The violent derailing of a passenger train in northwest Spain last night killed at least 78 and injured more than 140. Video of the accident shows the first several cars of the train lurching onto their sides at high speed as it exits a curve:
What is the backwards and uncivilized Middle East doing now to thank us for our work "stabilizing" their region, with explosives? They are dying from a brand new virus that researchers now say is "deadlier than SARS." How long before you, too, are dead?
Planned protests at IRS offices across the country seemed to stall at a few dozen Tea Party people outside the Treasury Department offices in Boston, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Washington today. Maybe there just aren't that many Tea Party people after all, or maybe Obama really did deploy the HAARP tornado machine.
If our planet's increasingly extreme weather isn't caused by man-made climate change, then it stands to reason that it's actually caused by man-made supervillains using government technology to take American Freedoms with superstorms like Monday's mile-wide monster tornadoes.
The Royals are expected to do something now and then, and nothing says "I happen to be partying in New York" like Prince Harry taking a somewhat tardy disaster tour of the New Jersey shoreline devastated by Hurricane Sandy seven months ago.
For those of us with a reasonable fear of the ocean, this is a worst case scenario: Last week, Dan Suski, 30, and his sister Kate Suski, 39, chartered a fishing boat in St. Lucia. Things were going fine, despite the rough seas, and the siblings even managed to hook a 200-pound marlin. They were battling the giant fish when water rushed onto the boat and flooded its engine room. As the captain radioed for help, another surge of water swamped the boat. At that point, the captain tossed the Suskis life jackets and ordered them into the ocean.
A death toll in the hundreds is expected following a massive earthquake in southeast Iran near the border of Pakistan on Tuesday. Measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, the quake is the country's largest in decades, and its tremors reportedly caused buildings to sway as far away as New Delhi and Qatar.
Beloved New York day trip destination and shithole Coney Island was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Not to worry: Matt Chaban reports that, with the official opening of CONEY SUMMER 2013 FUCK YEAH CLAM STRIPS *VOMITS* just weeks away, the rebuilding effort has successfully rehabilitated the charming hellscape. Buildings, completely remodeled! Businesses, spiffed up! Rides, scrubbed and repainted! The very sand on the beach sifted for debris, leaving the beaches "cleaner than they probably have been in a century!"
The earth opened up behind a one-story home in Florida late last night, swallowing an entire bedroom into a sinkhole—now 100 feet wide—and likely killing one. Authorities say that their equipment has been unable to find signs of life, meaning that the 36-year-old man who was sucked into the rubble is believed dead; according to early reports, the victim's brother attempted to rescue him, only to himself require rescue by an arriving sheriff's deputy. "It sounded like a car hit my house," Janell Wheeler, the man's aunt and one of the occupants of the home, told the Tampa Bay Times. The sinkhole, which expanded from 30 to 100 feet wide overnight, is reportedly still developing; its causes are unclear, though it's not man-made. [Tampa Bay Times | CNN | Sheli Muniz]
A passenger on a nearby balloon managed to capture video of the hot air balloon accident that claimed the lives of 19 tourists yesterday in Luxor, Egypt: Smoke billows from the balloon's basket for several seconds before the ballon itself dramatically deflates and plummets toward the ground. Passengers on the balloon filming the terrifying scene can be heard gasping and praying. Victims included tourists from Japan, China, the U.K. and Hungary; the two survivors, the pilot and a British tourist, survived by jumping from the balloon. "I saw tourists catching fire and they were jumping from the balloon," local farmer Hassan Abdel-Rasoul told AP. "They were trying to flee the fire but it was on their bodies." The crash—by far the worst in history—led to the immediate suspension of hot air balloon flights in Luxor.
A huge natural gas explosion—"like an earthquake," one witness said—burned a Kansas City restaurant to the ground yesterday evening, injuring 16, some critically, and leaving one person unaccounted for. Authorities believe a contractor working near JJ's Restaurant, a three-decade institution overlooking Kansas City's iconic Country Club Plaza, hit a natural gas line, and people reported a strong odor of gas in the area—so strong JJ's employees cancelled reservations, shut down the kitchen, and asked patrons to leave the restaurant—hours before the 6 p.m. explosion shattered nearby windows and sent shockwaves nearly a mile through the city. One woman is still missing, and Kansas City police are using cadaver dogs to search for her. Some 100 fire fighters responded to the four-alarm fire; it was under control by 8 p.m. [Kansas City Star | KCTV]
