Chaman: 5 killed, 1 injured in road mishap

 

As per details, a car carrying six people was travelling to Quetta from Chaman when a dumper tumbled over it, killing at least five people and severely injuring another.

 

According to locals, the incident occurred apparently due to bad weather and slippery on the road caused by snowfall.
 

Cold weather grips most parts of country

 

The cold wave persists in most parts of the country with lowest temperature as -1C was even recorded in Mithi area of Sindh while temperature also fell below zero Celsius degrees in Balochistan including Quetta.

 

The temperature recorded in different cities was: Parachinar-14C, Kalat-8C, Quetta-7C, Zhob -5C, Murree- 4C and -1C in Toba Tek Singh and Sahiwal.

 

The cold weather also persists in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa and Northern areas while farmers have been informed that rain is not expected in most cultivation areas within next 3 days.
 

Lootera faces trouble again

Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha, which marks the launch of the newly formed production house Phantom Films, has hit yet another road block. The film, which was earlier delayed owing to bad whether conditions while shooting in Dalhousie, is currently being shot in rural Bengal and has once again run into trouble with the erratic weather conditions and crazed fans.

Currently in a town called Khanyan, the film’s shoot has been constantly delayed as the weather has been very erratic and shooting the night scenes have become especially difficult. The film crew has also had to deal with the crazed population, with the first two days of outdoor shoot going haywire as the crowd poured in from all corners of the fields.

The crew has not been able to find suitable accommodation near the shoot location and have had to set up base in Kolkata city which is a good four hours away. With this distance between the actual shoot location and the place that they are staying, the crew has since been put on a rigid schedule which involves them leaving in the wee hours of dawn between 3:30am and 4:30am only to return around 9 pm, with just enough time to eat, do some prep for the next day and hit the sack for hopefully 4 hours at least.

Speaking about the new road blocks, Vikas Bahl, one of the producers says, “The crew including Sonakshi and Ranveer are working very hard to finish the schedule on time even if it means sleeping only for 3 hours. The initial two days we had crazy crowds pouring in when they heard Ranveer and Sonakshi were in town. But now, things are under control.

With Lootera scheduled for an October release this year, producers Balaji and Phantom Films will surely have a race against time to finish the shoot.

Hundreds lose life in freezing Europe

 

Bitterly cold weather sweeping across Europe claimed more victims on Sunday, brought widespread disruption to transport services, and left thousands without power with warnings that low temperatures would continue into next week.

 

Hundreds have lost their lives in eastern Europe as freezing weather sweeps across the continent westwards, while major airports warned that services would be delayed or cancelled.

 

Steven Keates, a weather forecaster at Britain s Met Office, said the severe wintry conditions were expected to last, and spread to other areas.

 

“It will still be very cold, maybe not quite the exceptional temperatures we ve seen this last week, but still very cold,” he told Reuters.

 

“(It will be) perhaps turning increasingly unsettled across southern and eastern Europe, so that will probably bring a risk of snow for Italy across to Greece and up round the Balkan countries.”

 

A state of emergency was declared in Bosnia after the cold snap claimed its seventh victim, and avalanches and strong winds cut off hundreds of villages in eastern parts.

 

Helicopters were needed to deliver aid packages to mountainous areas and take the sick to hospital.

 

Greece also declared an emergency situation in the western Peloponnese peninsula after heavy rain caused flooding and an 82-year old woman drowned while trying to escape her house.

 

Nine more deaths from freezing temperatures were registered in Ukraine overnight, emergency services said, taking the death toll to 131 from a nine-day cold spell, the most severe in the country for six years with night temperatures down as low as minus 33 Celsius (minus 27 Fahrenheit) in parts.

 

Many of the dead were homeless people with bodies being found in the streets under snow, in rivers and in doorways. More than 3,000 heated tents have been set up around the country to provide makeshift accommodation for the homeless.

 

In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked local authorities to waive the ban on admitting inebriated individuals to homeless shelters as eight more people died taking the death toll to 53, PAP news agency reported.

 

The extreme cold also caused the death of at least three people in Hungary, national news agency MTI said, and at least five people froze to death in Lithuania over the weekend in Lithuania as the temperature fell below -30 Celsius overnight.

 

Transport networks were also badly hit as the chilling weather moved west, prompting severe weather warnings to be issued across much of France and Britain.

 

London s Heathrow, Europe s busiest airport, said it had cancelled about half of its normal services as more than 15cm (6 inches) of snow fell in parts of England overnight and temperatures dropped to almost -10 Celsius.

 

Many of Britain s other airports were forced to shut runways overnight and warned of further disruption, while rail services were affected and motorways near London were brought to a standstill, forcing some divers to abandon their vehicles.

 

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower received a coating of snow and more downfalls were expected to bring problems to the French capital s main airports.

 

The French death toll rose to five, after a 12-year old boy died of hypothermia after falling into a frozen pond in eastern France and two homeless people were found dead.

 

Meanwhile about 86,000 Italians were left without power because of trees falling on power lines, Livio Gallo, head of state power company Enel told SkyTG24 television. The deaths of 13 people were blamed on the bad weather,
Italian police said, including three men who died of heart attacks while shoveling snow.

 

Two highways in central Italy that cross the Apenines remained closed, the Interior Ministry said, while in Rome, schools and public offices are to remain closed until at least Tuesday, Mayor Gianni Alemanno said.

 

He urged people to get out and clean sidewalks, and said the city had handed out 2,350 free shovels.  While the cold snap has brought death and misery across Europe, some made the most of the conditions.

 

Snowboarders took to the streets of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo after it was blanketed by a record snowfall of 107 cm.

 

The traditional Sartai horse race on ice also went ahead in Lithuania and local media reported more than a dozen men and women from a health club went swimming in a lake near Vilnius.

 

Meanwhile in Belgium, police found that overnight temperatures of about -10 Celsius were so low that machines to test motorists  alcohol levels did not work.

 

Big freeze grips Europe with 200 dead

LONDON: Temperatures have plunged to new lows in Europe where a week-long cold snap has now claimed more than 220 lives as forecasters warned that the big freeze would tighten its grip over the weekend.

A total of 223 people have died from the cold weather in the last seven days according to an AFP tally, with Ukraine suffering the heaviest toll.

People have been found dead on the streets in some countries, while thousands have been trapped in mountain villages in Serbia. In Italy, Venice’s canals started freezing over and even Rome was dusted in snow.

The lowest temperatures recorded in Europe were in the southwest of the Czech Republic, where the mercury dropped as low as minus 38.1 degrees Celsius (minus 36.5 Fahrenheit) overnight Thursday.

The EU executive said Friday that vital Russian gas deliveries had dropped in nine countries, with Russian giant Gazprom invoking flexibility clauses as it also braves a cold snap. Supplies fell 30 percent in Austria and 24 percent in Italy.

Ukraine’s emergencies ministry raised its death toll to 101 since the cold snap took hold, 64 of whom died on the streets.

Almost 1,600 people have sought medical attention for frostbite and hypothermia and thousands have flocked to temporary shelters.

The chilling temperatures killed eight more people over 24 hours in Poland, bringing the death toll to 37 since the deep freeze began a week ago, police said.

Temperatures plunged to minus 35 Celsius in some areas of Poland Friday.

In Bulgaria parts of the River Danube froze over, while another six people were found dead from the cold, bringing the overall tally to 16 in the last week, according to local media.

Most of the dead in the European Union’s poorest country were villagers found frozen to death on the side of the road or in their unheated homes, the reports said.

More than 1,000 Bulgarian schools remained closed for a third day amid fresh snowfalls and piercing winds in the northeast.

In neighbouring Romania two more people died, bringing the overall toll to 24, and hundreds of schools remained closed.

In Rome, residents experienced only their second day of snow in 15 years, with white flakes covering palm trees, ancient Roman ruins and Baroque churches across the capital.

Up to five centimetres (two inches) of snow fell in some districts and ancient monuments like the Colosseum were closed to visitors for fear of damage to the structure.

Canals in Venice, where temperatures fell as low as minus 5 Celsius, started freezing. However trains resumed normal service across the country except in and around Bologna and on a local line near Rome after days of delays.

Three people have died due to the extreme weather in recent days, including a homeless man found in Milan on Thursday.

An Italian ferry with over 300 people aboard got into difficulties off the port of Civitavecchia, north of Rome late Friday, hitting a harbour wall and ripping the side of the ship, port authorities said.

Two tugs managed to bring the “Sharden” safely in with all passengers and crew safe and sound.

In Estonia, a man was found frozen to death on a street in Tallinn, the first reported death there.

France also reported its first death after an 82-year-old man suffering from Alzheimer’s wandered out of his home in his pyjamas in the eastern French village of Lemberg and died of hypothermia.

One person died in Serbia, but teams of workers ploughed through snowdrifts to get food, supplies and aid to thousands of residents of mountain villages cut off by the weather.

“To help a woman who needed to reach a hospital we were breaking through two-metre (six-foot) snow drifts, which lasted for two and a half hours,” said Vedran Taskovic, a rescuer in the southeastern town of Vranje.

The cold snap has also killed people in the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Austria and Greece.

Swathes of Britain were bracing for snow after temperatures plunged to minus 11 degrees Celsius overnight in some areas, with authorities warning that the cold could catch people off-guard after a warmer-than-normal winter so far.

Further north, about 40 people were injured in about 100 road accidents caused by powdery snow and icy conditions, police said.

The first snows to hit Belgium caused more than 1,100 kilometres (700 miles) of traffic jams on roads and highways, said automobile associations. The last record was 948 kilometres registered in February 2010.

Algerian officials announced they had cancelled ferry services to the southern French port of Marseille because of the conditions. AGENCIES

Play called off at Qatar golf event

 

Play was called off at the Qatar Masters after just three hours of action as strong desert winds moved balls and made life difficult for players at Doha Golf Club on Friday.

 

European Tour officials said the tournament will be now played over 54 holes and finish on schedule on Sunday. With the final leg of the “Desert Swing” being held in Dubai next week it was logistically impossible to stretch the event to Monday.

 

Winds up to 40mph were predicted before the tournament began and the first round on Thursday was played even as a sandstorm raged over Qatar.

 

Officials first called off play at 9:13am local time on Friday, with the next announcement scheduled for 11.30.

 

However, the wind failed to ease off for three hours after that forcing officials to call off play for the day. A low pressure area over Iran was the cause of the strong winds, the weather forecast said.

 

Overnight leader Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano had dropped two shots over the first seven holes in the second round to slip behind John Daly when tournament officials decided to stop play.

 

Daly, who had shot a 67 in “brutal” conditions on Thursday had complained that he had to “eat” a lot of sand and many other players were also struggling with the conditions.
 

Gamer dies at internet cafe

 

A Taiwanese man who died while playing video games at an internet cafe was left for hours after fellow gamers failed to notice his death.

 

The body of Chen Rong-yu, 23, was found slumped in a chair at a cafe in New Taipei city on Tuesday night, according to local reports.

 

He was rigid on a chair with his hands stretched out towards the keyboard and mouse, police said.

 

He had been playing League of Legends.

 

Mr Chen s body had apparently been sitting there for up to nine hours without any of the 30 other people in the cafe noticing.

 

He was last seen by a waitress talking on the phone around noon on Wednesday.

 

An initial police investigation found he might have died of a cardiac arrest triggered by low temperatures.
The man s family said he had been treated for a heart problem in September of last year.

 

Police are still looking into the cause of the death.

 

They say they suspect that a combination of tiredness, lack of movement and the cold weather could have caused blood clots and a heart attack.
 

Nearly 250 of 362 saved from Papua New Guinea ship

 

A day after rescuing nearly 250 survivors of a ferry sinking, crews searching for more than 110 other people aboard came up empty Friday off Papua New Guinea s east coast. Many of the missing may still be in the vessel, now at the bottom of the sea.

 

The MV Rabaul Queen sank Thursday in rough seas, and big waves and strong winds continued to make rescue efforts difficult Friday. But Capt. Nurur Rahman, rescue coordinator for Papua New Guinea s National Maritime Safety Authority, said he had not given up hope of finding more survivors.

 

“I do not presume them to be dead yet,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

 

There were no reports of any more survivors by late Friday, and no bodies have been found.

 

Rony Naigu, a National Maritime Safety Authority official, told ABC about 100 people are thought to have been trapped inside when the ship was hit by three large waves and sank.

 

“The sea was really rough, windy, big waves. The boat tilted once, then twice, then three times and it went over,” said Alice Kakamara, who was recovering in a Lea hospital Friday after inhaling toxins during the sinking.

 

“There was oil everywhere,” she said.

 

Kakamara said she might not have survived had she not been with her 11-year-old nephew, who urged her not to give up. They found a lifeboat, but it too was sinking. She said she put the boy on another boat and later heard from relatives that he is OK.

 

The ferry s owners, Papua New Guinea-based Rabaul Shipping Company, said there had been 350 passengers and 12 crew aboard the 22-year-old Japanese-built ferry when it went down Thursday morning while traveling from Kimbe on the island of New Britain to the coastal city of Lae on the main island. A police official said most of those aboard were students.
“We are stunned and utterly devastated by what has happened,” managing director Peter Sharp said in a statement.

 

The company said the cause of the disaster remained unclear, but National Weather Service chief Sam Maiha told Papua New Guinea s Post-Courier newspaper that shipping agencies had been warned to keep ships moored this week because of strong winds.

 

By nightfall Thursday, 246 survivors had been rescued by merchant ships battling 16-foot (5-meter) swells and 45 mph (75 kph) winds at the disaster scene 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Lae and 10 miles (16 kilometers) from shore, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

 

Capt. Rahman said the sea temperature was above 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) warm enough for people to survive for an extended period. He said most of those rescued had been wearing life jackets.

 

He said the 155-foot (47-meter) ferry sank in 3,300-foot (one-kilometer) deep water, making it difficult to determine whether bodies were trapped inside.

 

The survivors were delivered to Lae, the South Pacific country s second-largest city, by five ships early Friday, said the AMSA, which is assisting Papua New Guinea authorities with the rescue.

 

“None of them had sustained any real injuries. They were pretty cold and miserable,” Lae Chamber of Commerce president Alan McLay told Sky News television.

 

The search continued at first light Friday with three ships, two airplanes and two helicopters, AMSA said. An angry crowd threw stones at the Kimbe office of Rabaul Shipping Company on Thursday night, outraged at a lack of information, police said.

 

“There were a lot of people crying and then they wanted to know the fate of their loved ones, the people actually who were on board,” Kimbe Police Inspector Samson Siguyaru told ABC.

 

“I had to send in the police to rescue (staff and), get them out of the office to a location where it is safe,” he added. Siguyaru said the passengers were mostly students returning to school at Lae.

 

The company said the ferry s captain had made routine radio contact with another vessel before sinking and gave no indication anything was wrong.

 

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O Neill said the cause of the accident was unknown, but acknowledged that safety in the shipping industry was lax.

 

“We need to bring some safety measures back into this industry,” O Neill told reporters.

 

Australia s High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Ian Kemish, said bad weather played a part.

 

“I think it s a fair bet that the very severe weather that s being experienced in some parts of Papua New Guinea played a role, but I can t say much more about the cause of the sinking beyond that at this stage,” he told ABC.
 

Rain, snowfall likely in Kashmir, Gilgit

 

According to Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), mostly cold and dry weather will prevail in most parts of the country during next few days.

 

Cold weather also persists in Balochistan including Quetta while mountain areas are under the grip of cold winds. Weather will remain cloudy in coastal areas of Sindh.

 

On the other hand, cold intensity has started reducing in different cities of Punjab including Lahore and Faisalabad.

 

Minimum temperature recorded today in different cities of the country was: Kalam -13C, Parachinar -12C, Skardu and Gopas-C, Murree and Gilgit -3C, Quetta and Kalat -6C, Islamabad -1C, Lahore an Peshawar 4C, Karachi 11C and Multan 6C
 

Monsoon rain cools Peshawar, Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: Monsoon rains continue to lash widespread areas of Pakistan, TrendPK reports.

Showers turned the weather pleasant in the capital city of Islamabad, brining smiles on faces of citizens.

In Peshawar, two days of rains brought the temperature down to pleasing level.

The Met office has forecast more rains in interior Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Kashmir and Balochistan for the next 24 hours. TrendPK

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