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49 Killed, Hundreds Hurt as Argentine Train Crashes into Station


MSNBC
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:19 UTC
Image
© Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images
Police and rescue workers surround a train that crashed at Once train station in Buenos Aires Wednesday.
Carnage among morning commuters at Buenos Aires station

More than 600 people are injured, officials say, with reports of some passengers still trapped in carnage at Buenos Aires station

Buenos Aires - A packed train slammed into the end of the line in Buenos Aires' busy Once station, killing 49 people and injuring hundreds of morning commuters in Argentina's worst train accident in decades.

Federal Police Commissioner Nestor Rodriguez said Wednesday's dead included 48 adults and one child.

Officials said more than 600 people were injured out of more than 800 people who were reportedly on the train.

The death toll was Argentina's highest from a train accident since 1970, when 200 were killed.

Officials said the train was unable to stop and it slammed into the buffers inside the centrally located station.

"The train entered the Once station at 26 kilometers per hour (16 mph)... we suppose there was some flaw in the brakes," Transport Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi told state news agency Telam.

"The train was full and the impact was tremendous," a passenger named Ezequiel told local television, AFP reported.

Comment: Is there any possible connection?: Israeli agents operate in Argentina (Sun, 09 Oct 2011)
"..Could this be then analyzed as a sign of controlling Zionist Interests in Argentina? According to Mr. Salbuchi, Israel organizations have enormous advantage in Argentine politics, media and lifestyles, which could have tracked back to the times of the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl.

...

The question of Israeli lobbies and their influence in Argentina also hit headlines back in September [2011] when leaders of the Jewish community showed their strong disapproval on President Fernandez decision to accept Iran's call to hold "constructive dialogue" regarding the investigation of the 1994 AMIA bombing attack."
See link for Video.

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House

US: Marine makes last stand in foreclosed home

Kari Huus
MSNBC
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:30 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Arturo de los Santos takes part in a demonstration in front of Freddie Mac's Los Angeles offices on Feb. 2, demanding the mortgage company halt efforts to forcibly remove him and his family from their single-story house in Riverside, Calif.
Arturo de los Santos lost his home to foreclosure more than a year ago and was evicted. But because he felt he was treated unfairly, he moved back into his home of 10 years in an effort to force the lender, Freddie Mac, to back down.

"I'm just a regular guy who gets up each day, takes the kids to school and goes to work," said de los Santos, a retired Marine who is hunkered down in the modest three-bedroom house in Riverside, Calif., surrounded by an encampment of Occupy Riverside protesters and housing activists. "We've done everything the way we were supposed to. We're not going to just sit back and let Freddie Mac steal our home."

A new eviction order aimed at forcing de los Santos, a 46-year-old metal worker, and his family out of the house took effect Tuesday, meaning that sheriff's deputies could arrive at any time. Arturo de los Santos also has been served a court summons threaten[ing] him with arrest if he doesn't leave his house.

De los Santos' story is similar to thousands of other American homeowners who claim that banks mishandled mortgage modifications.

When the economic crisis hit in 2008, the factory where he worked cut his hours, so de los Santos pursued a modification based on his lower income with JP Morgan Chase, servicer of the loan.
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2 + 2 = 4

UK: 25% of Kids Aged 10-12 Can't Do Basic Addition

Suzannah Hills
The Daily Mail
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:12 UTC
student @ chalkboard
© n/a
Young children are leaving primary school unable to spell, add up or do their times tables because their parents are too busy to help them practise, a survey revealed today.

Half of children aged between 10 and 12 do not know what a noun is or cannot identify an adverb - while almost a third, 31 per cent, cannot use apostrophes correctly.

More than one in five - 22 per cent - could not use the correct version of 'they're', 'there' and 'their' in a sentence and more than four in 10 couldn't spell the word 'secretaries' correctly.

Maths didn't fare much better in the survey by online tutor, mytutor, with more than a quarter of children being unable to add two small sums of money without using a calculator as they can't do division and basic algebra.

Twenty-seven per cent of children surveyed could not add £2.36 and £1.49 to get £3.85. In addition, more than a third, 36 per cent, could not divide 415 by five and a quarter did not know the answer to seven multiplied by six.
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Sheriff

Spying on Campus: New York Police Caught Monitoring Muslim Student Groups Throughout Northeast

Amy Goodman
Democracy NOW!
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
The Associated Press has revealed the New York City Police Department monitored Muslim college students at schools throughout the Northeast, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In one case, the NYPD sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed. We speak to one of the students on the trip, Jawad Rasul. He is the only student who was under surveillance to now publicly speak out about his experience. "[This is] hurting NYPD's try and attempt at finding homegrown terrorism, because these kind of tactics actually create more hatred towards them and the other law-enforcement agencies and really destroys the trust that any youth might have developed with the government," Rasul said. We're also joined by Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Connecticut chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is calling for a state probe into the spying on Muslims.

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Handcuffs

US: New Hampshire man arrested for firing gun into ground while catching suspected burglar

Joshua Rhett Miller
Fox News
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:18 UTC
Dennis Fleming
© Foster's Daily Democrat
"I didn't think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground," Fleming told FoxNews.com.

A New Hampshire man who fired his handgun into the ground to scare an alleged burglar he caught crawling out of a neighbor's window is now facing a felony charge -- and the same potential prison sentence as the man he stopped.

Dennis Fleming, 61, of Farmington, was arrested for reckless conduct after the Saturday incident at his 19th century farmhouse. The single grandfather had returned home to find that his home had been burglarized and spotted Joseph Hebert, 27, climbing out of a window at a neighbor's home. Fleming said he yelled "Freeze!" before firing his gun into the ground, then held Hebert at gunpoint until police arrived.

"I didn't think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground," Fleming told FoxNews.com. "He stopped. He knew I was serious. I was angry ... and I was worried that this guy was going to come after me."

No one was injured in the incident, but when the police arrived, they made two arrests. Hebert was charged with two counts of burglary and drug possession. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted. Fleming, meanwhile, is scheduled to be arraigned March 20 on a charge of reckless conduct, which could potentially land him a sentence similar to the one Hebert faces.
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Family

Will Spain's Lotto Town Avoid Bankruptcy?

Davis MacMillan
Minyanville
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:53 UTC
Spanish Village
© Minyanville
Spoils of Olé

It's like something out of a fairy tale. A tiny town in a country with nearly 23% unemployment receives a huge, sudden windfall and every resident becomes a near millionaire overnight.

Of course, if fairy tales have taught us anything, it's that stories like this rarely end well.

Sodeto, a village of 250 people in an inhospitable region of northern Spain has won the lottery -- or part of it anyway. According to Der Spiegel, the town won 17% of the country's annual Christmas lottery's biggest prize, "El Gordo," totaling 700 million euros ($910 million). The village itself took 120 million euros ($158 million).

The rest of the prize money was paid out in other towns in Sodeto's province of Huesca but Sodeto was the only village where every family won. Its luck can be primarily traced back to the local housewives' club, which spent weeks convincing residents to buy lotto tickets.

Since their win, many around Spain have viewed the village as a potential cash cow. Salesmen sit in the local bar all day, hoping to sell new cars, homes or investments.

On their end, many residents claim that they want to use the money to improve the town and draw people back to it -- it's been shrinking for years. Some see the money as a way to improve the area's agricultural infrastructure.
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Radar

U.S. Pakistan Relations Reach Point of No Return

Alexander Higgins
Alexander Higgins Blog
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:38 UTC
Press TV screenshot-Pakistan protest
© Press TV
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis protest continued assassinations and airstrikes on Pakistan soil that have left thousands of innocent bystanders dead.

Massive rallies were held today in Pakistan in response to over 2,000 soldiers being killed by NATO forces and constant drone strikes that leave innocent woman and children dead. The protests also denounced the U.S. assassination attacks by U.S. military forces on Pakistani soil.

The sparking point for the rallies began when a U.S airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November. Since the U.S. has repeatedly ignored requests to end or coordinate them with Pakistani intelligence in order to prevent so-called collateral damage.

While it may be hard to imagine the anger of Pakistani citizens given all of the one-sided reporting and anti-terrorism propaganda reported in the corporate media, anyone who objectively questions the morality situation can clearly understand there anger. As reported some time ago, 1 in 7 U.S. drone strikes worldwide kills a child. In Pakistan those statistics are worse, were in 1 in 3 drone strikes kills a child. See this- Report: "1 in 3 Pakistan Drone Strikes and 1in 7 of all CIA Drone Strikes Kills a Child."

Furthermore, just imagine Russia or Iranian special forces conducting raids every day to assassinate people here inside the U.S. Also imagine, when every a target is assassinated any innocent bystander, be they a man, women or child, who is unfortunate to be in the surrounding area is also killed as part of collateral damage.
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People

US: For Boomers, It's a New Era of 'Work Til You Drop'

John Rogers
Associated Press
Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:07 UTC
skeleton @ laptop
© Getty Images
When Paula Symons joined the U.S. workforce in 1972, typewriters in her office clacked nonstop, people answered the telephones and the hot new technology revolutionizing communication was the fax machine.

Symons, fresh out of college, entered this brave new world thinking she'd do pretty much what her parents' generation did: Work for just one or two companies over about 45 years before bidding farewell to co-workers at a retirement party and heading off into her sunset years with a pension.

Forty years into that run, the 60-year-old communications specialist for a Wisconsin-based insurance company has worked more than a half-dozen jobs. She's been laid off, downsized and seen the pension disappear with only a few thousand dollars accrued when it was frozen.

So, five years from the age when people once retired, she laughs when she describes her future plans.

"I'll probably just work until I drop," she says, a sentiment expressed, with varying degrees of humor, by numerous members of her age group.
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Family

Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness in Best Recovery Story

Omar R. Valdimarsson
Bloomberg
Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:09 UTC
Iceland
© Paul Taggart/Bloomberg
Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country's economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger.

Since the end of 2008, the island's banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association.

"You could safely say that Iceland holds the world record in household debt relief," said Lars Christensen, chief emerging markets economist at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. "Iceland followed the textbook example of what is required in a crisis. Any economist would agree with that."
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Ambulance

Olympic VIPs take fast lane leaving patients at risk as non-emergency ambulances banned

Daniel Boffey
The Guardian
Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:01 UTC
London Olympic staduim
© ODA/Getty Images Europe
The Olympic stadium will be accessed by VIPs in 'Games lanes' - but they are likely to worsen traffic congestion.
Games organisers accused of risking health of Londoners by banning ambulances without blue lights on from 'Games lanes'

Sick and vulnerable NHS patients will be left stranded in ambulances in traffic jams while dignitaries and sponsors race past in a fleet of expensive cars on specially designated lanes during the Olympics, healthcare providers fear.

Games organisers have been accused of risking people's health by banning the routine use by ambulances of the "Games lanes" introduced to ensure that VIPs can travel quickly to events. The decision to reject a request for access from NHS London, the capital's strategic health authority, has led to a storm of anger. Medical Services, an independent business that transports patients for the health service, and whose clients include the hospitals closest to the Olympic stadium, says it fears that the ill, including those on dialysis, will be trapped in vehicles as London suffers unprecedented congestion, with traffic on key routes expected to slow to a crawl.
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