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Mount Etna Eruption Disrupts Sicily’s Troubled Catania Airport 

Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, lights up the night sky with eruptions as seen from Rocca Della Valle, Italy, August 13, 2023. (Etna Walk/Marco Restivo/ Handout via Reuters)
Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, lights up the night sky with eruptions as seen from Rocca Della Valle, Italy, August 13, 2023. (Etna Walk/Marco Restivo/ Handout via Reuters)
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Mount Etna Eruption Disrupts Sicily’s Troubled Catania Airport 

Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, lights up the night sky with eruptions as seen from Rocca Della Valle, Italy, August 13, 2023. (Etna Walk/Marco Restivo/ Handout via Reuters)
Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, lights up the night sky with eruptions as seen from Rocca Della Valle, Italy, August 13, 2023. (Etna Walk/Marco Restivo/ Handout via Reuters)

Flights serving the eastern Sicilian city of Catania were halted on Monday after an eruption from nearby Mount Etna, local authorities said, bringing fresh travel woe to the crisis-plagued Italian airport.

The 3,330 meter (10,925 ft) high volcano burst into action overnight, firing lava and ash high over the Mediterranean island. The lava flow subsided before dawn, but ash was still coming from one of the craters.

Flights to and from Catania, a popular tourist destination, would be suspended until 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT), the airport said on Twitter.

Catania Mayor Enrico Trantino banned the use of motorcycles and bicycles in the city for the next 48 hours, because many streets were covered in ash, and ordered cars to drive no faster than 30 kph (19 mph) due to the skiddy conditions.

The latest cancellations at Catania airport, which attracts more arrivals than the island's capital, Palermo, came a month after a fire at a terminal building led to weeks of disruptions for passengers.

The last major eruption was in 1992.

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Explorer: Sonar Image Was Rock Formation, Not Amelia Earhart Plane

A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP
A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP
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Explorer: Sonar Image Was Rock Formation, Not Amelia Earhart Plane

A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP
A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP

A sonar image suspected of showing the remains of the plane of Amelia Earhart, the famed American aviatrix who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937, has turned out to be a rock formation.

Deep Sea Vision (DSV), a South Carolina-based firm, released the blurry image in January captured by an unmanned submersible of what it said may be Earhart's plane on the seafloor.

Not so, the company said in an update on Instagram this month, AFP reported.

"After 11 months the waiting has finally ended and unfortunately our target was not Amelia's Electra 10E (just a natural rock formation)," Deep Sea Vision said.

"As we speak DSV continues to search," it said. "The plot thickens with still no evidence of her disappearance ever found."

The image was taken by DSV during an extensive search in an area of the Pacific to the west of Earhart's planned destination, remote Howland Island.

Earhart went missing while on a pioneering round-the-world flight with navigator Fred Noonan.

Her disappearance is one of the most tantalizing mysteries in aviation lore, fascinating historians for decades and spawning books, movies and theories galore.

The prevailing belief is that Earhart, 39, and Noonan, 44, ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific near Howland Island while on one of the final legs of their epic journey.

Earhart, who won fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, took off on May 20, 1937 from Oakland, California, hoping to become the first woman to fly around the world.

She and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937 after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on a challenging 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometer) flight to refuel on Howland Island, a speck of a US territory between Australia and Hawaii.

They never made it.