Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Two trains have collided head-on in eastern France at Zoufftgen in the Moselle region of France, close to the Luxembourg border, at around 11:45 local time (09:45 UTC) earlier today. Based on inital reports, BBC News has suggested 10 passenger deaths as well as the those of two train drivers involved in the incident and a track side worker. French officials later confirmed at least 5 dead.

The trains were a french freight train and a Luxembourgeois passenger train. The passenger train was travelling from Luxembourg to Nancy and the freight train was travelling from Thionville to Luxembourg.

There are also at present 20 additional casualties although this number could rise. BBC News has reported, some of the injured may still be trapped in wreckage. Rescuers from France and Luxembourg are at the scene, with BBC reporting that a mobile hospital as well as specialist equipment was on the way.

The cause of the crash is undetermined at present, but due to engineering works, single line working was in operation on the route affected. The trains collided head-on. An SNCF spokesman was quoted as saying “Due of the engineering works, only one way was available and train traffic was alternating” He continued, “For reasons still to be established, the trains found themselves facing each other”.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Transport Minister Dominique Perben are understood to be on their way to the scene of the incident.

Eric Soupa, a local official was quoted (BBC News) on French radio: “We are faced with an important and dramatic situation.”According to first reports, the spokesman of SNCF has indicated that the driver of the freight train did not “pass a signal at red” and had actually passed the signal at green.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Four people have been shot and killed and at least 15 wounded when a gunman opened fire inside a LA Fitness center in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. The gunman was among the dead.

Reports say the man walked into a dance room where an all-female Latin dance class was in session, turned off the lights and began to shoot people. CNN reports that the gunman was a “middle-aged white male.” One witness said he was carrying a duffel bag, which he put down before shooting into the crowd. After opening fire, he turned the gun on himself. At least 30 people are reported to have been in the room at the time of the shooting.

Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said, “I’ve never seen nothing quite like this. It was very chaotic. […] There’s a good belief that the shooter is deceased.”

Collier Township Police Chief Tom Devin stated that the police, “believe the shooter committed suicide at the scene but we’re not positive.” Police report that the shooter’s motive may have been a domestic dispute with one of the exercisers.

Mike Hentosz, a witness who was inside the gym, said, “I feel like it’s a dream. I don’t know what to think of it.” A woman participating in the class, Nicole, said that 10 minutes into the class, “a middle-aged white male walked into the class. He had a big gym bag. […] He looked out of place in a class full of women.” When he began firing, she reported, she ran out of the gym and escaped in passerby’s car.

Monday, August 2, 2010

A cargo plane crashed into a mountain Sunday afternoon in Alaska’s Denali National Park, killing around three people and sparking a small wildfire after the aircraft disintegrated and burst into flames. According to the National Park Service, the plane crashed into the southern slope of Mount Healy, and the crash was just 200 yards away from Denali’s only road.

Though it is estimated that three people died in the crash, it has been hard to determine exactly how many died as “the plane pretty much disintegrated,” park spokeswoman Kris Fister said. The explosion from the crash sparked a small wildfire that firefighters contained within two acres (one hectare.)

Though George Clare, a man from Las Vegas who witnessed the crash, thought the plane looked like a military aircraft, US military officials have stated that none of their planes were involved. Clare has said that the plane was “… a military khaki green kind of color. It was propeller-driven. It was a fixed wing aircraft and it had kind of a flat underbelly.” The Federal Aviation Administration, which tracks civil flying accidents, later circulated a report that identified the aircraft as a Fairchild C-123K, and echoed the initial reports that all three on board died, including one passenger.

Jeff Kowalczyk, an EMT hiking through the 6,075,107 acre park with his wife, a nurse, said that he saw the plane positioned almost upside-down as it crashed. The crash was only a few hundred yards from where he was watching, and he also said “the whole experience was really surreal.”

The crash came just four days after another major airplane crash in the state, when a military cargo plane crashed a minute after taking off at the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. The crash killed four people onboard who were training for an airshow.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

On Sunday, Israeli health minister Ya’akov Litzman officially resigned, submitting his resignation letter after Jewish workers were made to work on Shabbat — the Jewish holy rest day, from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday — for installation of a signalling system on rail tracks in the Negev on Saturday. Shortly after Welfare Minister Haim Katz announced on Friday his intentions to deploy Jewish workers on Shabbat for the railway work, Litzman, who belongs to the orthodox United Torah Judaism party, informed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would vacate his post on Sunday if Shabbat was sanctioned by the ministers.

Addressing the Israeli citizens in a video statement, the health minister said, “I cannot continue to bear ministerial responsibility as a minister of Israel while there is state-sanctioned public desecration of Shabbat, in contravention of the sacred values of the Jewish people, the status quo and the coalition agreement”. Both welfare minister Haim Katz and transportation minister Yisrael Katz had expressed potential threat to passengers if the railway work was postponed.

Haim Katz said he had considered the religious beliefs and public safety before making this call. On Friday, he said, “after thorough examination, I authorised only essential work to ensure the safety of rail traffic, and if it were not carried out it could endanger lives […] This decision reflects full consideration for the feelings of the religious public, on the one hand, and maintaining the routine of the train passengers on Sunday.”

The minister also said delaying this work and doing it on a working day would cause inconvenience to many people and create traffic problems. In Litzman’s statement, the health minister said, “throughout the generations the Jewish people knew it must safeguard the Sabbath as a supreme value, and even to sacrifice one’s life for it. The holy Sabbath is the national day of rest, and we were raised to protect against desecrating the Sabbath.”

“Throughout the generations the Jewish people knew it must safeguard the Sabbath as a supreme value, and even to sacrifice one’s life for it. The holy Sabbath is the national day of rest, and we were raised to protect against desecrating the Sabbath.”

Litzman, who became health minister in September 2015 following a ruling by Israel’s apex court prohibiting him from doing the job as a deputy minister, stated he is not leaving the coalition government. On Saturday, the prime minister’s office in a statement said, “the heads of the factions have clarified that they do not intend to leave the coalition” while they were trying to figure out a way “to both respect the Sabbath and ensure safe, consistent public transport”, indicating the coalition government would not be dissolved by Litzman’s resignation.

Netanyahu said he would take Litzman’s vacated place while they try to bring Litzman back. Avi Gabbay, leader of the opposition Labor party, said, “in a modern society, if you want trains to run all week, you have to do maintenance work on Shabbat[…] Litzman is a good minister, and his resignation shows that the Netanyahu government is finished.”

Litzman had discussed about working on Shabbat with religious leader Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter, and was told it was wrong to work on Shabbat. Early in July, when prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Strasbourg, France to attend former German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s funeral, Netanyahu walked from hotel to European Parliament, and he did not deliver a speech or sign a guestbook to avoid actions of work on the rest day.

This is not the first time the Isaeli government has had work done on Shabbat, but non-Jewish labourers were used to complete the task. According to reports, the task of installing the signalling system on the tracks required skilled workers, for whom substitutes were not available at the time. Israeli Army Radio reported some German engineers were to arrive during the weekend for the signalling system installation work.

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

The United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has begun to address concerns raised by the EU, the Council of Europe, and several member countries about the CIA’s detention practices upon her arrival in Germany for a European tour that began Tuesday.

“As a matter of US policy, the United States’ obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which prohibits, of course, cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment, those obligations extend to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside the United States,” said Rice, speaking from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Wednesday.

Media reports and Human Rights groups have alleged that the CIA transported renditioned prisoners through European countries, which could violate European laws and the sovereignty of countries involved. Secretary Rice claimed that the United States has respected the sovereignty of other countries, and that it has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture, and has not transported anyone to a country when we believe he will be tortured.

“We consider the captured members of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates to be unlawful combatants who may be held, in accordance with the law of war, to keep them from killing innocents. We must treat them in accordance with our laws, which reflect the values of the American people. We must question them to gather potentially significant, life-saving, intelligence. We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible,” Rice told reporters before she left from Andrews Air Force base on Monday.

Rice said that European nations should realize that interrogations of terrorist suspects have produced information that has saved European lives. However, Secretary Rice provided no specific cases.

“Secretary Rice made extra-legal rendition sound like just another form of extradition. In fact, it’s a form of kidnapping and ‘disappearing’ someone entirely outside the law,” said Tom Malinowski, a Human Rights Watch official in Washington.

The CIA practice known as “extraordinary rendition” is used to interrogate terrorist suspects outside the U.S., where they are not subject to American legal protection.

“Kidnapping a foreign national for the purpose of detaining and interrogating him outside the law is contrary to American values,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the Khalid El-Masri case. “Our government has acted as if it is above the law. We go to court today to reaffirm that the rule of law is central to our identity as a nation.”

The ACLU feels the government has to be held to account over “extraordinary rendition”.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.