NBey6's Blog

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche -

Midday & Evening

** until 7-19-09 **

281, 284, 298, 280, 282, 283, 444 , 680, 682, 683, 681, 684, 689, 777

731, 734, 739, 947, 615, 691, 888, 131, 134, 139, 133, 000, 222, 999

181, 055, 319, 195, 197, 001, 071, 073, 904, 907, 003, 451, 254

"He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had tried and failed."

- William James -

Zeus' Day 7-16-09

154, 721, 053, 247, 942, 290, 184, 643, 130, 390, 615, 618, 617, 498, 947, 946, 319, 613, 164, 198, 118, 116, 106, 001, 003, 073, 071, 430, 986, 562, 788, 095, 799, 131, 000, 444, 555, 777, 7522, 0226, 0202, 0829, 0928, 8815

 

Midday 7-16-09 Evening

** until 7-19-09 **

012 016 017 025 026 029 034 035 038 039 047 048 049 056 057 058 067 089 124 125 128 129 134 137 138 139 146 147 148 156 157 179 189 236 237 238 245 246 247 256 269 278 279 345 346 359 368 369 378 458 459 467 468 489 567 579 589 678 679 228 229 133 233 335 336 337 044 344 445 449 155 255 355 557 558 066 166 566 669 377 477 111 444 666 777 999

Midday 7-16-09 Evening

** until 7-18-09 **

015 019 024 028 037 046 069 078 123 127 136 145 159 168 235 249 258 267 289 348 357 379 456 469 478 568 789 001 006 114 118 226 033 334 339 244 447 055 559 366 667 177 577 388 199 699 222 555 888

:l Thor's Day l: Midday 7-16-09 Evening

** until 7-19-09 **

016 017 025 026 029 034 035 038 047 056 079 089 124 125 128 134 137 146 169 178 179 236 245 259 268 269 278 349 358 359 367 368 389 457 458 467 479 569 578 002 007 008 011 115 116 119 223 224 227 133 233 335 044 344 448 449 155 556 557 466 566 668 277 377 677 088 188 488 889 299 799 899

 

"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." - Arthur Rubinstein -

Crashed Iranian airliner 'disintegrated into pieces'

• Story Highlights
• NEW: State TV reports plane's flight data recorder, <snip>pit voice recorder found
• All 168 aboard believed to be dead in Iranian plane crash
• Plane is thought to have crashed near the Iranian city of Qazvin
• Qazvin is the largest city in the province of Qazvin

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- An Iranian airliner that crashed Wednesday, killing all 168 passengers and crew, plunged into the ground and disintegrated on impact, according to a security official.

Images of the crash site show a smoldering crater scattered with charred pieces of the plane and tattered passports.

Ten members of the country's youth judo team were aboard the Caspian Airlines plane, said several sources, including Iran's Press TV. The government-backed network said the dead included eight athletes and two coaches.

The plane "disintegrated into pieces," said Col. Masood Jafari Nasab, security commander of Qazvin, the city nearest to the crash site in northwestern Iran.

"The aircraft all of a sudden fell out of the sky and exploded on impact, where you see the crater," a witness told Press TV from the crash site.

The plane's flight data recorder and <snip>pit voice recorder have been found, state television reported late Wednesday.

The crash was at least the fifth major airline accident in the world this year, following crashes of planes flown by Colgan Air, Turkish Airlines, Air France and Yemenia Airways. A US Airways pilot managed to land his plane safely on the Hudson river in New York City in January, with no major injuries, after the plane lost power.

But aviation safety expert John Wiley said there is no reason to fear air travel in general, and no single airline or aircraft is particularly dangerous.

The three most recent crashes -- in which a total of 548 people died -- involved different planes, flown by different airlines, in different stages of flight, he said.

Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 -- a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154M plane -- went down near the village of Jannatabad near Qazvin at 11:33 a.m. (2:03 a.m. ET) Wednesday, Press TV reported.

Conversations between the pilot and the ground were normal and did not indicate any technical problems, the network's Web site reported, citing the managing director of Iran's airport authority without naming him.

Some witnesses say the plane caught fire before crashing, Press TV said.

The plane descended very quickly, Wiley told CNN, but it may have been circling, trying to land, rather than plummeting to the ground.

Qazvin Police Chief Hossein Behzadpour and Mohammad Reza Montazer Khorasan, the head of the disaster management center in Iran's health ministry, both confirmed that all 168 people on board died, Press TV reported

Aviation analyst Kieran Daly told CNN that many aircraft operating in Iran are aging Tupolevs, some dating back to the 1970s.

He described Tupolevs as "workhorses of the old Soviet aviation system."

But he said the Caspian Airlines fleet is based on a slightly newer design, dating to the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Pictures from the scene were "consistent with a high-speed impact," he said. But he added that there could be large debris not seen on television, and that could change his analysis.

A team of investigators from the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee is flying to the crash scene to join the investigation, the agency said in a posting on its Web site. They will work alongside Iranian aviation authorities, the agency said.

An agency official declined to comment further, saying the plane was operated by an Iranian company and nothing is known about it.

A Tupolev representative told CNN the manufacturer will not comment until the aviation committee releases its report on the crash.

The Tupolev 154 is essentially banned in the West because it does not comply with European noise and pollution regulations, but it has a safer-than-average accident record, Wiley said.

Wednesday's crash is the first on record for Caspian Airlines, which was founded in 1993, he added.

The Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that the plane was flying from Tehran and was headed to Yerevan, Armenia.

The semi-official Mehr news agency listed the names of 153 passengers and 15 crew members. At least 42 of the names appeared to be Armenian, but it was not clear if they were from the former Soviet republic or if they were ethnically Armenian citizens of Iran.

The plane crashed 16 minutes after takeoff, said the newspaper, quoting a spokesman from Iran's civil aviation organization.

That would have put the flight in one of the safest stages of travel, according to International Air Transport Association data. Only about 5 percent of accidents take place during the phase called en-route climb, 16 to 20 minutes into a flight, when a plane climbs to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. About half of accidents take place during landing.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed his condolences to the victims' families, as did the European Union. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his sympathies to the presidents of Iran and Armenia, the Kremlin said.

Qazvin is the largest city in the province of Qazvin and is its capital, with an estimated population of 330,000.

It is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Tehran, the capital of Iran.

The last crash in Iran involving a Tupolev plane occurred in 2006, according to the Web site airdisaster.com.

That crash occurred on an Iran Air Tour flight from the port city of Bandar Abbas; it crashed and caught fire during landing, the Web site reported.

Twenty-nine of the 147 people on board died in that crash.

Visa card surprise: $23,148,855,308,184,500

MANCHESTER, N.H. - A "small number" of Visa cardholders were surprised to find that recent purchases cost them a little more than expected — $23 quadrillion, plus change.

In New Hampshire, Josh Muszynski said he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and when he later checked his account online found that he had been charged  the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500.

In North Texas, Jon Seale saw the same 17-figure bill on his credit card statement, presumably for a meal July 13 at a restaurant owned by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, NBC affiliate KXAS TV reported.

"For that amount of money, I could actually own Wolfgang Puck himself," Seale said.

Seale said he spent much of Tuesday making calls to Visa and his bank, Wachovia, in hopes of getting the exorbitant charge removed from his Wachovia Visa Buxx credit card. "It's an inconvenience, but it's not like I was truly worried my money was gone," he said. "It’s an obvious, glaring error."

Seale even tried tracking down Puck "on Facebook and add him as a friend to see if he’d make a comment, but I didn’t have any luck finding him."

Muszynski, for his part, said he spent two hours on the phone with his bank, Bank of America, trying to sort out the string of numbers and the $15 overdraft fee. The bank corrected the error the next day.

Visa said a technical glitch caused the trouble, but it did not say exactly how many accounts were affected.

"A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts," Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said in a written statement. "The technical glitch has been corrected, and all erroneous postings have been removed."

A Visa representative said affected customers will have any overdraft fees removed.

Wednesday 7-15-09

758, 754, 203, 238, 703, 704, 138, 127, 110

120, 768, 783, 456, 457, 908, 603, 278, 498

131, 001, 311, 555, 3628, 1759, 1824, 6704

8901, 2637, 3389, 4389, 5389, 4639, 5639

Midday 7-15-09 Evening

** until 7-18-09 **

003, 013, 032, 330, 403, 053, 063, 073, 803, 903

580, 851, 582, 835, 584, 558, 586, 587, 588, 895

109, 911, 219, 319, 194, 195, 916, 917, 198, 199

000, 222, 444, 555, 777, 999

Big quake off New Zealand triggers small wave

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand's western coast Wednesday generating a small tsunami. No injuries or major damage were reported.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii warned that a tsunami was generated, but it later said the waves were less than 8 inches in height and the warning was canceled after about an hour.

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre also issued a tsunami alert for eastern Australia that was still in effect late Wednesday.

"All available New Zealand and international data about the earthquake and sea levels showed that there is no tsunami threat to New Zealand," said John Hamilton, director of the Ministry of Civil Defense and Emergency Management.

The quake's epicenter was 100 miles west of Invercargill, off the west coast of New Zealand's South Island at a depth of 21 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It hit at 0922 GMT on Wednesday.

The quake was felt widely across South Island. Police in the town of Tuatapere said they had reports of minor cracks in buildings and stock falling from supermarket shelves.

However, no reports of serious damage or injuries were received, police said.

Scientists with New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences were working with their U.S. counterparts late Wednesday to reconcile their readings with those taken overseas. The quake was reported locally at 6.6 magnitude before reports from the U.S. listed it at 7.8 magnitude and as high as 8.2.

"We've had big differences in the measurements of the quake, ranging from 6.6 by GNS Science, to 8.2 by a tsunami warning center in Hawaii. We're issuing a precautionary message," Vince Cholewa, an emergency management spokesman in Wellington, told the domestic news agency NZPA.

Scientists in New Zealand reported aftershocks, the first of 6.1 magnitude occurring 19 minutes after the main temblor.

New Zealand sits above an area of the Earth's crust where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates collide and records more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, though only about 150 are felt by residents. Fewer than 10 temblors a year do any damage.

Midday 7-15-09 Evening

** until 7-17-09 **

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