Guns claim kids’ lives in all areas

Guns claim kids’ lives in all areas

chicago

Children in the most rural areas of the United States are as likely to die by gunshot as kids in the biggest cities, a new analysis of nearly 24,000 deaths finds.

Not surprisingly, murders involving firearms are more common among city youth. But gun suicides and accidental fatal shootings level the score: They are more common among rural kids.

“This debunks the myth that firearm death is a big-city problem,” said lead author Dr. Michael Nance of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “This is everybody’s problem.”

The findings were published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Black box found after plane crash

MANGALORE, India

As crash investigators pulled the black box from the charred, twisted wreckage of an Air India plane Sunday, Koolikkunnu Krishnan marveled that he escaped the crash alive. Of the 166 passengers and crew aboard when the plane overshot a hilltop runway and plunged over a cliff at dawn Saturday, 158 were dead. Krishnan and just seven others survived.

“I’ve been thinking, ‘Why me? Why me?’ And I can only think that God wanted to give me a second life,” he said from a hospital in Mangalore.

Investigators and aviation officials combed through the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across a hillside to try to determine the cause of India’s worst air disaster in more than a decade. They recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which they hope will give them important clues, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Fergie ‘devastated’ over tabloid sting

london

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson said Sunday she was “very sorry” for her lapse of judgment after she was recorded apparently offering to sell access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew in return for $724,000.

The duchess said in a statement that she had financial problems, but “that is no excuse for a serious lapse in judgment and I am very sorry this has happened.”

The tabloid News of the World posted video on its website that appears to show Ferguson discussing payment terms. She is heard to say “500,000 pounds when you can, to me, open doors.” Asked if she was referring to the prince, she said: “Yeah.”

State of emergency declared in Jamaica

kingston, jamaica

Masked men torched a police station and traded gunfire with security forces in a patchwork of barricaded slums in Jamaica’s capital Sunday, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency.

Sporadic gunshots rang out in gritty West Kingston where defiant supporters of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a Jamaican “don” sought by the U.S. on drug and arms trafficking charges, turned his Tivoli Gardens neighborhood and other areas into a virtual fortress with trashed cars and barbed wire.

Unearthed in Egypt

cairo

Archeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said Sunday.

The oldest tombs date back to around 2750 B.C. during the period of Egypt’s first and second dynasties, the council said in a statement. Twelve of the tombs belong to the 18th dynasty which ruled Egypt during the second millennium B.C.

The discovery throws new light on Egypt’s ancient religions, the council said.

Associated Press