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Plane Plunges into Stands at Reno Air Show (Video)

Plane Plunges into Stands at Reno Air Show (Video)

A vintage World War II-era fighter plane plunged into the grandstands Friday during a popular annual air show, killing at least three people, injuring more than 50 spectators and creating a horrific scene strewn with body parts and smoking debris.

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known, but an official with the event said there were indications that mechanical problems were at play.

The plane, flown by a renowned 74-year-old air racer and movie stunt pilot, spiraled suddenly out of control and appeared to disintegrate upon impact. Bloodied bodies were spread across the area as people tended to the victims and ambulances rushed to the scene.

Maureen Higgins of Alabama, who has been coming to the show for 16 years, said the pilot was on his third lap when he lost control.

She was sitting about 30 yards away from the crash and watched in horror as the man in front of her started bleeding after a piece of debris hit him in the head.

“I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn’t believe it. I’m talking an arm, a leg,” Higgins said “The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore.”
Among the dead was pilot Jimmy Leeward, 74, of Ocala, Fla., a veteran airman and stunt pilot who named his P-51 Mustang fighter plane the “Galloping Ghost,” according to Mike Houghton, president and CEO of Reno Air Races. Officials earlier said Leeward was 80.
Renown Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Kathy Carter confirmed that two others died, but did not provide their identities.
Stephanie Kruse, a spokeswoman for the Regional Emergency Medical Service Authority, told The Associated Press that emergency crews took a total of 56 injury victims to three hospitals. She said they also observed a number of people being transported by private vehicle, which they are not including in their count.
Kruse said of the total 56, at the time of transport, 15 were considered in critical condition, 13 were serious condition with potentially life-threatening injuries and 28 were non-serious or non-life threatening.
“This is a very large incident, probably one of the largest this community has seen in decades,” Kruse told The Associated Press. “The community is pulling together to try to deal with the scope of it. The hospitals have certainly geared up and staffed up to deal with it.”

The P-51 Mustang crashed into a box-seat area in front of the grandstand at about 4:30 p.m., race spokesman Mike Draper said. Houghton said Leeward appeared to have “lost control of the aircraft,” though details on why that happened weren’t immediately known.

Houghton said at a news conference hours after the crash that there appeared to be a “problem with the aircraft that caused it to go out of control.” He did not elaborate.

He said the rest of the races have been canceled as the NTSB investigates.

KRNV-TV weatherman Jeff Martinez, who was just outside the air race grounds at the time, said the plane veered to the right and then “it just augered straight into the ground.”

“You saw pieces and parts going everywhere,” he said. “Everyone is in disbelief.”

Tanya Breining, off Hayward, Calif., told KTVU-TV in San Francisco: “It was absolute carnage. … It looked like more than a bomb exploded.”

Another witness, Ronald Sargis, said he was sitting in the box seat area near the finish line. The box seat area holds 300 to 400 people, while the main grandstands area holds several thousand.

“We could see the plane coming around the far turn — it was in trouble,” Sargis told KCRA-TV in Sacramento. “About six or seven boxes down from us, it impacted into the front row.”

He said the pilot appeared to do all he could to avoid crashing into the crowd. Response teams immediately went to work, Sargis said. After the crash Sargis went up a few rows into the grandstand to view the downed plane.

“It appeared to be just pulverized,” he said.

Leeward, the owner of the Leeward Air Ranch Racing Team, was a well-known racing pilot. His website says he has flown more than 120 races and served as a stunt pilot for numerous movies, including “Amelia” and “Cloud Dancer.”

In an interview with the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner last year, he described how he has flown 250 types of planes and has a particular fondness for the P-51, which came into the war relatively late and was used as a long-range bomber escort over Europe. Among the famous pilots of the hot new fighter was WWII double ace Chuck Yeager.

“They’re more fun. More speed, more challenge. Speed, speed and more speed,” Leeward said.

Houghton described Leeward as “a good friend. Everybody knows him. It’s a tight knit family. He’s been here for a long, long time,” Houghton said.

The National Championship Air Races draws thousands of people to Reno every year in September to watch various military and civilian planes race. They also have attracted scrutiny in the past over safety concerns, including four pilots killed in 2007 and 2008. It was such a concern that local school officials once considered whether they should not allow student field trips at the event.

The competition is like a car race in the sky, with planes flying wingtip-to-wingtip as low as 50 feet off the sagebrush at speeds sometimes surpassing 500 mph. Pilots follow an oval path around pylons, with distances and speeds depending on the class of aircraft.

The FAA and air race organizers spend months preparing for air races as they develop a plan involving pilot qualification, training and testing along with a layout for the course. The FAA inspects pilots’ practice runs and brief pilots on the route maneuvers and emergency procedures.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement saying he was “deeply saddened” about the crash.

“My thoughts are with the families of those who have lost their lives and with those who were wounded in this horrific tragedy,” he said. “I am so grateful to our first responders for their swift action and will continue to monitor this situation as it develops.”

Scarlett Johansson Cell Phone Photos Leaked 2011

Scarlett Johansson Cell Phone Photos Leaked 2011

 This year has been the year for celebrities getting their phones hacked! It seems like every few weeks nude photos of another celebrity are leaked onto the internet. Vanessa Hudgens, Jessica Alba, and others have been involved in this nude photo scandal. How are these pictures getting out? A hacker is breaking into their phones.

Today a new celebrity is being exposed by the phone hacker – Scarlett Johannson!‎


As much as I would love for this to be true, I am very unconvinced at the genuine real-ness of these photos. Unlike Blake Lively’s lovely nude photos, these pics of Scarlett have all kinds of “wrong” in them. For all I know, these could be a pair of really old fakes and I’m just late in noticing it…..or maybe not.
Take a look at the second picture and notice how “Scarlett” is looking downwards from her phone but the naked person in the mirror is looking up AT the phone. It’s very iffy at this point but I’m willing to accept any argument that it MIGHT be her.
And besides, I can’t argue that those big tits aren’t hers! So until something gets announced (or denounced), let’s all just assume that this is just some kind o’ Photoshop job done right. Bravo, Mr. Photoshopper, you are my new friend!

Astronaut's Unique View as 9/11 Unfolded

Astronaut's Unique View as 9/11 Unfolded

Whenever he sees a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, Frank Culberston is reminded of where he was on Sept. 11, 2001. An encounter earlier this year is a good example. On a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia to watch the re-enactment of British occupation, he met a young veteran who had lost both legs while serving as an explosive ordinance device technician in Afghanistan.
 As he helped the soldier, who had two artificial legs, navigate the unpaved grounds, Culbertson mentioned he had witnessed the invasion of Afghanistan from above."From where, a C-130?" the soldier asked. A C-130 is a low-flying military aircraft used mainly to deliver troops and supplies to ground forces.

"No, higher," Culbertson replied.

"Oh, a U-2?" the soldier guessed, referring to the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.

"Higher than that."

From Aug. 12 to Dec.  15, 2001, astronaut Frank Culbertson was aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Two hundred fifty miles above the Earth's surface, Culbertson was the only American not on the planet at the time of the terrorist attacks. He -- along with two Russian cosmonauts -- witnessed the horrific events of Sept. 11, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan a month later, from space.

"I could always spot Afghanistan at night because it's basically dark," said Culbertson, who explained that surrounding countries, with their oil money, were pretty well lit at night. Some were even "grossly lit up," he said.

"One night, I looked down on Afghanistan and I saw these big, bright explosions ... I was witnessing the invasion of Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban," he said. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former test pilot for the Navy, Culbertson was able to identify what he saw as explosions from cruise missiles and bombs being dropped from B-52s. "After the attacks on 9/11, I knew the world had changed."

A month earlier, on the morning of Sept. 11, Culbertson, who had been in space for 30 days, had called down to mission control for a routine medical check-in.

"I asked the doctor how things were going. He responded: 'We're not having a very good day on Earth,'" Culbertson recalled.

Amid the chaos on the ground, mission control briefed Culbertson on what limited information they had: Two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and one plane had crashed into the Pentagon; all three were deliberate attacks by terrorists.

"My immediate reaction was very visceral: My country was wounded, and it was hurting," Culbertson said.

As he listened to mission control, struggling to make sense of the tragedy unfolding hundreds of miles below, he looked up at the map of the world flashing on the computer screen in front of him. In a few minutes, he would be directly over New York. He quickly left the radio, grabbed a video camera and raced to the cabin window that would have the best view of the city.

"It was a very good weather day, and I could look down and see the entire northeastern U.S. very clearly. I saw a big column of black smoke rising over New York City, over Long Island, and out over the Atlantic. I zoomed the camera in, and as I did, I saw this big gray glob start to envelop the southern half of the city." He found out two days later that he was witnessing the collapse of the South Tower.

Because the International Space Station travels at a speed of about 5 miles per second (it completes its orbit of Earth in only 90 minutes), the views of New York came and went very quickly. Because of the planet's rotation, the next time Culbertson and his crewmates passed over the U.S., they had a view of the Midwest and the Southwest, which was important to Culbertson. A married father of five, he wanted to make sure his family was out of harm's way.


"I had a daughter studying at Purdue University at the time, so as we crossed over the Midwest, I'm looking throughout that area to make sure everything's all right over there. Most of the family was in Houston, and I could see all the way down to Texas," he said.

As the ISS crossed the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic region came into view, Culbertson and his crewmates were ready with cameras and binoculars.

"We flew directly over Washington, D.C., and I could look straight down and see the Pentagon with basically a gash in its side, and the smoke and the lights of the rescue vehicles," he said. "We could tell it was a terrible event."

The tragedy at the Pentagon soon became much more personal for Culbertson. The next morning, he found out that a former Naval Academy classmate and good friend, Charles Burlingame, was the captain of American Airlines Flight 77, which had crashed into the building the day before.

"Tears don't flow the same in space," said Culbertson in a letter he wrote to the public on Sept.  12. "It's difficult to describe how it feels to be the only American completely off the planet at a time such as this. The feeling that I should be there with all of you, dealing with this, helping in some way, is overwhelming."

Culbertson's and Burlingame's 30th college reunion was scheduled to take place at the end of September, and originally Culbertson had planned to send a video message down to his class with joyful greetings and news of his adventures in space. Instead, he played taps on his trumpet in honor of Burlingame, a man who had, decades earlier, played trumpet alongside him in the Navy's Drum and Bugle Corps.

Though sorrow tinged his remaining days in space, Culbertson remembers the care  poured over him by people from various countries. On a close level, he felt the love and encouragement of his two Russian counterparts, who not only shared their sympathy -- as well as their outrage toward the attackers -- and made Culbertson's favorite dinner (borscht), but also gave him the time he needed to think and to grieve. On a wider scale, Culbertson felt the support of nations around the world.

Read More: Yahoo

Lohan Sister's Startling New Look

Lohan Sister's Startling New Look

The first thing Ali Lohan did when she got signed to a modeling agency was obtain ... an entirely new face?

The 17-year-old sister of Lindsay and daughter of Dina stepped out in Beverly Hills yesterday looking, in all honesty, like a surgically altered version of her former self. Lohan's lips and cheeks appear fuller and her nose narrowed and tweaked. Her eyebrows are bushier and more defined, exuding that '80s Brooke Shields

quality that's trendy this moment. She looks shockingly skinny, as if attempting to mimic the lanky, size-00 frame of a high-fashion runway model.

Vh1's The Fab Life notes: "We'd love to believe her almost-unrecognizable new face is due to some sculpting makeup, Lip Venom and masterful eyebrow threading, but we're skeptical."

Lohan inked a contract with NEXT Model Management last month, and it appears she's taking her new career path very, very seriously. Like, "I'm gonna go out and get a face transplant" seriously.

In the name of Heidi Montag, someone please tell Hollywood to handcuff Dina Lohan and outlaw underage plastic surgery while they're at it because another naive, misguided Lohan girl has become catnip to the snarking interwebs. Quips the Best Week Ever blog: "Maybe now that she's a model, Ali has decided to exchange being cute with, like, paying tribute to Michael Jackson by ... becoming him?"

Source: Yahoo

Ronaldo Return To Man United

Ronaldo Return To Man United

Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo admits he keeps in contact with Sir Alex Ferguson and will not rule out a return to Manchester United.

Ronaldo keeps in regular contact with his friends at United.

“I have good memories from Manchester and when I watch sometimes the games I miss it a lot because it’s part of me I left in England,” Ronaldo told Sky Sports News.

“Just because I play in Madrid I’m not going to miss speaking with the old guys so, when I have an opportunity, I speak with Sir Alex Ferguson.

“It was important for me when I played there, when my life was there, so it is good to speak with him because I’ll never forget who really helped me.

“I don’t close the door (on returning to England), so maybe in the future. I hope so, because I know the league, I know the players, I know the atmosphere.”

Most Expensive Movies Ever Made

Most Expensive Movies Ever Made

After ‘The Lone Ranger’ film starring Johnny Depp was shelved due to budget issues - having been pitched at over £154 million - we wanted to see which films cost the most to make.

Obviously inflation would have ruled a number of the old classics as cheap tat destined for the bargain bucket in a gutted Woolworths, so our boffins got to work on calculating some of the complex mathematical equations needed to find out the most expensive films of all time.

10 – King Kong / Spider-Man 2
Peter Jackson’s remake of the classic tale of a fictitious monster that looks an awful lot like a gorilla just sneaks into the top ten alongside Sam Raimi’s web slinger sequel. Costing just over £129 million and £124 million respectively, due to inflation rates since the films’ release dates that equates to more than a staggering £145 million to make each film. And this is just the beginning!

09 – Avatar
2009’s CGI epic blockbuster ‘Avatar’ cost a whopping £148 million to make which slightly inflates to £152 million in today’s cash. It sounds like a lot of dosh, but if you look at the box office figures, it took over £1.2 billion. So we reckon the initial outlay was sufficiently rewarded. Writer and director James Cameron did pretty well out of it too.

08 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Johnny Depp and co set sail on the high seas for the second installment of the much-loved ‘Pirates’ franchise. Costing a little under £153 million, it plunders the eighth spot above ‘Avatar’. Early reports that most of the funding came from treasure chests littered on beaches around the world were quashed by producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s massive wallet.

07 – Waterworld
Although ‘Waterworld’, starring Kevin Costner, is one of the most expensive films ever made, critics didn’t think it was worth the paper the posters were printed on and it subsequently bombed at the US box office. Thankfully, the rest of the world liked it and pushed the film to a £62 million profit. Having cost £109 million back in 1995, today’s valuation puts it at £157 million, making it a very lucky escape.

06 – Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
The sixth installment of the outrageously popular Harry Potter series is also the sixth most expensive film ever made. Costing a cool £156 million to conjure, it followed the famous boy wizard as he becomes obsessed with a mysterious textbook, falls in love and attempts to retrieve a memory that holds the key to Lord Voldemort's downfall. There was no question it was going to be a box office success, and it raked in over £570 million at the box office.

05 – Tangled
A surprise entry at number five is the Disney animation, ‘Tangled’. It follows a bandit called Flynn Rider, who’s taken hostage by Rapunzel after hiding out in her tower (ahem). Flynn's curious captor, who's looking for her ticket out of the tower where she's been locked away for years, strikes a deal with the handsome thief and the unlikely duo sets off on an action-packed escapade, complete with a super-cop horse and an over-protective chameleon (obviously). Costing just shy of £160 million, it proved worthwhile at the box office, taking £362million.

04 – Spider-Man 3
Following Peter Parker as he went through his curious emo stage, ‘Spider-Man 3’ was critically shunned. Fears of a flop were never really considered, as the franchise was so popular with audiences that it didn’t even matter. But after shelling out £167 million, both the producers and the studio must have been biting their nails. It still made over £30 million profit though.

03 – Titanic
The colossal James Cameron classic was one of the first films with a budget over £100 million (in 1997 money). Today, that sum rises to a monstrous £171 million! It was a resounding success and took almost £1.2 billion at the box office and was the highest-grossing movie until Cameron knocked himself off the top spot with the less expensive ‘Avatar’. No wonder they are re-releasing it in 3D next year.

02 – Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Disney’s franchise of the noughties only just missed out on the top spot with £195 million in today’s cash. The third flick in the saga, even with Johnny Depp’s outrageous wages couldn’t outdo our number one. Surely with two films in the top 10, film boss Jerry Bruckheimer could have dropped another mill in there somewhere.

01 – Cleopatra
Having cost £27 million pounds in 1963, the inflation raises this paltry sum to an almighty £196 million! Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall and Martin Landau, ‘Cleopatra’ chronicles the struggles of Cleopatra VII, the young Queen of Egypt, to resist the imperialist ambitions of Rome. Quite fitting that Cleopatra sits on the most expensive Hollywood film throne then.

Source: Yahoo