Tag Archives: 천안 마사지

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More than just a massive street party, Rio’s Carnival parade is also a fierce competition between 12 top-tier samba “schools” whose winner is hailed by fans across Brazil

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Little Julia Lira is scheduled to perform for the packed Sambadrome stadium – and for millions more around the country via live television – early Monday morning when the Viradouro samba group parades.

“We received the news this morning that the judge will let Julia parade,” Viradouro said spokeswoman Joice Hurtado. “The group is ecstatic that she will be able to samba.”

The Rio state agency for child protection confirmed the ruling and said it would appeal to the Justice Ministry. Calls to Judge Ivone Caetano, who decided the case, were not immediately returned.

Viradouro’s plan to make Julia its Carnival queen has created a stir in Rio and made headlines around the globe, with some child’s rights advocates saying it’s inappropriate for a young girl to be in such a traditionally sexualized role.

“The decision sets a negative precedent that will have implications across Brazil,” said Carlos Nicodemos, who as director of the Rio de Janeiro state Council for the Defense of Children and Adolescents had asked the court to block Julia’s participation.

Nicodemos said he worries about what message it sends to a nation that has long had a problem with sexual exploitation of children, 강남 마사지 especially in the lawless Amazon region.

Julia’s father, Marco – who is also the president of Viradouro – has said concerns about the girl’s well-being are overblown. He says the girl will wear a costume that is not too skimpy for a 7-year-old, and both he and his wife will watch her closely to make sure she doesn’t get too tired during the 80-minute parade.

More than just a massive street party, Rio’s Carnival parade is also a fierce competition between 12 top-tier samba “schools” whose winner is hailed by fans across Brazil.

Viradouro, which won the title in 1997, is no stranger to controversy. In 2008, a judge blocked the group from putting a dancer dressed as Adolf Hitler on a float loaded with naked people representing Holocaust victims.


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On Oscar award night, his wife, Enrica Fico, 41 years his junior, and “translator” for him since his 1985 stroke, said: “Michelangelo always went beyond words, to meet silence, the mystery and power of silence.” The first success at the box office came in 1966 with “Blowup,” about London in the swinging ’60s and a photographer who accidentally captures a murder on film

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The ANSA news agency said that Antonioni died at his home on Monday evening.

“With Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors but also a master of modernity,” Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.

Antonioni depicted alienation in the modern world through sparse dialogue and long takes. Along with Federico Fellini, he helped turn post-war Italian film away from the Neorealism movement and toward a personal cinema of imagination.

In 1995, Hollywood honored his career work — about 25 films and several screenplays — with a special Oscar for lifetime achievement. By then Antonioni was a physically frail but mentally sharp 82, unable to speak but a few words because of a stroke but still translating his vision into film. The Oscar was stolen from Antonioni’s home in 1996, together with several other film prizes.

His slow-moving camera never became synonymous with box-office success, but some of his movies such “Blow-Up,” “Red Desert” and “The Passenger” reached enduring fame.

His exploration of such intellectual themes as alienation and existential malaise led Halliwell’s Film Guide to say that “L’Avventura,” Antonioni’s first critical success, made him “a hero of the highbrows.”

The critics loved that film, but the audience hissed when “L’Avventura” was presented at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. The barest of plots, which wanders through a love affair of a couple, frustrated many viewers for its lack of action and dialogue, characteristically Antonioni.

In one point in the black-and-white film, the camera lingers and lingers on Monica Vitti, one of Antonioni’s favorite actresses, as she plays a blond, restless jet-setter.

Antonioni was born on Sept. 29, 1912, in the affluent northern city of Ferrara. He received a university degree in economics and soon began writing critiques for cinema magazines.

Antonioni’s first feature film, “Story of a Love Affair” (1950) was a tale of two lovers unable to cope with the ties binding them to their private lives.

But Antonioni grew more interested in depicting his characters’ internal turmoil rather than their daily, down-to-earth troubles. The shift induced critics to call his cinema “internal Neorealism.”

After the international critical acclaim of “L’Avventura,” which became part of a trilogy with “The Night” (1961) and “Eclipse” (1962), Antonioni’s style was established. He steadily co-wrote his films and 부천 마사지 directed them with the recognizable touch of a painter. His signature was a unique look into people’s frustrating inability to communicate and assert themselves in society.

On Oscar award night, his wife, Enrica Fico, 41 years his junior, and “translator” for him since his 1985 stroke, said: “Michelangelo always went beyond words, to meet silence, the mystery and power of silence.”

The first success at the box office came in 1966 with “Blowup,” about London in the swinging ’60s and a photographer who accidentally captures a murder on film.

But Antonioni with his hard-to-fathom films generally found it hard to convince Italian producers to back him. By the end of the 1960s, he was looking abroad for funds. American backing helped produce “Zabriskie Point” (1970), shot in the bleakly carved landscape of Death Valley, California.

Asked by an Italian magazine in 1980, “For whom do you make films” Antonioni replied: “I do it for it an ideal spectator who is this very director. I could never do something against my tastes to meet the public. Frankly, I can’t do it, even if so many directors do so. And then, what public? Italian? American? Japanese? French? British? Australian? They’re all different from each other.”

Using sometimes a notepad, sometimes the good communication he had with his wife and sometimes just his very expressive blue eyes, Antonioni astonished the film world in 1994 to make “Beyond the Clouds,” when ailing and hampered by the effects of the stroke.

With an international cast — John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, Irene Jacob, and Fanny Ardant — the movie wove together three episodes based on Antonioni’s book of short stories “Quel Bowling sul Tevere” (“Bowling on the Tiber”) to explore the usual Antonioni themes.

Worried that Antonioni would be too frail to finish the movie, investors had German director Wim Wenders follow the work, ready to step in if the Italian “maestro” couldn’t go on. But Wenders wound up watching in awe and letting Antonioni put his vision on film.

Antonioni is survived by his wife. He had no children. ANSA said that a funeral would be held Thursday in Antonioni’s hometown of Ferrara in northern Italy.


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When they see that their family budget or their personal budget is affected, then they react.” So a broader backlash could be yet to come

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Rattled EU leaders will wrangle Thursday over how to resolve a Greek debt crisis that has shaken the euro and underscored the interconnectedness of the global economy. U.S. and European shares rose on hopes for a rescue plan that might take pressure off a host of eurozone stragglers, including Portugal and Spain.

But German officials said Wednesday there was no urgent need for a bailout at the moment and that “no decision on such help” is imminent. They also said EU rules prohibited them from guaranteeing another country’s debts.

“Of course, we are running through worst-case scenarios,” a German official said on condition of anonymity. “Greece has to present a credible volume of cuts. Agreement on that would be an important signal from tomorrow’s summit.”

Greece has come under intense EU pressure to slash spending after it revealed a massive and previously undeclared budget shortfall last year that continues to rattle financial markets and the euro, the currency shared by 16 EU members. Its deficit spiraled to above 12 percent of economic output – more than four times the eurozone limit – in 2009.

Prime Minister George Papandreou’s new government has announced sweeping spending cuts that will freeze salaries and new hiring, cut bonuses and stipends and increase the average retirement age by two years to 63. The government also announced new taxes, which it insists will increase the burden on the rich but safeguard the poor.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who was in Paris Wednesday to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy, insisted Athens is not asking for a bailout.

“We have not asked for help,” he told Greek reporters in a briefing after his meeting with Sarkozy. “We have said that we just want you to support our will, the credibility of our country in the implementation of this program.”

Speaking earlier, just after his meeting with Sarkozy, Papandreou insisted that “We are absolutely decided that the stability program will be implemented in every measure.”

“We are ready to take any necessary measures to make sure the deficit goal is met,” he said.

Papandreou has faced pressure from unions, with civil servants walking off the job Wednesday in the first tangible widespread backlash against the new austerity measures.

“It’s a war against workers and we will answer with war, with constant struggles until this policy is overturned,” said Christos Katsiotis, a representative of a communist-party affiliated labor 강남 안마 union.

Yet despite the harsh rhetoric, turnout for demonstrations was relatively low, with less than 10,000 strikers and pensioners braving windy, drizzly weather in Athens. There was only one reported incident of mild tension, when police used a small amount of tear gas to stop strikers from using a garbage truck to break through a security cordon and join the main demonstration. But the incident was quickly over, and the march ended peacefully. Another 3,000 people showed up for two rallies in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city.

Although a much broader strike is planned for Feb. 24, in a country that has seen tens of thousands of people take to the streets in the past, it was an indication that many Greeks realize urgent action is needed to save the economy, no matter how painful.

“In general, there’s a dynamic developing in favor of the implementation of measures because it’s clear that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy, and if this negative dynamic isn’t controlled, we’re going to pay a huge social and financial price,” said political analyst and publisher Giorgos Kyrtsos.

Recent opinion polls have shown widespread support for freezing the pay of the country’s roughly 27,000 civil servants – whom many consider to be cosseted with various stipends, bonuses, chances of early retirement and lifetime job guarantees.

One weekend newspaper survey showed 70 percent of Greeks backed Papandreou’s call to cut civil servants’ pay and perks, although they opposed measures that would affect them individually such as new taxes or a higher retirement age.

“This is a Greek phenomenon,” Kyrtsos said. “Everyone accepts the measures that don’t affect them. When they see that their family budget or their personal budget is affected, then they react.”

So a broader backlash could be yet to come. The Feb. 24 strike promises to be broader than Wednesday’s, with both civil servants and private-sector workers walking off the job. Taxi drivers have declared a separate strike, for Thursday.

“We will have to wait to see how public opinion develops and how the government reacts to the first negative opinion polls,” Kyrtsos said.

Papandreou’s Socialists came to power last October and enjoy a strong majority of 160 seats in the 300-member Parliament, compared to the conservative opposition’s 91. The government has already faced down a protest by farmers, who demanded higher subsidy payments and staged tractor blockades on Greek highways for nearly three weeks.

European governments were initially reluctant to dig Greece out of a debt crisis it created itself – but now appear ready to help after market concerns intensified in recent days, dragging the euro down to an eight-month low against the U.S. dollar and hitting stocks worldwide.

The head of France’s national assembly, Bernard Accoyer, said Wednesday that European countries needed to show solidarity with Greece.

“The reality is obvious to everyone. The issue is not to let Greece go bankrupt,” he said.

European stocks closed up, and the spread, or interest rate difference, between Greek and benchmark German bonds narrowed, indicating less fears of Greek default in the bond market.

Markets are looking for more from EU leaders – a concrete plan on what EU nations would do if Greece were near default, which would hurt the euro, harm Europe’s already battered banking system and raise borrowing costs for governments across the continent.

Stephen Lewis, an analyst at Monument Securities, said financial markets “are taking it for granted that support will be forthcoming and would probably react negatively if the summit’s outcome fell short of expectations.”


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Ford, who speaks fluent Arabic, served previously as the U.S

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“The approval was sent through the diplomatic channels to Washington,” a diplomat with knowledge of the decision told CBS News on condition of anonymity.

The approval comes just one month after a meeting in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and 부산 마사지 senior U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell.


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In 1995, Hollywood honored his career work — about 25 films and several screenplays — with a special Oscar for lifetime achievement

Tags : 

The ANSA news agency said that Antonioni died at his home on Monday evening.

“With Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors but also a master of modernity,” Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.

Antonioni depicted alienation in the modern world through sparse dialogue and long takes. Along with Federico Fellini, he helped turn post-war Italian film away from the Neorealism movement and toward a personal cinema of imagination.

In 1995, Hollywood honored his career work — about 25 films and several screenplays — with a special Oscar for lifetime achievement. By then Antonioni was a physically frail but mentally sharp 82, unable to speak but a few words because of a stroke but still translating his vision into film. The Oscar was stolen from Antonioni’s home in 1996, together with several other film prizes.

His slow-moving camera never became synonymous with box-office success, but some of his movies such “Blow-Up,” “Red Desert” and “The Passenger” reached enduring fame.

His exploration of such intellectual themes as alienation and existential malaise led Halliwell’s Film Guide to say that “L’Avventura,” Antonioni’s first critical success, made him “a hero of the highbrows.”

The critics loved that film, but the audience hissed when “L’Avventura” was presented at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. The barest of plots, which wanders through a love affair of a couple, frustrated many viewers for its lack of action and dialogue, characteristically Antonioni.

In one point in the black-and-white film, the camera lingers and lingers on Monica Vitti, one of Antonioni’s favorite actresses, as she plays a blond, restless jet-setter.

Antonioni was born on Sept. 29, 1912, in the affluent northern city of Ferrara. He received a university degree in economics and soon began writing critiques for cinema magazines.

Antonioni’s first feature film, “Story of a Love Affair” (1950) was a tale of two lovers unable to cope with the ties binding them to their private lives.

But Antonioni grew more interested in depicting his characters’ internal turmoil rather than their daily, down-to-earth troubles. The shift induced critics to call his cinema “internal Neorealism.”

After the international critical acclaim of “L’Avventura,” which became part of a trilogy with “The Night” (1961) and “Eclipse” (1962), Antonioni’s style was established. He steadily co-wrote his films and 전주 안마 directed them with the recognizable touch of a painter. His signature was a unique look into people’s frustrating inability to communicate and assert themselves in society.

On Oscar award night, his wife, Enrica Fico, 41 years his junior, and “translator” for him since his 1985 stroke, said: “Michelangelo always went beyond words, to meet silence, the mystery and power of silence.”

The first success at the box office came in 1966 with “Blowup,” about London in the swinging ’60s and a photographer who accidentally captures a murder on film.

But Antonioni with his hard-to-fathom films generally found it hard to convince Italian producers to back him. By the end of the 1960s, he was looking abroad for funds. American backing helped produce “Zabriskie Point” (1970), shot in the bleakly carved landscape of Death Valley, California.

Asked by an Italian magazine in 1980, “For whom do you make films” Antonioni replied: “I do it for it an ideal spectator who is this very director. I could never do something against my tastes to meet the public. Frankly, I can’t do it, even if so many directors do so. And then, what public? Italian? American? Japanese? French? British? Australian? They’re all different from each other.”

Using sometimes a notepad, sometimes the good communication he had with his wife and sometimes just his very expressive blue eyes, Antonioni astonished the film world in 1994 to make “Beyond the Clouds,” when ailing and hampered by the effects of the stroke.

With an international cast — John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, Irene Jacob, and Fanny Ardant — the movie wove together three episodes based on Antonioni’s book of short stories “Quel Bowling sul Tevere” (“Bowling on the Tiber”) to explore the usual Antonioni themes.

Worried that Antonioni would be too frail to finish the movie, investors had German director Wim Wenders follow the work, ready to step in if the Italian “maestro” couldn’t go on. But Wenders wound up watching in awe and letting Antonioni put his vision on film.

Antonioni is survived by his wife. He had no children. ANSA said that a funeral would be held Thursday in Antonioni’s hometown of Ferrara in northern Italy.


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Analysts say a potential succession struggle in the wake of Mehsud’s death could temporarily weaken the Pakistani Taliban but not cripple its ability to carry out deadly attacks

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The attack came on the day the country’s top civilian security official told the Associated Press that . It was the government’s first categorical confirmation of the death of the feared militant, whose passing is likely to weaken, but not vanquish, the al Qaeda-linked insurgent network he led.

The suicide bomber who attacked police in Pakistan’s Khyber tribal area Wednesday was able to get inside their vehicle before detonating his explosives, said local tribesman Izzakhana Afridi, who witnessed the bombing.

“I saw him running and jumping into the Khasadar vehicle and then an explosion pushed me down to the ground some 50 yards away,” said Afridi, using the official name of the tribal police.

Rasheed Khan, a local government official, said the blast killed 10 policemen, six civilians and one paramilitary officer.

Police official Ibrahim Khan, who survived the explosion because he was outside the vehicle, said the blast also injured about a dozen other civilians.

“I was about 30 yards away when a huge explosion occurred and I fell on the ground,” said Khan. “I looked back and found our vehicle destroyed and my colleagues in a pool of blood.”

No group has claimed responsibility, but Taliban militants often target Pakistani security forces.

Reports of Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud’s death emerged after a spate of U.S. missiles hit his stronghold in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt in mid-January. Mehsud was said to have died of wounds suffered in one of the strikes in the Waziristan region – another big victory for the CIA-led missile campaign that killed Mehsud’s predecessor just six months ago.

The Taliban have repeatedly denied his death, but backed off an initial promise to prove the 28-year-old was still alive. The militant group also denied his predecessor’s death for weeks until the succession question was settled.

In a response to an AP query, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, wrote, “Yes, he is dead.” A senior intelligence official concurred separately. Neither gave details as to when or how the militant died.

The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

In late January, a tribal elder told the AP that he attended Mehsud’s funeral in the Mamuzai area of the Orakzai tribal region after Mehsud died at his in-laws’ home. Some local media reports, citing unnamed Taliban sources, said Mehsud died more recently in the Multan area of central Pakistan on his way to receive medical treatment in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi.

In the first few days after the mid-January missile strikes, the Taliban released a pair of audiotapes believed to carry Mehsud’s voice, in which he insisted he was fine. They have stopped offering additional evidence, one reason U.S. counterterrorism officials also are increasingly certain he died.

Still, Mehsud has been mistakenly reported dead before.

After his predecessor, fellow tribesman Baitullah Mehsud, died in an August missile strike, the Pakistani interior minister was among those who claimed Hakimullah was killed in a succession struggle. But the militant met with reporters, on camera, in the weeks afterward and went on to lead a surge of bomb attacks across the country that left more than 600 people dead.

Hakimullah Mehsud has been considered a particularly ruthless Taliban fighter with grand ambitions.

He appeared in a video with a Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees in eastern Afghanistan. After that Dec. 30 attack, the U.S. temporarily ramped up its missile campaign in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

There are reports that commanders already are lining up to vie for his position as Taliban chief.

Among the potential successors are Waliur Rehman, the deputy Taliban commander who oversaw operations in the South Waziristan region. The Pakistani army is waging an offensive in that Afghan border area against the group that has damaged much of its infrastructure.

Another name being floated is that of Maulvi Toofan, a Taliban commander reported to be based in Orakzai, a region gaining importance as militants flee there from South Waziristan.

Malik, the interior minister, also said Wednesday that Pakistan is investigating reports that Qari Hussain, another Hakimullah deputy, had also been killed. If confirmed, Hussain’s death would be a significant blow to the group because he was in charge of training suicide bombers and had close ties to other militant networks.

Analysts say a potential succession struggle in the wake of Mehsud’s death could temporarily weaken the Pakistani Taliban but not cripple its ability to carry out deadly attacks.

The Taliban’s campaign of bomb attacks in towns and cities across Pakistan had eased in recent weeks, although 34 people were killed in twin bombings in Karachi last Friday.

Also Wednesday, a Pakistani army Cobra helicopter gunship crashed in the remote Tirah Valley of Pakistan’s Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.

Another army official said the helicopter’s pilot and gunner are missing and feared dead. He said the crash appeared to have been caused by either bad weather or 대구 안마 a mechanical failure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.


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Dr

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The government initially estimated 150,000 dead on Jan. 24, apparently from bodies being recovered in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince, the capital that was near the epicenter.

Haiti Earthquake – Latest CoverageHaiti Relief: How You Can Help

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Tuesday the government now counts 230,000 deaths. CBS News reports that 300,000 others were hurt and up to 4,000 have had limbs amputated.

But she says the new figure is not definitive. She says it does not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or 대구 마사지 the dead buried by their own families.

The new figure gives the quake the same death toll as the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Four weeks after the earthquake, housing is still a big problem. Nearly half a million people are living in tent cities that have sprung up on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

On Tuesday, medical teams began vaccinating the children living there to protect them from measles and other diseases – they are worried about an o outbreak when the rainy season begins next month.

Violence bred of food shortages and inadequate security is also producing casualties. Dr. Santiago Arraffat of Evansville, Ind., said he treats several gunshot wounds a day at General Hospital.

“People are just shooting each other,” he said. “There are fights over food. People are so desperate.”

A shortage of medical equipment and spotty electrical power – service has been restored to about 20 percent of Port-au-Prince – have worsened the medical emergency.

Friday will be a national day of mourning in Haiti.


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Other actors on the show include J.K

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Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and “Funny or Die” are teaming up again to produce “No Activity” on CBS All Access. The comedy cop show, which is based on an Australian show of the same name, is set during a drug cartel bust and follows Tim Meadows and Patrick Brammall as two officers whose boring jobs are turned upside down. Brammall was in the Australian “No Activity” as well. 

Ferrell plays a character who is part of a father-and-son criminal team. Other actors on the show include J.K. Simmons, Amy Sedaris, Arturo Castro of “Broad City,” Mackenzie Davis and more. You can watch the NSFW trailer here. 

Ferrell and McKay have worked together on movies like “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights,” “Step Brothers” and “The Other Guys.” Here’s what you need to know to tune into the show. 

More in TV & Streaming

What is CBS All Access

CBS All Access is available on your mobile device, Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, PS4, Xbox or Windows 10. If you don’t have CBS All Access already, you can watch with a free, one-week trial.

Signing up is easy. You simply browse the CBS All Access landing page and pick the plan you want to purchase. The seven-day free trial is available for 대구 안마 new customers only.


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Complete Coverage: Devastation in Haiti Haiti Quake: How You can Help A press officer withdrew the statement, saying there was an error, but re-issued it within minutes

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Haiti issued wildly conflicting death tolls for the Jan. 12 earthquake on Wednesday, adding to confusion about how many people actually died — and to suspicion that nobody really knows.

A day after Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue raised the official death toll to 230,000, her office put out a statement quoting President Rene Preval as saying 270,000 bodies had been hastily buried by the government following the earthquake.

Complete Coverage: Devastation in Haiti Haiti Quake: How You can Help

A press officer withdrew the statement, saying there was an error, but re-issued it within minutes. Later Wednesday, the ministry said that due to a typo, the number should have read 170,000.

The number buried in mass graves is not necessarily the same as the government’s official estimate for the overall death toll and it remains unclear who’s doing the counting.

Government officials were not available to comment on the confusion.

The 270,000 figure, which Preval’s office said he announced at a meeting with South American presidents in Ecuador, was 40,000 higher than one released by Preval’s communications minister the previous day, even though a gravedigger at the mass graves just north of Port-au-Prince said only two bodies have been buried there this week.

Haitian officials offer no convincing explanation for how they are compiling the death toll – which has climbed from a precise 111,481 on Jan. 23 to 150,000 on Jan. 24, to 212,000 on Saturday, to 230,000 on Tuesday before Wednesday’s erroneous report of 270,000 and quick reversal to 170,000. Even some government officials are expressing skepticism about the numbers.

“I personally think that a lot of information being given to the public by the government is estimates,” said Haiti’s chief epidemiologist, Dr. Roc Magloire.

There is no doubt that the death toll — whatever it is — is one of the highest in a modern disaster.

A third of Haiti’s 9 million people were crowded into the chaotic capital when the quake struck just to the southwest a few minutes before 5 p.m. Many were preparing to leave their offices or schools. Some 250,000 houses and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed, according to government estimates, many crushing people inside.

For days, people piled bodies by the side of the road or left them half-buried under the rubble. Countless more remain under collapsed buildings, identified only by a pungent odor.

No foreign government or independent agency has issued its own death toll. Many agencies that usually can help estimate casualty numbers say they are too busy helping the living to keep track of the dead. And the Joint Task Force in charge of the relief effort — foreign governments and militaries, U.N. agencies and Haitian government officials — quotes only the government death toll.

That toll has climbed from a precise 111,481 on Jan. 23 to 150,000 on Jan. 24, to 212,000 on Saturday, to 230,000 on Tuesday. Preval’s count of 170,000 bodies buried in mass graves may represent only a piece of the toll — but nobody at his office was available to clarify.

It’s common in major disasters to see large discrepancies in death tolls: Governments may use lower figures to save face, or higher figures to attract foreign aid. In Haiti’s case, however, where the very institutions responsible for compiling information were themselves devastated, reaching a death toll is particularly difficult.

Many citizens are even more cynical, accusing the government of inflating the numbers to attract foreign aid and to take the spotlight off its own lackluster response to the disaster.

“Nobody knows how they came up with the death count. There’s no list of names. No list of who may still be trapped. No pictures of people they buried,” said shop owner Jacques Desal, 45. “No one is telling us anything. They just want the aid.”

A few days after the quake, the state-run public works department, known as the CNE, began picking up bodies from the streets and dropping them in trenches dug by earth movers in Titanyen, just north of the capital, amid rolling chalk and limestone hills that overlook the Caribbean Sea.

The trenches are 6 meters (20 feet) deep and piled 6 meters (20 feet) high.

Preval said the government has counted 170,000 bodies during those efforts, and 부천 안마 that the number does not include people buried in private ceremonies. But at Titanyen on Wednesday, worker Estelhomme Saint Val said nobody had counted the bodies.

“The trucks were just dropping people wherever, and then we would move in and cover them up,” he said. “We buried people all along the roads and roadsides. It was impossible to do a count.”

And although the government death toll jumped by the thousands from Saturday to Tuesday, Saint Val said at noon Wednesday that only one truck had arrived this week, and it carried two bodies. He said workers received 15 truckloads of bodies a day just after the quake, but the numbers dropped off about 10 days ago.

Lassegue, in announcing the Tuesday death toll, refused to say how it was calculated.

“For the moment we count 230,000 deaths, but these figures are not definitive,” she said. “It’s a partial figure.”

U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs in Geneva, who has often cited Haitian government figures, said Wednesday that she said she doesn’t know how Haiti is calculating the death toll: “We cannot confirm these figures.”

Finding someone who can is difficult.

The government says the CNE is orchestrating the count. The CNE referred questions to the prime minister’s office. The prime minister’s chief of protocol referred questions to the prime minister’s secretary-general. The prime minister’s secretary-general could not be reached.

A report by the U.N. on Tuesday attributed the death toll to Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency instead of the CNE. Civil Protection director Alta Jean-Baptiste referred questions to the Ministry of Interior. Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said Wednesday that the Civil Protection toll is “217,000-and-some deaths,” despite the higher number given by his government.

“Civil Protection, before giving out the numbers, really is doing a precise count and the numbers that they give out are numbers that are proven,” he said.

He would not say how that count is being done.

A death toll of 230,000 would equal the number of people killed in the tsunami that devastated a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean following a magnitude-9.2 earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004. That disaster generated an outpouring of international aid — in part because of the number of dead.

An extremely high toll “probably elicits more public sympathy, so it might generate more visibility, more funding,” said Chris Lom, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.

But Byrs says inflating numbers can backfire.

“Regarding every estimate, we have to be very careful because we could lose credibility with donors, with humanitarian partners,” she told The Associated Press. “If you boost the figure, it’s counterproductive. It doesn’t help when you try to match assistance to needs.”


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Another army official said the helicopter’s pilot and gunner are missing and feared dead

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The attack came on the day the country’s top civilian security official told the Associated Press that . It was the government’s first categorical confirmation of the death of the feared militant, whose passing is likely to weaken, but not vanquish, the al Qaeda-linked insurgent network he led.

The suicide bomber who attacked police in Pakistan’s Khyber tribal area Wednesday was able to get inside their vehicle before detonating his explosives, said local tribesman Izzakhana Afridi, who witnessed the bombing.

“I saw him running and jumping into the Khasadar vehicle and then an explosion pushed me down to the ground some 50 yards away,” said Afridi, using the official name of the tribal police.

Rasheed Khan, a local government official, said the blast killed 10 policemen, six civilians and one paramilitary officer.

Police official Ibrahim Khan, who survived the explosion because he was outside the vehicle, said the blast also injured about a dozen other civilians.

“I was about 30 yards away when a huge explosion occurred and I fell on the ground,” said Khan. “I looked back and found our vehicle destroyed and my colleagues in a pool of blood.”

No group has claimed responsibility, but Taliban militants often target Pakistani security forces.

Reports of Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud’s death emerged after a spate of U.S. missiles hit his stronghold in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt in mid-January. Mehsud was said to have died of wounds suffered in one of the strikes in the Waziristan region – another big victory for the CIA-led missile campaign that killed Mehsud’s predecessor just six months ago.

The Taliban have repeatedly denied his death, but backed off an initial promise to prove the 28-year-old was still alive. The militant group also denied his predecessor’s death for weeks until the succession question was settled.

In a response to an AP query, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, wrote, “Yes, he is dead.” A senior intelligence official concurred separately. Neither gave details as to when or how the militant died.

The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

In late January, a tribal elder told the AP that he attended Mehsud’s funeral in the Mamuzai area of the Orakzai tribal region after Mehsud died at his in-laws’ home. Some local media reports, citing unnamed Taliban sources, 전주 마사지 said Mehsud died more recently in the Multan area of central Pakistan on his way to receive medical treatment in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi.

In the first few days after the mid-January missile strikes, the Taliban released a pair of audiotapes believed to carry Mehsud’s voice, in which he insisted he was fine. They have stopped offering additional evidence, one reason U.S. counterterrorism officials also are increasingly certain he died.

Still, Mehsud has been mistakenly reported dead before.

After his predecessor, fellow tribesman Baitullah Mehsud, died in an August missile strike, the Pakistani interior minister was among those who claimed Hakimullah was killed in a succession struggle. But the militant met with reporters, on camera, in the weeks afterward and went on to lead a surge of bomb attacks across the country that left more than 600 people dead.

Hakimullah Mehsud has been considered a particularly ruthless Taliban fighter with grand ambitions.

He appeared in a video with a Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees in eastern Afghanistan. After that Dec. 30 attack, the U.S. temporarily ramped up its missile campaign in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

There are reports that commanders already are lining up to vie for his position as Taliban chief.

Among the potential successors are Waliur Rehman, the deputy Taliban commander who oversaw operations in the South Waziristan region. The Pakistani army is waging an offensive in that Afghan border area against the group that has damaged much of its infrastructure.

Another name being floated is that of Maulvi Toofan, a Taliban commander reported to be based in Orakzai, a region gaining importance as militants flee there from South Waziristan.

Malik, the interior minister, also said Wednesday that Pakistan is investigating reports that Qari Hussain, another Hakimullah deputy, had also been killed. If confirmed, Hussain’s death would be a significant blow to the group because he was in charge of training suicide bombers and had close ties to other militant networks.

Analysts say a potential succession struggle in the wake of Mehsud’s death could temporarily weaken the Pakistani Taliban but not cripple its ability to carry out deadly attacks.

The Taliban’s campaign of bomb attacks in towns and cities across Pakistan had eased in recent weeks, although 34 people were killed in twin bombings in Karachi last Friday.

Also Wednesday, a Pakistani army Cobra helicopter gunship crashed in the remote Tirah Valley of Pakistan’s Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.

Another army official said the helicopter’s pilot and gunner are missing and feared dead. He said the crash appeared to have been caused by either bad weather or a mechanical failure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.


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