the mysterious craters found in Siberia, including this one.

 The discovery of several mysterious craters in Siberia earlier this year launched a wave of speculation about their origins. Now, a new report suggests an explanation for the holes, claiming it could also be linked to the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.

 However, other scientists not involved in the new report say the weird sinkhole mechanism likely doesn't explain vanishings in the Bermuda Triangle — a place that has never been proven to exist.

 In July, Siberian reindeer herders discovered a huge crater on the Yamal Peninsula, which means "end of the world." Later, two more gaping holes were found, one in the Taz District and one on the Taymyr Peninsula. But while scientists speculated as to the cause of these weird Siberian holes, their origin remained a mystery.

 In July, Russian scientists reported in the journal Nature that the explosive release of gases trapped in the permafrost — known as methane hydrates — likely carved out the enormous sinkholes. Air near the crater's bottom contained unusually high concentrations of methane, they said.

 Mysterious happenings

 But now, researchers have gone even further, suggesting that methane hydrates could be responsible for the disappearances of ships and aircraft under supposedly mysterious circumstances in the Bermuda Triangle, according to The Siberian Times, which cited a report in Science in Siberia, a weekly publication of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Bermuda Triangle is a region some people say exists in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico; many others dispute its existence. [Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle (Photos)]

 But regardless of whether the Bermuda Triangle exists, the idea that methane release could sink ships holds some water, scientists say.

 "It is very probable that the similar sinkholes in the ocean were produced [as a result] of decomposing gas hydrates,"said Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysicist who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but who was not involved in the study.

 Methane is normally solid under the crushing pressures of the deep sea, but chunks of the icelike substance can break off and form gas bubbles that rise to the surface.

 "Gas hydrate is known to exist along the U.S. North Atlantic continental margin, with a very large province on Blake Ridge (north of the Bermuda Triangle)," Benjamin Phrampus, an Earth scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told Live Science in an email.

 Loose bubbles sink ships

 In fact, a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Physics found that such bubbles could indeed sink ships, at least in principle. For that study, researchers built a model ship hull and released a large bubble underneath it, filming what happened. If the ship was in the right position above the bubble, the vessel would lose buoyancy and sink, the researchers said.

 But even though the phenomenon worked with a model ship, there's no evidence that it ever actually occurred, Phrampus said. In addition, such large-scale methane releases have not been reported in recent history, when the ship and airplane disappearances supposedly took place within the Bermuda Triangle. The last time the ocean floor was venting gas in that area was after the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, Phrampus said.

 "I personally see it as an interesting theory and nothing more," he said.

 The U.S. Navy does not believe the Bermuda Triangle exists, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not recognize it as an official name. The insurance market Lloyd's of London determined that no more ships have sunk in that region than in other parts of the ocean, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

 Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Sea bed gas blasts could explain Bermuda Triangle

 Huge craters on the sea floor, found off Norway, suggest giant blowouts of methane (Alamy)

 SCIENTISTS have found giant craters on the sea bed around the coast of Norway, marking spots where huge bubbles of methane have apparently exploded.

 The craters are up to half a mile wide and 150ft deep and appear to have been caused by gas leaking from deposits of oil and gas buried deeper in the sea floor. The gases are thought to accumulate in sea-floor sediments before bursting through the sea bed into the water above.

 Details of the discovery will be released next month at the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union, with a key question being whether such bubbles could threaten ships. One idea is that they may explain the disappearance of ships in areas such as the Bermuda Triangle.

 “Multiple giant craters exist on the sea floor in an area in the west-central Barents Sea . . . and are probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas,” said ||||| The location of the so-called Bermuda Triangle. (Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/CC BY 2.0)

 The Bermuda Triangle, so named in a 1964 story in America’s first pulp magazine, the infamous Argosy, has long been controversial. Its existence as a center for sunken ships and downed airplanes has never gained official traction: the U.S. Navy doesn’t recognize it, nor does the U.S. Board on Geographic Names even list it as a place.

 But that, of course, hasn’t stopped amateurs and some real researchers from studying and speculating about the area. This week, Bermuda Triangle fans might be seeing a breakthrough: Norwegian scientists announced they had found new evidence to support an old theory—that oceanic flatulence was behind some of the shipwrecks.

 Newly-found craters off the coast of Norway suggest the sea’s potential for enormous blowouts of methane gas, the scientists said, adding some credence to an idea that has been floated before. The theory is that gas bubbles rising to the surface could sink an unfavorably-positioned ship, some scientists have speculated, though a proven case of that happening has never been recorded.

 Skeptics have long held that there is a simple explanation for the phenomenon: the area is one of the most highly-trafficked shipping routes in the world, in addition to being the site of numerous tropical storms and the Gulf Stream, which can cause sudden changes in the weather. The latest evidence isn’t likely to stop true believers in the supernatural, though, or even Steven Spielberg, who explained in Close Encounters of the Third Kind that aliens were in fact behind the disappearance of Flight 19. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A new discovery has revived an old theory about ocean water gobbling up ships in the Bermuda Triangle—if, that is, the Bermuda Triangle even exists. Researchers from the Arctic University of Norway say they've spotted large craters apparently created by methane buildups off Norway's coast, Atlas Obscura reports. "Multiple giant craters exist on the sea floor in an area in the west-central Barents Sea ... and are probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas," they tell the Sunday Times. "The crater area is likely to represent one of the largest hotspots for shallow marine methane release in the Arctic." Other experts have said gas blowouts from such craters, which measure 150 feet deep and up to a half-mile wide in Norway, could explain the sinking of ships in a region between Puerto Rico, Miami, and Bermuda dubbed the Bermuda Triangle. "There is a version that the Bermuda Triangle is a consequence of gas hydrates reactions," Russian scientist Igor Yeltsov said last year, per the New Zealand Herald. Ice-like underwater methane can break away and form gas that bubbles to the surface, Live Science explained in 2014; Yeltsov says it erupts "like a nuclear reaction, producing huge amounts of gas." Research has shown that such eruptions could sink sea vessels, as NBC News reported in 2003, and this YouTube video appears to confirm that. But it's not clear these blowouts even occur in the Bermuda Triangle, the Guardian notes. And skeptics say the Gulf Stream's many tropical storms would better account for the Triangle's lost ships and planes. The very term "Bermuda Triangle" is questionable: Still dismissed by the US Navy, it was invented in a dramatic 1964 article that probed the "mysterious menace" behind ships and airplanes lost in the area. (A teacher may have found "the key" to finding Amelia Earhart's plane.)


Astronaut Scott Kelly, Expedition 43, with carrots floating around him in the Node 1 module of the International Space Station. A table covered in other food packets is beside him. Credit: NASA; Terry Virts Centuries ago, ships often sailed with crews numbering in the hundreds returning with tens. Cause of death: Scurvy - a severe depletion of Vitamin C. Today's explorers cross miles of space with no hope of finding an island with food and nutrients along the way. All nutritional needs must be met aboard.

 "Nutrition is vital to the mission," Scott M. Smith, Ph.D., manager for NASA's Nutritional Biochemistry Lab said. "Without proper nutrition for the astronauts, the mission will fail. It's that simple."

 Smith and his colleagues at NASA's Human Research Program are tasked with research to understand the requirements for long-duration spaceflight. In their recent publication, Human Adaptation to Spaceflight: The Role of Nutrition, Smith explains the importance of nutrition to the astronauts and how the spaceflight environment presents even more challenges to eating a healthy diet. For instance, they tend to eat less in space due to being very busy and menu fatigue.

 In space, the astronauts' environment also impacts their nutrition needs. Beyond microgravity, higher radiation exposure, higher atmosphere levels of carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity can all have profound effects on health. Nutrition is important to help counteract some of the effects spaceflight have on the body, such as bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular degradation, impairment of immune function, neurovestibular changes and vision changes.

 "We need to make sure we understand the body's requirements for nutrients, that the food system has those nutrients, and that they are stable over the duration of a long spaceflight," Smith said. "We can plan for what we know. It's what we don't know that's the challenge."

 To help assess the impact spaceflight has on nutrition, astronauts provide blood and urine samples before, during and after their space missions. A biochemical profile is created for each astronaut in the investigation. The ultimate goal is to keep astronauts healthy from a nutrition perspective while they are on the mission.

 As mission durations increase and as we prepare for our journey to Mars, it is important to understand how the human body changes with longer exposures to microgravity and higher radiation doses. The Biochemical Profile project examines nutritional markers such as proteins, vitamins, minerals, bone markers, hormones, metabolites, immune function, antioxidants and general chemistry to better understand these changes.

 The Twins Study brings another, unique, element to this investigation, because the scientists have a ground-based control for comparison. Mark Kelly will remain on Earth and has agreed to provide his biochemical profile in conjunction with his twin brother, Scott, throughout Scott's one-year mission aboard the International Space Station. The tracking of Scott's overall nutritional status during flight as compared to Mark's here on Earth is of particular interest to these investigators.

 This is a continuation of the nutrition study in which several astronauts aboard the Space Station have participated over many years. The biochemical profiles are stored in a database for researchers to extrapolate key factors used to improve efforts to enhance nutrition health on space missions. The database can also be used to test the effectiveness of exercise and diet as countermeasures for the effects of extended weightlessness on the body.

 The future of spaceflight includes human space exploration that will go beyond low-Earth orbit, such as a journey to Mars that could last as long as 30 months or more. The human body could experience several physiological effects in this prolonged environment including weight loss, fluid shifts, dehydration, constipation, calcium loss, potassium loss and motion sickness.

 "The food system will be of utmost importance for combatting these effects from long-duration missions," Smith said. "But to be helpful, food must also be palatable, nutritious, and safe even after months in storage. If astronauts do not eat well, they will not receive the necessary nutrients to keep them healthy."

 Nutrition is essential for health for people on Earth as well as in space. An improved understanding of the biochemical effects of weightlessness could also help patients on Earth. Studying the response of the astronauts to exercise and dietary countermeasures could help physicians design different treatments or exercises for people with certain health conditions, especially those with limited mobility.

 While nutrition investigations are still ongoing, the initial results are promising. Maintaining nutritional health will counteract negative effects of space travel, but in exactly what ways is still being studied. Today's explorers have no hope of finding food on their journey like earlier explorers, but they do have a team of NASA scientists looking for the best ways to use food to keep them healthy throughout their spaceflight missions.

 Explore further: Study reveals immune system is dazed and confused during spaceflight ||||| Scurvy doesn't just turn your skin yellow.

 In fact, in the later stages of the disease, the skin turns black, often right before you die, horribly, from massive internal hemorrhaging near the brain or heart.

 While in middle school health class, you probably learned that sailors of centuries past suffered scurvy when they didn't eat enough oranges. But what you didn't hear was that between 1500 and 1800, an estimated two million of them died from it!

 "It was such a problem that ship owners and governments counted on a 50 percent death rate from scurvy for their sailors on any major voyage," science journalist Catherine Price wrote in her book Vitamania. "[A]ccording to historian Stephen Bown, scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined."

 British Commodore George Anson's celebrated voyage around the world may have earned him fame and fortune, but it also resulted in the deaths of 65% of his crew. 1,300 sailors, stationed across six ships, lost their lives, the vast majority of them to scurvy. Nice job, commodore.

 Scurvy wasn't simply a recurring nuisance, it was an appalling scourge, one exacerbated by its gruesome symptoms.

 "Scurvy starts with lethargy so intense that people once believed laziness was a cause, rather than a symptom, of the disease," Price wrote. "Your body feels weak. Your joints ache. Your arms and legs swell, and your skin bruises at the slightest touch. As the disease progresses, your gums become spongy and your breath fetid; your teeth loosen and internal hemorrhaging makes splotches on your skin. Old wounds open; mucous membranes bleed."

 That's not even the worst of it. Two separate accounts -- one from a chaplain and the other from a surgeon -- describe how the gums engorge and grow over the teeth. If not cut off, the tissue may protrude from the mouth and start to decay. The dying tissue endowed sufferers with the worst possible breath imaginable.

 The scope and severity of scurvy was remarkable, especially considering how easy it is to prevent and treat. Scurvy results from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is commonly found in citrus fruits, peppers, and a variety of other plant sources. As little as 10 milligrams of the vitamin per day -- one-fifth the amount found in a single orange -- administered over a week or so, can bring a scurvy sufferer back from the brink of death.

 But back when scurvy was at its deadliest, humanity was unaware of the existence of vitamins. Ships on long overseas voyages were also ill equipped to store fresh fruits and vegetables. Moreover, cooks onboard didn't know that vitamin C is destroyed by heat, as well as cutting, and even exposure to air. But perhaps the biggest impediment to solving scurvy was a slow spread of information. Journals of ship physicians dating back to the 17th century reveal that a good few stumbled upon the healing powers of oranges, limes, lemons, and cabbage, but their discoveries never made it to common knowledge.

 Scurvy's decline began in 1747, when James Lind demonstrated and publicized citrus' power to treat the disease. In the 19th century, scurvy dwindled at a healthy pace. Today, scurvy is mostly a defunct disease of the past, but citizens of underdeveloped countries -- particularly children -- are still susceptible.

 (Image: CDC)

 Source: Price, Catherine. Vitamania: Our Obsessive Quest For Nutritional Perfection. Penguin Press, 2015. The science and technology focused Alfred P. Sloan Foundation helped make this book possible. ||||| The emergence of scurvy Scurvy did not emerge as a problem for maritime explorers until vessels started penetrating the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. Vasco da Gama lost two thirds of his crew to the disease while making his way to India in 1499. In 1520 Magellan lost more than 80 per cent while crossing the Pacific. Two voyages made by Pedro de Quiros early in the 17th century resulted in huge mortality from a sickness Sir Richard Hawkins called, after his venture into the South Seas, 'the plague of the Sea, and the Spoyle of Mariners'. ... Magellan lost more than 80 per cent of his crew while crossing the Pacific. Scurvy came to public notice in Britain after Commodore George Anson led a squadron into the Pacific in the 1740s to raid Spanish shipping. He lost all but one of his six ships, and two thirds of the crews he shipped (700 survived out of an original complement of 2000), most of them to scurvy. Their symptoms were vividly described by Richard Walter, the chaplain who wrote up the official account of the voyage. Here were descriptions of its ghastly traces: skin black as ink, ulcers, difficult respiration, rictus of the limbs, teeth falling out and, perhaps most revolting of all, a strange plethora of gum tissue sprouting out of the mouth, which immediately rotted and lent the victim's breath an abominable odour. There were strange sensory and psychological effects too. Scurvy seems to have disarmed the sensory inhibitors that keep taste, smell and hearing under control and stop us from feeling too much. When sufferers got hold of the fruit they had been craving they swallowed it (said Walter) 'with emotions of the most voluptuous luxury'. The sound of a gunshot was enough to kill a man in the last stages of scurvy, while the smell of blossoms from the shore could cause him to cry out in agony. This susceptibility of the senses was accompanied by a disposition to cry at the slightest disappointment, and to yearn hopelessly and passionately for home. Now we know that scurvy was a cocktail of vitamin deficiencies, mainly of C and B, sometimes compounded by an overdose of A from eating seals' livers. Altogether these produced a breakdown in the cellular structure of the body, evident in the putrescence of the flesh and bones of sufferers, together with night blindness and personality disorders associated with pellagra. In the 18th century no one knew what caused scurvy, whose symptoms were so various it was sometimes mistaken for asthma, leprosy, syphilis, dysentery and madness. Top

 Prevention Physicians speculated that it was owing to a salt diet, to a lack of oxygen in the body, to fat skimmed from the ships' boiling pans, to bad air, to thickening of the blood, to sugar, to melancholy; but no one knew for certain. People were aware that once victims were on shore they could be recovered by eating scurvy grass, wild celery, wood sorrel, nasturtiums, brooklime, Kerguelen cabbage (Pringlea antiscorbutica), cabbage trees and other esculent plants growing on the shores of distant islands. Fruit and palm wine were also esteemed to be fine remedies, and since 1753, when James Lind published A Treatise of the Scurvy, there was experimental proof that citrus had a rapid beneficial effect. Once on shore it was a superstition among sailors that the smell and the touch of the earth gave the surest cure. One of Anson's crew had his shipmates cut out a turf and put his mouth into the hole. Vitus Bering, the Danish navigator, died of scurvy half buried in the ground. No one had a remedy for scurvy at sea - however; the best on offer was a battery of prophylactic measures, including portable soup (a preparation of dried vegetables), malt, sauerkraut, concentrated fruit juice (rob), vinegar, mustard, molasses and beans. These were aimed at repelling any sign of scurvy from the outset, since it was impossible to control it, once it had gained a footing, other than by going ashore. ... it was impossible to control scurvy, once it had gained a footing, other than by going ashore ... All the British voyages of the Pacific undertaken in the 1760s - by Byron, Wallis, Carteret and Cook - were used to test these prophylactics. Wallis carried malt, sauerkraut, 'vinegar and mustard without limitation', 30 hundredweight of portable soup, and 180 Magellan jackets to protect the men against cold and damp. Under the direction of the 'Sick and Hurt and Victualling Boards of the Admiralty', Cook was supplied likewise with 40 bushels of malt, 1000lb of portable soup, vinegar, mustard, wheat, together with 'proper Quantities of sauer Kraut and Rob'. Like Wallis, Cook paid strict attention to airing and drying the lower decks, and keeping his men warm and well slept. Top

 Scurvy takes its toll Cook had five cases of scurvy reported by his surgeon and no deaths from it. Wallis's men were dogged by the disease, three dying of it, and he himself appears to have been suffering from it when he came across Tahiti. Byron reports the 'dreadful havock' made among his crew by the disease, while Carteret records 31 men dead of scurvy, and his ship for the most part of his voyage a hospital. In his next two voyages Cook's good management, or luck, persisted, and no deaths from scurvy were reported. Since then he has been hailed as the conqueror of the sea's great plague. William Bowles wrote in his poem The Spirit of Discovery (1804): Smile, glowing Health! For now no more the wasted seaman sinks, With haggard eye and feeble frame diseased; No more with tortured longings for the sight Of fields and hillocks green, madly he calls. ... Cook was in no doubt that the principal cause of the health of his crews was owing to regular doses of malt ... Recently Christopher Lawrence has called Cook's regimen 'a representation and an endorsement of 18th-century social order'. For his own part, Cook was in no doubt that the principal cause of the health of his crews was owing to regular doses of malt, and woe betide the sailor who refused it! In a paper delivered to the Royal Society he said of malt, 'This is without doubt one of the best antiscorbutic [effective against scurvy] sea-medicines yet found out; and if given in time will, with proper attention to other things, I am persuaded, prevent the scurvy from making any great progress for a considerable time'. There were dissenting voices about this at the time, as there still are today. Gilbert Blane and Thomas Beddoes, highly esteemed authorities on scurvy in the 18th century, rightly doubted that there was any antiscorbutic virtue in malt. Thomas Trotter, another expert, thought sauerkraut and portable soup were 'mere placebo'. They stated what Lind had already experimentally deduced - that fresh vegetables and citrus juice are the only substantial sources of vitamin C. But although 'rob' was carried on board Cook's ships, it had been boiled to reduce it, and in the process all its vitamin C (ascorbic acid) had been lost. Top

 Cook's men suffer It turns out that Cook's prohibition against the fat from the boiling pans was the only truly antiscorbutic measure he took, for hot salt fat coming into contact with copper acquired a substance that irritates the gut and prevents its absorption of vitamins. James Watt has pointed this out in several articles, together with the plausible conjecture that an infestation of worms caused a similar effect in Cook's own body, precipitating a deficiency of vitamin B that might have been responsible for his odd behaviour in Hawaii shortly before his death. There is no doubt that many people suffered from scurvy on Cook's ships. There is no doubt that many people suffered from scurvy on Cook's ships. On the second voyage William Wales, the astronomer, and Johann Reinhold Forster, the naturalist, both give descriptions of their symptoms, chiefly their growing melancholy and sense of isolation. On the first, Joseph Banks records that once the Endeavour was in the Arafura Sea everyone - except Cook, Solander and himself - were suffering from homesickness, 'the longing for home which the Physicians ... esteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia.' Thomas Trotter was to characterise the symptoms 20 years later as 'scorbutic Nostalgia', a condition to which Banks himself soon succumbed, when he thought of the explorer William Dampier in these same seas, and confessed, 'this thought made home recur to my mind stronger than it had done throughout the whole voyage'. When they landed at Savu, Banks reported that there were many people sick on board. The deaths at Batavia of Tupaia, the priest from the island of Raiatea, and Charles Green, the astronomer, have usually been ascribed to the dysentery that killed 30 of the Endeavour's crew at the end of the voyage. Beaglehole suggests, however, that it was not dysentery that put an end to Tupaia's life and Cook himself was adamant that his death was owing to 'the long want of a vegetable diet which he had all his life before been used to, and brought upon him all the disorders attending a sea life.' As for Green, 'he had long been in a bad state of hilth, which he took no care to repair but on the contrary lived in such a manner as greatly promoted the disorders he had had long upon him'. Top

 Cook's record Cook was referring to the fact that Tupaia refused malt, portable soup and all the other remedies against scurvy, and that Green's addiction to drink was precipitating scorbutic symptoms. However, Tupaia, Green and a crew member named Hicks had been diagnosed at Batavia as the three people suffering from complaints 'occasioned by long continuance at sea', which makes it look as if perhaps Cook's record is not as clean in this respect as has sometimes been thought, and he did lose two of his men to scurvy. That was not his reputation, however, and based on his example no commander wanted scurvy on his ship. When James Morrison reported that scurvy appeared on the Bounty on the run between the Cape of Good Hope and Tahiti, Captain Bligh wrote in the margin of his manuscript 'Captain Bligh never had a symptom of Scurvy in any ship he commanded', and Vancouver was dismayed when he found it on his vessel, Discovery, while he was mapping the north east coastline of America: 'To my utter astonishment and surprise, I was given to understand from Mr Menzies that the sea scurvy had made its appearance amongst some of the crew.' Clearly it was greeted with the same shock and incredulity as headlice today. In naval logs of the later 18th century, scurvy is scarcely mentioned, fluxes and cholera being far the most common complaints. But Leonard Gillespie, a naval surgeon, had it reported to him that scurvy was still common on the India station, and that in 1781 HMS Egmont lost a third of her crew to the disease, on a return journey from Jamaica. Thus it has always been hard to say anything authoritative about scurvy, or to trust the testimony of its victims, who are afflicted by emotions so powerful that they lose the virtue of dispassionate neutrality that has been understood to distinguish the minds of explorers and navigators during the Enlightenment. Hence William Wales's terse yet strangely querulous entry in his Resolution journal: 'Brewed Wort [malt] for some of the People who began to have symptoms of the Scurvy. I suppose I shall be believed when I say that I am unhappy in being one of them'. About scurvy so much is to be supposed, so little known for sure. Top

 Find out more Read on The Ship - Retracing Cook's Endeavour Voyage by Simon Baker (BBC Worldwide, 2002) The Journals of Captain Cook, edited by Philip Edwards (Penguin, 1999) The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy by NAM Rodger (many editions since 1986, including WW Norton & Co, 1996). Top |||||
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– A ship's chaplain in the 1740s wrote of sailors' gums that would grow out of control until they protruded from the mouth and rotted away, leaving a horrific case of bad breath, the BBC reports. So it turns out that not only was scurvy once incredibly dangerous, it was also super gross. Real Clear Science reports that approximately 2 million sailors died from scurvy, which is caused by a lack of vitamin C, between 1500 and 1800. During his voyage across the Pacific, Magellan lost 80% of his crew to the disease called "the plague of the sea," according to the BBC. One historian says scurvy killed more sailors than battle, storms, shipwrecks, and other diseases combined. And, it wasn't a pleasant way to go, either. Scurvy starts with lethargy before causing achy joints, swollen limbs, and loose teeth, according to Real Clear Science. From there, sufferers get swollen gums, bad breath, and bruising. The skin turns yellow, then black, just before sufferers die from internal hemorrhaging. The tragic part is scurvy is ridiculously easy to cure. Real Clear Science reports someone on the brink of death from the disease could be saved by eating one-fifth of an orange every day for a week. Alas, doctors of the time didn't know what vitamins were, and ships weren't exactly built to store fresh fruit. The disease is mostly gone now, but a post at Phys.org notes that NASA scientists are using the lessons learned to ensure astronauts get the vitamins they need to stay healthy in space. (Is it possible kids are getting too many vitamins?)