 |
|
|
30 dead in Iraq blaze
June was warmest ever
Plane crash kills 2 Indians
|
|
|
2.5m Muslims threaten to quit Facebook
BP plugs oil spill
Chinese scroll breaks Indian record
A flight of fancy: Airbus 380
|
|
30 dead in Iraq blaze
Sulaimaniyah (Iraq), July 16
“The regional government will contact the embassies of the foreigners who were killed,” said Rasheed, listing Iraq, Ecuador, Venezuela, Lebanon, South Africa and Bangladesh as among the victims' nationalities. Witnesses said at least three of those who died did so after leaping from the hotel's windows in a desperate bid to save themselves as flames and smoke engulfed their rooms. Mirwan Saeed, 30, broke both his legs after making his way to the hotel roof and jumping towards a lower building near the hotel to save his life. “We were in the hotel when the smoke started coming in,” he told AFP from his hospital bed. “I had no choice but to jump.” Colonel Araz Bakr, chief of Sulaimaniyah rescue services, confirmed the death toll and said 42 people were injured, including seven firefighters. He said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke. A city council official said an electrical fault caused the blaze, which also damaged several adjacent buildings. "Women and children are among the victims of the incident which happened in the Soma Hotel," said the official, Razgar Ahmed. Sulaimaniyah is the capital of one of three northern provinces that make up Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. The region is popular with tourists and business has flourished in recent years as it is peaceful, unlike much of Iraq which remains wracked by violence seven years after the US-led invasion toppled now executed dictator Saddam Hussein. — AFP
|
|
June was warmest ever
Washington, July 16 The combined global land and ocean surface temperature data also found the January-June and April-June periods were the warmest on record, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, which based its findings on measurements that go back as far as 1880. In June, the combined average for global land and ocean temperatures was 16.2 Celsius--0.68 Celsius more than the 20th century average of 15.5 Celsius. Temperatures warmer than average spread throughout the globe in recent months, most prominently in Peru, in the central and eastern United States and in eastern and western Asia, according to NOAA. In contrast, cooler-than-average conditions affected Scandinavia, southern China and the US northwest. The Beijing Climate Center found that Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Jilin experienced their warmest June since records began in 1951, while Guizhou saw its coolest June ever. Spain's nationwide temperatures made June the coolest in 13 years, according to its meteorological surface. — AFP
|
|
Washington, July 16 American national Casey Brinegar, 26, a pilot instructor also died. Both Casey and Kartik were pilot instructors at Skymates Flight College in Arlington, Texas. Pratik, who was studying dentistry in Chennai, came to visit his brother and was scheduled to go back to India in a couple of days. Casey and Kartik were showing Pratik Texas from the sky. All three of them flew out in Casey's four-seat, single engine aircraft on Tuesday night for a dinner and were coming back to Arlington Airport when this accident happened, said the Telugu Association of North America in a media release. The right wing of the 1964 'Beech Craft Bonanza' hit the ground and the single-engine plane tumbled, according to an NTSB investigator. A witness told investigators that the engine sounded rough and then the four-seat airplane nosedived. Kartik learned to fly from Casey and was accumulating flight time before returning to India to be a commercial pilot like his dad. Casey and Kartik died at the scene and Pratik was taken by a helicopter to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth where he later died. There was no fire and no one else was hurt. The cause of the crash was still under investigation. — PTI
|
|
Faith Matters
London, July 16 Following the removal of four extremely popular Islamic pages from the website, the Muslim community has expressed anger and a template letter that has been pasted into numerous Facebook pages accused the website's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of "ignoring the feelings of more than 2.5 million Muslims", the Daily Mail reported. The letter reads: "Although you have attended the world’s best communication skill courses you have been most successful in growing great hatred and hostility between you and Muslims around the world, but seriously this time you have caused an almost unrepairable [sic] damage." The letter demanded not only that the pages are reinstated but that new rules are introduced. Apart from reinstating the four deleted pages, the letter demanded the website to ban disrespecting Islamic religious symbols and disable any Facebook page which does so. It warned that unless its demands are met, Facebook's "2.5 million Muslim users" will join 'madina.com' — a social networking site for Muslims. — PTI
|
|
Houston, July 16 For the first time, video from BP's live feed on the ocean floor showed no sign of crude billowing out of the well, as it was sealed with a cap as part of a test of its integrity that could last up to 48 hours. BP senior vice president Kent Wells, who announced the well closure at a press conference, said the oil had been stopped at 2.25 pm on Thursday. At the White House, US President Barack Obama called the development a "positive sign," though he cautioned the operation was still in testing phase. — ANI
|
|
Chinese scroll breaks Indian record
Beijing, July 16 The waterproof scroll, covering 3,715.86 square meters, was presented at the Yitong River to celebrate the opening of the third Changchun International Automobile festival in the provincial capital of Changchun yesterday. Wu Xiaohong, a notary public for Guinness World Record, announced that "the handprint scroll was about 115.86 square meters larger than the previous Guinness world record. — PTI
|
|
A flight of fancy: Airbus 380 “How would this machine fly?” was the first thing that crossed my mind as we boarded the world’s largest passenger carrier to New Delhi from Dubai’s sparkling international airport last morning.
It was to be Airbus 380’s first commercial flight to touch down on Indian soil -- Delhi’s new integrated T3 terminal to be specific. Excitement surrounding the operation was natural, with every passenger on board — 517 yesterday — keen to savour the jumbo’s famed five-star features, 100 TV channels, 500 audio channels and a personal satellite phone being a few. But I was most drawn in by the jetliner’s fascinating take-off, which I watched live on the TV screen before me. Cameras fitted to the exterior of Emirates Airlines’ A380 made the sight possible as the Indian pilot, Captain Sameer Burjani, steered the jumbo calmly into the air. He drew upon the power of four Rolls Royce engines that each offer A380 around 31,752 kg (close to 70,000 lbs) of thrust. Or else, it would be impossible to lift the titanic vessel whose normal take-off weight is about 1.2 million lbs. But we soared quietly into high skies, touching 36,000 feet, and spared of the noise of Boeing 747. Another of A380’s super features is sound-less operation; it generates less than half the noise of a Boeing, meeting EU Stage Three noise level standards. And the lack of noise also made it easy to eavesdrop on each other’s excitement, as the exploration began of the aircraft’s nuances yesterday. Every passenger in the first and business class had his/her own space, complete with a private bar, home theatre, aisle access and electrically operated doors. While 14 flat bed private suites are reserved for first class travellers, business class has 76 fully flat seats, while 427 economy class passengers get more than what other carriers offer -- comfortably contoured seats, spread across four roomy cabins in the lower deck. For the record, A380 is the sole double-deck, double aisle aircraft in the world — something that impressed many aboard as the cameras flashed unstoppably. There was much to see — from shower spas and jam-packed lounge offering a host of free drinks and canapés to two staircases connecting the two decks. Being at two levels was like being in two planes at once, though the view of the sky was better from the upper deck, which allowed a breathtaking glance of A380’s 80-metre wing span. The journey -- offered at a discounted fare of 9,990 AED for yesterday’s one-off flight -- was unimaginably calm, with the usual flight trouble of ear-popping and dehydration absent. As an Emirates insider said, “A380 is more fuel efficient and less costly than any other aircraft. That’s why we have 11 in our fleet and are getting 79 more.” We also learnt on board that this greenest jetliner in the world produced just 75g of CO2 per passenger km, much below current international limits and provided 10 per cent more range than its closest rival. No wonder the Emirates want to fly A380 regularly to India, subject to latter’s consent.
|
||
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Visiting telecommunications engineers from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Cambodia, were among the victims, according to hospital officials and the chairman of the telecoms company. “The number killed is 30, among whom there are 14 foreigners,” said Rikot Hama Rasheed, the director of Sulaimaniyah hospital, following the fire, which rose rapidly from the second floor of the six-storeyed Soma hotel.