Jet Crash on Colombian Island Kills 1

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A Boeing 737 jetliner with 131 passengers aboard crashed on landing and broke into three pieces at a Colombian island in the Caribbean early Monday. The region's governor said it was a miracle that only one person died.

Colombian Air Force Col. David Barrero said officials were investigating reports the plane had been hit by lightning before crashing at 1:49 a.m. (3:49 a.m. EDT; 0649 GMT) while landing at San Andres Island, a resort island of 78,000 people about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of the Nicaraguan coast.

San Andres Gov. Pedro Gallardo said 125 passengers and six crew members had been aboard, but the only person killed was Amar Fernandez de Barreto, 68.

''It was a miracle and we have to give thanks to God,'' that only one person died, said Gov. Pedro Gallardo.

The Aires airline said in an e-mail that passengers aboard the plane that left Bogota about midnight included eight U.S. citizens and four Brazilians. They were not identified.

Ninety-nine passengers were taken to the Amor de Patria Hospital on San Andres, said the hospital director, Dr. Robert Sanchez. He said only four suffered major injuries.

''It's incredible. For the dimension (of the accident), there should be more,'' he said.

Sanchez said an initial examination indicated that Fernandez de Barreto may have died of a heart attack.

Barrero, commander of the Caribbean Air Group, said by telephone from San Andres that ''the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport.''

He said the cause of the accident was uncertain. ''You can't speculate. Lightning? A gust of wind? The investigation will say.''

Barrero said part of the 7,800-foot (2,380-meter) runway had been closed because parts of the plane were still scattered across it. But enough was usable that air ambulances would be able to land.

Police Gen. Orlando Paez said by telephone that a group of police officers who had been waiting at the airport for the plane to take them back to the Colombian mainland aided in rescuing the victims

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/08/16/world/americas/AP-LT-Colombia-Plane-Crash.html?_r=1&hp

Epidemic Fears Prompt Call for Clean Water in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As Pakistan reels from its worst floods in memory, United Nations officials said Monday that 3.5 million children and infants were at a particularly high risk of diseases borne by dirty water.

Clean water is an urgent need,” said Maurizio Giuliano, a United Nations spokesman, who said the international agencies dealing with children and health were both suffering from shortages of funds. The United Nations, whose secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, flew over flooded areas of Pakistan on Sunday, has appealed for international donations of $460 million, but only one-third of that of that has been provided, Mr. Giuliano said in a telephone interview.

“There was a first wave of deaths caused by the floods themselves,” Mr. Giuliano said. “But if we don’t act soon enough there will be a second wave of deaths caused by a combination of lack of clean water, food shortages and water-borne and vector-borne diseases.”

He said as many as six million people were at risk of diseases including diarrhea-related illnesses and dysentery, typhoid and forms of hepatitis.

“We may be close to seeing this second wave of death,” he said. “The picture is a gruesome one.”

With a shortage of aid funds, relief workers were currently able to provide clean water to only one million of the 6 million people in need, Mr. Giuliano said. Many people had no adequate shelter or proper food, he said, and, as in any crisis, “children are among the most vulnerable.”

The long-term economic and political damage wrought by the huge inundation is also likely to be costly. Roads, bridges and communications networks across the country have been severely damaged, Pakistani officials said.

Arbab Alamgir Khan, the federal minister for communications, said damage to roads alone was estimated at around $76 million, much of it in the northern province of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, where the floods started as monsoon rains pounded down earlier this month.

The threat of long-term damage has raised fears that the flood damage in Pakistan, a central pillar of American regional strategy to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, will add further instability to a mix of weak government and economic woes.

In the latest surge, floodwater submerged vast areas of Baluchistan and Sindh Provinces after causing massive destruction in the country’s north and in the central Punjab Province.

Television footage from helicopters showed a seemingly endless vista of muddy water, freckled with palm trees. The distribution of aid seemed chaotic in some parts with people jostling for handfuls of food thrown from trucks.

In Baluchistan Province in the southwest, rail service was suspended for three days starting Monday from the provincial capital, Quetta, to the provinces of Punjab and Sindh and floods were threatening the town of Osta Muhammad. Officials said Monday they were trying to evacuate thousands of residents there, while thousands more were stranded in Dera Murad Jamali town.

In Punjab, a second round of flooding threatened some areas such as Rajanpur, said Muhammad Usman, a provincial coordination officer.

“The second wave has hit us worse,” he said. In another area, where people had gathered after escaping earlier floods, a canal had burst its banks and relief workers were struggling to repair the damage.

“We are trying to fill that breach with heavy machinery but we have also warned people to be alert,” Mr. Usman said. Some people were preparing to move again, abandoning an area where floodwaters have cut roads and electric power supplies, but others insisted they would stay put.

Abdul Mohsin, a government education officer, scrambled to salvage the school records and said that, despite the threat of further flooding, not everyone was prepared to abandon their land and homes.

“My father is not ready to leave,” Mr. Mohsin said. “He has told the family to move and he will be on the roof of the house with his gun.”

Elsewhere, The Associated Press reported, angry flood survivors blocked a highway to protest delays in the delivery of aid as rain poured from leaden skies.

Some 20 million people living in about one-fifth of Pakistan’s surface area have been affected, according to official estimates.

In the Sukkur area, The A.P. said, hundreds of survivors complained bitterly that food aid was rare and was distributed only when television cameras were in the district. “They are throwing packets of food to us like we are dogs. They are making people fight for these packets,” a protester, Kalu Mangiani, was quoted as saying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?hp

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Econom

SHANGHAI — After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures released early Monday.

The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

The recognition came early Monday, when Tokyo said that Japan’s economy was valued at about $1.28 trillion in the second quarter, slightly below China’s $1.33 trillion. Japan’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the quarter, Tokyo said, substantially less than forecast. That weakness suggests that China’s economy will race past Japan’s for the full year.

Experts say unseating Japan — and in recent years passing Germany, France and Great Britain — underscores China’s growing clout and bolsters forecasts that China will pass the United States as the world’s biggest economy as early as 2030. America’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion in 2009.

“This has enormous significance,” said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It reconfirms what’s been happening for the better part of a decade: China has been eclipsing Japan economically. For everyone in China’s region, they’re now the biggest trading partner rather than the U.S. or Japan.”

For Japan, whose economy has been stagnating for more than a decade, the figures reflect a decline in economic and political power. Japan has had the world’s second-largest economy for much of the last four decades, according to the World Bank. And during the 1980s, there was even talk about Japan’s economy some day overtaking that of the United States.

But while Japan’s economy is mature and its population quickly aging, China is in the throes of urbanization and is far from developed, analysts say, meaning it has a much lower standard of living, as well as a lot more room to grow. Just five years ago, China’s gross domestic product was about $2.3 trillion, about half of Japan’s.

This country has roughly the same land mass as the United States, but it is burdened with a fifth of the world’s population and insufficient resources.

Its per capita income is more on a par with those of impoverished nations like Algeria, El Salvador and Albania — which, along with China, are close to $3,600 — than that of the United States, where it is about $46,000.

Yet there is little disputing that under the direction of the Communist Party, China has begun to reshape the way the global economy functions by virtue of its growing dominance of trade, its huge hoard of foreign exchange reserves and United States government debt and its voracious appetite for oil, coal, iron ore and other natural resources.

China is already a major driver of global growth. The country’s leaders have grown more confident on the international stage and have begun to assert greater influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with things like special trade agreements and multibillion dollar resource deals.

“They’re exerting a lot of influence on the global economy and becoming dominant in Asia,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “A lot of other economies in the region are essentially riding on China’s coat tails, and this is remarkable for an economy with a low per capita income.”

In Japan, the mood was one of resignation. Though increasingly eclipsed by Beijing on the world stage, Japan has benefited from a booming China, initially by businesses moving production there to take advantage of lower wages and, as local incomes have risen, by tapping a large and increasingly lucrative market for Japanese goods.

Beijing is also beginning to shape global dialogues on a range of issues, analysts said; for instance, last year it asserted that the dollar must be phased out as the world’s primary reserve currency.

And while the United States and the European Union are struggling to grow in the wake of the worst economic crisis in decades, China has continued to climb up the economic league tables by investing heavily in infrastructure and backing a $586 billion stimulus plan.

This year, although growth has begun to moderate a bit, China’s economy is forecast to expand about 10 percent — continuing a remarkable three-decade streak of double-digit growth.

“This is just the beginning,” said Wang Tao, an economist at UBS in Beijing. “China is still a developing country. So it has a lot of room to grow. And China has the biggest impact on commodity prices — in Russia, India, Australia and Latin America.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/business/global/16yuan.html?_r=1&hp