Chopper rescue attempt in North ends in tragedy

Cousin of man killed in botched rescue mission slams army for 'sending trainees' to minefield

The cousin of an Arab Israeli killed in a failed rescue mission at a minefield Wednesday slammed authorities for what he characterized as a "shameful screw-up."

"I’m shocked…it's difficult for me to talk right now, but I'll have plenty to say about how the State treated us," northern resident Hisham Agabriya told Ynet. His cousin, Alaa, was killed earlier after falling from a helicopter that airlifted him from a minefield.

The 24-year-old Alaa Agabriya entered the minefield with his cousin and 16-year-old brother, who told police they arrived at the site to hunt for porcupines. The two were questioned on suspicion of deliberately entering a closed military zone. They told police they did not see any fences or warning signs around the minefield. However, police are looking into the possibility that the two entered the minefield deliberately with the intention of acquiring mines.

However, Hisham denied the charges, while offering harsh words in respect to the failed rescue effort.

"Instead of dispatching a professional team to rescue him, we saw what everyone else saw – my cousin falling down from an altitude of 50 meters," he said. "This is a shameful disgrace for the rescue forces, simply a screw-up; they brought young kids there, trainees, in order to rescue him."

"I saw something falling and I asked what it was. The police officers told me: Don't worry, it's his jacket,'" the victim's cousin said. "I didn't believe it, however. I saw the soldiers coming down to him again quickly. They brought him back up and flew away quickly."

A senior doctor at the trauma ward of Haifa's Rambam hospital said that Agabriya was in critical condition when he arrived at the hospital. All subsequent efforts to save him failed.

'We were sure he would make it'

For over an hour, an eyewitness to the tragedy shouted in Arabic to Agabriya, who lay wounded in the minefield. "We were sure he would make it," the witness told Ynet. "He communicated nicely with us the whole time."

The eyewitness arrived on the scene a short while after Agabriya, who supposedly planned to have a picnic with friends, was injured by a mine.

"I managed to get within a few dozen meters of him," he said. "I spoke to him the whole time. People around him were telling him not to move and to apply a tourniquet. He cried for help, telling us in Arabic: 'Come and save me.'"

The man said witnesses had yelled to Agabriya that a chopper was on the way. "In other moments he cried out from pain and said he had been injured in the heel. He yelled: 'It hurts, it hurts, help me.'"

When the chopper arrived, the eyewitness said, two soldiers disembarked and administered first aid, tied him to a stretcher, and fixed a helmet on his head.

"The field conditions were very rough and the soldiers did a professional job while putting themselves at risk," the witness said. "At the end, after he was secured, they lifted him in the air and then – like in a movie – he dropped to the ground."

The witness said the soldiers had come back down but that at that stage, "it was clear he was dead". "What happened to him was just terribly bad luck. We were sure he would make it," the witness concluded.

Making ads more interesting

At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks.

That's why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of our AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.

We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.

We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don't want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store's upcoming sale.

Our advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising. Advertisers need an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products and services. And publishers can generate more revenue when they connect advertisers to interested audiences.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.

Transparency - We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
Choice - We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.

To find out more about what Google is doing in this important area, please visit our Public Policy blog and Privacy Center.

Keyword advertising has been so successful because it's useful to users, advertisers and publishers — everyone's interests are aligned. We believe that interest-based ads will create the same virtuous cycle, by giving users more relevant ads, while generating higher returns for advertisers and publishers.

Monkey 'kills cruel owner with coconut thrown from tree'

The animal threw the missile from the top of a tree after becoming frustrated with his tiring labour, according to reports.

Leilit Janchoom, 48, had employed the monkey to pick coconuts which he could then sell for around 4p each.

The animal – named Brother Kwan – found the work tedious and strenuous but Mr Janchoom refused to let him rest, dishing out beatings if he refused to climb trees.

It is believed that the monkey eventually snapped, and targeted his owner from a high branch with one of the hard-skinned fruits.

Mr Janchoom, from the province of Nakorn Sri Thammarat in Thailand, died on the spot after being struck by the coconut, according to reports in a local newspaper.

The dead man's wife said that the monkey had "seemed lovable" when they bought him for £130.

News of the attacks comes after scientists disclosed this week that a chimpanzee at a Swedish zoo became so annoyed at being gawked at by tourists in a zoo that he started creating weapons to hurl at them.

Santino the chimp would calmly collect stones and fashion discs made out of concrete even when the zoo was closed, to throw at visitors when they returned.

Scientists believe his behaviour is the strongest proof yet that humans are not the only creatures which can make plans for the future.

Police hunt for gunman who killed 11 in German school shooting

WINNENDEN, Germany – A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire at his former high school in southwestern Germany on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people and injuring others before escaping, police said.

Helicopters searching for him crisscrossed the area, and police warned area residents not to pick anyone up in their cars. It would be Germany's worst shooting since another teenage gunman killed 16 people and himself in another high school in 2002.

State police chief Konrad Jelden in nearby Stuttgart said 10 students and one adult had been killed.

Nine of the slain students were found dead in the school and the gunman killed an adult outside the building as he escaped, regional police spokesman Klaus Hinderer said. It was not immediately clear how the 10th student died.

"He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath," said regional police chief Erwin Hetger. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

After the attack, the suspect fled the Albertville high school toward the center of Winnenden, a town of 28,000, Hinderer said. The teenager graduated from the school last year, police said.

Witnesses said students jumped from the windows of the school building after the gunman opened fire. Concerned parents quickly swarmed around the school, which was evacuated during the incident.

The man entered the school at 9:30 a.m. and opened fire, shooting at random, police said. Police said the suspect was dressed in a black.

About 1,000 children attend the school, located in a suburb some 12 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of Stuttgart.

In 2002, 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer before turning his gun on himself in the Gutenberg high school in Erfurt.

Steinhaeuser, who had been expelled for forging a doctor's note, was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.

Asian markets extend global rally on Citi news

HONG KONG — Asian stock markets stormed higher Wednesday after Wall Street rallied on news Citigroup was turning a profit, but the upbeat mood was clouded by signs the region's biggest economies were still struggling amid the global slowdown. European markets gained modestly in early trade.

Asia's lurch higher, led partly by financial shares, was a welcome reprieve from the depressing declines in global equities over the last few weeks.

But the relief was likely to be temporary as the economic slump continued to ravage Asia's export-driven nations. Wednesday's figures showing another sharp drop in Chinese exports, as well as a fourth straight month of lower spending by Japanese companies, were just the latest grim reminders of how severe the downturn is.

With the outlook still miserable, the bear market would continue to grind toward a new bottom in the coming months, analysts said.

"What you've seen today is mostly a technical bounce in markets after falling steeply recently, and I don't think this rally can be sustained," said Arjuna Mahendran, the Singapore-based head of Asian investment strategy for HSBC Private Bank, which manages some $494 billion in assets. "It's still far too early to predict that the global recession is over ... The fundamentals are simply not in place."

The catalyst for the rally on Wall Street was a letter from Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit to employees saying the bank had operated at a profit for the first two months of this year, logging its best performance since the third quarter of 2007, the last time it booked a quarterly profit.

Investors, desperate for any positive signs about the ailing financial system, cheered the news about the banking giant, which has lost so much money the federal government has been forced to extend billions in aid and take a 36 percent stake.

As trading opened in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.7 percent, Germany's DAX advanced 0.9 percent and France's CAC 40 was up 0.8 percent. Stock futures pointed to solid gains on Wall Street Wednesday. Dow futures rose 93, or 1.4 percent, to 6,980 and S&P 500 futures advanced 11.4, or 1.6 percent, to 727.40.

Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average shot up 321.14 points, or 4.6 percent, to 7,376.12, rebounding from a 26-year closing low hit this week. Hong Kong's Hang Seng leaped 236.61 points, or 2 percent, to 11,930.66.

Elsewhere, South Korea's Kospi rose 35.31, or 3.2 percent, to 1,127.51. Benchmarks in Australia and Taiwan were up 1.9 percent; Singapore's gained 1.3 percent.

Banking shares were especially strong, with leading Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. gaining 4.1 percent. HSBC, which like Citi, gave reassurances this week that it was performing better than expected so far this year, advanced another 2.3 percent in Hong Kong, continuing its recovery form a 24 percent plunge on Monday.

The upbeat mood, though, belied more evidence that Asian countries were still suffering from the drought in Western demand that drives their export-reliant economies.

In China, exports plunged 25.7 percent last month as overseas appetite for goods made in the world's third-largest economy continued to deteriorate. Imports also fell. A string of monthly export declines is undermining hopes among many investors that China can boost its economy, at least in the near term, with a 4 trillion ($586 billion) stimulus package.

Also in Asia, Japanese machinery orders, an indicator of how much the country's companies are spending, fell 3.2 percent in January, though was still better than expected.

In the U.S., Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned the U.S. recession wouldn't end this year unless the government bailout of banks succeeded and financial markets were restored to working order.

On Tuesday, Wall Street posted its best performance of the year, with the Dow Jones industrials surging 379 points, or about 5.8 percent, to 6,926.49. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 43.07 points, 6.4 percent, to 719.6.

Oil prices were lower in Asian trade, with light, sweet crude for April delivery down 26 cents at $45.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.36 to settle at $45.71 a barrel overnight.

The dollar weakened to 98.47 yen from 98.80 yen late Tuesday. The euro rose to $1.2714 from $1.2702.

Dent-Brocklehurst family to move out of Sudeley Castle... and into cowshed

The Dent-Brocklehurst family are planning to move out of their 15th century home, Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, and into a cow shed after running into financial difficulties.

Sudeley Castle, near Winchcombe, is owned by Lady Elizabeth Ashcombe, 65 and her two children – Henry, 42, and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, 38. Elizabeth Hurley married her husband Arun Nayar at the castle in 2007.

The castle, which is open to the public, costs owner Lady Ashcombe £1.5 million to run each year.

When many of the rooms were closed to viewing for the family's private use, the estate suffered a downturn in business which has seen annual losses of £100,000.

To rectify the situation, the family have applied for permission to convert a barn and cow stalls into residential accommodation so they can move out of the castle.

The planning application – submitted to Tewkesbury Borough Council by Lady Ashcombe's daughter, Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst – states: "As the castle cannot now be opened to the public because most of its rooms are used by family for accommodation, the practicality of gaining an income from visitors has dropped dramatically as only the grounds are available to the public.

"To ensure the estate's survival, the family needs to move out of the castle into converted farm buildings on the estate to allow the castle's unique rooms to be open to visitors again, and therefore increase the public's interest and visitor income."

Lady Ashcombe and her two children inherited the 1,200-acre estate when Mark Dent-Brocklehurst, the stockbroker father of Henry and Mollie, died aged 40 in 1972.

Lady Ashcombe owns 50 percent of the estate, is now married to Henry Edward Cubitt, 4th Baron Ashcombe. Lady Ashcombe's children each own 25 per cent of the estate.

Problems began when widowed Lady Ashcombe closed the state rooms and private quarters to tourists, a decision which resulted in visitor numbers dropping from 150,000 in 2004 to 50,000 in 2006.

Now the family hope that transforming the 18th and 19th century Hill Barn and attached sheds into residential accommodation will rejuvenate the fortunes of the castle.

The application says the listed buildings, two kilometres up a steep hill from the main castle, are not now used for agricultural purposes and are redundant.

They plan to keep them as one structure, with an unspecified number of bedrooms in the east section of the main building and in the cowshed.

The tool and card shed to the north will be a sitting room and the main building a large hall and kitchen.

Corrugated iron roofs will be replaced by slate and, in keeping with the area, the walls will be insulated with sheep's wool and water will be heated by solar panels.

A spokeswoman for Sudeley Castle said: "Owing to the increasing success of weddings and corporate hospitality which has shot up this year, we are looking at increasing the options and possibly making some space in the castle available for such events."

George Clooney's ER return 'could be aired this week'

The actor has confirmed that he will make a one last appearance on the television show that made him a household name, which is on its 15th and final series.

It had been expected that Clooney would star in the finale in April, but entertainment websites are rife with rumours that he will appear on this Thursday's show.

Clooney, 47, rose to prominence playing Dr Doug Ross on America's longest-running medical drama, but last appeared in 2000.

Since then he has become one of Hollywood's highest profile film actors, starring in Ocean's Eleven, Solaris and O Brother, Where Art Thou? He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2006 for his role in Syriana.

In January he was photographed on the ER set filming what – at the time – producers thought would be the last ever episode of the show.

But The Guardian reported television industry rumours that three extra episodes have since been added, bringing forward the broadcast of Clooney's return.

Photographs taken during filming showed Clooney wearing a wedding ring, raising hopes among fans that the episode will see him tie the knot with his on-screen love interest Carol Hathaway, played by Julianna Marguiles.

ER will appear for the last time in the US on NBC on April 2 and will be preceded by a one-hour retrospective.

Funny Pictures 1

Funny Pictures - Wednesday

Man stages own funeral

A Romanian man staged his own funeral while he was still alive to make sure everything went to plan.

Marin Voinicu, 73, from Vadastra in Olt county, invited fellow villagers, relatives and friends to his home to mark his "future passing".

The village priest even accepted an invitation to officiate a funeral sermon at the man's home.

Mr Voinicu said: "I did everything by the book. I even dug my own grave in the cemetery and laid down in it to see how it feels.

"I asked my relatives to wail at my headstone for a test run. I was fully satisfied with my funeral."

He explained he decided to organise his own funeral because he didn't want to leave the task on his family's shoulders.

And his family agreed to go along with it because they felt it would be easier to organise the event when they were not distracted by grieving.

Mr Voinicu's daughter-in-law Oncica said: "If we had done this after his death it would have been harder.

"Everybody would have cried a lot but this way nobody shed a tear. We had such a good time one could have said it was more like a wedding than a funeral."

Magician who claimed he mailed self admits to hoax

– A magician who posted videos online detailing a "trip" he made in a crate aboard a cargo plane from upstate New York to Las Vegas admitted Tuesday that it was an elaborate hoax.

"It was a publicity stunt right from the start," said Wade Whitcomb, of North Syracuse, after federal officials declared the event a hoax. "If that's what they say, that must be the truth."

"The FBI spoke to Whitcomb; he did not ship himself anywhere. We have no further interest in this," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Tuesday.

Whitcomb had claimed he folded himself into a cramped wooden crate for the 26-hour trip on a United Parcel Service truck and a UPS plane. He posted a series of videos online of the purported trip shot with tiny cameras pointed out of the crate and one inside focused on him.

Whitcomb, who goes by the stage name Wade Live, claimed he made the trip last November to publicize a buddy's Web site.

The Transportation Security Administration and the FBI investigated Whitcomb's claim, saying it would violate a number of laws. The Atlanta-based UPS Inc. also investigated.

UPS spokesman Dan McMackin said he couldn't verify the claim.

"To me, it seems like a publicity stunt, and therefore, I think it could be a hoax," he said.