It may have hit the fan in Ukraine – passenger jet shot down

How about the Sky journalist rummaging through someone’s luggage ?

He also says that the pro russian guys are being massacred and women and children in the area are being rounded up and shot. No idea if this is true but I guess it is what his girlfriend is being told from the homeland.

Don’t know about round up and shot, but it certainly seems that the Ukranian forces have been bombing civilian areas heavily

(again, can’t recommend the Vice news dispatches enough, some strong stuff in this one:)

Is the Russian media still state controlled?

And if so, what’s internet access like?

Just wondering how easy it is to get hold of news from outside the Motherland.

(apologies – I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, and Russian stereotypes are still in full effect)

Is Russian media state controlled? Most of the TV channels are run by the government, and follow the official Kremlin line, but there are a couple of independents which seem to have a really hard time (TVRain?).

The Internet is currently largely uncensored, Facebook, BBC and Twitter are all available, but your average Russian wont understand English so wont be interested in the western viewpoint. Same as we dont read Russian media.

There’s tons of foreign media published in Russian, just like there’s tons of foreign media published in English – and few people read them because they’re too busy talking about Big Brother/Dom on Facebook/Vkontakte.

Bloke I work with who has a Russian girlfriend is convinced that the Ukranian forces shot the plane down as they were after Putin who was allegedly flying in a plane near by.

Is your bloke’s girlfriend a journalist for Russia Today?

Just looking through this collection of photos and spotted this:

https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/jeroenakkermans/14515216568/in/set-72157645790319631/

🙁

Quite a lot of close up photos of the damage. Looking like an engine strike at the moment rather than the fuselage from the pics I’ve seen so far.

another one that stands out 🙁

https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/jeroenakkermans/14721749853/in/set-72157645790319631/

The Internet is currently largely uncensored, Facebook, BBC and Twitter are all available, but your average Russian wont understand English so wont be interested in the western viewpoint. Same as we dont read Russian media.

Fair point.

Andyl – does that mean a heatseeker then?

How about the Sky journalist rummaging through someone’s luggage ?

Kay Burley was there…?

This is a pretty grim question, but my 12 yr old daughter asked me earlier. How did/do most people die in a situation like this? Clearly hurtling into the ground at x mph is going to be a killer but am I right in thinking most would not survive the sudden decompression at 30000 ft and 500 odd mph. I tried to explain to her that fortunately this would be the case and they wouldn’t have known (I hope) I couldn’t however explain why it happened!

I think the answer for a 12 year old would be that the lack of oxygen would lead to them passing out in seconds and not feeling anything – theres some videos on hypoxia blackouts in pilot training on youtube

unfortunately, from what I remember of the Lockerbie postmortems (I had a couple of friends involved in the clearup) thats not always the case, and they had some cases of people conscious after impact 🙁

edit – here: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Lockerbie+10+Years+On%3A+The+dead+girl+still+had+tufts+of+grass+in+her…-a060628228

very sad

Watching the footage of Putin demonstrating his martial art skills on Newsnight.

Do you reckon if we stopped short blokes, who’ve clearly got a complex about it, having access to power (and weapons systems) all this kind of shenanigans could’ve been avoided?

He really is international politics answer to those angry pint-sized blokes who starts on you in the pub for looking at their pint!

Putin is 170cm. he’s not tall but he’s not remarkably short, either

I bet you wish Cameron was as hard a man as a Putin, or at least half of it.

It depends what style of news you fancy West vs East, meanwhile in Israel …

Andyl – does that mean a heatseeker then?

No, I still believe it’s the radar guided missile from all the scenario evidence but after looking at those images the debris in the wing sections didn’t seem to tie up with fan blades from below the wing.

I then spotted this:

Which would seem to be the side of the cockpit and it’s not hard to make out what looks to be the story there.

Looks like maybe the front port side and the other images show the outer section of what I think is the port wing that has torn off.

This image looks like the tail section: http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/mh17-crash.jpg?w=1100

based on the width, seems to be cut outs on either side and the red stripe is close to the cut out. The section in front is like a wing box and the horizontal stabiliser is normally a single piece that passes through.

Here is the vertical stabiliser/rubber. Bit chunk missing on the upper leading edge so maybe an impact with another bit of the plane? The way the crop is splayed out looks like it landed nice and flat.

Also spotted seat row 31 which is behind the wing box. D-H is the middle section so we can expect complete separation of the tail from the back of the wingbox which supports the tail section, rear door section etc that are all seen scattered away from the main crash site.

The main crash site with all the fire seems to have at least one engine and one rear undercarriage leg, possibly and probably 2. Looks like the bulk of the centre section of the aicraft and this is obviously were most of the fuel is hence the fire. Looks like it hit the ground very hard. The is also the underside of one of the wings visible.

It looks like the explosion was in the front port segment – ie along side the cabin and infront of the port engine. I think the gashes I can make out on the wing are from the blast not from the engine and the marks on the cockpit definitely looks like they are direct from the blast and it was close.

Will be interesting (from a wanting know what happened and engineering sense) how the plane broke up.

The photo above was released yesterday morning.

It is indeed the port side of the 777 cockpit and shows textbook marking off a hit by a SAM. All of the small puncture wounds around the main hole are consistent with the SAM detonating within approximately a 20m distance from the aircraft as they are designed to do – they send a shower of hot metal at the target for maximum chance of damage.

The large hole in the middle will have been from the rapid decompression just after impact – consistent with the hole looking like it was punched from the inside out.

I bet you wish Cameron was as hard a man as a Putin, or at least half of it.

I dunno, I think even Cameron is tough enough to shoot a wild tiger (that’s already been drugged out of shot of the cameras).