Wires snap, Norway ship sinks more
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — One of Norway’s navy frigates has almost completely gone under water after an oil tanker rammed into it last week and tore a large hole in the side, authorities said Tuesday.
Rear Adm. Nils Andreas Stensoenes, the head of Norway’s navy, said several of the wires used to stabilize the KNM Helge Ingstad snapped Tuesday, causing the vessel to sink farther into the fjord.
Only the top of the frigate with its radar and antennas remained above the waterline.
The 442-foot frigate began listing heavily after a Maltese-flagged oil tanker hit it Thursday in a harbor in Sture, north of Bergen. Its 137 crewmen were evacuated and eight people onboard were injured.
The tanker was only slightly damaged in the crash.
Stensoenes said plans remained to recover the vessel, but didn’t give details. Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident.
Built in Spain in 2009, the frigate was part of a NATO fleet in the Atlantic, and had recently taken part in the vast Trident Juncture NATO military drill in Norway.
Truce said to hold in Yemen’s port city
SANAA, Yemen — An informal agreement to reduce hostilities between Saudi-led coalition forces and rebels in and around Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeida has taken hold, military officials said Tuesday, in a move that stands to be a prelude to peace talks that would end the ruinous war in the poorest Arab country.
The officials said hostilities have ceased for the second-consecutive day, with both sides respecting the truce. Only three coalition airstrikes were carried out in the previous 24 hours, targeting rebel positions outside the city.
The truce followed advances by the coalition in their latest attempt to retake the city from the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, with its forces now 3 miles short of the port, Yemen’s traditional lifeline.
The officials said efforts were being made to persuade the Houthis to abandon the city and hand over control to an independent Yemeni party that would run the port under U.N. supervision. The Houthis, who had in the past rejected the proposal, said the coalition accepted the truce because of its heavy casualties and because it came under international pressure to spare some 500,000 civilians inside the city the death and destruction that come with street-to-street fighting, which already began this week.
The military and Houthi officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Australia driver guilty in 6 street deaths
MELBOURNE, Australia — A man who drove a car through a crowd on a pedestrian-only Australian street last year, killing six people and injuring dozens more, was found guilty Tuesday of all 33 charges against him, including six counts of murder.
A Melbourne Supreme Court jury took less than an hour to find James Gargasoulas, 28, guilty of all charges, which included 27 counts of reckless conduct endangering life.
Gargasoulas pleaded innocent to all of the charges, but admitted driving through Melbourne’s busy Bourke Street pedestrian mall and along sidewalks in January 2017, causing death and injury.
Gargasoulas, who has a mental illness but didn’t use that as a defense, told the court Monday that he believed he had received God’s permission, through a premonition, to hit people with the stolen car he was driving but not to kill anyone.
“I apologize from my heart but that’s not going to fix anything … neither will a lengthy sentence fix what I done,” he said.
He’ll reappear for sentencing in January.
Norway faults Russia for GPS jamming
HELSINKI — The Norwegian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Russian forces in the Arctic disturbed GPS location signals during a recent large NATO drill in Norway.
The ministry said that Norway’s Foreign Ministry earlier had raised the issue with Russian authorities.
In an email Tuesday to The Associated Press, the ministry said it “was aware that jamming has been recorded between Oct. 16 and Nov. 7 from the Russian forces” on the Arctic Kola peninsula.
NATO’s huge exercise Trident Juncture that included soldiers from 31 countries, was staged in Norway from Oct. 25 to Nov. 7. Finland and Sweden, which are not NATO members, also took part in the drill.
The jamming of the location signals is not believed to have caused any accidents.
Over the weekend, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila said his country’s GPS location signals were intentionally disrupted in the northern Lapland region.
Sipila said Sunday that Russia may have been to blame.
The Russian Defense Ministry could not be reached Tuesday for comment on Norway’s claim. The Kremlin on Monday denied involvement in the Finnish GPS disturbance.
“We know nothing about Russia’s possible involvement in those GPS failures,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said according to the Tass news agency. “There is a trend to blame all mortal sins on Russia.”