user: Problem: At least 124 people killed in Afghan winter storm, official says

PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan – Avalanches caused by a heavy winter snow killed at least 124 people in northeastern Afghanistan, an emergency official said Wednesday, as rescuers clawed through debris with their hands to save those buried beneath.

The avalanches buried homes across four northeast provinces, killing those beneath, said Mohammad Aslam Syas, the deputy director of the Afghanistan Natural Disaster Management Authority. The province worst hit appeared to be Panjshir province, about 60 miles northeast of the capital, Kabul, where the avalanches destroyed or damaged around 100 homes, Syas said.

The acting governor of Panjshir, Abdul Rahman Kabiri, said rescuers used their bare hands and shovels in an effort to reach survivors. Rescue teams had been dispatched to the affected areas and casualties were expected to rise, Syas said.

The heavy snowstorms, which began early Tuesday, hampered rescue efforts. Snow fall from the storm was nearly 3-feet deep in places and fallen trees blocked roads in the Panjshir Valley.

Gen. Abdul Aziz Ghirat, the provincial police chief of Panjshir, said the death toll from the avalanches was expected to rise when rescue attempts resumed at sunrise Thursday.

Avalanches in the valley's Dara district affected up to 600 families, according to people trying to reach the area to assist in rescue efforts.

"People there have told me that two of my relatives have been killed and eight others are still under the snow," said an Afghan who goes by the single name Sharafudin. "My son and I are trying to get through to see if we can help find their bodies. But it will take us at least three or four hours to get there because of the snow and the road is very narrow, so we have to walk, the car can't get through."

He spoke at the mouth of the valley, where traffic moved at a crawl.

"We've had no help yet from the authorities, no medicines, no machinery to open the roads so we can get to the buried houses," Sharafudin said.

Another man stuck on the highway trying to reach Dara told The Associated Press that many bodies remained in houses buried beneath feet of snow.

"We are so concerned about our relatives who are just stuck there," said the man named Abu Muslim.

Large parts of Afghanistan have been covered in snow as a major storm interrupted an otherwise mild and dry winter.

Authorities in Parwan province closed the strategic Salang Tunnel, which links the north and south of the country, over avalanche fears. Power cables traversing the tunnel have been damaged, cutting power to much of Kabul since earlier this week.

In a statement, President Ashraf Ghani said he was "saddened by news of the avalanches and flooding across the country." He said he had ordered urgent assessments of the extent of damage and offered his condolences to the families of the dead.

Temperatures have plummeted across the country, though the snow was expected to start melting in the Panjshir Valley and much of the mountainous northwest of the Hindu Kush range in coming days, according to forecasts.

Afghanistan has suffered through some three decades of war since the Soviet invasion in 1979. But natural disasters such as landslides, floods and avalanches have taken a toll on a country with little infrastructure or development outside of its major cities.

In May, a massive landslide killed anywhere from 250 to 2,700 people, authorities said at the time. Another landslide in 2012 killed 71 people. Authorities were not able to recover the vast majority of bodies and ended up declaring the site a massive grave.

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Summary: Avalanches caused by a heavy winter snow killed at least 108 people in northeastern Afghanistan, an emergency official said Wednesday, as rescuers clawed through debris with their hands to save those buried beneath.


Problem: Rayo Vallecano pledge to pay rent for evicted... -

Rayo Vallecano takes care of their own.

The La Liga club pledged to pay a local 85-year-old woman’s rent for the rest of her life after she was evicted from her home by police.

Carmen Martínez Ayudo was driven from the Vallecas apartment she lived in for 50 years after her son used it as security for a $50,000 loan he then failed to pay off. Because ownership of the home was transferred to Ayudo’s son following the death of her husband, she knew nothing of the loan or the accumulated debt until police showed up at her doorstep last month.

A local anti-eviction committee managed to win Ayudo a brief reprieve, but on Friday seven police vans arrived to evict her. That’s when local Madrid club Rayo stepped up to the plate.

"We’re not going to stand around and do nothing, we’re going to help this woman," Rayo Vallecano coach Paco Jemez told The Guardian.

"Not just me but the technical team and the players. We’ll give her a hand to find a place where she can live in dignity and not feel abandoned. Because she’s from the neighborhood, as a club we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help."

Rayo, who are currently in 13th place in La Liga, are sure to win over a few fans over this heartwarming story.

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Summary: Rayo Vallecano pledge to pay rent for evicted...


Problem: Ernest Borgnine dead at 95, Oscar winner best known for ‘Marty,’ ‘McHale’s Navy’

Ernest Borgnine died of renal failure in Los Angeles Sunday at the age of 95, surrounded by family.

A thousand guys who looked like Ernest Borgnine - hulking, intense, lots of eyebrows - got steady work as movie and TV villains, the kind who sneer and swagger right up until the hero puts one in their gut. Ernest Borgnine did that for a while. But then something else happened. He become sympathetic and even poignant, quietly building one of the most versatile screen careers of the last 60 years. The first time most viewers saw Borgnine, he was Fatso, the sadist who beat Frank Sinatra to death in "From Here To Eternity." The last time most viewers saw him, he was mourning his just-deceased wife in the final "ER." He may be even better known to a generation of children born in the century after his. Since 1999 he has been the voice of Mermaid Man on "SpongeBob Squarepants." How the snarling bully of "Eternity" and "Bad Day at Black Rock" became that guy can be summed up in one word: "Marty."

In the 1955 film of the Paddy Chayefsky screenplay, he was cast against type as a shy, lonely butcher who lived with his mother in the Bronx. He meets a shy, lonely girl. His friends tell him to forget her, she's not pretty. He answers with one of the great movie speeches of the era: "All I know is I had a good time last night. . . ." "Marty" won Borgnine an Oscar. Grace Kelly presented it to him, creating one of Hollywood's most glorious beauty-and-the-beast snapshots ever. A decade later he reinvented himself again, as Quinton McHale in the World War II sitcom "McHale's Navy." Modestly popular during its four-year lifetime, it has since graduated to a classic. Borgnine worked steadily thereafter, mostly ensemble roles in films like "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Poseidon Adventure." He lived long enough to become a beloved old-timer, a welcome guest wherever he landed. He wasn't born into that position. He earned it.

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Summary:

assistant: Ernest Borgnine, the beefy screen star known for blustery, often villainous roles, but who won the best-actor Oscar for playing against type as a lovesick butcher in "Marty" in 1955, died Sunday. He was 95.