Asia

India

Stampede kills 100 in southern India 

A stampede near a religious temple killed 100 people in southern India, authorities said.


Pilgrims were returning from a Hindu ritual at a temple when a vehicle overturned, prompting the stampede, said Jai Kumar, home secretary of Kerala state. At least 14 people were injured.
Video footage showed authorities loading up bodies in large pickup trucks. Onlookers gathered around, looking at the pile of bodies as some took pictures and sobbed.
The incident occurred about 5 miles from the Sabarimala Temple, Kumar said.
The vehicle struck many of the people in a narrow stretch through a forest, the news agency Press Trust of India reported.
Stampedes at events in India have occurred several times because large crowds gather at narrow, congested areas.

Last March, more than 60 people were killed during a stampede at a temple in the Uttar Pradesh state.

 

 

Europe

Italy

Mount Etna rumbled Wednesday, sending lava down its side. Italian vulcanologists are monitoring the Sicilian volcano, they said Thursday.
Etna began tremors Tuesday night, the Italian Institute of Vulcanology said.
They reached their peak Wednesday morning, and lava flowed down the eastern rim on Wednesday night.


The volcano continued to show "rather weak" activity Thursday morning, the Institute said in a statement.

The volcano may be producing ash, scientists said, but did not offer confirmation.
Etna does not appear to be threatening people at the moment.

One of the most active volcanoes in the world, it towers over the city of Catania on the island of Sicily.

Middle East

U.A.E.

Hotel "7 star" Burj Khalifa, made in China.The Chinese plan to make a copy of Khalifa Al Burj hotel in Beijing

 

 

Chinese authorities plan to build a "seven-star hotel" Burj Khalifa made the model of Dubai hotel - the Maytallest building in the world -, the project will be implemented in collaboration with Saudi Arabia will rise to 1.3 billion dollars. 

The hotel will be built in Beijing, 30 kilometers from the center inform the Beijing Morning Post quoted by AFP.

An official of the metropolis, which has refused to say his name, confirmed the existence of design and value.

According to the newspaper, the design will be completed according to the building belonging to 828 meters high building in Dubai.

Although there is no official classification "seven-star" tourist sector by allowing only a maximum five-star hotels around the world already exists which boasts seven-star Burj Al Arab in Dubai and Pangu 7 Star Hotel in Beijing are also hotels.

 

 

Brazil flooding

The death toll from flooding caused by torrential rains in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state rose to 549 people Saturday, Brazil's official news agency reported.
Most of the deaths were reported in the cities of Nova Friburgo and Teresopolis, located in a mountainous region northeast of Rio, according to Agencia Brasil.
Rescuers have not been able to reach some hard-hit areas and many more people are feared dead, the agency said Friday.
The rain is predicted to continue for several days in areas already submerged in water or slathered with mud.
Thousands of families are still living on mountain slopes or on riverbanks and face extreme risk of being washed away. One resident described the disaster as a tsunami that fell from the sky.
Chaos reigned in the especially hard-hit city of Teresopolis, where some residents donned masks and helped clean streets or deliver first aid. Others combed the city, searching desperately for missing loved ones. Schools and police stations turned into overflowing morgues, where people waited to identify their family and friends.
Municipal worker Reginald de Oliveira came to see if he could find the body of his uncle, missing in the floods. He was trying to save his family when a wall of water washed him away.

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Red Cross volunteer Maria Helena de Jesus was helping with first aid.
"You have to almost have a heart of stone," she said. "It was very difficult."
Teresopolis Mayor Jorge Mario Sedlacek declared his city a natural disaster area.
At least 238 people died in Teresopolis, while 252 were killed in the town of Nova Friburgo, Agencia Brasil reported.
President Dilma Rousseff flew over flood-affected areas Thursday and landed in a slushy, trash-littered soccer field in Friburgo, the agency said. The floods are her first test as president.
She trudged through mud in her rain boots to talk to residents in a neighborhood where four of seven firefighters attempting to rescue people had been buried under mud. Three others were pulled out alive.
"We are going to take firm action" to help the devastated areas, said Rousseff, who assumed office at the first of the year.
Brazilian authorities have been criticized for a lack of disaster planning and allowing people to build homes in areas known to become treacherous in the rainy season.
They are under increasing pressure to show a strong response. Brazil is scheduled to host the World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics.
With more rain forecast, Brazilian authorities have ordered evacuations for at least 5,000 families living in especially perilous areas in Rio de Janeiro state, Agencia Brasil said. Another 3,000 families from a mountainous region were homeless and sheltered in schools and gymnasiums, the news agency said.
"The most important thing right now is to assist the homeless population and reach the most critical points," said Rodrigo Neves, the state secretary of Social Welfare and Human Rights.
State health officials pleaded for people to donate blood that will be sent to the Serrana region, where only 36 units of blood remained for treatment of flood victims.

Rain has affected neighboring Sao Paulo as well, killing 24 people there.

Tunisia

Are jackboots already trampling the "Jasmine Revolution"?

It happened with breathtaking speed. Within a matter of weeks, Tunisia went from being a beacon of authoritarian, pro-Western stability to a country in open, nationwide revolt. A largely leaderless, spontaneous popular movement drove the head of state from power.
At the moment it's not clear whether that movement will result in real change, or just a change at the top.
Shortly after Friday's massive demonstrations in Tunis, which reached a crescendo outside the hated Ministry of the Interior on Avenue Mohamed V, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, taking refuge in Saudi Arabia.
The army and security forces are trying to impose order in Tunis. Tanks and armored personnel carriers have been deployed on one of the capital's main thoroughfares, Avenue 7 Novembre (named after the date when Ben Ali assumed presidential powers in 1987). At midday Saturday, I watched as two truckloads of soldiers pulled up on the avenue and began stringing out barbed wire.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew is being ruthlessly enforced -- just how ruthlessly, I saw from my hotel window. At midnight. a plain-clothes policemen beat with batons and kicked a young man to the ground. All the while the man screamed, "Have mercy on me!"
This afternoon, the front desk called to tell me to close my window on orders from the police.
In the Place de l'Independence, I watched municipal workers taking down a large poster of Ben Ali. There was no cheering, no celebration. The few people in the square appeared more concerned with getting home before the curfew began.
The feel is very much that of a military takeover. It's hard to catch a whiff of what is being called the Jasmine Revolution.
Mounting fear of chaos is diluting the unbridled joy inspired by Ben Ali's departure. Fires have broken out in prisons in Muntasir and Al-Mahdia. There are reports of gangs on looting sprees.
Tunisian television has discontinued regular programming, replacing it with a call-in program. The prime concern of callers from around the country is that law and order are breaking down.
On back streets in the center of Tunis, away from the soldiers and plain-clothes police, people are still seething with anger at Ben Ali. They complain of rampant corruption and nepotism by him and his clique, of deteriorating economic conditions, rising prices, high unemployment and a lack of job opportunities for university graduates.
Everything they complain about plagues many other Arab countries. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has been in power since 1981. But he's a relative newcomer compared to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, at the helm since 1969. In Yemen, Ali Abdallah Saleh has ruled since 1979.
All of these aging autocrats must be pacing the floors of their palaces worrying that the unrest in Tunisia will spread. Conditions in countries like Egypt are, if anything, far worse than in Tunisia. In Egypt, for example, it's estimated that 40 percent of the population has to get by on less than $2 a day. Unemployment is rampant, high-level corruption a given.
In the spring of 2008, thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to demonstrate against spiraling food prices. In the Nile Delta city of Kafr Al-Shaikh, protesters burned huge posters of Mubarak.
Ever so briefly it appeared his regime was beginning to totter, but then it passed. The government announced wage increases, scrambled to ensure a supply of subsidized bread for the poor, and rounded up the troublemakers one by one.
Middle Eastern rulers are masters at outsmarting their opponents and quashing protest. They're far less skilled when it comes to addressing the problems that plague their people.
Those autocrats are almost certainly rooting for the Tunisian army and intelligence services to re-establish calm and control. In much of the Middle East, the rulers depend upon the support of the army and intelligence services. When the secretive, low-profile generals and spooks decide the leader is more a liability than an asset, they send him packing.
Revolution -- real revolution resulting in an overthrow of the existing order along the lines of 1979 Iran, is far less probable.

The Jasmine Revolution, which inspired so many angry and frustrated people across the Arab world, is already in danger of being trampled by jackboots.