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ENVIRONMENT

British man, 25, drowned after being swept out to sea in southern France

A British man has died after being swept out to sea in southern France.

British man, 25, drowned after being swept out to sea in southern France
Biscarrosse plage, in southwest France. Photo by Thibaud MORITZ / AFP

Emergency services were called to a beach on France’s Atlantic coast, just south of Bordeaux, on Sunday after the man got into difficulty in the water.

He was pulled from the water at Biscarrosse-Plage at around 9am, but emergency services were unable to resuscitate him.

Local authorities said that he was a 25-year-old British man.

In a separate incident on Sunday, a four-year-old French child also got into difficulty in the water on the same stretch of coastline. They were airlifted to hospital and remain in a critical condition.

Authorities have warned swimmers to be careful of riptides in the area, and pay attention to the flags on the beach which denote whether swimming is safe and whether a lifeguard is available. 

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ENVIRONMENT

Mystery sonic boom rattles French Mediterranean island of Corsica

An unidentified sonic boom heard on the French island of Corsica and in Italy may have been a meteorite, experts have said.

Mystery sonic boom rattles French Mediterranean island of Corsica

Media in Corsica reported that the event occurred at around 4.30pm on Thursday.

It was also felt on the Italian island of Elba. The town of Campo nell’Elba said on its Facebook page that a nearby tracking station had, “captured a seismic, acoustic event felt by everyone” at that time. 

Tuscany regional government president Eugenio Giani initially said it was an earthquake, then backtracked after Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) ruled one out.

The Italian Air Force told Giani it had nothing to do with the sonic boom.

“The type of event which caused the tremor, felt by many as an earthquake over the entire coast of Tuscany and in some inland areas, is currently unconfirmed,” Giani wrote on social media.

The region’s Geophysics Institute and the University of Florence said in a joint statement that whatever caused the boom was travelling at 400 miles per second.

“A meteorite entering the atmosphere seems the most likely and in line with the data registered”.

The Corriere della Sera daily quoted an unnamed person from Italy’s civil protection agency saying, “the impact would have been registered by seismographs. The most likely hypothesis is still an aeroplane”.

It is not the first time mysterious sonic booms have been registered on Elba, the Corriere della Sera said. Similar events in 2012, 2016 and 2023 have yet to be explained, it said.

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