Tuesday, October 13, 2009 AJACCIO: French authorities rescued six people who survived in the Mediterranean Sea for more than five hours Monday after their small plane crashed off the coast of Corsica, officials said. The first two survivors were found thanks to a distress beacon and were plucked from the choppy sea by a helicopter. They were treated for hypothermia at a beach before being taken to hospital, a medical source said. A third person was rescued later by an army helicopter. The last three survivors were found at 10:00 pm near a lifeboat that was dropped by a reconnaissance aircraft, according to the rescue operations centre in the Corsican city of Ajaccio. The plane was flying from Propriano in southern Corsica to the French Riviera city of Cannes when it crashed in the sea in the Gulf of Porto. The pilot, who is in his 50s, reported engine failure to air control and announced he would try to land in the sea one hour after take-off, officials said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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