Summarize this article:

Shares of Boeing are sinking after a fire aboard an empty 787 airplane flown by Ethiopian Airlines at Heathrow Airport.

 British police said the fire is being treated as unexplained.

 The entire fleet of 787s was grounded in January for problems involving the plane's lithium-ion batteries. One caught fire at Boston's Logan airport.

 The planes resumed flying in May after Boeing made redesigns to the battery system that were approved by global aviation regulators. Ethiopian was the first airline to resume using the 787.

 Boeing shares fell $7.20, or 6.7 percent, to $99.68, around midday in New York.

 Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said in an email to The Associated Press that the company has personnel at looking into the event at Heathrow. ||||| Image caption An area in front of the tail area on the fuselage appeared to be scorched

 Flights have resumed at London's Heathrow Airport after a fire on a parked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet.

 All runways were closed for nearly 90 minutes after the fire at 16:30 BST. No passengers were aboard the plane at the time, a Heathrow spokesman said.

 Fifty Dreamliners worldwide were grounded in January after malfunctions with the plane's lithium-ion batteries.

 Boeing modified the jets with new batteries and flights resumed in April.

 The Air Accidents Investigation Branch of the Department for Transport has despatched a team to the scene.

 The Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner in the Heathrow incident - named the Queen of Sheba - flew from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on the first commercial flight since the grounding.

 Pictures of the Heathrow fire showed the Queen of Sheba close to a building and surrounded by fire vehicles. London Fire Brigade said its crews assisted Heathrow staff.

 Fire-retardant foam was sprayed at the airliner, and an area on top of the fuselage in front of the tail appeared to be scorched.

 Ethiopian Airlines said smoke was detected from the aircraft after it had been parked at Heathrow for more than eight hours.

 Production difficulties

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Aerial pictures show the plane surrounded by emergency crews

 A Heathrow spokesman said: "Heathrow's runways are now fully open following an earlier fire on board an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft which the airport's emergency services attended.

 "The aircraft was parked on a remote parking stand and there were no passengers on board. Arrivals and departures were temporarily suspended while airport fire crews attended to this incident.

 "This is a standard procedure if fire crews are occupied with an incident."

 Heathrow reopened shortly before 18:00 BST but was advising passengers to check the status of their flights with the airlines.

 Gatwick Airport said it experienced minor delays on departing flights as it assisted Heathrow with flights that were diverted.

 Meanwhile, Thomson Airways said one of its Dreamliners travelling to Florida returned to Manchester Airport as a precautionary measure, not connected to the Heathrow fire.

 Thomson, which became the first British carrier to operate the aircraft earlier this week, and is taking delivery of eight of the planes, said the plane had "experienced a technical issue".

 British Airways is taking delivery of the first two of its 24 Dreamliners.

 Virgin Atlantic said it "remains committed" to taking on the first of its 16 Dreamliners in September 2014.

 The British pilots' union Balpa said: "The Boeing 787 Dreamliner forms an important part of many of our airlines' future plans, and it is vital that the cause of this fire is established as quickly as possible.

 "All parties in the industry need a full and transparent explanation as to what has been identified as the root causes in this series of events."

 The battery problems followed production difficulties for the Dreamliner, marketed as a quiet, fuel-efficient aircraft carrying between 201 and 290 passengers on medium-range routes.

 It was due to enter passenger service in 2008 but it was not until October 2011 that the first commercial flight was operated by Japan's All Nippon Airways.

 The groundings of all Dreamliners in service in January followed two major incidents concerning the plane's two lithium-ion batteries.

 On 7 January, a battery overheated and started a fire on a Japan Airlines 787 at Boston's Logan International Airport. Nine days later, an All Nippon Airways 787 had to make an emergency landing in Japan after a battery started to give off smoke.

 The two batteries are not used when the 787 is in flight.

 They are operational when the plane is on the ground and its engines are not turned on, and are used to power the aircraft's brakes and lights.

 The new versions of the batteries, which run at a much cooler temperature, are now enclosed in stainless steel boxes.

 Boeing shares fell on the New York Stock Exchange on news of the fire.

 A Boeing spokesman said: "We're aware of the event. We have Boeing personnel on the ground at Heathrow and are working to fully understand and address this." ||||| Thomson Airways says one of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes travelling from England to the U.S. had to turn back after experiencing a technical issue.

 The incident is the second to involve one of Boeing Co.'s troubled planes on Friday. Earlier, Heathrow Airport temporarily shut down its runways due to a fire on an empty 787.

 Thomson said that flight 126 travelling from Manchester Airport to Sanford, Florida had returned to Manchester "as a precautionary measure."

 It said all passengers had disembarked from the plane and engineers are inspecting the aircraft.

 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

 A fire on an empty Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane forced Heathrow Airport to temporarily close both its runways Friday.

 The incident comes as unwelcome news for Chicago-based Boeing Co., whose Dreamliners were cleared to fly again in April after a four-month grounding amid concerns about overheating lithium-ion batteries.

 Heathrow said there were no passengers aboard the Ethiopian Airlines plane, which was parked at a remote stand of the airport, and runways reopened after about an hour. British police said the fire is being treated as unexplained.

 Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said in an email that the company had personnel on the ground at Heathrow and "is working to fully understand and address" the situation.

 Ethiopian Airlines was the first airline to resume using the 787, with a flight on April 27 from Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya, after the battery incidents.

 The airline could not immediately be reached for comment.

 Television images showed nearly a dozen fire trucks on the scene at Heathrow and firefighters standing around the Ethiopian Airlines plane, which was parked on a remote stand.

 Fire-retardant foam appeared to have been sprayed, and it was not immediately clear if there was damage to the plane.

 The Dreamliner suffered battery incidents in January, including an emergency landing of one plane and a fire on another. U.S. federal authorities lifted the grounding order on April 19, and several airlines have recently resumed flying their Dreamliners.

 None of the incidents caused any serious injuries. But the January grounding embarrassed Boeing and disrupted schedules at the eight airlines that were flying the planes. The company had delivered 50 of the planes worldwide.

 Boeing never did figure out the root cause of the battery incidents. Instead, it redesigned the battery and its charger. The changes included more heat insulation between each cell and charging the battery to a lower maximum voltage.

 Shares in Boeing fell 6.5 percent to $99.58 on news of the Heathrow fire.

 ___

 Associated Press writers Raphael Satter in London and Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed to this report. |||||

– Looks like the Boeing 787's fire issues aren't entirely behind it. A parked Dreamliner, owned by Ethiopian Airlines, caught fire today at Heathrow airport, prompting a suspension of all arrivals and departures to the London airport, the BBC reports. No passengers were aboard, no injuries have been reported, and the airport has since reopened. But the incident is likely to raise more doubts about the benighted Dreamliner—and sure enough, Boeing's stock plunged on the news, the AP reports. And as if that wasn't enough bad news for the plane maker, later another 787 flying from Manchester to the US had to turn around after encountering an unspecified mechanical failure. All 126 passengers aboard have now disembarked safely. The plane's operator, Thompson Airways, describes the emergency landing as a "precautionary measure."


Summarize this article:

Eliécer Gutiérrez, a researcher who helped debunk a recent study on the yeti, with bear skulls at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

 The yeti, a legendary shaggy, bipedal beast from the Himalayas, made headlines last year when a geneticist said he had solved the mystery of its origins. But now, scientists have found the hair samples used in that study didn't come from a mysterious animal, but rather from the Himalayan brown bear.

 "There is essentially no reason to believe that they [the hairs] belong to a species other than the brown bear," said one the new study's researchers, Eliécer Gutiérrez, a postdoctoral fellow of evolutionary biology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

 Gutiérrez and a colleague re-examined a finding reported in 2014 in which geneticist Bryan Sykes and his colleagues looked at two hair samples from the Himalayan region: One sample came from an aggressive animal walking on its hind legs that was shot by a hunter about 40 years ago in northern India; the other had been found in Bhutan in a high-altitude bamboo forest, according to that study, published in the journal the Proceedings of The Royal Society B.

 After a genetic analysis, Sykes' team said they had linked the "yeti" hair samples to the jawbone of an ancient polar bear (Ursus maritimus) that lived in Norway. It's likely the hairs came from "a previously unrecognized bear species," living in the Himalayas, the researchers wrote in the study. In fact, the species may have been a hybrid descendent of U. maritimus and the brown bear (Ursus arctos) of the Himalayas, the researchers said. [Rumor or Reality: The 10 Creatures of Cryptozoology]

 Perhaps this unknown bear inspired the legend of the yeti, the researchers said in the study.

 But Gutiérrez said he became skeptical of the study when he noticed the researchers only used a fragment of a gene to identify the species. He and a colleague looked up the genetic sequence of the two hair samples in GenBank, a database of publicly available DNA sequences.

 "We made this discovery that basically that fragment of DNA is not informative to tell apart two species of bears: the brown bear and [modern-day Alaskan] polar bear," Gutiérrez told Live Science. The polar bear does not live in the Himalayas, so the hair samples likely belong to the Himalayan brown bear, he said.

 The new study is the second to discredit the 2014 research. In a 2014 letter published in the same journal, two researchers also showed Sykes' team had not sufficiently analyzed their "yeti" data.

 "Once they had determined that two of their samples were a match to a polar bear, they should have run further analyses on the extracted DNA to look at other regions of the mitochondrial genome [DNA passed down by the mother] in order to double-check this controversial result," said one of the letter's authors, Ceiridwen Edwards, a researcher in ancient DNA studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

 "Instead, after (incorrectly) establishing a direct link to a 40,000-year-old polar bear sequence, they then used this misinformation in the publicity for the paper," Edwards told Live Science in an email.

 A researcher responds

 Still, the new study doesn't discount his 2014 finding, said Sykes, a professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford. [Image Gallery: 'Yeti Footprint' Photos Up for Auction]

 "What mattered most to us was that these two hairs were definitely not from unknown primates," Sykes told Live Science in an email. "The explanation by Gutiérrez and [Ronald] Pine might be right, or it might not be."

 A Himalayan brown bear cub. Credit: Artyom Ernst Shutterstock.com

 The only way to get to the bottom of the case is to find "fresh material" from an animal to see if it matches the genetic fragment they studied for the 2014 paper, Sykes said.

 "The real heroes of the piece are the people who actually went to the Himalayas, spoke to the local people, found these hairs and then contributed them to the study," Sykes said. "This is the Himalayas, not Central Park."

 He added that his book on the yeti project, "The Nature of the Beast" will be published by Coronet on April 9, and will contain additional details about his efforts to learn more about the animal behind the legend.

 In spite of the new study, the public will likely continue to believe in the yeti, said Daniel Loxton, an editor of Junior Skeptic, a website published by the Skeptics Society, an educational nonprofit.

 "People are fascinated by monsters, and they're fascinated by mysteries in general," Loxton said.

 The yeti is especially puzzling because there are multiple cultures and languages in the Himalayas, making it difficult "to disentangle Western folklore from local legend from genuine anthropological or zoological fact on the ground," Loxton said.

 It's common for people to mistake a bear for a yeti, particularly a Himalayan brown bear, as this bear can walk on its hind legs, he said. But, just like the Loch Ness monster, people will probably continue to believe in the yeti legend.

 "Loch Ness is not as big as the Himalayas," Loxton said. "It is a finite body of water. It has been extensively scanned by sonar. It's been observed for decades. There's just really no possibility that there's a plesiosaur in Loch Ness, or even anything of comparable size."

 "But people aren't giving up on the Loch Ness monster," he said. "I don't think they ever will. So I think the yeti will probably exist as long as there are people to think about mountains."

 The study was published online today (March 16) in the journal ZooKeys.

 Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption It had been proposed that hairs said to be from the yeti matched the DNA of ancient polar bears

 A theory that the mythical yeti is a rare polar bear-brown bear hybrid animal has been challenged.

 Last year, Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes revealed the results of DNA tests on hairs said to be from the Abominable Snowman.

 The tests matched the samples with the DNA of an ancient polar bear.

 But two other scientists have said re-analysis of the same data shows the hairs belong to the Himalayan bear, a sub-species of the brown bear.

 The results of the new research by Ceiridwen Edwards and Ross Barnett have been published in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

 Among Dr Edwards' previous work was an attempt to carry out DNA analysis of a sample taken from bones of a polar bear washed into caves in north west Scotland 18,000 years ago.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption A sub species of the brown bear could be behind the Himalayan myth

 According to legend, the yeti is a large and elusive ape-like beast.

 For many years experts have been seeking a scientific explanation for the Abominable Snowman.

 Prof Sykes, along with other genetics experts, conducted DNA tests on hairs from two unidentified animals, one from Ladakh - in northern India on the west of the Himalayas - and the other from Bhutan, 800 miles (1,285km) further east.

 The results were then compared with the genomes of other animals stored on a database of all published DNA sequences.

 The scientists found that he had a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago - a time when the polar bear and closely-related brown bear were separating as different species.

 The species are closely related and are known to interbreed where their territories overlap.

 Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The doctor will see you now: Experts have sought scientific explanations to the yeti legend

 The sample from Ladakh came from the mummified remains of a creature shot by a hunter around 40 years ago, while the second sample was in the form of a single hair, found in a bamboo forest by an expedition of filmmakers about 10 years ago.

 The samples were subjected to the most advanced tests available.

 Prof Sykes said the most likely explanation for the myth was that the animal was a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears.

 The research was reported widely by the media last year and, in July this year, published by the Royal Society.

 However, following re-analysis of the same data, Dr Edwards and Dr Barnett argue that the hybrid bear does not exist in the Himalayas.

 They said the previous research mistakenly matched DNA to an ancient Pleistocene polar bear, instead of a modern polar bear.

 In their paper, Dr Edwards and Dr Barnett said their tests identified the hairs as being from a rare type of brown bear.

 The scientists said: "The Himalayan bear is a sub-species of the brown bear that lives in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, in remote, mountainous areas of Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India.

 "Its populations are small and isolated, and it is extremely rare in many parts of its range.

 "The common name for these bears in the region is Dzu-teh, a Nepalese term meaning 'cattle bear', and they have long been associated with the myth of the yeti."

 Mountain monsters

 Image copyright AP

 The yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman, is said to be a large ape-like beast that roams the Himalayas in Nepal and Tibet.

 Bigfoot, or Sasquatch (above), is the legendary beast of North America. Explanations to sightings include hoaxers using a gorilla suit.

 The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui is said to haunt the UK's second highest mountain. Scientific explanations for this Scottish creature include a meteorological phenomenon known as the brocken spectre, which causes a person's shadow to be cast on low cloud.

 Prof Sykes and the other members of the team behind the earlier yeti hairs analysis have acknowledged that there was an error caused by an incomplete search of the DNA database used.

 However, they said in a statement: "Importantly, for the thrust of the paper as a whole, the conclusion that these Himalayan 'yeti' samples were certainly not from a hitherto unknown primate is unaffected."

 The response added: "We stressed in the original paper that the true identity of this intriguing animal needs to be refined, preferably by sequence data from fresh tissue samples derived from a living specimen where DNA degradation is no longer a concern."

 Other hair samples said to belong to the yeti have been scrutinised by experts before.

 In 2008, scientists in the US examined hairs given to the BBC which some had claimed were from a yeti.

 The scientists concluded that the hairs - obtained from the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya - actually belonged to a species of Himalayan goat known as a Himalayan goral.

 Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Dr Edwards has previously attempted to unlock the secrets of polar bear remains found in Scotland

 In 2007, Dr Edwards began a process to extract DNA from what are believed to be the only polar bear remains to be found in Britain.

 The skull, of which only a part survives, was discovered at the Bone Caves in Inchnadamph, in Assynt, Sutherland, in 1927.

 Prehistoric remains of animals - including an almost complete skeleton of a brown bear - and humans have been uncovered in the caves.

 Dr Edwards hoped to shed light on what the polar bear was doing in Assynt 18,000 years ago.

 However, DNA had not survived in the bone fragment.

 Dr Edwards was also involved in a DNA study of ancient brown bear bones that suggested the maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland.

 Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska. ||||| No evidence of a taxonomically unrecognized bear in the Himalayas |||||

– Research led by an Oxford scientist has suggested there could be something to legends of the yeti, even if it's not quite the creature legends would suggest. Bryan Sykes has argued, based on genetic analysis, that two hair samples collected by yeti enthusiasts in the Himalayas could indeed point to an animal we didn't know existed today, though it would be something like an ancient polar bear rather than something like Bigfoot. But Eliécer E. Gutiérrez of the Smithsonian Institution and Ronald Pine at the University of Kansas are now raining—or perhaps snowing—on Sykes' parade, NBC News reports. They write in a study at ZooKeys that there's not enough information to suggest the hairs were from an unknown species: "We have concluded that there is no reason to believe that the two samples came from anything other than Brown Bears." Gutiérrez and Pine were bothered by Sykes' use of just a "very short fragment" of the sequenced gene to arrive at his conclusion. LiveScience reports they determined the samples could have come from a brown bear or polar bear; based on the Himalayan location, the brown bear is the likely source, they maintain. Theirs is the second study to question Sykes' findings: The BBC reported in December that another group of researchers found that a brown bear subspecies was the source of the hairs. But Sykes isn't giving up just yet. He calls the new research "entirely statistical," noting "the only way forward is to find a living bear that matches the (genetic material) and study fresh material from it. Which involves getting off your butt, not an activity I usually associate with desk-bound molecular taxonomists," he tells NBC. Read more on where Sykes got his samples.


Here is a news article: SHARE COPY LINK The parents of Dylan Noble and their attorneys held a news conference in Fresno on July 7, 2016. They denied assertions that Noble was depressed or unhappy when he was shot dead by Fresno police after a traffic stop June 25. Kelsey Grey The Fresno Bee

 The parents of Dylan Noble and their attorneys held a news conference in Fresno on July 7, 2016. They denied assertions that Noble was depressed or unhappy when he was shot dead by Fresno police after a traffic stop June 25. Kelsey Grey The Fresno Bee ||||| Police in California have released graphic body-camera footage of officers repeatedly shooting an unarmed teenager, including multiple shots that were fired as the adolescent was gravely wounded, lying on his back and barely moving.

 The release on Wednesday of video of the killing of Dylan Noble, a 19-year-old shot at a gas station in Fresno on 25 June, occurred just hours after the police department told the Guardian it would not release the footage.

 Officers privately showed the video to Noble’s family last Friday but had initially refused to release the video to the public until the investigation was complete.

 “They just wanted to shoot him,” said Darren Noble, Dylan’s father, after watching the footage. “They’re just trigger-happy.”

 After watching the footage, Noble’s family launched legal action against the city alleging that the shooting was “an inexcusable use of excessive force”.

 According to the Fresno police department’s account of the shooting, officers pulled Noble over while investigating reports of a man carrying a rifle at around 3.20pm.

 Police claim that the officers believed Noble had a gun, though they later learned he had no weapons on him or in his pickup truck.

 Blurry video from a witness that emerged last week captured the final bullets that killed Noble, but the body-camera footage provides a much fuller picture of the shooting.

 The body-camera footage released Wednesday shows that officers approached Noble with their guns pointed at him and repeatedly shouted: “Let me see your hands” and “Both hands.”

 When Noble eventually exited and walked away from his truck, he appeared to have his left arm outstretched and, for a few seconds, his right arm behind his back. He then briefly walked toward the police.

 Officers continued shouting at him to show his hands, with one screaming: “Get your fucking ass on the ground.”

 One officer then fired two shots at Noble, who collapsed onto the ground and rolled onto his back. Approximately 12 seconds later, while Noble was laying on the ground, the same officer fired a third shot.

 An officer then shouted: “If you reach one more time, you will get shot again. Stop.”

 Roughly 15 seconds after the third shot, with Noble barely moving, another officer shot a fourth.

 “Do not reach again, please,” an officer said.

 Narrating the footage, police chief Jerry Dyer repeatedly pointed out moments when, he said, it appeared that Noble had something in his hand. He said the investigation would seek to determine whether each bullet was justified and if there were alternative actions the police could have taken.

 Dylan Noble. Photograph: Courtesy of family

 “Were the last two rounds fired by the officers necessary? Based on a reasonable fear, did the officers have to use deadly force? I do not have the answer to that today,” he said, adding: “That video was extremely disturbing to watch.”

 Dyer also referenced the unrest throughout the country, saying: “In many respects, we are a spark away from a forest fire in our communities in America.”

 Questions over Noble’s death come at a time when communities across the country are grappling with anxieties about police brutality following multiple high-profile deaths by officers.

 In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police tackled and fatally shot Alton Sterling last week outside of a convenience store while he was selling CDs.

 One day later, during a traffic stop in Minnesota, an officer killed Philando Castile, who told the officer that he had a gun and a permit to carry it, according to his girlfriend, who was sat in the passenger seat.

 The Baton Rouge shooting and the aftermath of the Minnesota shooting were caught on camera in disturbing footage that quickly went viral.

 The violence continued when a sniper killed five officers in Dallas last Thursday during a peaceful protest against police violence. According to police, the gunman, Micah Johnson, was a political extremist motivated by grievances over police shootings promoted by the the Black Lives Matters movement.

 Dyer said he would not release the name of the officers out of fear for their safety. “I don’t want anything to happen in our city like it happened in Dallas.”

 The death of Noble, who is white, received national attention when some protesters in the Central Valley city held up a “White Lives Matter” sign at a vigil.

 How 'White Lives Matter' protests over a police shooting were misunderstood Read more

 The appropriation of the political caused controversy online, however friends of Noble said their protests had been misunderstood and they were only seeking justice for their friend.

 The Noble family’s claim for unspecified damages, filed on Monday on behalf of his mother Veronica Nelson, argues that officers “never had an objectively reasonable basis to shoot” the 19-year-old.

 The department has also failed to remedy “systemic violations” and “civil rights abuses” within the police agency, the claim continues, and has shown “deliberate indifference to the use of excessive and often deadly force in encounters with civilians when it is a grossly disproportionate response”.

 Days after the shooting, Dyer said he felt it would be “premature” to release the video before the investigation was concluded.

 The release of the footage appeared to be a last-minute decision.

 On Wednesday afternoon, a police spokesman told the Guardian the department’s position hadn’t changed and the video would not be released.

 About half an hour later, the spokesman said the chief had changed his mind and decided to let the media watch the footage.

 At the news conference, Dyer said he did not want to release the footage the day after the shootings in Dallas. “Although tensions remain high at this point, not only here in Fresno but across this nation, I believe the timing is right to release this video.”

 Noble’s father said that while the public would likely be angered by the footage, he hoped there would not be any violent protest. “I don’t want no riot. I don’t want anybody else hurt.”

 He added: “Nothing they do can bring my kid back ... but I want those cops to pay. I won’t be satisfied until they go up on murder charges. They should be held [responsible] like anybody else who killed an innocent kid.” ||||| Police in Fresno, Calif., released body camera videos from two police officers showing the officers fatally shooting Dylan Noble, an unarmed white teenager (Editor's note: This video contains graphic content). (Fresno Police Department)

 Police in Fresno, Calif., on Wednesday released body-camera footage showing officers fatally shooting an unarmed 19-year-old, Dylan Noble.

 The footage from June 25 shows officers pulling over Noble at a gas station in the central California city after police received a report of a man carrying a rifle.

 Noble was unarmed, but as he exited from his pickup truck, he repeatedly ignored officers’ commands.

 The video shows him appear to hide his hands behind his back and walk toward officers, disobeying commands to show his hands, get on the ground and stop advancing.

 “I f—ing hate my life,” Noble shouts a split-second before an officer shoots him twice.

 The video then shows Noble continue to reach toward his waist before he is shot twice more, including one shotgun blast from a second officer.

 The video does not appear to show Noble pulling his hand out “very quickly” before the shooting, however, as Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer told reporters last month.

 The release of the footage comes at a tense time for law enforcement in the United States. The fatal police shootings of two black men — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., — last week prompted nationwide protests over fatal use of force by police. During a July 7 protest march in Dallas, a lone gunman angry over the two shootings opened fire on police, killing five officers and wounding nine others.

 Dyer said Wednesday that he had planned to release the footage Friday but delayed because of the Dallas shooting.

 The fatal shooting of Noble, who was white, did not initially generate national outrage. That, in turn, prompted its own anger and demonstrations.

 A vigil for Noble the day after his death featured Confederate flags and a “White Lives Matter” sign.

 Gail Rowell, grandmother of Dylan Noble's girlfriend, says Noble was at her house just hours before his murder. pic.twitter.com/EZ7QuklxEE — Cresencio Rodriguez (@cres_guez) June 27, 2016

 “I guarantee if an African American guy got shot, it would’ve blown up,” Noble’s friend, David Merkord, told the Guardian. “There definitely would’ve been a bigger crowd.”

 Some Internet commenters claimed the relative lack of media attention was because of Noble’s race.

 “Fresno cops shoot, kill 19-year-old,” wrote one Twitter user. “You didn’t hear about it, well because he was white.”

 The release of the body-camera footage, however, is now steering that anger away from race and toward the broader issue of police officers’ use of deadly force.

 [Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no.]

 After Noble’s father, Darren Noble, saw the footage during a private July 8 screening, he demanded that the two officers face murder charges.

 “They just wanted to shoot him,” Darren Noble told the Guardian. “They’re just trigger-happy.”

 On Monday, Noble’s mother filed a legal claim against the city saying she had suffered “significant emotional and mental distress as a result of the senseless and brutal shooting death of her son,” the Fresno Bee reported.

 “The officers never had an objectively reasonable basis to shoot Dylan Noble,” the complaint says. “At no time did they use or attempt to use their K-9. At no time did they use or attempt to use a TASER.”

 Before last month’s shooting, the Fresno Police Department was, in some ways, at the forefront of the effort to reform policing in the United States. The department used powerful — and, to some critics, controversial — software to scour data on suspects and predict a person’s threat level. City officials, meanwhile, credited a community-policing approach, emphasizing partnerships and problem-solving instead of mass arrests, for a drop in gang violence and an absence of angry protests.

 But now, something has shifted.

 The incident began about 3:20 p.m. June 25, when Fresno police responded to a call from a woman who reported a man in a camouflage jacket walking around near the city’s airport while carrying a rifle.

 Two officers in the area spotted Noble “peeling out” in his black pickup truck and pulled him over at a Chevron gas station.

 A body camera on the officer who drove the police vehicle captures him and his partner drawing their guns as they step from their squad car.

 “Turn off the truck,” the officer says. “Get your hands out the window. Both hands out the window.”

 Noble’s truck door appears to swing open.

 “No, I didn’t tell you to get out,” the officer behind the camera continues. “Hey, let me see both your hands. Let me see both your hands.”

 Noble appears to hold his left hand up but not his right.

 “Let me see your hands. Get both your hands out. Both your hands,” the officer says, calling for backup. “Let me see your hands. Let me see your hands. Let me see your hands.”

 “Both hands. Both hands,” says the partner as a third officer arrives and racks his shotgun. (His body-camera footage was also released Wednesday.)

 “Get your hands out where we can see them,” shouts the first officer’s partner.

 “Both your hands,” the first officer says.

 “Other hand. Right hand up. Right hand up,” his partner says.

 “I think we have a dog with us,” the officer with the shotgun says.

 “Subject keeps reaching for his waistband,” the first officer says into his radio.

 “He’s getting out of the car,” the officer with the shotgun shouts.

 Multiple officers frantically shout for Noble to get on the ground.

 “We don’t have a dog?” the officer with the shotgun asks.

 “Let me see your hands,” the first officer tells Noble as he holds his right hand behind his back and walks toward them. “Stop, stop reaching. Stop.”

 “Get down on the ground. Get down on the ground now. Get your f—ing ass on the ground,” the officer with the shotgun says. “Fresno Police Department. Drop whatever you have in your hand.”

 “Drop,” the first officer says.

 “If you come forward, you’re going to get shot, man,” the officer with the shotgun says.

 “Stop,” the first officer says.

 “Get on the ground now,” the officer with the shotgun says.

 “I f—ing hate my life,” Noble shouts.

 Two shots, apparently fired by the first officer, ring out and Noble falls to the pavement on his stomach. An object — later determined to be a 4-by-4-inch piece of clear plastic, according to the Bee — falls to the ground.

 “Shots fired, subject down,” the officer with the shotgun says into his radio.

 In a still from the Fresno Police officer’s body camera footage, Dylan Noble can be seen holding his left hand in the air and his right behind his back in the moments before his fatal June 25 shooting. (Fresno Police Department via AP)

 “Get your hands up” the first officer says.

 Noble then rolls onto his back.

 “Let me see your hands,” the officer with the shotgun says.

 Noble then appears to reach with his right hand toward his waistband.

 “Keep your hands up,” the officer with the shotgun shouts. “I cannot see his hands.”

 A third shot rings out, apparently fired by the first officer.

 “Dude, keep your hands out,” the officer with the shotgun says.

 “Don’t reach with your hands,” the first officer says.

 “Quit reaching for what you’ve got,” the officer with the shotgun says. “Keep your hands out. Dude, if you reach one more time, you will get shot again. Stop.”

 Noble’s right hand moves again toward his waistband.

 “Dude,” the officer with the shotgun says, firing once at Noble.

 “Dude, do not reach again, please,” the officer with the shotgun says.

 Noble was taken to a local hospital but died during surgery, according to the Los Angeles Times.

 A memorial has grown at Chevron where a man was shot & killed by police. Friends identified him as Dylan Noble pic.twitter.com/MBV2WnPUmv — Lucero Benitez (@LuceroGBenitez) June 27, 2016

 Two days later, Dyer, the police chief, told reporters that the shooting was a “tragedy” but that body-camera footage of the incident showed why officers “felt, at least in their minds,” the need to open fire. He said the footage showed Noble pulling his hand out “very quickly” before he was shot, adding that, like Noble’s parents, he was baffled by the incident.

 “We’re talking about a 19-year-old young man who doesn’t have any criminal history, and we’re trying to figure out why this occurred,” he said, according to the Bee.

 On Wednesday, at a news conference in which he released the footage, Dyer said an investigation would try to determine whether all four shots were justified and if deadly force could have been avoided.

 “Were the last two rounds fired by the officers necessary? Based on a reasonable fear, did the officers have to use deadly force? I do not have the answer to that today,” Dyer said, according to the Guardian. “That video was extremely disturbing to watch.”

 Dyer added that he hoped the video, which Noble’s family had called on him to release, would not unleash more violence.

 “Tensions are high,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “In some cases, we are one spark away from a forest fire. And I pray this video doesn’t serve as that spark.”

 The object in Noble’s hand is being investigated by the Justice Department, the Bee reported. According to the Times, it contained malleable clay.

 Unlike the shootings of Sterling and Castile, which became national headlines within hours and were loudly denounced by the Black Lives Matter movement, it was almost two weeks before Noble’s killing began to gain nationwide attention. (A column in New York Daily News by Shaun King three days after the shooting was a rare exception.)

 [Huckabee’s claim that more white people were shot by police in 2015 than minorities]

 As in the case of Sterling and Castile, it was bystander video of the shooting that sparked the media’s attention.

 On July 6, as the nation watched Castile bleed to death on Facebook Live, video emerged of Noble’s shooting 11 days after it had occurred.

 The video, shot from a distance on a bystander’s cellphone, shows the third and fourth shots as Noble lay on the ground.

 New video shows portion of deadly Fresno police shooting of #DylanNoble https://t.co/k7M3Sb9Ej9https://t.co/UtBzlgZr05 — ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) July 7, 2016

 “It shows how my son was murdered,” Darren Noble told the Guardian on July 7. “You can see he was still alive. He was trying to comply and they’re still yelling at him. You can see his hands in the video. They shot him more times just to kill him.”

 That night, however, Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire on police in Dallas, shifting the public conversation — at least temporarily — toward police safety.

 Whether the release Wednesday of the Fresno police footage pushes the conversation back toward police-involved shootings remains to be seen.

 Also unclear is whether Noble will be remembered for the “White Lives Matter” sign and Confederate flags at his vigil or whether he instead will become a symbol of how police shootings affect all communities.

 https://twitter.com/disturbedseoul/status/751619354156945408

 When one Black Lives Matter supporter tweeted Friday that the movement “stands with Dylan Noble,” she was attacked from all sides.

 “It was suicide by cop,” wrote one commenter who criticized the Black Lives Matter movement.

 “Why do you believe the movement stands with him?” asked a Black Lives Matter sympathizer. “It was believed he was flying his confederate flag when shot.”

 His friends and family say Noble should be remembered simply as a fun-loving country boy who deserved more than to die in a gas station parking lot.

 “They executed him,” Darren Noble told YourCentralValley.com on Wednesday. “There was no reason for them to even have guns drawn down on him for a traffic stop.”

 Warren Paboojian, the father’s attorney, admitted that Noble did not follow officers’ commands but said police could have used nonlethal means of subduing him, including a K-9 reportedly at the scene.

 “They were telling a young boy, who may have been under the influence of some alcohol, to do a bunch of commands for a routine traffic stop,” he said.

 Paboojian added that the family had at least one thing in common with the officers who killed Noble.

 “We don’t want any more violence or any threats to police officers or anyone else,” he said.

 Read more about recent police-involved shootings:

 Outrage after video captures white Baton Rouge police officer fatally shooting a black man

 The aftermath of this Minn. police shooting was live streamed on Facebook ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Another fatal police shooting from last month is getting attention, and the police department involved released body camera video footage from the incident Wednesday, the Fresno Bee reports. Dylan Noble, 19, was killed in Fresno, Calif., on June 25 after police responded to a 911 call about a man walking around with a rifle. While in the area, officers pulled over Noble's pickup; they say Noble was "peeling out" and continued to drive after they signaled him to stop. After pulling into a gas station, Noble got out of his truck and walked toward the officers. The video shows him repeatedly ignoring officers' commands to stop and to show both his hands. Officers believed Noble, who repeatedly reached toward his waistband, was armed; they ultimately shot him twice after he yelled "I [expletive] hate my life" and continued toward them. After "pleading" with him to show both hands, officers shot him two more times while he was already on the ground. It was ultimately determined that what Noble had in his hand was a 4-inch-by-4-inch piece of clear plastic with something resembling gray clay inside; the Department of Justice is analyzing it. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says the department is investigating and that he will focus on whether the third and fourth shots were "absolutely necessary." As the Washington Post reports, soon after Noble's death, people pointed out on social media that the shooting wasn't getting as much attention as the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, presumably because Noble was white. (At a vigil the day after his death, there were Confederate flags and a "White Lives Matter" sign present.) Now Noble's father tells the Guardian the new video shows police were "trigger-happy," and his mother has started the process of suing the city, the Bee reports. In addition to the internal investigation and the DOJ, the county DA's office and the FBI are also investigating.


News article:

Thieves have stolen 300 bottles of fine wines worth €250,000 (£230,500) from a cellar in central Paris after breaking into the trove of vintages from the catacombs, the maze of mainly off-limits tunnels under the French capital.

 The apparently well-informed thieves broke first into the catacombs from one of many secret or sealed entrances around Paris before drilling a hole through the cellar wall of the property near the Luxembourg gardens - which houses the French Senate.

 After stealing the grands crus, they quietly vanished back underground, said police. ||||| A gang of thieves managed to empty the Parisian cellar of a private residence of 300 of its finest wine bottles in the night between Monday and Tuesday (28/29 August).

 The gang successfully pierced a hole in one of the walls of the private cellar, reports France Bleu. The flat was located in a fashionable Paris neighbourhood, near the Jardin du Luxembourg and the French Senate. Their loot amounts to €250,000 (£231,000) in fine wine and the thieves still remain at large.

 To complete their heist, they used a secret pathway in the Paris Catacombs. A police source analysing the audacious theft speculated: "We believe they must have made visits before; the suspects didn't drill that particular wall by accident."

 The 3rd District of the Parisian Criminal investigation department is in charge of the case and have so far refused to comment on the heist.

 The real-life artful dodgers managed to navigate the intricate maze that make up the Paris Catacombs.

 The one mile-long pathway tourists can visit is but one tiny fraction of the labyrinth. About 150 miles of dark corridors, dead ends and possible pits await thrill seekers who dare to explore the former communal cemetery.

 The Catacombs were once mines but at the end of the 18th century, they were converted into ossuaries to curb the overflow of bodies in the city's cemeteries. That is why in addition to their confusing structure and lack of light, the Catacombs are home to between six and seven millions of human remains.

 Skulls and rib cages lay along its walls. Apart from the path that is actually accessible to the public, the rest of the Catacombs are restricted. Whoever braves the interdiction risks a fine of €135 (£125). There are also legends about people dying in the Catacombs after explorations went wrong and of cults holding black masses in the ossuary.

 However sinister that may sound, many Parisians known as 'Cataphiles' like to brave the maze and enter the Catacombs at night. Some have organised parties or even film screenings. A special branch of the police force, called the 'Cataflics' or Catacops,' deal with the intruders.

 In June 2017, two teenagers were found safe after spending three days trapped in the Catacombs. The Quarries General Inspector, Julien Alaterre noted that the people who visit the Catacombs are "usually well equipped regulars". ||||| Thieves who stole more than 250,000 euros worth of fine wine from a Paris apartment cellar exploited the French capital's vast underground tunnel network, according to French media reports.

 Thieves knocked through a wall of the Paris catacombs to break into the luxury apartment’s cellar and steal an estimated 250,000 euros-worth of vintage wines, French media has reported police as saying.

 There are an estimated six million people buried in the Paris catacombs, part of a vast underground tunnel network stretching for several miles underneath the French capital.

 French media said that the thieves stole around 300 bottles of fine wine from the cellar of an apartment in the plush sixth arrondissement of Paris, near to the Le Jardin du Luxembourg. No specific wines were named.

 Paris police said that they were investigating how the theft took place.

 Police speculated that such precision in the catacombs network would require significant research and planning by the culprits.

 Earlier this summer, two teenagers were lost in the Paris catacombs for three days.

 Only two kilometres of the network is open to the public. The gates are locked at night, yet groups are known to find ways into the tunnels to hold illicit parties.

 Parisians began burying their dead underground in the 18th Century in response to overflowing graveyards.

 Some of the estimated six million dead met their end at the guillotine during the French Revolution and subsequent Terror period at the end of 18th Century.

 More articles like this: |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The catacombs 65 feet under Paris are home to the bones of 6 million people, tours, illegal parties, secret film festivals, and—on one recent night—thieves making off with nearly $300,000 worth of fancy wine. The Guardian reports thieves drilled into a cellar belonging to an apartment near Luxembourg Gardens and stole more than 300 bottles of vintage wine. The wine is said to be worth between $595 and $1,200 per bottle, according to the Telegraph. "We're talking about very, very good wine," a spokesperson for the local prosecutor says. She says the burglary could have happened any time between late July and late August but was only discovered this week. After loading up on wine, the thieves made their escape through the catacombs. The International Business Times reports the thieves are still at large, and police are offering few details on their investigation. The specific wine stolen has also not been revealed, according to Decanter. With approximately 150 miles of tunnels comprising the catacombs, police believe the thieves knew exactly what cellar they wanted and where it was located. "One can assume that they had made reconnaissance missions and that the criminals didn't drill through this wall by chance," the Telegraph quotes a police source as saying. (Two teens spent three days lost in the dark and cold of the Parisian catacombs.)


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– When journalist Al Letson saw a suspected alt-right protester being beaten by "antifa" supporters in Berkeley, Calif., on Sunday, he didn't stop to consider what the fallen man might think of him. Letson, who is black, simply wanted to save him. Running into the crowd, Letson jumped on top of the man in order to protect him. A series of videos posted to Twitter show Letson, in a red shirt, shielding the man's body and attempting to push the assailants away. "What came to me was that he was a human being, and I didn't want to see anybody die," Letson, host of podcast Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, tells NPR. "In retrospect, it doesn't matter if he doesn't see my humanity, what matters to me is that I see his." Letson tells Slate that the unidentified protester had been with Joey Gibson of right-wing group Patriot Prayer during the mostly peaceful rally. But after Gibson began "antagonizing the black bloc," 20 to 30 others began chasing them. Gibson fled but his apparent companion "stumbled—or someone tripped him—and then four or five people surrounded him and began to kick and hit him," Letson says. When he noticed "a whole mass of people coming," Letson says he intervened in fear for the man's life. Though he was struck a few times, he'd do it all again, per Reveal. "I remember seeing the pictures of a young man being brutally beaten by these guys with poles [in Charlottesville], and when I saw that I thought, "Why didn't anybody step in?" he says.

I Saw His Humanity: 'Reveal' Host On Protecting Right-Wing Protester

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images

 On Sunday a planned rally of right-wing activists in Berkeley, Calif., mostly fizzled out, but thousands of peaceful left-wing protesters turned out, singing songs and chanting.

 About 150 members of anti-facist groups — also known as antifa or black bloc protesters — also were there, marching in formation with covered faces. Then a couple of people from the right-wing did show up.

 That's when Al Letson, host of the investigative radio program and podcast Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, saw one right-wing man fall to the ground, and some left-wing antifa protesters beating him.

 Letson jumped on top of the guy to protect him, because, he says, he didn't want anyone to get hurt. Earlier this month, a woman was killed during a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

 "When I glanced to my left I saw, you know, a mass of people just coming off the lawn towards this guy, and I don't know — I just, I thought they were going to kill him. And I just didn't want anybody to die," Letson says. "And I just put my body down on top of his, in the hopes that they would not hit me."

 Interview highlights

 On why he protected this man

 What came to me was that he was a human being, and I didn't want to see anybody die. And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the events in Charlottesville, and I remember seeing the pictures of a young man being brutally beaten by these guys with poles, and when I saw that I thought, "why didn't anybody step in?"

 And you know, in retrospect, it doesn't matter if he doesn't see my humanity, what matters to me is that I see his. What he thinks about me and all of that, like — my humanity is not dependent upon that.

 On how he balances his ethics as a journalist with his own morality

 I don't want to be a part of the story, at all. And I believe in all of those journalistic ethics and all of that — but I also think that, before that, I'm a human being.

 You know, I mean this sounds really high-minded and maybe a little nutty, but I am a huge NPR nerd, and many years ago I was listening to Terry Gross and father Greg Boyle was on there, and he gave this quote that has just stuck with me ever since. He said, "I want to live like the truth is true, and go where love has not been found." And it's how I want to govern myself in the world.

 So when I get into this situation where the decision is, do you be a journalist or do you be a human, I'm going to put the journalism to the side and do the thing that feels right for me.

 On if this event changed his view of antifa protesters

 It hasn't really changed the way I think about them at all. I think that the problem that happens when we have the antifa or people on the left engaging in violence is that it shifts the narrative.

 Suddenly, we are equating people that are fighting Nazis with Nazis — and the two things don't equate, right? And we've seen what they can do when they're in power. So we see and know exactly what that is.

 It's a false equivalency to say that the people fighting back against that are the exact same. But I also see how the violence that is coming from the antifa movement can be spun to make it seem like the two are equivalent.

 So you know, we're living in tricky times when there's a lot of nuance that needs to be walked through — and America is not good at nuance. So I think, for me, it didn't change the way I thought about them, but it does mean as a reporter, as a producer, as a journalist ,that I'm thinking even more about what that nuance means, and how to communicate it to the audience. ||||| Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images

 On Sunday, while covering Berkeley’s Rally Against Hate, Al Letson—host of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal podcast—found himself shielding a man from the blows of far-left black bloc protesters. The clip of his intervention has been shared widely across social media by critics of the antifa movement.

 Antifa beat down apparent alt-righter. pic.twitter.com/WVdDJqLKmA — Shane Bauer (@shane_bauer) August 27, 2017

 I interviewed Letson about the incident, and what it's like to cover antifa and the alt-right more broadly, Monday afternoon.

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 Osita Nwanevu: So walk me through how you ended up protecting this guy. Who was he?

 Al Letson: No idea who he was. The longer story is that there was the rally—I think one thing that people should know is that it was mostly a peaceful rally. It wasn’t like anarchy and fighting and brawling everywhere. It was mostly a peaceful thing. Most of the protesters there were not what I would call antifa. They were a mixture of people. The antifa were definitely there, but I would say that they were maybe 20 percent of the crowd? But they were there, and they showed up in force.

 So [far-right activist] Joey Gibson was doing his “Patriot Prayer” thing—he came through with like two other guys, and he was antagonizing the black bloc, and it really escalated. So they started chasing Joey and this guy. They ran across the street—I’m literally right next to Joey while all this is happening, so I know this to be true—they ran into the police, and the police kind of protected them. But this other guy—I’m not sure if he was with Joey. It looked like he was, but I’m not sure. He was running in kind of a different place, and he stumbled—or someone tripped him—and then four or five people surrounded him and began to kick and hit him with like a flagpole. And I was just filming it, but at some point I looked behind him and I saw a whole mass of people coming, and I just thought that they were going to kill him. And, you know, I didn’t want anybody to die. So I just dropped my stuff and dove in and got on top of him. Originally I wasn’t planning on getting on top of him; I just wanted to shield him. I wanted to break it up, but then I realized there were too many of them, and there was no way that was going to happen.

 There’s been a rumor going around on social media—which has been promoted by conservative writers—that this man was simply going to a grocery store. Is that true?

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 No, I don’t think that’s true at all. He was there with Joey, and I think he was filming the rally, if I remember correctly. I know he had a camera. And I think that they took the camera from him. But I’m pretty sure he was out there with Joey filming the whole thing.

 Did stepping in calm down the antifa demonstrators? And were there other fights before this?

 I pretty much left after that. After that, I was burnt. But I saw people having small skirmishes here or there. Mostly it was running people out of the square—like someone would try to say something, and they would get chased out. That happened twice, maybe three times. It was very small, very contained. It was not like this chaotic scene that you see in the video. Absolutely, that did happen. It was crazy there. But it was mostly a peaceful situation.

 I think there’s been a tendency to conflate the question of whether it’s moral to physically confront the alt-right with the question of whether that kind of action is actually effective. What are your thoughts on the broader debate we’ve been having about violence?

 What I’m seeing happen is that the violence from the far left is beginning to create an equivalency in both the media’s mind and a lot of other people’s minds between the alt-right and the alt-left. And I don’t think that there’s an equivalency there. What you’re talking about with the white nationalists, white supremacists, alt-right, whatever they want to name themselves—they want an ethno-state. They want people of color, LGBTQ people, and everybody that’s not white out of this country. And we’ve seen what that looks like in Nazi Germany. We know what that means. You’re not going to get people to peacefully line up and walk out of the country. So, you’re talking about people who are advocating genocide and then equating them with people who are fighting against advocates for genocide. And there’s no equivalency there for me. Obviously if someone’s talking about the genocide of a race or getting rid of people, it’s much worse than someone who is doing violence to protect those people. But I think violence creates that false equivalency. So I think it’s something that we as a country and the black bloc and others have to think about.

 You interviewed Richard Spencer right after the election in November, and that kind of dialogue has been held up as a productive alternative to direct confrontation or preventing figures on the alt-right from expressing their views. Did you find that conversation productive? Do you think you actually delegitimized him in any meaningful way?

 Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about this. I think that there is a way that I engage that is about exposing them and allowing our listeners and anyone listening to see exactly who this person is. I think that there are ways that you can engage them where you are giving them a platform, and that’s not what I ever want to do. But for me—I didn’t know who Richard Spencer was until maybe a week before that interview. And therefore, if I don’t know who he is, I can’t see the foundation that he’s laying out to build his organization and spread his concepts. Only in the light can we dispel this stuff that’s growing in the dark corners. So, that’s the way I see it: I’ve got to keep my eye on this guy. ||||| Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| Al Letson shields a demonstrator from attacks at a protest in Berkeley Sunday. Credit: Shane Bauer i

 UPDATE: The man Letson protected identifies himself as Trump supporter and video blogger Keith Campbell.

 While covering Sunday’s “Rally Against Hate” in Berkeley, California, today, Reveal host Al Letson witnessed a man being attacked by a group of protesters. The man was balled up on the ground, fending off blows from several people. Letson, wearing a red T-shirt, jumped in front of the batterers, protecting the man from further injury.

 Antifa beat down apparent alt-righter. pic.twitter.com/WVdDJqLKmA — Shane Bauer (@shane_bauer) August 27, 2017

 “I was scared they were going to kill him,” Letson said. “So the only thing I could think was I wanted to get on top of him to protect him.”

 The altercation was caught on video by Mother Jones journalist Shane Bauer, who identified the aggressors as anti-fascist protesters, sometimes called antifa. He also said the man being beaten may have been a member of the alt-right.

 Hear what led up to the event

 Letson was covering the event along with other Reveal staff members. In the video, he can be seen wearing his headphones, with his recording gear in a black satchel strapped across his body.

 “Our editorial policy is clear: we are unbiased observers not participants,” said Reveal Editor in Chief Amy Pyle. “However, in reviewing the video, it is clear that Al did not take sides. Instead, he responded as any of us might if we saw another human in distress.”

 Thousands of people had converged in downtown Berkeley Sunday in response to a planned right-wing rally dubbed “No to Marxism in America.” A huge police presence also flooded the streets to ward off violence between right- and left-wing groups. And barriers were erected around Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where the rally was to have unfolded.

 The right-wing organizers had announced yesterday that they were canceling their events, and very few of their supporters had shown up. However, there were reports of several arrests and scattered skirmishes throughout the morning and early afternoon.

 Letson was at the Civic Center Park as the surrounding streets filled with left-wing groups, including members of the antifa, also known as the black bloc for their trademark black attire and face-covering masks and bandanas.

 Letson recounted what happened next, a scene he also caught on video: Right-wing organizer Joey Gibson arrived at the park shortly after 1:30 p.m. He and a couple of his supporters were chased by what appeared to be antifa members, who began to throw things at him.

 Joey Gibson, organizer of yesterday's cancelled Patriot Prayer rally, chased by #BerkeleyProtests demonstrators https://t.co/BkPqrJDnEw — Reveal (@reveal) August 27, 2017

 In Letson’s video, law enforcement officers can be seen standing on the sidelines, a protest policing strategy criticized during the violent April “Battle of Berkeley” protests and in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month. Gibson continues through a line of police. Other videos from the scene show him being handcuffed.

 Meanwhile, Letson said, a man who appeared to be one of Gibson’s supporters was also chased by 20 to 30 antifa protesters, who began to kick and hit him with sticks.

 Letson dove on top of the man, suffering a few collateral blows but no injuries. Tear gas was released, quickly dispersing the crowd.

 Later, the man Letson protected reached out to him on social media. His name is Keith Campbell, 54, a President Donald Trump supporter and video blogger who was live streaming the rally on Sunday. He says antifa members know him from his conservative youtube channel Patriot Warrior Media – where he’s known as KPikklefield – and targeted him specifically.

 “Someone pointed me out and called me by name and started running toward me,” he said. “Someone knocked my camera out of my hand and I was going to grab it and someone hit me over the head and I went down. I was sure they were going to kill me. I was thinking, ‘I hope it’s quick’ because it hurt.”

 Campbell told Reveal he has no memory of Letson shielding him and only learned about it after seeing video of the attack.

 “I wanted to reach out to Al because it was a direct, coordinated attack,” he added. “It’s incredible what he did.”

 Campbell sustained bruised ribs and kidneys on Sunday, he said, but suffered no permanent damage. He said he has relocated out of state for the moment to avoid further attacks.

 Jack Smith IV, a senior writer at Mic, recorded the incident from another angle. In it, Letson can be heard urging demonstrators to stop their attack. There’s a brief pause in the confrontation, then another fight breaks out between two protesters who had been watching nearby.

 Someone dives on top of another guy being beaten by Antifa, begging them to stop, fleeing behind police lines. Intra-left blows exchanged. pic.twitter.com/bz2zFEB25j — Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) August 27, 2017

 Berkeley Police, who were in charge of the law enforcement response on Sunday, did not respond to a request for comment.

 Media inquiries should be addressed to engagement reporter Byard Duncan, by email at bduncan@revealnews.org or on Twitter at @byardduncan.

 Don't miss the next big story. Brave investigations that change minds, laws and lives. Emailed directly to you. |||||


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Crawls performed by Internet Archive on behalf of the National Library of New Zealand. This data is currently not publicly accessible. ||||| Following Donald Trump's convincing Republican primary win in South Carolina, pundits and political rivals are beginning to shift their view on the billionaire's candidacy from unlikely outsider aberration to very real GOP challenger for the White House.

 Fittingly, as some begin nervously considering how the U.S. might elect a reality TV star as president, a brilliant parody of Trump's rise has appeared, deftly using the lore of Game of Thrones as the backdrop.

 Titled "Winter is Trumping," the clever clip by Huw Parkinson uses real Trump footage and speech audio and merges it almost seamlessly with key Game of Thrones scenes. We get to see Trump negotiating with Littlefinger, facing down the queen of dragons, Daenerys Targaryen, and even preparing for battle alongside Tyrion Lannister. And yes, these people thought of everything, we even see Trump defending against invaders from atop The Wall.

 Sure, comparing Trump to the characters in a world in which the good guys often get decapitated and no one's innocence lasts for long is a bit harsh. But as this video shows, it's hard to deny just how well the would-be president might fit into the ruthless world of The Seven Kingdoms. ||||| David Mack is a deputy director of breaking news for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

 Got a confidential tip? Submit it here. |||||

– It's not entirely clear what a country run by Donald Trump might look like. But as Mashable points out, "it's hard to deny just how well the would-be president might fit into the ruthless world of The Seven Kingdoms." See for yourself in a new YouTube video from Huw Parkison of ABC Australia's Insiders program. "Winter is Trumping," spotted by BuzzFeed, drops Trump into scenes from HBO's Game of Thrones where he complains about Pope Francis and smirks at those trapped on the wrong side of The Wall. An unsympathetic Trump also turns away Daenerys Targaryen and her starving Dothraki followers from Qarth, negotiates with Littlefinger, refuses an order from Jon Snow, and promises to "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding" if he wins the Iron Throne. In King's Landing, at least, that vow leads to the use of wildfire during the Battle of the Blackwater. The video has been viewed more than 415,000 times in just three days. (Trump admits he needs to act more presidential.)


Article:

The search continues for Phylicia Simone Barnes, a star high school student from North Carolina who went missing in Baltimore last week. The 16-year-old honor student from Monroe, N.C., was visiting her half-sister when she disappeared three days after Christmas.

 Phylicia was last heard from Dec.28 via Facebook when she posted a note saying she was at her sister's apartment with her sister's boyfriend. The 5 foot 8 inch straight-A, African-American student has been missing ever since.

 "I was going to turn this city upside down to find my child, and I was going to leave no stone unturned," Russell Barnes, Phylicia's father, told ABC News.

 The FBI and Baltimore police are conducting the investigation. Baltimore Metro Crime Stoppers has offered a cash reward of up to $2,000 for her discovery.

 Police told ABC News today that they obtained additional security video from the area surrounding the apartment, but it has yet to shed new light on the case. FBI helicopters have scoured the area for three days without finding any clues.

 "If there's any good news, we haven't found anything yet," Baltimore Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

 "We've thrown every single tool, trick, machine, widget that we have in our law enforcement toolbox. And ten days later we still have nothing."

 Police say several people who visited the apartment are considered persons of interest, and the two likely scenarios proposed by investigators are abduction or murder.

 "At this point, you hope it's an abduction," Guglielmi said.

 Janice Sallis, Phylicia's mother, said, "If she's alive, she's scared to death."

 "Our goal is to find our sweet beautiful sister, daughter, niece, friend - that's what she is to everyone," said Phylicia's father, Russell Barnes.

 Aside from Baltimore and her hometown near Charlotte, N.C., Phylicia's disappearance has garnered little media attention, raising the issue of a double-standard because of her race.

 "I can't see how this case is any different from Natalee Holloway," Guglielmi said. "Is it because she's African-American? Why?"

 Question of Double-Standard Arises

 The dissappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway while on vacation in Aruba nearly six years ago sparked a media frenzy. But news coverage has been relatively sparse in Phylicia's case.

 Speaking about the lack of national media coverage, the Baltimore Police spokesman said, "Birds are falling out of the sky in Arkansas and two headed calves, and this girl may lose her life."

 The Baltimore Mayor's office says it shares the concern about the possible existence of a double-standard in the coverage of Phylicia's disappearance but is more distressed about the case because of its heartbreaking nature.

 "You see other cases that get attention, other kids that go missing and its immediately up on television and you know, I know there's frustration," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

 Nearly 9,000 people have joined a Facebook page called, "Pray for Phylicia Barnes." The charter school Phylicia attends in North Carolina, Union Academy, held a vigil for the promising student.

 "Just so scared, just praying that she's going to turn up and she'll be safe and sound," Lindsey Helms, a student at Union Academy, said.

 Her father said, "Phylicia had a bright spirit and just a glow about herself. Our greatest hope is that she can walk in the door and ... be reunited with her family." ||||| Baltimore Police Department

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 Authorities in Maryland are stepping up efforts to locate Phylicia Barnes , a 16-year-old North Carolina girl who disappeared while visiting relatives in Baltimore . But a local police official said the national media need to take note of the case."We are doing everything we can," Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told AOL News, noting that more than 35 detectives are working on the case, as well as two teams from the FBI."We would really like the national outlets to help us out here, so if somebody sees her in Missouri, they are able to alert authorities quickly," Guglielmi continued. "It has been incredibly frustrating for me. We've been pitching this since the 29th [and] have not gotten any traction. This case is no different than the Natalee Holloway case. The only difference is Phylicia is from North Carolina, she went missing in Baltimore and she is African-American."Guglielmi added, "I just think if we could get America just to see her picture -- that is all we are asking -- maybe that will lead detectives to a break and save this young lady's life."Phylicia lives in Monroe, N.C., but was visiting relatives in Baltimore. She was last seen around 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 28, when she left the apartment of her 27-year-old half-sister, Deena Barnes . According to relatives, Phylicia told her sister she was going shopping.What happened to the teenager next remains a mystery, police said."Time is working against us," Guglielmi said. "She has been missing 10 days. ... This is not a runaway. We suspect some type of foul play. The question is, What kind of foul play?"Investigators are preparing to examine video footage and process additional search warrants in the case, police said."We got some new footage [from] an apartment complex in the area, so we are reviewing that," Guglielmi said. "We are continuing interrogations, [and] we have a couple more search warrants and things to process."Family members have described Phylicia as a straight-A student who was to graduate early from Union Academy in Monroe and planned to go to Towson University in Maryland. Her father, Russell Barnes, has said it is out of character for her to take off without notifying someone.There has been no activity on any of Phylicia's social-networking accounts, and police say her cell phone has been turned off since the day of her disappearance.Authorities are looking at two possible scenarios in the case, Guglielmi said. The first is that someone in the Baltimore area did "something terrible to her." The second is that she was abducted and taken elsewhere, he said.Anyone who had contact with Phylicia in the hours leading up to her disappearance is considered a person of interest, police said. According to Guglielmi, Phylicia's half-sister's lifestyle makes the potential suspect pool large and difficult to narrow down."[Phylicia's] sister is college-age, and she had a lot of friends coming in and out," he said. "I would describe it probably like a dorm room setting. They party, maybe do a little drinking, [but] there is no activity there that concerned us -- no illicit drug use or sex parties or anything ridiculous. She was just a young lady with a lot of friends, [and] that makes our job difficult."Authorities have conducted interviews with all of the individuals whom they know were present at the apartment on the day Phylicia went missing. They are now interviewing those individuals again to see if their stories are consistent, police said.Investigators have also served a search warrant at the half-sister's apartment. Items of interest have since been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va."We have taken out pieces of bedding and pieces of flooring, but we haven't gotten any smoking gun in terms of the case," Guglielmi said. "A couple more evidentiary things have to be processed, but it is a bit frustrating for detectives because usually you are guided by some kind of physical evidence, and in this case, so far we haven't been able to find anything."The FBI's Baltimore branch confirmed to AOL News that it is assisting in the investigation."We have a unit here in Baltimore called the Crimes Against Children Unit, which is assisting the Baltimore police homicide unit in trying to locate Ms. Barnes," Special Agent Rich Wolf said.Wolf declined to comment on any specifics about the case and directed questions back to the police department.In the past week, authorities have conducted multiple searches for Phylicia in and around the area of the apartment complex where she was last seen, but so far nothing of interest has been found. Authorities are now hoping that billboards donated by Clear Channel Communications might help bring some new leads in the case. The billboards, which display Phylicia's photo and vital information, are being put up along Interstate 95 from Baltimore to New York City, police said.Authorities have set up a special tip line. Anyone with information on Phylicia's disappearance should call 855-223-0033. The FBI has also posted her vital information and photo on its website |||||
What is a summary?

– She's a beautiful, straight-A high school student who's vanished from a big American city, triggering a massive police hunt joined by the FBI. And yet the case of 16-year-old Phylicia Barnes has been slow to percolate to the national radar, complains a Baltimore police spokesman. "I can't see how this case is any different from Natalee Holloway," he said. "Is it because she's African-American? Why?" Authorities are looking for all the help they can get in locating Barnes, a North Carolina resident who disappeared while visiting her college-aged sister in Baltimore on Dec. 28, reports ABC News. She left the apartment, apparently to go shopping, and hasn't been seen since. "At this point, you hope it's an abduction," said the police spokesman. Added her mother: "If she's alive, she's scared to death." Click for more on the case.


– If it's been tough to gauge how much risk is posed by Japan's damaged nuclear plants, it's because officials have given what the New York Times describes as "confusing accounts" of exactly what's going on. Safety officials say the explosion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant destroyed walls of the building where the reactor is located, but not the metal housing enclosing the reactor, notes AP. The blast released radioactive material, but officials say the amounts are so small the public isn't endangered. Nevertheless, they widened the evacuation zone, warned people to stay inside, and prepared to distribute iodine tablets. Reuters rounds up assessments of experts, but the bottom line seems to be that more information is needed. "We don't know enough about what the status of the fuel is in the reactor core," says one. "The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting." The Washington Post talks to one doctor who arrived from Germany to provide relief, but is curtailing plans to go too far north. "I'd rather be working with a pocket knife in Haiti than worrying about the danger of a radioactive cloud."

Expand this summary.

NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, flashed instructions to evacuees: close doors and windows; place a wet towel over the nose and mouth; cover up as much as possible. At a news conference, Mr. Edano called for calm. “If measures can be taken, we will be able to ensure the safety of the reactor,” he said.

 One result of the venting may have been setting off an explosion, caused by either steam or hydrogen, that tore the outer wall and roof off the building housing reactor No. 1, although the steel containment of the reactor remained in place, officials said.

 Even before the statement on Sunday by Mr. Edano, it was clear form radioactive materials turning up in trace amounts outside the reactors that fuel damage had occurred. The existence or extent of melting might not be clear until workers can open up the reactors and examine the fuel, which could be months.

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 A meltdown occurs when there is insufficient cooling of the reactor core, and it is the most dangerous kind of a nuclear power accident because of the risk of radiation releases. The radiation levels reported so far by the Japanese authorities are far above normal but still too small to pose a hazard to human health if the exposure continued for a brief period. The fear was that more core damage would bring bigger releases.

 The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation around the plant, and Japanese news media said that three workers at the facility were suffering from full-on radiation sickness.

 Even before the explosion on Saturday, officials said they had detected radioactive cesium, which is created when uranium fuel is split, an indication that some of the nuclear fuel in the reactor was already damaged.

 How much damage the fuel suffered remained uncertain, though safety officials insisted repeatedly through the day that radiation leaks outside the plant remained small and did not pose a major health risk.

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 However, they also told the International Atomic Energy Agency that they were making preparations to distribute iodine, which helps protect the thyroid gland from radiation exposure, to people living near Daiichi and Daini.

 Worries about the safety of the two plants worsened on Saturday because executives of the company that runs them, Tokyo Electric Power, and government officials gave confusing accounts of the location and causes of the dramatic midday explosion and the damage it caused.

 Late Saturday night, officials said that the explosion at Daiichi occurred in a structure housing turbines near its No. 1 reactor at the plant, rather than inside the reactor itself. But photographs of the damage did not make clear that this was the case.

 They said that the blast, which may have been caused by a sharp buildup of hydrogen when the reactor’s cooling system failed, destroyed the concrete structure surrounding the reactor but did not collapse the critical steel container inside. This pattern of damage cast doubt on the idea that the explosion was in the turbine building.

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 “We’ve confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged,” Mr. Edano said in a news conference on Saturday night. “The explosion didn’t occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside. At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside, so we’d like everyone to respond calmly.”

 Japanese nuclear safety officials and international experts said that because of crucial design differences, the release of radiation at Daiichi would most likely be much smaller than at Chernobyl even if the plant had a complete core meltdown, which they said it had not.

 After a full day of worries about the radiation leaking at Daiichi, Tokyo Electric Power said an explosion occurred “near” the No. 1 reactor at Daiichi around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. It said four of its workers were injured in the blast.

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 The decision to flood the reactor core with corrosive seawater, experts said, was an indication that Tokyo Electric Power and Japanese authorities had probably decided to scrap the plant. “This plant is almost 40 years old, and now it’s over for that place,” said Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector for the I.A.E.A., and now a visiting scholar at Harvard.

 Mr. Heinonen lived in Japan in the 1980s, monitoring its nuclear industry, and visited the stricken plant many times. Based on the reports he was seeing, he said he believed that the explosion was caused by a hydrogen formation, which could have begun inside the reactor core. “Now, every hour they gain in keeping the reactor cooling down is crucial,” he said.

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 But he was also concerned about the presence of spent nuclear fuel in a pool inside the same reactor building. The pool, too, needs to remain full of water to suppress gamma radiation and prevent the old fuel from melting. If the spent fuel is also exposed — and so far there are only sketchy reports about the condition of that building — it could also pose a significant risk to the workers trying to prevent a meltdown.

 Both Daiichi and Daini were shut down by Friday’s earthquake, but the loss of power in the area and damage to the plants’ generators from the ensuing tsunami crippled the cooling systems. Those are crucial after a shutdown to cool down the nuclear fuel rods.

 The malfunctions allowed pressure to build up beyond the design capacity of the reactors. Early Saturday, officials had said that small amounts of radioactive vapor were expected to be released into the atmosphere to prevent damage to the containment systems and that they were evacuating people in the area as a precaution.

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 Those releases apparently did not prevent the buildup of hydrogen inside the plant, which ignited and exploded Saturday afternoon, government officials said. They said the explosion itself did not increase the amount of radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. However, safety officials urged people who were not evacuating but still lived relatively nearby to cover their mouths and stay indoors.

 David Lochbaum, who worked at three reactors in the United States with designs similar to Daiichi, and who was later hired by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to teach its personnel about that technology, said that judging by photographs of the stricken plant, the explosion appeared to have occurred in the turbine hall, not the reactor vessel or the containment that surrounds the vessel.

 The Daiichi reactor is a boiling-water reactor. Inside the containment, the reactor sends its steam out to a turbine. The turbine converts the steam’s energy into rotary motion, which turns a generator and makes electricity.

 But as the water goes through the reactor, some water molecules break up into hydrogen and oxygen. A system in the turbine hall usually scrubs out those gases. Hydrogen is also used in the turbine hall to cool the electric generator. Hydrogen from both sources has sometimes escaped and exploded, Mr. Lochbaum said, but in this case, there is an additional source of hydrogen: interaction of steam with the metal of the fuel rods. Operators may have vented that hydrogen into the turbine hall.

 Earlier Saturday, before the explosion, a Japanese nuclear safety panel said the radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at Daiichi. Some radioactive material had also seeped outside, with radiation levels near the main gate measured at eight times normal levels, NHK quoted nuclear safety officials as saying.

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 The emergency at Daiichi began shortly after the earthquake struck Friday afternoon. Emergency diesel generators, which kicked in to run the cooling system after the electrical power grid failed, shut down about an hour after the earthquake. There was speculation that the tsunami had flooded the generators, knocking them out of service.

 For some time, the plant was able to operate in a battery-controlled cooling mode. Tokyo Electric Power said that by Saturday morning it had also installed a mobile generator to ensure that the cooling system would continue operating even after reserve battery power was depleted. Even so, the company said it needed to conduct “controlled containment venting” in order to avoid an “uncontrolled rupture and damage” to the containment unit.

 Why the controlled release of pressure did not succeed in addressing the problem was not immediately explained. Tokyo Electric Power and government nuclear safety officials also did not explain the precise sequence of failures at the plant.

 Daiichi and other nuclear facilities are designed with extensive backup systems that are supposed to function in emergencies to ensure the plants can be shut down safely. ||||| VIENNA Radiation leaked from Japan's quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday after a blast blew its roof off. Assessments of the danger varied. The critical issue is what happens to the radioactive reactor fuel.

 "We don't know enough about what the status of the fuel is in the reactor core," nuclear expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said. "The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting."

 WHAT HAPPENED ?

 An explosion occurred at the 40-year-old Daichi 1 reactor as plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) tried to reduce pressure in the core after the total loss of power needed to keep water circulating to prevent it from overheating.

 This led to fears of a disastrous meltdown at the plant, which shut down automatically after Friday's quake.

 The government later said radiation levels were low because the explosion had not affected the reactor core container, although it had severely damaged the main building.

 "The most probable (cause of the blast) is that the coolant, particularly if it's water, can overheat and turn to steam more rapidly than it was designed to," said nuclear fuel technology professor Timothy Abram at Manchester University.

 The cause and exact location of the blast still needs to be established, said nuclear physics professor Paddy Regan at Surrey University. "So far it looks like it's not the reactor core that's affected, which would be good news."

 The World Nuclear Association, a London-based industry body, said the blast was probably due to hydrogen igniting and that this was unlikely to cause a big accident by itself.

 "It is obviously an hydrogen explosion," communications director Ian Hore-Lacy said. "If the hydrogen has ignited, then it is gone, it doesn't pose any further threat."

 HOW SERIOUS COULD IT BE?

 Views differ. Stratfor, a risk consultancy, initially said there appeared to be a reactor meltdown, but others disagreed, dismissing any comparisons with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

 In an updated analysis, Stratfor said new developments "may suggest positive signs for authorities' efforts to contain the problem." But "many dangers and risks remain," it added.

 Abram, the Manchester professor, said it was unlikely it would develop into anything more serious, though this would depend on the integrity of the fuel. He believed it "pretty unlikely" that the fuel had been significantly damaged.

 "If the fuel is substantially intact, then there'll be a much, much lower release of radioactivity and the explosion that's happened might be just due to a build-up of steam in the reactor circuit," he said.

 Apparently backing this view, the government said the plant's concrete building collapsed in the blast, but the reactor container inside did not explode.

 The top government spokesman said Tepco, the operator, planned to fill the leaking reactor with sea water to cool it down and reduce pressure.

 Carnegie's Hibbs said: "If they are suggesting that the reactor vessel is intact and that they have a way to get cold water into the core of the reactor to cool that core down, that is very good news indeed."

 It is too early to say that a "catastrophe has been averted," Stratfor said.

 A nuclear technology expert who declined to be named said the situation was still "very serious" as the cause of the explosion had yet to be determined. He blamed the accident on rising pressure inside the reactor.

 (Editing by Tim Pearce) |||||