10 killed as tornado strikes Miss.; others injured

YAZOO CITY: Tornadoes ripped through four states in the South on Saturday, leaving broken crosses in front of a flattened church, splintering houses and overturning vehicles as they killed 10 people, including three children.

One of the hardest hit areas was Mississippi”s Yazoo County, where Gov. Haley Barbour grew up. He described “utter obliteration” among the picturesque hills rising abruptly from the flat Mississippi Delta.

More than 15 other counties in Mississippi also had damage. The swath of debris forced rescuers to pick up some of the injured on all-terrain vehicles the west-central part of the state. Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to track eastward.

In Yazoo City, Malcolm Gordon, 63, stood with members of his family peering out at the neighborhood through a broken window.

Above them, the roof was gone, a tree lay across part of the house and power lines stretched across the yard. The smell of shredded pine trees hung in the warm breeze in the neighborhood of modest houses and mobile homes surrounded by hills and ravines.

Gordon and his wife, Diane, hid in a closet while much of the neighborhood was blown away.

“I”ll just bulldoze what”s left and start over,” he said.

It was one of several unlikely survival stories to emerge from the destruction.

Essie Hendrix, manager of Peebles department store in Yazoo City, said she and other employees were inside with about 15 customers when the tornado struck. An assistant manager took the customers to the back of the store, and Hendrix saw the tornado barreling through the parking lot. She huddled between a safe and a sturdy desk to avoid flying glass and debris.

“It was like a rumbling and a roaring and stuff was falling,” Hendrix said. “It sounded like it was going to suck us out of there. It lasted about two minutes, but it felt like it lasted an hour.”

No one in the store was injured.

About 100 yards away, the owner of Ribeye”s Steak House said everyone ran into a walk-in freezer to safety when they saw the tornado.

“The roof was caving in, TVs flying off the shelves and it was horrible,” Mitchell Saxton said. “… We got in the walk-in freezer, sat in there for about ten minutes. When I came out it was really bad. Just thanking the good Lord I”m here and able to talk with you all.”

Saxton”s restaurant was destroyed but no one was hurt.

The severe weather started in Louisiana, just across the state line from Mississippi when a tornado destroyed 12 homes and warehouses at Complex Chemical Co., which makes antifreeze and other automotive fluids, owner Jerry Melton said. A small nitrogen leak was reported but didn”t cause any problems.

The storm system moved east, with the twister hitting nearby Yazoo County, Miss., killing four people. In adjacent Holmes County, another person was killed. A little farther northeast, a tornado hit Choctaw County, where another five victims were reported, including children ages 3 months, 9 and 14.

Authorities in Choctow County were going house-to-house in the areas with the worst damage to check for any injured.

Meteorologists said it was too soon to tell whether a single long-lasting tornado — or multiple shorter ones — caused the death and damage in the different cities.

In Yazoo City, stunned residents stood on a hill overlooking the destruction. A National Guard helicopter sat nearby, and later took the governor on an aerial tour of the town.

“Sad, man,” said 22-year-old Rafael Scott, shaking his head. “It”s really hard to believe it. I heard they found a couple of bodies.”

Three broken crosses stood near a flattened church, and religious materials were scattered among twisted steel, broken wood and furniture. A nearby funeral home was reduced to rubble. In a patch of woods, pieces of tin were twisted high up in the broken trees.

Josh Nicholson, 26, was driving home through the storm with his wife, 1-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter when a power line fell across the road in front their sport utility vehicle.

“There was nowhere we could go,” he said.

Nicholson and his wife took the children out of their car seats and they all huddled in the back of the vehicle. All of the sudden, Nicholson said, the vehicle spun around and a tree clipped part of the truck where the 4-year-old had been sitting. Luckily, nobody was hurt.

“It was scary,” Nicholson said.

Thousands across the state were without electricity, and downed power lines and trees blocked roads. At least four people had been brought by four-wheeler to a triage center at an old discount store parking lot, Yazoo City Mayor McArthur Straughter said as sirens whined in the background.

Jim Pollard, a spokesman for American Medical Response ambulance service, said four patients from Yazoo County were airlifted and some 20 others were taken to hospitals. At least four people were in critical condition.

Houston Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt, who pitched on Friday, was returning to Mississippi after a tornado damaged his parents” home in Weir, Miss.

Willie M. Horton, 78, said he hunkered down in the hallway of his house in Holmes County, which borders Yazoo. “Everything is down. A lot of trees. Big trees,” Horton said.

He said his sister-in-law”s house nearby was damaged, and a nephew”s mobile home was carried away by the storm.

“My cousin — half his barn is gone,” Horton said.

The weather hampered crews trying to clean up an oil spill after an offshore rig exploded earlier this week off the coast of Louisiana. Several sporting events and festivals also were rescheduled.

earth day

Maybe your mother told you that you should always put clean underwear on in the morning in case you were ever to get hit by a bus. But what if every time you changed your skivvies, 20 trees would be planted in Africa? It could happen. PACT underwear [www.wearPACT.com], the pet project from the design celeb Yves Behar, donates 10 percent of its sales to an ever- increasing roster of nonprofits like Dave Eggers’s writing program, 826 Valencia, and Oceana. Each organization gets its own print so you can wear your cause on your, er, oh never mind. The newest collaboration is with the architect David Adjaye and Wangari Maathai, whose Green Belt Movement works to empower women and fight deforestation, soil erosion and water scarcity in Kenya. For Earth Week only, 100 percent of the proceeds of Adjaye’s specially designed Green Belt print underwear will contribute to the planting of 10,000 trees. (After April 25, it reverts to 10 percent.) See? Change is good!

kick-ass

Superhero action comedy “Kick-Ass” won a tight contest at the North American box office this weekend, edging out “How to Train Your Dragon” and reversing the order from early estimates, according to final data released on Monday.
It was the second photo-finish in a row in the coveted race for the No.1 spot.

“Kick-Ass” made $19.83 million at U.S. and Canada box offices, compared to an earlier estimate released on Sunday of $19.75 million. “Dragon” made $19.63 million, but the previous estimate put the figure at $20 million. Read more

jeffrey conroy

Jeff Conroy GUILTY of 1st Degree Manslaughter as a Hate Crime of Marcelo Lucero! Mother Forgives!
Jeffrey Conroy’s track record of targeting “Mexicans” and his confession to police that he and his friends would sometimes go “Beaner Stomping” made it clear to jurors that the killing of Marcelo Lucero was a Hate Crime, the jurors said. Conroy, the Long Island man accused of stabbing and killing an Ecuadorean immigrant in a racially motivated attack was convicted today of Manslaughter as a hate crime, a less serious crime than the initial Murder charge — saving him from spending the rest of his life behind bars, a much shorter sentence then he inflicted on Marcelo.

Seventeen months after the stabbing in 2008 and 24 miles from the parking lot in Patchogue where police found a 370-foot trail of Marcelo’s blood leading to his stabbed body, Read more

Car bomb targets hotel in Kandahar; 6 hurt

KABUL: Witnesses say a car bomb has targeted a hotel in the heart of the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar, injuring at least six people.

Police official Nidah Mohammed says at least two of those injured is in serious condition.

Witnesses say windows were shattered in the four-story Noor Jehan Hotel when the car bomb went off in the parking lot.

Idol Contestant Disqualified + news

Idol Contestant Disqualified , As per fellow American Idol contestant for the Hollywood Week, Samantha Musa, the response is “Yes”. Samantha musa auditioned for Idol in LA and got a Golden Ticket, but we never saw her on TV.

If you have seen the Wednesday February 17th episode you would have noticed that Chris Golightly was integrated in the group shot at episode’s end, but when the individual dancing montage was showed Golightly was missing and instead we saw Tim Urban shaking his groove thing.

Many of the viewers remember Chris Golightly as the man who has lived in around 25 foster homes from the time when he was 18 months old.

The news of Golightly’s disqualification got confirmed with Ryan Seacrest’s TWEET, Ryan on Wednesday, February 17, soon after the Idol Top 24 were announced Tweeted that, “been determined that Chris Golightly is disqualified from IDOL, he will be replaced by contestant Tim Urban as part of the Top 24?. Though the reason of the disqualification hasn’t been estimated yet, and even Ryan remained shady on it and wrote “must have broken a rule or maybe had previous deal”.

Plane Crash Austin, Echelon Building Austin

Plane Crash Austin, Echelon Building Austin, AUSTIN, Texas: A low-flying small plane crashed into an office building that houses the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas on Thursday, and at least one person was missing, witnesses and officials said.

Assistant Austin Fire Chief Harry Evans said two people have also been taken to a hospital. Their conditions were not immediately known.

A law enforcement official said the crash did not initially appear to be the result of a crime or terrorism. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the crash.

Thick black and gray smoke was billowing out of the second and third stories of the building Thursday as fire crews using ladder trucks and hoses battled the fire. Dozens of windows were blown out of the hulking black building, and vehicles traveling on a nearby highway paused to look.

Peggy Walker, an IRS revenue officer who works in the building said she was sitting at her desk when the plane crashed.

“It felt like a bomb blew off. The ceiling caved in and windows blew in. We got up and ran,” she said.

Matt Farney, 39, who was in the parking lot of a nearby Home Depot, said he saw a low-flying private plane near some apartments and the office building just before it crashed.

“I figured he was going to buzz the apartments or he was showing off,” Farney said, adding that the plane dipped down. “It was a ball of flames that was high or higher than the apartments. It was surreal. It was insane. … It didn’t look like he was out of control or anything.”

Sitting at her desk about a half-mile from the crash, Michelle Santibanez said she felt vibrations. She and her co-workers ran to the windows, where they saw a scene that reminded them of the 2001 terrorist attacks, she said.

“It was the same kind of scenario with window panels falling out and desks falling out and paperwork flying,” said Santibanez, an accountant.

Fire crews were inside the building battling the blaze and looking for survivors, Evans said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the agency was investigating but had no immediate information on the type of plane or how many people were on board.

SC hears petitions relating to NRO

The Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan has started hearing petitions related to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).

A 17-member larger bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry conducting hearing. The former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmad is also present in the court.

The 17-member larger bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry includes Justice Javed Iqbal, Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan, Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan, Justice Tassadduq Hussain Jillani, Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk, Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed, Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed, Justice Muhammad Sair Ali, Justice Mahmood Akhtar Shahid Siddiqui, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, Justice Rahmat Husain Jafferi, Justice Tariq Parvez and Justice Ghulam Rabbani.

The hearing related to petitions filed by Dr Mubashar Hassan and Roedad Khan in the Supreme Court in which they have challenged the controversial ordinance, calling it contrary to the Constitution and fundamental rights.

The Chief Justice has appointed three amicus curiae to assist the court on the issue, including Shaiq Usmani, former judge of the Sindh High Court, Mian Allah Nawaz, advocate Supreme Court and former chief justice of Lahore High Court and M Sardar Khan, former attorney general for Pakistan.

These advocates had also been appointed as amicus curiae in October 2007 to assist the Supreme Court on the NRO issue.

The apex court has issued notices to the Attorney General of Pakistan, the petitioners and the respondents for the above date of hearing.

The court will also be hearing review petitions of Asfandyar Wali Khan and Anwar Saifullah Khan along with the petitions filed by Dr Mubashar Hassan and Roedad Khan. Meanwhile, some convicts/prisoners who have also prayed for benefit under the NRO have also been issued notices through the concerned superintendents of the jails.

Blast Near Sessions Court Peshawar, 2 killed

PESHAWAR, Pakistan News: At least two persons were killed and eight others were injured in blast at Jail Road of Peshawar near sessions court premises.

According to reports the explosion might be a car bomb blast. The clouds of smoke seen rising from the place of the blast.

The relief and rescue teams have reached to the spot of bombing in central area of Peshawar.

According to an eyewitness a bomber detonated his explosives near the court. At least three cars were destroyed in the blast.

The bomber wanted to enter in the court building, the witness said.

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