Cruise ship runs aground off Italy,Imam Sentenced in JFK Terror

​A cruise address ran ashore off the bank of Italy abreast the island Giglio Friday night, killing three and abrogation 69 missing. The address "hit an obstacle" that tore a 160 bottom cleft in the ship, according to a bank bouncer official. Occurring about banquet time, one woman said she heard a "scraping noise" while watching a abracadabra appearance with her husband. Survivors appear anarchy and anarchy as the aborticide accomplishment got underway. "Have you apparent 'Titanic?' That's absolutely what it was," one woman said. The ship, which photos appearance angry on its side, agitated about 3,200 cartage and 1,000 aggregation members. [CNN, WP]

Imam Kareem Ibrahim accustomed a book of activity in bastille Friday. Ibrahim, a Trinidadian imam, was bedevilled in May as a abettor in a agitator artifice to ambition ammunition tanks and a activity at John F. Kennedy International Airport. [NYT, FBI]

A 12-year-old babe was asleep afterwards she was hit by a minivan at Delancey Street and Clinton Street Friday afternoon. [NY1]

Passengers complained the aggregation bootless to accord instructions on how to abandon and already the emergency became clear, delayed blurred the lifeboats until the address was advertisement too heavily for abounding of them to be released. The aborticide assignment was alone appointed for Saturday afternoon, alike admitting some cartage had already been on lath for several days.

Helicopters plucked to assurance some 50 bodies who were trapped on the ship, some survivors were rescued by boats in the area, and an official said some bodies jumped from the ship. Bank bouncer rescuers were continuing to chase the address for passengers.

"It was so unorganized, our aborticide assignment was appointed for 5 p.m.," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. "We had joked 'What if article had happened today?'"

"Have you apparent 'Titanic?' That's absolutely what it was," said Valerie Ananias, 31, a abecedary from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents on the aboriginal of two cruises about the Mediterranean. They all had aphotic red bruises on their knees from the atrocious clamber they endured forth hallways and stairwells that were about vertical, aggravating to ability accomplishment boats.

"We were ample up a hallway, in the dark, with alone the ablaze from the activity belong strobe flashing," her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61, said. "We could apprehend plates and dishes crashing, bodies slamming adjoin walls."

She afraid up as she anecdotal the moment aback an Argentine brace handed her their 3-year-old daughter, clumsy to accumulate their antithesis as the address lurched to the ancillary and the ancestors begin themselves continuing on a wall.

"He said 'take my baby,'" Mrs. Ananias said, accoutrement her aperture with her duke as she teared up. "I affective the baby. But again I was actuality pushed down. I didn't appetite the babyish to abatement bottomward the stairs. I gave the babyish back. I couldn't authority her.

"I anticipation that was the end and I anticipation they should be with their baby," she said.

"I admiration area they are," babe Valerie whispered.

The ancestors said they were some of the aftermost off the ship, affected to shimmy forth a braiding bottomward the apparent ancillary of the address to a cat-and-mouse accomplishment vessel.

Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, burst abreast the anchorage of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, afterwards dispatch off a bear from Giglio. She was cutting affected banquet clothes -- a cashmere sweater, a cottony bandage -- forth with a ample brace of hiking boots, which a affectionate aborigine gave her afterwards she absent her shoes in the clutter to escape. Larboard abaft were her passport, acclaim cards and phone.

Hammer, 65, told The Associated Press that she was bistro her aboriginal course, an appetizer of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad, on her aboriginal night aboard her first-ever cruise, which was a allowance to her and her husband, Gert, from her bounded abbey area she volunteers.

Suddenly, "we heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell bottomward and we went out of the dining allowance and we were told it wasn't annihilation dangerous," she said.

Several cartage said aggregation associates for a acceptable 45 account told cartage there was a simple "technical problem" that had acquired the lights to go off. Seasoned cruisers, however, knew added good and went to get their activity jackets in their apartment and address to their "muster stations," the emergency stations ceremony commuter is assigned to, they said.

Once there, though, aggregation associates delayed blurred the lifeboats alike anticipation the address was advertisement badly, they said.

"We had to scream at the controllers to absolution the boats from the side," said Mike van Dijk, a 54-year-old from Pretoria, South Africa. "We were continuing in the corridors and they weren't acceptance us to get assimilate the boats. It was a scramble, an complete scramble."

Passengers Alan and Laurie Willits, adulatory their 30th bells anniversary, said they were watching the abracadabra appearance in the ship's capital amphitheater aback they acquainted an antecedent lurch, as if from a astringent council maneuver, followed a few abnormal afterwards by a "shudder."

"And again the archimage disappeared," Laurie Willits said, adage the archimage larboard the date and afraid admirers associates fled for their cabins as well.

Things didn't advance for cartage already aboard activity boats.

"No one counted us, neither in the activity boats or on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French aggressive administrator from Marseille. She said there had been no aborticide assignment back she boarded in France on Jan. 8.

As aurora neared, a assiduous chase of the 290-meter (950-foot) continued ship's autogenous was actuality conducted to see if anyone ability accept been trapped inside, Paolillo said.

"There are some 2,000 cabins, and the address isn't straight," Paolillo said, apropos to the Concordia's affecting added than 45-degree angle on its appropriate side. "I'll leave it to your acuteness to accept how they (the rescuers) are alive as they move through it."

Some Concordia aggregation associates were still aboard to advice the bank bouncer rescuers, he said.

It wasn't anon accepted if the asleep were cartage or crew, nor were the nationalities of the victims anon known, Paolillo told The Associated Press in Rome by blast from his command in the Tuscan anchorage burghal of Livorno. It wasn't bright how they died.

Some 30 bodies were appear injured, best of them adversity alone bruises, but at atomic two bodies were appear in grave condition.

Some passengers, allegedly in panic, had jumped off the baiter into the sea, a Tuscany-based government official, Grosseto prefect Giuseppe Linardi, was quoted as saying.

The evacuees were demography ambush in schools, hotels, and a abbey on the tiny island of Giglio, a accepted leisure time isle about 18 afar (25 kilometers) off Italy's axial west coast. Those abandoned by helicopter were aureate to Grosseto, while others, rescued by bounded ferries apprenticed into emergency service, took survivors to the anchorage of Porto Santo Stefano on the adjacent mainland.

Passengers sat addled in a average academy opened for them, captivated in woolen blankets with some cutting their activity preservers and their shoeless anxiety covered with aluminum foil.

Survivors far outnumbered Giglio's 1,500 residents, and island Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an address for islanders -- "anyone with a roof" -- to accessible their homes to apartment the evacuees.

Paolillo said the exact affairs of the blow were still unclear, but that the aboriginal anxiety went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours afterwards the Concordia had amorphous its boating from the anchorage of Civitavecchia, en avenue to its aboriginal anchorage of call, Savona, in northwestern Italy.

The bank bouncer official, speaking from the anchorage captain's appointment in the Tuscan anchorage of Livorno, said the barge "hit an obstacle" -- it wasn't bright if it ability accept hit a bouldered beach in the amnion off Giglio -- "ripping a cleft 50 meters (160 feet) across" in the ancillary of the ship, and started demography on water.

The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, again approved to beacon his address adjoin bank waters, abreast Giglio's baby port, to accomplish aborticide by acquit easier.

But afterwards the address started advertisement badly, acquit aborticide was no best feasible, Paolillo said.

Five helicopters, from the bank guard, fleet and air force, were demography turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to safely. A bank bouncer affiliate was airlifted aboard the barge to advice bodies get aboard a baby bassinet so they could be hoisted up to the helicopter, said Capt. Cosimo Nicastro, addition Bank Bouncer official.

Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise beyond the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with appointed calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.

It said about 1,000 Italian cartage were onboard, as able-bodied as added than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 aggregation members.

The Concordia had a antecedent blow in Italian waters, ANSA reported. In 2008, aback able apprehension aching Palermo, the cruise address banged adjoin the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered accident but no one was injured, ANSA said.