Plane dangles from high voltage power lines near Durach, Germany

BBC is reporting that

Two people have been rescued from a light aircraft which hit power lines near Durach, in southern Germany.

It took emergency services two hours to get the trapped occupants out of the plane which was left dangling 30 metres (100 feet) above the ground.

Rescuers on the scene believe the plane's undercarriage clipped the 380,000 volt power line shortly after taking off from a nearby airport.

BBC Reporters from around the World Mashed up

BBC's DOT.LIFE blog is reporting that one of BBC's own - Stuart Pinfold has developed a Google Maps Mashup of BBC Reporters from around the World. So if you want to know which BBC Reporter is covering New Delhi, India or Washington D.C or any other capital cities from around the world then check out Stuart Pinfold's Google Maps Mashup.

British Airways Flight BA 038 crash lands at Heathrow

British Airways Flight BA038 a Boeing 777 from Beijing, China to London,UK crash lands at Heathrow Airport (01/17/2008).

This Google Maps view of Heathrow Airport shows the touch down location and the location where the aircraft finally stopped.

Quoting BBC:

All 136 passengers and 16 crew escaped from the British Airways flight BA038 from Beijing. Eighteen people have been taken to hospital with minor injuries.

An airport worker told the BBC the Boeing 777 pilot, named later as Peter Burkill, 43, said he had lost all power and had to glide the plane in to land.

Environmental Disaster near Black Sea

A powerful storm battered the Black Sea and Azov Sea region which resulted in (via and via)

four ships sinking, including an oil tanker, and four others are in danger of breaking up.

Up to 2,000 metric tons of fuel oil have leaked from the tanker in the Kerch Strait, which links the two seas.

A big clean-up operation is now under way, amid fears of an environmental disaster in the area.

At least two other ships were carrying potentially hazardous cargos when they sank, including nearly 6,000 tons of sulphur.

Google Maps view of the disaster location:

Northwest Passage fully navigable

Thanks to Global Warming, Northwest Passage (The most direct shipping route from Europe to Asia) is fully navigable now. In just over a year the ice cover has dropped by about 386,000 square miles. Quoting BBC:

"We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3m sq km (1.2m sq miles)," Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Centre said.

He said it was "about 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006".

"There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100, 000 sq km (38,600 sq miles) per year on average, so a drop of 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) in just one year is extreme," Mr Pedersen said.

Monsoon Floods in Eastern India

Image shown below from NASA Earth Observatory was taken on August 3rd. Quote from their website:

On August 3, the Ganges, Gandak, and Kosi Rivers were so swollen that it was hard to see exactly where the rivers normally flow. The tributaries that feed the Kosi River, not even visible on June 4, have combined in a vast web of water-covered land. The light blue area under the clouds in the lower left corner of the image is probably water-soaked earth, not standing water.

According to BBC as of August 3, nearly 20 million people had been displaced in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and 125 had died in India.