The two-day test — called “Exercise Forward Defensive” — started at the Aldwych subway station, which has been closed to commuters since 1994. The London Underground maintains the station so it can be used in movies and rented for parties.
The security simulates an attack on one of the busiest days during the 2012 London Olympics. Authorities declined to reveal the exact scenario in advance, saying surprise is a key element of the exercise.
“(It’s about ensuring) that we have the right people in the right places, that we understand how others operate and that we are talking to each other at the right levels and in the right way,” said Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison of the Metropolitan Police.
The test is a part of efforts to create confidence ahead of the games, which open July 27 and end Aug. 12.
British Transport Police spokesman Simon Lubin said for participants the test evoked memories of the July 7, 2005, London transit attacks, when four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters aboard three subway trains and a bus. The attacks came a day after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics.
Official reports and an inquest criticized the emergency services’ response to the 2005 bombings.
“If there are mistakes, this is the time to make them, not when there’s a real incident,” Lubin said.
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Chavez was meeting with top aides on Wednesday to plan for his absence while expressions of support poured in from his allies around the region. Venezuela‘s foreign ministry said Chavez had received messages of concern from Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Francisco Mujica of Uruguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina.
Chavez told Venezuelans on Tuesday that doctors in Cuba had over the weekend found a two-centimeter (less than an inch) lesion is in the same place where they removed a cancerous tumor last year.
The socialist president, who hopes to extend his 13 years in power with another six-year term in the Oct. 7 elections, said he will likely need radiation therapy.
That will most likely mean being incapacitated in the coming weeks, though Chavez did not mention who might replace him during a temporary absence.
“I’m not going to be able to continue with the same rhythm,” he told state TV in a telephone call Tuesday night, adding he would need to “rethink my personal agenda and take care of myself, confront what must be confronted.”
Chavez, 57, did not say when he would depart for Cuba. He said he would attend to government business Wednesday, including signing papers and meeting with the Cabinet and military leaders.
His departure for Havana will be made “without haste,” he said. “All in good time.”
A leading Colombian oncologist, Dr. Carlos Castro, said that if Chavez undergoes radiation therapy that typically means a minimum of 10 daily sessions, which means Chavez would need to name a temporary replacement while
]]>Italy’s national civil protection agency, which is monitoring the operation off a Tuscan island, said four of the bodies had been recovered — those of a woman, a girl, a man and a person whose sex could not immediately be determined. Because of worsening weather, the divers were unable to immediately remove the other four bodies. That operation will resume Thursday, if seas are calm.
The bodies were being transferred to a hospital on the mainland for identification, a process which could take days. Before Wednesday’s development, 15 people were listed as missing, but only one of them — Dayana Arlotti — was a child.
Dayana was on the Mediterranean cruise with her Italian father and his girlfriend. The girlfriend survived, while the father, Williams Arlotti, was among the missing.
The death toll, which includes those missing — presumed dead — and bodies already recovered, stands at 32.
Among the missing passengers are an elderly American couple from Minnesota, Barbara and Gerald Heil, and Dayana‘s father. Others are from Germany and France. The one missing crew member is from India.
The father had a history of health problems, and was said by family to be traveling to celebrate a new lease on life — he had received a kidney and pancreas transplant. Some witnesses told media that they last saw him during the evacuation as he headed back to his cabin to retrieve lifesaving medication.
The Concordia, which was carrying some 4,200 passengers and crew, struck a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Jan. 13, took on water and started listing badly until it lay on its side.
Giglio is
]]>The officers and executives from Costa Cruises, the stricken vessel’s operator, join the ship’s captain Francesco Schettino and first officer Ciro Ambrosio who are being formally investigated.
A spokesman for the company would not identify the new group of defendants.
The Concordia, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, foundered off the Italian coast on January 13 after it came close into shore off the island of Giglio where a rock tore a gash in its side and it capsized.
At least 25 people died and seven remain unaccounted for.
Divers located the bodies on deck four of the partly submerged wreck. They included the body of 5-year-old Dayana Arlotti, whose father also died in the accident.
Bad weather has hampered recovery efforts and crews have been forced to wait until conditions improve before they try to get all the bodies off the ship.
Schettino faces charges of multiple manslaughter, causing an accident and abandoning ship before the evacuation of
]]>Passengers told of chaos and panic as the impact of the collision propelled the second train car into the first carriage, trapping dozens of people as others looked on from the busy platforms at the central Once station.
Officials said faulty brakes were suspected of causing the accident.
“All of a sudden we felt an explosion and we literally flew through the air … there were lots of people thrown to the floor, injured, bloodied,” a passenger wearing a neckbrace who identified himself as Fabio told local television.
“The train (car) was incrusted inside the other … the seats were gone, they disappeared, and people were jumping out the window,” the young man said.
More than 800 people were aboard the train, state news agency Telam reported.
A police captain said 49 people had been killed, including one child. Most of the damage was inflicted in the first two cars of the train.
“The train entered the Once station at 26 kilometers per hour (16 mph) … we suppose there was some flaw in the brakes,” Transport Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi was quoted by Telam as saying. “This caused the train to fold up on itself.”
Some 10 million passengers
]]>Though the 57-year-old former soldier looked stoic and played down the dangers of his latest condition, the announcement inevitably raises questions over his ability to stand for the October 7 presidential vote – or rule beyond it.
Chavez, who has dominated Venezuela since taking office in 1999 and whose fierce anti-U.S. rhetoric has turned him into one of the world’s best-known leaders, said he will head back to Havana for the next operation by the weekend.
He said a two-centimeter lesion had been discovered in his pelvis where surgeons removed a baseball-sized tumor in June, and that there was a high probability it was malignant.
His challenger for the presidency in October, opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, was quick to wish Chavez well.
“I wish my rival a successful operation, a quick recovery and a long life,” Capriles, the 39-year-old governor of Miranda state, said on Wednesday in a careful tweet.
Capriles, who won the Democratic Unity coalition’s primary this month, does not want to give any impression he is exulting in Chavez’s health problems. He wants to focus on issues such as crime and unemployment,
]]>The U.S. embassy said its staff were in “lockdown” and travel had been suspended as thousands of people expressed fury over the burning, in protests that flared for a second day in several cities.
It was a public relations disaster for U.S.-led NATO forces fighting Taliban militants ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
The U.S. government and the American commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan apologized after Afghan laborers found charred copies of the Koran while collecting rubbish at the sprawling Bagram Airbase, about an hour’s drive north of Kabul.
The apologies failed to contain the anger. Afghans took to the streets again, chanting anti-American slogans and some raising white Taliban flags in the capital.
Karzai urged security forces to try to protect civilian lives and property.
“Protests are the right of people but I ask my countrymen to avoid violence,” he said in a statement, urging people to wait for the outcome of investigations into the burnings.
Winning the hearts and minds of Afghans is critical to efforts to defeat the Taliban. Similar incidents in the past have caused deep divisions and resentment among Afghans toward the tens of thousands of foreign troops in their country.
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In a defiant response, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran’s nuclear policies would not change despite mounting international pressure against what the West says are Iran’s plans to obtain nuclear bombs.
“With God’s help, and without paying attention to propaganda, Iran’s nuclear course should continue firmly and seriously,” he said on state television. “Pressures, sanctions and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Iran’s nuclear work.”
As sanctions mount, ordinary Iranians are suffering from the effects of soaring prices and a collapsing currency. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed over the past two years in bomb attacks that Tehran has blamed on its arch-adversary Israel.
In response, Iran has issued a series of statements asserting its right to self-defense and threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil tanker route.
The collapse of the nuclear talks came as Iran seems increasingly isolated, with some experts seeing the Islamic republic’s mounting defiance in response to sanctions against its oil industry and financial institutions as evidence that it is in no mood to compromise with the West.
Elections on March 2 are expected to be won by supporters of Khamenei, an implacable enemy of the West.
The failure of the two-day visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency could now hamper any resumption of wider
]]>At least two other journalists and possibly more were wounded in the attack, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said.
One of the wounded was named as British photographer Paul Conroy, the other as Edith Bouvier of France’s Le Figaro newspaper. She was said to be in serious condition.
A witness contacted by Reuters from Amman said shells hit the house in the opposition-held Baba Amro district of Homs which was being used as a media centre. A rocket hit them when they tried to escape.
Colvin and Ochlik were both prize-winning veterans of wars in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere.
The British-based Colvin, who worked for the Sunday Times, lost an eye when she suffered a shrapnel wound while working in Sri Lanka in 2001. In public appearances after that attack, she wore a black eye patch.
Among her awards was a Martha Gelhorn Prize in 2009 for distinguished work over many years
Ochlik was born in France in
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