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Quake Victims in China Rally From Painful Losses

2008-09-01T00:53:00.000-07:00

CHENGDU, China — Far from Beijing and its gathering of Olympic athletes, a small group of people here spend hours each day pushing their own physical limits
Li Chunyang, 16, is one of the children pulled from the rubble of Dongqi Middle School in the town of Hanwang after being trapped for 52 hours. His left leg had been pinned under debris. It was amputated after his rescue.

The other day, he went on his own from Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, to the city of Deyang to take a national school exam. The trip involved getting on a bus, then walking through city streets. It was his first journey with an artificial leg. It took two hours.
“If there’s an incline, I have a little difficulty walking,” he said. “The hardest part is walking on stairs or going uphill.”
The rehabilitation clinic is called the Sichuan Missing Limbs Restoration Center, and it is considered one of the top five institutions for prosthetic limb fittings in China. On a recent day, there were 75 patients there. Many were young children.

The vast majority of the patients are victims of the 7.9-magnitude quake that left nearly 70,000 people dead and 18,000 missing.
The patients spend one to two months here, first training for a week before getting a new limb, then learning how to use it.
The schedule is strict: three hours of training in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, using a variety of equipment — waist-high parallel bars, exercise balls, weight machines. In one room, a man lay on a bed with acupuncture needles in his back.

The center has been around for more than 50 years. It is supported by the government of Sichuan Province and by donations from charities and individuals. Patients do not pay for medical treatment or for their prostheses. Mr. Li estimated that each limb costs from just under $1,500 to $3,000; materials are imported from around the world, and the limbs are assembled here.

Mr. Li said the center had not had to turn away any patients. Sometimes it seeks out patients who need help, as it did in the case of Chunyang, the Dongqi student. The boy had been flown to Suzhou University Hospital in Jiangsu Province after being rescued, and somehow the center heard about his case. Workers here contacted his parents.

“Some people from the center came to our home to take us here,” said Yue Tianyun, 41, Chunyang’s mother and a farmer from Tumen, in the mountains of northern Sichuan Province.
She watched her son as he stood on both legs in a hallway talking to a friend. He wore a pink shirt and white sneakers on both feet. She stays here in the center with him.

“I’m here to encourage him or look after him,” she said. “I accompany him when he does his exercises. He doesn’t have many psychological problems.”
It was 11 a.m., time for lunch. The hallway began clearing out. Ms. Yue brought out a wheelchair. Chunyang took off his artificial leg and sat down.
A doctor approached and pressed on the stump.
“The stitches have some pus,” said the doctor, Liu Xidong, 40. “You can squeeze it out.”
The first week Chunyang was here, he practiced with a training leg before workers began assembling the real thing.
“My butt hurt at first,” he said. “After a week, there was still a little pain, but not much.”

Chunyang was sitting outside the largest training room in the center, which has three walking platforms with parallel metal bars. There are television screens in front of each platform so the patients can watch themselves walking. On one side of the room there are a few steps with bars for patients to practice walking up and down stairs.

“They do indoor exercises first, then outdoor exercises,” Dr. Liu said. “They’ll use the bars inside the rooms, then they’ll walk without the bars.”
In a room on the floor above, a woman named Cheng Yan sat up in bed eating a lunch of rice porridge and vegetables. She had just gotten a replacement limb for her right leg that morning. After a few hours of training, she had taken it off.
“I’m trying to get used to it,” said Ms. Cheng, 29, who was wearing a necklace with an icon of Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. “It’s O.K. so far. It’s not too painful.”
Ms. Cheng, who worked in a clothing factory in the southern boom city of Shenzhen, had been visiting her parents in the nearby city of Dujiangyan when the earthquake hit. She was in a room in the back at the time; everyone but her managed to run from the house.

She said she could have gotten her new leg earlier if she had not injured herself in her first week here. “I forgot that I had had my leg amputated, so in the morning I got out of bed and fell,” she said. “All the people in this situation have the same feeling. You feel you still have your leg there, and it hurts. But after the wound heals more, that kind of feeling will fade.”
Ms. Cheng said she would not go back to the factory and would stay with her family from now on.

In the hallway, Chunyang said he and his mother would go home soon. When they do, they will live in tents.
More than 240 students died in the collapse of Chunyang’s school, and only a few sections of crumbling wall stand by the river in Hanwang. Classes will restart in the fall in a refugee camp.

2008-09-01T00:42:00.000-07:00

Georgia emerged from breakup of the Soviet Union divided by its own separatist conflicts and afflicted with corruption and poverty. It has transformed in recent years into one of the more democratic countries in the region thanks largely to reforms by the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Since coming to power in a bloodless coup called the Rose Revolution in 2003, Mr. Saakashvili has guided his country towards greater integration with the West, seeking membership in NATO and the European Union and sending Georgian troops to fight with American forces in Iraq -- moves that have soured once-friendly relations with Russia, Georgia's far-larger neighbor to the north.

Mr. Shaakashvili also put a high priority on reuniting three regions that refused to recognize federal rule: Ajaria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He found quick success in Ajaria, a Black Sea region on the border with Turkey. Mr. Shaakashvili had hoped to woo South Ossetia back before tackling Abkhazia, but his overtures in 2005 were spurned.

In November 2007, opponents angry about corruption took to the streets in protests that were violently broken up by the police. In response, Mr. Shaakvashvili called for a special election. On Jan. 5, 2008, he was reelected to a new five-year term with 52 percent of the vote.

At the same time, voters approved a referendum on seeking membership in NATO, a popular idea after years of standoffs with Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The NATO bid further angered Russia, which in the spring of 2008, announced that it was expanding its support for the two breakaway regions.

Technology Features

2008-08-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE : The Apple iPhone 3G will irk many people. You can’t forward SMSes and you can’t create an SMS group. You can’t send MMSes and you can’t delete individual messages — you have to delete whole conversation threads.

And be careful not to get too verbose in your correspondence lest you need to forward it, because without a copy-and-paste feature, you’ll have to type it out letter-by-letter.

It’s a 3.5G phone, but you can’t make video calls. The camera is a 2-megapixel number that can’t capture video. There’s no FM radio tuner. You can pair the iPhone with a headset for voice calls, but you can’t transfer files from the iPhone to another device via Bluetooth.

As you can gather, the iPhone 3G is no quantum leap in technology.

Yet, it’s an agent of change that has driven phone makers back to the drawing board, and it has probably captured more headlines than any other device.

As we found out, the iPhone isn’t all fluff. Let us tell you why.

Integration & Software

Using iTunes, the iPhone 3G syncs to your computer, channelling your contacts, music, home movies, podcasts, photos and Internet bookmarks. If you lose the phone, you can get a new one and restore it with the latest backup, with all your settings intact. This tight integration of hardware and software makes the smartphone less daunting to use.

Making the iPhone a central device for mobile media consumption is also compelling because of the emotional attachment people have with their media. Couple this with the features of a phone, desktop-grade Web browsing and email, and the iPhone 3G becomes a digital representation of your tastes, your personality and how you communicate.

Apple seems committed to delivering bug fixes and feature additions with every new release of the phone’s operating system. With these updates, some of the shortcomings listed earlier, such as the lack of SMS forwarding, could be written off one by one.

Applications

The addition of the App Store makes the iPhone 3G seem like a Swiss Army knife with a limitless number of interchangeable tools.

The applications, both free and paid ones, broaden the phone’s functions: you can compose music, listen to Internet radio, play Sudoku or even review X-ray scans.

In one instance, I found myself tapping my feet to a song while I was having my hair cut. I whipped out the iPhone to see if there was an application in the App Store that could record audio so I could identify the song later. I ended up with Shazam, an application that identified the song in a matter of seconds.

Even portions of this review were crafted with a word processor that I downloaded on a whim.

Using the iPhone

There have been reports of issues with the iPhone’s 3G performance and complaints of dropped calls. But there were no such woes with our review model, even before we downloaded the recent software update released to rectify its 3G problems.

To test the network coverage and the phone’s 3G performance, we cruised down the East Coast Parkway, making our way from Tampines to Holland Village.

Calls were made while we tracked our location using GPS and surfed the Web. Google Maps constantly updated and downloaded the maps for our location with nary a lag. Voice calls remained clear and consistent. We streamed Internet radio and YouTube videos without a jitter. We booked movie tickets and performed online banking. All this within a single cab ride.

The iPhone’s battery has attracted much flak because it cannot be replaced conveniently when you run out of juice. But we found that using the device on a normal basis — accessing the Web intermittently, listening to music and playing games — yielded a decent eight to 10 hours.

However, using 3G, WiFi, utilising push email and viewing media intensively drained battery life to three hours.

Putting the App in the Apple iPhone

Applications on Apple’s App Store can range from the outright awesome to the terribly inane. And as we found out, browsing and trying the applications can be addictive. Recent figures don’t lie — since the launch of the App Store on July 11, more than 60 million applications have been downloaded.

According to Apple, there are more than 900 applications available, with 20 per cent of them free, and more than 90 per cent of paid ones priced at less than US$10 (S$14).

We check out five free applications you can get started on.

Shazam

Find yourself trying to figure out that song you’re tapping your feet to? We know we have.

Shazam can help you to identify a song you hear by recording ambient audio and sending it back to its servers for an audio recognition engine to work its magic. Apart from identifying the song, it provides relevant links to YouTube videos.

We’ve tried it out on quiet music playing in an uber-romantic candlelit restaurant, and clubby beats at a trendy hair salon. It hasn’t failed us yet. This crowd-pleaser is that good.

Flashlight

Download the Flashlight application and watch the 3.5-inch touchscreen on your iPhone literally outshine almost any phone on the market.

With Flashlight, you can definitely find those darn coins you dropped at the movie theatre.

The application has a fun component, too, with its ability to emit colourful strobe effects. Nifty when you’re at your next rave party or when you want to confuse that stalker of yours with some pretty, seizure-inducing lights.

Stunningly simple, yet effective and useful, this one belongs on Batman’s utility belt.

Tap Tap Revenge

If you love Guitar Hero, you’re going to like Tap Tap Revenge just as much.

In this game, you tap on colourful balls flowing down lines of light, in time to music.

There are multiple levels of difficulty and even a two-player mode where a friend can tap on the other end of your iPhone.

If you run out of songs to tap to, there’s an option to download more free songs within the game. All these for free? Yes, oh yes.

Last.fm

No FM radio on the iPhone? No problem. Tap into Internet radio with Last.fm. You’ll have to sign up for an account but registration is brief and painless.

You can then start streaming any of the five million songs from its library and share them with the contacts on your phone or your friends on the music-based social network.

The user interface is akin to Apple’s iPod application and is easy to navigate. Despite being streamed, the music doesn’t suffer in quality. Just keep your eye on how much bandwidth you’re consuming.

Stanza

Book lovers will find Stanza a treasure trove of deliciously classic reads that you can download. We found must-reads from the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, D H Lawrence, Franz Kafka and H G Wells.

Although the phone’s screen might not be as big as some of the digital book readers out there, there are settings to resize text to improve readability. You can also search through books and jump to specific chapters

Computer virus goes into orbit

2008-08-28T18:59:00.001-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO: NASA confirmed on Wednesday that a computer virus sneaked aboard the International Space Station only to be tossed into quarantine on July 25 by security software.

A "worm type" virus was found on laptop computers that astronauts use to send and receive email from the station by relaying messages through a mission control center in Texas, according to NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries.

The virus is reported to be malicious software that logs keystrokes in order to steal passwords or other sensitive data by sending the information to hackers via the Internet.

The laptop computers are not linked to any of the space station's control systems or the Internet.

"The bottom line is it is a nuisance for us," Humphries told AFP. "The crew is working with teams on the ground to eradicate the virus and look for actions to prevent that from happening in the future."

The virus had no adverse effect on space station operations, according to Humphries.

The space station orbits Earth once every 90 minutes at an altitude of about 350 kilometers (217 miles).

NASA is reportedly looking into whether the virus got into the computers by hiding in a memory drive used to store music, video or other digital files.

Humphries said this is not the first computer virus stowaway on the Space Station.

"This is not a frequent occurrence but it has happened before," Humphries said.

Sony to launch new high-resolution PSP

2008-08-28T18:57:00.001-07:00

TOKYO: Sony will launch a new PlayStation Portable in October with a high-resolution screen and a built-in microphone that enables it to be used as a telephone, the company said Thursday.

The PSP-3000, which will be available in Japan, Asia, North America and Europe, has the same basic design of the current PSP Slim and Lite, and comes in three colours -- black, white and silver.

It can be used to make telephone calls through the Skype service, which Sony added to PSPs already on the market earlier this year in an effort to broaden its appeal amid fierce competition with rival Nintendo Co.

The new PSP comes with a price tag of US$199.99 in North America and 199 euros (US$294) in Europe. The price for Asia has not yet been announced.

Sony aims to sell 15 million PSPs worldwide in the current fiscal year to March 2009.

"Demand for the consoles is still strong, especially in the United States," Sony Computer Entertainment Inc spokeswoman Yoko Sakaki said.

Skype, which was bought by eBay in October of 2004, uses a peer-to-peer network to enable users to make free Internet telephone calls to one another through their computers, or low-cost calls to standard telephones.

Sony also announced it will launch the Wireless Keypad, which can slot into Sixaxis and Dualshock 3 controllers for the PlayStation 3, in North America in late November, followed by Japan, Europe and Asia by the end of this year.

Users can use the keypad instead of the onscreen keyboard for text chat.

Sony is also launching a new version of the PlayStation 3 console with a 160-gigabyte hard drive in November in North America for US$499.99, and in Europe from November 1 with a price tag of 499 euros.

Music faked at Sydney Olympics opening ceremony

2008-08-28T18:54:00.001-07:00

SYDNEY - Eight years after it hosted an Olympics that were famously hailed as the "best games ever," Sydney has had to confess that it faked one of the key musical performances at the opening ceremony in 2000.

The revelation came after it emerged that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke was just lip-synching when she "sang" a patriotic song before 91,000 people and a global television audience during the August 8 opening ceremony at the Beijing Games.

Orchestra bosses have admitted that the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) mimed its entire performance at the ceremony, and that some of the real music was in fact recorded by rival musicians in Melbourne.

"It was all pre-recorded and the MSO (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) did record a minority of the music that was performed," SSO managing director Libby Christie told Australia's Fairfax newspapers earlier this week.

"It's correct that we were basically miming to a pre-recording," she said.

The respected orchestra gave the fake performance because Olympics organisers "wanted to leave nothing to chance" and a second orchestra was found to record the backing tape because of a "mountainous workload" in Sydney, Christie said.

The admission has columnists in Melbourne -- which has a longstanding rivalry with glitzier Sydney -- crowing over the fact that its musicians ghosted a crucial performance by their arch-rivals.

The head of the MSO confirmed the performance had been pre-recorded but defended the move, saying it was "purely a workload issue" and in no way reflected on the relative quality of either orchestra.

"It's nothing to do with priorities or which orchestra is better. It was decided to split (the work) between the two orchestras," he said.

"It's quite a normal practice and if the Olympics had been in Melbourne, the Sydney Symphony would have been involved -- I'm sure of that."

Christie said the Sydney orchestra had very rarely mimed performances but had done so at the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Sydney, while the MSO said it had used a backing tape at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Beijing Olympic officials went on the defensive two weeks ago when it was revealed that pigtailed Lin Miaoke, who became a celebrity in China after her performance, had not actually done the singing.

It later emerged the real voice belonged to chubby seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was deemed not attractive enough to go on stage, and that the switch was ordered by a politburo member of China's ruling Communist party.

One dead, thousands urged to evacuate as rain pounds Japan

2008-08-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

TOKYO: One woman was found dead and an entire city of nearly 400,000 people urged to evacuate Friday as torrential rain hit central Japan, officials said.

Heavy rain since late Thursday has wreaked havoc, flooding houses and roads, triggering landslides and destroying bridges.

"The body of a woman who looks to be in her 70s was found underwater at an inundated house" in the central city of Okazaki, a local police official said.

Reports said the woman was Suzue Kuroyanagi, whose husband had called rescuers, saying water had come up to his chest and his wife was swept away.

Okazaki was the worst hit city, with 146 millimetres of rain per hour recorded early Friday.

The city has advised all of its 376,000 residents to evacuate temporarily.

Some 50 people have fled their homes, according to Keiji Yamamoto, a disaster prevention official in the city.

Footage of the city from a helicopter showed inundated rice fields and roads with cars half-submerged.

2008-08-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

China's tallest building to open to the public this weekend

SHANGHAI : China's tallest building - the Shanghai World Financial Centre - will be opened to the public this weekend.The skyscraper boasts one of the world's highest observation deck and hotel.

Soaring to a towering height of 101 storeys, the Shanghai World Financial Centre is the latest addition to the city's changing landscape.

Built at a cost of US$1.4 billion, the president and CEO of the Mori Building Company, Minoru Mori, expects to recoup the investment in 12 years.

The building currently has a 45 per cent occupancy rate, but Mori Building Company is confident of getting more tenants despite recent worries about the economy.

The Shanghai World Financial Centre is also a window to modern construction capabilities. The building has 7 evacuation floors in the event of emergencies, like fire. It can also withstand a 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

Mega-structures on the exterior make the building resistant to strong winds, and counterweight balances prevent it from swaying.

Construction started 11 years ago, but was stopped three times - during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the September 11 attacks in 2001, and the 2003 SARS outbreak.

The Park Hyatt Shanghai hotel, occupying the 79th-93rd floors of the Shanghai World Financial Centre, will welcome its first guests next month

2008-08-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

Indian troops kill Kashmir militants, rescue hostages

SRINAGAR, India : Indian troops have shot dead three Muslim militants in Kashmir and freed seven hostages they seized after going on a killing spree, the army said Thursday.

"The operation is over. We killed third militant early today (Thursday)," Indian army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel S.D. Goswami told AFP from the stand-off on the outskirts of Hindu-dominated Jammu city.

The army, backed by paramilitaries, had killed the two other militants on Wednesday evening during a fierce gunbattle.

Goswami said soldiers were able to rescue seven women and children, but three men who were also taken hostage were killed by the militants.The army had earlier said only women and children were hostages.

Earlier on Wednesday, the militants, wearing camouflage dress, opened fire on an army post killing one officer and wounding two other soldiers.

The soldiers retaliated but the militants escaped in a taxi rickshaw and later killed its driver and two other civilians.They then barricaded themselves in a house and took 10 people hostage.

Goswami said in all 10 people were killed -- three militants, six civilians and an army officer.Police chief K. Rajindera Kumar said the militants had entered Jammu from Pakistan after cutting through a border fence on Tuesday.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and funding militants who have been waging an insurgency in the region since 1989. Islamabad denies the charge.The insurgency has left more than 43,000 people dead by official count. The violence has decreased sharply since India and Pakistan started a peace process in 2004.

2008-08-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

Dalai Lama admitted to hospital with stomach pain

DHARAMSHALA, India : The Dalai Lama was taken to hospital in India on Thursday after complaining of stomach pain, his office said.

The Dalai Lama's admission to a hospital in Mumbai came a day after the Tibetan spiritual leader's office said he was suffering from exhaustion and would travel to the city for a medical check-up.

"There is nothing major to feel concerned about," his personal secretary Tenzin Taklha told AFP in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based.

"But he has been admitted to the Lilivati Hospital in Mumbai because he was feeling some discomfort in his abdomen."

"The Dalai Lama will be examined by doctors tomorrow (Friday)," he said. The check-up is being carried out "at the recommendation of his personal physicians," Taklha said.

In 2002 the leader of Tibetan Buddhists was admitted to the Lilivati Hospital after falling ill with stomach pains. He was treated with antibiotics.

The 73-year-old spiritual leader had been pursuing a gruelling travel itinerary as he campaigned for improved human rights in Tibet while China readied to host the Olympic Games in Beijing that ended on August 24.

The Nobel peace prize winner returned last weekend from France where he met Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, human rights minister Rama Yade and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Violent protests against Chinese rule broke out across Tibet in March, sparking a heavy Chinese crackdown on the Himalayan region that has drawn global condemnation

2008-08-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

Indonesian armed forces chief shrugs off ExxonMobil suit

Indonesia's armed forces chief dismissed Thursday a US federal court judge's ruling that ExxonMobil must face a lawsuit over alleged killings and torture by troops in Aceh province.

General Djoko Santoso said he was not even aware of the suit filed in the United States by 11 villagers alleging atrocities took place in Aceh near the US oil giant's Arun natural gas project in the early 2000s.

The suit accuses Exxon Mobil Corporation and two of its US affiliates, Mobil Corp. and ExxonMobil Oil Corp., and its Indonesian subsidiary, ExxonMobil Oil Indonesia (EMOI) of "killings and torture committed by military security forces protecting and paid for by EMOI," according to a court document.

US Judge Louis Oberdorfer ruled in Washington on Wednesday that the plaintiffs had provided "sufficient evidence, at this stage, for their allegations of serious abuse."

Oberdorfer denied Exxon Mobil Corp.'s and EMOI's request to throw out the lawsuit, but he dismissed the suit for the group's two US affiliates, Mobil Corp. and ExxonMobil Oil Corp.

The lawsuit was filed in June 2001 by the 11 villagers, using pseudonyms.Santoso shrugged off the ruling."Until now I had no idea about that. If it's true I've just learnt about it from you," he told journalists.

He indicated that the matter did not concern the armed forces because they were not being sued."Just go ahead (and sue). The one who will be sued is Exxon, right?" he said.

Aceh, which lies at the northern tip of Sumatra island, saw nearly three decades of bloody conflict before the Indonesian government signed a peace pact with separatist rebels in August 2005.

ExxonMobil has argued that the lawsuit sets a dangerous precedent for all US firms operating overseas and contravenes "well-established constitutional principle" that foreign affairs should not be handled by the courts.It says it does not condone human rights abuses.

2008-08-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

PM Manmohan Singh says India floods a "national calamity"SAHARSA, India:

Massive flooding in eastern India has caused a "national calamity," the prime minister said on Thursday after touring the devastated region where more than a million people remain trapped.

Manmohan Singh announced a relief package of 228 million dollars and 125,000 tonnes of grain for those affected when a monsoon-swollen river changed course, flooding huge swathes of the country's impoverished Bihar state.

"If there is a need for more, we will give more," he told reporters. "We would like to assure the people of Bihar that all India will support them through this difficulty."

The Kosi river breached its banks 10 days ago on the border with Nepal, flowing through a channel it had previously abandoned.

Brahmdeo Yadav's village in badly-hit Saharsa district was reduced to an island surrounded by murky water.

"We have nothing to cook with so we are soaking grain into this filth and trying to survive," Yadav, a farmer, told an AFP correspondent.

The district's tiny rail station was packed on Thursday with thousands of flood victims desperate to get on one of the few passenger trains still operating.

"We just want to get out. We want to leave this curse behind," wept Girija Prasad, a housewife whose husband, Narayan, went missing when she was plucked out of the waters by a military motorboat on Wednesday.

More than 400 boats had been pressed into service and hundreds more would be used to shift people to relief shelters and higher ground, officials said.

"About 90,000 victims have been evacuated from villages in the flood affected area by government rescue agencies," disaster management official Prataya Amrit told AFP.

At least 46 people are reported to have died in the floods, as troops and air force helicopters rushed to help police in the rescue operation.

The federal government also promised tents and helicopters to speed up the military-backed evacuation.

Nepalese disaster management officials told AFP the river had washed away a series of dams and spurs, which control the water flow, sending huge torrents downstream that washed away further flood defences.

Authorities on both sides of the border have been in dispute over maintenance of flood control structures and uncleared silt, officials said.

In Nepal, around 50,000 people have been displaced by the floods and have sheltered in schools and makeshift camps, said local authorities.

"All infrastructure is pretty much gone. The telephone system, water supply, public buildings, roads and government offices have all been destroyed," said Suman Ghimire from Nepal's natural disaster committee.

Around five kilometres of the main highway on the Nepali side of the border has also been washed away, he added.

Nepali engineers were frantically trying to strengthen flood control barriers upstream to prevent increased water flow as more rain was forecast.

The Kosi, which flows into the Ganges, is known as the "River of Sorrow" due to its record of disastrous floods during the monsoon season.

More than 800 people have been killed in monsoon-related accidents following the heavy June-to-September rains across India.

Bihar officials said the death toll could climb further as many areas were inaccessible.

2008-08-28T02:28:00.000-07:00

Brit jet in terror plunge

Experts are now investigating why flight FR9336 from Bristol to Barcelona in Spain suddenly dropped from 30,000ft to 8,000ft - losing air pressure in the cabin and forcing the panic-stricken passengers to use their air masks.

Arctic explorer Pen Hadow's son Wilf, nine, was among 16 of the 168 on board taken to hospital when the plane made an emergency landing in Paris
Passengers who suffered ear problems after the plane descended quickly before diverting to a French airport were finally completing their journey to Girona in Spain by coach.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said the masks had worked normally and the cockpit crew had made an announcement after bringing the plane down to safer levels.
Later, Ryanair said its engineers had confirmed the masks were working properly after inspecting the plane.

Mr O'Leary said: "The oxygen masks were working, the correct safety procedures were followed." Defending the crew's actions, he said it was not possible for them to make an announcement about the situation because safety regulations meant the pilots and cabin staff had to don oxygen masks themselves.

He added: "The first thing we do in these situation is divert to safety, take the safety first option. We have to require that the pilots and the cabin crew also deploy their oxygen masks."They can't be making passenger announcements when they have their oxygen masks on. As the passengers confirmed, the pilot did make an announcement once he got down to 8,000ft, where it is safe to take the oxygen masks off, that they were diverting to Limoges."

Ryanair said 16 passengers, accompanied by five family members had gone to a local hospital at Limoges complaining of earache.Most passengers were flown on to Girona overnight in a replacement plane. Those who had gone to hospital plus 18 who had chosen not to take the overnight flight left Limoges for Spain by coach just before 12 noon UK time today.

A Ryanair spokeswoman said: "Ryanair's engineers have inspected the aircraft overnight and have confirmed that the oxygen masks which deployed were working properly. The Irish and French aviation authorities have been notified of this incident and a full investigation of this incident will be undertaken later today.

"The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, is five years old and was last serviced on July 24. The captain of the flight has flown with Ryanair for five years and seven months and has over 13,400 hours' flying experience.
"While this investigation is ongoing with the French and Irish authorities Ryanair will not comment further on this incident."

2008-08-28T01:52:00.000-07:00

Plot to kill Obama revealed
‘Blacks don’t belong in political office’, said racist plotter

AN alleged RACIST plot to assassinate Barack Obama during his nomination acceptance speech was foiled last night.
Three men and one woman were looking to shoot the 47-year-old Democrat nominee from “a high vantage point” just 750 yards away from the podium at his Denver coronation tomorrow, one of the suspects said.

US police arrested them after finding rifles, bullet proof vests and walkie talkies during a routine stop-check.

Tharin Gartrell, 28, Nathan Johnson, 32 and Shawn Robert Adolph, 33, who was wearing a swastika ring, were arrested yesterday.

Johnson’s girlfriend Natasha Gromek, 29, was also held on drug charges.

As the Secret Service, FBI and the US Joint Terrorism Task Force all investigate the alleged plot, the ‘hit’ shocked Senator Obama’s supporters as they flood into the Colorado capital for what was supposed to be a celebration.

And unemployed truck driver Johnson admitted in an interview last night from Denver City Jail that his two cohorts ‘had planned to kill Obama at his acceptance speech’. He added: “He [Obama] don’t belong in political office. Blacks don’t belong in political office. He ought to be shot.”

But none of the accused will face charges because Denver officials said the case does not meet the legal standard to charge them with a federal offence.

The news comes hours before Obama is to accept the Democratic nomination in Denver tomorrow.

Drug user Johnson also said pal Adolf had “made a comment in the past” about hating black people enough that he could take out a black presidential hopeful.

He said: “I can’t honestly tell you how long ago in the past, that he didn’t believe a black should be the leader of this country.”

And last night Colorado federal prosecutor Troy Eid said: “It’s premature to say that it was a valid threat or that these folks have the ability to carry it out.

“It could also turn out that these were nothing but a bunch of knuckleheads, meth[amphetamine]-heads.”