Saturday’s crash underscores India’s poor aviation safety standards though it is the first major crash to take place in a decade in the country. The last major crash in India was in July 2000 when an Alliance Air Boeing 737-200 crashed into a residential area during a second landing attempt in Patna, killing at least 50 people.

According to the Flight Safety Foundation figures, India has the highest rate of aviation accidents in the world. Since January, nearly 550 people have been killed from plane crashes. The black box has been recovered from an Air India Express passenger plane from Dubai that crashed on landing in southern India on Saturday, the United Arab Emirates’ state media said.

Air India Express is the budget arm of the loss making state-run carrier Air India, which has been fending off growing competition from private airlines. Television channels said the plane crashed around 6:30 a.m. (0100 GMT). The plane had broken into two. I jumped out of the plane after it crashed. The flight had already landed.

Nearly 160 people are feared dead after an airliner crashed while landing near the southern Indian city of Mangalore. Air India Express mainly caters to the southern Indian states of Kerala and Karnataka, where this plane crashed, with flights to and from the Gulf, where a large number of Indian nationals work.

The runway at Mangalore airport is situated on a hillock, which in aviation parlance is known as a table top runway. According to aviation officials, the aircraft overshot the runway, hit a fence and went beyond the boundary wall of the airport. First, one tyre burst, then the other tyre burst and the plane caught fire. Airports Authority of India chairman V P Agarwal said visibility was 6-7 kms, more than that required, when the ill-fated plane landed in Mangalore .

Firefighter’s sprayed water on the plane as rescue workers struggled to find survivors. Meanwhile, civil aviation minister Praful Patel has rushed to the spot. Congress president Sonia Gandhi also expressed grief and sorrow over the tragic air accident in Mangalore . India’s worst aviation accident occurred in 1996 when two passenger planes collided in mid-air near New Delhi with the loss of all 349 on board both flights.

A favela is fundamentally different from a slum or tenement, primarily in terms of its origin and location. While slum quarters in other Latin American countries generally form when poorer residents from the countryside come to larger cities in search of work, and while this also occurs to some extent with favelas, the latter are unique in that they were chiefly created as large populations became displaced. Many favelas now have electricity, a situation that 20 years ago was unheard of. Favelas differ from ghettos such as those in the United States in that they are racially mixed, and it is chiefly economic forces, rather than ethnic or cultural issues, that drive people there.

Most favelas are inaccessible by vehicle, due to their narrow and irregular streets and walkways and often steep inclines. These areas of irregular and poor-quality housing are often crowded onto hillsides, and as a result, these areas suffer from frequent landslides during heavy rain. In recent decades, favelas have been troubled by drug-related crime and gang warfare. There are often common social codes in some favelas which forbid residents from engaging in criminal activity inside their own favela.

Some of the older favelas were originally started as quilombos among the hilly terrain of the area surrounding Rio, which later grew as slaves were liberated in 1888 with no place to live. The favelas were formed prior to the dense occupation of cities and the domination of real estate interests. The housing crisis of the 1940s forced the urban poor to erect hundreds of shantytowns in the suburbs, when favelas replaced tenements as the main type of residence for destitute cariocas (residents of Rio). The explosive era of favela growth dates from the 1940s, when Getulio Vargas’s industrialization drive pulled hundreds of thousands of migrants into the Federal District, until 1970, when shantytowns expanded beyond urban Rio and into the metropolitan periphery.

Most of the current favelas began in the 1970s, as a construction boom in the richer neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro initiated a rural exodus of workers from poorer states in Brazil. Heavy flooding in the low-lying slum areas of Rio also forcibly removed a large population into favelas, which are mostly located on Rio’s various hillsides. Since favelas have been created under different terms but with similar end results, the term henrietta has become generally interchangeable with any impoverished areas. Favelas are built around the edge of the main city so in a way they are actually expanding the city. The Brazilian Census of 2000 provided information about the cities with most favelas in Brazil.The explosive growth of favelas triggered government removal campaigns. Police have little or no control in many favelas. A program in the 1940s called Parque Proletário destroyed the original homes of those dwelling in favelas in Rio and relocated them to temporary housing as they waited for the building of public housing.

The Brazilian government has made several attempts in the 20th century to improve the nation’s problem of urban poverty. One way was by the eradication of the favelas and favela dwellers that occurred during the 1970s while Brazil was under military governance. These favela eradication programs forcibly removed over 100,000 residents and placed them in public housing projects or back to the rural areas that many emigrated from. Another attempt to deal with urban poverty came by way of gentrification. The government sought to upgrade the favelas and integrate them into the inner city with the newly urbanized upper-middle class. As these “upgraded favelas” became more stable, they began to attract members of the lower-middle class pushing the former favela dwellers onto the streets or outside of the urban center and into the suburbs further away from opportunity and economic advancement. For example: in Rio de Janeiro, the vast majority of the homeless population is black, and part of that can be attributed to favela gentrification and displacement of those in extreme poverty.

In fact, the population of the favelas is growing faster than the population of Brazil as a whole. In 1950, only 7 percent of Rio de Janeiro’s population lived in favelas, in the 21st century it has grown to 19 percent or about one in five people living in a favela. According to national census data, from 1980–1990, the overall growth rate of Rio de Janeiro dropped by 8 percent, but the favela population increased by 41 percent. After 1990, the city’s growth rate leveled at 7 percent, but the favela population increased by 24 percent. By the year 2000, this created an all-time high of people living in concentrated poverty.

Current increases in the population of favelas cannot be credited to the original reasons of rural to urban migration or foreign immigration.[citation needed] These increases can more accurately be linked to the increased downward economic and social mobility of the people. The middle classes are getting poorer[citation needed] and unable to find affordable housing close to work, and the lowest classes are being voluntarily or involuntarily pushed out of the formal favelas of the inner city and into irregular favelas of the periphery because of gentrification. It is difficult to increase one’s social and economic status in Brazil’s major cities because of the decrease in job opportunities for uneducated and unskilled workers and the decrease in manufacturing jobs for blue-collar workers.

There are currently higher educational requirements for job entry in today’s society, but it is extremely difficult for the urban poor to have access to higher education. The public education system is not a reliable source for college preparation, and as a general rule, most moradores da favela do not even finish basic schooling.

7,589 runners crossed the start line of the first Brighton Marathon in 20mins, the temperature at race start was a chilly 5C, warming to 15C at midday, but much warmer in the cloudless sunshine with thousands lining the route. In all, 7426 finished the race.

Mongolian Ser-od Ba-otochir claimed the inaugural Brighton Marathon title in 2:19:05, Second was Medway’s Michael Coleman in a time of 2:24:54, local boy Chris Thomson of Brighton and Hove AC coming third in 2:29:54.

I was supposed to be in Boston. Yesterday was the 103rd annual Boston marathon, and while there may be richer prizes in a professional runner’s calendar, and races with a bigger goodie bag, for the thousands of us who’ve let our gym membership’s lapse in favour of battered trainers and a pair of inappropriate tights Boston has an almost mystical appeal.

I’d still like to run Boston one day, but with such a great race so close to home, I’d strongly suggest anyone crowded out of London – or simply in the mood for a change – consider taking the train to the pain. So thank you, Eyjafjallajökull. And thank you, Tim Hutchings. Brighton Marathon is offering three lucky photographers the chance to win an Olmpus digital camera.

The iPod line came from Apple’s “digital hub” category,[3] when the company began creating software for the growing market of personal digital devices. Apple did not develop the iPod software entirely in-house, instead using PortalPlayer’s reference platform based on two ARM cores. Later iPods switched fonts again to Podium Sans—a font similar to Apple’s corporate font, Myriad. The trickle of iPad games released last week has now become a flood of iPad software news. Mobile Entertainment has what’s probably the biggest news: another new swarm of titles has been found in the App Store’s database, including iPad versions of the popular Fieldrunners and Flick Fishing games. Developers are gearing up to unleash their wares on Apple’s iPad.

Games are likely to feature heavily, in part due to the iPhone and iPod touch becoming surprisingly strong competition for the DS and PSP. Taking into account the quality of existing titles and the technical and practical benefits and limitations of the iPad, here are TechRadar’s top 20 iPad games we want to see.

The iPad has the potential to revolutionise board games. The vector-based tower defence game GeoDefense would look marvellous on the iPad’s bigger screen, but the increase in resolution would also enable bigger maps and precision placement of units. Other tower defence games would also benefit, especially those that require map-scrolling on the iPhone.

More traditional Risk games, such as Lux, should also reap rewards from the iPad’s larger screen. The iPhone version of Orbital was demoed on the iPad at Apple’s live event, which the developer says was a surprise to the team.

So Blonde stars Sunny, a rich, blonde, seventeen year old girl who is on a cruise in the Caribbean with her parents celebrating their wedding anniversary. As a classic point-and-click adventure title, So Blonde will leverage the DS stylus and the Wii Remote’s IR pointing to mimic the mouse-driven gameplay found in the original PC version.

Sunny will face a new adventure. Lace Mamba Global has announced today that they’re bringing the PC adventure game So Blonde over to the Wii.

dtp entertainment and Wizarbox have announced the adventure game So Blonde for Wii and Nintendo DS which is a completely new adventure game, based on the beautiful heroine of the already-released PC versions. This time, the game’s story, again written by adventure gaming legend Steve Ince, makes Sunny explore the dark side of the Forgotten Island, where she stranded.

Both version’s controls have been adapted to fit Wii Remote, Nunchuk and Nintendo DS-Touchpen easily. dtp entertainment is going to release So Blonde for Wii and Nintendo DS in 2009.

The Sea of Okhotsk covers 611,000 sq.mi. (1,583,000 km2.), with a mean depth of 2,818 feet (859 metres). Its maximum depth is 11,063 feet (3,372 metres). It is connected to the Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin: on the west through the Sakhalin Gulf and the Gulf of Tartary; on the south, through the La Pérouse Strait.

In winter, navigation on the Sea of Okhotsk becomes difficult, or even impossible, due to the formation of large ice floes, because the large amount of freshwater from the Amur River lowers the salinity and raises the freezing point of the sea. The distribution and thickness of ice floes depends on many factors: the location, the time of year, water currents, and the sea temperatures.

With the exception of Hokkaidō, one of the Japanese home islands, the sea is surrounded on all sides by territory administered by the Russian Federation. For this reason, it is generally considered as being under Russian sovereignty.

Here in America, some people claim that a man marrying another man ruins the sanctity of marriage. We wonder how those same people would feel about Lee Jin gyu, a Korean man who recently wed a pillow.

Yes, the 28-year-old is now happily married — to a pillow. Well, not just any pillow. Lee has fallen in love with a dakimakura, a large body pillow adorned with the face of an anime beauty.

The UK Metro is reporting on a wedding ceremony held for a 28-year old Korean man and his full-sized body pillow girlfriend. The pillow cover supposedly has an image of a character named Fate Testarossa from the anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

By purchasing Earth clothing we are helping the earth. Earth Music Ecology is a sustainable line of clothing that preserves the integrity of the earth, without harming animals, since the clothing is not derived from animal sources. All the textiles at Earth Music store are organic and sustainable. Earth Music Ecology is the brand for women, while Earth Music is the men’s brand of clothing.

The Earth Music Ecology brand of fashion was created by a fusion of artists and designers such as Ryan McGinness, Darek, Mambo, and others. Earth Music Ecology clothing is manufactured without animal testing; therefore parents that are concerned about animal cruelty will have assurance that no animals were used in the manufacture and testing of the product. Earth Music Ecology clothing is a product of the organic fashion industry. Who would purchase Earth Music Ecology clothing? Earth Music Ecology gives you a choice.

Acoustic Ecology may have been inspired by music but never became music and, conversely, some of his music may have been influenced by Acoustic Ecology but never became “Acoustic Ecology” except in the most rudimentary and academic of cases.

In many ways the current expansion of the term Acoustic Ecology—which otherwise seems historically appropriate is reinforced by a largely conservative musical establishment—especially in academia—interested in placing experimental musical activity into a zone of non-musical status. As a composer, Schafer has essentially been a Romantic Modernist (by no means meant as a pejorative) here defined as an interest in expanding the expressive palette of music while maintaining an essentially 19th-century aesthetic concept of what the social role and purpose of music should be. As such he could not accommodate his insights about environmental sound into his music, and the logical way open to him was to define a new intellectual discipline. It is also a tradition concerned with achieving many of Schafer’s Acoustic Ecology concerns but through active creative strategies that emphasize the materiality of sound, listening, environment, perception, and socio-political engagement.

In addition to the artistic activities that were evolving parallel to those of Acoustic Ecology, many developments were taking place in scientific fields concerned with the relationship of sound to the environment. While all of these events have to some extent more precisely advanced issues originally put forth by Acoustic Ecology, further blurring its original meaning and intellectual focus, Acoustic Ecology has itself influenced other disciplines beyond music and the arts. It is obvious that some commentators within the traditional music world have seen the development of these new events and genres as directly hostile to traditional musical values. Meanwhile, many “sound artists” have seemed eager to part from the music world’s aesthetic and educational expectations. They often reinvent concepts that the experimental music community has always embraced but can now be retrofitted into the art market gallery system. If music in any way reflects the evolving human condition, then this is what we should have expected music to become in the 21st century.

From an environmental viewpoint, music may have been a means through which humans structurally coupled to the larger systems of mind that comprise our natural and social environments. Beyond the cultural richness and entertainment that recent uses for music afford us, assumptions about musical authorship, communicative intention, emotional expression, and musical genius may—in evolutionary terms be short-term phenomena and even distractions from a more profound significance.

In the light of insights inherited from the experimental music tradition and the broader meaning for Acoustic Ecology previously outlined, I am willing to contend that this capacity to hear the sounds cape as music is simultaneously one of the most archaic ways of listening and the most modern. Music is both a conserving action for keeping alive a mode of communication similar to non-human forms of cognition and an intuition to a future communication modality that we are actively evolving.

There is one final caveat to include before concluding this discussion of the link between Acoustic Ecology and musical experimentalism. My position is not intended to negate prior musical forms and assumptions. Like any living ecosystem, a near infinite diversity of musical realities can coexist and be widely valued and that is the true meaning of our human heritage of music.

Conversely, a quake can slow the rotation and lengthen the day if it redistributes mass away from that axis the calculated changes in length of the day are permanent.  The Chilean earthquake has shortened the length of the day by making the Earth rotate faster, according to NASA scientists.

The Sumatran earthquake from 2004 should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth’s axis by 2.76inches. Soldiers patrol the streets during curfew hours in Concepcion, Chile three days after an earthquake killed at least 700 people

Chilean rescue crews fanned out with sniffer dogs today around quake-ravaged cities and villages, some still hoping to find survivors and others facing the daunting task of recovering bodies buried under mountains of rubble.