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Taban Air flight 6437 caught fire as it was landing at Mashhad International Airport in Iran at 7:20 A.M. local time (3:50 GMT) yesterday. There were no fatalities. 46 people were injured out of 157 passengers and 13 crew members aboard. The flight was scheduled to fly from Abadan to Mashhad, but it made an early landing due to severe weather at the destination and an ill passenger. As the flight landed amid poor visibility, the plane veered off the runway and gear collapsed, causing the tail to hit the runway. The right wing touched the g

According to The Independent and The Telegraph, British television channel Channel 4 appointed David Abraham as the new chief executive of the channel on Friday. Abraham has been chief executive of UKTV, an organisation owned between BBC Worldwide and Virgin Media Television, since April 2007. He was also famous for creating the marketing slogan for the television channel Dave: "Everybody knows a bloke called Dave." As well as this, David was previously the general manager and president of The Learning Channel, which is currently owned by Disco

Al-Qaeda's notional leader Osama Bin Laden has released a new audio tape in which he delivers a message he describes as from "Osama to Obama". Bin Laden tells the US President that Americans can expect further attacks. In the tape, aired by al-Jazeera, Bin Laden describes Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a US airliner on Christmas day, as "a hero" who was reaffirming the message of the September 11 attacks. He commented that "If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes.

The Haitian government Communications Minister states that over 150,000 people in Port-au-Prince, the country's capital, are confirmed dead from the recent magnitude 7.0 earthquake there. Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue commented that the figure is based on corpses found and collected in the city by a state company, CNE. "Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000, 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?" the Associated Press reports Lassegue as commenting. Yesterday, the United Nations reported the Haitian

A US flight en-route from Washington, D.C. to Las Vegas, Nevada was diverted to Denver, Colorado yesterday, after one of the passengers tried to open an exterior exit while in flight, according to reports from officials. The authorities said that United Airlines Flight 223, an Airbus A320-200, with 134 people aboard, landed in Denver and the passenger in question was detained. The BBC reports that he had been under the influence of alcohol. "There was a disturbance onboard, an unruly passenger. Due to that disturbance, pilots decided to diver

A Yemeni government official has said that three soldiers with the national army were killed in an attack earlier today, southeast of the capital, Sanaa. According to reports, armed men started firing at a checkpoint in the province of Shabwa, where security forces are conducting operations against suspected rebels for al-Qaeda. "Three soldiers were killed and one was injured when unknown armed people believed to belong to the southern movement attacked a checkpoint at the entrance to the city of Ataq," said an unnamed official to the Reuters

A nineteen-year-old man was caught driving at 191 kilometres an hour (kph) in an 80 kph zone in Traralgon, Victoria, Australia. The teenager told police of the La Trobe Traffic Management Unit (TMU) that he was "late to drop his girlfriend off at home". TMU officers pulled over the driver's Ford XR6 at 11:00pm on Saturday, Australian Eastern Daylight Saving time. "Police observed the Ford XR6 travelling east along the Princess Highway Traralgon at 11:00pm last night at 191kph in an 80kph zone. The young man who had his 16 year old girlfriend

At least six people have been wounded after a shooting ambush near a gold and copper mine in Indonesia earlier today, according to police reports. The incident occurred at the US company Freeport McMoRan's mine in the Papua region of the country. A convoy of police cruisers and buses was reportedly shot at by gunmen while en route to the coastal city of Timika from the Grasberg mine. "We're combing the area of the incident to gather evidence [...] we're still investigating who the perpetrators are," said senior police officer Mada Aksanta to

Stranded on a floe since it broke loose while he was snowmobiling across it on Friday, 39 year-old David Idlout is huddled in a tent dropped by rescue planes awaiting the arrival of a rescue helicopter that is scrambling from CFB Greenwood, Nova Scotia, the closest rescue helicopter to Resolute, Nunavut. While many places are experiencing cold temperatures, much of the Arctic has had an unusually mild winter. Too much so for professional hunter and hunting guide Idlout, who was out checking if conditions had improved after a cold snap. The bre

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, scheduled to fly from Beirut, Lebanon, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after taking off Monday morning. Ethiopian Airlines report 83 people on board. Flight ET409, a Boeing 737, was set to leave at 2:10 am local time, but was delayed until 2:35. The passenger plane took off in stormy conditions, and it disappeared from radar five minutes later. Eyewitnesses reported a ball of fire as the plane went down. Debris has already been seen off the Lebanese coast. Rescue efforts are

A soldier from Hereford, Britain died yesterday in Afghanistan's Helmand province. The incident occurred when the soldier (who belongs to Third Battalion The Rifles) was on foot patrol, and takes the death toll in the conflict to 251, which is four short of the number who died during the Falklands war in 1982. The soldier, whose name has not yet been released by the UK Ministry of Defence, died due to the wounds incurred when the bomb exploded in the southern part of Sangin, Helmand. Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield, spokesperson for Task Fo

Human brains cannot manage more than 150 friendships – even with the advent of social networking websites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace. This is the conclusion of Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Dunbar originally carried out research in this area in the 1990s, looking at social groups from modern offices back to ancient villages. He found that the neocortex in the brain, used for thinking and language, cannot cope with more than 150 friends – a conclusion known as "Dunbar's number". Groups of