El Salvador Floods, Mudslides kill 124

SAN SALVADOR: El Salvador Floods, Mudslides kill 124, A late-season hurricane ravaged parts of Central America on Sunday as floods and landslides killed at least 124 in El Salvador, where the president declared a state of emergency, and thousands were left homeless in Nicaragua.

Hurricane Ida, which grew to a category two storm Sunday, was moving into the southern Gulf of Mexico but local officials said it had caused no casualties or damage to infrastructure in the popular tourist resort city of Cancun.

Forecasters at the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said Ida had strengthened packing top wind speeds of 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour as it moved over Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

The tail-end of Ida coupled with a low pressure system in the Pacific caused heavy flooding in El Salvador that left 124 people dead, civil defense officials said. President Mauricio Funes declared a state of emergency.

Civil Defense chief Jorge Melendez added that “there could be more fatalities” in the eastern regions of Verapaz and Tepetitan.

In Tepetitan, landslides and overflowing rivers carried away some 30 houses, authorities said. Some residents had agreed to evacuate the area, but a number “refused to leave their homes,” according to mayor Ana Jovel.

In Verapaz, 71 miles (114 km) southeast of the capital San Salvador, officials reported a raging torrent of mud, rocks and tree trunks ripping through a whole section of the town, burying houses and cars.

A dozen bodies of victims were hauled from the devastation to a local chapel and covered with white sheets, caked with mud, as they awaited identification by relatives.

El Salvador has been on a state of alert since Thursday as heavy rains associated with Ida began to affect the region, destroying an estimated 930 homes and leaving some 13,000 people homeless in Nicaragua.

On Saturday, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega said his government hoped to make available up to 4.4 million dollars in aid for those affected by the storm.

At 0001 GMT on Monday, the National Hurricane Center said Ida was about 140 miles (225 km) west-northwest of the western tip of Cuba, moving near 12 miles (19 kilometers) per hour.

The center said the storm, currently a category two on the Saffir-Simpson scale, strengthened with sustained winds near 105 mph (165 km/hr) but was forecast to weaken on Monday, the NHC said.

A hurricane watch has been issued for parts of the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as for the area east of the Mississippi-Alabama border through the northwest area of Florida.

The NHC stressed the hurricane watch does not cover the city of New Orleans, which was devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

Forecasters warned Ida could dump between three to five inches of rain in the Yucatan and western Cuba, with up to eight inches in some places, as well as storm surges and “large and destructive waves.”

This year, the Pacific’s El Nino ocean-warming phenomenon has resulted in an especially calm Atlantic hurricane season — a welcome respite for Caribbean and southeastern US residents still smarting from a 2008 pounding.

There have only been two other hurricanes in the 2009 Atlantic season, which runs from June 1 to late November 30.

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El Salvador Floods, Mudslides kill 124 was first posted on November 9, 2009 at 12:46 pm.

Actress Jessica Tandy,Kathy Bates

Actress Jessica Tandy,Kathy Bates : A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy’s career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that course of time she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at the age of 80, something unheard of in a town that worships youth and nubile beauty. She was born Jessie Alice Tandy in London in 1909, the daughter of Harry Tandy, a traveling salesman, and Jessie Helen Horspool

Actress Jessica Tandy,Kathy Bates:A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy’s career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that course of time she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at the age of 80, something unheard of in a town that worships youth and nubile beauty. She was born Jessie Alice Tandy in London in 1909, the daughter of Harry Tandy, a traveling salesman, and Jessie Helen Horspool. Her parents enrolled her as a teenager at the Ben Greet Academy of Acting where she showed immediate promise. She was 16 when she made her professional bow as Sara Manderson in the play “The Manderson Girls,” and was subsequently invited to join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Within a couple of years Jessica was making a number of other debuts as well. Her first West End play was in “The Rumour” at the Court Theatre in 1929; her Gotham bow was in “The Matriarch” at the Longacre Theatre in 1930; and her initial film role was as a maid in The Indiscretions of Eve (1932).

Jessica married British actor Jack Hawkins in 1932 after the couple had met performing in the play “Autumn Crocus” the year before. They had one daughter, Susan, before parting ways after eight years of marriage. An unconventional beauty with slightly stern-eyed and sharp, hawkish features, she was passed over for leading lady roles in films, thereby focusing strongly on a transatlantic stage career throughout the 1930s and 1940s. She grew in stature while enacting a succession of Shakespeare’s premiere ladies (Titania, Viola, Ophelia, Cordelia). At the same time she enjoyed personal successes elsewhere in such plays as “French Without Tears,” “Honour Thy Father,” “Jupiter Laughs,” “Anne of England” and “Portrait of a Madonna.” And then she gave life to Blanche DuBois.

When Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, Jessica’s name became forever associated with this entrancing Southern belle character. One of the most complex, beautifully drawn, and still sought-after femme parts of all time, she went on to win the coveted Tony award. Aside from introducing Marlon Brando to the general viewing public, “Streetcar” shot Jessica’s marquee value up a thousandfold. But not in films.

While her esteemed co-stars Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden were given the luxury of recreating their roles in Elia Kazan’s stark, black-and-white cinematic adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Jessica was devastatingly bypassed. Vivien Leigh, who played the role on stage in London and had already immortalized another coy, manipulative Southern belle on celluloid (Scarlett O’Hara), was a far more marketable film celebrity at the time and was signed on to play the delusional Blanche. To be fair, Leigh was nothing less than astounding in the role and went on to deservedly win the Academy Award (along with Malden and Hunter). Jessica would exact her revenge on Hollywood in later years.

In 1942 she entered into a second marriage with actor/producer/director Hume Cronyn, a 52-year union that produced two children, Christopher and Tandy, the latter an actor in her own right. The couple not only enjoyed great solo success, they relished performing in each other’s company. A few of their resounding theatre triumphs included the “The Fourposter” (1951), “Triple Play” (1959), “Big Fish, Little Fish (1962), “Hamlet” (he played Polonius; she played Gertrude) (1963), “The Three Sisters (1963) and “A Delicate Balance.” They supported together in films too, their first being The Seventh Cross (1944). In the film The Green Years (1946), Jessica, who was two years older than Cronyn, actually played his daughter! Throughout the 1950s they built up a sturdy reputation as “America’s First Couple of the Theatre.more info bollywood91

Nobody Won Or Lost On NRO: Gillani

LAHORE: Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani Sunday said the government did not let National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) become an issue of ego and that nobody won or lost on this issue. Talking to media, the Premier said NRO is a thing of past, therefore, there is need for bringing it up anymore.

LAHORE: Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani Sunday said the government did not let National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) become an issue of ego and that nobody won or lost on this issue.

Talking to media, the Premier said NRO is a thing of past, therefore, there is need for bringing it up anymore.

He said the government reinstated the Chief Justice and the deposed judiciary through an executive order.

He said Balochistan issue is not a new one, as the province has been facing deprivation for the last 62 years. We are also well aware of the terrorist activities in Balochistan and that exchange of views will be held during meeting with PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif, he added.

To a question, he said Kerry Lugar Bill is a US law and not Pakistan’s. “No compromise will be made on the national security and nuclear program of Pakistan,” he asserted, adding, it is up to us to either accept or reject the aid under KLB.

He said it was the decision of the judiciary to present NRO before the Parliament.

Hurricane Ida Projected Path,Hurricane Ida Path

Hurricane Ida Projected Path,Hurricane Ida Path:Hurricane Ida Projected Path 2009 – Hurricane Ida path and other information on the natural disaster can be found here. Hurricane Ida is currently unleashing its anger on the island of Nicaragua where it has already forced 2,000 people to evacuate and has left many more without electricity.TS Ida has winds of 75 mph (120 kph) and is moving to the northwest at 6 mph (9 kph) and has Mexico on its target. Hurricane Ida could dump as much as 20 inches of rain in the country.

Hurricane Ida Projected Path,Hurricane Ida Path:Hurricane Ida Projected Path 2009 – Hurricane Ida path and other information on the natural disaster can be found here.Hurricane Ida is currently unleashing its anger on the island of Nicaragua where it has already forced 2,000 people to evacuate and has left many more without electricity.TS Ida has winds of 75 mph (120 kph) and is moving to the northwest at 6 mph (9 kph) and has Mexico on its target.Hurricane Ida could dump as much as 20 inches of rain in the country.

El Salvador Floods,Mudslides Kill 124, 60 Missing

El Salvador Floods,Mudslides Kill 124, 60 Missing: Mud and boulders loosened by heavy rains swept down a volcano and partly buried a small town Sunday, swallowing up homes as flooding and landslides across El Salvador killed at least 124 people, authorities said.

El Salvador Floods,Mudslides Kill 124, 60 Missing:Mud and boulders loosened by heavy rains swept down a volcano and partly buried a small town Sunday, swallowing up homes as flooding and landslides across El Salvador killed at least 124 people, authorities said.

Hundreds of soldiers, police and residents dug through rock and debris in Verapaz looking for another 60 people missing from the mudslide, which struck before dawn Sunday while residents were still in their beds.

Matias Mendoza, 26, was at home with his wife Claudia and their year-old son, Franklin, when the earth began moving.

“It was about two in the morning when the rain started coming down harder, and the earth started shaking,” Mendoza recalled. “I warned my wife and grabbed my son, and all of a sudden we heard a sound. The next thing I knew I was lying among parts of the walls of my house.”

“A few minutes later, I found my wife and my son in the middle of the rubble, and, thank God, we’re alive,” said Mendoza, who suffered cuts on his check that emergency workers stitched up.

Almost 7,000 people saw their homes damaged by landslides or cut off by floodwaters following three days of downpours from a low-pressure system indirectly related to Hurricane Ida, which brushed Mexico’s Cancun resort on Sunday before steaming into the Gulf of Mexico.

President Mauricio Funes declared a national emergency and said he would work with the United Nations to evaluate the extent of the damage.

“The images that we have seen today are of a devastated country,” Funes said. He called the damages incalculable.

El Salvador’s Civil Protection agency raised the death toll to 124 late Sunday, with another 60 people missing. It didn’t break down the deaths by location, but under the previous toll of 94, officials had listed 61 deaths in San Salvador, 23 in San Vicente province, including 10 in the town of Verapaz, and the remaining fatalities spread across the country. Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza said that 60 people were missing in Verapaz.

Some of the worst damage was in Verapaz, where mudslides covered cars and boulders two yards (meters) wide blocked streets.

The rain loosened a flow of mud and rocks that descended from the nearby Chichontepec volcano and buried homes and streets in Verapaz, a town of about 3,000 located 30 miles (50 kms) east of San Salvador, the capital.more info yahoo news