OTHER NEWS

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LOCAL HEROES: BRITISH PLANE CRASH LANDING

GUARDIAN WRAP - "Jet lands just short of Heathrow runway, only one
serious injury" may be an accurate description of yesterday's drama, but
it is not the stuff of splashes. Most of the papers judge - correctly -
that this particular near-miss makes gripping copy. . .

"There was not enough time to warn the 135 passengers, sitting oblivious
to any problems, that they should adopt the brace position," opens the
Times. "With just seconds to go before landing, Peter Burkill, captain
of BA038, realized that his Boeing 777 was not going to make the runway
rushing towards them."

Despite a sudden loss of power in both engines - the cause of which is
the subject of much speculation - Burkill managed to skim the jet over
the perimeter fence, "narrowly" (the Mirror) missing Gordon Brown's
Jaguar as his entourage approached the airport. The PM's flight to China
suffered minor delay.

There is general admiration for Burkill's skill in bringing the plane
down largely intact, and for the cabin crew who evacuated the 777 in
less than three minutes. The pilot should get "a medal as big as a
frying pan", an airport worker said. "There is no training for this an
the instruments are of no help whatsoever," an aviation expert tells the
Sun. "It is what is called aircraftsmanship and pure instinct . . . 
They would have practiced losing power in training simulators, during
take-off and at height. But it is completely different when you are
landing." One passenger compared the crash landing to "being in a
washing machine".

"If the incident had been bewildering and unpleasant to watch, its
aftermath was somehow rather reassuring," writes Robert Hardman of the
Mail, who witnessed it from the window to BA730 to Geneva. "If a plane
can come all the way from China, crash-land and then allow its
passengers to walk away, it may be a safer bet than the trip home along
the M4."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,2242855,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3207393.ece )
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?
in_article_id=508839&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/01/18/
gordon-brown-just-25ft-from-death-in-heathrow-crash-89520-20289514/


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INDICATORS
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INDICATORS

How often blacks say they face frequent discrimination in:

Applying for jobs: 67 percent

Renting an apartment or buying a house: 65 percent

Dining out or shopping: 50 percent

Applying to college: 43 percent


How well blacks say they get along with whites:

Very well: 20 percent

Pretty well: 49 percent

Not too well: 20 percent

Not at all well: 4 percent


Percentage of blacks who'd like to see:

More neighborhood integration: 62 percent (versus 44 percent of whites)

More school integration: 56 percent (versus 23 percent of whites)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0118/p20s01-usgn.htm

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