Volcano Sinabung Erupts Killing 14 In Indonesia

Fourteen people, including four pupils on a school trip, have been killed after a series of huge eruptions thundered from a volcano in Indonesia, officials have said.

Mount Sinabung, which has been rumbling for months, sent hot rocks and scorching ash up to 2,000m (16,000ft) into the air.

The four high-school students and their teacher were killed on the excursion to see the volcano up close, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency.

A local television journalist was also among the dead. Officials fear there could be more fatalities.

"We suspect there are more victims but we cannot recover them because the victims are in the path of the hot (ash) clouds,"  said Mr Nugroho.

More than 30,000 people have taken refuge since Sinabung, on the island of Sumatra, started erupting in September.

Sinabung spews ash in November last year

But some villagers had returned home on Friday after authorities advised that houses outside of a 5km (3.1 mile) radius of Sinabung were safe.

Saturday's eruptions sent lava and pyroclastic flows up to 4.5 km from the volcano. 

All those who had been allowed to return home on Friday were ordered back into evacuation centres following the eruptions.

Sinabung had been quiet for around 400 years until it rumbled back to life in 2010, and again in September last year. 

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Diver Dies On Costa Concordia Salvage

A diver has died while working on the shipwrecked Costa Concordia after apparently gashing his leg on an underwater metal sheet.

Italy's civil protection agency, which is leading the removal of the Concordia from the Tuscan coast, said the diver was Spanish.

It was widely reported in Spain and Italy that he was Israel Franco Moreno, of La Coruna, and in his 40s.

Tuscany's La Nazione newspaper said the diver had been working on preparations to attach huge tanks on to sides of the Concordia, to float the ship off its false seabed and tow it to a port for eventual dismantling.

The newspaper reported he gashed his leg on an underwater metal sheet and was then unable to get free.

It said he bled heavily before a diver colleague was able to bring him to the surface. He was reportedly conscious upon surfacing but later died.

The job to right the ship last year took around 19 hours

He is the first  diver to die in the line of work on salvaging the Concordia ever since it slammed into a reef off Giglio island in January 2012, killing 32 passengers and crew.

In a statement, the head of the civil protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, expressed condolences for the death and recalled the dedication of people working on the wreckage, saying they had worked "for two years without a break, in difficult conditions not without risks, to achieve the common goal of removing the Concordia from Giglio.

The Concordia was righted in preparation for removal during a 19-hour engineering feat last autumn, in which a system of pulleys wrenched the 300-metre-long (1,000-foot-long), 115,000-ton cruise ship from its side to vertical.

A dozen giant tanks were affixed to its exposed port side and filled with water to help pull the ship upright.

The current project that the diver was working on was to prepare the starboard side, which had been underwater until the ship was righted, to hold a similar number of tanks.

Francesco Schettino, the ship's captain currently on trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and leaving the ship before all passengers were evacuated.

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