Two Ukrainians hospitalized after accident in Bulgaria

The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has confirmed that two citizens of Ukraine have been hospitalized following a bus crash near Byala (Bulgaria).

"Two Ukrainian citizens are at the hospital with moderately severe injuries. Two more Ukrainians stayed with them, including the husband of one injured woman and the friend of an injured man," the ministry spokesman, Oleksandr Dykusarov, told Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, the rest of Ukrainians that were in the bus are in satisfactory condition and are returning to Ukraine. The spokesman did not stipulate the exact number of Ukrainians.

"At the moment, the consul of Ukraine to Bulgaria is at the hospital to give the maximum assistance to his compatriots," he said.

Russia: Nine drown as Moscow pleasure boat sinks

A pleasure boat has sunk on the Moscow River in Russia's capital, drowning nine people, officials say.

Seven of the 16 on board were rescued, they said. The boat is reported to have been hosting a birthday party and is suspected to have been overcrowded.

Reports say the boat, the Swallow, collided with a barge in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The accident comes three weeks after a tourist boat sank on the Volga river in Tatarstan, killing more than 100.

Local media quoted witnesses as saying the Swallow was moving erratically on a 200m-wide bend before colliding with the barge.

The deputy emergency minister Alexander Chupriyan said: "After the collision, the motor boat was pulled under the bottom of the barge."

The accident took place close to the city's Luzhniki sports stadium.

The captain of the barge helped rescue some of the survivors.

Mr Chupriyan said inquires were focusing on the owner and captain of the Swallow, Gennady Zinger, who was one of those who died.

He said Mr Zinger had violated rules three times in the past, including exceeding the boat's capacity of 12.

Witnesses said a Turkish national had been hosting a birthday party.

Another official involved in the investigation, Vladimir Markin, told the Associated Press news agency that one of the survivors had said he worked at the US embassy.

Three weeks ago the 80m (260ft) Bulgaria - a double-decker river cruiser built in 1955 - listed during a thunderstorm on the Volga river and sank in minutes, trapping many passengers inside.

About 80 people were rescued.

Officials said the boat was designed for 140 passengers and crew but it had been carrying 208 people. It also lacked the correct licences and one of its engines was not working, prosecutors said.

Russian police arrested the director of the company that rented the boat and a ship registrar who certified it.

43 Killed In Bus, Train Collision In Ukraine

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine -- A collision between a bus and a train in the Ukraine on Tuesday left 43 people dead, officials said.
The crash took place when a commuter bus and a railway locomotive collided in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry.

The collision occurred at an unguarded train crossing near the village of Maksimovka on the stretch between the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets, the ministry said.

According to preliminary information, the bus was carrying about 50 people as it was driving over the crossing.

Several others were also wounded in the crash.

Railway officials told Ukrainian news agencies that the crossing was closed for cars, and the warning lights were on

A preliminary investigation showed that the bus driver ignored the warning light signals and violated safety rules by crossing the passage at a time when the train was approaching it, the officials told local agencies.

Driver Killed As Mine Ceiling Caves In Under His Car In Ukraine

KRIVOY ROG, Ukraine -- Four cars fell into huge pit which occurred as a result of a scheduled blast in an iron ore mine in the city of Krivoy Rog in central Ukraine, one person was killed.
A huge pit with an area of about 16 hectares and up to 80-meter deep was formed when a ceiling caved in the Ordzhonikidze mine on Sunday. The mine's administrative building and 4 km of the road were also damaged.

The mine's main ventilation shaft was partially destroyed, and works were stopped.

The victim's body has already been recovered, but rescue teams are still working at the scene.

According to Russia's RBC agency, the victim violated safety rules and parked his GAZelle minibus outside the safe parking zone.

Human error blamed for crash

Analysts have concluded that human error - rather than the state of Poland's presidential jet - was the cause of the devastating crash in Smolensk.

The Polish Board N1, Russian made Tu-154M was recently repaired and had plenty of flying time left, Alexiei Gusev, "Aviakor-Aviation" factory director, who was in charge of the Polish airplane maintenance.

The plane was manufactured in 1990 and within last 20 years it has been used by previous Polish presidents, including Wojciech Jaruzelski, Lech Walesa and Aleksander Kwasniewski. In December 2009, the liner went through a major overhaul.

"From the moment it entered service, the plane had had 5,004 flight hours and 1,823 landings, which, for an aircraft of this class, is not a lot," said Gusev.

Russian Air Force Chief of Staff Alexander Alyoshin said the pilots were recommended to divert to another airport due to heavy fog for the first time when the plane was at a distance of about 50 km from the airport Smolensk-North, but they did not follow the recommendations. "The second warning was made 1.5 km from the airport, and the plane kept descending. Then the flight director again gave several commands to divert to an alternative airfield, but the aircraft continued to descend," said Alyoshin at a briefing.

Some aviation experts speculated that President Kaczynski or his entourage might have ordered the pilot to land despite bad weather conditions and warnings from Russian air traffic control, calling it a "VIP-passenger syndrome".

A business aviation pilot with 40 years experience and aviation safety lecturer from Australia, who preferred not to be identified by name, said that there are several cases in history, when high ranking passengers try to influence flight captains.

"It's widely known that commissars in the communist era or modern-day influential VIP passengers try to command captains," he said.

The Polish web resource "Thenews.pl" quoted the former Polish president Lech Walesa, who said the pilot may have come under pressure. Walesa mentioned a case of two years ago when Lech Kaczynski tried to force a pilot of the presidential plane to land in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi during the war in South Ossetia.

And Kaczynski's apparent recklessness has a long historical pedigree, dating back to the 1930 R-101 airship disaster caused by the impetuousness of then UK aviation minister Lord Thomson. He insisted on a take off from Karachi despite warnings that the craft was not ready and the weather was not suitable for take off at that time.

Meanwhile the Interstate Aviation Committee (MAC) in its official statement said that the flight data recorders ("black boxes") of the crashed Tu-154M aircraft were delivered to a special laboratory, where the experts of the committee in the presence of Polish officials and officers of Investigation Committee of Prosecutor's Office started inspection of the containers with recorders. MAC Deputy Chairman Oleg Yermolov told The Moscow News that MAC will only comment on the state of the crashed airplane only after completion of the investigation.

Russia's Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the main reason for the crash was the decision to ignore the dangerously poor visibility. "The visibility at the time of the accident was 400 metres, although the standards require 1,000 metres as a minimum," said Levitin.

Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor's Office said they examined verbal recordings of radio contact between the pilot and the airport services and found out that the pilot did not follow the flight director's instructions to divert to another airport.

Maxim Pyatushkin, an expert from the "Aviation Review" magazine said that if the airport does not declare itself closed, the final decision to land is up to the captain."

Pyatushkin said that the technical condition of the Tu-154M airplane should be investigated as a cause of the crash only after all others.

"Twenty years for an aircraft is not a significant age if it's treated properly. The airplanes of country leaders are being repaired and checked very carefully and Polish pilots know this machine very well," said Pyatushkin.

Seven Churchgoers Die In Ukraine Road Accident

LVIV, Ukraine -- Seven Ukrainian churchgoers died and seventeen were injured in a Sunday road accident, police officials said. The victims had been en route to worship at the Krehovsky monastery in western Lviv province, said Svetlana Dobrovolska, a police spokeswoman, according to a Channel 5 television report.
The Orthodox Christian pilgrims' minibus collided head on with a lorry in the early morning hours, after the lorry driver fell asleep, according to the report.It was not clear from initial reports whether the lorry driver was among the injured. Survivors were being treated at local hospitals.Ukraine's road system is among Europe's most dangerous. Analysts say poor road conditions, corrupt police unwilling to enforce traffic law, and overuse of some road sections are all contributing causes.