Mexico City Explosion Kills 25, Leaves 100 Others Wounded

25 people died and at least 100 others were injured when a great explosion at the the headquarters of Pemex, in Mexico City occurred.

The explosion was reported to be in the basement garage of the auxiliary building, a busy commercial and residential area just before 4 p.m and next to Petroleos Mexicanos’ 52-story tower. The skyscraper complex was immediately visited by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to supervise rescue activities.

Picture: NY Daily News.

At least 30 people remained trapped in the debris while rescue dogs were sent to look for them. ”It shook the building, and then we were evacuated”, said a man who was on the ground floor.

“An explosion took place in the B2 building of the administrative center,”/”Regrettably, they have confirmed 14 people dead and 80 injured.”, Pemex tweeted yesterday. Today, Mexican authorities confirmed 25 people dead and 101 other were injured.

Pemex first said they were evacuating because there was an electricity problem, then it said there was an explosion but the problem was not determined.

Picture: Canberra Times.

Most of the people injured were treated at local hospitals with broken bones, sources said.

Director General of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin extended his condolences to all the families of the workers who have lost their loved ones at this accident.

Noe I, Windows of the World.

Big Twister Hits Georgia City; Thousands Affected SouthEast

A big tornado ripped through Adairsville, Georgia, overturned cars and killed at least 1, damaging several buildings in the area and leaving at least 12,000 people without power statewide.

The local hospital received 7 people with injuries from the storm. The man killed was inside his mobile home in Bartow County.

Picture: MSNBC

Tornado warnings were issued from Tennessee to northern and western Georgia until Wednesday afternoon.

A 47 year old man was also killed in Tennessee after a tree fell on a shed he was in, the local fire department said.

In Memphis, TN, more than 13,000 families lost power as winds took down power lines.

Noe I., Windows of the World.

Derailment on Long Island Causes LIRR Delays

A non-passenger train has derailed in Long Island City, blocking the rail yard where diesel trains are stored.

Port Jefferson and Oyster Bay branches customers are the most affected as more cancellations and delays are expected. They should travel to Penn Station, Woodside or Jamaica for eastbound service.

New York City Transit is cross-honoring fares for customers to take the 7 train to Woodside, where LIRR service is available. Some eastbound trains will make added stops at Woodside to accommodate customers.

Check the LIRR status here.

Free Wi-Fi Catches on With Subway Riders in New York

Emily Langmead was hesitant when she first heard of free Wi-Fi in the subway. Like many New Yorkers, she wondered what the catch was.

But now, she says, she uses it all the time.

One month in to wireless service being provided in six New York City subway stations, commuters like Langmead are happy to have chances to connect when their trains head underground and pull into one of the stations with Wi-Fi.

“Are you kidding? Being able to check my email when the train is in the subway is an amazing thing,” she said. “I love it.”

The new service is part of a $200 million plan to connect the subway to the outside world. Transit Wireless, the company in charge of building and designing the network, is working with many carriers to provide cellphone and data connectivity services to all 277 underground stations in New York by 2017.

The service, sponsored by Google Offers, is available on train platforms at five stations, all in the Chelsea neighborhood. Customers of T-Mobile and AT&T can also use cellphones in the six stations. Negotiations continue for telecom giants like Verizon and Sprint to join.

While some other cities have had data and cellphone connectivity in their subways for years, some New Yorkers were not thrilled with the idea because it can be disruptive. Others, though, see a benefit.

“It helps if you are in an emergency and you need to communicate with somebody and you don’t have email or anything else functioning, I think it can be very useful,” said subway rider Melissa Cardona-Bodhert.

While there have been concerns about noise pollution, the benefits of staying connected outweighed the concerns, said William Bayne Jr., the CEO of Transit Wireless.

Boingo Wireless is one of the first clients for Transit Wireless. Boingo is known for providing Wi-Fi services in airports but now wants to enter the advertising game.

Both companies see the move to wire the subways as a gold mine. Sponsoring Wi-Fi provides companies with the chance to advertise to more than 1.6 billion riders every year. And although Google Offers’ sponsorship officially ends on Sept. 7, it could continue. Boingo and Transit Wireless said they have others in the pipeline, in case it doesn’t.

“We definitely think we will be able to have continued sponsorship because this represents a really unique way for advertisers to really reach consumers,” assured Dawn Callahan, Boingo’s vice president of consumer marketing.

Some of the sponsorship money goes to cover operating costs, which Transit Wireless says can cost several thousand dollars a month per station. The MTA is working with Transit Wireless but says it will not incur any costs.

“There is an explosion of Wi-Fi utilization right now. There are a lot of new Wi-Fi devices that are entering the marketplace,” Bayne said. “All that is really inviting for sponsors because it really exposes the sponsor’s products and services through advertising to billions of ridership over the course of time.”

Transit Wireless won the contract in 2007 to wire the city’s subway system, now 105 years old. The project will take almost seven years because of the complexity of the system. Bayne says that the subways’ age and the fact that it is open around the clock present special challenges.

The company is working on the project on weekends and during off hours. In his office in Queens, Bayne and his staff are working on the next installment of 30 stations along the west side of Manhattan. Times Square and Columbus Circle, two of New York’s busiest stations, are in the next group to be wired by the end of the year.

“If you got a long commute, that could be as long as 30 minutes, that you are basically without any type of connectivity which some for people is like cutting off their arm,” Callahan said. “So I think that this presents people a way for them to stay connected.”

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Week in Pictures: May 31 – June 7

Space shuttle Enterprise is carried by barge underneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on June 3, in New York City. Enterprise was on its way to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it will be on permanent display.

Brandon Harder, gas man for Jimmie Johnson, goes airborne as Johnson accelerates from the pit during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, May 27.

People gather at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, June 3. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria’s largest city, killing everyone on board and several others on the ground. The pilot is said to have reported engine failure just before the aircraft went down.

A Pakistani boy who lives near a brick factory covers his face with a scarf to avoid a sand storm on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, June 6.

Venus appears as a small black dot (upper left corner) against the massive surface of the sun on its orbit between Earth and the center of our solar system, June 5. The transit of Venus across the sun is one of the rarest celestial sights visible from Earth. The event marked the last time Venus will cross the sun (as seen from Earth) for 105 years.

Kazakh nomads herd their livestock across a plain in Altay, China. The Altay, known in Chinese as the Aletai region, is situated in the most northern part of Xinjiang, sharing a border on the east with Mongolia and on the west with Russia.

NBC News.

LA becomes largest US city to ban single-use plastic bags

Withstanding a strong lobby from the plastic bag industry, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a ban on single-use plastic bags at checkout counters as well as a 10-cent fee on paper bags.

With a population of 4 million — and using an estimated 2.7 billion plastic bags each year – Los Angeles becomes the largest city in the U.S. to enact a ban and joins 47 other cities in California alone.

“This is a tipping point” for banning plastic bags around the world, City Councilman Paul Koretz, a ban sponsor, declared just before the 13-1 vote.

The industry counters that the ban will be bad for the environment and health and will cost local jobs.

Reusable bags “are hazardous because consumers seldom wash them, and they have been found to transport bacteria,” Mark Daniels, chair of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, told msnbc.com, citing a case earlier this month of girls getting norovirus from cookies left in a reusable bag.

“Plastic bags make up a fraction a percent of the litter stream,” Daniels added, citing a 2009 litter survey. “A policy to target and ban one product will not address the root issue” of pollution.

City staff countered at Wednesday’s meeting that 43 percent of Los Angeles’ trash is plastic and that the largest component of that plastic is plastic bags at 19 percent.

Read more of this story on MSNBC.

‘One World Trade Center Rises, Providing Breathtaking View Of Manhattan’ MSNBC Reports

One World Trade Center is well one its way to a planned 1,776 feet tall, reaching 100 stories this week. We were given the opportunity to spend some time on the site and Rock Center interviewed several construction workers who work there everyday. While many of us feel a sense of pride watching the massive structure grow on a daily basis, these workers are changing the skyline of New York and honoring those lost with every piece of steel.

See more picture on MSNBC.com along with an amazing 180 degree panoramic image.

Fire In Basement Prompts Evacuation Of Macy’s Herald Square Store

A Wednesday afternoon fire at Macy’s in Herald Square prompted an evacuation of the iconic store.

The blaze started at around 3:15 p.m. in the basement of the flagship store, which was emptied for more than 2 hours, CBS 2′s Derricke Dennis reported.

“The fire alarm went off and they told us to ignore it and then it went off again and they told us to get out,” one shopper told WCBS 880′s Peter Haskell.

The smell of smoke on the 34th Street side of the store convinced a lot of people it was time to go.  When people started rushing out, one store employee said he was surprised.

“It was a one-day sale, they’d go down in the fire before they miss that,” he joked to Haskell.

The fire was confined to an area already closed to customers and which was undergoing renovations. Phil Iannarone, shopping on the 9th floor, said he had to drop everything and take the stairs.

“We started on the 9th floor and we just made our way down — hundreds of people on the stairs,” he told Dennis.

Read the full story on CBS New York.

Pair Of Orphaned Baby Owls Take Over Apartment

Two orphaned baby owls have moved in with Jimmy Robinson, park keeper at Longleat Safari and Adventure Park in England, where they are busy finding small places to hide. The tiny 6-week-old burrowing owlets, nicknamed Linford and Christie (after the gold-medal-winning British Olympian) were hatched in an incubator at a local hawk conservancy and need 24-hour care for another month.

The birds, native to North and South America, get their name from living in small burrows in the wild, but this pair has certainly found no problem adapting that behavior to a one-bedroom apartment. Robinson keeps a close eye on the tiny birds as they try to blend in, the game keeper told British news service BNPS.

”Tea cups and bookcases are a particular favorite, but it’s good to see them developing their natural behavior,” he said, adding “and they always seem to find me at meal times”

See more lovely pictures on the Today Show’s webpage.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade In New York City

The 251st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade takes over Fifth Avenue Saturday.

Record crowds are expected with the nice weather and the holiday falling on a Saturday.

Everyone is being asked to take mass transit.

The parade begins on 44th Street at 11 a.m.

The marchers, bands and bagpipes then head up Fifth Avenue, past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to end at 86th Street.