Sao Paulo, 22 may (EFE).- Al menos 50 personas resultaron heridas hoy, una de ellas en grave, durante una estampida registrada a las puertas de una tienda de electrodomésticos que ofrecía descuentos en televisores en el estado brasileño de Paraíba, informó una fuente policial.
Según la fuente, citada por la edición electrónica del rotativo Folha de Sao Paulo, un gran número de personas aguardaba en la entrada principal de un comercio que ofrecía importantes descuentos en televisores a los primeros clientes del día, con el objetivo de estimular las ventas para el Mundial de Fútbol, que comienza el próximo mes en Sudáfrica.
En un intento por alcanzar la puerta del establecimiento, en Joao Pessoa, la capital regional, grupos de personas forzaron las rejas de la tienda y se registró una estampida que se saldó con una cincuentena de heridos.
Una de las víctimas tuvo que ser hospitalizada y su estado es grave.
Unidades del cuerpo de bomberos y de los servicios de emergencia se desplazaron al lugar del suceso para socorrer a los heridos.
El presidente de la Asociación Nacional de Fabricantes de Productos Electrónicos, Lourival Kiçula, calcula que este año las ventas de televisores aumentarán entre el 15 y el 20 por ciento por la Copa del Mundo, acontecimiento deportivo seguido con entusiasmo por el público brasileño, muy aficionado al fútbol y gran seguidor de la selección de su país. EFE
Justin Bieber door CRASH!! Caught on camera!! OUCH!!! No matter how much u love him.. This is a good laugh~ Now Justin have a new "MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT" to talk about!! LMFAO!!!
(May 22) -- Amid the animal and marine life living in Louisiana's coastal swamps is one critter few would mourn if the gulf oil spill wiped it out.
But in a bitter twist, those nutria haters are not likely to get their wish.
Weighing in at about 20 pounds and built like a small beaver, the semiaquatic rodent may be physically unimposing, but in terms of the destruction it's wreaked on Louisiana's coastal wetlands, it's any bulldozer's equal. Indeed, one of the reasons the wetlands are so vulnerable to the crude gushing from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is thanks to the nutria's handiwork.
The South American import -- which has webbed feet and is at home both in water and on land -- feeds on marsh grass, considers roots a delicacy and is blamed for ravaging almost 100,000 acres of wetlands along the coast. Nutria have been chewing their way through the marshes with such gusto over the past six decades that they've secured a place on the top 100 list of the The National Invasive Species Council.
National Geographic / Getty Images
Nutrias, which were brought to the United States for their fur in the late 19th century, have become pests in Louisiana, burrowing into levees along drainage canals.
"They dig down into the marsh and basically destroy the root system that holds the marsh together," said Edmond Mouton, a biologist for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and head of the state's nutria control program. "The area can be scoured out and those wetlands can turn into open water."
Nutria also burrow into levees along the drainage canals, weakening them. Adding insult to injury: "For people who live along canals or a bayou, the nutria will come up into the yard and chew on their lawn or eat their tulips or eat their lawn furniture and chew on their boat docks," Mouton said.
Hard to believe, but Louisiana once welcomed nutria, which were brought to the United States for their fur in the late 19th century. Before the fur market collapsed in the 1980s, their pelts at one point commanded a higher price here than those of the long-popular muskrat.
Stories abound about the nutria's introduction to Louisiana. One oft-told version has it that E.A. McIlhenny, creator of Tabasco sauce, brought them to the family pepper farm on Avery Island, 140 miles west of New Orleans, to raise them for their fur. The nutria subsequently escaped during a hurricane, moved into the marsh and did what nutria did best: eat and propagate.
That story is only half-right, but it is so widely believed that the folks at Avery Island felt compelled to clarify the facts on the Tabasco website. McIlhenny was not the first, but rather the third nutria farmer to set up in Louisiana, and he picked up his nutria from a fur farmer downriver from New Orleans. The hurricane escape is dismissed as Louisiana hyperbole. Still, McIlhenny did play a role in the nutria's proliferation by turning loose what is vaguely described as "a large number" of the rodents along the south Louisiana coast.
In the 1940s, nutria briefly were considered heroic protectors of the wetlands for their ability to control aquatic weeds, mainly the non-native water hyacinth. But as their numbers multiplied -- a female can birth 15 to 18 young in 18 months -- they quickly became known as pests. The population reached 20 million in the 1970s, Mouton said.
In the years since, there has been an assortment of efforts to eradicate the little beasts, including trapping, gassing and poisoning. In the 1990s, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department SWAT team even hunted nutrias in the canals for target practice. Last month, parish officials announced a plan to hire a full-time trapper to remove them from canals.
For the past eight years, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has also been paying trappers $4 a tail, a bounty that recently raised to $5. "We like to call them incentive payments," Mouton said. The program brings in about 300,000 tails a year.
Mouton has no illusions that his department can eradicate the nutria from Louisiana. But "if we can control them down to the numbers that the landscape can tolerate," he said, "we could keep them at bay and greatly reduce the number of acres they impact."
The oil spill may yet have a role to play in all this. Despite the dire predictions that it could destroy Louisiana's culture and way of life, though, locals think nutria will survive. They survived Katrina, and they'll survive the oil.
"They are very resilient. Very adaptive," Mouton said.
"Trapper John," a professional swamp pest exterminator who bid on the Jefferson Parish job, echoed that sentiment. He's been hunting nutria for years and knows they're tough.
"I don't think the oil will bother them," he said. "They'll just move to the river, which won't have any oil in it. They're going to get away."
Globe and Mail Update Wednesday, May. 19, 2010 08:49PM EDT
Peter Cheney's son drove a $180,000 Porsche through the garage door while attempting to check out the stereo
Peter Cheney/The Globe and Mail
Take an expensive sports car, a curious teen and a garage door – and mix together to get one very embarrassed automotive writer
Peter Cheney
Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, May. 19, 2010 8:48PM EDTLast updated on Friday, May. 21, 2010 3:25PM EDT
Some moments are lived backwards. The great ones run through your mind like a favourite movie. Then there are the other kind, where you try to roll back the clock – like the afternoon my teenage son launched a brand new Porsche Turbo through our garage door.
So far, I have not managed to invent a time machine, go back, and snatch the key from his hands (and in case you were wondering, the car goes for $180,000, not including freight, tax or a new garage).
That day began with deceptive perfection. I woke up in a sunlit bedroom next to my beautiful wife. We had celebrated 26 years of marriage just the day before. Our cherry tree was in full blossom, and in the garage, locked away like a crown jewel, was a 2010 Porsche 997 Turbo, the latest (and costliest) in a long series of test cars.
When I decided to transition into automotive journalism after more than two and a half decades of news reporting, no one was happier than my son Will. Instead of telling his friends his dad was in Afghanistan (or at a murder scene) he could bring them over to check out the latest ride.
Peter Cheney/The Globe and Mail
Initial body shop estimate for the 2010 Porsche Turbo – $11,000 plus taxes.
My new trade did have its perils, which include the creeping cynicism of the professional test driver. An auto journalist’s existence is like a mechanized version of Hugh Hefner’s – when you are presented with an endless cavalcade of automotive beauties, you can easily become jaded.
Now I had the Turbo, the car that every driving aficionado and pension raider dreams of – 500 horsepower, leather-lined cockpit and a 330 km/h top end. Until I drove it, I’d been a little skeptical – I’d seen too many Turbos employed as male enhancement devices by hobbit-looking accountants who couldn’t even drive a stick shift.
But the previous day, I had taken it to Mosport racetrack for a high-speed lapping session where it inhaled other cars like so many insects – when they saw the Turbo in their mirror, most simply pulled over to let us pass, acknowledging the Porsche as the alpha car.
I was experiencing the acme of German engineering. The Turbo had launched me up Mosport’s kinked back straightaway at more than 250 km/h, then purred back to the city through rush hour traffic, as though it had been magically converted from a race car into a Honda Civic. Best of all, my Turbo was a purist’s model, with a six-speed manual transmission – a factor that would play a key role in the events that were about to unfold.
It was early afternoon. Will had just returned from summer job hunting, accompanied by a friend. I was in my home office, writing and looking out at the green park in front of our house. That morning, Will and I had appeared together in a Globe Drive column called A Hockey Dad’s Last Ride that commemorated his 14 years in minor hockey.
Will stuck his head into the office and asked me if he could show his buddy the Turbo. I told him to go ahead. He and his friends always checked out my cars. Their main focus seemed to be the interior and stereo systems – details I barely cared about.
I went back to my computer. My car buddies knew I’d been at the track with the Turbo, and they wanted my verdict. I told one it was like a tiger in an Armani suit – killer chassis, unbeatable power, but suave and comfortable, too.
I shut down my computer and prepared to head to the office, smiling at the thought of a few minutes in the Turbo. As I headed out the back door, I saw my son running toward the house. His eyes were the size of dinner plates. He sputtered: “Dad, the Porsche … the Porsche …”
I thought the Turbo had been stolen. Our garage has a full security system, but this is one of the most desirable cars in the world, so you never know. Will tried to speak again. “The Turbo rolled into the door….” I walked past him into the garage.
For nearly a minute, I was too dumbfounded to speak. The Turbo hadn’t rolled into the door – it had launched itself through the entire structure. In a distance of approximately four feet, the Turbo had developed enough kinetic energy to blow the entire door apart. Parts of the roller mechanism were scattered through the alley. Dazed, I picked up a bent metal piece – it looked like a Crazy Bone, a toy Will had collected as a little boy.
When I parked it, the Turbo had been pristine. Now it looked like the car from Dukes of Hazzard after a chase through the southern backwoods. Stunned, I surveyed the damage. The hood was raked with gouges, the top of the right front fender was flattened, and the driver’s door (which is made from aluminum to save weight) had taken a beating. Worst of all was the rear fender, which had hit the concrete door frame as the Turbo launched itself into the alley – it looked like a giant blacksmith had smacked it with a sledge hammer.
Like a man surfacing from a deep dive, I slowly returned to reality. I yelled at my son for a minute or two. Then it was time to make some phone calls. Will stood in the garage, quaking. I dialled Rick Bye, a professional race driver who manages the Porsche press fleet. The day before, he had been with me in the Turbo at Mosport, teaching me the fastest line around the track and making sure I didn’t destroy his car. After decades of racing and dealing with idiot journalists, Mr. Bye has seen almost everything there is to see in the car business. But as he turned the corner into my alley, he was greeted by a new first: the nose of a $180,000 high-performance car projecting halfway into the lane, with a shattered garage door draped over it like a curtain.
Mr. Bye quietly surveyed the scene for a minute. Then he walked over to my son. “Stuff happens,” he said. “We’re glad you’re okay. This is only a car. You don’t need a lecture. You already know.”
Now Mr. Bye and I were both on our cellphones. He was talking to Porsche’s insurance company. I was trying to find someone who could get the garage door off the Turbo and get my garage closed up for the night – it was filled with mechanic’s tools and my homebuilt airplane project. If we left it open, we’d be picked clean by the morning.
I found three companies that advertised 24-7 emergency service. That was a joke – none of them could come within the next two days. Then I remembered my contractor, Marty Edge. Six years ago, he rebuilt my house. Now he works full time for David Thomson (yes, the one you’re thinking of) on his properties around the world.
Luckily, Marty was in Toronto. An hour later, he was at my garage, along with a door expert named Frank Dyer. The cavalry had arrived. I was starting to feel a little better. Frank used the remains of our ruined door to close up the opening. Will had never used power tools before, but Frank put him to work driving screws.
As the dust settled, my wife and I confronted the parenting issues that attended the disaster. What was the appropriate punishment for a boy who trashes a car worth $180,000? Friends were flooding us with stories of costly child screw-ups – like the son who flushed an action figure down a toilet, creating a deluge that caused more than $100,000 damage to their house. A colleague told me how she damaged her parent’s brand-new van – she got distracted and rear-ended a truck filled with huge stones (driven by two women who were starting a rock garden project.)
I recalled a childhood friend who rolled a bowling ball off a garage roof (it seemed like a good idea at the time) only to have it land on his father’s newly restored Porsche 356. Another had totalled the family Mercedes by taking it out of gear and pulling off the handbrake – he jumped out as the car began to roll, and watched helplessly as it headed down their steeply sloped driveway, across the street, and into a ravine.
Will’s ride through the door was getting around. I got an e-mail from a partner in a Bay St. communications firm: “Congratulations on your son’s Ferris Bueller moment,” it read. “ It’s all over town. There must be just a touch of parental pride that he has the sense of adventure, the stones, and the good taste to give it a try. That will be a wedding day story. Hope you got photos.”
Ferris Bueller had crossed my mind. There were some obvious parallels to the movie. Like Ferris, my son is a spirited, upbeat boy who loves a good time. And, also like Ferris, his coming-of-age story featured the ruination of an extremely valuable car. He had taken a four-foot, 500 horsepower ride to manhood.
We had a hard call to make. Would it be grounding for life? Let it go? Something in between? Will was a teenage boy. One of the world’s hottest cars had been sitting in our garage, calling to him like the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey. He had a friend to show off for. Will had taken the key, intending to turn on the stereo and navigation system, only to inadvertently fire up an engine that could launch the car to 100 km/h in just over three seconds. He didn’t know how to drive a standard. The outcome had been written in bent metal.
A lawyer friend who has known Will since he was 11 called me at the office. He was laughing so hard that he cried. In his view, Will had made a standard teenage mistake that happened to involve an expensive car. “He’s a great kid,” he said. “Give him a break.”
As I saw it, raising our boy was a lot like training a horse. I didn’t want to break his spirit and turn him into a pit pony. Neither did I want him to become El Diablo. I hoped he would end up as Secretariat – a disciplined champion.
My wife and I decided that Will would have to repay our insurance deductibles and discount losses by getting a summer job. The total would be about $750. Porsche’s deductible on the car was $10,000. I offered to pay it. Mr. Bye said no.
Courtesy of Rick Bye
Laurance Yap, PR manager for Porsche Canada, with a Porsche Cayenne that crashed end-over-end in the Siberian desert. The engine landed about another 100 feet away.
I woke up the next morning sick to my stomach. I was the car journalist whose son had trashed a brand new Porsche Turbo. That wasn’t good. And I was still weighing my son’s punishment. I looked in my inbox. There was an e-mail from Mr. Bye. It was a picture of a Porsche executive standing in the Siberian desert with a bandage wrapped around his head. Behind him was a new Porsche Cayenne, completely destroyed after a high-speed crash, its components littered across the sand.
Mr. Bye had provided some perspective – and some heart. Porsche is a large corporation. They would not be happy about the trashing of their expensive car. But they had sucked it up and tried to make my son and I feel better. Mr. Bye’s gesture reminded me of a story about Frank Sinatra’s handling of a home disaster. When Frank’s daughter Nancy was young, she hosted a party at his house. On a table was a pair of priceless crystal birds. Suddenly there was a crash, and the room fell silent – one of Nancy’s friends had knocked one of the birds off the table, destroying it.
All eyes turned to Sinatra, the legendary Chairman of the Board. Sinatra stood silent for a moment. Then he swept the second bird off the table with the back of his hand. It exploded on the floor like a high-priced crystal grenade.
My son has agreed to do a minimum of one week’s labour for Mr. Bye
Initial body shop estimate for the 2010 Porsche Turbo – $11,000 plus taxes.
My garage door was replaced last week, along with the door tracks, opener and door frame. I spent seven hours working alongside the installer. Total cost was $2,700. My insurance deductible was $500. I lose my no-claims insurance discount for three years.
Later this summer, based on his schedule, my son will attend Apex driving school, where he will be trained in advanced car control and learn to drive a standard transmission.
What happened on Monday in Tehran was so new, so alien to the categories we use to divide the world into easily digestible fragments, that there was bound to be some confusion and misunderstanding.
After all, how were we to interpret the news that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had spent 18 hours sitting down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and had struck a deal with him, a deal that involved Iran handing some of its uranium to Turkey in exchange for refined reactor fuel?
Brazil and Turkey managed to accomplish Monday exactly what the United States and its allies had tried and failed to do last October, a swap of potential weapon-making uranium for safer reactor-fuel stuff – in fact, they had struck a deal on even better terms, assuming (and it is a large assumption) that Iran actually carried out its end. But doing it involved sidestepping the U.S.-led sanctions negotiations, entering friendly negotiations on good-faith terms in the midst of a hostile confrontation with a country the major powers fear.
Friday, the Brazilian-Turkish deal seemed to have been snubbed by these powers when the United States persuaded the United Nations Security Council, including China and Russia, to impose another round of symbolically loaded, but not very punishing, sanctions on Iran. There were angry noises from Ankara and Brasilia.
How you interpreted this deal depended on how you see the thick lines that divide the nations of the world.
Every generation or so, we split the world into neat packages, bundles of nations and blocs of power. That happened on March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill made his “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Miss., turning an emerging ideological divergence into a physical barrier. It happened with equally lasting effect six years later when French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term “Third World” to draw a line between a disparate group of very poor, very angry countries and the rest of the world.
Both lines have dissolved during this century, as the totalizing ideologies of the Cold War and the wealth divisions of the previous century have melted away. We are still sketching out the new boundaries, trying to redraw the map. Yes, there are still very poor countries, and there are alarming authoritarian countries. But what do you make of Brazil and Turkey, which are neither?
In the wake of Monday’s news, some saw the emergence of a “rogue bloc” of countries that work together in opposition to the United States, Europe, Israel and their allies. After all, Russia sells arms to Hugo Chavez’s alarming Venezuelan regime and to Iran. Iran makes trips to Cuba and Venezuela. China and Russia seem to help Iran defy sanctions.
In this reading, Monday’s deal was the sealing of a pact between these nations, expanding it to Brazil – which often has kind things to say about Venezuela and Cuba – and Turkey – which has been making overtures to Syria in an effort to build its influence in the Muslim world. The citizens of both countries are reflexively anti-American.
If you see the world that way, then a new world was created Monday, one of betrayal and danger. Right-wing American columnist Ralph Peters called it a “merging constellation of alliances that will mean a lot more trouble.”
This was not just the view of cold warriors. Monday, British Labour Party MP Denis MacShane wrote an open letter to Lula: “I open my pages with the most profound sadness and see you embracing the incarnation of everything that denies human rights, social justice and all that liberation trade union movements stood for.”
But to view the world this way is to ignore a far more important dimension. While some commentators described this as an act of rogue diplomacy by a headstrong Lula and Erdogan, officials from the U.S. State Department told reporters in briefings that, in fact, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had encouraged Turkey and Brazil to negotiate the deal. And, quietly, Turkish officials say that the new sanctions don’t actually contradict their deal; in fact, the bad-cop sanctions might help it happen quicker.
Brazil and Turkey became this week what Canada has long tried to be: successful middle powers. Ottawa has never really achieved this status, except maybe for a few years in the 1960s, because Canada has never really managed to be in the middle – less so today than ever. What we saw Monday was a genuine middle.
It’s a perilous place: If Iran fails to live up to the deal during the next 30 days, then those countries will look weak and unfriendly. But if they succeed, they will have changed the rules permanently, delivered peace from the midst of an impassable divide and given the map of the world a new, bold line.
Full investigation promised into riots - Abhisit: Priority is to heal the mind
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has promised to hold an independent investigation into all crimes during the two-month red shirt rally which claimed at least 85 lives.
A man surveys the destruction at Siam Square after the fire set by rioters ripped through the popular shopping area.
PATIPAT JANTHONG
In a nationally televised address, Mr Abhisit also vowed to repair divisions in the country by calling for cooperation among all groups.
Thais should pull together to rehabilitate the country and heal the mental trauma in the wake of the riots in Bangkok and other provinces, he said.
``We have restored order in Bangkok and the provinces of Thailand,'' he said.
``We will continue to move swiftly to restore normalcy. There are huge challenges ahead of us, particularly the challenge of overcoming divisions in the country,'' he said.
Mr Abhisit said he felt sorrow at the loss of life and damage resulting from the riots. ``It's time for everyone to take part in the rehabilitation process.
[Damaged] buildings and houses can be rebuilt. But the overriding priority is to heal the mind,'' Mr Abhisit said.
The government and the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation were setting themselves longer-term tasks to deal with the situation after the riots.
The most immediate task was to rehabilitate victims of the riots, arson and acts of terrorism, Mr Abhisit said.
As for longer-term measures, he stressed the importance of rehabilitating the nation and healing mental wounds left by the riots.
He would go ahead with the five-point road map for national reconciliation which would include economic, social and political reforms.
``We must work together to design and rebuild our home to make it liveable for everyone,'' Mr Abhisit said.
Since the first clash on April 10, 85 people have died and 1,378 have been injured. Of the injured, 162 are still in hospital, 16 in ICU.
A picture of detained red shirt leader Nattawut Saikua enjoying himself at the Naresuan base in Cha-am district, circulated widely in the social media yesterday.
Pathumwan police yesterday found the body of a man in zone C on the fourth floor of the gutted CentralWorld. Fire officers said they saw at least nine more bodies in the ruined building but as yet are unable to retrieve them.
Meanwhile, Suporn Atthawong, one of the UDD leaders, yesterday sent his lawyer to hand a letter to police, saying he would surrender only after emergency rule had been lifted.
He said he wanted to fight violence instigation charges brought against him, but under normal circumstances.
Mr Suporn said the declaration of emergency rule was illegitimate.
Tharit Pengdit, chief of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), said the CRES approved a DSI request to prohibit Jatuporn Prompan, another United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship leader, from leaving the country.
As a Puea Thai MP, he enjoys legal immunity. Unlike eight other UDD leaders, he has been charged without detention.
Mr Jatuporn and the other eight UDD leaders turned themselves in on Wednesday and Thursday to face charges of violating the emergency rule decree.
Mr Tharit said police had handed over investigation reports on 115 cases involving acts of terrorism and violence during the riots in Bangkok.
Theremnants of burnt tyres piled up under the tracks of theBTS sky train on Ratchadamri road. The tyre burningwas aimedatundermining the structure of the train tracks.
KOSOL NAKACHOL
The CRES had approved a proposal by the Justice Ministry to set up a centre for the administration of justice.
The centre will integrate the operations of six agencies _ the Narcotics Suppression Bureau under the Royal Thai Police, the 191 Special Operations Division, the DSI, the Central Institute of Forensic Science, the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission, and the Justice Minister's Office.
The centre will support the CRES's work and is responsible for sending rapid deployment forces to deal with emergency situations and to rescue people. The centre can be reached by dialling 1688.
Acting government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said yesterday the CRES had also set up a special task force unit comprising police and military officers, and disaster mitigation staff from the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to maintain security and peace in Bangkok and provide initial relief and aid to Bangkok residents affected by the riots.
Mr Panitan said the CRES has also set up a centre to rehabilitate and provide assistance to entrepreneurs and traders affected by the riots. The centre is at the CRES office, in the compound of the 11th Infantry Regiment in Bang Khen.
CRES spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said the government will progressively relax some regulations under the emergency decree.
Members of security forces had finished their security sweep of the streets and ground areas which were the scenes of rioting in Bangkok.
Security checks were being conducted at 10 high-rise buildings on Ratchadamri Road, one of the riot scenes, such as the Phor Por Ror building in Chulalongkorn Hospital, Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel, Regent House, Ratchadamri Hotel and Nanthawan Building. BMA staff will then conduct further checks.
The CRES has restored electricity and water to areas occupied by the red shirt protesters, Col Sansern said, adding checkpoints will remain on Bangkok streets for some time to ensure security.
Public transport in Bangkok, including buses, boats, BTS skytrain and the MRT underground train, have also resumed.
Once crowded with red shirt protesters, theRatchaprasongintersection is nearly desertedexcept for officials cleaning up.
KOSOLNAKACHOL
Security guards at the Loxley building remain in good spirits while keeping watch over the area.
KOSOL NAKACHOL
Buildings at Siam Square ravaged by fires set by arsonists on Wednesday.
SOMCHAIPOOMLARD
A soldier examines a shattered window at Gaysorn Plaza, a high-end shopping centre at Ratchaprasong intersection, which was damaged during Wednesday’s riots.
SOMCHAI POOMLARD
Operators of businessesdamagedduringWednesday’sriots meet at the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation to seek financial assistancefromthegovernment.
SURAPOL PROMSAKANASAKOLNAKORN
Channel 3 goes back on the air at 11.30am yesterday after the station waspartly torched on Wednesdayby rioters.
CHANAT KATANYU
Electricity company staff work swiftly to repair power lines on RamaIV Road damaged during battles between protesters and soldiers.
CHANAT KATANYU
Red shirt supporters weepafter disembarking from a train at Chiang Mai railway station on theirwayhome.
NEW DELHI, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Bodies burnt beyond recognition, wild flames and thick smoke rising from the wreckage of the plane, sad relatives weeping on the site looking for possible survivors of their dear ones: this is the horror pictures shown on local TV channels following the crash of the Air India Boeing 730 jet from Dubai to Mangalore, southern India, Saturday morning.
Local analysts said error by pilots, bad weather, high risk feature of the airport runway added to the cause for the crash, said to be the worst on Indian soil in a decade.
A survivor who miraculously jumped from the plane before it burst into flames said there was a "thud" when the plane landed, allegedly 2,000 feet away from the appointed landing spot, and the tyre could have blown up.
Then the plane began jumping, causing all passengers flying up from their seats, and the plane broke into two pieces after hitting a boundary wall of the runway, before crashing into a gorge.
Eight people, including four children, survived the disaster, while 158 others, including 19 children, were declared dead as the plane was turned into a huge stove in fire and smoke, said local authorities.
Several dozen bodies have been pulled out by rescue workers and they are burnt beyond recognition, according to TV footage which were blurred at the spots of the body to show respect to the dead.
Air India recognized that the two pilots, one a Serbian-born Briton, and the other a local, were new and joined the airline in 2009. The passenger plane was also very new, according to India's state-owned national carrier.
However, the airport of Mangalore, 300 kilometer from the IT hub Bangalore, is known to be highly risky as it is located at the top of a hill.
Rains have also visited the area over the past two days and the runway could be wet and slippery. The pilots reportedly tried to abort the landing at the last minute, but they did not report any abnormalcy before the crash, said air traffic control tower of Mangalore.
The Air India authorities and local government have set up helplines for the relatives of the crash victims. Mangalore is a major medical center of India and is a key crosspoint for traveling to the southern tourism resort of Kerala.
Indian plane overshoots runway, casualties feared
NEW DELHI, May 22 (Xinhua) -- An Air India plane reportedly with more than 100 people on board has overshot a runway while landing on Saturday in southern India, and casualties are feared.
The accident occurred while the aircraft arriving from Dubai was landing in Mangalore, a city in southern India, according to Indian news agency, the Press Trust of India.
INDIAN AIR CRASHES WHILE LANDING, KILLING POSSIBLY 169 ON BOARD -- MEDIA
This TV grab taken on May 22, 2010 shows the site of the plane crash at the Mangalore airport in India. Around 160 people may have been killed when an Air India Express aircraft with 169 people onboard overshot the runway at the Mangalore airport on Saturday morning, said local TV Times Now.
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was fined 10,000 reais (5,379 U.S. dollars) by the Superior Electoral Court Friday for early campaigning in support of the ruling party candidate in the October presidential election.
The president has been fined four times for early campaigning for his party's candidate, former chief of staff Dilma Rousseff, this year.
In Brazil, campaigning is restricted to three months before the election. Politicians are not allowed to speak as candidates or campaign for others before that date.
Lula was fined because he stressed that Rousseff was his candidate and asked the audience to vote for her in a speech on April 10 at the headquarters of the Metallurgy Workers' Trade Union in Sao Bernardo do Campo in the state of Sao Paulo.
Rousseff was also fined 5,000 reais (2,689 dollars).
The Superior Electoral Court said Lula's intent to campaign was "explicit" and noted he had been punished for early campaigning before.
"The intent to campaign and call the working class to work in the campaign was evident," Electoral Judge Henrique Neves said.
Photo taken on May 22, 2010 shows the site of the plane crash in the southern Indian city of Mangalore
Photo taken on May 22, 2010 shows the site of the plane crash in the southern Indian city of Mangalore.
Photo taken on May 22, 2010 shows the site of the plane crash in the southern Indian city of Mangalore. Photo taken on May 22, 2010 shows the site of the plane crash in the southern Indian city of Mangalore. About 160 people were confirmed killed when an Air India Express flying from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, to the southern Indian city of Mangalore crashed near the airport early Saturday, said officials. Photo taken on May 22, 2010 shows the site of the plane crash in the southern Indian city of Mangalore. About 160 people were confirmed killed when an Air India Express flying from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, to the southern Indian city of Mangalore crashed near the airport early Saturday, said officials. (Xinhua/Stringer)
NEW DELHI (May 22) -- As many as 160 people were feared dead after an Air India plane arriving from Dubai crashed Saturday as it overshot a runway while trying to land in southern India.
Television images showed dense black smoke billowing from the aircraft surrounded by flames just outside the Mangalore city airport in a hilly area with thick grass and trees.
TV9
This image taken from Indian TV shows the smoking wreckage of an Air India plane that crashed while attempting to land at Mangalore's airport.
Firefighters sprayed water on the plane as rescue workers struggled to find survivors. One firefighter ran up a hill with an injured child in his arms.
Officials in the state of Karnataka said of the 169 people believed on board, only six or seven might have survived.
"This is a major calamity," Karnataka Home Minister V.S. Acharya told CNN-IBN TV.
The aircraft overshot the runway, hit a fence and went beyond the boundary wall of the airport, according to the Press Trust of India.
The crash could be the deadliest in India since the November 1996 midair collision between a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi that killed 349 people.
The airport's location, on a plateau surrounded by hills, made it difficult for the firefighters to reach the scene Saturday, officials said.
Pre-monsoon rains over the past two days caused low visibility in the area, officials said.
Mangalore airport is about 19 miles away from Mangalore city
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