'Thor' blasts rivals to stay atop US box office

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 04:23:00 05/16/2011

Close this LOS ANGELES-- fought off all comers to stay perched atop the north American box office for a second week, although wedding-themed Bridesmaids made a strong entrance, estimates showed Sunday.

Starring Chris Hemsworth as the epic hero banished to Earth from the mystical world of Asgard, where he meets human love interest Natalie Portman, the big budget film took $34.5 million since opening Friday.

The fantastical adventure, which knocked "Fast Five" off the top spot last week, made nearly $120 million in its first two weekends, according to tracker company Exhibitor Relations.

Sweeping straight up the aisle into second place was new entry "Bridesmaids," a comedy about an oddball group of women preparing for their Big Day supporting roles, which earned $24.4 million.

"Fast" the fifth volume in the high-speed car chase series, dropped back into third spot after accelerating to the biggest premiere this year, taking $19.5 million on its third week in theaters.

In fourth place was another newcomer, horror flick "Priest" starring Paul Bettany on the hunt for vampires who kidnapped his niece, which made $14.5 million in its opening weekend.

Hovering in fifth spot for the second week was family-friendly tropical bird comedy "Rio" which took $8 million for a total of $125 million over its five-week run.

"Jumping the Broom" about two African-American families meeting for a wedding, dropped from its opening third place last week to sixth spot this weekend, earning $7.3 million.

Romantic comedy "Something Borrowed" came seventh with $7 million, followed by depression-era romance "Water for Elephants," with British heartthrob Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon, in eighth with $4.1 million.

Rounding out the top 10 were critically-panned "Madea's Big Happy Family," which took in $2.2 million for ninth place, while "Soul Surfer" stayed upright to make $1.8 million on its sixth week in theaters, in 10th spot.

Typhoon ‘Bebeng’ killed 33, left P1.3B damage

By Dona Pazzibugan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:28:00 05/16/2011

MANILA, Philippines--Tropical Storm “Bebeng” (international name Aere) left 33 people dead and two others missing from flash floods and landslides and P1.37 billion in damage to agriculture and infrastructure, mostly in the Bicol region.

In its latest report, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said damage to agriculture was placed at nearly P238 million.

Bicol sustained the bulk of the infrastructure damage worth P1.13 billion. These include national roads and flood control assets in Albay, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Masbate and Sorsogon.

Farmers and livestock owners in Bicol (Region V) and Central Luzon (Region III) sustained losses of P225.3 million and P12.5 million, respectively.

Agriculture officials said Albay, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur and Masbate in Region V lost 19,250 metric tons of palay representing 3.48 percent of the region’s target production for the first half of the year or 25 percent of the national target for the period.

The national disaster agency said other regions in Luzon that were hit by Bebeng were spared from much agricultural damage since farmers had harvested their crops before the storm hit.

“There has been no report of damage to agriculture in Regions I (Ilocos), II (Cagayan Valley), IV-A (Calabarzon), IV-B (Mimaropa), VIII (Eastern Visayas) and CAR (Cordillera Autonomous Region) because most of the rice production was harvested before the onset of Tropical Storm Bebeng,” the NDRRMC said.

Bebeng intensified into a tropical storm on May 7. It made landfall over northern Catanduanes on May 8 and made a second landfall over northern Casiguran in Aurora before exiting the Philippine area of responsibility on May 11.

The storm unleashed heavy rains that caused flash floods, landslides and power outages, while a tornado hit Calumpit, Bulacan.

Most of the 33 fatalities, who either drowned or were buried in landslides, were from Bicol. Two persons from Albay remain missing while nine, mostly in Bicol, were injured.

Flood waters diverted onto Louisiana towns, farms

By Eileen Fleming
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 05:07:00 05/16/2011

NEW ORLEANS--Residents of rural Louisiana watched in despair Sunday as floodwaters from the swollen Mississippi were diverted into their towns and farm lands in an effort to save the cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

"It looks like a battlefield," said Ronald Perry, a resident of the town of Butte LaRose.

"It's nothing we would have ever expected," he told ABC television.

"We had a nice quiet life in retirement and it seems that everything is turning upside down on us now."

Huge tracts of Louisiana were being inundated by floodwaters as the US Army engineers opened two more bays at a major floodgate to ease pressure from the swollen Mississippi River.

The US Army Corps of Engineers by Sunday had opened a total of four bays at the key Morganza Spillway, said spokeswoman Rachel Rodi, in a bid to save several cities by sacrificing small towns and farmland.

The Corps has said it intends to open the bays slowly to avoid what Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal described as a "wall of water" slamming thousands of homes and farmland in the state's rural south.

"In Louisiana we're fighters," said Guy Cormier, the president of St. Martin's parish, which will be flooded.

"My grandfather fought the flood of 1927, my father helped fight the flood of '73 and here I am helping to fight the flood of 2011," Cormier told ABC television.

"We're going to fight this and we're going to rise, just like the sun's going to rise this morning," he said.

The effort, intended to spare the cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, marked the first time the spillway has been opened since 1973, and only the second time in the structure's almost 60-year history.

"This is certainly going to be a marathon and not a sprint," Major General Michael Walsh told a press conference earlier Saturday before the spillway was opened.

Opening the Morganza Spillway completely would divert some 600,000 cubic feet of water every second -- about six times the daytime volume of Niagara Falls.

But in order to prevent a massive wave from being unleashed, the one bay opened Saturday was allowing out 10,000 cubic feet per second. A second bay was opened Saturday and two more on Sunday. Ultimately, the Corps expects to open an additional 16 bays out of the 125 bays on the Morganza Spillway, which would divert about 125,000 cubic feet of water per second, said Rodi.

The Bonnet Carre spillway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans was opened to full capacity Saturday, officials said meanwhile, diverting 250,000 cubic feet per second into Lake Pontchartrain.

Jindal said officials expected around three million acres (1.2 million hectares) to be flooded by the diversion into the Gulf of Mexico. Some 25,000 residents were set to be affected by the controlled flood.

The 20-foot (six-meter) levees protecting New Orleans are now holding back the river at 17 feet, considered a flood stage. If the Morganza Spillway was not open, river levels were predicted to reach 19.5 feet.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said he was aware of the tremendous sacrifices residents of rural communities were making to save more populous areas of the state.

"We believe the city of New Orleans is going to be safe," he said, but added: "This is a very tragic situation, really, for everybody in America and, of course, the people that live along the Atchafalaya basin, as well in Morgan City. So our hearts go out to them.

"It doesn't make us feel any good that (by) protecting New Orleans, other folks are going to get hurt."

Cindy Prejean of Gibson, Louisiana, some 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans, said she was expecting five feet (1.5 meters) of water at her house.

"What gives them the right to flood us? I understand it, but there are so many communities, and so many farmers and so many businesses," she told AFP.

"Everybody pray for us," she asked.

According to flood projections, a flood as high as 15 feet (4.5 meters) was to bear down on some communities at its height after the spillway is opened.

With the Morganza Spillway now partially opened, Colonel Ed Fleming, commander of the Army Corps' New Orleans district, said it would take about three days for the flood to reach Morgan City, further south in the floodzone.

The rising river, swollen by heavy rains last month and the melting of a thick winter snow pack, has been set to eclipse the high water records set in the epochal floods of 1927.

Near its height, the Mississippi town of Vicksburg was expected to see a 57.5-foot (17.5-meter) crest on May 19, topping the 56.2-foot historic crest set 84 years ago this month, according to National Weather Service.

The Mississippi is the third-longest river in North America and its watershed is the fourth-largest in the world.

The worst floods to hit the central US in more than 70 years have already swallowed up thousands of homes, farms and roads in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, and the mighty river is expected to remain above flood stage along hundreds of miles (kilometers) for many days

Eight killed as Syria bloodshed spills into Lebanon

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 03:14:00 05/16/2011

DAMASCUS---Security forces killed seven people in the town of Tall Kalakh on Sunday as Syria's unrest entered a third month and spilled over into Lebanon where a woman died at a border crossing.

Pope Benedict XVI lamented the bloodshed and called for "cohabitation" between the authorities and anti-regime protesters who have been challenging the authority of President Bashar al-Assad. And as the protests entered their third month, authorities freed several dissidents on Sunday who had been held in connection with the unrest, after offering to launch a dialogue with the opposition.

"At least seven people, including two women, were killed by security forces who are indiscriminately shelling four districts in the town," of Tall Kalakh, a rights activist told AFP by phone, quoting witnesses.

Earlier a resident said three people were killed in the western town, where the army had deployed, and that there were many wounded people who could not be evacuated.

The resident, reached by telephone, told AFP that snipers stationed on rooftops had killed three men as they left a sit-in protest in a mosque.

Syrian troops were deployed in force in the town of some 25,000 inhabitants, he said as gunfire rattled in the background.
The bloodshed spilled into Lebanon on Sunday when a Syrian woman, among dozens fleeing Tall Kalakh, was killed and six other people wounded, a Lebanese security official said.

Gunfire from Syria raked a crowd at Al-Boqayah crossing, near north Lebanon's border town of Wadi Khaled, the official said. A Lebanese soldier was among those wounded.

Another Lebanese security official said two Syrian border guards were among those fleeing Tall Kalakh, and that one of them was wounded and later died of his injuries in Lebanon.

Hundreds of people have fled Tall Kalakh since Friday amid a brutal crackdown by authorities bidding to crush an unprecedented revolt against Assad's regime.

The pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome's St Peter's Square: "I ask God that there be no further bloodshed in (Syria), this country of great religions and civilisations.

"It is urgent to restore cohabitation," the pontiff said.

On another front, Israeli gunfire killed two pro-Palestinian protesters and wounded dozens as civilians crossed from Syria onto the annexed Golan Heights on Sunday, raising tensions between Damascus and the Jewish state.

The Israeli army accused Assad's regime of "organising" the violence as a means to divert international attention from the pro-democracy movement sweeping Syria.

The unrest came as Palestinians in the occupied territories, inside Israel and across the region marked the anniversary of the Jewish state's 1948 creation, known in Arabic as the "nakba" or "catastrophe."

Meanwhile Syrian authorities freed several dissidents, including prominent opposition figure and former MP Riad Seif and rights activist Catherine Talli, human rights groups said.

They were released two days after Information Minister Adnan Mahmud said a "national dialogue" would be launched with opposition figures as part of efforts by the government to forge ahead with reforms.

Up to 850 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the protests started in mid-March, rights groups say.

The regime has blamed the deadly violence on "armed terrorist gangs" backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

At least four people were shot dead on Saturday by security forces in Tall Kalakh and several wounded as thousands held a second day of anti-regime protests, a witness and a medic said.

To prevent casualties from being arrested or "finished off," the wounded were treated in a small clinic rather than the state hospital, another witness in Tall Kalakh said.

Security forces on Saturday fired at a funeral convoy at an entrance to the town, killing the mother and wounding three family members of a victim of the clashes, according to the Tall Kalakh resident.

A pro-regime newspaper, Al-Watan, said armed men had fled the cities of Banias and Homs and sought refuge in Tall Kalakh, while "fighters" from Lebanon had entered Syria.