Colombia Plane Crash: 76 Confirmed Dead, Including Footballers From Brazil's Chapecoense

A plane carrying players from a Brazilian football team headed to Colombia for a regional tournament final, has crashed on its way to Medellin's airport, killing at least 76 people.

Police officials said that five passengers had survived, one died in hospital and that the rest of the passengers were killed in the crash.

The entire Chapocoense football team - and an accompanying entourage of staff and journalists - were among 72 passengers and nine crew on board the aircraft.

• Al Jazeera's Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from Bogota, said the flight crashed in a mountainous region.
• "There have been heavy rains day in and day out in the last week or so," he said. "That could have played a big role in the crash, but that is still unconfirmed."
• Medillin's Mayor  Federico Gutierrez said he was on his way to the region where the chartered aircraft was believed to have crashed shortly before midnight local time.
• "It's a tragedy of huge proportions," he told Blu Radio.

It was not clear what caused the British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane to crash, but, as reported by Rampietti, Colombia had been hit by heavy rains and thunderstorms in recent hours.

Data from the FlightRadar24.com website showed the plane circling before eventually disappearing south of Rio Negro. Medellin's airport confirmed that the aircraft, which made a stop in Bolivia, was transporting the first division Chapecoense team from southern Brazil.

The team was scheduled to play on Wednesday in the first of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin.

Source: Al Jazeera...More...

'Apocalyptic Scenes' As Fires Erupt In Haifa, Israel?

The northern coastal city of Haifa has been one of the hardest hit as Israel closes its third day of intense battles against hundreds for fire related incidents, with 60,000 people evacuated, acres burned, and thousands of homes left without power.

Haifa Fire Department Spokesman Uri Chobotaro described "apocalyptic scenes" within the city nestled in the Carmel mountain range that is home to some 270,000.

"We have seen some apocalyptic scenes," he says. "We have seen houses burning down. We have seen trees, we've seen streets with people running out."

"But the way I see things, the most important detail that I can be proud of is that we have no loss of life and this is most important thing," he emphasized.

Haifa is no stranger to the dangers of wildfires. In 2010, the city was hit by another catastrophic fire, which has become known as the Carmel Disaster.

The Carmel disaster was the deadliest fire in Israeli history claiming 44 lives. It started on Mount Carmel, located just south of Haifa, burnt 50 square kilometers (12,000 acres) and destroyed 74 buildings.

Chobotaro said that Haifa learned a lot from 2010 and has been working to better its fire services.

"Since 2010 we managed to increase the amount of fire fighters drastically, we have increased the number of fire trucks- we have new fire trucks, we are building new fire stations and the fire planes help us a lot," he explained.

• Asked if the Haifa fire department had seen any indications of arson behind the fires, Chobotaro described the speed with which they erupted around the city.
• "Im working at Haifa fire services in our central station today at approximately 9:00 in the morning and we are doing checks on our equipment," he recalls. "Suddenly out of nowhere we see a lot of smoke and big flames. Somebody lit on fire the field that is next to us—huge flames, it was a matter of seconds."
• "The flames almost took our fire station and the fire trucks. Five minutes after this another one at the Halissa neighborhood, another five minutes gone and we had another one south of Haifa and ten minutes again after it started in another place," he continued.
• "It makes no sense."

Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav explained why the fire danger in Haifa is so high.

"This is a very green city," he told i24news. "It is surround by forests and to set fires in the forest is a very easy game and this was executed in very many positions throughout the day."

"For the first time we have had to deal with many points of fire, which becuase of the very strong and extreme wind, has covered a vast area," he added.

As Israeli officials work to discern which fires were arson and which were caused by human negligence or nature, the former Head of Israel's Arson Investigation Unit Shalom Tsaroom explains what type of indicators investigators will be looking for.

 "The chief of the police declared that most of them are arson cases but our mission as fire investigators is to prove it- not only to say it but you have to prove it and find evidence," he told i24news.

"If we found for instance, in a fire, that it was started in a few places at the same time, this is one of the indicators that we are talking about arson."

Asked how the authorities can trace arson based fires back to those started them, Tsaroom says that "it depends on what evidence you can find."

"If you can find for instance a shoe print you can do something with this. If you can find remains of Molotov cocktails or Molotov bottles, in some cases you can develop fingerprints, etc."

Ofer Bloch, CEO Israel electric company, declared a state of emergency because of the fires. At the fires' peak 12,000 people in Haifa were without power, which was shut off intentionally to minimize damage. As of Thursday night, power had been restored to most homes, leaving less than 3,000 people without electricity.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told i24news that at the end of the night, the eight fires burning in and around Haifa were largely under control.

Source: i24News, Agencies

India Train Accident DeathTtoll Rises To 96

LUCKNOW: At least 91 passengers, most of whom were sleeping, were killed when an express train derailed in northern India early Sunday, police said.

Rescue workers were searching for survivors believed still trapped inside the badly mangled coaches of the Patna-Indore express after the crash near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state.

Police initially put the death toll at 63 but revised the figure later.

• “The death toll has unfortunately increased and it is 96 now,” Daljit Singh Chawdhary, the additional police director-general, told reporters, adding 150 were injured.
• All local hospitals have been placed on alert and more than 30 ambulances have been deployed.
• TV footage showed rescue workers using gas cutters and other equipment to slice through severely mangled coaches strewn with suitcases and other luggage.
• Witnesses spoke of being woken by a huge bang and being thrown around.

“We woke up to a great thud this morning. It was pitch dark and the noise was deafening,” a passenger told reporters as he waited with his family at the scene.

“I am lucky to be alive and safe. But it was a near-death experience for us.”

Nitika Trivedi, a student who boarded the train with her family from the eastern city of Patna, said images of the bodies of her fellow passengers would long haunt her.

“I had never seen something like this in my life before. I am shaken to the core.”

Railway officials said special trains had been pressed into service for stranded travellers.

“We are also trying to clear the tracks and complete the restoration work as quickly as possible,” Vijay Kumar, a spokesman for north-central railways, told AFP.

National Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu said in a tweet the government would investigate what caused the derailment and announced compensation for the victims.

India’s railway network, one of the world’s largest, is still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country, but it is poorly funded and deadly accidents occur relatively frequently.

In 2014 an express train ploughed into a stationary freight train, also in Uttar Pradesh, killing 26 people.

And last year 27 people died after two trains derailed in Madhya Pradesh state during heavy rain.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “anguished beyond words” by the loss of life in the latest accident.

In 2012 a government report said almost 15,000 people were killed every year on India’s railways, describing the deaths as an annual “massacre”.

Modi’s government has pledged to invest $137 billion over five years to modernise the crumbling railways, making them safer, faster and more efficient.

Source: AFP

We've Got About 1,000 Years To Find A New Place To Live?

We're all doomed. Unless we can figure out how to get the heck off this planet.

Theoretical scientist and astronomer Stephen Hawking

says humanity won't survive another 1,000 years on Earth because of, you know, the usual suspects -- climate change, nukes, robots.

Hawking, speaking earlier this week at Oxford University Union, says our best chance for survival as a species is to leave the only home we've ever known and establish colonies on other planets.

• "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years," Hawking said in the speech, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
• "By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race."

And the pace of space exploration seems to be ramping up. NASA is busy searching for "goldilocks" -- exoplanets that might be able sustain human life. Meanwhile, Space X CEO Elon Musk has already laid out his plans to colonize Mars within the next century.

Despite all of his gloom and doom, Hawking did end with some positive notes, according to British newspaper The Independent.

"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, wonder about what makes the universe exist," he said. "Be curious. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up."

Source: CNN

7.8-Magnitude Earthquake Jolted New Zealand's South Island, Triggered A Tsunami

 

A powerful earthquake has generated tsunami up to 15ft high in New Zealand, with the first waves hitting the South Island, government officials have said. 

Describing it as ‘an event of life-threatening or national significance’ the department of civil defence warned people all along the country’s east coast to move to higher ground.

At least two people died in the series of violent quakes, according to Prime Minister John Key.

The quake struck some 93 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of the city of Christchurch just after midnight local time on Monday, the US Geological Survey reported. It triggered waves of 2.49 meters above usual tide levels, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said. 

"This is the highest tsunami wave (that) New Zealand has seen in at least 38 years," said Philip Duncan of Weather Watch New Zealand. 

The tsunami warning has now been lifted. 

Source: CNN…More…

US Political Elite Out Of Touch With The People

The latest US presidential election clearly indicates how much the country’s long time establishment and ruling political elite have lost their connection with many ordinary American people.

For many years, the focus has been given to foreign relations, fighting never-ending wars, and channeling aid to allies without paying or giving much attention towards their own people along with many problems which they faced in their own backyard. 

It seems that the majority of the Americans are fed–up with the political drama they have had for many years now and have started choosing a new path by selecting people or individuals who have less or no connection at all with any political establishment or ruling elite.

It’s okay to build up foreign relations, it’s okay to defend our country from attack, it’s even okay to help our friends in need, but in doing so, we must never forget to give attention towards our own peoples’ need like creating job opportunity, improving the infrastructure, ensuring the quality of education, controlling and reducing the cost of living, and others.

The current US election results can be a good lesson for all politicians not to underestimate the peoples’ power, never take any issue lightly, and to engage with ordinary people and understand their problems and needs. 

Source: FMT

MNLF Nur Misuari Blames Malaysia For Sipadan Kidnappings?

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