No Survivors Among 224 On Board in Russian Airliner Crash in Egypt

None of the passengers or crew members survived the crash, media reports quoted Egyptian officials as saying.

CAIRO:  A Russian airliner carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula today, the Egyptian government has confirmed. None of the passengers survived the crash, a report of the Russian embassy has said.

The search and rescue teams have so far found more than 100 bodies, including those of five children, in the wreckage of the aircraft, an official at the site told Reuters.

"The plane split into two, a small part on the tail end that burned and a larger part that crashed into a rock. We have extracted at least 100 bodies and the rest are still inside," the officer said.

An official among the Egyptian search and rescue teams had earlier said that voices could be heard in a section of the plane. But media reports quoting Egyptian officials have now confirmed that there were no survivors in the crash.

"There is another section of the plane with passengers inside that the rescue team is still trying to enter and we hope to find survivors especially after hearing pained voices of people inside."  he said.

Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Hossam Kemal said it was "too soon to determine the cause" of a Russian passenger plane crash in the country's Sinai peninsula, a cabinet statement quoted him as saying.

The prime minister went to the scene of the crash alongside the tourism and health ministers and offered his condolences to the Russian ambassador, the statement said.

The Metrojet (formerly Kolavia Airlines) flight had 217 passengers and seven crew members on board. A senior aviation official said it was a charter flight operated by a Russian company.


The Kolavia/Metrojet aircraft lost contact with air traffic control over Sinai in Egypt

According to reports, Flight 7K9268 flying to Russia from Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt went off radar 23 minutes after taking off.

Sergei Lzvolsky, an official with the Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia told Interfax news agency that the plane had departed Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh at 5:51 am local time (03:51 GMT).

He said the aircraft did not make contact as expected with air traffic controllers in Cyprus.

Earlier, there was confusion on the fate of the plane, while some reports said it had crashed in Sinai, others said the aircraft had made contact with air traffic control.

Most passengers on the flight are believed to be Russian tourists.

Lacha prantha

Akshay Kumar turns stylist for Amy Jackson

TAGS: STYLIST, SINGH IS BLIING, PERSONAL, FOCUS, CO-STAR, AMY JACKSON, AKSHAY KUMARAKSHAY KUMAR UPCOMING FILM SINGH IS BLIING.NEWS IS THAT OF PAIRING AMY JACKSON.HE BECAME A PERSONAL STYLIST TO AMY JACKSON.ACCORDING TO SOURCES AKSHAY KUMAR IS PERSONALLY FOCUSING ON CO-STAR AMY JACKSON'S STYLING.

Gunmen Kill 13 Passengers in Afghanistan: Officials

Gunmen Kill 13 Passengers in Afghanistan: OfficialsMAZAR-I-SHARIF:  Unknown gunmen today killed 13 passengers travelling in two vehicles in the usually tranquil northern Afghan province of Balkh, as President Ashraf Ghani convened an international donor conference in Kabul.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the killings of ethnic Hazara minorities, which come as Taliban insurgents ramp up attacks amid a bitter leadership transition.

"The gunmen stopped two vehicles, lined up all the male passengers and shot them dead," said Jafar Haidari, the governor of Zari district, where the incident occurred.

"They spared the life of one women who was in one of the vehicles. All the victims were ethnic Hazara minorities."

Abdul Razaq Qaderi, the deputy police chief of Balkh, confirmed the fatalities, adding that officials were investigating the incident.

The killings came as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani implored international donors for their continued support, saying the "wounded country" faced a host of security and economic challenges.

"Rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be a long-term endeavour," Ghani said at a conference of donors in Kabul attended by Western delegates and non-governmental organisations.

"Afghanistan is a wounded country. Widespread unemployment, a violent insurgency, and the advance of extremism across the region are increasing the likelihood that (our) economic reform agenda will be undone by political unrest."

Taliban insurgents are stepping up their summer offensive launched in late April amid a simmering leadership succession dispute after the confirmation of longtime chief Mullah Omar's death.

Mullah Akhtar Mansour, a trusted deputy of Omar, was named as the insurgents' new chief in late July, but the power transition has been acrimonious.

Afghan security forces, stretched on multiple fronts, are facing their first fighting season without the full support of US-led NATO forces.

NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan last December and pulled out the bulk of its troops although a 13,000-strong residual force remains for training and counter-terrorism operations.

Alia Bhatt Priyanka Chopra, Sonakshi Sinha Sonam Kapoor to become the most followed celebrity on Instagram!

Looks like divas is ruling this app in Bollywood. guys, watch out!
 But the queen of this game happens to be Alia Bhatt who has beaten her good friend Varun Dhawan to become the most followed celeb on Instagram in India! Here’s taking a closer look at her Insta account along with other most followed stars on the app.
#1: Alia Bhatt, Priyanka Chopra

Alia and PC have tied at number one, as the most followed actresses on Instagram


Celebrity: Alia

Number of followers: – 2.9m

Celebrity: Priyanka Chopra

Number of followers: 2.9m

#3 Celebrity: Sonam Kapoor

Number of followers- 2.4 m

#4 Celebrity: Jacqueline Fernandez

Number of followers: 2.3m

#5 Celebrity: Sonakshi Sinha

1.6 Million followers!
#6 Celebrity: Anushka Sharma

Number of followers for the two: 1.2m

Number of followers of all three- 1.8m
#brothers #salmankhan #priyankachopra #bollywood#bollywoodactress #bollywoodnews #udtapunjab#shahidkapoor #shaandaar #varundhawan#shraddhakapoor #aliabhatt #deepikapadukone#aamirkhan #jacquelinefernandez #ranveersingh#akshaykumar #shahrukhkhan #tigershroff#kareenakapoor #anushkasharma #bollywoodmania#arjunkapoor #sidharthmalhotra #sonakshisinha#welcomeback #jazbaa #hero #singhisbling

Guess who's getting ready for a massive shootout! Are you excited to see #PriyankaChopra hit the television screen with #Quantico?

Hubble Survey Unlocks Clues to Star Birth in Neighbouring M31 

After analysing images of 2,753 young, blue star clusters in the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy (M31), astronomers with the help from "citizen scientists" have found that M31 and our own Milky Way have a similar percentage of new-born stars based on mass.

By nailing down what percentage of stars have a particular mass within a cluster called Initial Mass Function (IMF), scientists can better interpret the light from distant galaxies and understand the formation history of stars in our universe.

The intensive survey, assembled from 414 mosaic photographs of M31 taken by Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope, was a unique collaboration between astronomers and "citizen scientists," volunteers who provided invaluable help in analyzing the mountain of data from Hubble.

"Given the sheer volume of Hubble images, our study would not have been possible without the help of citizen scientists," said Daniel Weisz from University of Washington in Seattle.

This evidence also implies that the early universe did not have as many heavy elements for making planets, because there would be fewer supernovae from massive stars to manufacture heavy elements for planet building.

It is critical to know the star-formation rate in the early universe - about 10 billion years ago - because that was the time when most of the universe's stars formed.

Stars are born when a giant cloud of molecular hydrogen, dust and trace elements collapses.

The cloud fragments into small knots of material that each precipitate hundreds of stars.

Hubble's bird's-eye view of M31 allowed astronomers to compare the IMF among a larger-than-ever sampling of star clusters that are all at approximately the same distance from Earth, 2.5 million light-years.

To the researchers' surprise, the IMF was very similar among all the clusters surveyed.

Nature apparently cooks up stars like batches of cookies, with a consistent distribution from massive blue supergiant stars to small red dwarf stars.

"It is hard to imagine that the IMF is so uniform across our neighbouring galaxy given the complex physics of star formation," Weisz noted.

The Andromeda Project is one of the many citizen science efforts hosted by the Zooniverse organization.

"The efforts of these citizen scientists opens the door to a variety of new and interesting scientific investigations, including this new measurement of the IMF," Weisz pointed out in a paper that appeared in the Astrophysical Journal.