Hospital: 16th person dies from burns in El Salvador bus attack

San Salvador, El Salvador (CNN) -- A 16th person has died from burns suffered in a Sunday night arson attack on a mass transit bus in El Salvador, authorities said Friday. Two other people were shot to death in a separate attack on another bus around the same time.

Five of 12 suspects arrested in connection with the attacks will be charged Friday with aggravated homicide and attempted aggravated homicide, said Erick Alvarez, a spokesman for the attorney general's office.

The victim who died Friday, identified as 46-year-old Maria de Jesus Orellana, suffered burns over 90 percent of her body and severe damage to her lungs and airways from smoke and hot gas inhalation, said officials at the Hospital Nacional Rosales.

Two remaining patients were listed in critical condition but were stable and conscious, the hospital said.

The arson attack occurred in a congested neighborhood in San Salvador, the nation's capital.

Witnesses said people on motorcycles intercepted the bus, doused it with gasoline and closed the doors with the passengers inside.

Authorities tried to break windows to help people escape from the burning bus, El Salvador's National Civil Police said. Emergency crews transported 13 passengers to a hospital.

Ten minutes later, a group of attackers fired on another bus blocks away, police said, killing an 11-year-old girl and the bus conductor.

Police said they suspected the incidents were linked, and that gang members were involved in the attacks. Authorities said they had not ruled out the possibility the buses were targeted as a reprisal against drivers who had not paid gang-imposed protection money.

The U.S. State Department says "the criminal threat in El Salvador is critical. Random and organized violent crime is endemic throughout El Salvador".

El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, the State Department says.

German TanDEM-X satellite returns first images

Germany's new radar satellite, TanDEM-X, has returned its first images.

The spacecraft was launched from Kazakhstan on Monday on a mission to make the most precise 3D map of the Earth's surface.

The pictures demonstrate the platform is in excellent health and ready to team up with the TerraSAR-X satellite launched in 2007.

Together, the pair will trace the variation in height across the globe to a precision of better than two metres.

This digital elevation model (DEM) will support a multitude of applications, such as the programming of navigation computers in military jets to enable them to fly ultra low. The data will also be given to relief workers to show them where an earthquake has wrought most damage in a city.

Infoterra GmbH, the company with exclusive rights to commercialize the TanDEM information, says the market for radar products is steadily growing.

The new images depict a landscape in Ukraine, the north of Madagascar, and Moscow.

The pictures illustrate neatly the particular specialism of using radar to sense the planet's surface.

In the Madagascan data, for example, the choppiness of the waves in the open stretches of the Indian Ocean can be contrasted with the smooth reflection of the radar signal from the enclosed, clam waters of the Baie de Diego.

And in the image of Moscow-Sheremetyevo airport, the flat concrete surfaces of the runways appear as black lines because the radar beam has been very efficiently reflected away from the satellite.

TanDEM-X is flying in a polar orbit that is ever so slightly inclined to the one occupied by TerraSAR-X, some 514km above the planet.

The intention is to make TanDEM-X fly an extremely tight helix around its more established sibling. This should be achieved by October. At times, the two satellites will be separated by as little as 200m.

The pair's radars work by constantly bouncing microwave pulses off the ground and sea surface. By timing how long the signal takes to make the return trip, the instruments can determine differences in height.

The compact orbital dance will give the pair "stereo vision", by enabling them to operate an interferometric mode in which one spacecraft acts as a transmitter/receiver and the other as a second receiver.

Three-dimensional image acquisition is expected to start in earnest in January.

The seamless DEM of the Earth's surface will be built up over three years of joint operations. Ultimately, it should have a vertical resolution of 1-2m and a spatial resolution of 12m - far superior to any previous global data set.

The TerrSAR-X/TanDEM-X venture is operated on the basis of a public-private partnership. The Germany's space agency (DLR) owns the hardware; satellite manufacturer EADS Astrium has developed and built the technology; and Infoterra GmbH processes and sells the data.

Leaders play down austerity split on eve of G20

Ontario (Reuters) - The world's richest economies, burdened with debt after spending their way out of the credit crisis, papered over differences on Friday on how to clean up their finances with minimal damage to growth.

Leaders from the Group of Eight, a club that spans the large industrialized nations and Russia, met in Canada ahead of a broader summit with China and other rising economic powers of the G20, now the world's dominant economic policy forum.

Washington appeared to be at loggerheads with Berlin in the run-up to the Canada summits. U.S. officials expressed concerns that a nascent recovery from the global recession could be derailed by accelerating austerity in much of Western Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, however, that the G8 talks had not produced any conflict over economic policy.

"The discussion was not controversial but was based on great mutual understanding," she told reporters.

A U.S. official said: "There is a broad consensus among the G8 leaders, a convergence of views...about how to maintain durable growth while also reaffirming, of course, the common shared commitments to fiscal consolidation going forward".

The G20 has struggled to keep the unity of last year when governments pumped trillions of dollars into the economy to prevent recession turning into depression and vowed to prevent another credit crisis from endangering the world economy.

U.S. President Barack Obama, buoyed by a deal in the U.S. Congress to toughen rules for Wall Street, urged other G20 leaders to make good on promises to curb risky bank behavior that sparked the financial crisis in 2007.

"We need to act in concert for a simple reason: this crisis proved, and events continue to affirm, that our national economies are inextricably linked," Obama said, calling on other leaders to match the U.S. progress on financial reform.

Demonstrators in Egypt rail against brutality, man's death

Alexandria, Egypt (CNN) -- Mohamed ElBaradei, the former chief of the U.N. atomic agency and now an Egyptian reformist figure, joined thousands of people in Alexandria on Friday to protest the death of an Egyptian man and shine a light on police brutality.

Khaled Said died after police dragged him out of an internet cafe in Alexandria on June 6 -- a fatality that has since become a lightning rod for human rights activists.

Witnesses said two plainclothes police officers beat Said, 28, to death. Egyptian authorities said he died from asphyxiation after he swallowed a packet of drugs.

A photograph of his pummeled face is on a Facebook page devoted to him.

The circumstances behind Said's death are unclear. Police say he was wanted for theft and weapons possession and that he resisted arrest. Supporters say he was targeted for trying to expose official corruption. The government says it is still investigating the death.

ElBaradei visited Said's family Friday to offer his condolences, went to Friday prayers at the Sidi Gaber mosque, and moved through the crowds of protesters as security forces stood guard at the demonstration.

He told CNN that such a beating is a practice out of the Middle Ages.

"I think the message should be clear," said ElBaradei, making his most high-profile appearance since leaving the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This should be the last time we witness torture in Egypt".

Protesters carried posters; one read "Killed by Barbarians." One opposition activist, Gamila Ismail, said police are "bold" and "brutal".

"They want to tame us and they want to get us used to torture, even in the streets, and shutting up".

One man, who identified himself as Sharif, told CNN, "I don't want a million dollars. I just want to be treated like a human being".

Layla Said, Khaled's mother, told CNN, "We raise our children so they will become like flowers. And in a moment they are cut down. Why?"

Referring to President Hosni Mubarak, a well-wisher at Said's house said, "The president needs to hear us and needs to feel the tears of the mothers".

"Everyone is with you," another well-wisher said to Layla Said. "All our hearts are with you".

The death has sparked other demonstrations in Egypt in which crowds were forcibly dispersed and some were arrested, the group said.

Human Rights Watch, a humanitarian watchdog group, said photographs of Said's "mangled face" as well as the witness accounts "constitute strong evidence that plainclothes security officers beat him in a vicious and public manner".

"Photos of Said's battered and deformed face published on the internet show a fractured skull, dislocated jaw, broken nose, and numerous other signs of trauma," it said in a news release.

The group said that nine people described the beating, and that the two officers suspected in the beating "have not been relieved of their duties and have yet to be questioned by the prosecutor".

"All those involved should be speedily interrogated, and the prosecutor should fully investigate what caused the fractures and trauma clearly evident on his body," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said in the release, dated Thursday.

ElBaradei stepped down last year from the post of director-general of the IAEA. He and the agency were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Mars once covered in water, space agency says

(CNN) -- Conditions favorable to life may once have existed all over Mars, the European Space Agency said Friday.

Two spacecraft have found evidence that liquid water was widespread over the red planet.

The ESA's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered hydrated silicate minerals in the northern lowlands of Mars, a clear indication that water once flowed there, the ESA said.

The two spacecraft had previously found thousands of small outcrops in the planet's southern hemisphere where rock minerals had been altered by water, it said. Many of these outcrops are in the form of hydrated clay minerals known as phyllosilicates. They indicate the planet's southern hemisphere was once much warmer and wetter than it is today.

No such sites had been found in the northern lowlands until this week, the ESA said. The northern lowlands are covered in thick blankets of lava and sediments up to several kilometers thick and that had hampered efforts to probe what lay beneath.

The ESA's Mars Express found the first hints of water in the northern plains, but the outcrops were small and more detailed observations were needed to confirm the evidence, the ESA said.

NASA's Orbiter provided higher resolution data that showed at least nine northern craters with phyllosilicates or other hydrated silicates, the ESA said. The finding was reported this week in the journal Science.

Those minerals formed in wet environments and were identical to those found in the southern hemisphere.

"We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water more than 4 billion years ago," said the report's lead author, John Carter of the University of Paris.

Scientists said it's difficult to draw conclusions about the type of environment that existed on Mars when it had water, but they do have some clues.

The sites "are rich in iron and magnesium, but less in aluminum. Together with the close proximity of olivine, which is easily modified by water, this indicates that the exposure to water lasted only tens to hundreds of millions of years," said Jean-Pierre Bibring, the OMEGA principal investigator from the University of Paris.

The scientists' search concentrated on 91 sizeable craters where incoming asteroids have punched down the planet's surface by several kilometers, exposing "ancient crustal material," the ESA said.

The results could also suggest sites for future Mars landers, because evidence of water during the planet's early history suggests conditions in those spots may have been favorable to the evolution of primitive life, the ESA said.

Emirates in talks with banks to finance aircraft

Local and international banks offer finance, with the total value of 2010-2011 deliveries $2.8 billion

Emirates airline has received offers from local and international banks to fulfil its financing needs for the purchase of aircraft to be delivered post May 2011, according to a senior airline executive.

Having already arranged financing for its aircraft deliveries up to May 2011, Emirates is still discussing potential financings beyond that date, said Brian Jeffery, Emirates' Senior Vice-President for Commercial Treasury.

"We have received offers of finance from local and international banks that encompass both Islamic and conventional markets," he told Emirates Business, adding that the carrier always has ongoing contact with all its relationship banks.

Asked if Emirates would consider the bonds route to raise finances, Jeffery said: "We envisage that bonds [either guaranteed by export credit agencies or otherwise] will continue to be used as part of our financing strategy as long as the pricing remains competitive".

Emirates has in the past issued bonds to finance aircraft purchase. The carrier in October 2009 announced the successful pricing of its inaugural US bond offering guaranteed by the Export Import Bank of the US (Ex-Im Bank) related to a loan facility secured for three new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. The transaction was valued at $413.7 million (Dh1.51 billion) with a fixed rate coupon of 3.465 per cent per annum.

Emirates' total value of aircraft scheduled for delivery in financial year 2010-11 rests at $2.8bn (Dh10.29bn) at list prices, according to Jeffery, "and we have arranged finance for all of these".

The Dubai carrier earlier this month placed a historic order for 32 additional Airbus A380 aircraft worth $11.5bn at list prices. The order brings the carrier's total value of orders to more than $59.5bn. On order for Emirates at this point are 80 Airbus 380s, 70 Airbus 350s, 18 Boeing 777-300s and seven Boeing air freighters totalling 143 wide-body aircraft.

"No matter how many aircraft per year, we try to follow a strategy of diversifying both our funding sources and our financial products as much as possible," said Jeffery. He added that Emirates prefers to arrange fleet financing "well in advance" of each delivery date.

Meanwhile, the carrier in December 2009 raised $1.13bn to finance six A380 aircraft, with Citigroup and Doric Asset Finance having helped arrange the funding.

Emirates airline recorded a net profit of $964m for the financial year ending March 31. Whereas, Emirates Group overall posted a record net profit of $1.1bn for the year 2009-10 even as the global airline industry suffered heavy losses owing to the economic downturn.

Dubai 'looking for new growth opportunities'

Dubai's ruler says the worst is over and he views the global recession as a challenge

The worst is over and Dubai is looking for new opportunities for growth, said His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

He said he views the global recession as a challenge and that firms are restructuring in response.

"I don't call it a recession, I call it challenge. The companies are restructuring because it's a new world. You have to stop and restructure".

On Dubai World, he told CNN: "I am not worried about the company; they have the wealth and they will go back to shining very, very soon".

Dubai is home to the region's largest airport, largest airline and largest trade port. In the past two decades, Dubai has created a name for itself.

Slayings at 2 marijuana dispensaries appear unrelated, LAPD officials say

Los Angeles police detectives on Friday continued to chase clues in two slayings at separate marijuana dispensaries that occurred within hours of each other Thursday.

Although it is early in the investigations, significant differences at the two crime scenes have led authorities to believe that the killings are not related, said two senior LAPD officials involved in the cases, who requested their names not be used because of the sensitivity of the ongoing inquiries. 

The first incident occurred around 4:15 p.m. on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park at Higher Path Holistic Care. Four suspects are thought to have entered the dispensary and at gunpoint ordered the two employees to lie face-down on the ground as the suspects ransacked the facility for marijuana and money, the police sources said.

Although the two workers did not resist, the attackers shot them, killing one and critically wounding the other, according to the police sources.  They said the account of the shooting came from the surviving victim, who has been able to speak with detectives from his hospital bed.

Before fleeing, the suspects removed the videotape from the facility's surveillance system, according to the police officials.

The slain man was 27-year-old Matt Butcher, the son of Julie Butcher, a well-known L.A. labor leader.  Butcher’s mother described the killing as “totally senseless,” saying her son was simply trying to cobble together part-time jobs in a tough economy.

“He was one of the most peaceful people,” said Julie Butcher, who works as a regional director of the Service Employees International Union Local 721. “He would have given them anything they wanted. There’s no reason for anyone to die over marijuana”.

About five hours after the shooting and a few miles away, the owner of the Hollywood Holistic II dispensary in the 1600 block of North El Centro Avenue walked into the store to find the body of his employee. The man, whom police have not yet publicly identified, had suffered stab wounds, the police sources said, although detectives are awaiting the results of the coroner’s initial investigation to determine whether he died from the stabbing or some other trauma.

Mark Lawson on Alan Plater: 'Bright, socialist and proudly northern'

Throughout his long and varied career the TV writer helped maintain high standards across the industry

Alan Plater, who has died of cancer, was a notably versatile writer. Frequently employed on police series, his career spanned pioneering episodes of Z Cars and Softly Softly to an episode of ITV's Lewis screened in the final months of his life.

This was appropriate because, as well as being one of British TV's key dramatists, he also operated for five decades as a sort of drama cop.

As president of the Writers' Guild and a willing media pundit, Plater policed the schedules and statements of broadcasting executives, as well as the opportunities and conditions for fellow scriptwriters.

He kept the tone and behaviour of the industry higher than it might otherwise have been. Plater refused to accept that multi-channel television and the popularity of Simon Cowell's dancing dogs made it necessary to abandon the values of the days in which he made his name - when television was inventing itself and strands such as The Wednesday Play were a public event.

Z Cars was credited with introducing contemporary speech and themes to TV drama, and topicality was one part of Plater's talent. But his favourite register as a writer was a tough-edged nostalgia, reflecting his lifelong obsession with traditional jazz.

Many TV dramas – including The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, starring Judi Dench – were set in the past or had protagonists who spiritually belonged there, such as the hero of The Beiderbecke Affair and The Beiderbecke Tapes, his very successful comedy crime romps for Yorkshire TV.

He wrote as he spoke: bright, funny, kind, socialist, proudly northern. Yorkshire and Durham were his home counties as a writer – he had been born in Jarrow but grew up in Hull – and he created scripts for stage and screen about many of their major industries: coal mining, Philip Larkin, Geoffrey Boycott.

In common with other northern writers of his generation – Jack Rosenthal and Alan Bennett – Plater had an ear for the musicality, spikiness and euphemism of talk in the upper regions of England.

His TV series Trinity Tales (1975) was a brilliant northern modernisation of The Canterbury Tales, which clearly influenced later present-day adaptations of Chaucer and Shakespeare on television.

Structurally, though, his writing was notable for the variety of territory it covered: from sitcoms (Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt!), through adaptations of novels – classic (Fortunes of War) and modern (A Very British Coup) – to stage plays. Peggy for You, a bio-drama about his eccentric agent Margaret Ramsay, gave Maureen Lipman a West End hit.

In an industry vulnerable to fashion, he remained in demand until the very end, with various outstanding commitments which, like the dedicated freelance professional he had always been, he determined to try to meet despite medical inconvenience. Joe Maddison's War, a second world war drama based on his grandfather's life, will be screened later this year.

In common with much of his work, it can be expected to look with wry and intelligent nostalgia at the past. Plater's fear would have been that we will soon stare with historical incredulity at the kind of TV drama-writing career he was able to have.

Alleged Jamaica drug lord Coke pleads not guilty

Suspected Jamaican drug lord Christopher "Dudus" Coke has pleaded not guilty to US charges of drug and gun-trafficking.

Mr Coke, 41, entered the plea in a New York court after being extradited from Jamaica on Thursday.

Mr Coke waived his rights to challenge the extradition. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

Attempts to capture him in May led to clashes in which scores of people died. He was finally detained on Tuesday.

'Community leader'

Mr Coke entered the plea at Manhattan federal court on Friday.

"As I understand, you are pleading not guilty at this time. That is what your lawyer said," Judge Robert Patterson was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Mr Coke's lawyer Russel Newfeld replied: "Yes, that is right".

The judge then ordered that Mr Coke be remanded in custody, before he set a new hearing for 28 June to decide whether he should be jailed indefinitely pending trial, the AFP news agency reports.

On Thursday, Mr Coke made a brief appearance before a Jamaican judge in Kingston to announce that he was waiving his rights to challenge the extradition. He was later flown to the US.

Mr Coke said he believed he could win the case in the Jamaican courts.

But he added that he would go to the US to stand trial for the sake of his family, the people of Tivoli in west Kingston and Jamaica.

The US justice department says Mr Coke is one of the world's most dangerous drug lords, but his supporters say he is a community leader.

Tivoli Gardens clashes

Mr Coke is accused of being the leader of the notorious Shower Posse, which US prosecutors say operates an international drug and gun smuggling network.

They say that Mr Coke conspired to distribute cocaine and marijuana throughout the eastern United States for more than 15 years.

The Shower Posse is also blamed for numerous murders.

The pursuit of Mr Coke has shed light on the links between politicians and gang leaders in Jamaica.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding is said to have relied on Mr Coke to turn out the vote at election time in the Tivoli Gardens district he represents in parliament, and which the Shower Posse controls.

When Mr Coke was first indicted in the US last August, Mr Golding initially fought the extradition, arguing that it was based on flawed evidence.

But after months of delays and amid growing local and international criticism, he agreed to extradite the suspect and signed an arrest warrant in May.

However, gunmen loyal to Mr Coke in Tivoli Gardens barricaded the streets and mounted attacks against the police.

A state of emergency was declared and more than 70 people were killed in four days of gun battles, during which Mr Coke was able to escape. The security forces have since been accused of using excessive force.