With a mother from Ghana and a father from Sierra Leone, Idris Elba was brought up in east London before finding fame in America. As he takes his place in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, we send Afua Hirsch, half-Ghanaian herself, to unpick this most modern of British actors Idris Elba wants to know, on a scale of one to 10, how intimidating I find him in person. “Do you think I’m terrifying?” he asks. “I
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Southwest Airlines grounds 80 Boeing 737-300s after Flight 812 develops 6ft hole in fuselage mid-flight A “gunshot-like sound” woke Brenda Reese as her Southwest Airlines flight cruised at 36,000ft (11,000m). Looking up, she could see the sky through a hole torn in the cabin roof. The Boeing 737 lost cabin pressure after the hole appeared on Friday, prompting frightened passengers to grope for oxygen masks as the plane made a terrifying but controlled descent. One passenger called it “pandemonium”. Another watched as a flight attendant and another passenger passed out, apparently for lack of oxygen, their heads striking seats in front of them. Officials said Flight 812 lost pressure because of a fuselage rupture. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilot made a “controlled descent from 36,000ft to 11,000ft (3,350m) altitude”. His safe emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, about 240km south-west of Phoenix, drew applause from relieved passengers. No serious injuries were reported among the 118 people aboard although a flight attendant was slightly hurt, according to Southwest officials. The cause of the hole was not immediately known. The FBI called it a “mechanical failure”, not an act of terror or other foul play. The plane is a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 . Southwest officials said they would pull about 80 similar planes out of service for inspections of the fuselage, forcing the airline to plan to cancel roughly 300 flights on Saturday. Southwest officials said the Arizona plane had undergone all inspections required by the FAA, but they did not immediately provide the date of the last inspection. The 737-300 is the oldest plane in Southwest’s fleet, and the company is retiring 300s as it takes deliveries of new Boeing 737-700s and, beginning next year, 737-800s. But the process of replacing all the 300s could take years. Reese said the plane had just left Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for Sacramento, California, when the “gunshot-like sound” woke her up. She said oxygen masks dropped as the plane dove. Seated one row from the rupture, Don Nelson said it took about four noisy minutes for the plane to dip to less than 10,000ft(3,000m). “You could tell there was an oxygen deficiency,” he said. Reese described the hole as “at the top of the plane, right up above where you store your luggage”. “The panel’s not completely off,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s like ripped down, but you can see completely outside… When you look up through the panel, you can see the sky.” Mobile phone photographs provided by Reese showed a panel hanging open in a section above the plane’s middle aisle, with a hole about 6ft (1.8m) long. The National Transportation Safety Board said an ” in-flight fuselage rupture ” led to the drop in cabin pressure aboard the plane. A similar incident happened in July 2009 when a football-sized hole opened up in flight in the fuselage of another Southwest 737, depressurising the cabin. The plane made an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia. It was later determined that the hole was caused by metal fatigue. Reese said passengers applauded the pilot after he emerged from the cockpit following the emergency landing in Yuma. “I fly a lot. This is the first time I ever had something like this happen,” said Reese, a 37-year-old single mother of three who is vice president for a clinical research organization. “I just want to get home and hold my kids.” Air transport Airline industry United States guardian.co.uk
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Officials stopped outspoken artist at Beijing airport this morning and police have surrounded studio China’s best-known artist Ai Weiwei has been detained at Beijing airport this morning and police have surrounded his studio in the capital. The 53-year-old, who designed the Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium, has been an outspoken critic of the government. Although he has previously experienced harassment by officials, he appeared to be relatively protected by the status of his late father, a renowned poet, and his high international profile; last year, he created the Sunflower Seeds installation for Tate Modern. His detention comes amid a wider crackdown on activists and dissidents , which human rights campaigners describe as the worst in over a decade. At least 23 people have been detained, mostly in relation to incitement to subversion or creating a disturbance. Three more have been formally arrested and more than a dozen are missing, including high profile human rights lawyers. Ai was due to fly to Hong Kong for business this morning, but was detained at immigration on his way out of Beijing. An officer told an assistant who was travelling with him that the artist had “other business” and could not board the plane. Between 15 and 20 uniformed and plain clothes police surrounded his studio in Caochangdi, in the north of the capital, and more were believed to be searching it. Power to the neighbourhood was cut off. Men who appeared to be plainclothes police grabbed the phone of a Guardian journalist who took a photograph of the scene and deleted the image. A uniformed officer told the reporter: “You are not allowed to be on this street. You must leave.” One resident said: “I went outside to see what was going on and saw a lot of police…I cannot understand it. What has he done?” Officials visited Ai’s studio three times this week, saying they wanted to check that staff there – particularly foreigners – were registered correctly. But his assistant said Ai appeared to have no particular concerns prior to his detention today. Ai’s mobile was not available and telephones at his studio rang unanswered. Posts about Ai on the popular Weibo microblog were deleted. Twitter users reported that Ai’s friend Wen Tao had been detained by police in Caochangdi. Shortly beforehand, replying to a friend enquiring whether he was all right, he had tweeted: “So far, so good”. Wen’s mobile was not available. Beijing police said they did not know anything about either man. Asked about Ai, an airport police spokesman said: “I do not have the obligation to tell you the information. You may have got your information wrong; even if it is right, you have to go through certain procedures to make inquiries, not just make a phone call.” Earlier this week it emerged that Ai was setting up a studio in Berlin because of his increasing work in Europe. But he told the Guardian that it would take at least two years to build the space and he would probably divide his time between Europe and China. He said the situation in Beijing was “difficult” and added: “It is hard to know what will happen in a few years. “I will never leave China behind unless I am forced to….Hopefully that is not going to happen.” Last year Ai was placed under house arrest after saying he would hold a party to mark the forced demolition of his studio in Shanghai. In December he was prevented from leaving the country. Many dissidents had their movements restricted at the time because of the government’s fears that people would attend the Nobel peace prize ceremony for jailed writer Liu Xiaobo. Ai also complained he was twice assaulted by police in Sichuan, south west China. Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said: “This crackdown has not bottomed out yet. “We are still in this process of weeding out any government critics, with no end in sight.” He added: “Ai Weiwei has been a bit of an outlier and the harassment against him has been more and more intense in the past few months. “But I think the signal it sends is that if he can be arbitrarily harassed in this way, no one is safe.” China Ai Weiwei Human rights Tania Branigan Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Shelvin Mack scored 23 points on 8-of-11 shooting and Zach Hahn came up big off the bench with eight second-half points, leading Butler back to the national title game with a 70-62 win over upstart VCU tonight. Butler came a bounce away from winning it all last year and is…
Continue reading …How on earth do the operators of Japan’s nuclear plant convince workers to risk their lives exposing themselves to huge doses of radiation? Money helps, apparently. TEPCO officials are advertising for so-called “jumpers” to carry out dangerous jobs for up to $5,000 a day, reports Reuters . They’re called jumpers…
Continue reading …Sorry, parents, but it’s time to add porn to that talk about the birds and the bees. The days of hidden Playboys have been replaced by a 24-7 pornography culture that gives confused teens a skewed sense of sexuality, as seen in all those lewd “sexts” and salacious Facebook poses,…
Continue reading …Candy and cookies aren’t the only cavity culprits: tooth decay can actually be contagious, scientists have found. That’s because cavities result from bacteria hanging around in your mouth—and these germs can be passed from person to person, the New York Times reports. It’s a noted problem in young children;…
Continue reading …President Obama this week rolled out some ambitious goals toward making the federal government’s fleet of cars more fuel-efficient, but his critics are likely to have fun with one thing in particular: His big limo is exempt. (Drudge has been highlighting the exemption with an upside photo of the president….
Continue reading …With most of the country now controlled by his opponent, and with both his home and the presidential palace surrounded, Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo today issued a final call to arms to defend his 10-year grip on power. Gbagbo’s forces got a rare bit of good news when they…
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