Monday, February 25, 2008
h Victims’ remains
removed from crash site
During a Mass in Merida, Venezuela, a woman grieves for relatives killed in a plane crash Thursday in the Venezuelan Andes. The Mass was Sunday. Investigators began retrieving the bodies of 46 crash victims. Forensic experts brought six body bags containing victims’ remains down from the crash site, located on a steep slope 13,500 feet above sea level, Venezuelan Civil Aviation director Gen. Ramon Vinas said.
The twin-engine ATR42-300 crashed and burst into flames Thursday in the Sierra La Culata National Park, shortly after taking off from the Andean city of Merida on a flight to Caracas. Three crew members and 43 passengers were aboard. The victims were mostly Venezuelan, but also included five Colombians and a U.S. citizen, Vivian Guarch, 53, who worked for a Miami branch of Stanford Bank, officials said.
Producing more uranium
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran said Sunday that it has started using new centrifuges that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the machines that now form the backbone of the Islamic nation’s nuclear program.
The announcement was the first official confirmation by Tehran after diplomats with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog reported earlier this month that Iran was using 10 of the new IR-2 centrifuges. Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official on Sunday blamed the U.S. for Tehran’s refusal to respond to an International Atomic Energy Agency probe into whether Iran tried to make nuclear weapons in the past. Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate to the IAEA, claimed information provided by Washington and used by the U.N. agency was fake and it came to Tehran too late for a proper review.
The U.S. dismissed the complaint, saying Iran could have answered concerns about its nuclear program years ago. Tehran insists its nuclear program is intended only to produce energy.
UAW’s Fraser dead at 91
DETROIT (AP) — Douglas A. Fraser, who led the United Auto Workers union through dark hours in the U.S. auto industry in the 1970s and ’80s, has died. He was 91. Fraser died late Saturday at Providence Hospital in Southfield, his wife, Winnie, said Sunday. She said he had emphysema and went into the hospital with breathing problems.
With his mischievous smile and gregarious, easygoing manner, Fraser was popular with the union’s rank-and-file, who appreciated his candor and accessibility. Everyone called him Doug. He also was a shrewd and pragmatic negotiator who won the respect of Big Three executives. In the 1960s and ’70s, he helped win such benefits as comprehensive health care and improved working conditions.
But he faced challenges as UAW president from 1977 to 1983, a period of severe financial hardship for the industry that forced the union to make unprecedented concessions.
5 killed in family
LOS ANGELES — A 14-year-old boy was the lone survivor of an apparent murder-suicide that left five family members, including three children, dead across the street from the Richard Nixon Library. A neighbor dialed 911 late Saturday to report shots fired. Two minutes later, the teen told police that his father had shot him and his brother at their condo complex in Yorba Linda, a bedroom community about 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Police found five people, including three children, dead of gunshot wounds. The teen’s mother was discovered on the doorstep. Inside the home, police found the bodies of two girls in a bedroom; they had apparently been asleep in their beds. The body of a boy was discovered in another bedroom, along with the body of a man with a shotgun beneath him.
Associated Press