Daily News Roundup

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19

Three people have died, including children, after a car was allegedly set alight in Brisbane’s Camp Hill, Queensland’s Police Minister Mark Ryan revealed this morning.

Queensland police are on the scene of what they have described as a “major incident” in Raven Street, at Camp Hill.

Mr Ryan told Parliament of the tragedy after talking to the Police Commissioner.

“[It is] a horrific incident,” Mr Ryan said.

Mr Ryan confirmed a number of victims were involved in the incident.

“I have just been informed by the Police Commissioner that three people have died, including children, in a horrific incident at Camp Hill this morning,” he said.

“All emergency services are on scene.

“The situation is at a very early stage and I am informed that police are investigating all of the circumstances surrounding this tragic set of events.

“My thoughts are with all of those affected by this terrible tragedy.”

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Detectives are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death yesterday of a three-year-old boy allegedly left in a mini bus in stifling heat in Cairns.

The boy’s body was found at 3:15pm by the driver of the Goodstart Early Learning minibus, which had been parked outside a nearby school.

It is understood the minibus had picked the boy up from his home yesterday morning, but police are not sure how long the child was alone  inside the vehicle throughout the day.

Temperatures hit 34C in Cairns yesterday.

Goodstart Early Learning chief executive, Julia Davison, said staff at the centre in Edmonton were still trying to come to terms with the tragedy.

“We are absolutely devastated,” Ms Davison told Channel Nine.

“We have decided as a precaution, and it’s been a very difficult decision for us to make, to not use our buses from later today,” Ms Davison said.

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A modern day Mary Celeste ghost ship has washed up on the coast of Ireland, more than a year after being abandoned by its crew.

After a lonely journey around the world with no one aboard, the cargo vessel MV Alta, was washed ashore in by bad weather that came with Storm Dennis last weekend.

It was spotted on the rocks of the fishing village of Ballycotton in County Cork, after drifting thousands of kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean 

The story of the Mary Celeste, discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands on December 4, 1872, has been recounted and dramatized many times in documentaries, novels, plays, and films, and the name of the ship has become a byword for unexplained desertion.

Commenting on the sudden appearance of the MV Alta, John Tattan, the head of Ballycotton’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), told the Irish Examiner newspaper: “This is one in a million,” “I’ve never, ever seen anything abandoned like that before.”

Built in 1976, the MV Alta was sailing from Greece to Haiti under the Tanzanian flag in September 2018 when it struck trouble about 2,000 kilometres south-east of Bermuda.

The roughly 250-foot vessel was abandoned in October 2018 after the U.S. Coast Guard rescued its stranded crew that was without power, Lt. Amanda Faulkner, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Coast Guard’s 5th District, told USA TODAY.

The ship was roughly 1,300 miles southeast of Bermuda when the U.S. Coast Guard received the distress call in September, Faulkner said. 

The ship’s owner planned to send a tug to rescue it, and the Coast Guard airdropped supplies to the crew in the meantime.

Due to poor weather and the MV Alta’s configuration, the U.S. Coast Guard could not tow the boat, so it brought the 10-member crew to Puerto Rico and left the vessel afloat, Faulkner said.

What happened to the ship next is unclear. Faulkner said the Coast Guard tracked the vessel for a few weeks so they could warn others in the area that the ship was abandoned, but they eventually stopped receiving reports of sightings and had no jurisdiction over the ship out in open water.

The MV Alta was last seen unmanned in September 2019 when HMS Protector, a British Royal Navy patrol ship, encountered it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Its journey would then take it from Africa, past Portugal and Spain, to the Celtic Sea, and its final destination in Ireland.