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Facebook flashmob shuts down station

Thousands of dancers jammed a major London train station in a Facebook-driven "flashmob" mimicking an advertisement for a phone company.

And the event last Friday evening was so successful that another is planned for next Friday in Trafalgar Square in central London. Plus, a group has been set up to organize another one at Liverpool Street Station a week later. Videos posted on the social-networking site showed Liverpool Street Station completely filled with people, counting down the seconds until the clock showed 7 p.m., then dancing to music on their mp3 players as the hour struck. The sheer scale of the event came as a complete surprise to the organizer, a 22-year-old Facebook user who identified himself only as Crazzy Eve. “I was watching TV and the T-Mobile advertisement came up and I thought, hm, let’s get my friends down to Liverpool Street and do a little dance,” he told CNN by phone. He posted the event on Facebook and invited his friends, who invited their friends, he said, and so on until thousands of people had been told of the plan. “At a quarter to seven people just flocked into the station like someone opened a plughole and the water went out,” he said. “They just kept coming in like sheep. As it grew and grew, I just thought, ‘This is going to be huge.'” His main memory of the event is “the volume of people — you couldn’t see the floor,” he said. He left after 15 minutes — the scheduled ending time — for fear of the police, he said, adding that he had deleted his name from the event Web site and refused to identify himself to CNN for the same reason. “The entire main concourse was packed full of people dancing, cheering and screaming,” said CNN’s Simon Hooper, who was passing through the station on his way home. “There were camera flashes going off constantly. There were also loads of people crammed around the edge of the upper level of the station, looking down at the scene below. “There were a lot of bemused commuters wandering around the edges, trying to get to their trains but nobody seemed to mind too much. Everyone seemed pretty good humored,” he said. “I think a lot of people who pass through Liverpool Street regularly are getting used to this sort of thing.” British Transport Police also described it as “mainly a good humored event,” adding “No arrests were made and no crimes were reported.” Police did not have an immediate estimate of the crowd size, but more than 14,000 people joined the Facebook group “Liverpool Street Station Silent Dance.” “It was both good cause we all stuck like a group didn’t stop dancing inside and outside but bad cause of the people who could get anywhere but hey I love it WE MADE HISTORY RIGHT THERE!!” one Facebook user said on the event’s Web site. “Yeah I agree, there wasn’t any bad feelings there. Everybody just had a good time, apart from my friend being groped by some guy, but you’ll always get one,” another wrote. The T-Mobile commercial which inspired the event shows several hundred people dancing in the station. The dancing in the advertisement appears to be spontaneous but was actually choreographed. It was filmed January 15 and has been widely broadcast since then. The success of the event has prompted Crazzy Eve to call for another silent dance at Trafalgar Square in central London on February 13. A group has been set up to organize another one at Liverpool Street Station a week later. The station has a large open space with a balcony surrounding it. User videos shot from the balcony and posted on Facebook showed every available inch of space filled with people, many of them cheering, though the event was billed as “silent.” Flashmobs — groups of people meeting and all doing the same thing together in public, from dancing to freezing in place — have become increasingly regular events around the world. London’s Tate Modern art museum was the scene of a flashmob dance in 2007, and hundreds of people froze in place in Trafalgar Square, then formed a conga line in 2008. Charlie Todd, a comedian and founder of the New York group Improv Everywhere, which organizes flashmobs, says the point of the group’s “missions” is simple. “We get satisfaction from coming up with an awesome idea and making it come to life,” he writes on the group’s Web site. “In the process we bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives. We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.”

Adams axed by struggling Portsmouth

Portsmouth won just two league games from 16 under Adams.
English Premier League side Portsmouth have axed manager Tony Adams following a nine-match winless streak in the league that has left the south coast club battling against relegation.

The former Arsenal and England captain was promoted to the top job in October following Harry Redknapp’s departure to Tottenham. But Portsmouth have won just two league games since under Adams. On Saturday, Adams watched his side throw surrender a 2-1 lead late in the game in a 3-2 home defeat by title-chasing Liverpool. After winning the FA Cup last season, Portsmouth’s defense of the trophy was ended by Championship side Swansea. The club also failed to advance beyond the group stages of the UEFA Cup. “This has been a very difficult decision and Tony has worked tirelessly to arrest the slump in form,” a club spokesman said Monday. “The owner and the board feel they have been as supportive as they can during a period where results have been poor. The team has played well but too many points have been dropped from winning positions. Portsmouth are currently 16th in the Premier League, just one point and two places outside the relegation zone. “The priority is for Portsmouth to remain in the top flight and we feel the appointment of a new manager will give us the best opportunity to enable us to do this.” Portsmouth’s director of youth football, Paul Hart, formerly in charge at Nottingham Forest, will take over as caretaker manager while the club searches for a longterm replacement. Adams’ Dutch assistant, Johnny Metgod, has also left the club.

Chinese military tackles drought crisis

Drought has hit major wheat-growing provinces in northern China since early January.
The Chinese government brought out the big guns over the weekend to help fight its worst drought in 50 years.

Soldiers loaded rockets with cloud-seeding chemicals over the weekend and fired them into the sky over drought-stricken areas. The clouds opened and it rained briefly in some of the hardest hit provinces in northern and central China, but not enough end to the drought. The clouds were too thin and moving too fast to do much good. In the longer term China plans to divert water from its two longest rivers to drought-stricken areas, although it will remain difficult to get water to mountainous and remote farmland. Many farms in China still rely on rainfall, because irrigation systems are poor. Some places are getting 80 percent less rain than they normally do, according to the Flood Control and Drought Relief Office. Since November, northern and central China has had little precipitation. Many places have not had rainfall for more than 100 days. State-run media reports 4.4 million people and 2.1 million livestock are facing water shortages. China’s winter wheat crop is most seriously threatened. The drought has hit almost half of the country’s winter wheat fields. Rice crops are also affected. The Chinese government has allocated $12.7 billion dollars for farmers to buy relief materials, including agricultural tools and fertilizer, in an effort to help salvage their crops.

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“It’s of vital significance to the overall economy to boost steady growth of grain production,” said Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. The drought comes as China seeks to boost domestic demand and farmers’ incomes in the midst of the global economic crisis.

In rural Alaska villages, families struggle to survive

Villagers in Emmonak, Alaska, must travel to the store and to hunt using a snowmobile now that the river has frozen over.
Thousands of villagers in rural Alaska are struggling to survive, forced to choose between keeping their families warm and keeping their stomachs full, residents say.

Harvested nuts and berries, small game animals, and dried fish, are the only things keeping some from starving. To get to the nearest store, Ann Strongheart and her husband, who live in Nunam Iqua, Alaska, take an hour-and-15-minute snowmobile ride to Emmonak, Alaska. Their town does not have a store of its own. Normally, they would each ride a snowmobile, in case one broke down. But now, they can’t afford to waste the fuel, so they just take one and hope for the best. At the store, the Stronghearts buy groceries and supplies for the family for the week, which cost more than $400. They buy only as much as their snowmobile can carry. In many stores, two pounds of cheese costs between $15 and $18, milk costs $10 a gallon, a five-pound bag of apples costs $15, and a dozen eggs costs $22 — more than double the price in the area just two years ago. Many area residents don’t even bother with fruits and vegetables which can be damaged by freezing on the trip home. After shopping, the Stronghearts pack their groceries into boxes, tie them to the snowmobile and begin the 25-mile trek home, passing moose, rabbit and fox tracks along the way. Watch how transportation is a challenge in rural Alaska » The trip sets them back about $50 in fuel alone. On top of high food prices, some residents are paying nearly $1,500 a month to heat their homes.

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The Strongheart’s live in one of a group of Native American communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Strongheart and other residents of these villages of 200 to 800 residents, are feeling the impact of a devastating perfect storm of events. See where the towns are and learn more about them » Commercial fishermen couldn’t make money from the seasonal king salmon harvest this year, because there was barely enough fish for subsistence. In fact, most fishermen lost money. Then a brutal early winter brought the longest cold snap in five years. In September the temperature in many villages dropped as low as 20 degrees, a record low for many, according to the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. The 1,200-mile Yukon River, which the villages use as a highway, froze completely in September, at least two months earlier than usual. That left residents cut off from some basic necessities, and forced them to have pricey bulk fuel flown in. These residents and their descendants have lived for hundreds of years in the Yukon Delta, which Emmonak resident Cindy Beans describes as something out of National Geographic. Watch how rural Alaskans celebrate their culture » Though they send their kids to school, many speak the native Yup’ik, and live a much simpler life than even urban Alaskans. They have always had the comfort of food around them — whatever they can pick, catch and hunt. “But in order to have access to all the subsistence food, you have to be able to get out there and hunt for it,” Beans said. And that requires them to go out on their snowmobiles, which means using more fuel. The community is always gathering food, Beans said. “All summer long we are putting away fish for the winter, by fall working on moose, then setting nets under the ice for winter time. But now, this food which used to supplement groceries, is all that people have since they can’t afford to buy food at these prices.” So residents have been forced to rely more on these subsistence methods. Beans said her brother walks three miles in -20 degree weather to check on nets under the ice for fish. The fish is a staple they need to keep themselves fed. “The life out here has always been hard, it’s just that its a lot harder now,” she said. Emmonak resident Nicholas Tucker wondered if others were feeling the impact, so he broadcast an inquiry via VHF radio, one of the common ways to communicate in the village. Tucker said many of them sobbed as they radioed him back. “His family has been out of food for quite some time now,” Tucker wrote about one resident in a letter sent to legislators and the media. “Their 1-year-old child is out of milk, [he] can’t get it and he has no idea when he will be able to get the next can.” “There are days without food in his house,” Tucker wrote. A single father with five children choked back tears as he told Tucker of his struggle to help his kids. “Right now, we can’t eat during the day, only at supper time,” Tucker wrote of the man. “If there had been no school lunch our kids would be starving.” Many of the tribal leaders said they are begging the state and federal governments to do something to help. George Lamont, tribal administrator in Tuluksak, Alaska, said because of the crisis and villagers’ inability to pay their utilities, he fears many may have their electricity shut off. Watch how heating the house is a daily struggle for one family » Alaska has given many residents $1,200 energy rebate checks, but residents say it barely helps them with one month’s heating costs. Aid agencies, including the Red Cross, aren’t an option right now — the Alaska Red Cross said they couldn’t help until a disaster is declared. But the state hasn’t declared an emergency yet, and it can’t because of a state statute that requires the average income levels in the villages to drop below $26,500 — whatever the cost of living. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s office said the state is trying to find a way to free up government help. “Local government specialists in the state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development continue to crunch numbers and seek creative approaches to finding a statutorily acceptable way to justify a disaster declaration, which would open the door to federal aid, as well,” deputy press secretary Sharon Leighow said. Leighow said Palin is sending her new rural advisor, John Moller, to the area next week, accompanied by representatives of the Alaska Food Bank. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs to step in and help the towns most in need. “I find it ironic, tragically ironic, that it takes an economic downturn in the rest of the country for this Congress to consider an economic stimulus for Indian Country,” she said during a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs economic stimulus hearing. The villagers hold out hope that the state or federal governments can come through. “People have really been looking forward to some emergency assistance,” Lamont said.

After hearing the stories from his neighbor, Tucker said it’s clear help is needed now. “We have remained quiet, cried and suffered in silence,” he said. “So now, this is our simple cry to others for help.”

Bomb explodes in Madrid after ETA warning

Policemen inspect the area after a van loaded with a bomb exploded in northeast Madrid.
A bomb inside a van exploded in northeastern Madrid Monday, after a warning call by the Basque separatist group ETA. The blast caused damage but there were no immediate reports of injury.

The Red Cross received a call at 7:37 a.m. (1:37 a.m. ET), in the name of ETA, warning of the bomb. The Red Cross immediately contacted police, who cordoned off the area, a Red Cross spokeswoman told CNN. The blast occurred shortly after 9 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) outside the building of a construction company, CNN partner network CNN+ reported. The company, Ferrovial Agroman, is involved in building a high-speed train line in the Basque region, which ETA opposes. The attack came just hours after Spain’s Supreme Court declined to allow two new leftist Basque parties to compete in the March 1 Basque regional elections in northern Spain. Authorities allege the new parties are simply new names for other leftist Basque parties already outlawed for their links to ETA. “What ETA did this morning ratifies the Supreme Court decision last night,” Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told reporters, at the scene of the explosion. At least 30 vehicles parked in the street were damaged, as well as the construction company offices, the Spanish police said in a statement. The bomb, it added, was placed in a van stolen last night in the Madrid area. Exactly four years ago, on Feb. 9, 2005, ETA placed a bomb in the same Madrid neighborhood that was hit on Monday. That attack caused dozens of injuries, and damaged a different glass-façade office building. ETA is blamed for more than 800 deaths in its long fight for Basque independence. It is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.

An explosion, a scream, then silence

Firefighters battle a blaze in Labertouche, about 125 kilometers west of Melbourne.
For 25 agonizing minutes, journalist Norm Beaman did not know whether his wife had perished in wild fires sweeping southern Australia, after he lost mobile phone contact following an explosion and a scream.

Beaman, a veteran reporter for Channel 7 news, was racing home to his property on Mount Disappointment, north of Melbourne, talking to his wife Annie as she tried to defend their home from the fires that have left dozens dead. “She was being stoic, putting up a fight, but when the hay and machinery shed next to our house exploded, she frantically screamed: ‘I’m jumping in the dam,’ and that was the last I heard of her for 25 minutes,” he told CNN. Beaman, held back at a roadblock, argued with police to be let through to try to find Annie, but they refused — eventually dispatching an officer to investigate. Watch Beaman describe his anguish ». Annie, meanwhile, had been found by neighbors who took her to shelter in the smoldering ruins of another property — only to face a return of the flames. “She and some of the neighbors on top of this mountain huddled together in a burnt-out paddock with blankets over their heads and let the fire… and it curled back over them but they escaped.” Beaman said he eventually made it through to his home after persuading offers manning the roadblock to turn a blind eye. “I eventually pleaded on humanitarian grounds in fairly direct terms with a policeman and asked him to turn his back for 30 seconds and he did and I got through,” he said. “A lot of my neighbours have lost everything, but miraculously, my house is still standing and it’s now got bodies sleeping on every square inch.” Photos: Bushfires leave path of destruction »

Beaman said his 22-year-old son Cameron, a news cameraman, was also fearing the worst for his mother as he was dispatched to film the area from the air and was so overcome with emotion he had to taken off the job. “He couldn’t stand the thought of his mother perishing while he filmed and he had to be dropped off out of the chopper and another cameraman take over.”

Italian Senate to weigh comatose woman’s fate

A portrait of Eluana Englaro. She has been in a vegetative state for nearly 17 years.
An emergency decree that could prevent doctors from finishing removing the feeding tube of a woman who has been comatose for 17 years was sent to the Italian Senate on Friday night for a vote.

Parliament must act quickly because doctors began removing the feeding tube Friday morning, and Italian media quoted them as saying the procedure can be reversed only within the first 48 hours, in this case by Sunday morning. Experts said the process of removing the tube could take up to two weeks. The Council of Ministers, led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, unanimously approved the decree earlier in the day, but President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign it. That led Berlusconi to put the decree in bill form and forward it to the upper house of Parliament, urging lawmakers to meet in an emergency session. The bill directs doctors to continue feeding and hydrating Eluana Englaro, 37, until Parliament makes a decision. “I will do everything I can to save her life,” Berlusconi said at a news conference after the Council of Ministers adopted the decree. “Eluana is alive, and she could have children.” Watch Italian PM vow to keep comatose woman alive »

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“We have to do everything possible to stop a person from dying,” he said on government television. If passed by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the bill would go to Napolitano. If he still refuses to sign it, it would return to Parliament, where a second approval would make it law. In rejecting the decree, Napolitano sided with a ruling by the nation’s high court, which upheld a lower court’s decision to allow the feeding tube to be withdrawn. According to a statement from Napolitano’s office, “An emergency decree cannot be in contrast with a court decision.”

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Englaro has been in a vegetative state for 17 years, after suffering what doctors determined to be irreversible brain damage in a 1992 car crash, when she was 20 years old. She was transferred Tuesday to a private clinic where she is expected to die, ending what has been a lengthy and controversial legal fight, which ended in the courtroom in November. For years, Englaro’s father, Beppino, has fought to have her feeding tube removed, saying it would be a dignified end to his daughter’s life. The case has been a controversial one in Italy, a heavily Catholic country where the Vatican has great influence. Last Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI told pilgrims that “euthanasia is a false solution to suffering.” Watch more on the Euthanasia debate in Italy » On Friday, Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life said, “Eluana is alive and has the right to be sustained. It is the duty of the doctors, of society, and of the political institutions to administer her essential foods to keep her alive. No one has the right to take her life away from her.” He added, “The government has done well. The courts had pronounced themselves, but there is also the ethic duty to respect a human life.”

Beppino Englaro said that before the crash, his daughter visited a friend who was in a coma and told him she didn’t want the same thing to happen to her if she were ever in the same state. Euthanasia is illegal in Italy, but patients have the right to refuse treatment. It is on that basis that Englaro argued his daughter should be allowed to die, because she had expressed the wish not to be kept alive while in a coma — indirectly refusing treatment, he said.

Israel launches fresh Gaza air strikes

Israel says its air strikes in Gaza are aimed at stopping rocket attacks into the south of the country.
Israel launched air strikes against a number of targets in Gaza Monday to retaliate against Palestinian militants who have fired a "barrage" of rockets inside the Jewish state in recent days, the military said.

The targets in Monday’s air strikes included two Hamas outposts in southern and northern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said. The IDF said militants fired two rockets at Israel Sunday. The recent rocket fire brings to more than 35 the number of Qassam rockets, mortars and Grad missiles that have been fired at Israel since Israel and Hamas agreed to separate cease-fires on January 21. Rockets fired from a Grad have a longer range than the crude, home-made Qassams that Palestinian militants in Gaza fire more frequently. Militants have used Grads strike farther into Israel.

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Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, declared separate, tentative cease-fires following more than three weeks of fighting in Gaza. Israel launched the attack on Hamas in Gaza on December 27 with the stated aim of ending rocket attacks on southern Israel. The air strikes come one day before Israelis are due to go to the polls in a national election that is expected to be dominated by the issue of security.

Could smoking pot raise testicular cancer risk?

Some experts question research saying that frequent pot smokers could double the risk of having testicular cancer.
Do men who frequently smoke pot have a higher risk of testicular cancer than those who do not? It’s possible, according to a new study. However, the researchers say the link is currently a "hypothesis" that needs further testing.

Testicular cancer is relatively rare — a man’s lifetime chance of developing the disease is about 1 in 300 (and dying of it is about 1 in 5,000). Frequent or long-term marijuana smokers could have about double the risk of nonusers, according to the report in the February 9 issue of the journal Cancer. In the study, a team led by Dr. Janet R. Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, interviewed 369 men between the ages of 18 and 44 from the Seattle-Puget Sound area whose testicular cancer had been diagnosed. They compared those men with 979 men who lived in the same area, but did not have cancer. Overall, 26 percent of the testicular cancer patients were pot smokers (15 percent who used daily or weekly) at the time of diagnosis, compared with 20 percent of men without cancer (10 percent who used daily or weekly). Health.com: Is there a link between drugs, alcohol, and ADHD Marijuana users had 2.3 times the risk of a type of testicular cancer known as a nonseminoma as those who were not. Testicular cancer is divided into two types, pure seminomas (60 percent of cases) and nonseminomas (40 percent of cases.) The link was much weaker in men with seminomas.

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These types of studies have one important caveat — cancer patients may be more likely to remember – or may be more honest about – past drug use than men in the general population. Because marijuana use was more closely associated with one type of tumor, rather than testicular cancer in general, it reduces the chances that the study participants were less than honest, Daling said. “That certainly makes us feel better that the associations are true associations,” she said. Still, the results are considered preliminary and need to be confirmed with more research. “There have been studies done on testicular cancer, but ours is the first to look at marijuana,” said Daling. Health.com: Dogs sniff out clues in the fight against cancer Scientists believe that most cases of testicular cancer actually get their start in early fetal life. Having an undescended testicle – a relatively common birth defect – a key risk factor for the disease. There has been an increase in testicular cancers in the last half of the 20th century, however, which spurred the team to examine other factors that might explain the rise. Marijuana use increased over the same period, and chronic use has been shown to affect sperm formation and fertility, they note. Health.com: Boost your mood naturally Some experts say the association is a tenuous one, particularly because seminomas have increased 64 percent from 1973 to 1998, while nonseminoma rates rose only 24 percent. “These researchers have an association that they’ve picked up on, but it’s a weak association,” said Steve Shoptaw, a professor in the department of family medicine and psychiatry at UCLA. “Marijuana tends to be one of those firebrand issues were people can make statements to get airtime, so I’d like to see these findings replicated.”

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The authors note that nonseminoma rates did go up in a couple of places in the world in recent decades. One is Norway and the other is the Netherlands, a country where cannabis use is tolerated. The next step, said Daling, is to collect tumor tissue, evaluate it for marijuana receptors, and study how those relate to tumor development. Visit CNNhealth.com: Your connection for better living “Certainly we’re going to continue forward with this,” she added. Without stronger proof, critics say the study should be taken with a grain of salt. “There’s always been the thought that cannabinoids had some interaction with the reproductive systems, so maybe they’re onto something. Who knows” said Shoptaw. “But now we need to isolate the actual physiological responses.” For patients using cannabis for medicinal purposes, the improvement in quality of life may outweigh any potential risk of testicular cancer, said Shoptaw. “The bottom line is that I would not start warning my marijuana smokers that they are going to get testicular cancer,” he said. “I don’t think there’s enough here to go forward with that message, at least not yet.”

Nissan to cut 20,000 jobs

Nissan is planning to slash its global production by 20 percent.
Nissan, Japan’s third-largest automaker, announced a series of steps Monday to deal with the economic downturn, including slashing its workforce by 20,000.

The cost-cutting measures makes Nissan the latest among the country’s carmakers to take drastic action in the face of a worsening financial outlook. The job reductions will bring down Nissan’s head count from 235,000 to 215,000. The company also said it is eliminating bonuses for its board of directors. And until its financial situation improves, it is reducing board members’ salaries by 10 percent. The company took the steps after reporting a $860 million third-quarter consolidated net loss after tax. For the same period a year ago, it had a net income of $1.5 billion. Nissan’s net revenue is down 34.4 percent. It has revised its forecast for the fiscal 2008, saying it will post a net loss of $2.9 billion.

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“In every planning scenario we built, our worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded, with the continuing grip on credit and declining consumer confidence being the most damaging factors,” said Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “Looking forward, our priority remains on protecting our free cash flow and taking swift, adequate and impactful actions to improve our business performance.” Among other steps the company said it will take are: • Suspending part of the five-year strategy plan it unveiled last year, dubbed Nissan GT 2012. The ‘G’ stood for growth; the ‘T’ for trust. As part of the plan, the carmaker had hoped for 5 percent revenue growth on average over five years; • Reducing labor costs in high-cost countries by 20 percent; • Slashing global production by 20 percent. Fellow Japanese automakers Toyota, Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda have also forecast financial losses for fiscal 2008.