In a dispute over unpaid national debt, Russia has said it will reduce the supply of gas into Ukraine today.

Russia said that gas supplies to Europe which run through pipes crossing Ukraine would be unaffected but the Ukraine government threatened to cut supplies into Europe.

A worrying naive view from the UK national grid is that because we don’t get any of our gas directly from Ukraine, we would be okay. This seems to fly in the face of the logic that in the event of supply via Ukraine to Europe being cut, some of the UK supply would be diverted to support Europe.

Who’s idea was it not to have a strategic gas reserve eh?

On Saturday (March 1st) a Lufthansa Airbus A320 was attempting to land on on runway 23 at Hamburg, Germany in a severe gusting crosswind.

They near as toucher didn’t make it. Video found on LiveLeak

The aircraft was on a domestic flight from Munich and encountered 30-40kt crosswinds on landing.The port wingtip actually hits the runway ripping off the winglet and causing some damage to the wing before the pilot can get the wings level and apply go-around power. It looks like the starboard wingtip may drag also. I’m not sure if applying pressure to only one maingear will trigger the spoilers; you really wouldn’t want them to deploy when you’re this far out of shape!The aircraft was able to go around and landed safely on the next attempt.Flight Global identified the aircraft as D-AIQP and airliners.net has a rather stunning photograph of a the port tip being dragged.

It almost defies belief that plane spotters will hang around in such inclement conditions. Perhaps they have a certain sense of the macabre.