Nine dead as Indian bus driver goes on rampage

MUMBAI: An Indian bus driver left at least nine people dead and dozens hurt Wednesday after going on a rampage during rush-hour, smashing into cars and crushing pedestrians, police told AFP.

The rogue driver hijacked the vehicle in a depot and then sped down the crowded streets of central Pune in western India as children headed to school and office employees made their way to work.

The half-hour wrecking spree came to a halt only when members of the public wrestled him from the controls after he rammed into another bus. He has since been detained and interrogated by police.

“He just went berserk. He went on ramming whatever vehicles were plying the road,” the city’s commissioner of police, Meeran Borwankar, told local television.

“Citizens came forward and literally threw children (out of the way). He was in such a dangerous mood. Ultimately he was held (by police) but the damage has been tremendous.”

An officer in the local police control room told AFP that nine people had been killed and 27 injured. Some 40 vehicles were left mangled, with cars damaged and autorickshaws overturned.

“He was a nut-case, he had completely lost his head,” said the officer, who asked not to be named.

“Most of the damage was to parked taxis, private vehicles, cycles and stalls.”

Identified by police as 30-year-old Santosh Mane, he was confirmed as a licensed driver and employee of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC).

“This is very unfortunate. We are unsure what state of mind he was in when he committed the act,” V.V. Ratnaparkhi, a senior official at the MSRTC, told AFP.

Witnesses described their horror as the bus careened through the streets. The Press Trust of India reported that police fired 10 shots during their pursuit of the vehicle.

“Whoever came in his way, he just rammed into them,” one witness told NDTV television.

Another said: “I was out jogging, there was a noise, I jumped immediately that is why I was saved. This is my second life, I would have been dead.” AGENCIES

Irene moves to Canada, US damage estimate $7b

In the US, the storm claimed at least 19 lives and caused estimated economic damage of up to $7 billion.

Millions of people were without power along the East Coast after the huge storm — now downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone — passed over the Big Apple and headed for Canada.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center warned late Sunday of “major river flooding occurring in parts of the northeast,” after President Barack Obama cautioned that recovery efforts would last for “weeks or longer.”

“I want people to understand that this is not over,” Obama said in a short statement in the White House Rose Garden.

“I do want to underscore that the impacts of this storm will be felt for some time… Power may be out for days in some areas.”

The governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, said his state was in “tough shape” while New York state s Andrew Cuomo warned of “tremendous flooding” in the Catskill Mountain area north of Manhattan.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie said roads and rails were “impassable” in some areas, and much of the state had seen “significant flooding.”

Localized flooding occurred in the south and east of Manhattan, with more serious incidents in Brooklyn, where the famed Coney Island amusement park took a battering and outlying beaches were swamped.

There was heavy flooding along the low-lying south shore of Long Island where high tides, rain and ocean surge drove waves right up against expensive beach houses. Floods were also reported far inland after torrential rain.

At least 18 deaths were blamed on the storm, which first slammed into North Carolina on Saturday as a Category One hurricane, before turning north up the coast and weakening.

Initial property damage estimates ranged up to $7 billion.

The youngest victim, an 11-year-old boy, died when a tree crashed through his apartment building in Newport News, Virginia.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced that New York area airports — John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia and Newark — would reopen on Monday. More than 10,000 flights were cancelled across the eastern United States.

The New York Stock Exchange said it was set to reopen as normal Monday morning.

“The good news is the worst is over and we will soon return to restore and return mode,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, announcing that 370,000 people ordered to evacuate could now go back home.

More than a million evacuees in New Jersey were also headed home, Christie said.

City officials however warned that commuting into New York could be a nightmare this week with no firm indication of when public transport would be back on track following an unprecedented shut-down just ahead of the hurricane.

“You re going to have a tough commute in the morning,” mass transit chairman Jay Walder said.

Walder said buses could start running soon, but subway trains needed extensive testing of lines and equipment.

Irene also left swaths of territory without power, including one million in New York state, most of them on Long Island, according to Cuomo.

In New Jersey, 650,000 people had lost power supplies, while in the greater Washington area, nearly two million people lost electricity. In Massachusetts, 500,000 customers were without power.

Virginia s Governor Bob McDonnell told MSNBC his state had seen the second biggest power outage in its history.

“It s going to be days, perhaps a week, before all the power s restored. We just ask people to be patient,” he said.

About 200,000 households have lost power in Canada, officials said.

Some 65 million people live in the urban corridor from Washington north to Boston. More than 4.5 million customers lost power in that area and well inland.

In Atlantic City, a gambling resort on the New Jersey shore, locals started to put their lives back together, while counting the costs of a weekend shutdown during the high season.

“We were expecting to make good money, but you cannot fight with Mother Nature,” said Riaz Rajput as he removed plywood storm screens from the windows of his shop.

On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, waves of up to six feet (1.8 meters) crashed over some coastal roads, but most residents and tourists let out a collective sigh of relief.

“We re having a little bit of a hurricane party,” said T.J. Wolnar, who was confident his beachfront home could withstand the high winds.

“It s good the storm isn t as strong as it was going to be.”

Hurricanes are rare in the northeastern United States — the last major hurricane to hit New York was Gloria in 1985.

Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center reported that a new tropical storm, Jose, had formed and was approaching Bermuda.

London riots reveal social strains, say residents

LONDON: Days of riots rocking London point to deeper social unease in poor areas of Britain’s capital, community leaders and residents said Monday, rejecting moves by politicians and police to blame criminals alone.

The touchpaper for the unrest was lit on Thursday when police shot dead Mark Duggan, a resident of the multi-ethnic district of Tottenham in north London, after officers stopped the taxi in which he was a passenger.

Hooded youths torched police cars and a double decker bus in Tottenham on Saturday while a block of flats was gutted after the carpet store on the ground floor was set alight, sending terrified families fleeing into the street.

The violence then spread to other parts of London on Sunday, including Brixton in south London, another racially mixed district which like Tottenham was rocked by riots in the 1980s, with a third day of unrest in Hackney in east London.

The scenes in Tottenham evoked memories of severe rioting on the Broadwater Farm housing estate there in 1985, sparked when a local woman died after police raided her home. In the ensuing violence, a policeman was hacked to death.

A quarter of a century on, with Britain’s economic growth almost at a standstill and government cuts to public spending hitting areas of high unemployment like Tottenham, some residents said they saw the seeds of more unrest.

Osagyefo Tongogara, a community activist who was in Tottenham during the Broadwater Farm riots, said: “There are a lot of parallels with 1985. I don’t call it rioting, I call it rebellion.

“People are angry and frustrated. If you have a community with high levels of unemployment and cutbacks in welfare then this is what you are going to get,” he told AFP.

“We are told that this is a global financial crisis and that we are all in this together but why should we be?

“I don’t know everything about the crisis surrounding this young man’s death. But you can’t just put it (the unrest) down to that or down to criminality. That’s a simplistic explanation for this.”

But others in Tottenham said that although the police had mishandled the aftermath of Duggan’s shooting in an area where there were underlying tensions, there was no excuse for the violence that followed.

“There is anger and frustration here but I feel people have taken advantage of it,” said resident Adam Cuthbert, 24, as he surveyed the damage with his girlfriend.

“The majority of the people on Saturday weren’t from here, they were from other areas. It was people from outside using it as an excuse to create havoc.”

Cheryline Lee, a Tottenham resident, in her 50s, agreed.

“We are not condoning the rioting,” she said. “The police should actually be able to talk to people. But burning buildings like this is much too much. People have lost their houses and people have lost their jobs as well.”

Chuka Umunna, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party who represents a district near Brixton, agreed that the “anger and frustration arising from the tragic death” of Duggan was no excuse for the unrest.

“It’s shocking, it’s completely opportunistic and it’s totally unacceptable,” he said.

British officials were united in their attempts to blame “criminals”.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Monday condemned the violence as he visited Tottenham to view the damage.

“Let’s be clear, the violence we saw last night had absolutely nothing to do with the death of Mr Duggan. It was needless, opportunist theft and violence — nothing more and nothing less,” he said.

London’s deputy mayor Kit Malthouse, who watched Sunday’s violence unfold from the central police control room, said he saw no evidence of a protest, just looting.

“We’re talking about opportunists,” he told BBC television.

Doubt has now been thrown on the original version of events of the shooting that sparked the Tottenham violence.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating the shooting, initially said 29-year-old father-of-four Duggan was killed in an exchange of fire.

The IPCC were even forced to issue a statement to deny rumours that Duggan had been shot in the head, “execution-style”. Ballistic results were expected on Tuesday.

Professor Gus John of the University of London, a Grenada-born academic who has written extensively about race issues in Britain, said dismissing the rioters as thugs was “fatuous” and failed to acknowledge the deeper issues.

“Such labels don’t solve anything,” he told AFP.

“The question is, what disposes these young men to be like that? Why is the largest section of the young offender population in Britain young and black?” AGENCIES

Termites eat millions of rupees in bank

According to police, an army of termites munched through 10 million Indian rupees in currency notes, stored in a steel chest at a bank, in Barabanki, a town 30 kilometres southwest of Lucknow.

Police officials said that the bank manager discovered the damage when he opened the reinforced room in an old bank building. The currency was equivalent to about US$ 250,000.

The police have registered a case of negligence against bank officials. The termites had damaged bank furniture and documents in the past.

Death toll of south Russia flood rises to 11

MOSCOW: The death toll of the floods in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region has risen to 11, local authorities said Saturday.

According to the latest information, 11 people died and three are missing, a source from the local administration was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

Earlier reports said the flood has killed eight people.

Torrential rains in mountainous areas caused rivers to overflow, flooding 21 villages. About 300 people were evacuated and a state of emergency was imposed in the area earlier.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin to assess the damage caused by the flood and take measure to help those affected.

The regional governor Alexander Tkachyov has pledged to pay compensation to affected families as soon as possible. AGENCIES

Floodwater inundates Sujawal, heads to Thatta

Flood inundates Sujawal, heads to Thatta

Staff Report

KARACHI: Floodwater submerged Sujawal on Sunday, spreading further destruction in an area where hundreds of thousands of people who fled to higher ground are in dire need of food and water.

Almost all of Sujawal’s 250,000 residents fled from the town before the water rushed in, but the damage to homes, clinics and schools added to the widespread devastation the floods have caused across Pakistan, said Hadi Baksh, a disaster management official in southern Sindh province.

Authorities in Sujawal were trying to limit the damage, but the water level has already risen to five feet (1.5 meters) in the center of town and up to 10 feet (3 meters) in the surrounding villages, said Anwarul Haq, the top official in Sujawal.

The floodwaters also threatened Thatta, one of the major cities in southern

Gen. David Petraeus collapses during Senate hearing

WASHINGTON: General David Petraeus, commander of United States war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, fainted as he was questioned during a Senate hearing.

He slumped over his desk a little over an hour into the morning hearing on the current situation in Afghanistan.

It happened just as Sen John McCain saluted him as a “national hero” but questioned if the intended July 2011 withdrawal of troops remained on track.

Military personnel immediately rushed over to the general. After a few moments, the he was revived and was escorted out of the committee room, walking unaided. He returned about 25 minutes later to applause and appeared to be in good spirits.

As he left the Capitol, Gen Petraeus, 57, who was last year treated for early stage prostate cancer, told reporters that he “just got a little lightheaded, a little dehydrated”. “It wasn”t Senator McCain”s question,” he added.

He blamed his collapse on not eating breakfast. The hearing has been rescheduled for this morning [weds].

Gen Petraeus had not previously shown any signs of exhaustion or dehydration during the hearing reported that the 30,000-man increase in troop levels would be complete by the August deadline set by President Barack Obama.

In several lengthy appearances before the Senate and House armed services committees in September 2007 to testify on Iraq, Gen Petraeus was reported to have endured great back pain and got through it with the help of pain-relieving drugs.

As the most popular and widely known general of his generation, Petraeus is approaching a new juncture in a career that catapulted him to fame when President George W. Bush sent him to Baghdad in early 2007 to carry out a long-shot “surge” strategy that arguably rescued Iraq from collapse.

Many believe he is the leading candidate to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while rumours abound that he is considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 or 2016.

The senators” questioning mostly concerned whether the United States would meet the president”s deadline to begin pulling out troops in July 2011.

After insisting throughout the hearing that he supported Mr. Obama”s policy, Sen Carl Levin pressed Gen Petraeus for his “best professional judgment” on the withdrawal timeline.

Gen Petraeus hesitated for several moments, and said that even “in a perfect world, we have to be careful with timelines”.

He stressed that there was “nuance” to what the president”s policy, emphasising that the withdrawal would begin only if certain security, political and development conditions were met. Obama “did not imply a race to the exits,” he clarified.

His remarks came as the president promised “disrupt and dismantle” al-Qaeda and to continue reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan to a crowd of National Guardsmen in Florida.

First foreign aid arrives in Uzbekistan for Kyrgyz crisis

ANDIJAN: A plane carrying the first foreign aid for refugees, who fled the violence in Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan, arrived Wednesday in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, local officials said.

At least two killed in Indonesia quake

JAKARTA: At least two people were killed when a powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia on Wednesday, police said.

Police said initial reports suggested they were crushed when their houses collapsed as the quake shook Yapen Island off northern Papua province shortly after midday.

“Two people were killed on the island because of the quake. We”re still collecting information about the damage,” Yapen Island police chief Deny Siregar told foreign news agency.

nashville newspaper

It has been days since the flooding of Nashville Tennessee happened. It is now said that the infrastructures in Nashville are bit at a risk of unsafe issues. The city is struggling to recover the damage the calamity has brought upon them. They miscalculated the amount of damage involved and when they saw a clear aerial view of the surroundings, they concluded that the damage was more on a larger scale than they thought.
The officials are now contemplating on the best way to recover the lost houses, buildings and other city infrastructures.
Meanwhile, 2 more are missing after the tragedy has occurred. Many are listed as dead, missing or injured after the event and they are in search for a complete number and listing of the names of victims involved

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