Balloon Breaks From Mooring, Dashes Hopes - Up Up and Away (Empty)
     Disaster hit British Tycoon Richard Branson a second time in his
 effort to become the first man to fly a balloon non-stop around the
 world.  While it was being filled, gusting wind ripped his balloon
 free from its moorings. (Reuters)
     Marrakech, Morocco, Dec. 9 - British mogul Richard Branson's
 hopes to fly around the world were dashed today when his balloon
 accidentally took off without him.
     Following a small explosion, the balloon whooshed up into the
 sky as technicians were inflating it before the planned afternoon
 send-off at a military air base near Marrakech.
     Moroccan air traffic controllers put out a warning that the
 balloon was on the loose.
     "Everybody is gutted," said an emotional Branson, 47, speaking
 on Sky TV. "If we can get the balloon back, we'll have another go
 this year."
     Branson, dressed in a green flying suit, watched as his balloon
 floated away hundreds of feet overhead and headed eastward across
 the Atlas Mountains toward Algeria.
                         Second Disappointment
     It was the second time that disaster hit Branson's efforts to
 become the first man to fly a balloon non-stop around the world.
     The last attempt by Branson, head of the Virgin group of comp-
 anies, to break the record ended when he and two co-pilots had to
 land in the Algerian desert because of technical problems less than
 24 hours after taking off from Morocco.
     This time, the crew had hoped to succeed in crossing north
 Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, the South China Sea, the Pacific and
 the United States before landing in Britain after a 24,000-mile
 trip expected to take 14-21 days.
     Virgin spokesman Will Whitehorn said everyone involved was upset
 by the loss and that the attempt has been canceled.
     Branson's balloon, the Virgin Global Challenger, takes eight
 hours to inflate, and the process was only partially complete when
 it tore away from its moorings.
     Organizers said the balloon could no longer be used and could
 end up anywhere as it is was carried away by the jet stream.
     Branson said he had no intention of giving up.
     "When I first heard the news I thought it was all over, but I
 think we will live to fight another day if not this year then
 definitely next year," he said.
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           First victims of Siberian crash buried
     IRKUTSK, Russia - December 9, 1997 11:47 a.m. EST - Two 8-year-
 old girls, killed when a Russian military transport plane crashed
 in a fireball next to a home from children, were buried Tuesday,
 the first of more than 80 probable victims to be interred.
     Lyudmila Shashkina and Yana Potanina, both in state care after
 family breakdowns, were watching television when the Antonov An-124
 came down moments after takeoff Saturday.
     "These girls were totally burned," the home's director Galina
 Kryukova told NTV television. "The first impact caught them ... In
 all probability, they died in that instant."
     The 140 other children were evacuated safely. Some of them shed
 tears as they laid flowers as their friends were buried in sealed
 caskets under bright sunshine at a snowbound cemetery.
     A Russian Emergencies Ministry official in Irkutsk, 2,600 miles
 and five time zones east of Moscow, told Reuters that 47 bodies and
 17 body parts had been retrieved from the scene of the inferno.
 Thirty-eight people were unaccounted for; they were assumed to be
 incinerated in the cargo plane and in homes on the ground.
     President Boris Yeltsin canceled a Kremlin ceremony at the last
 moment on uesday, telling those who had gathered to receive awards:
 "Funerals are going on in Irkutsk right now and I believe we should
 get together again a bit later. This will be the right thing to do,
 in a Christian and simply human sense."
     He then called for a minute's silence.
     Rescue workers gave up hope of finding survivors after three
 days of sub-zero temperatures. On Tuesday they began demolishing
 the building, once home to 106 people, which bore the brunt of the
 impact and intense fire that left only the huge tail of the 340-ton
 aircraft recognizable.
     The remains of about half the 15-person air force crew have been
 identified.  Six engineers also died.  They were accompanying two
 Sukhoi Su-27 fighters which were in the hold, being exported to
 Vietnam. There are still conflicting reports about how many victims
 there may have been on the plane and on the ground.
     Witnesses said the plane, in the air for just 21 seconds, came
 down in silence. Officials say it appeared that at least three if
 not all four of its jet engines failed.
     Investigators are still going through evidence from the black
 box flight recorders.
     Nikolai Kovalyov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service,
 told Interfax and RIA news agencies that he had all but ruled out
 any criminal act and that the focus of investigation was the pre-
 sence of summer aviation fuel in the plane's tanks.
     The Antonov, one of the world's biggest aircraft, was carrying
 60 tons of summer fuel in temperatures of some minus 13 degrees
 Fahrenheit, Kovalyov said.
     The Ukrainian designers of the 11-year-old plane told Reuters
 they believed the freighter was unlikely to have suffered a simul-
 taneous engine failure without some other factor being in play, like
 a failure to have warmed the aircraft properly before takeoff or
 poor low-temperature maintenance, they said.
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