World News
A train crash at a station in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, has killed 49 people with at least 600 more injured, officials say. The train slammed into the barrier at the end of the platform at the Once station during the morning rush hour.
“We assume that there was some fault in the brakes”, Transportation Secretary JP Schiavi said.
Eyewitnesses said the train was travelling fast. Dozens of people remain trapped.
“The train was full and the impact was tremendous,” a passenger identified as Ezequiel told local television.
Medics at the scene were overwhelmed by the casualties, he added. People started to break windows and get out however they could,” another eyewitness told Reuters.
“Then I saw the engine destroyed and the train driver trapped amongst the steel. There were a lot of people hurt, a lot of kids, elderly,” the eyewitness added.
The train had hit the barrier at about 12mph (20km/h), destroying the front of the engine and crunching the carriages behind it, Mr Schiavi said. One of the carriages was driven nearly 6m (20ft) into the next, he said. Rescue workers ease a casualty out of the wreckage
Emergency workers are working to extract dozens of people trapped inside the first car, said health official Alberto Crescenti. Survivors told local media that many people had been injured in a jumble of metal and glass. Some suffered fractures and other serious injuries.
Many parts of Argentina’s rail network are antiquated and in need of repair, the BBC’s Vladimir Hernandez in Buenos Aires reports. Several similar accidents have occurred in recent years.
In September 2011, 11 people died when a commuter train in Buenos Aires hit a bus crossing the tracks and then hit a second train coming into a station. This latest accident is Argentina’s worst train crash since 1970.
Source: BBC News
Regenerated Pleistocene Age plant. David Gilichinsky/Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil, Russian Academy of Sciences
The plant in this picture dates from the Pleistocene Age, 30,000 years ago, before agriculture, before writing, before the end of the last Ice Age. And while it’s not accurate to say the plant itself is that old, scientists in Russia say they regenerated it from frozen cells they found beneath 125 feet of permafrost in what is now northeastern Siberia.
It was cultivated in the lab, with help from some “clonal micropropagation,” from seeds and leaves probably collected by some long-ago species of squirrel. The researchers, publishing their find today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say the squirrel’s burrow was probably frozen over quickly, and stayed that way until they discovered it.
“The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,” said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. “It’s a natural cryobank.”
The plant is of the species Silene stenophylla, and radiocarbon dating says it is 31,800 years old, plus or minus 300 years. The Russian scientists were able to grow it in a conventional pot, and after a year of tender loving care, they say it blossomed, bore fruit, and dropped seeds. It lived, in other words, as if there had never been a 30,000-year interruption.
“The first generation cultivated from seeds obtained from regenerated plants progressed through all developmental stages and had the same morphological features as parent plants,” wrote Svetlana Yashina and a team at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science, Russian Academy of Sciences. “We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth’s surface.”
It all may sound a bit incredible – and other scientists will be skeptical – but beyond that, why does it matter? The scientists say the world’s permafrost – about 20 percent of the planet’s surface – could be a vast time capsule, a place where ancient life is preserved, could be revived, and could speak volumes about the evolution of life on Earth.
They also point to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the northernmost reaches of Norway, an ultra-high security, ultra-low temperature bank for the seeds of every plant we eat – more than two million of them. More than 100 nations have left seeds there in a sort of frozen Noah’s Ark, so that species can be recovered in case of some sort of calamity.
When the vault was set up in 2008, there was doubt it would be useful. The Russian team now says it is “of great interest and importance,” worth keeping up.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Source: ABC News
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin will be elected president in the first round of March’s election with more than half the vote, avoiding a runoff that would dent his authority on the eve of his planned return to the Kremlin’s top job, a state pollster predicted Monday.
Prime Minister Putin hopes to convincingly win the March 4 election in order to take the sting out of a growing urban protest movement which casts him as an authoritarian leader who rules through a corrupt and tightly controlled political system.
Once cast as Russia’s “alpha-dog” leader by U.S. diplomats, talk of anything less than complete victory for Russia’s paramount leader was unthinkable before the protests, the biggest of his 12-year rule.
Putin is likely to win 58.6 percent of the vote, far ahead of his closest rival, said Russia’s Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), which has a history of accurately predicting the results of Russian elections.
“Putin will gain victory,” the pollster’s general director, Valery Fedorov, told reporters in Moscow. The forecasts were based on a poll of 1,600 people carried out across Russia this month.
Second place will go to veteran Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who is likely to win 14.8 percent, the pollster said.
A mood change against Putin among voters in major cities has stoked speculation that the former KGB spy might face the humiliation of winning less than half of the vote, undermining his claims of majority support and triggering a second round.
Putin even conceded this month that he may face a second round, though he warned such a step would stoke infighting and undermine Russia’s political stability.
Read full story on Reuters
A Swedish man has survived being trapped in his snow-covered car for two months without food, police say. The car was found on Friday at the end of a forest track more than 1 km (0.6 miles) from a main road in northern Sweden.
Police say the temperature in the area had recently dropped to -30C (-22F).
The man, who was too weak to utter more than a few words, said he had been inside since 19 December. He may have survived by drinking melted snow. Police say they have no reason to doubt his story.
The man, who has not been named, is recovering at Umea University Hospital – where staff say he is doing well considering the circumstances. The 45-year-old was discovered by snowmobilers who initially assumed the car was a wreck until they dug their way to a window and saw movement inside, reported the Vasterbotten Courier newspaper. The man was huddled in a sleeping bag on the back seat, said policeman Ebbe Nyberg.
“He was in a very poor state. Poor condition. He said he’d been there for a long time and had survived on a little snow.
“He said himself he hadn’t eaten anything since December,” Mr Nyberg said.
Doctors at the Umea University Hospital said they would normally expect a person to survive without food for around four weeks, said the Vasterbotten Courier.
One doctor told the newspaper that the man might have survived so long by going into a kind of hibernation.
Source: BBC News
At least three people are said to have died after an avalanche near a ski resort in the US state of Washington. Rescuers were dispatched to an out-of-bounds area near Stevens Pass ski resort after reports around noon local time (20:00 GMT). Eight skiers declared missing were later accounted for.
The resort is located in the Cascade Mountains north-east of Seattle. It is a day resort which draws heavily on skiers from the city and has a base elevation of 4,061 ft (1,238 m).
The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center warned of a high avalanche danger above 5,000 ft in the Stevens Pass area with a considerable danger at lower levels. The centre said there had been heavy snowfall over the last few days.
King County Sheriff’s Office Sgt Cindi West, who briefed journalists on the Stevens Pass deaths, said another person was killed in a separate incident. Sgt West said a snowboarder went over a cliff at Alpental ski area east of Seattle.
Source: BBC News
A French Champagne producer is spreading the wealth with his workers after they discovered nearly $1 million in gold coins stashed away in the building’s rafters, according to Agence France Press (AFP).
“One of the workers (was) attacking the building’s ceiling with a crowbar when gold coins started to rain down on him, followed by sacks of gold,” Francois Lange, head of Alexandre Bonnet in Les Riceys France, told AFP.
It’s not unusual to hear about treasure hunters combing the ocean’s depth for gold and other precious metals lost at sea, but finding $1 million in your office attic is quite a steal. And a valuable one too, given that demand for gold has reached new heights recently. In 2011, just an ounce of gold was valued at $1,920.30.
In all, 497 gold coins were unearthed, with the majority literally raining down upon the workers who were busy renovating the building. Minted between 1851 and 1928, the coins have a face value marking of $20 each. However, together they are now worth an estimated $980,000, according to AFP.
Lange says he will keep half of the money for himself, while splitting half with the workers who made the discovery. No one knows for sure who placed the coins in the building, but AFP reports the building was previously owned by a wine producer in the 1930s.
That may seem like a minor detail for now but don’t be surprised if this “buried” treasure story still has another chapter to be told. After all, what are the odds that $1 million in gold coins will go unclaimed, even if the previous owners are no longer alive. Just look at the recent legal case being argued between Spain and a team of scavengers who in 2008 found more than $500 million worth of gold coins and other treasures in a wreck off the Florida coast.
Source: AFP
WASHINGTON (AP) — Interracial marriages in the U.S. have climbed to 4.8 million — a record 1 in 12 — as a steady flow of new Asian and Hispanic immigrants expands the pool of prospective spouses. Blacks are now substantially more likely than before to marry whites.
A Pew Research Center study, released Thursday, details a diversifying America where interracial unions and the mixed-race children they produce are challenging typical notions of race.
“The rise in interracial marriage indicates that race relations have improved over the past quarter century,” said Daniel Lichter, a sociology professor at Cornell University. “Mixed-race children have blurred America’s color line. They often interact with others on either side of the racial divide and frequently serve as brokers between friends and family members of different racial backgrounds,” he said. “But America still has a long way to go.”
The figures come from previous censuses as well as the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, which surveys 3 million households annually. The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. For purposes of defining interracial marriages, Hispanic is counted as a race by many in the demographic field.
The study finds that 8.4 percent of all current U.S. marriages are interracial, up from 3.2 percent in 1980. While Hispanics and Asians remained the most likely, as in previous decades, to marry someone of a different race, the biggest jump in share since 2008 occurred among blacks, who historically have been the most segregated.
States in the West where Asian and Hispanic immigrants are more numerous, including Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico and California, were among the most likely to have couples who “marry out” — more than 1 in 5. The West was followed by the South, Northeast and Midwest. By state, mostly white Vermont had the lowest rate of intermarriage, at 4 percent.
In all, more than 15 percent of new marriages in 2010 were interracial.
Read the full article on AP
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Trapped inmates screamed from their cells as a fire swept through a Honduran prison, killing at least 300 inmates, authorities said Wednesday. Some 475 people escaped from the prison in the town of Comayagua and 356 are missing and presumed dead, said Hector Ivan Mejia, a spokesman for the Honduras Security Ministry. He said 21 people had been injured.
Dozens were trapped behind bars as prison authorities tried to find the keys, officials said. Outraged relatives of dead inmates tried to storm the gates of the prison Wednesday morning to recover the remains of their loves ones, witnesses told The Associated Press. The crowds were driven back by police officers firing tear gas.
Channel 5 television showed dozens of inmates’ relatives hurling rocks at officers.
“We want to see the body,” said Juan Martinez, whose son was reported dead. “We’ll be here until we get to do that.”
Comayagua fire department spokesman Josue Garcia said he saw “horrific” scenes while trying to put out the fire, saying inmates rioted in attempts to escape. He said “some 100 prisoners were burned to death or suffocated in their cells.”
“We couldn’t get them out because we didn’t have the keys and couldn’t find the guards who had them,” Garcia said.
Officials are investigating whether the fire was triggered by rioting prisoners or by an electrical short-circuit, said Danilo Orellana, head of the national prison system.
A prisoner identified as Silverio Aguilar told HRN Radio that someone started screaming, “Fire! fire!” and the prisoners called for help.
“For a while, nobody listened. But after a few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, a guard appeared with keys and let us out,” he said.
Hundreds of relatives rushed to Santa Teresa Hospital in Comayagua state to learn the fate of their loved ones, said Leonel Silva, fire chief in Comayagua, a town 90 miles (140 kilometers) north of the Central American country’s capital, Tegucigalpa.
Lucy Marder, chief of forensic medicine for the prosecutor’s office, said 12 victims were treated there and nine more in the Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa, bringing the total of injured to 21. “That’s why we think the death toll will rise,” she said.
Marder said it would take at least three months to identify victims, some burned beyond recognition, because DNA tests will be required.
President Porfirio Lobo declared an emergency in July 2010 in nine of the 24 prisons in Honduras. His security minister at the time called the prisons “universities of crime” that had been overwhelmed by overcrowding.
Source: AP
You can download the full article in .pdf format here Islamization of Europe
Geert Wilders is a Member of the Dutch Parliament.
In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: “Who lost Europe?” Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons in New York, introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem.
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me.
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.
First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.
The Europe you know is changing.
You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.
All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.
There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.
Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.
In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.
Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear ‘whore, whore’. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.
In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.
In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. (As a “Brit” I couldn’t believe this particular speech so I decided to investigate this bit – to my utter astonishment it is quite true!) Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan.
Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
A Los Angeles coroner has said there were no signs of foul play surrounding the death of singer Whitney Houston. After a post mortem examination, the coroner said there were no visible signs of trauma on Houston’s body and that foul play was “not suspected at this time”. He added officials were not ruling out any causes of death until they had the results of toxicology tests.
The star was found dead in the bath in her Los Angeles hotel room on Saturday.
The coroner said he would not release any more details on the post mortem, performed on Sunday at the request of police detectives investigating the singer’s death.
Meanwhile, the music world has been remembering her life and career at the Grammy Awards. Host LL Cool J opened the event with a prayer for the singer, who won six Grammys during her career.
“There is no way around this. We’ve had a death in our family,” he said.
“The only thing that feels right is to begin with a prayer for a woman who we loved – for our fallen sister, Whitney Houston.”
The audience then gave a standing ovation after watching a clip of her hit I Will Always Love You. Dressed in black and with a simple piano accompaniment, singer Jennifer Hudson later gave a moving rendition of the same song, ending with the line: “Whitney, we will always love you.”
Others paying tribute during the ceremony included singer Bruno Mars, who told the crowd: “Tonight we’re celebrating the beautiful Miss Whitney Houston.”
Read full story on BBC News
