By JAMES PALMER
Another rail tragedy
All the British front pages today are dominated by the news of a train crash near Selby in North Yorkshire, which killed 13 people and injured over 70 yesterday morning.
A Land Rover pulling a trailer lurched off the M62 before dawn, coming to a halt on the southbound track before being rammed by a passenger train travelling at 120 mph. The train derailed and crashed almost head-on with a goods train travelling at 60 mph.
The Independent says police believe the driver of the Land Rover may have fallen asleep at the wheel.
The Guardian moots the theory of a blown-out tyre.
The Daily Mail calls the disaster a "conspiracy of fates", headlining on the chilling fact that the passenger train was powered by the very same locomotive that crashed at Hatfield, killing four on 17 October 2000.
The Telegraph says the closing speeds of the trains was 170 mph, much faster than any crash in history.
The Times tells on its front page how the driver of the Land Rover, Gary Hart, dialled 999 on his mobile to warn police his car was on the track, but he was too late. The paper says investigators think inadequate crash barriers on the sides of the motorway may be to blame.
'Tragedy returns to the tracks' is The Guardian's take on the carnage, calling it an appalling blow to an industry reeling from a series of disasters.
The Independent reviews the crashes that have haunted Britain's railways since 1997: Southall, where an inattentive driver missed three warning lights, Paddington, where a train missed a 'difficult-to-see' red light, and Hatfield where a broken rail was to blame.
Diseased Britain
Eight more cases of the Foot-and-Mouth animal disease have been confirmed in Britain, The Independent reports, adding strict controls have been put on British travellers abroad. Britons arriving on the continent and Ireland are not allowed to bring yogurts or sausage rolls with them, and in some cases are forced to walk over disinfectant-soaked mats on arrival. Cars leaving the UK are also sprayed with disinfectant, the paper says.
The Times says the hunt for the source of the disease has turned to Argentina, which exports meat to Britain but says it has had no outbreaks of foot-and-mouth in the last year, despite strong evidence to the
contrary.
The Guardian carries a feature headlined "Brittle Isles", wrapping up the hidden weaknesses at the heart of the UK: floods, disease, a fuel crisis, a broken down rail system, computer viruses and blizzards.
Quake strikes Seattle
Thousands fled their homes in Seattle, Washington yesterday, The Independent reports, as a powerful earthquake rippled across the Pacific northwest for up to 30 seconds. No one died and only about two dozen were injured the paper says.
The Times says the city "got off lightly" for a quake which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale.
The Guardian says scientists in the US have had to
upgrade predictions for "The Big One" from 7.3 on the Richter scale to 7.7, since comparing California's earthquake potential with that of India, which
suffered a devastating 7.7 quake on January 26.
The Washington Post reports that one person died of a heart attack when yesterday's quake struck. The estimated damage will amount to billions, The New York Times says.
Palestinian Authority crumbles
Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority may have only a month left before it collapses financially, The Independent reports, plunging the occupied territories into anarchy. The warning comes from a UN envoy who is trying to persuade the international community to bail out the Palestinians before it is too late, the paper says.
Shoot-to-kill order to quell Dyaks
Galvanised by the massacre of 469 Madurese, the Indonesian authorities took steps to quell the ramapage of the Dyak tribesmen in Borneo yesterday, The
Independent reports. After 10 days of murders, in which Madurese immigrants were beheaded and had their hearts removed and eaten, police shot dead five Dyaks caught
looting Madurese shops, the paper says.
Net closes around Milosevic
The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic is imminent, The Independent reports. Belgrade prosecutors have ordered the first official investigation into allegations that the former Serbian president smuggled 173kg of gold out of the country to Switzerland and tranferred the profits to private accounts in Greece and Cyprus. This is just the start of a process that could lead
to him being tried for fraud, embezzlement, and the assassination of his political enemies, the paper says.
The New York Times quotes a senior government official as saying Milosevic would be behind bars by March 10. He is currently living in a government villa under 24-hour police surveillance, the paper says.
Ranson sidekick's new job
An extraordinary feature in today's Independent tells how a former accordian-playing sidekick of Esther Ranson ended up reporting on the recent US and British bombing of Iraqi radars for the BBC world service.
His report was full of praise for the RAF for their spot-on accuracy, though it was later admitted by US and British defence ministries that less than half of the bombs hit their targets.
Howard Leader, journalist, it transpires, is currently on the RAF payroll.
- INDEPENDENT
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