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After four years of work, three launch delays and $100 million in dot-com cash, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket rose from its Pacific launch pad on Friday, but was lost moments later.

Space enthusiasts around the world had looked forward to what SpaceX, also known as Space Exploration Technologies, billed as the world’s first all-new orbital launch vehicle in more than a decade.

The two-stage, partially reusable rocket ascended from a launch complex on Omelek Island in Kwajalein Atoll, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as thousands watched via a Webcast. But moments after its fiery rise from the pad, the Webcast signal was lost. Then, SpaceX reported that the rocket and its satellite were destroyed during the ascent.

SpaceX’s founder and chief executive officer, Elon Musk, said the launch team was still analyzing the problem Friday afternoon. "We had a successful liftoff and Falcon made it well clear of the launch pad, but unfortunately the vehicle was lost later in the first-stage burn," Musk reported on the SpaceX Web site.

Course never ran smooth

SpaceX’s course has never run totally smooth: Three times before, preparations had to be aborted because of assorted glitches.

The first countdown, last November, was called off with just minutes to go due to a computer problem and a stuck liquid-oxygen valve. The second attempt went awry in December when a fuel tank was dented due to a faulty depressurization valve. The third time, computer glitches encountered during a test countdown forced a delay.

more at MSNBC. 

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil held above $64 a barrel after hitting a near seven-week high on Friday as renewed supply woes in Nigeria increased expectations of prolonged outages in Africa’s largest producer.

Oil in New York surged 3.5 percent on Thursday after Italian energy firm Eni said it could not honor crude oil export commitments from its Nigerian Brass River terminal, after a pipeline attack last week.

"I’d be expecting Nigerian outages to last for another couple of months," said Deborah White of SG CIB Commodities in Paris. "It’s not particularly that the situation has deteriorated, but it is indeed quite serious."

U.S. light crude for May delivery was up 69 cents at $64.60 a barrel in mid-morning trade. It hit a peak of $64.75 earlier Friday, the highest since Feb. 7.

London Brent crude was up 45 cents at $63.72 after a surge of $1.76 the previous day.

Eni’s Brass River terminal loads around 200,000 barrels per day (bpd). The pipeline blast shut in 75,000 bpd of Eni’s Nigerian output, but the company said on Thursday that if all went well, it could be repaired within a week.

Exports from Nigeria, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Africa’s largest producer, have been cut back by attacks on oil installations there.

Royal Dutch Shell and other companies already have shut down 630,000 bpd of production, 26 percent of the capacity in the world’s eighth-largest crude exporter.

via CNN.

BRUSSELS - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi joked about declaring war on France on Friday and pretended to massage President Jacques Chirac, making light of a clash between their two countries over energy mergers.

Berlusconi, leaving for the second day of a European Union summit, told reporters: “There is no news, unless you journalists want us to declare war on France.”

Inside the conference room, he walked up to the seated Chirac and put his hands on the French president’s shoulders in what looked like a neck-rub, prompting a startled laugh.

Tension between France and Italy has risen since the Paris government engineered a hasty merger between state-owned Gaz de France and private French utility Suez to fend off a feared bid from Italy’s Enel.

Diplomats had expected Berlusconi, trailing center-left ex-European Commission President Romano Prodi in opinion polls ahead of an April 9-10 general election, to use the summit to attack the French action.

In the event, he focused his public comments on attacks against Prodi and insisted that he would confound the polls and win re-election.

via MSNBC.

A North Korean cargo ship that was used to smuggle heroin into Australia has been sunk by an Australian fighter jet.

An F-111 aircraft bombed the Pong Su during target practice on Thursday at a secret location offshore, police said.

Australian troops seized the ship in 2003 after spotting it unloading part of a huge heroin shipment at a beach.

The Australian government said the bombing was a warning to North Korea to halt its involvement in drug smuggling - an allegation Pyongyang rejects.

"It is appropriate that we publicly demonstrate our outrage at what has happened by sinking this ship," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

Captain cleared

"We are concerned about possible links between the North Korean ship and the North Korean government."

The Pong Su’s cargo of heroin, worth about US$115 million (£66 million), would have provided four million hits of the drug on Australian streets, Mr Downer said.

Earlier this month, an Australian jury cleared the captain of the Pong Su and three officers of involvement in an international drug ring.

But four crew members who were involved in transporting the heroin from ship to shore pleaded guilty to drug charges.

Two have been sentenced to 22 and 23 years in prison and the other two are awaiting sentence.

The 3,500-tonne Pong Su was used to smuggle in more than 125 kilograms of heroin.

High-sea chase

It had anchored off the town of Lorne in Victoria state while the cargo was carried ashore by dinghy.

It was seized in April 2003 after a four-day chase by the Australian navy.

Earlier this week, the freighter was towed out of Sydney Harbour to a location 140km (90 miles) off the coast of eastern Australia, the Australian Federal Police said.

The fighter jet then dropped the bomb that sank the ship, the police added.

Although North Korea has denied any link to the smuggling operation, Mr Downer said it was hard to imagine a shipping company acting on its own in Pyongyang’s Stalinist-style economy.

"I mean this isn’t, after all, a private sector economy where private companies are doing things on their own accord," Mr Downer said.

"North Korea has been involved in illicit drug trade, North Korea has been involved in illicit financial dealings, and North Korea has been involved in the illicit trade in WMD (weapons of mass destruction) technology over quite some years," he added.

Australia and the United States have said the case of the Pong Su strengthens their suspicions that Pyongyang deals in drugs to help support its failing economy.

via BBC News.

and here is the actual footage.

KOLKATA, India - A giant aldabra tortoise thought to be around 250 years old has died in the Kolkata zoo of liver failure, Indian authorities said on Thursday.

The tortoise had been the pet of Robert Clive, the famous British military officer in colonial India around the middle of the 18th century, a local minister in West Bengal state said.

Local authorities say the tortoise, named “Addwaitya” meaning the “The One and Only” in Bengali, was the oldest tortoise in the world but they have not presented scientific proof to back up their claim.

“Historical records show he was a pet of British general Robert Clive of the East India Company and had spent several years in his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo about 130 years ago,” West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Barman said.

“We have documents to prove that he was more than 150 years old, but we have pieced together other evidence like statements from authentic sources and it seems that he is more than 250 years old,” he said.

via MSNBC.