PENINSULA DAILY NEWS for Monday, January 28, 2013 PAGE
A3 Briefly: Nation Senator pushing gun legislation not optimistic WASHINGTON — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who’s leading the push to restore an assault weapon ban, acknowledged Sunday that the effort faces tough odds to pass Congress — and she blamed the nation’s largest gun-rights group. Feinstein, D-Calif., on Thursday introduced a bill that would prohibit 157 specific weapons and ammunition magazines that have Feinstein more than 10 rounds. The White House and fellow Democrats are skeptical the measure is going anywhere, given lawmakers who are looking toward re-election might fear pro-gun voters and the National Rifle Association. “This has always been an uphill fight. This has never been easy. This is the hardest of the hard,” Feinstein said. “They [the NRA] come after you. They put together large amounts of money to defeat you,” Feinstein said.
Oil spilled into river VICKSBURG, Miss. — A
barge carrying 80,000 gallons of oil hit a railroad bridge Sunday, spilling light crude into the Mississippi River and closing the waterway for eight miles in each direction, the Coast Guard said. A second barge was damaged. Investigators did not know how much had spilled, but an oily sheen was reported as far as three miles downriver of Vicksburg after the 1:12 a.m. accident, said Lt. Ryan Gomez of the Coast Guard’s office in Memphis, Tenn. The first barge was still leaking Sunday evening, and emergency workers set out booms to absorb and contain the oil, Gomez said.
7 killed in violence CHICAGO — Authorities said seven people were killed and six wounded in gun violence in one day. Among those killed Saturday was a 34-year-old man whose mother had already lost her three other children to shootings. Police said Ronnie Chambers, who was his mother’s youngest child, was shot in the head while sitting in a car. Police said two separate double-homicide shootings also occurred Saturday about 12 hours apart. Chicago’s homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time since 2008. Chicago’s homicide rate was almost double in the early 1990s, averaging around 900. The Associated Press
Briefly: World Egypt leader sets curfew in trouble spots CAIRO — Egypt’s president has declared a 30-day state of emergency and curfew in the three Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by a wave of political violence that has left more than 50 dead in three days. An angry Mohammed Morsi vowed in a televised address Sunday he would not hesitate to take more action to stem the latest Morsi eruption of violence across much of the country. The three provinces are Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. Morsi also invited the nation’s political forces to a dialogue starting today to resolve the country’s latest crisis. The predominantly secular and liberal opposition has in the past declined Morsi’s offers of dialogue, arguing that he must first show a political will to meet some of its demands.
nine months. So far the French forces have met little resistance, though it remains unclear what battles may await them farther north. The Malian military blocked dozens of international journalists from trying to travel toward Timbuktu. Lt. Col. Diarran Kone, a spokesman for Mali’s defense minister, declined to give details Sunday about the advance on Timbuktu, citing the security of an ongoing operation. Timbuktu’s mayor, Ousmane Halle, is in the capital, Bamako, and he told The Associated Press he had no information about the remote town, where phone lines have been cut for days.
Mussolini praised
ROME — Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi praised Benito Mussolini for “having done good” despite the Fascist dictator’s anti-Jewish laws, immediately sparking expressions of outrage as Europe on Sunday held Holocaust remembrances. Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for allying himself with Hitler, saying he likely reasoned that it would be better to be on the winning side. The media mogul, whose conservative forces are polling second in voter surveys ahead of Troops off to Tumbuktu next month’s election, spoke to SEVARE, Mali — French and reporters on the sidelines of a Malian forces pushed toward ceremony in Milan to commemothe fabled desert town of Timrate the Holocaust. buktu on Sunday as the two“It is difficult now to put oneweek-long French mission gath- self in the shoes of who was ered momentum against the making decisions back then,” Islamist extremists who have Berlusconi said. The Associated Press ruled the north for more than
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Firefighters continue to fight a fire at a nightclub in the Brazilian college town of Santa Maria early Sunday.
Lifeless bodies block exit in nightclub fire At least 230 die; fireworks likely cause THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil — Bodies of patrons already dead appeared to block the only exit for others trying to flee smoke and flames from a nightclub fire early Sunday, killing more than 230 people — the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade. Witnesses said a flare or firework lighted by band members might have started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 225,000 people. Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside. Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city’s fire department, told O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because “there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance.”
World’s deadliest nightclub fires HERE IS A look at some other biggest nightclub fires in the past century: ■ A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out in December 2009 when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152. ■ A December 2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a flare ignited ceiling foam. ■ A nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling. ■ A fire blamed on a welding accident tore through a disco in the central Chinese city of Luoyang in December 2000, killing 309 people. ■ A fire at the Ozone Disco Pub in 1996 in Quezon City, Philippines, killed 162 people, many of them students celebrating the end of the school year. ■ In 1977, 165 people perished and more than 200 were injured when the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, which touted itself as the Showplace of the Nation, burned to the ground. ■ A fire killed 492 people at Boston’s Cocoanut Grove club in 1942, the deadliest nightclub blaze in U.S. history. The fire led to the enactment of requirements for sprinkler systems and accessible exits with emergency lights not linked to the regular lighting system. ■ In 1940, a fire ignited the decorative Spanish moss draping the ceiling of the Rhythm Night Club in Natchez, Mississippi, killing 209 people. Hundreds of patrons ran to the only exit. The windows had been boarded shut to keep unwanted guests from sneaking in. The Associated Press
Desperately seeking help Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said. Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band ignited flares that started the conflagration. “The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward,” she said.
Quick Read
“At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread.” Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band Gurizada Fandangueira started playing at 2:15 a.m., “and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning.” “It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It’s harmless; we never had any trouble with it. “When the fire started, a guard
passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it, but it wasn’t working.”
Band member dies He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely. Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim — he said earlier that the death toll probably was made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could exit.
. . . more news to start your day
Nation: Casey Anthony asks bankruptcy protection
Nation: Obama unsure about child playing football
Nation: ‘Hansel, Gretel’ movie stirs box offices
World: Authorities looking for missing musical band
CASEY ANTHONY HAS filed for bankruptcy in Florida, claiming $1,100 in assets and $792,000 in liabilities. Court records show that Anthony, who was acquitted of killing her 2-yearold daughter Caylee in 2011, filed in federal court in Tampa. Her listed debts include $500,000 for attorney fees and costs for her criminal defense lawyer; $145,660 for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office for a judgment covering investigative fees and costs related to the case; $68,540 for the Internal Revenue Service for taxes, interest and penalties; and $61,505 for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for court costs.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA is a big football fan with two daughters, but if he had a son, he says he’d “have to think long and hard” before letting him play because of the physical toll the game takes. “I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence,” Obama told The New Republic. Republic. “In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.”
“HANSEL & GRETEL: Witch Hunters” cooked up $19 million in its opening weekend. Paramount’s R-rated action film update on the classic fairytale topped the box office, according to studio estimates Sunday. Other films opening over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada didn’t fare as well. The crime thriller “Parker,” starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez, debuted in fifth place with $7 million, while Relativity Media’s raunchy ensemble comedy “Movie 43” opened in the seventh spot with $5 million. “Mama” starring Jessica Chastain dropped to second with $12.8 million.
AUTHORITIES IN NORTHERN Mexico still have no leads after searching two days for 20 people with a Colombian-style band who went missing after a private performance at a bar, an official with the Nuevo Leon State Investigation Agency said Sunday. The 20 people include 15 members of Kombo Kolombia and the band’s crew. People living near the bar in Hidalgo municipality south of the Texas border reported hearing gunshots about 4 a.m. Friday, following by the sound of vehicles speeding away, said a source with the state agency.