Ravenshoe cafe blast survivor Noeleen Avenell forced to wear full body suit

'I was covered in boiling oil, watching the skin and flesh dripping off my body': Single mother given just a FIVE per cent chance of survival after horror cafe blast is now forced to wear a full-body suit
Noeleen Avenell, 52, suffered burns to 60 per cent of her body in the blast
Serves You Right cafe burst into flames when a 4WD hit a gas canister
Mother-of-two Ms Avenell was given a five per cent chance of survival
The June 9 blast claimed the lives of two people including Nicole Nyholt
A further 19 were injured in the blast in Ravenshoe in far-north Queesland


A woman who survived a horrific cafe blast that claimed the lives of two people last year has made an incredible recovery.
Noeleen Avenell, 52, was given just a five per cent chance of survival after a fire ripped through the Serves You Right cafe in Ravenshoe when a car hit a gas canister outside the restaurant.
The single mother-of-two, from Millstream in far-north Queensland, is finally home after a month in a coma, four months in intensive care and 18 operations, the Courier Mail reported.

'I was up in flames, covered in boiling oil, watching the skin and flesh dripping off my body, and I thought "I'm dead",' she said, recalling her horrific ordeal.
Ms Avenell is required to wear a full-body compression suit that also covers her face, after suffering burns to almost 60 per cent of her body.

Her face was the most badly damaged park of her body, and the 52-year-old said her ankles were the only part left untouched by the fire.
'That was how they dragged me out, by the ankles.'
But the brave mother-of-two has learned to walk again since the accident, and is finally back at home despite still needing to attend daily physiotherapy sessions.
She also spoke about cafe manager Nicole Nyholt, who tragically died during Queensland's largest mass burn disaster, describing her as a 'legend'.
Ms Avenell said her horrific experience helped her to appreciate life and not take it for granted, and she felt blessed that she would now get to see her grandchildren grow up.
Horrific CCTV footage shows the moment an out-of-control 4WD smashed into a 420 kilogram gas canister, engulfing the cafe in flames and injuring 19 people in June 9, 2015.
Ms Avenell said when the vehicle hit the wall right near the kitchen she was working in as a chef, the explosion was so intense she was 'inhaling fire'.
She said she was conscious the entire time.

Volgograd mourns victims of bus bombing, police look for organizers

Volgograd law enforcement agents work inside a passenger bus blown up Monday afternoon by a female suicide bomber in Krasnoarmeysky District, Volgograd (RIA Novosti/ Irina Il'icheva)

 

 

Russian security forces are looking for the organizers of a deadly suicide bombing on a bus in Volgograd that killed six people and injured 37 on Monday.
The bomb, measured at about 500-600 grams of TNT equivalent, was detonated by 30-year-old suicide bomber Naida Asiyalova, a native of Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
Asiyalova, reportedly the wife of Dmitry Sokolov, a militant from the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala, detonated the bomb, filled with metal objects and dowel pins, after getting off a Moscow-bound bus on the outskirts of Volgograd and returning to the city center, Markin said.
“Having bought a ticket to Moscow, Asiyalova was going on a bus from Makhachkala and stopped in Volgograd. Her left hand was in plaster, and she was holding it with her right hand. Almost on the outskirts of the city, Asiyalova left the bus and returned to the Volgograd city center,” Markin said.

Dmitry Sokolov (L) and Naida Asiyalova (Photo from vk.com)

He also added that investigators didn’t know if it was “planned, or Asiyalova changed her plan on her way, looking for the most crowded places.”
The bomb could be have been triggered by a remote electronic detonator, a source told Itar-Tass.
Asiyalova reportedly converted her husband to radical Islam and convinced him to join a terrorist group in Dagestan, officials say. Sokolov, 21, is part of the Abdul-Jabar armed gang based in Makhachkala, the Interior Ministry said, and is wanted for organizing the Volgograd blast and other terrorist attacks.
Three days of official mourning have been declared in the Volgograd region. All mass cultural events have been canceled, and authorities have asked local TV channels not to broadcast entertainment programs.
Flags will be flown at half-mast during the mourning period.
From early morning Tuesday, residents started bringing flowers to the scene where the blast took place.

RIA Novosti/Kirill Braga

“Those who died were ordinary people, they were innocent. It’s a terrible tragedy. Anyone of us could be in their place. No one thought that anything of this kind could ever happen in our city,” Ivan Skorobogatov, a city resident, told Itar-Tass.
Residents have begun donating blood for those wounded in the blast.
MPs in Russia’s State Duma also held a minute of silence to honor the dead.
Bomb technicians and criminal investigators are working at the scene to determine more details about the blast. Traffic has been partly halted in the area where the blast took place, and the scene of the attack remains cordoned off.
Most of the bomb’s 30 injured victims are in a moderately serious state. Four people in critical condition have been flown to Moscow by helicopter.
 

Space cannon ready: Japan to shoot asteroid for samples in 2014 mission

In 2013 the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency are sending the space probe, Hayabusa 2, on a long journey to an asteroid named 1999 JU3 (Image by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

 

 

A unique space cannon developed for Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has successfully test-fired on Earth in preparation for a 2014 mission. During its upcoming journey into space, the cannon will blast an asteroid and mine samples of its soil.
The test took place in the Japanese prefecture of Gifu, paving the way for the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to extract soil samples from the asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Monday.

During the mission of Hayabusa 2, scheduled to begin in December 2014, the space probe will extract soil from inside the asteroid. In order to do this, it will be equipped with a collision device designed to shoot at the surface of the asteroid from a distance of 100 meters with metal shell ammunition moving at a speed of two kilometers per second.

JAXA hopes to create a small (a few meters in diameter), artificial crater from which Japanese scientists can extract valuable samples capable of revealing the history of the formation of cosmic bodies of this type.

“A new function, [a] ‘collision device,’ is considered to be [on board] to create a crater artificially,” JAXA explained on its website, adding that collecting samples from the surface that is exposed by a collision will ensure acquiring “fresh samples that are less weathered by the space environment or heat.”

In order to calibrate the precision of the cannon, JAXA engineers had to overcome a number of challenges. However, the agency assures that all problems have already been solved.

Image by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

“We were able to solve several problems associated with the development of the device. During the tests, the projectile hit right on target, and with the expected speed,” JAXA engineer Takanao Saiki said.

Japanese scientists actively began exploring asteroids with the Hayabusa mission, which returned to earth in June 2010 after exploring a 500-meter-long rock-rich S-type Itokawa asteroid.

Hayabusa 2 is a successor of the first spacecraft and is scheduled to be launched in 2014 to conduct research of a C-type asteroid temporally called ‘1999 JU3.’ It is believed to contain a higher concentration of organic matters and water.

“Minerals and seawater which form the Earth as well as materials for life are believed to be strongly connected in the primitive solar nebula in the early solar system, thus we expect to clarify the origin of life by analyzing samples acquired from a primordial celestial body such as a C-type asteroid to study organic matter and water in the solar system and how they coexist while affecting each other,” JAXA posted on its website.

So far, research into ‘1999 JU3’ revealed that it is a sphere approximately 920 meters in diameter with an albedo on the surface of about 0.06. The rotation period of the celestial object is approximately 7.6 hours.

Hayabusa 2 is expected to reach its target in the middle of 2018 before departing back to Earth in 2019. 

Terrorist blast kills 6, injures over 30 in Volgograd, central Russia

Six people were killed and 37 injured - some of them critically - after a female suicide bomber set off a bomb on a bus in Volgograd, central Russia. Local authorities have been put on high terror alert for the next 15 days.
“Today at 2:05pm Moscow time [10:05 GMT] in Volgograd inside a bus, as a result of an unknown explosive device going off, a blast happened, leading to casualties,” a national Anti-terrorist Committee representative said in the statement.
Forty passengers were on the bus. At least eight of them are in critical condition. A 20-month-old toddler is among those injured. His state is assessed as moderately severe.
Russia’s Health Ministry indicated that most of the victims in the explosion sustained mine explosive-type wounds, caused by the bus’s paneling and the shattered glass.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the Emergencies Ministry and the Ministry of Health to provide all the necessary help to the victims of the blast. An Emergencies Ministry plane has already brought four injured to Moscow for treatment.
A three-day mourning for the victims of the terrorist attack has been declared in Volgograd Oblast.

A young man named Ilya, an eyewitness of the terror act, who was in a different bus on the same route, described the scene of the blast to RT:
“First I saw a lot of pieces of broken glass scattered all over the driveway [road]… There definitely was an explosion in [the bus] as its windows burst outside sending glass to a considerable distance, but with no fire outbreak… There were a lot of police there and also people who had been just driving by and stopped to help the victims, they were bringing med kits with them. There were people from the emergency service at the scene helping the injured, but I saw a woman sitting inside the bus. She was covered with blood and I couldn’t make out whether she was alive or not. She was just sitting there.”
According to Ilya, lots of students use that bus route, as it stops at Volgograd State University, and there were apparently some students at the scene of the blast. The bus also passes the local Cardio Center, he said, adding that some heart patients might have been there too.

Photo from vk.com/club60039978

A relative of one of the surviving passengers told Echo of Moscow radio the explosion went off in the middle of the bus aisle. There were a lot of youngsters on the bus at the time of the blast, he said.

Witnesses reported that the front part of the vehicle was heavily damaged, and that the nearby cars had their windows broken.

Bomber identified

The Investigative Committee has identified the woman who was the suicide bomber behind the blast: it's allegedly Naida Asiyalova, from Dagestan.
The preliminary information indicates that “the female suicide bomber recently converted to Islam, and was the wife of a militant leader,” an Investigative Committee representative told the media.
Also, a grenade has been found under the vehicle and it's now being checked whether the explosive is live, a source in the security forces now at the scene told RIA Novosti.

Naida Asiyalova's passport scan (image from http://hackinferno.livejournal.com)

According to information obtained by LifeNews from security sources, the suicide bomber, Asiyalova, earlier recruited a young Muscovite, Dmitry Sokolov, who became a skilled bomber respected by Islamist militants. Sokolov, now known as Abdul Jabbar, is wanted in Dagestan for taking part in two terrorist explosions, in which at least 29 people were injured, the media added.

RIA Novosti/Kirill Braga

Following the blast, local police cordoned off the scene and ordered all movement of minivan buses in Volgograd to be halted. A kilometers-long traffic jam has formed in the area.
Bomb technicians and investigators thoroughly searched the scene. Criminal investigators from Moscow have also been called to Volgograd, according to Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin.
Volgograd authorities have also been put on high terror alert for the next 15 days.
Emergencies Ministry video from the scene:

 

#Волгоград,#автобус,#взрыв первые реальные фото pic.twitter.com/uxx2IFgBka
— Александр (@smetanoman) October 21, 2013

Earlier, the malfunction of gas equipment inside the bus was listed as one of the possible causes of the blast. However, investigators soon indicated a terrorist act was the preliminary cause.
The transport company which owned the bus said that the vehicle worked on diesel fuel, and there was no gas equipment on board, a statement on the local governor’s website later confirmed.

RIA Novosti/Press-service of Russian Emergen

Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad, is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd region. The city spans some 80 kilometers along the Volga River in the South of Russia.
At the present time more than 1 million people live in Volgograd.

Raw Video: Mexico Volcano Blast Tower of Ash

Raw Video: Mexico Volcano Blast Tower of Ash



The Popocatepetl volcano that towers over Mexico City began rumbling again Friday, shooting a blast of ash about 2 miles above its crater at dawn. The 17,886-foot mountain shook for several minutes before the ash burst out. (June 6)

Second Blast Inside NZ Mine; 29 Miners Dead

Second Blast Inside NZ Mine; 29 Miners Dead

Police say all 29 workers missing in a New Zealand coal mine are dead after a second explosion Wednesday that no one could have survived. (Nov. 24)

Raw Video: Pakistan Blast Levels Police Staticn

Raw Video: Pakistan Blast Levels Police Staticn


A powerful bomb in the center of Pakistan's largest city leveled a police building Thursday, killing at least five people and wounding 40. The blast hit the headquarters of the Crime Investigation Department in Karachi. (Nov. 11)