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28 August 2011 Last updated at 11:19 ET
Driver dies in racing crash at York Raceway
A driver has died in a high-speed crash at a drag race venue in East Yorkshire.
Steve Murty, organiser at York Raceway, near Pocklington, said the car was travelling at 130mph when the driver lost control at the finish line.
Mr Murty said a paramedic and fully trained fire staff unit were on the scene immediately but despite resuscitation attempts the man died.
Mr Murty said the driver was very experienced and his family were with him at the event.
Mr Murty said: "The fully trained motorsport rescue unit observed the car going out of control and followed it as it rolled.
"They were immediately on the scene when it came to rest. A paramedic and a fully trained fire staff unit were also on the scene immediately.
"Despite intensive and immediate attempts at resuscitation, the driver died at the scene.
"The driver was very experienced and a very well known racer. His whole family was with him at the event.
"This is the first tragedy of this nature at the venue in 34 years."
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28 August 2011 Last updated at 05:19 ET
Hurricane Irene pummels New York amid fears of flooding
The menacing storm is moving slowly northwards
Ferocious winds from Hurricane Irene have begun to hammer New York, bringing torrential rain and the threat of flooding in the financial district.
New York City's public transport system has been closed and the mayor said it was now too late for people to leave.
Irene has already hit North Carolina and Virginia, causing damage and the deaths of at least eight people.
The eye of the storm, packing winds up to 75mph (120km/h), is due to hit New York in the next few hours.
The storm has weakened to a category-one hurricane since it came ashore but is still expected to be destructive.
About two million people have been left without power as the 500-mile-wide (800km) storm barrelled up the east coast.
The same number have moved out of the danger zone, most from New Jersey.
At 05:00 (09:00 GMT) the hurricane was moving along the New Jersey shore, about 115 miles south of New York City, having weakened slightly, the National Hurricane Center reported.
Some 370,000 people living in low-lying areas of New York City had been told to leave, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned those behind to stay put.
"The edge of the hurricane is finally upon us," he told reporters.
"The time for evacuations is over. At this point, if you haven't evacuated, our suggestion is you stay where you are.
"Nature is a lot stronger than the rest of us."
The fear is of a storm surge affecting New York's Hudson River, which could potentially inundate the flood defences of Lower Manhattan and cause flooding in the financial district there.
On Wall Street, sandbags have been placed around subway grates and construction work has been stopped across the city.
Irene has already dumped more than 1ft (30cm) of rain on North Carolina and Virginia and there are reports of storm surges of nearly 10ft.
The north-eastern seaboard is the most densely populated corridor in the US, with more than 65 million people living in major cities from Washington DC in the south to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston further north.
Scott Snyder of the American Red Cross told the BBC about 13,000 people have taken refuge in 150 Red Cross shelters along the coast.
States of emergency have been declared in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. New York's John F Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, and Newark in New Jersey, have shut, with the cancellation of about 8,000 flights.
The hurricance has been blamed for the deaths of two children, as well as six other people killed by falling trees, road accidents and high waves, in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Florida.
A nuclear reactor in Maryland automatically went offline after a large piece of aluminium blown down by high winds came into contact with the plant's main transformer, prompting a low-level emergency.
Echoes of Katrina
President Barack Obama cut short his holiday to Martha's Vineyard to co-ordinate efforts to deal with the hurricane.
The BBC's David Willis in Washington says the president is very keen to avoid any criticism that surrounded the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina six years ago.
The president is at pains to point out that all the federal agencies on the ground that need to be deployed have been and that he is looking to be seen to be on top of this and will be over the next few hours and days, our correspondent says.
The Pentagon has loaded 200 trucks with emergency supplies, and 100,000 National Guard troops are on standby.
Irene made landfall at 08:00 on Saturday at Cape Lookout in North Carolina for what is expected to be a 36-hour assault on the US east coast.
Residents hoping to ride out the storm have stocked up on food, water and fuel.
"Thursday late night I bought bottles of water after New Jersey declared a state of emergency. They were the last bottles of water on the shelves," Jay, from Manhattan, told the BBC.
"[There are] very heavy wind gusts. I live on the 33rd floor so gusts are powerful up here. The rain is coming down consistently hard," he said.
"Last time I checked from my window I only saw police cars on West 34th Street, which never happens. It's one of the busiest streets in Manhattan 24/7."
Supermarkets along the east coast were reportedly running out of supplies before the storm arrived.
"This is my first time witnessing anything like this," student Ryan Narcisse of Roselle, New Jersey, told the BBC. "The street was blanketed with a sheet of water...
"It is tense. It's amazing. The wind. We have to worry about power lines going down which is a major issue. The New Jersey governor has 6,000 electricians ready to fix power lines but I don't think that's going to be enough given the damage that is bound to happen after the storm... We are not used to this at all on the East Coast."
Barack Obama's gun control is 'under the radar'
The U.S. has the world’s preeminent system for regulation of military arms sales, the author writes. | Reuters
Not long ago, the gun control advocates Jim and Sarah Brady visited the White House. President Barack Obama reportedly told them that he was working on new gun control schemes “under the radar.”
It’s been said that guns have two enemies — rust and politicians. Rust never sleeps, and neither do those who would seek to restrict our constitutional rights. So let me tell you about a meeting you weren’t invited to, where those people were planning an attack on our rights that’s very much “under the radar.”
Remember no other country in the world enjoys America’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This is why the vast majority of U.N. diplomats believe that an arms trade treaty must reach into your gun safe and mine. There is little question that this treaty would require additional restrictions on our Second Amendment rights.
Consider the comments of a spokesman from “Project Ploughshares,” a Canadian arms control group. “From a humanitarian perspective,” the spokesman told the Canadian Postmedia News “all firearms need to be controlled, and that’s the bottom line.”
This attitude has spooked even Canada’s government, which typically embraces a disarmament agenda. During the meeting, Canada put forth a panicky petition for a hunting rifle exemption in the treaty. Mexico immediately objected.
For an administration with a secretive itch for gun control, the situation is ideal. They can let the United Nations do the dirty work of drafting onerous new restrictions on civilian firearms, then package them inside a treaty with legitimate measures to control true military armaments.
The U.N. has scheduled the treaty to be finished in July of next year — just in time to go to the Obama White House for ratification.
That’s “under the radar” for you.
But one risk of operating under the radar is that you can’t see the moves of your opponents. This is not the first U.N. gun-control rodeo for my friends at the National Rifle Association. They know treaty ratification requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Thirty-four senators would have to vote no to block the treaty.
While the rest of Washington was fixated on the debt ceiling debate, the NRA quietly marshaled opposition to the treaty among pro-gun senators.
Fifty-eight senators have now called out the president on his plan. Led by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), 45 Republicans and 13 Democrats have written two strong letters —one from members of each party — to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. All the senators have vowed to oppose any treaty that restricts civilian firearm ownership.
What’s ironic is that the United States already has the world’s pre-eminent system for regulation of true military arms sales. If the rest of the world merely adopted the U.S. regulatory regime, there would be no need for an Arms Trade Treaty.
But rather than harmonize other nations’ patchy regulations on arms transfers, the diplomatic crowd would rather force Washington to hew to its utopian vision of global disarmament.
If this were only a partisan exercise in bashing Obama and the U.N., one could be forgiven for concluding it has no substance. But 13 Democratic senators clearly think otherwise — a sign that this debate is far from over.
Chuck Norris, an actor, martial artist and author, is the honorary chairman of the National Rifle Association’s voter registration program, Trigger the Vote.
It’s been said that guns have two enemies — rust and politicians. Rust never sleeps, and neither do those who would seek to restrict our constitutional rights. So let me tell you about a meeting you weren’t invited to, where those people were planning an attack on our rights that’s very much “under the radar.”
It happened in July at the United Nations headquarters in New York, at a meeting to draft of what they call the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty.
An Arms Trade Treaty doesn’t sound bad in concept — isn’t that what the U.N. is for? The problem, however, is what U.N. diplomats consider to be “arms.” To you and me, the word means tanks, fighter jets, missiles, that kind of thing. But look no further than the U.N. plaza to see what the silk-stocking set considers “arms.” There you will find a bronze statue of a simple .38 revolver — with its barrel tied into a knot.Remember no other country in the world enjoys America’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This is why the vast majority of U.N. diplomats believe that an arms trade treaty must reach into your gun safe and mine. There is little question that this treaty would require additional restrictions on our Second Amendment rights.
Consider the comments of a spokesman from “Project Ploughshares,” a Canadian arms control group. “From a humanitarian perspective,” the spokesman told the Canadian Postmedia News “all firearms need to be controlled, and that’s the bottom line.”
This attitude has spooked even Canada’s government, which typically embraces a disarmament agenda. During the meeting, Canada put forth a panicky petition for a hunting rifle exemption in the treaty. Mexico immediately objected.
For an administration with a secretive itch for gun control, the situation is ideal. They can let the United Nations do the dirty work of drafting onerous new restrictions on civilian firearms, then package them inside a treaty with legitimate measures to control true military armaments.
The U.N. has scheduled the treaty to be finished in July of next year — just in time to go to the Obama White House for ratification.
That’s “under the radar” for you.
But one risk of operating under the radar is that you can’t see the moves of your opponents. This is not the first U.N. gun-control rodeo for my friends at the National Rifle Association. They know treaty ratification requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Thirty-four senators would have to vote no to block the treaty.
While the rest of Washington was fixated on the debt ceiling debate, the NRA quietly marshaled opposition to the treaty among pro-gun senators.
Fifty-eight senators have now called out the president on his plan. Led by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), 45 Republicans and 13 Democrats have written two strong letters —one from members of each party — to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. All the senators have vowed to oppose any treaty that restricts civilian firearm ownership.
What’s ironic is that the United States already has the world’s pre-eminent system for regulation of true military arms sales. If the rest of the world merely adopted the U.S. regulatory regime, there would be no need for an Arms Trade Treaty.
But rather than harmonize other nations’ patchy regulations on arms transfers, the diplomatic crowd would rather force Washington to hew to its utopian vision of global disarmament.
If this were only a partisan exercise in bashing Obama and the U.N., one could be forgiven for concluding it has no substance. But 13 Democratic senators clearly think otherwise — a sign that this debate is far from over.
Chuck Norris, an actor, martial artist and author, is the honorary chairman of the National Rifle Association’s voter registration program, Trigger the Vote.
