World News Thread & Breaking News!!

[bd popeye]

In the US all but seven of our 50 states may play the

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..and yes I bought a couple of tickets. I believe the present Jackpot of $640 million USD is a Worlds record.

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The Mega Millions jackpot that has set off a nationwide case of lotto mania rocketed to $640 million Friday morning, just hours before the historic drawing, lottery officials said.

The enormous prize brings a one-time cash option of an estimated $462 million before taxes, or a winner could choose annual payments of about $24 million before taxes for 26 years.(popeye will take the cash..thank you!)

"This is history, and we’re enjoying it," California spokeswoman Donna Cordova said Friday. "This is just a shared moment for the entire country. We’re rolling into uncharted territory here."

Lotto fever struck Los Angeles soon after officials announced there was no winner in Tuesday’s $363 million drawing. Officials say they have met every night since Tuesday and watched the number grow from $540 million Thursday to the astronomical figured released Friday.
More tickets are expected to be sold before the 8 p.m. drawing Friday night. Lines hours long have formed at places deemed “lucky retailers” by the lottery and stores like Bluebird Liquor in Hawthorne that are known to sell winning tickets.

“It’s so high — I mean, that’s astronomical,” said Charlie Blair, 70, a retired mechanical engineer.

Blair had never played the lottery until he heard about the record payout, and he headed to a gas station near his Koreatown apartment Thursday to buy a single ticket.

According to the California Lottery, the chance of winning Mega Millions is 1 in about 176 million.

Or as California statistician Mike Orkin, puts it: If you buy 50 tickets a week, you will win the jackpot every 68,000 years.

 

[bd popeye]

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - A passenger plane crashed and burst into flames after takeoff in Siberia on Monday, killing 31 people and putting the spotlight on Russia's poor air-safety record before Vladimir Putin's return as president.

Thirteen survivors were pulled from the wreckage but one later died after being rushed by helicopter to hospital in the city of Tyumen, some 1,720 km (1,070 miles) east of Moscow, emergency officials said.

Television footage showed the UTair airlines ATR 72, which had snapped in two, lying in a snowy field with only the tail and rear visible. Emergency workers sifted through the wreckage and cleared away the snow.

An investigative committee said the most likely cause of the crash was a technical malfunction as the 21-year-old twin-engine, turbo-prop plane carried its four crew and 39 passengers on a flight to the oil town of Surgut.

"I went out on to my porch and heard a bang, saw a small flash and smoke came out. It turned, with smoke coming out, started to lose height and came down in the field. If it had turned a bit further, it would have hit us," a local resident, identified only as Alexei, told RIA news agency.

He said he often saw aircraft fly past, and the plane appeared not to be on the usual flight path: "It should have been behind my house but it was in front of it."

The investigative committee said the plane had notched up 35,000 flying hours since going into operation in 1992 and had not had a "serious" technical check since 2010.

Yuri Alekhin, head of the regional branch of the Emergencies Ministry, told Russian television at the scene of the crash that the "black box" flight recorder had been found and contact had been lost with the plane just over three minutes after take-off.

Surgutneftegas, Russia's fourth-largest oil company, said in a statement that it had lost some employees in the crash but did not say how many and did not name them.

RUSSIA'S POOR SAFETY RECORD

The crash was the worst in Russia since a passenger plane slammed into a riverbank near the city of Yaroslavl after takeoff on September 7, 2011, killing 44 people and wiping out the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team.

President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin, who is prime minister until he takes over as president on May 7, called for moves to improve Russia's air safety after that crash, including better training and improved conditions on board.

But their opponents on Monday drew attention to the lack of action since then and the fact that Transport Minister Igor Levitan remains in office.

"It's typical that 'the minister of catastrophes' does not receive even a cosmetic reprimand for all the chaos on public transport. They cover for each other," opposition ecologist Yevgenia Chirikova said in a message on her Twitter account.

Putin said last September that airlines should put passengers' safety above commercial considerations and ordered the government to draft proposals for improving condition on planes and at airports, but ignored calls to dismiss Levitan.

 

[Equation]

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Oh man, my condolences to the victims and their families.

---------- Post added at 03:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:28 PM ----------

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Here is another bit of sad news, which also makes me a little angry.

 

[bladerunner]

[

QUOTE=Equation;184105]Oh man, my condolences to the victims and their families.

After watching several programs on solving airline accidents ,Id have second thoughts travelling budget airlines

 

[delft]

[


After watching several programs on solving airline accidents ,Id have second thoughts travelling budget airlines

Articles I read regarding the incident when a pilot went mad while taking his airliner from New York to Texas mentioned that very many airline pilots flying for most airlines, not just budget airlines, don't get enough sleep and many use sleeping pills that can have hallucinations as their side effects. It is true that the number of incidents is tiny but I wonder if the pressure on the pilots, to which for many is added a large increase in financial trouble, will cause an serious increase .

 

[bladerunner]

Articles I read regarding the incident when a pilot went mad while taking his airliner from New York to Texas mentioned that very many airline pilots flying for most airlines, not just budget airlines, don't get enough sleep and many use sleeping pills that can have hallucinations as their side effects. It is true that the number of incidents is tiny but I wonder if the pressure on the pilots, to which for many is added a large increase in financial trouble, will cause an serious increase .

THe program I was watching was called "Mayday" A twin jet prop commuter aircraft made by Bombadier crashed after the pilot stalled the plane while coming in to land outside Buffalo. The stick shaker triggered the imminent stall alert, and the pilot pulled up on the stickinstead of down Investigation put that down to pilot error due to tiredness as the pilot first officer were seen cat napping in the airport lounge. It seems , they had to make their own way by road (a several hour trip at their own expense) to the airport from where they then took command of the aircraft. THe captains pay was $60000 annually and the first officers pay was $16,000, (apparently not much more than flicking hamburgers.

 

[bd popeye]

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DALLAS (Reuters) - Up to a dozen tornadoes skipped through the densely populated Dallas-Fort Worth(pop.6,700,000) area in Texas on Tuesday, ripping apart homes, tossing tractor-trailer trucks into the air and injuring at least 17 people, but there were no reported deaths.

Ten to 12 tornadoes touched down during a massive storm that brought chaos from high winds, rain and hail to the nation's fourth most populous metropolitan area, said National Weather Service meteorologist Jesse Moore.

Many of the 6.3 million area residents were forced to scramble for safety as the storm bore down during the early afternoon, when schools and workplaces were open.

Seven people were injured in the suburb of Arlington, police said. Most suffered only minor injuries but one person hit by a falling tree was in critical condition, said Arlington police spokeswoman Cheryl Carpenter.

In one of the hardest hit areas south of Dallas, Lancaster, tornadoes damaged 300 structures.

Of the 10 people injured in Lancaster, two of them were severely hurt, said Lancaster police spokesman Paul Beck.

Authorities were amazed that no one was killed given the intensity of the storm, the number of tornadoes and the population density of the area.

"We dodged a big bullet ... It really is a miracle," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said in an interview on CNN.

The survival rate from a tornado is higher during the daylight hours because people are more likely to hear or see the warnings and take cover, meteorologists said. Twisters are most deadly when people are sleeping at night, they said.

One tornado lifted trucks like toys in the Flying J Truck Plaza in Dallas, said truck driver Michael Glennon, who caught the destruction on his video camera as debris swirled through the air.

"We've seen roofs blown off, houses totally flattened, tractor-trailers knocked over," Moore said.

On Tuesday evening, the storm system moved east into Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana with the potential of producing high winds and more tornadoes, Moore said.

Sixth-grader Hailey Pellerin said she and other students had just started lunch when teachers quickly herded students back to their classrooms in their southwest Arlington elementary school.

"We had to duck and cover for two hours," she said. The students were seated, lined up against a wall in their classrooms and covered their heads. "The power went out so it was dark and hot."

The tornado passed about 200 yards from the school, her father David Pellerin said.

"We were so lucky because it came so close but passed by the two schools my kids attend," said Pellerin, the father of three.

US TORNADO SEASON STARTS EARLY

Some 110 planes were damaged by hail and 400 flights canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the eighth busiest in the world, stranding thousands of passengers. Another 40 incoming flights were diverted.

During the height of the storm, witnesses at the airport said the sky turned dark and passengers were herded away from windows and into stairwells and restrooms.

The U.S. tornado season has started early this year. Tornadoes have been blamed for 57 deaths so far in 2012 in the Midwest and South, raising concerns that this year would be a repeat of 2011, the deadliest year in nearly a century for the unpredictable storms.

In 2011, there were 550 tornado deaths, including 316 lives lost on April 27 in five southern states, and a massive tornado that killed 161 people in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22.

Tuesday's tornadoes in Texas could prove more costly than a hailstorm nearly a year ago in the Dallas area that caused more than $100 million in insured losses. That April 15, 2011, storm was less damaging in terms of hail and winds.

Insurers have already lost as much as $2 billion during the 2012 tornado season, mostly from a record March 2 outbreak. That follows record-breaking losses of $26 billion during the 2011 tornado season.

(Additional reporting by Jon Nielsen, Marice Richter, Corrie MacLaggan, James Kelleher, Kyle Peterson, Ben Berkowitz and Karen Jacobs; Writing by Andrew Stern and Greg McCune; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

 

[Equation]

Re: Chinese Daily Photos, Videos & News of 2012!!!

Here's a great heart felt story of the day. As Popeye posted earlier about a twister hitting north Texas area (Dallas-Ft. Worth). This is one amazing grandma.

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[Norfolk]

Re: Chinese Daily Photos, Videos & News of 2012!!!

Mothers, don't let your sons grow up to be truck drivers:

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, Caijing Magazine, 5 April, 2012;

There were more than 10 tonnes of blast shells and armor piercers contained in 236 boxes in a sealed container in the trunk, when it was checked by civil police on duty in Lichuan, a county-level city in southwestern Hubei province, the report said.

Strange news of the day.

 

[bladerunner]

Re: Chinese Daily Photos, Videos & News of 2012!!!

Mothers, don't let your sons grow up to be truck drivers:

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, Caijing Magazine, 5 April, 2012;



Strange news of the day.

Scary and so many unanswered questions.

1/Was the driver stopped for a traffic violation eg speeding or dangerous driving.

2/ As in the West theres a dedicated branch of traffic police whose job is to check on trucks to ensure everything is in order .Therefore it was just another case of spot checking for safety reasons.

3/ Was the load legit? if so was there any outriders and such like warning other motorists of a oncoming hazadous load