Coast Guard suspends search for 6 people aboard plane that went missing over Lake Erie

Officials don't expect to find any survivors after a plane carrying six people disappeared over Lake Erie Thursday, and search efforts were suspended Friday evening.

"The decision to suspend a search is never easy," Capt. Michael Mullen of the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement. "I extend my deepest condolences to the family and friends of those who lost loved ones during this tragedy."

The pilot of the plane was John T. Fleming, according to a statement from an executive at the company where Fleming is president and CEO. Joseph McHenry, EVP of Superior Beverage Group, said the others on the plane were Fleming's wife, Sue, their teenage sons, Jack and Andrew, and two close friends identified as a neighbour and the neighbour's daughter.

Canadian air force assisted

​The coast guard was notified Thursday around 11:30 p.m. that a Cessna Citation 525 took off from Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Ohio, then disappeared from radar shortly after. 

At the request of the U.S. Air Force, a Canadian C-130 Hercules plane was dispatched from the Joint Response Co-ordination Centre in Trenton, Ont., to assist with the search.

Crews scoured the lake for a total of 20 hours and covered an area of more than 330 square kilometres, the statement said.

The Coast Guard said it suspends search and rescue cases only "with extreme care and deliberation."

"After a search area is located and saturated with a maximum number of assets, resources and crew effort, and persons in distress are still not located, a decision is made to suspend a search for survivors."

Representatives from the City of Cleveland and the Coast Guard will hold a joint press conference Saturday to talk about recovery efforts.

LA Vs. Nuggets

D’Angelo Russell had one of his best games as a pro Sunday night when the Lakers defeated the Denver Nuggets 124-115. He led all scorers with 33 points on 13-of-19 shooting while also adding three assists and three steals and only turned the ball over twice.

20 of Russell’s 33 points came in the first half. His backcourt mate Lou Williams also had a strong game, scoring 25 points on 8-of-15 shooting, and Jordan Clarkson led all Lakers bench scorers with 12 points and three assists in 19 minutes.

The Scotland Independence Vote

With more than 50% of the votes taken in from the Scotland referendum in seems that the Scottish will support the "Yes," campaign. This will continue the British rule that has been going on for more than tree centuries.

Scots prepare for independence vote

He looks just like many would imagine the typical Scot. Kilt, knee-high socks, bagpipes and a solid build. People stand and clap when John Patterson plays Highland melodies near Edinburgh Castle. In the emotional question of Scottish independence, Patterson has answered questions for one local TV station after another. "There is a lot of tension in the air," he said. "People want to see emotions."
He added that he doesn't have a firm view on Scottish independence. But - as a New Zealander - he's not allowed to vote anyway, and instead chuckles with amusement when people regard him as a typical Scot. After all, he said, there are only two types of people: "Scots and the people who wish they were Scots."
Audry Painsarnault came to Scotland with her husband and four children to hang up "no" posters and stickers around the city and to try and convince people to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom. Like Patterson, she won't be able to vote in Thursday's referendum. "My husband has Scottish ancestry so we decided if we could do some small part in all this then we would," she said. "We came with our four children to help. We want to convince people to vote - no matter what their opinions are." She added that in Canada there is a similar movement for independence among French-speaking Canadians in Quebec.
Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister and head of the Scottish National Party, laid out a clear definition. Anyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot and can vote on the question of whether to leave the United Kingdom after more than 300 years and become an independent nation. The three latest polls show the "yes" and "no" camps nearly neck-and-neck with those opposed to independence leading with 52 percent to 48 percent, though the polls do not take the eight percent of undecided voters into account.
Ben Walker is a businessman from London who said he sees himself as a Scot and wants his home to stay in the UK with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. He regrets that he, like 800,000 other Scots living outside of Scotland, does not have a vote. "All Scots who live in England are not, under the terms of the referendum, allowed to vote." Walker said. "I would become a foreigner without having a say on it."
Campaigning in the final days leading up to the referendum has heated up, with Scottish nationalists saying they wanted to free themselves from oppression and dismissing offers of more regional autonomy as untrustworthy. Unionists then accused the nationalists of lying. Pro-British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband was even attacked during a campaign event in Edinburgh. The British tabloid press managed to dig out a few final scandals. The Scottish Daily Mail accused Salmond of megalomania for proposing that a new position be created after independence.
Claims that Scots were about to take their fate in their hands at the ballot box were made by both sides on the final day of campaigning.
"I think the emotional side is nice - I'm a Scot, I was educated here," he said. "I care quite passionately about my country. But I think from the rational side it is something we cannot afford. We are wandering into an abyss and I think we are going to be much worse off."
The economic effects would be disastrous, he said, adding: "Why would you break up one of the most successful states? The UK is not perfect, and it has the same problems as Germany or France or America or any Western democracy and independence and rampant nationalism isn't the way to solve that."
A few blocks further down the streets at the "Yes" campaign office, Rachel Blair has a different take. She said Scotland's oil reserves would bolster the country's economy.
"At the moment we have a government in London that people in Scotland feel quite disconnected from," she said. "We need a government that is closer to home and more accountable to the Scottish people. I think we have got a lot of problems here. We have one in five children in poverty, families queuing up at food banks. We need to be in control of our own resources to address these issues."
Those for and against independence disagree on whether Scotland would remain in the European Union and keep the pound as its currency. But charges that Scotland would be left on its own are just fear-mongering, Blair said.
A number of trade and industry groups have warned against independence. Unions are split on the issue. The British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, spends her summers in Scotland but has not taken a clear position on the referendum, saying only that the voters should consider the consequences of their choice. Regardless of the poll's outcome, most nationalists say they want the queen to remain their head of state.
Polls will close at 10 pm local time and results from the vote are expected in the early hours of Friday. Some pubs in Edinburgh have had closing times lifted so people can congregate and hear the results. Some nationalists have even already setup a border checkpoint between Scotland and England - one that looked so real some drivers actually stopped and handed over their papers.
"I'm not for or against independence, " Jon Parker Lee of Manchester said after passing the faux-checkpoint. "I just want everyone to have a good laugh."

Spurs beat Heat 104-87 in Game 5 to win NBA title

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, the winningest trio in NBA postseason history, shared hugs.
Players wrapped themselves in flags from around world, a reminder that the San Antonio Spurs look far beyond the border to build champions, as confetti fell from above.
Painfully denied 12 months ago by the Miami Heat, this victory party was worth the wait.
''It makes last year OK,'' Duncan said.
The Spurs finished off a dominant run to their fifth NBA championship Sunday night, ending the Heat's two-year title reign with a 104-87 victory that wrapped up the series in five games.
''We had a great first quarter, but from that point on they were the better team, and that's why they're the champions in 2014,'' said LeBron James, who led the Heat with 31 points and 10 rebounds.
San Antonio erased an early 16-point deficit and routed Miami for the fourth time in the series, denying the Heat's quest for a third straight championship. A year after the Spurs suffered their only loss in six finals appearances - a heartbreaking seven-game defeat - they turned the rematch into no match at all.
''We wanted to redeem ourselves. I'm just glad we were able to do that,'' Parker said.
Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard had 22 points and 10 rebounds for the Spurs, who added this title to the ones they won in 1999, 2003, '05 and '07. They nearly had another last year, but couldn't hold off the Heat.
''I've said many times, a day didn't go by where I didn't think about Game 6,'' Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said of the turning point in last year's finals. ''So I think, just in general, for the group to have the fortitude that they showed to get back to this spot, I think speaks volumes about how they're constituted and what kind of fiber they have.''
Not to mention tons of talent, and perhaps the best coaching in the game.
''They played exquisite basketball this series and in particular these last three games and they are the better team. There's no other way to say it,'' Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
The Spurs won four titles in nine years, but hadn't been back on top since 2007, making Foreigner's ''Feels Like the First Time'' an appropriate song choice after the final buzzer.
Duncan and Popovich have been here for all of them, and it was the fourth for Parker and Ginobili, who with Duncan are once again the reigning the Big Three in the NBA.
Chris Bosh finished with 13 points and Dwyane Wade just 11 on 4-of-12 shooting for the Heat.
The painful conclusion to last year's NBA Finals served as the fuel for this one, powering the Spurs to a league-best 62-win season and a rematch with Miami - the first in the finals since Chicago beat Utah in 1997-98.
Round 2 went to the Spurs, but both teams have challenges to navigate if there is to be a rubber match.
San Antonio will face questions - as it has for years - about the age of its core, and whether Duncan, Ginobili and Popovich want to stick around. The Heat will brace for the potential free agency of James, Wade and Bosh, and will need younger, fresher pieces around the three All-Stars if they all stay.
But this moment belongs to the Spurs.
Playing a methodical, albeit winning, style for many years made San Antonio respected, but never beloved. The Spurs were TV ratings killers, casual viewers finding them not much fun to watch.
But Popovich opened up the offense a few years ago, making the Spurs an easy-to-like, tough-to-beat group that thrives on ball movement and 3-point shooting.
''You showed the world how beautiful this game is,'' Commissioner Adam Silver told the Spurs during the postgame award ceremony.
A decade and a half after winning their first title in 1999, when Duncan was in his second season, the Spurs remain the NBA's model organization, a small-market team that simply wins big and hardly ever does it with a high draft pick. Instead, they found players overseas or in other organizations who would fit the Spurs' way of doing things and mesh with the Duncan, Parker and Ginobili, who have teamed for 117 postseason victories.
That included Leonard, acquired in a draft-night trade with Indiana after playing at San Diego State, and Patty Mills, an Australian national who scored 17 points off the bench.
In the end, the Spurs made winning their fifth title look stunningly easy - much to the delight of the home crowd. After the slow start, they had their fans standing, chanting and dancing much of the second half.

Ottawa seeks public input on wireless radiation

TORONTO - Health Canada has opened an online public consultation process so Canadians can comment on proposed updated guidelines governing safe exposure to radiofrequency waves emitted by cellphones and other electronic devices.
Called Safety Code 6, the draft revised guidelines have been posted on Health Canada’s website — http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/consult/_2014/safety_code_6-code_securite_6/index-eng.php — which is open for comment from Canadians until July 15.
The federal department said Friday it will consider comments related to the scientific and technical aspect of Safety Code 6 in the development of its final revised guidelines, expected to be published this fall.
Recommended limits to exposure to radiofrequency waves are based on established scientific evidence and provide protection against all known adverse health effects, said Health Canada, noting that Canada’s limits are consistent with those in such countries as the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
The public consultation follows an April 1 report by a Royal Society of Canada expert panel on Safety Code 6, which is aimed at protecting the health of workers and the general public.
The panel was asked by Health Canada to recommend any necessary changes to the code following a review of the latest research on adverse health effects linked to radio waves from mobile phones, Wi-Fi equipment, cellular phone towers and TV/radio broadcast antennas.
While the eight-member panel concluded that current exposure limits are designed to avoid all known health hazards and no additional precautionary measures should be introduced, there was one caveat.
Panel members said Health Canada should pursue research aimed at determining if there is a link between exposure to radiofrequency waves from ubiquitous wireless devices and cases of cancer.
Paul Demers, the director of Toronto's Occupational Cancer Research Centre who chaired the panel, said at the time that studies investigating a potential association between exposure to radio waves and the development of cancer have had inconsistent results.
The non-profit group Canadians for Safe Technology, whose stated goal is to educate Canadians and policy makers about the dangers of exposure to unsafe levels of radiofrequency radiation, reacted angrily to the findings.
The organization accused the panel of siding with the wireless industry and ignoring scientific data warning of health risks related to the technology.
Health Canada said the proposed update to Safety Code 6, which was reviewed by the Royal Society panel, includes radiofrequency exposure limits that are more restrictive than those in the current version, written in 2009.

Planes, ships chase new leads in search for Malaysian jet

PERTH/KUALA LUMPUR - New satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days, while planes scouring the frigid seas on Wednesday also reported seeing potential wreckage.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.
"We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris," Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370."
The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area of ocean,Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres (75 ft) in length, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.
Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
Malaysia's air force has released few details of its radar tracking beyond saying the plane was last detected off the northwest coast heading towards India.
But the country's deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back, local media said.
"It was detected by our radar, but the turn back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower," he was quoted as saying.
Asked at the news conference whether air force radar operators thought the plane had been told to turn back by air traffic controllers, Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said he could not confirm it.

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage on Wednesday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.
"The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it's possible to be but it's closer to Australia than anywhere else," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country's parliament in a moment's silence.
"A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be."
Wednesday's good weather was unlikely to last, in an area renowned among mariners for high winds and big waves.
"This is only going to be a narrow window of opportunity by the looks of things, because another weather system is moving in for Thursday, which looks like that will bring an increase in winds again and also lead to a reduction in visibility through the rain associated with the cold front," Neil Bennett, a spokesman for Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak this week confirmed Flight MH370 had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was no doubt the Boeing 777 came down in one of the most remote places on Earth.
Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane had diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.
Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.

PASSENGER RELATIVES DISTRAUGHT

An Australian navy ship returned to the area after being driven away by gale force winds and 20-metre (66 ft) waves on Tuesday, while a Chinese icebreaker and three Chinese navy vessels were also in the search zone.
Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-metre floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defence vessel due in Perth in the coming days.
The so-called black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up locator beacons that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.
Malaysia said on Tuesday that the U.S. "Towed Pinger Locator" would not arrive in the search area until April 5, which would give it only a few days to find the black box before the beacon battery would be expected to run out.
At the Pentagon, the U.S. and British defence chiefs acknowledged the incident remained a mystery.
"On the terrorism question, I don't think at this point we can rule anything in or out. I think we have to continue to search," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.
"Unless and until we recover the cockpit voice recorder, we will not know for certain," British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said.
FBI Director James Comey said at a Washington hearing on Wednesday he expected his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the flight in the next day or two. He did not say what results he expected.
The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of Chinese passengers clashing with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception".
Malaysia's confused initial response to the plane's disappearance and a perception of poor communications have enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and have strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese special envoy Zhang Yesui met Malaysia's Najib on Wednesday and called for "unremitting efforts" to find the plane, Xinhua said.

Flappy Bird to return, says creator

Addictive mobile game Flappy Birds will return to Apple's app store confirms creator Dong Nguyen, without giving a specific date
Addictive mobile game Flappy Bird will return to Apple's app store, creator Dong Nguyen has confirmed - although he declined to give a specific date.
On Twitter, a fan had asked if he was going to put the game back in the app store.
"Yes. But not soon," Mr Nguyen replied, later adding: "I don't work by plan. I will release it when it is done."
Mr Nguyen removed the popular game in February, saying its popularity had ruined his "simple life".

Ruined lives

Launched in May 2013, Flappy Bird was free to download and required players to tap the screen to keep the bird in flight.
Despite its simple graphics, Flappy Bird was a notoriously difficult game since many users could only keep the bird in the air for a few seconds before it hit an obstacle and fell.
The game went viral after being promoted almost entirely by social media users and was reviewed on a YouTube channel by more than 22 million subscribers.
It was downloaded 50 million times, and at the height of its popularity, Mr Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 (£30,450) a day from advertising
In an interview earlier this month with Rolling Stone, Mr Nguyen said he was moved to remove the popular mobile game from the App store after users wrote to him detailing how the game had destroyed their lives.
After the game was taken down, users started several passionate petitions to get the game reinstated.

Canada is watching rapidly mounting H7N9 case count, but still feels risk is low

TORONTO - The number of H7N9 bird flu infections continues to climb rapidly in China. But the Public Health Agency of Canada says it believes the risk the virus poses to Canadians remains low.
The agency's director general for immunization and respiratory infectious diseases said Canada is monitoring the situation in China, and continues work on an update of the national pandemic preparedness plan that was begun in the aftermath of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
"We're very interested and watching very carefully what is going on in China," Dr. John Spika said Monday in an interview.
"But the bottom line is that until the virus demonstrates some ability to more efficiently spread from person to person it remains something that we're very interested in, watching carefully but still consider to be a low risk."
Since the new H7N9 virus emerged last spring, there have been about 277 cases diagnosed; 63 of the infections have been fatal. After several months with no infections over the summer, new cases began to pop up in the fall as temperatures went down and conditions for the spread of influenza viruses improved. Since then, there have been 142 new cases, and 18 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Spika said the recent diagnosis of a case of H5N1 bird flu in Alberta is a reminder that hospitals and public health officials across the country should be on the lookout for infections with novel flu viruses in people with a travel history to China.
The woman, who died from her illness, is believed to have contracted the virus while visiting China.
"It's quite possible that the same thing may occur with H7(N9)," Spika said, referring to the possibility that infected travellers may bring the virus to Canada. But he said the fact that surveillance efforts picked up the H5N1 infection leads the Public Health Agency to believe H7N9 cases would likewise be detected.
Spika said a lot of work has been done on the national pandemic plan since 2009. In particular, an effort has been made to make the document more flexible so that authorities can react with greater ease to the particulars of the next pandemic.
Prior to 2009, many pandemic plans — both here and abroad — were written in such a way that reaching a particular phase on the World Health Organization's pandemic alert scale activated certain response activities. For example, vaccine production contracts kicked in when the WHO declared a pandemic was underway. The resulting outbreak turned out to be milder than planners had been anticipating and some countries ended up with vaccine they didn't want or need.
Spika said the revised plan will be more like a guidebook than a cookbook. He said it is hoped the provinces and territories will approve the revised plan in the spring or early summer. Work remains to be done on annexes to the main document, including those relating to surveillance, laboratory efforts, vaccines and antivirals.
On the latter issue, Spika said provinces and territories appear to be maintaining their stockpiles of flu antiviral drugs. The national antiviral stockpile contains enough of the drugs to treat about 17 per cent of the population, he said.
Canada has not asked its pandemic vaccine suppliers to make and test H7N9 vaccine, opting instead to wait for the results of clinical trials being done in the United States.
The U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority — BARDA — has funded trials to test how much vaccine each person would need to gain protection against H7N9, and whether a boosting compound called an adjuvant would be needed to stretch supplies during a pandemic.
Past studies of H7 flu viruses have shown they are poorly immunogenic; without an adjuvant, even large doses produced poor results.
The U.S.-funded studies of H7N9 vaccine have confirmed that two doses per person would be needed to get a protective response, and that an adjuvant would be needed.
The U.S. has decided to stockpile H7N9 vaccine, though it will not reveal how many doses it plans to have on hand. Spika said to this point there has been no decision taken on whether Canada should add H7N9 vaccine to a national stockpile which already includes some H5N1 vaccine.

Man 'acting violently' on flight to Vancouver arrested

A man on an international flight from China was arrested Sunday morning after the plane landed at Vancouver International Airport.
Richmond RCMP said a pilot had reported at about 6:30 a.m. PT that a passenger was "acting violently" on the China Southern Airlines flight, and had to be restrained.
A passenger on that plane, Tanya Truong, told CBC News that the man — who seemed to be in his 30s and may have had an Australian accent — was behaving strangely even before they all boarded the plane at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.
"When we were lining up to get on to the flight from Guangzhou, we had already noticed him," she said. "He appeared slightly rowdier than the rest."
But the trouble began about halfway through the 11½-hour flight, she said.
"Everyone was asleep and the lights were turned off in the plane, and he ran down the aisles, screaming and yelling at someone and alarming everyone and waking everyone one up.
"There were several flight attendants trailing him and, I think, trying to get him to calm down.
"He was just screaming a lot of swear words at one of his family members," she said.
Some passengers who had been sitting near him later told Truong that they suspected he had been intoxicated, and overheard flight attendants telling him to stop drinking.
After about an hour or two of the flight attendants keeping watch on him in the back of the plane, first in the kitchen area and then in the back row seated with one of the flight attendants, things apparently got worse.
"Other flight members had to get involved," Truong said.
"He kept trying to provoke the flight attendant," she said. "I think this definitely alarmed a lot of people because this was really loud, and it looks like he was trying to harm the flight attendant, so he had to be taken down."
"Several people had to, kind of like, sit on top of him, and then he was handcuffed," she said.
The flight attendants announced that because the passenger has compromised the safety of the other passengers, he would be taken into police custody when the plane landed.
Richmond RCMP arrested the passenger just after 9:30 a.m. PT at Vancouver International Airport.
Cpl. Stephanie Ashton said he was taken into custody and is being held at the Richmond RCMP Detachment until he appears in court on Monday.
Ashton said "it is unknown where the man originates from or the purpose of his travel to Canada."
Truong said some of the passengers who spoke with the man's family members on the flight said the family had talked about being on their way to go to Whistler to snowboard.

Madrid denies involvement in Neymar investigation

Real Madrid has issued a statement denying any involvement in the investigation into Neymar's transfer from Santos to Barcelona.
The Spanish High Court is continuing its probe surrounding the alleged misappropriation of funds  by the club's former president Sandro Rosell- who resigned last week- in securing the signing of the Brazil star.
His replacement, Josep Maria Bartomeu, has since revealed that Barcelona paid Neymar's parents 40 million euros of the total €57.1 million transfer fee.
This news was then followed by suggestions from a Catalan journalist, Xavi Bosch, that Madrid was responsible for sparking the investigation - claims fiercely denied by los Blancos.
A statement on the club's official website read: "Given the serious demonstrations last night by RAC 1 journalist Xavi Bosch, the president of Real Madrid Florentino Perez wants to state the following:
1. It is flatly a false assertion that aims to involve absurdly the president of Real Madrid with the judicial process initiated following the complaint filed by a member of FC Barcelona against president Sandro Rosell.
2. Real Madrid president demands that the journalist author of such misrepresentations rectify those claims in the same medium of communication clearly and immediately.
3. If this correction does not occur, the president of Real Madrid will file suit against journalist in defense of the right to honor, privacy and self-image. This has already been sent to the lawyers the content of the allegations made."
Barcelona board member Jordi Cases was the man responsible for initially raising concerns over the small print of Neymar's transfer and has refused to drop his complaint.

RCMP Drone Patrols P.E.I. Skies

RCMP have a new drone patrolling the skies of P.E.I. to get aerial perspectives on crashes and perhaps help with search and rescues.
The miniature helicopter caries a camera and operates by remote control. The unmanned aerial vehicle, as it's officially known, was custom-built for $18,000 for Saskatchewan RCMP. They gave it to Island police for free.
“The helicopter is carrying a Canon stock camera, like you'd buy at Future Shop or Staples. It's plugged into a live, encrypted, down link," RCMP spokesman Greg McCormick explained.
"It's a multi-rotor helicopter. There are six blades. It's made of carbon fibre.”
It fits in the back of a police cruiser and can be deployed in minutes. RCMP have just one regular helicopter to serve all of Atlantic Canada, so mini-copters could assist by taking aerial photos of highway accidents for crash analysts.
It may also help find missing people, RCMP said.
15-minute battery life
Sgt. Andrew Blackadar tested out the craft this week. "Actually it's a bit of fun. It's like a remote-controlled car, but a bit more sophisticated and it takes two of us to operate it," he said.
McCormick said it wouldn’t work for covert surveillance. “We don't use it for covert work. As you can tell, it's quite loud. It would certainly be a giveaway to its purpose,” he said as the drone buzzed overhead.
Its rechargeable battery only lasts for 15 minutes and it struggles in high winds.

Genetic Clue to How Limbs Evolved

Fish have the genetic machinery necessary to make fingers, but it is not switched on, a study suggests.
The research in Plos Biology journal sheds light on how fish evolved into the earliest land animals millions of years ago.
For fish to make the transition to land, an existing DNA architecture had to be "hijacked" in order to make digits, the researchers said.
In order to do this, they took genes from fish and inserted them into mice.
It was already known that the genes for limbs are found in fish but how they evolved to form digits remained unclear.
To unravel the genetics, the authors used the zebrafish as a model. But other scientists said that zebrafish were not a useful species for studying limb evolution.
Lead author Joost Woltering from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, said that he was interested in the "longstanding evolutionary question - how did limbs actually develop out of ancestral fish fins?"
In order to answer this, Dr Woltering and his colleagues looked at the genetics of fin and limb developments in zebra fish and mice.
He was particularly interested in the division of the hand and arm (or digits), which does not exist in fish fins and "is considered one of the major morphological innovations during the fin-to-limb transition".

'Architect' genes

Tetrapods, the first four-legged creatures to walk the Earth, evolved from water to land over 380 million years ago in an era known as the Devonian period, often referred to as "the age of fish".
Fish and land animals both have clusters of genes called HoxA and HoxD and both are known to be essential in fin and limb development.
These Hox genes are sometimes referred to as "architect genes" as they are involved in making many of the physical structures animals possess.
However, when these Hox genes from fish were placed into mouse embryos, the genes that result in the arm were switched on but not the genes responsible for the hand or the digits.
This suggests that the genetic information needed to make tetrapod limbs was already present in fish before the tetrapods evolved.
"During embryogenesis it is key that developmental genes are switched on at exactly the right time and right place to ensure the development of a complete, coherent good functioning adult organism," Dr Woltering told BBC News.

Modernised genes

"The most surprising result is we found [DNA in fish] which is almost identical to the higher order DNA structure that we found in the mouse."
Another important conclusion of the study is that fish fins are not equivalent to the tetrapod hand and digits. Instead, the evolution of digits in land animals involved the repurposing of existing genetic infrastructure.
One of the co-authors of the study, Prof Denis Duboule, also from the University of Geneva, said: "Altogether, this suggests that our digits evolved during the fin-to-limb transition by modernisation of an already existing regulatory mechanism."
Other researchers in the field say that the study contains some flaws.
Jennifer Clack, from the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, who was not involved with the study, said using the zebrafish as a model for the experiments was a bad choice.
"We know that this animal, and by inference its relatives... lack some of the developmental stages that make digits in tetrapods," she explained.
Prof Clack added that other finned fish such as Polydon [paddlefish] "do have that mechanism, operating in a similar way to that in tetrapods, to make a complex fin skeleton".
This suggests, she said, that the zebrafish at some point lost the ability to make digits.
This view was echoed by Per Ahlberg from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He said that the molecular analysis was of a very high quality but that the evolutionary conclusions were flawed.
"This entire inference is based on the assumption that the zebrafish fin skeleton is reasonably representative of the ancestral condition for tetrapods, and it just isn't," he explained.
"Essentially, modern-day sturgeon, gar and bowfin (living primitive ray-finned fishes) have fin skeletons that are reasonably close to the shared ancestral condition for mouse and zebrafish."

L'Isle-Verte fire survivors describe narrow escape

Nelida Pettigrew always had boots, a scarf and a warm coat ready at the door, just in case.
Her daughter made a point of ensuring that if Pettigrew ever needed to leave her room at the Résidence du Havre in a hurry, she would be properly dressed.
Last Thursday morning, when she realized the alarm bells echoing through the hallways weren’t triggered in error, Pettigrew threw on those warm clothes and escaped with the help of a neighbour.
She is one of only about 20 people authorities believe safely fled the burning seniors' residence in the heart of the small town.
The toll of the missing and dead in L’Isle-Verte stands at 32. Ten of those have been confirmed dead, Quebec provincial police said on Saturday. Three of those eight have been identified by the coroner’s office.
Police were initially reluctant to give a firm number of missing people, hopeful that some of the residents were away at the time of the fire and simply couldn’t be reached.
“We can assume the worst,” Lieut. Guy Lapointe of the Sûreté du Québec said at a news conference Saturday morning.
Police said, however, they will not confirm the deaths of any victims until their remains are recovered from the scene.
Survivors staying in neighbouring towns
On Saturday, emergency workers brought in extra equipment to help melt the 60-centimetre-thick ice that coats some of the rubble as the search for those still missing resumed.
Those who survived are now scattered between family members and other assisted living homes in neighbouring Trois-Pistoles and Rivière-du-Loup.
That’s where Pettigrew, 90, found herself after her home was destroyed in the blaze. Sitting in a room decorated with a vase of flowers and a few stuffed animals at a seniors' residence in Trois-Pistoles, she said she’s been well taken care of since the fire.
She escaped unharmed, but knows several of the people who didn’t make it out. She wiped away tears as she described one woman with whom she shared her meals who she believes has died.
“There’s others who died as well. I saw a few who had all their arms burned,” she said.
“I didn’t cry then, but I cried after.”
Pettigrew believes if she hadn’t been assisted by Arnaud Côté, a neighbour in the building's newer wing which sustained less damage than the older portion, she wouldn’t have made it out of the fire.
“He saved me,” she said. “If I didn’t have Mr. Arnaud Côté, I wouldn’t have known to take the emergency exit.”
Pettigrew went down two flights of stairs to safety, leaving her walker behind.
She was taken to a community centre and then to another location before she was moved to the room in Trois-Pistoles.
She hasn’t had the opportunity to talk to Côté, but said she’s immensely grateful.
“I want to hug him like he’s never been hugged before,” she said.
New wing saved by firewall
Other incredible stories of survival have emerged in L’Isle-Verte as more family members arrive at the scene to support their mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles who escaped the blaze.
Marie-Luce Dionne drove from Campbellton, N.B., to help her mother, who was also living in the newer wing of the Résidence du Havre. The flames were cut down by a firewall between the two sections. The newer portion is still standing. The older portion of the building is completely unrecognizable.
“I told my mom there were angels that night for her because she used to be in the apartment 206 [in the old section], apparently where the fire started,” Dionne said.
“She was moved down in the new [wing] on Dec. 27. There was a reason for that. She was saved maybe because she was moved there.”
Many residents and family members said they received exceptional care at the seniors home. Dionne said her mother has a very close relationship with one of the owners and she called once a week to speak with them about her mother’s care.
Dionne said her mother was assessed by medical staff, but didn’t require hospitalization.
“I’m pleased that she's OK,” she said. “She's my mom, I love her and she asked to go, but I said, ‘Mom, God is not ready for that. When you go I hope you go peacefully.’
“I'm so glad she was not in the building. I would not like her to die that way.”

US Athletes Cautioned on Wearing Team Gear Outside Sochi Venues

The US Olympic Committee has advised athletes taking part in the upcoming Sochi Games to avoid wearing their uniforms or Team USA logos outside Olympic venues, the State Department said.
The warning, released Friday, came amid growing concerns in Washington over security at the Games and as Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said the United States would work with Russian authorities on "appropriate arrangements" if an emergency required evacuating Americans from Sochi.
On advice from the State Department, the US Olympic Committee told athletes in a memo not to call attention to their nationality outside the Olympic village as a safety precaution, officials said.
"I think it is just common sense that perhaps if you are an American Olympic athlete, perhaps you don't want to advertise that so much, far outside of the venues," a senior administration official told reporters.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that "we are in very close contact with the US Olympic Committee on issues related to security."
But she added that Russia was not a unique case and that the US government often provides similar advice at "big international events."
The White House has signaled concern over Russia's security preparations for next month's Winter Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, with officials privately complaining about Moscow's reluctance to share intelligence on terror threats.
The United States has repeatedly offered to provide help to Russia to ensure security for the event, a question that came up in a telephone conversation between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
But Hagel, speaking at a news conference after talks with his French counterpart, said Russia had not taken up the US offer so far: "Right now, there has been no request from the Russian government."
The Pentagon has announced it is deploying two warships to the Black Sea as a "precaution" in case of a terror attack.
When asked if the US military had contingency plans in place to evacuate Americans in the event of a terror attack, Hagel said: "If we need to extract our citizens, we will have appropriate arrangements with the Russians to do this."
US officials later said that a potential evacuation might not require a role for the military as commercial planes might be used. And in any emergency, American authorities would need to work closely with the Russian government, officials said.
"First and foremost, Russia has the responsibility in responding to and coping with situations that might affect the safety, security and the presence of their guests," a senior administration official told reporters.
"All the American citizens there are their guests," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The US government will work with the Russian government on the various options should they need to be implemented."
As with previous Olympics, Washington has set up an operations center in Sochi with various security experts and a clear "chain of command" that would apply in any contingency, officials said.
Signaling its concern, the State Department issued an updated travel alert for Russia, urging all Olympics-bound US citizens to "remain attentive regarding their personal security at all times."
"Large-scale public events such as the Olympics present an attractive target for terrorists, and the US government continues to monitor reported threats of potential terrorist attacks in Sochi or in Russia in general," it said.
Insurgents based in North Caucasus republics such as Dagestan who are seeking their own independent state have vowed to disrupt the Games in a bid to undercut Putin.
In a recent video threat posted on a prominent North Caucasus extremist website, two men sitting in front of a jihadist flag warn of planned attacks at the February 7-23 event.

Baltimore Mall Shooting at Skateboard Store

Police in Maryland say three people died Saturday in a shooting at a mall in suburban Baltimore, including the presumed gunman, and another five people were injured.
The shooting took place at the Mall in Columbia, a suburb of both Baltimore and Washington.
"The shooting took place above the food court in a store called Zumiez, it's a skateboard shop," said Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon at a news conference early Saturday afternoon.
"He had a large amount of ammunition on and about him. We are approaching this with an abundance of caution," said McMahon. "The situation is still fluid, still evolving, still dynamic."
McMahon said no motive is known yet but revealed that one male and one female, both in their twenties and employees of the store, are dead as well as the gun man, whose identity is still unknown. It wasn't clear whether the shooting was random or if the shooter and victims knew each other.
The five other people injured included one person being treated for a gun shot wound and another four who were injured while trying to escape.
Authorities received a call to the police emergency dispatcher at around 11:15 a.m. local time from someone reporting that shots had been fired. Police responded to the scene and found three people dead, including one person who was found near a gun and ammunition.
The mall is now closed for the rest of the day as investigators piece together what happened.
Gunshots, people running
The mall, which is at the centre of the town, typically opens at 10 a.m. on Saturdays and it was not known how many shoppers or workers might have been present at the time of the shooting.
Witnesses described moments of panic as they heard a succession of gunshots and screaming as people ran for cover into nearby stores and hid behind locked doors.
Joan Harding of Elkridge, Maryland, was shopping with her husband, David, for a tiara for their granddaughter's 18th birthday. She said she heard something heavy falling, followed by gunshots and people running.
"My husband said, `Get down!' and the girl that worked in the store said, `Get in the back,' " Harding said. That is where they hid until police gave the all-clear..
People were directed out of the mall and into a parking lot, where some boarded a bus and others walked toward their cars. Some people were seen crying. McMahon said detectives were interviewing witnesses as they emerged from the mall to try to get a better picture of the events that had unfolded.
Laura McKinzles of Columbia works at a kiosk in the mall. She said she heard between eight and 10 gunshots, followed by people running and screaming. She ran into the backroom of a perfume store and locked the door.
Allison Cohen, who works at the apparel store "Lucky Brand Jeans," said she always felt safe at the mall.
"I truly never thought something like this would ever happen here. It's really, really shocking," Cohen said.

How do the Knicks Decide Who gets Courtside Seats?

The Knicks stink. But celebs still flock to Madison Square Garden to sit courtside at games. You see them every night: How do they get those tickets? Do they pay for them or are they free? And what if every celeb in the city wants to sit courtside to see LeBron? Who gets a seat and who gets a "sorry"? And who makes the decision?
Well, first off, some celebs pay for their seats. Even Carmelo Anthony's wife, LaLa. But for the rest of them, there's an entire celebrity-handling team with a SERIOUS system in place to determine who gets a seat, and where that seat is.
“If you’re an A-level person and we know the fans are going to go bananas when your picture goes up on the scoreboard, then there’s a value having you there,” Barry Watkins, the executive vice president for communications and administration for MSG's parent company, told The New York Times.
“We think it’s a big part of the brand. Win or lose, it’s one of the reasons people come to the games.”
So the A-listers get the seats on Celebrity Row, along with the celeb perks -- a special entrance and elevator, an usher who shows them to their seats, plus access to Suite 200, where they can enjoy an open bar, fine cuisine and other amenities.
Of course, nothing is really free. Celebs usually are asked to do promo spots for the team, appear at employee events or perform other small services. James Gandolfini appeared in character as Tony Soprano to woo LeBron James and Amar'e Stoudemire when they were free agents.
And if you don't play ball, well, prepare to face the consequences. Woody Allen apparently is banned from Suite 200 because he refused to film a short promo, according to his spokesperson. And Allen "understood completely," she added.

Turn Down the Heat to Lower the Obesity Risk

Keeping homes a little chillier as temperatures drop outside might help people burn more calories and protect their health, Dutch researchers say.
We spend about 90 per cent of our time indoors at home, school or work, scientists say. Now a paper published in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism proposes a little cold keeps that doctor away since regular exposure to mild cold could increase energy expenditure to tackle obesity.
"What would it mean if we let our bodies work again to control body temperature? We hypothesize that the thermal environment affects human health," Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt of Maastricht University Medical Center in The Netherlands said in a release.
The researchers describe two ways that people respond to cold. First, shivering helps protect us from hypothermia. In the past few years, scientists have also shown that adults carry brown adipose tissue, also called brown fat, which burns calories instead of storing them like conventional fat does. Brown fat is found around internal organs and between the shoulder blades.
"Maximal thermal comfort in the built environment may increase our susceptibility to obesity and related disorders, and in parallel requires high energy use in buildings," Lichtenbelt and his co-authors concluded.
"Letting our body spend more energy to maintain thermal balance may positively affect health on a population scale."
The researchers pointed to a Japanese study that found a decrease in body fat after people spent two hours per day at 17 C for six weeks. At their lab, the Dutch team has found that after spending six hours a day at 15 C, people shiver less, felt more comfortable and brown fat is activated.
In both young adults and the elderly, a previous study suggested that gradual temperature variations are accepted without significant discomfort. But Lichtenbelt notes that hospitals and long-term care homes often set the thermostat relatively high during winter.
While research aims to pinpoint the physiological basis, the idea of letting our body spend more energy to maintain its temperature remains a hypothesis that needs to be tested in long-term experiments. Lichtenbelt’s team and others are planning to have people live in cooler environments while tracking their weight.
It's too soon to tell if turning down the thermostat definitely helps with weight loss, Mitchell Lazar, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania said commenting on the paper to HealthDay News.
Previously, researchers in Stockholm have pointed out it’s not yet clear if brown adipose tissue burns more through metabolic activity.