DUISBURG, Germany – The death toll rose to 19 on Sunday and police said that 342 had been injured in a panicked crush of partygoers in an overcrowded tunnel that served as the sole entrance to a German festival billed as the world's largest techno music party.
The founder of the Love Parade said it would never be held again.
"The Love Parade was always a peaceful event and a happy party" but would forever be overshadowed by the tragedy, Rainer Schaller said.
"It's over for the Love Parade," he said.
He spoke at a press conference where authorities faced tough questions, but provided few details, about why hundreds of thousands of people were funneled through a single highway underpass into the former freight railway station used to host the party.
German media reported that there were at least 1.4 million people but police did not confirm that estimate.
Detlef von Schmeling, the police chief in Duisburg, said that 16 of the 19 people killed have been identified so far. He said they include an Australian, an Italian, a Chinese citizen and a person from Holland.
Von Schmeling said their ages ranged from just over 20 to 40.
Witnesses said officers in Duisburg, a city near Duesseldorf in western Germany, closed the end of the tunnel emptying onto the festival grounds after they become overcrowded around 5 p.m. They told revelers over loudspeakers to turn around and walk back in the other direction. But the entrance to the tunnel did not appear to have been closed and people continued piling in, sparking a panic and then a deadly crush.
Witnesses described a desperate scene, as people piled up on each other or scrambled over others who had fallen.
Partygoer Udo Sandhoefer told n-tv television that even though no one else was being let in, people still streamed into the tunnel, causing "a real mass panic."
"At some point the column (of people) got stuck, probably because everything was closed up front, and we saw that the first people were already lying on the ground," he said.
City officials chose not to evacuate the site, fearing it might spark more panic, and many people continued partying, unaware of the deaths.Rescue workers carried away the injured as techno music thundered in the background.
Other workers had trouble getting to the victims, hampered by the huge crowds. Local media reported that the cell phone system in Duisburg broke down temporarily and frantic parents trying to reach their children instead drove to the scene to look for them.
However, most streets downtown were blocked by police and the highways leading to the city were jammed. Several media outlets also reported that rescue helicopters had problems taking away the heavily injured because there was not enough space for them to land.
The founder of the Love Parade, Matthias Roeingh, known by the name Dr. Motte, blasted the planning for the event, saying "one single entrance through a tunnel lends itself to disaster. I am very sad."
German authorities also have not identified the victims yet, but the Dutch Foreign Ministry said that a 22-year-old Dutch man was among then.
German leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, voiced shock that an event meant to celebrate youth, peace and love could turn so deadly.
"The young people came to celebrate and instead there are dead and injured," Merkel said Saturday. "I am horrified by the suffering and the pain."
It was the worst accident of its kind since nine people were crushed to death and 43 more were injured at a rock festival in Roskilde, Denmark, in 2000. That fatal accident occurred when a huge crowd pushed forward during a Pearl Jam gig.
The Love Parade, where people from across Europe gather to dance, watch floats and listen to DJs spin, was once an institution in Berlin, but has been held in the industrial Ruhr region of western Germany since 2007.
The original Berlin Love Parade grew from a 1989 peace demonstration into a huge outdoor celebration of club culture that drew about 1.5 million people at its peak in 1999. But it suffered from financial problems and tensions with city officials in later years, and eventually moved.
The website of the Love Parade — whose motto this year was "The Art of Love — went black on Saturday night, with words in white saying:
"Our wish to arrange a happy togetherness was overshadowed by the tragic accidents today. ... Our sincere condolences to all the relatives and our thoughts are with all of those who are currently being taken care of."
_source:___yahoo news
About Me
- Kenneth Onojeta
- A young man of modesty and love, who believed "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool".
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Celebrity sex-tape scandal grips Indonesia
AP – In his July 14, 2009 photo, pop singer Nazril Irham, better known as Ariel, left, and his girlfriend … The story topped newscasts for a week and dominated chatter on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But just as controversial was the reaction of officials in the newly democratic nation.
Police initially threatened to charge the "stars" under a strict anti-pornography law.
Several high schools were raided for mobile phones so the offending clips could be removed. And some ministers said the incident pointed, once again, to moral decay and the need for stricter controls of the Internet.
Indonesia, a secular nation with more Muslims than any other in the world, emerged from 32 years of dictatorship in 1998. It won praise for tackling the tough tasks of fighting corruption and terrorism and implementing widely lauded social and economic reforms.
But it still faces challenges on the road to democratization, from the explosion of grass-roots campaigning on the Web to old-style politicians, who speak to small constituencies or narrow-based parties rather than the central government, said sociologist Wimar Witoelar.
For some, the initial instinct still is to clamp down.
When the scandal spurred debate as to whether education about sex — a subject still taboo at home and in the classroom — should be added to the school curriculum, Minister of Education Muhammad Nuh responded with a flat out "no."
"I may be obsolete, but I don't see that sex education in schools is needed," he told reporters. "I believe people will learn about sex naturally."
Instead, he recommended authorities search students' mobile phones for copies of the tapes, the rapid dissemination of which "violates the rules and cultural norms in a religious society."
"Whoever is responsible should be punished," Nuh said.
The first six-minute video clip appears to show pop singer Nazril Irham, better known as Ariel, in bed with his girlfriend Luna Maya, a top model, actress and, up until the scandal, the face of Lux beauty soap.
The two deny it was them, saying the footage has been doctored, but were called in for questioning by police.
Initially officers threatened to charge them under a tough anti-pornography law, even though there was no indication the intimate but explicit sex scenes were ever intended for public viewing.
"If someone is proven to have intentionally distributed the videos, that person will be charged," said Brig. Gen. Zainuri Lubis, spokesman for the national police, adding even those caught downloading clips and copying it for others could face jail time.
Local media said the video started appearing in early June after Ariel's laptop was stolen and many similar tapes, with other celebrities, are still out there.
Then a second eight-minute video emerged, purportedly showing Ariel with a former girlfriend, also a well-liked model and television presenter, further fanning public appetite for more.
As the tapes were downloaded onto Facebook and YouTube (they have since been removed by the sites' administrator) and distributed from mobile phone to mobile phone, the country tottered on the verge of sexual hysteria.
Fifteen-year-old Bintang Irvano, a student at a high school in south Jakarta, huddled around a mobile phone with his two friends to look at the video "for about the fourth time."
He said after teachers started launching daily raids, teens started removing the footage from their phones ahead of class only to later upload it.
"It's easy to get it back again," said Raikhan Daffa, 16. "We just pass it to one another by Bluetooth."
"Hey, it's one way to learn about sex!" he said, laughing.
Work grinded to a halt at some offices last week, as employees discussed the scandal on Facebook or forwarded a steady string of jokes, the punch lines all tied to the scandal.
The country of 240 million has seen an explosion of social networking as more people have access to the Internet, prompting the government earlier this year to propose a bill to regulate content.
Public pressure forced it, eventually, to be shelved.
But, in the wake of the sex-tape saga, Minister of Information and Technology Tifatul Sembiring renewed calls for content control, and teams immediately set out to deploy firewalls for more than 2,000 Internet cafes around the country.
He said it was a "race against time" to protect children from harm.
Others argued while it is important to protect the young, new media has a key role to play in helping democratize the country, and curtailing content does not come without risks.
"The government may have good intentions," said Roy Suryo, an information and technology analyst. "But freedom of information and personal access rights have to be protected as well."
Source: yahoo news
Friday, May 28, 2010
50 Cent: Get Skinny Or Die Tryin
PDT by Billy Johnson, Jr. in Hip-Hop Media Training
Die-hard 50 Cent fans won't recognize the rap superstar in a new photo that has surfaced in US Weekly. The normally buff and chiseled G-Unit head lost 54 pounds for a role in Things Fall Apart, a movie he wrote and stars in, about a promising college football player who gets cancer."I was starving," the 6-foot artist, who reduced his weight from 214 pounds to 160, told the magazine. To lose the weight, 50 walked three hours a day on a treadmill for nine weeks and lived on a liquid diet.When the shocking photo hit the web, some speculated that he was sick, but a longtime spokesperson said that was not the case.
"I can confirm that he is indeed okay," the spokesperson told Y.
Source: Yahoo news
Monday, May 24, 2010
Facebook CEO: privacy controls "missed the mark"
Report by Alexei Oreskovic
(Reuters) - Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the Internet social network will roll out new privacy settings for its more than 400 million users, amid growing concerns that the company is pushing users to make more of their personal data public.
"Many of you thought our controls were too complex," said Zuckerberg in an opinion piece published on Monday in The Washington Post.
"Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark," said the 26-year-old Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004.
In the coming weeks, Zuckerberg promised, Facebook will add privacy controls that he said would be much simpler to use.
Facebook will also give users an easy way to turn off all third-party services, Zuckerberg said.
It was not clear whether the third-party services referred to applications designed to be used within Facebook, such as games from companies like Zynga and Electronic Arts Inc's Playfish, or to separate websites which have recently begun to incorporate Facebook data.
The comments come a few weeks after Facebook, the world's largest Internet social network, unveiled several changes to its service that have prompted sharp criticism from privacy advocates and spurred a few high-profile Facebook users, such as tech commentator Jason Calacanis, to delete their accounts in protest.
A feature called "instant personalization" automatically imports Facebook users' personal profile information to the music site Pandora and the user-review site Yelp.
Another recent change forced Facebook users to make some of their profile information, such as education, hobbies and hometown, tied to public pages devoted to those topics.
And many users decry the service's byzantine privacy settings, which one blogger has called the modern-day equivalent of the notoriously complex task of programing a VCR.
Palo Alto, California-based Facebook is a private company and does not disclose financial data, though analyst estimates for its 2009 revenue range from $500 million to $650 million, primarily from selling online ads targeted at users based on their activity and profile information on Facebook.
The service is expected to reach half a billion users in the next several weeks, up sharply from 150 million users in January 2009.
Zuckerberg also noted in his opinion piece in The Washington Post, whose chairman, Donald Graham, is a member of Facebook's board of directors, that Facebook will always be kept as a free service for everyone.
Source: Reuters
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Why I recorded my phone conversation with 9ice –Ruggedman
The 9ice/Ruggedman controversy is still raging. Ruggedman had been fingered as the reason behind the break up of 9ice‘s one-year old marriage to Toni Payne, and a lot of people have insinuated that 9ice was referring to Ruggedman in his controversial song, Once Bitten Twice Shy, where he talked about his woman having oral sex with his friend. Many people are still condemning Ruggedman for recording his phone conversation on the issue with 9ice and going as far as posting it on the Internet.
However, in an e-mail sent to Life and Beat earlier in the week, Ruggedman, who said he was in London shooting some videos, explained the reasons for his actions.
According to him, it was never his intention to go that far, “but I decided to do so as a backup since I still can‘t get the reason why he (9ice), as a friend, hadn‘t come out to publicly clear up the sick rumour started by his song.
”I guess the decision to let people hear the conversation and hear 9ice himself saying he was not talking about me or Toni Payne in the song, was reached when he admitted it to me but bluntly and arrogantly refused to go public with clearing up the name of his friend and the mother of his child, especially since he admitted nothing of the sort ever happened.”
Rugged said he didn‘t care who 9ice was referring to in the controversial song.
”I guess it‘s a personal experience he had. That is not my concern. My concern was that people and even some soft sell magazines were pointing fingers at me as the person he was talking about in the song. That is not the type of person I am, and I don‘t want families, friends, fans and business partners seeing me as that. Unfortunately, for reason(s) best known to him, he admitted to me that it wasn‘t me or Toni Payne. But he has still refused to clear my name. I was left with no choice but to let people hear him say it himself. That was why I put out the conversation on the Internet. People have now heard him admit it was not me or Toni Payne he sang about, and that‘s all that matters to me. I still got mad love for him and his music, but his behaviour was bad,” Rugged said in the mail.
When contacted, 9ice, through his publicist, Black House Media, said they weren‘t ready to make any comment on the controversy.
However, it looks as if 9ice is making all the gains with the brouhaha. Life and Beat gathered that his latest album, Tradition, which contains the controversial song, has sold more than a million copies, as many people are curious to know what the artiste actually said in the song.
Source: Punch
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Nigeria: P-Square, MI Make BET Awards '10 List
Both artistes are up for the Best International Act award.
In what many analysts have described as an unusually strong contingent from the African continent, Nigerian born veteran soul singer, Sade, was included in the list of nominees as well.
Other Nigerian born acts nominated for awards include soul singer Laura Izibor and rapper Wale. Jay-Z leads the nominations list in general with a total of 5 nominations.
To be hosted by Queen Latifah, the 2010 BET Awards is scheduled to take place on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at the Shrine Auditorium, L.A.
According to a release by the organisers, BET AWARDS '10 will recognize the achievements of artists, entertainers and athletes in 19 categories. Front runner Jay-Z gets five individual nominations across multiple categories: Best Male Hip Hop Artist, Best Collaboration, Video of the Year (for which he holds two nominations) and Viewer's Choice.
Closely behind are Beyonce (Best Female R&B Artist, Best Collaboration, Video of the Year, Viewer's Choice), Alicia Keys (Best Female R&B Artist, Best Collaboration, Video of the Year, Viewer's Choice), Trey Songz (Best Male R&B Artist, Best Collaboration), Viewer's Choice) and Melanie Fiona (Best Female R&B Artist, Best New Artist, Video of the Year, Centric Award) with four each.
Source: Vanguard
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Capricia Penavic Marshall, Chief Of Protocol, SLIPS On White House Steps At State Dinner (VIDEO, PHOTOS)
Read More: Capricia Marshall Fall, Capricia Marshall Slips, Capricia Penavic, Capricia Penavic Marshall,Capricia Penavic Marshall Falls, Capricia Penavic Marshall Slips, Chief Of Protocol, Chief Of Protocol Falls, Chief Of Protocol Slips, Penavic Marshall, Slidepollajax, Slideshow, State Dinner, Style News
Oh no! Chief of Protocol of the United States Capricia Penavic Marshall slipped on the steps of the North Portico of the White House before the arrival of Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife Margarita Zavala to the State Dinner. President Obama cautioned photographers "Don't take that picture" and Michelle Obama added "Don't print that picture!"
Sorry, Mr. President
Source: The Huffington Post
Source: The Huffington Post
Monday, May 17, 2010
Dagrin's Car......
Please let this generation learn from Dagrin.We can't afford to waste our best brain any more. In a more civilized society like that of Russia here, it will never happen that you will see guys out for show and all the guys will be drunk knowing they have to drive back home. You can never see the guy to drive drinking. this is what is obtainable abroad.
Although, It is no longer a news that Our Nigeria Roads are inanimate killer. But what do we do now that the older generations have failed us and we 've got no choice but to pray and believe that soon we shall see God's hand on Nigeria.......
E GO Better
ALL STAR TRIBUTE SONG TO DAGRIN
ALL STAR TRIBUTE SONG TO DAGRIN
About 4 wks have gone by since I last sent out some updates to grp members.. we’ve had some cold days/nights recently but it seems to be warming up now…ok, so let’s get straight to it…
ALLSTARS TRIBUTE RECORD TO DAGRIN PRODUCED BY SHEYMAN
I’m aware that top Nigerian video director DJ Tee has recently filmed the official video for the Naija allstars tribute track to Dagrin, which I’m really looking forward to seeing, but in the meantime if you would like to listen to the tribute track and see some of my fave Dagrin video bits, pls click the link below… I’ve mixed in both parts 1 & 2 of the track so you can listen to all the artistes in one play. I hope I got all the pics & the names of the artistes right, as their melodies sometimes intertwined on the track, if you notice any errors do let me know & I’ll stick an apology note on Youtube! Grab a hanky or tissue when you do play the video, it may come in handy. ☹
* Dagrin allstars tribute ft Sheyman, Durella, Omawumi, Eldee, Jahbless etc
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)