Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019 Page 33
Fracking halted by
by minor tremor
Russian robot is
blasted into space
A FRACKING firm was forced to halt work
at Britain’s only shale gas exploration site
after it triggered a minor earthquake.
Caudrilla staff downed tools for 18 hours
at the plant near Blackpool after Wednes-
day’s tremor, measuring 1.6 on the Richter
Scale. The firm compared it to ‘a large bag
of shopping dropping to the floor’.
It follows a number of minor quakes in
December at the Lancashire site.
Fracking – opposed by many environ-
mental groups – involves blasting sand,
water and chemicals into the earth to
crack shale rock and free trapped gas.
Under strict state rules, firms must pause
work if they trigger a ‘seismic event’
above 0.5 on the Richter Scale.A HUMANOID robot has been blasted into
orbit by the Russians to lend a hand at the
International Space Station.
FEDOR, who is the size of an adult and can
copy some human movements, will spend
two weeks as an ‘assistant to the crew’.
‘It’s main purpose is to be used in opera-
tions that are especially dangerous for
humans,’ space agency Roscosmos said
yesterday after the droid blasted off in an
unmanned spacecraft. The robot – whose
name stands for Final Experimental Dem-
onstration Object Research – was sitting in
the captain’s chair and clutching a small
Russian flag in its right hand.
But the Americans got there first. A US
‘robonaut’ was sent to the ISS in 2011.Reservoir Sprog
for Tarantino, 56
Quentin taran-
tino is to become a
father for the first
time, aged 56.
the Reservoir
Dogs and Pulp Fic-
tion director mar-
ried israeli singer
and model Daniella
Pick, 35, last november, having met her in- the couple, pictured, announced the
pregnancy yesterday.
Speaking about his wife in May, he said: ‘i
can honestly say that my taking stock is
different than it would have been three
years ago, four years ago or even 10 years
ago. i just got married six months ago. in
fact, my wife is sitting in front of you. i was
waiting for the perfect girl.’
Madeley ‘no’ to
Strictly Spandex
RiCHARD Madeley
said he has turned
down the chance to be
on Strictly Come Danc-
ing several times for
fear of looking
stupid in Spandex.
the tV host, pic-
tured, said executives
on the BBC show find
it more difficult to sign
up male celebrities.
Madeley, 63, said while hosting itV’s Good
Morning Britain yesterday: ‘i wouldn’t do it
because of the jive. i cannot conceivably
come on in Spandex and Lurex and do the
flick kicks – i would look so stupid.
‘i would look stupid anyway, whereas a
woman wouldn’t think like that.’The £500,000 crash
the vehicles then caused 80
yards of carnage, colliding with
another lamp post, smashing
through a flowerbed and wiping
out two bollards before smashing
into six parked cars in front of
horrified diners eating outside a
Cote Brasserie in Chislehurst,
south-east London.
the wreckage of the two cars
nearly crushed a young woman as
they crashed yards from her table.
Ralu Bucur, 21, was sitting on
the terrace outside the restaurant
when the Jaguar hit parked cars
and a solid flowerbed next to her,
sending bricks and vehicle
fragments flying towards her and
a friend.
the restaurant worker, from
Chislehurst, said: ‘i saw the Jag-uar flying, spinning and then land-
ing on its back. it was really loud,
like a bomb. there were bricks
and pieces of lamppost flying
around us and bits of the car fly-
ing towards me.’
the two drivers were white and
in their early twenties, she said,
adding that the Audi driver
looked shocked but seemed physi-
cally fine.
One man and his friends saw the
smash from a nearby pub.
He said: ‘About ten or 12 of us
got together and we managed to
flip the Jaguar upright but this
guy [the driver] was still inside,
completely knocked out.
‘We couldn’t get the door open
but it was so badly damaged wewere able to rip it off.’ He told how
people tried to give emergency
cardiopulmonary resuscitation to
the driver before ambulances
arrived. the driver was in a critical
condition in hospital yesterday.
Road accident cleaner Paulin the job. He said: ‘they were rac-
ing down the road at some speed- i would say possibly 80 or 90mph
by the damage that was caused.’
He added: ‘You can tell by look-
ing at the average damage from
previous accidents we’ve worked
on. We were here at 6am this
morning and you could not walk
on this pavement.
‘the flowerbeds and the bol-
lards, all the parked cars on the
high street were smashed.
‘there were a lot of expensive
cars involved – i would say there
was at least half a million pounds
worth of damage, easily.’
Barry Woodley, 62, who owns a
furniture store on the high street,
said: ‘every car i looked at seems
to be a write-off. they were all
squashed on one side. i couldn’t
even make out what type of cars
they were it was that bad.’
A woman was also injured in the
crash, and was cared for by
paramedics.
Another onlooker said: ‘What a
stupid thing to do. it happens a
lot round here, people come
racing through the high street in
these powerful cars, just because
they can.’
A twisted bumper and hundreds
of fragments of glass and plastic
remained strewn across the road
yesterday afternoon.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said
there had been no arrests and that
inquiries were continuing.PEDESTRIAN, 66, KILLED BY PURPLE ROLLS
Starting at £258,000: The Wraith at the scene yesterdayBy George OdlingA 66-YEAR-OLD pedestrian died
after being hit by a purple
Rolls-Royce in the early hours of
yesterday morning.
The driver stopped after the
3am accident at Hyde Park Cor-
ner in central London and spoke
to investigating police officers.
The pedestrian was declared
dead at the scene.
According to one witness,
another expensive car stopped
near the scene. ‘A Mercedes-
Benz G Wagon was parked up
nearby and there was some spec-
ulation about what the two cars
were doing in that area of Lon-
don at that time.’
The man added: ‘There havebeen incidents of people racing
around Hyde Park corner in the
early hours.’
The death of the pensioner
comes at the height of the ‘Sum-
mer Supercar’ season when own-
ers of luxury cars from around
the world fly their vehicles into
the capital to show them off.
The Rolls-Royce Wraith – which
sells at a starting price of £258,000- is understood to have been
registered in Qatar.
The left-hand drive vehicle may
have lost a front number plate
due to the impact of the collision
and the right hand side of the
windscreen was smashed during
the accident.
tWO speeding sports cars left a
£500,000 trail of devastation in
their wake as they crashed after
a 90mph race down a leafy
suburban street.
Witnesses told how a black Jaguar
F-type and a white Audi A5 came
hurtling down the road, putting the
lives of pedestrians on the busy pave-
ments in danger.
After the crash, a dozen drinkers raced
from a nearby pub to flip the Jaguar
upright and pull the unconscious
25-year-old driver out.
CCtV footage appears to show the Jag-
uar overtaking the Audi at high speed on
the wrong side of the road, narrowly
missing a pedestrian at a bus stop before
clipping a lamp post and losing control
at about 10pm on Wednesday.Carnage as sports cars rocket through
leafy suburbs in 90mph street race
‘Worst crash in 13
years on the job’Cheeseman was at the scene yes-
terday – and estimated the crash
caused around half a million
pounds of damage.
the 58-year-old, from nearby
Welling, said it was the ‘worst’
crash he had seen in his 13 yearsRELEASED BY "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS SLIP TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws