Bombs kill three, wound over 100 in Boston

Two bombs ripped through the crowd at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing three people, maiming others and injuring more than 100 in what a White House official said would be treated as an "act of terror."

It was the worst bombing on U.S. soil since security was tightened after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and President Barack Obama promised to hunt down whoever was responsible for the attack on a day when tens of thousands of spectators packed the streets to watch the world-famous race.

No one has been arrested and the White House official said it would have to be determined whether the attack came from a foreign or domestic source.

Investigators found what could be five additional, undetonated explosive devices around the Boston area, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing two unnamed people briefed on the investigation. The evidence had yet to be fully analyzed, the Journal said.

The blasts a few seconds apart knocked some runners off their feet and shattered what had been a resplendent spring day with the state of Massachusetts celebrating Patriots' Day, which commemorates the U.S. war of independence on the third Monday in April.

April 15 is also the deadline for U.S. taxpayers to file their annual income tax returns.

Many runners were heading for the finish when a fireball and smoke rose from behind cheering spectators and a row of flags representing the countries of participants, video from the scene showed.

The cheers turned to screams and panic.

"I saw people who looked like they had their legs blown off. There was a lot of blood over their legs. Then people were being pushed in wheelchairs," said Joe Anderson, 33, a fisherman from Pembroke, Massachusetts, who had just run the race holding a large U.S. flag.

Many of the victims were gravely injured, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said.

Some suffered shrapnel wounds and amputations and will require repeat operations in the coming days, said Peter Fagenholtz, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Ambulances, fire trucks and dozens of police vehicles converged at the scene, and spectators could be seen crying and consoling each other.

The dead included an 8-year-old boy, the Boston Globe reported, citing two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.

A 2-year-old was being treated with a head injury at Boston Children's Hospital, the hospital said in a statement.

"It sounded like a sonic boom. I haven't stopped shaking yet," said Melissa Stanley, who watched her daughter cross the finish line four minutes before the explosions.

The blasts put police on alert in major cities across the United States, including in Washington, D.C. and New York City, sites of the September 11 attacks.

'POWERFUL DEVICES'

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis called them "powerful devices."

Davis told a news conference at least three people died and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said more than 100 people were wounded.

FBI Boston Special Agent In Charge Richard DesLauriers declined at the same news conference to comment on media reports that police found unexploded devices.

In Washington, Obama told reporters, "Make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this and we will find out who did this."

"Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice," he said.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation took the lead on the investigation with help from several other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The two explosions at 2:50 p.m. were about 50 to 100 yards (metres) apart as runners crossed the finish line with a timer showing 4 hours and 9 minutes, some 9 minutes faster than the average finish time, as reported by Runner's World magazine.

Spectators typically line the 26.2 mile (42.19 km) race course, with the heaviest crowds near the finish line.

Mike Mitchell of Vancouver, Canada, a runner who had finished the race, said he was looking back at the finish line and saw a "massive explosion."

Smoke rose 50 feet (15 metres) in the air, Mitchell said. People began running and screaming after hearing the noise, Mitchell said.

"Everybody freaked out," Mitchell said.

The annual Boston Marathon, held since 1897, attracts an estimated half-million spectators and some 20,000 participants every year.

Earlier on Monday, Ethiopia's Lelisa Desisa and Kenya's Rita Jeptoo won the men's and women's events respectively, continuing African runners' dominance in the sport.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra cancelled Monday night's concert and the National Hockey League's Boston Bruins cancelled their home game against the Ottawa Senators. The Boston Red Sox had completed their Major League Baseball game at Fenway Park before the explosions.

With Makeup and Without Makeup :: Top Models

First clues in search for universe's dark matter

A massive instrument circling the globe aboard the International Space Station has provided a first glimpse of what may be mysterious dark matter in the universe, experts said Wednesday.

The elusive nature of dark matter -- which surrounds the galaxy in a near-spherical halo and is believed to make up around a quarter of the universe -- is considered one of the most important riddles in physics.
Dark matter has only been observed indirectly through its interaction with visible matter, and is not explained by the standard model of physics.
But that could change with data collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, the most sensitive particle physics spectrometer ever sent to space, made by a 16-nation team at a cost of $2.5 billion.
The machine arrived at the orbiting outpost aboard the US space shuttle Endeavour's last flight in 2011.
The first results from the AMS seem to indicate "evidence of a new physics phenomena," said a press statement from the international research team.
The AMS studies cosmic rays -- charged high-energy particles that permeate space -- before they interact with Earth's atmosphere.
Of the 25 billion cosmic ray events the AMS has studied so far, "an unprecedented number, 6.8 million, were unambiguously identified as electrons and their antimatter counterpart, positrons," said CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
AMS spokesman Samuel Ting said more experiments in the coming months should indicate whether these positrons are a signal for dark matter or not.
There is still a chance that the signals could result from pulsars, or neutron stars that emit electromagnetic radiation.
"There is no question we are going to solve this problem," Ting told reporters.
Scientists are pinning their hopes on the AMS because its accuracy is "unmatched by any other experiment," said Ting, a Nobel laureate and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"Our evidence supports the existence of dark matter but cannot rule out" other origins, such as pulsars, he said, stressing that scientists are not yet convinced either way, but are awaiting more data.
The findings appear in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Michael Salamon, US Department of Energy Office of Science program manager for AMS, described the latest measurements as "exciting," but preliminary.
"It is very important to say there may be a very common, prosaic explanation for this excess. It could be due to pulsars, for example. We don't know," he told reporters.
"The fact is AMS has made a high-precision measurement and in the future, with more statistics, we are going to learn more about the nature of this excess. And if nature is kind, we might have a very exciting discovery in the future," he added.
The AMS is expected to keep operating until 2020, or as long as the ISS stays in operation.
"If we detect dark matter and learn something about its nature we will have made a major impact to our understanding of physics and nature itself," Salamon said.

Plane seats in the back are most popular

Those seats all the way in the back? It turns out, some people really like them. A study by the airline British Airways has revealed that in economy class on the Boeing 747, passengers prefer the last row of the plane. The reason: The last seats are twin, allowing couples to have a row to themselves.

(Photo: iStockphoto)As surfaced by Gizmodo, British Airways reports that more than half their customers traveling in pairs choose seats 51/52B, 51/52C, 51/52H, and 51/52J in a Boeing 747. If you're lucky enough to be flying first class, though, the most popular seats are at the front of the plane: 1A and 1K.

Other tidbits about passenger habits: Among travelers who book their seats 24 hours in advance, 54 percent prefer to sit on the right-hand side of the cabin while 46 percent pick the left side.

British Airways can't exactly explain the preference, suggesting perhaps that more people are right-handed. Sara Dunham, British Airways' head of retail and direct channels, said, "There are lots of theories why people favor the right-hand side: There are more right-handed people, we automatically tend to turn right, but the truth is we don't know for sure."

On the other hand (pun intended), window seats are 6 percent more popular than aisle ones. "It would seem, though, that the window-lovers who are firm fans of their view slightly outnumber the aisle-hoppers who like to get out of their seats easily," Dunham said.

According to the British Airways press release, those who prefer aisle seats sit toward the front of the aircraft. The ones who want a view head to the back.

But perhaps the smartest way to pick a seat is to consider safety. A flier's chance of dying in an airplane crash is minute, just 1 in 4.7 million, according to the Telegraph. A recent report reveals the safest place to be on a plane: Take a window seat in economy class, keep your seatbelt on, and make sure you're just a few rows from an emergency exit.

Nicolas Maduro ::: New President of Venezuela

 

 

  

 

 

Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, won a razor-thin victory in Sunday's special presidential election, edging the opposition's leader by only about 300,000 votes, electoral officials announced.

His challenger, Henrique Capriles, declared that he wouldn't accept the results and called for a full recount.

Maduro's stunningly close victory came after a campaign in which the winner promised to carry on Chavez's self-proclaimed socialist revolution while Capriles' main message was that Chavez's 14-year regime put Venezuela on the road to ruin.

Maduro, acting president since Chavez's death, held a double-digit advantage in opinion polls just two weeks ago, but electoral officials said he got just 50.7 percent of the votes to 49.1 percent for Capriles with nearly all ballots counted.

Chavistas set off fireworks and blasted car horns as they cruised downtown Caracas in jubilation.

In a victory speech, Maduro told a crowd outside the presidential palace that his victory was further proof that Chavez "continues to be invincible, that he continues to win battles."

At Capriles' campaign headquarters, people hung their heads quietly as the results were announced by an electoral council stacked with government loyalists. Many started crying; others just stared at TV screens in disbelief.

But Capriles emerged later to angrily reject the official vote totals.

"It is the government that has been defeated," he said.

Capriles said at his campaign's headquarters that his campaign's tally of votes came up with "a result that is different from the results announced today."

"The biggest loser today is you," he said, directly addressing Maduro through the camera. "The people don't love you."

Maduro said during his speech that Capriles had called him before the results were announced to suggest a "pact" and that Maduro refused.

There was no comment from Capriles' camp on Maduro's claim.

Maduro, a longtime foreign minister to Chavez, rode a wave of sympathy for the charismatic leader to victory, pinning his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of government largesse and the powerful state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.

Capriles' main campaign weapon was to simply emphasize "the incompetence of the state" in handling the world's largest oil reserves.

Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe his government not only squandered, but plundered, much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his tenure.

Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime — one of the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates — that the opposition said worsened after Chavez succumbed March 5 to cancer.

Analyst David Smilde at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank predicted the victory would prove pyrrhic and make Maduro extremely vulnerable.

"It will make people in his coalition think that perhaps he is not the one to lead the revolution forward," Smilde said.

In a hint of discontent within Chavista ranks, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, who many consider Maduro's main rival, expressed dismay at the tight outcome.

He tweeted: "The results oblige us to make a profound self-criticism. It's contradictory that the poor sectors of the population vote for their longtime exploiters."

Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe his government not only squandered, but plundered, much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his tenure.

Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime — one of the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates — that the opposition said worsened after Chavez succumbed March 5 to cancer.

"This is a result in which the 'official winner' appears as the biggest loser," said Amherst College political scientist Javier Corrales. "The 'official loser' — the opposition — emerges even stronger than it did six months ago. These are very delicate situations in any political system, especially when there is so much mistrust of institutions."

Turnout was 78 percent, down from just over 80 percent in the October election that Chavez won by a nearly 11-point margin.

Many across the nation put little stock in Maduro's claims that sabotage by the far right was to blame for worsening power outages and food shortages in the weeks before the vote.

"We can't continue to believe in messiahs," said Jose Romero, a 48-year-old industrial engineer who voted for Capriles in the central city of Valencia. "This country has learned a lot and today we know that one person can't fix everything."

In the Chavista stronghold of Petare outside Caracas, Maria Velasquez, 48, who works in agovernment soup kitchen that feeds 200 people, said she was voting for Chavez's man "because that is what my comandante ordered."

Reynaldo Ramos, a 60-year-old construction worker, said he "voted for Chavez" before correcting himself and saying he chose Maduro. But he could not seem to get his beloved leader out of his mind.

"We must always vote for Chavez because he always does what's best for the people and we're going to continue on this path," Ramos said. He said the government had helped him get work on the subway system and helps pay his grandchildren's school costs.

The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed the backing of state media as part of its near-monopoly on institutional power.

Capriles' camp said Chavista loyalists in the judiciary put them at glaring disadvantage by slapping the campaign and broadcast media with fines and prosecutions that they called unwarranted. Only one opposition TV station remains and it was being sold to a new owner Monday.

At his campaign rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves.

Capriles, 40, showed Maduro none of the respect he earlier accorded Chavez. Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles' backers "heirs of Hitler." It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland.

The opposition contended Chavez looted the treasury last year to buy his re-election with government handouts. It also complained about the steady flow of cut-rate oil to Cuba, which Capriles said would end if he won.

Venezuela's $30 billion fiscal deficit is equal to about 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

Maduro, a former union activist and bus driver with close ties to Cuba's leaders, constantly alleged that Capriles was conspiring with U.S. putschists to destabilize Venezuela and even suggested Washington had infected Chavez with the cancer that killed him.

In his victory speech, he said he would be presenting on Monday nine men arrested in an alleged sabotage plot

He focused his campaign message on his mentor: "I am Chavez. We are all Chavez." And he promised to expand anti-poverty programs.

Maduro will face no end of hard choices.

Many factories operate at half capacity because strict currency controls make it hard for them to pay for imported parts and materials. Business leaders say some companies verge on bankruptcy because they cannot extend lines of credit with foreign suppliers.

Chavez imposed currency controls a decade ago trying to stem capital flight as his government expropriated large land parcels and dozens of businesses. Now, dollars sell on the black market at three times the official exchange rate and Maduro has had to devalue Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, twice this year.

Meanwhile, consumers grumble that stores are short of milk, butter, corn flour and other staples. The government blames hoarding, while the opposition points at the price controls imposed by Chavez in an attempt to bring down double-digit inflation.

CEC’s laptop, documents stolen from ECP Karachi office

The laptop of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Fakhruddin G Ibrahim was stolen along with other important documents from his office located in Clifton here.
The theft took place between 12 noon and 1 pm today, source said.
The laptop of the Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G Ibrahim contained data which is said to be of a sensitive nature.

 

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Berlin :::: World Explore

Official tourism portal for visitors

http://www.visitberlin.de/en

Berlin  is the capital city of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.5 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city and is the second most populous city proper and the ninth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany on the River Spree, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 4½ million residents from over 180 nations. Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.

First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), theWeimar Republic (1919–33) and the Third Reich (1933–45). Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. AfterWorld War II, the city became divided into East Berlin—capital of East Germany—and West Berlin, an exclave (surrounded by the Berlin Wallfrom 1961–89) and federal state of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of Germany, hosting 147 foreign embassies.

Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media, and science. Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, and convention venues. Berlin also serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, biotechnology, electronics, traffic engineering, and renewable energy.

Berlin is home to renowned universities, research institutes, orchestras, museums, and celebrities, and is host to many sporting events. Its urban setting and historical legacy have made it a popular location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, public transportation networks and a high quality of living.

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