Gunmen assassinate peasant leader in Paraguay

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Gunmen murdered one of the surviving leaders of a peasant movement whose land dispute with a powerful politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo‘s presidency last June.

Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times early Saturday by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report prepared at the police headquarters in the provincial capital of Curuguaty.

A friend, Mario Espinola, told The Associated Press that Vega was shot down when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.

Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language.

He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that Colorado Party Sen. Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.

By last May, the peasants finally lost patience and moved onto the land. A firefight during their eviction on June 15 killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado Party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.

Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been jailed without formal charges since then on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings Dec. 16.

Vega was expected to be a witness at the criminal trial, since he was among the few leaders who weren’t killed in the clash or jailed afterward.

He wasn’t charged because he was away getting supplies when the violence erupted at the settlement erected by the peasants inside Riquelme’s ranch, the Naranjaty Commission’s secretary, Martina Paredes, told the AP.

“We think he was assassinated by hit men who were sent, we don’t know by whom, perhaps to frighten us and frustrate our fight to recover the state lands that were illegally taken by Riquelme,” she said.

Riquelme, who died of natural causes about a month after the battle in June, occupied the land during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whose government gave away land for free to anyone willing to put it to productive use.

A local court in Curuguaty upheld Riquelme’s claim to the land years later. Lugo’s government later sought to overturn the decision, but the case remains tied up in court.

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How Google Stole Christmas (And is Bringing it Back)

Google‘s Nexus smartphones and tablets have a unique feature that’s also a curse. They come with the latest version of Android (which is actually unusual among Android devices), and they’re basically guaranteed to get updates throughout their lifespan (which is also unusual). But on the downside, Nexus owners are also the first to discover new “features” in each version of Android … like Google’s new 11-month calendar.

​’Tis (not) the season

​ You may not have noticed, if none of your friends or family members were born in December. But if you tried to enter in somebody’s birthday in Android’s “People” app, you may have noticed that the spin-dials for selecting a date don’t include the last month of the year, in one of the oddest bugs to hit Android.

Other bugs found in the Android 4.2 update include random reboots, unstable apps, and overall slow and sluggish performance. David Ruddock of the Android Police blog has written up an extensive list of these bugs, and of which Nexus devices have been affected.

​Appy holidays

Most of these bugs are tied to specific apps not working correctly with the 4.2 update. The HD Widgets app, for instance, seems to cause the random reboots. Even first-party apps, like the Google Currents web magazine reader, are apparently responsible for some of the issues.

Some developers have fixed their apps. Mozilla quickly corrected a bug in the Android version of its Firefox web browser which caused it to randomly (and frequently) force close. But for now, the only real solution is to stop using certain apps, or features of apps like Currents’ background sync.

Need a little Christmas?

Fortunately for Nexus device owners, a fix for at least one of the issues (the missing month of December) has already been written, and is on its way if you haven’t gotten it already. A new version of Android is being sent over the air to Nexus devices, and Android developer Al Sutton reports that “Santa is back.”

It remains to be seen, however, whether or not Google can “save Christmas” for people who’ve ordered (or tried to order) an unlocked Nexus 4 smartphone from its Google Play store. Right now, the 8 GB model “Ships in 8- 9 weeks,” while the 16 GB model won’t ship until around New Years’. And that’s if you can even place an order; many Google customers are reporting that the ordering system simply won’t work, although Google+ user Syko Pompos has discovered a way around the faulty website.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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Letterman, Hoffman, Zeppelin honored by Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — David Letterman‘s “stupid human tricks” and Top 10 lists vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim Sunday night as the late-night comedian received this year’s Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin, an actor, a ballerina and a bluesman.

Stars from New York, Hollywood and the music world joined President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday night to salute the honorees, whose ranks also include actor Dustin Hoffman, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova.

The honors are the nation’s highest award for those who influenced American culture through the arts. The recipients were later saluted by fellow performers at the Kennedy Center Opera House in a show to be broadcast Dec. 26 on CBS.

Obama drew laughs from his guests when he described the honorees as “some extraordinary people who have no business being on the same stage together.”

Noting that Guy made his first guitar strings using the wire from a window screen, he quipped, “That worked until his parents started wondering how all the mosquitoes were getting in.”

The president thanked the members of Led Zeppelin for behaving themselves at the White House given their history of “hotel rooms trashed and mayhem all around.”

Obama noted Letterman’s humble beginnings as an Indianapolis weatherman who once reported the city was being pelted by hail ‘the size of canned hams.’”

“It’s one of the highlights of his career,” he said.

All kidding aside, Obama described all of the honorees as artists who “inspired us to see things in a new way, to hear things differently, to discover something within us or to appreciate how much beauty there is in the world.”

“It’s that unique power that makes the arts so important,” he added.

Later on the red carpet, Letterman said he was thrilled by the recognition and to visit Obama at the White House.

“It supersedes everything, honestly,” he said. “I haven’t won that many awards.”

During the show, comedian Tina Fey said she grew up watching her mom laugh at Letterman as he brought on “an endless parade of weirdos.”

“Who was this Dave Letterman guy?” Fey said. “Was he a brilliant, subtle passive-aggressive parody of a talk show host? Or just some Midwestern goon who was a little bit off? Time has proven that there’s just really no way of knowing.”

Alec Baldwin offered a Top 10 reasons Letterman was winning the award, including the fact that he didn’t leave late night for a six-month stint in primetime — a not-so-subtle dig at rival Jay Leno.

Jimmy Kimmel, who will soon compete head-to-head with Letterman on ABC, said he fell in love with Letterman early in life and even had a “Late Night” cake on his 16th birthday.

“To me it wasn’t just a TV show,” Kimmel said. “It was the reason I would fail to make love to a live woman for many, many years.”

For Buddy Guy, singers Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman and others got most of the crowd on its feet singing Guy’s signature “Sweet Home Chicago.”

Morgan Freeman hailed Guy as a pioneer who helped bridge soul and rock and roll.

“When you hear the blues, you really don’t think of it as black or white or yellow or purple or blue,” Freeman said. “Buddy Guy, your blue brought us together.”

Robert De Niro saluted Hoffman, saying he had changed acting, never took any shortcuts and was brave enough to be a perfectionist.

“Before Dustin burst on the scene, it was pretty much OK for movie stars to show up, read their lines and, if the director insisted, act a little,” De Niro said. “But then Dustin came along — and he just had to get everything right.”

By the end of the night, the Foo Fighters, Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz got the crowd moving to some of Zeppelin’s hits at the Kennedy Center.

Jack Black declared Zeppelin the “greatest rock and roll band of all time.”

“That’s right. Better than the Beatles. Better than the Stones. Even better than Tenacious D,” he said. “And that’s not opinion — that’s fact.”

For the finale, Heart’s Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson sang “Stairway to Heaven,” accompanied by a full choir and Jason Bonham, son of the late Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.

Zeppelin front man Robert Plant and his bandmates John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page seemed moved by the show.

Meryl Streep first introduced the honorees Saturday as they received the award medallions during a formal dinner at the U.S. State Department hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton said ballerina Makarova “risked everything to have the freedom to dance the way she wanted to dance” when she defected from the Soviet Union in 1970.

Makarova made her debut with the American Ballet Theatre and later was the first exiled artist to return to the Soviet Union before its fall to dance with the Kirov Ballet.

Clinton also took special note of Letterman, saying he must be wondering what he’s doing in a crowd of talented artists and musicians.

“Dave and I have a history,” she said. “I have been a guest on his show several times, and if you include references to my pant suits, I’m on at least once a week.”

___

Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

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Holiday fitness gifts trend from high-tech to basic

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Looking for the perfect holiday present for a fitness fan? Gift offerings this year range from apps that can store a run in the country to be viewed later to gadgets so sophisticated they measure quality of sleep as well as calories burned.

There is also the revival of the humble foam roller, which experts say, like old-time push-ups, squats and planks, has never been more popular.

Anita Golden, fitness manager at a Crunch gym in New York City, said she’ll be giving clients a foam roller called the GRID.

“We’ve always had foam rollers in the club but now more people are using them as a way to ease post-workout muscles, prevent injuries and exercise the core,” Golden said.

When it comes to big-ticket items, Colleen Logan of Icon Health and Fitness, which manufactures a number of fitness brands, said the treadmill remains the most popular gift.

“Treadmills continue to lead the industry in terms of home fitness purchases,” said Logan.

They account for about 57 percent of fitness purchases, while elliptical trainers and stationary bicycles are a distant second and third place at about 8 percent each.

The average home treadmill costs about $ 700, said Logan, but the technology revolution has transformed even this stalwart at the high end.

The ultimate splurge, at $ 4,000, she said, is the Boston Marathon Treadmill, which allows users to adjust speed in 1/10 of a mile per hour increments without touching the console. It also lets users run a virtual Boston Marathon.

For people on a smaller budget, there is the iFit app that lets the iPhone capture a favorite vacation run or bike ride in Hawaii, store it in data centers all over the world which collectively are referred to as the “cloud,” and download it to an iFit-enabled treadmill at home.

“You’ll view the exact route and experience the same terrain again,” Logan explained.

Devices, gadgets and apps proliferate as tech-savvy fitness becomes more accessible, according to Jessica Matthews of the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

“There’s a lot of interest in on-body monitoring devices as ways to motivate and track progress,” she said. “They run the gamut from basic devices to track hours, steps, and caloric expenditure to full-body tracking.”

Nike+ Sportsband has a series of small lights on the wrist band that change from red to green as the runner nears his goal, while the BodyMedia FIT Armband tracks everything from the number of calories burned to the quality and quantity of sleep.

ACE also studied fitness DVDs released for the holidays.

“We evaluated them for quality of instruction, safety, effectiveness and design of workout,” Matthews said.

Among the best were “Amy Dixon’s Breathless Body Vol.2: The Edge.” Matthews called it a challenging cardio workout best suited to those on your list with “an established base of fitness.”

“Jessica Smith’s 10 Pounds Down Better Body Blast” also got a thumbs up for its well-rounded routine and clarity of instruction.

For people seeking a mind-body approach, Matthews praised “STOTT Pilates Intense Body Blast: Pilates Interval Training: Level I,” which she said is accessible for someone new to fitness.

“They do a great job queuing movements and creating flow,” she said.

Richard Cotton of the American College of Sports Medicine suggests giving the fitness novice the gift of a personal trainer.

“The best is human assistance,” he said. “Another way is a beginner group exercise class.”

He also suggests a gift certificate for shoes at a running store equipped with a treadmill.

“You need shoes that fit your gait,” he said. “People should always get their gait analyzed.”

Golden likes to cite the law of reciprocity to the personal trainers she manages.

“I always tell them to get their clients something,” she said.

And what does the personal trainer want for Christmas?

“I like the roller, or a new jump rope,” she said. “Fitness people aren’t hard to please. Get me a new yoga mat and I’m happy.”

(Reporting by Dorene Internicola; editing by Patricia Reaney)

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Boehner 'flabbergasted' at 'fiscal cliff' talks

President Obama and his White House team appear to have drawn a line in the sand in talks with House Republicans on the "fiscal cliff."

Tax rates on the wealthy are going up, the only question is how much?

"Those rates are going to have to go up," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner flatly stated on ABC's "This Week." "There's no responsible way we can govern this country at a time of enormous threat, and risk, and challenge ... with those low rates in place for future generations."

But the president's plan, which Geithner delivered last week, has left the two sides far apart.

In recounting his response today on "Fox News Sunday," House Speaker John Boehner said: "I was flabbergasted. I looked at him and said, 'You can't be serious.'

"The president's idea of negotiation is: Roll over and do what I ask," Boehner added.

The president has never asked for so much additional tax revenue. He wants another $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, including returning the tax rate on income above $250,000 a year to 39.6 percent.

Boehner is offering half that, $800 billion.

In exchange, the president suggests $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and other programs. House Republicans say that is not enough, but they have not publicly listed what they would cut.

Geithner said the ball is now in the Republicans' court, and the White House is seemingly content to sit and wait for Republicans to come around.

"They have to come to us and tell us what they think they need. What we can't do is to keep guessing," he said.

The president is also calling for more stimulus spending totaling $200 billion for unemployment benefits, training, and infrastructure projects.

"All of this stimulus spending would literally be more than the spending cuts that he was willing to put on the table," Boehner said.

Boehner also voiced some derision over the president's proposal to strip Congress of power over the country's debt level, and whether it should be raised.

"Congress is not going to give up this power," he said. "It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone."

The so-called fiscal cliff, a mixture of automatic tax increases and spending cuts, is triggered on Jan. 1 if Congress and the White House do not come up with a deficit-cutting deal first.

The tax increases would cost the average family between $2,000 and $2,400 a year, which, coupled with the $500 billion in spending cuts, will most likely put the country back into recession, economists say.

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Italy votes for center-left candidate for premier

ROME (AP) — Italians are choosing a center-left candidate for premier for elections early next year, an important primary runoff given the main party is ahead in the polls against a center-right camp in utter chaos over whether Silvio Berlusconi will run again.

Sunday’s runoff pits a veteran center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, 61, against the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who has campaigned on an Obama-style “Let’s change Italy now” mantra.

Nearly all polls show Bersani winning the primary, after he won the first round of balloting Nov. 25 with 44.9 percent of the vote. Since he didn’t get an absolute majority, he was forced into a runoff with Renzi, who garnered 35.5 percent.

After battling all week to get more voters to the polling stations for round two, Renzi seemed almost resigned to a Bersani win by Sunday, saying he hoped that by Monday “we can all work together.”

Bersani, a former transport and industry minister, seemed confident of victory as well, joking about Berlusconi’s flip-flopping political ambitions by asking “What time did he say it?” when told that the media mogul had purportedly decided against running.

Next year’s general election will largely decide how and whether Italy continues on the path to financial health charted by Premier Mario Monti, appointed last year to save Italy from a Greek-style debt crisis.

The former European commissioner was named to head a technical government after international markets lost confidence in then-Premier Berlusconi’s ability to reign in Italy’s public debt and push through sorely needed structural reforms.

Berlusconi has largely stayed out of the public spotlight for the past year, but he returned with force in recent weeks, announcing he was thinking about running again, then changing his mind, then threatening to bring down Monti’s government, and most recently staying silent about his political plans.

His waffling has thrown his People of Freedom party into disarray and disrupted its own plans for a primary — all of which has only seemed to bolster the impression of order, stability and organization within the center-left camp.

A poll published Friday gave the Democratic Party 30 percent of the vote if the election were held now, compared with some 19.5 percent for the upstart populist movement of comic Beppe Grillo, and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in third with 14.3 percent. The poll, by the SWG firm for state-run RAI 3, surveyed 5,000 voting-age adults by telephone between Nov. 26 and 28. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.36 percentage points.

It’s quite a turnabout for Berlusconi’s once-dominant movement, and a similarly remarkable shift in fortunes for the Democratic Party, which had been in shambles for years, unable to capitalize on Berlusconi’s professional and personal failings while he was premier.

But Berlusconi’s 2011 downfall and a series of recent political party funding scandals that have targeted mostly center-right politicians have contributed to the party’s rise as Italy struggles through a grinding recession and near-record high unemployment.

Angelino Alfano, Berlusconi’s hand-picked political heir, seemed again exasperated Sunday after a long meeting with his patron over Berlusconi’s plans. News reports have suggested Berlusconi might split the party in two and re-launch the Forza Italia party that brought him to political power for the first time in 1994.

“We have to work to reconstruct the center-right, and reconstructing it means having a big center-right party,” not a divided one, Alfano said.

He added that Berlusconi didn’t say one way or another if he would run himself. “It’s his choice,” he said. “If there are any decisions in this regard, he’ll be the one to say so.”

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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iPad mini shortages may soon be resolved

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Analysis: Drugmakers step up search for hearing loss medicines

ZURICH/LONDON (Reuters) – When Swiss biotech firm Auris Medical wanted to recruit patients to test its experimental hearing loss drug, it decided to enlist partygoers deafened by firecrackers on New Year’s Eve.

In the weeks leading up to December 31, 2005 it advertised in the subway and on radio stations in Munich and Berlin, urging victims of sudden firecracker-induced hearing loss to turn up at designated clinics for treatment on January 1.

“We had just one single day of enrolment, we didn’t know how many people would show up,” Thomas Meyer, managing director of Auris, told Reuters.

Luckily, his gamble paid off and the small private company is now one of the leaders in what has been an empty space for the pharmaceutical industry.

Auris managed to recruit enough people to show that its compound AM-111 posed no safety risk and has since successfully completed a mid-stage trial in acute sensorineural hearing loss, or sudden deafness, involving 210 patients.

While there is no guarantee that its drug, which is injected through the eardrum, will pass muster in final-stage tests, the progress by Auris and a clutch of rival biotech firms is making large pharmaceutical companies sit up and take notice.

There are currently no approved disease-modifying drugs for hearing loss, which affects nearly a third of people aged 65 to 74 and half of those over 75.

But the science is developing and investor interest is growing, piqued by the huge commercial success of recent new treatments for sight loss, such as Lucentis from Novartis and Roche and Eylea from Regeneron and Bayer.

British charity Action on Hearing Loss conservatively puts the potential Western market for new drugs at $ 4.6 billion a year – a figure that could grow quickly as ageing populations swell the ranks of those with hearing problems.

NEGLECTED FIELD

“It’s one of the few areas that, as yet, hasn’t really been tackled by the drugs industry,” said Kate Bingham, managing partner at SV Life Sciences Advisers, a venture capital firm with investments in new drugs for both eyes and ears.

Bingham sits on the board of Autifony Therapeutics – a hearing loss firm spun out of GlaxoSmithKline in which the British drugmaker retains a stake.

Historically, hearing loss has received little attention from Big Pharma, given the lack of obvious targets for drug intervention, the difficulties of running clinical trials and a widespread belief that most deafness could not be reversed.

Now the big companies are getting involved, although the work is early-stage.

“A drug that is therapeutic and priced right could be quite a blockbuster. That’s why they’ve put their toe in the water,” said Jonathan Kil, chief medical officer at Seattle-based Sound Pharmaceuticals, which is enrolling young iPod users in a trial of an oral drug for noise-induced hearing loss.

U.S. giant Pfizer is arguably the most advanced of the big players, with a drug in initial Phase I clinical testing trial for age-related sensorineural hearing loss that looks to enhance the function of existing hair cells.

Some of its biggest rivals are laying bets, too. Last year French drugmaker Sanofi inked a two-year research deal with privately held Dutch biotech firm Audion Therapeutics to develop small molecule drugs to improve hearing.

In October, Roche joined forces with venture capital firm Versant Ventures and biotech Inception Sciences to find molecules targeting ear hair cell protection and regeneration in the cochlea, the spiral-shaped cavity in the inner ear.

Cross-town competitor Novartis, meanwhile, struck a 2010 deal potentially worth more than $ 213 million with U.S. biotech GenVec to develop gene-based treatments to replace hair cells in the ear that transmit sound.

“We’re looking at restoration as our main line of work and we’re interested in whether there are chemicals that might also play this role instead of having to introduce a gene,” said Novartis research head Mark Fishman.

“This is an area that’s a bit more futuristic and ultimately restoring the hair cells will be the cure.”

EYES AND EARS

Unlike new eye drugs, which work by inhibiting an unwanted process, hearing drugs will need to restore damaged function – a more difficult proposition.

Experts say the first drugs will target niche areas, such as damage caused by loud noise or as a result of chemotherapy.

“Hearing loss is not just one condition. It’s like cancer – there are lots of different types and there is work to be done to segment the market,” said Ralph Holme, head of biomedical research at Action on Hearing Loss.

Heading the field for noise-induced hearing loss is South Illinois University, which has launched a late-stage trial with the U.S. military for an drug to increase protection for people exposed to very noisy environments like soldiers.

Canada’s Adherex also has a late-stage trial to test a drug that may protect against hearing loss caused by platinum-based anti-cancer agents in children.

While protective treatments could become available within the next few years, regenerative approaches – such as injecting stem cells into the ear or chemically intervening to switch on genes that control cell growth – are much further off.

Despite recent promising tests in gerbils, the potential to replicate this in humans is still uncertain, said Pascal Senn, an ear specialist at the University of Berne.

“If something grows inside the ear, you must be sure that it doesn’t grow excessively or form tumors. There are a lot of roadblocks that need to be overcome in this field. It’s highly risky, but I think it’s also the hottest area,” he said.

One intriguing possibility for the future is the convergence of future drugs and devices. Hearing aid manufacturers have certainly not been deaf to the noises from the pharma sector.

Sonova, the world’s largest maker of hearing aids, has invested in two start-up companies – one in the United States for drugs to protect hearing and another Swiss biotech working on a treatment for acute tinnitus.

It bought U.S. cochlear implant manufacturer Advanced Bionics in 2009 in a bid to increase its focus on the inner ear and understand how drug treatments could work with implants.

“It will be interesting whether the innovation will be driven by pharma companies moving in or whether the hearing aid companies will branch out,” said Auris’ Meyer.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Report: At least three dead after Japan tunnel collapse

TOKYO (Reuters) - A tunnel on a major highway in central Japan collapsed on Sunday, killing at least three people and starting a blaze, Japanese media reported.

Attempts to rescue those still trapped inside the smashed tunnel, which began spewing smoke after concrete ceiling panels fell onto the road, have been interrupted for fear they might trigger another collapse.

Three bodies have been found so far, television networks Fuji and Asahi said.

The fire service earlier said at least seven people were unaccounted for in the 4.7 km (2.8-mile) tunnel in Yamanashi prefecture, about 80 km (50 miles) west of Tokyo on the Chou Expressway, a main road connecting the capital to western Japan.

"Dense smoke was coming out as if it covers the entire mountain," witness Kiyoko Toyomura told Japanese news agency Kyodo.

The fire service said the blaze was extinguished about 11 a.m. - some three hours after the accident occurred.

The operator of the highway, Central Nippon Expressway, said a 50-60 meters (165 feet) long section of ceiling panels fell to the road, and it was looking into the cause of the accident.

Motorists described narrow escapes from falling debris, and a long walk through the darkness after abandoning their cars.

"When I was driving in the tunnel, concrete pieces fell down suddenly from the ceiling," a man in his 30s told public broadcaster NHK. "I saw a crushed car catching fire. I was frightened, left my car and walked for about an hour to get out of the tunnel."

In 1996 a tunnel in Hokkaido, northern Japan, collapsed and falling rocks crushed cars and a bus, killing 20 people.

NHK reporter Yoshio Goto, caught in Sunday's accident, hit the accelerator and managed to drive out.

"But it was a bit too late and pieces of ceiling fell on my car. I kept pressing the pedal and managed to get out," he said. "Then when I looked around, I saw half of the car ceiling was crushed."

(Reporting by Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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Cargo plane crashes in Brazzaville, 3 dead

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) — A cargo plane owned by a private company crashed Friday near the airport in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, killing at least three people, officials said.

The Soviet-made Ilyushin-76 belonged to Trans Air Congo and appeared to be transporting merchandise, not people, said an aviation official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The plane was coming from Congo‘s second-largest city, Pointe Noire, and tried to land during heavy rain, he said.

Ambulances rushed to the scene in the Makazou neighborhood, located near the airport, but emergency workers were hampered by the lack of light in this capital, which like so many in Africa has a chronic shortage of electricity.

“At the moment, my team is having a hard time searching for survivors in order to find the victims of the crash because there is no light and also because of the rain,” Congolese Red Cross head Albert Mberi said.

He said that realistically, they will only be able to launch a proper search Saturday, when the sun comes up.

Reporters at the scene fought through a wall of smoke. Despite the darkness, they could make out the smoldering remains of the plane, including what looked like the left wing of the aircraft. A little bit further on, emergency workers identified the body of the plane’s Ukrainian pilot, and covered the corpse in a blanket.

Firefighters were trying to extinguish the blaze of a part of the plane that had fallen into a ravine. They were using their truck lights to try to illuminate the scene of the crash. Although the plane was carrying merchandise, emergency workers fear that there could be more people on board.

Because of the state of the road connecting Pointe Noire to Brazzaville, many traders prefer to fly the roughly 400 kilometers (250 miles).

Africa has some of the worst air safety records in the world. In June, a commercial jetliner crashed in Lagos, Nigeria, killing 153 people, just a few days after a cargo plane clipped a bus in neighboring Ghana, killing 10.

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