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Hungarian firemen and workers use a ladder as they prepare to remove Golgotha, a 35 square metre painting from 1884 by Hungarian artist Mihaly Munkacsy, from a wall of Deri Museum in Debrecen, to take it to Pecs, European Capital of Culture 2010
Picture: EPA
| Last Update: 4/19 8:06 pm |
A Russian pilot crashed his plane into a field after trying to ask a farmer for directions.
The pilot lost his bearings while flying in the Stavropol region of south-west Russia.
Spotting a tractor driving down below, the pilot decided to land and ask the driver for directions.
The tractorUnfortunately, his plane clipped the top of the tractor, breaking its landing gear and causing it to crash.
Nobody was hurt in the accident.
Copyright WENN.com. Metro.co.uk contributed to this report.FOXNews.com.20/4/2010
The Space Shuttle Discovery is on its way back to Earth at the end of a resupply mission to the International Space Station, targeting a 9:08 a.m. landing.
With a smooth touchdown and a safe parachute deployment, Discovery and its seven astronauts landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:08 a.m., where clear skies rather than ground fog greeted the astronaut crew.
The shuttle flew 6,232,235 miles in 238 orbits around the Earth before landing safely in Florida. It was the 129th safe landing for the craft.
Discovery took take a more westerly approach in its descent, bringing the shuttle over Vancouver, British Columbia, and down over Helena, Mont., Wyoming, southwestern Nebraska, northeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida just east of Gainesville.
It was the first time since 2007 that a space shuttle has descended over so much of the United States. The ship's descent was 20 times steeper than that of a commercial plane landing.
"Sounds like a great ground track," Discovery's commander, Alan Poindexter, had radioed back to ground control.
Watch NASA latest Shuttle Discovery mission, STS-131, from lift-off to the International space station and back again.
NASA typically prefers bringing a shuttle home from the southwest. That way, there's minimal flying over heavily populated areas. In 2003, space shuttle Columbia shattered over Texas during re-entry, but no one on the ground was injured by the falling wreckage.
NASA also prefers to end a shuttle flight at its home base in Florida, to save the $1.8 million and minimum of a week it takes to haul a shuttle cross-country atop a modified jumbo jet.
While reentering the atmosphere, Discovery hit speeds as fast as 11,000 mph. It landed at 205 mph at 9:08 and 35 seconds EST, following sonic booms at 9:05 a.m. that announced that the ship was slowing to landing speeds.
Showers that NASA was concerned with have begun to move further East, out into the Atlantic, past the 30-mile zone the space agency is concerned with.
On Monday, rain and overcast skies at Kennedy prevented Discovery from ending its next-to-last flight, a resupply mission to the International Space Station that spanned more than 6 million miles.
Before leaving the space station Saturday, Poindexter and his crew dropped off tons of supplies and equipment. The main delivery was a tank full of ammonia coolant, which took three spacewalks to hook up.
A nitrogen pressure valve refused to open after the tank was installed, and for a day, NASA considered sending the shuttle astronauts out on a fourth spacewalk to fix the problem. But engineers concluded it was not an emergency and that the space station crew or future shuttle fliers could deal with it.
History, meanwhile, was made with the presence of four women in space: three on the shuttle and one at the station.
Only three shuttle missions remain for NASA before the fleet is retired this fall after nearly 30 years of operation. Atlantis will carry up a small Russian lab and other equipment next month.
The same bad weather that prevented Discovery from returning home Monday also stalled Atlantis' trip to the launch pad. The three-mile move from the hangar has been rescheduled for Tuesday night. Liftoff is targeted for May 14.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri, seen in a poster in a 2006 news conference.
After Mr. Maliki’s press conference, the American military released a statement verifying that Mr. Baghdadi was killed in a joint raid between Iraqi and United States forces in the dark hours of Sunday morning near Tikrit, near Saddam Hussein’s hometown.
Also killed, according to Mr. Maliki and American officials, was Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, also known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group that includes some foreign leadership.
Both men were found in a hole in the ground.
“The security forces surrounded the hole, and when they got them out they were dead,” Mr. Maliki said at the news conference. Mr. Maliki said computers and letters were found that included communication between the men and Osama bin Laden.
One United States soldier died during the operation in a helicopter crash, which officials said was not caused by enemy fire.
“The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” said Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American military commander in Iraq, in a statement. “The Government of Iraq intelligence services and security forces supported by U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have over the last several months continued to degrade A.Q.I. There is still work to do but this is a significant step forward in ridding Iraq of terrorists.”
The American military said Mr. Masri had replaced the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006. The American military described Mr. Masri as being “directly responsible for high profile bombings and attacks against the people of Iraq.”
While violence is down dramatically in Iraq compared to the worst days of the insurgency and sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, the country still faces daily attacks in the form of car bombs, improvised explosive devices and assassinations.
The Sunni insurgency, whose face was Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, deteriorated in recent years after American forces persuaded groups of fighters to switch sides by paying them cash and promising them jobs, a movement that became known as the Awakening.
