Driver held in Calif motorcycle crash that kills 5

A man was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after he slammed his car head-on into a group of motorcycle riders celebrating their club's 10th anniversary, killing four motorcyclists and his companion, authorities said Sunday. But they also are looking for another driver who they say played a central role in the crash.

Carlos Ramirez Bobadilla, 36, was arrested when officers smelled alcohol on his breath about five hours after the Saturday crash, said California Highway Patrol Officer DeeAnn Goudie. Ramirez, one of six injured in the collision on a remote desert highway, was recovering from hand fractures at a San Diego hospital, Goudie said.

It was unclear if the driver's alleged alcohol consumption contributed to the collision, Goudie said, but he was arrested on a misdemeanor and is not being held responsible for the deaths based on evidence collected so far. Results of a blood test were pending and not expected for about two weeks, she said.

Authorities were looking for the driver of a gold Honda Civic with California license plates who forced Ramirez off the road when trying to pass the motorcyclists on the undivided two-lane highway east of San Diego. Goudie said she planned to check surveillance video at a nearby border crossing to see if the driver went to Mexico.

Ramirez, of Mexicali, Mexico, swerved his white Dodge Avenger to the right shoulder to avoid the Honda and then overcompensated by swinging left into oncoming traffic, Goudie said. Ramirez's speedometer was found stuck at 60 mph, 5 mph below the speed limit.

"It would have been nice if he had just gone off to the right," she said. "He would have been stuck in the soft sand."

None of the motorcyclists got the license plate number of the Honda driver — described as a man wearing a baseball cap. No one pursued him, choosing to stay behind to attend to their friends.

"I was the first person on scene that had a uniform on," Goudie said. "I was being dragged in every direction by frantic people saying, 'Help this person, help that person.'"

The CHP withheld names of the five who died, pending notification of next of kin. They included a husband and wife who were on a motorcycle that was first to be struck.

A man who was driving a motorcycle behind the couple was struck next and died, Goudie said.

Ramirez turned and hit a third motorcycle, killing a woman who was riding on the back and injuring her husband, Wilson Trayer, 39, of Lakeside, Goudie said.

Trayer's motorcycle sliced 18 inches into the front passenger door of the Dodge that Ramirez was driving, killing Ramirez's companion, a 31-year-old Mexicali woman who owned the car, Goudie said.

Carl Smith, president of the Lakeside-based Saddletramps Motorcycle Club, said three riders were seriously injured but expected to survive. Two others had less serious injuries.

William Barnes, 57, of San Diego suffered a punctured lung and broken hip and ankle and his wife, Melanie, 46, broke her pelvis and had a brain hemorrhage, Smith said. Trayer broke his pelvis, ribs, back and jaw, according to his daughter, Sierra.

"It's going to be a long recovery for the three of them," Smith said.

One of the injured — John Philip Lombardo, 55, of Lakeside, whose leg was hit by an ejected motorcyclist — was released from the hospital, Goudie said.

Another rider had her spleen removed, Smith said. Goudie identified her as Kelly Halley, 42, of Santee.

Smith was leading the motorcycles and watched in his rearview mirror as Ramirez turned his sedan into oncoming traffic and struck the middle of the pack. There were 21 riders on about a dozen motorcycles.

"The car was out of control when I went by him. He narrowly missed me and my vice president," said Smith.

Smith doesn't blame Ramirez, despite the allegation that he was driving under the influence. He considers Ramirez a victim because his companion died.

"It looked like he overreacted, but the guy in the Honda Civic was at fault," said Smith, who estimated the Civic was going 95 mph when it passed the motorcycles.

The group met Saturday morning at Smith's Alpine home and had breakfast at the Golden Acorn Casino off Interstate 8 in Boulevard. They planned to spend the night at the Quechan Casino Resort in Winterhaven, near the Arizona state line.

"They were just going on a nice, leisurely ride in the desert because the weather's gorgeous now," Goudie said.

The accident occurred about 1 p.m. Saturday on state Route 98 near the hamlet of Ocotillo, about 80 miles east of San Diego. The curvy road, which hugs the Mexican border, links Mexicali to Interstate 8 and is used by motorists from Southern Californians and Mexico's Baja California state.

Smith said club members are close friends — many in daily contact — who go on long monthly rides and do an annual charity drive for the Boys and Girls Clubs of East (San Diego) County. They plan a blood drive to help the injured riders.

Obama's Asian trip shows limits on global stage

President Barack Obama left Asia with a greater foothold in the emerging nations that could help shape the American economy for years. But his failure to deliver on his own high expectations on key economic issues served notice that the global stage is not nearly his for the taking.

The president returned to Washington on Sunday with mixed results to show from his longest foreign trip abroad as president, an exhausting 10-day tour through India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

His first two stops yielded dramatic diplomatic successes and memorable images in two booming Asian democracies that will only become more important strategically to the U.S.

But the narrative soured once Obama arrived in Seoul, South Korea, for a meeting of the Group of 20 developed and emerging economies. Obama failed to achieve a free-trade deal with Korea that was to have been the biggest trophy of his trip, and instead of banding with America against China's currency manipulation, several countries aligned themselves against the U.S.

The trip ended anticlimactically in Yokohama, Japan, with an uneventful gathering of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. But Obama has no time to breathe easy. Almost as soon as he gets back to Washington he'll have to grapple with combative Republican congressional leaders at a White House meeting, then head back overseas for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"Overall, it was a mix of successes and deep disappointments," Mike Green, senior adviser and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the trip. "Two great visits in India and Indonesia, a real disappointment in Seoul, and a reassuring but curiously unambitious visit to Japan."

Obama, in some ways, achieved what he set out to do.

By spending so much time in Asia, undeterred by his and his party's midterm election "shellacking" on the way out the door, he showed key nations how important they are to the U.S. agenda. And that, in turn, is an investment he expects to pay off over time — by loosening up trade and hiring opportunities for his own constituents, and by building up the base of democratic and America-friendly voices in a fast-growing region of the world where communist China looms ever larger.

"I think all of Asia is eager for American engagement and leadership," Obama told reporters on Air Force One on the way back to Washington. "Everywhere in Asia, what I heard from leaders and people is that we are still central, and they want us there."

National security adviser Tom Donilon told reporters, "I think that the United States has dramatically advanced its critical goals and its strategic interest in the region."

In essence, trips like this are down payments on diplomacy, even when immediate returns are neither as great as the president wants nor as measurable to a press corps holding him accountable for his soaring promises.

Yet the trip also underscored one of the president's most nagging problems. He is operating in a world, particularly in regard to the economy, in which he takes a long view and voters want more immediate gratification. It is much harder for the unemployed, for example, to take much cheer in all the talk of the emerging international structure of the G-20. They want jobs and security now.

And so when Obama stood at the podium in Seoul with South Korea's president and failed to announce the completion of a trade deal that would have been a breakthrough, it seemed to set the tone for the rest of the trip and colored the outcomes of the two economic summits that followed. The trade pact may still be finished within weeks, but its delay robbed Obama of a sense of flourish. It is never good for a president to be standing next to a world peer appearing empty-handed, and all the other cooperation Obama cemented in the course of the trip got overshadowed.

"The lone miscalculation appears to have been allowing the president of the United States and the president of South Korea to meet without an agreement on trade," said Patrick M. Cronin, senior director of the Asia program at the Center for a New American Security. "In hindsight, an accord should have been hashed out months ago."

Overall, the economies of Asia are "moving," Obama said. "We should feel confident about our ability to compete, but we are going to have to step up our game."

The best moments of the trips may have been during Obama's three days in India, where he sealed $10 billion in commercial deals, firmly staking a claim in the booming country's future prosperity, and delighted his hosts by announcing his support for a permanent Indian seat on the U.N. Security Council. But it was first lady Michelle Obama who won India's heart by visiting several times with schoolchildren and dancing with them in images replayed nonstop on India's jostling cable networks.

In Indonesia, Obama spoke to an appreciative, collegiate crowd in his boyhood home city in Jakarta, but the trip was brief — less than 24 hours on the ground, cut even shorter when ash spewed by a volcano threatened airspace. South Korea and Japan featured economic negotiations and meetings with world leaders including Germany's Angela Merkel, Russia's Dmitri Medvedev and China's Hu Jintao.

The limits of America's — and Obama's — influence was on painful display as the G-20 failed to produce specific action against China's currency undervaluation and Obama instead fielded questions about the wisdom of the Federal Reserve's recent move to stimulate the U.S. economy through a $600 billion purchase of Treasury bonds, which is expected to inflate the value of the dollar.

Back in Washington countless challenges await: a lame-duck congressional session expected to feature a showdown over extending Bush-era tax cuts; negotiations with resurgent Republicans; and more potential shake-ups to the White House staff.

Despite all that, Obama left Asia on a personal high: a return visit to an enormous bronze Buddha statue in Kamakura, Japan, that he had seen once as a child. Just as he did as a boy, he even got some green tea ice cream.

Top 50 Most Unbelievable – Yet Not Photoshopped Photographs Top 50 Most Unbelievable – Yet Not Photoshopped Photographs

It is hard to be amazed by anything you see on the internet these days, when you know for a fact that any teenager with a computer and a copy of Adobe Photoshop or other photo manipulation software can put together a fake photograph in a couple of minutes.  Which would make you completely right to believe that these photographs have been tempered with! Unfortunately, this means there’s a bunch of jaw-dropping images that the internet declared “FAKE!” the moment they appeared! But, you need to be broad minded and always mind that real life is, sometimes, stranger than Photoshopped imagery and some of the most unbelievable, jaw-dropping of those photographs are, in fact, REAL.

Crazy Military Trainings

Join the military, go crazy? Look at russian military trainings.




And here are the annual winter military exercises in South Korea. More than 200 soldiers a month have received special military training.

5 heaviest people in the history

Carol Yager (peak weight 727 kg/ 1,600 lbs)

Her peak weight reached was 727 kg (16, 00 lbs).  She was also famous for losing most weight by natural means. Carol Yager lost 521 lbs weight in just three months. Her skin was breaking down due to a bacterial infection that’s why she was admitted in Hurley Medical Center. She spent terrible time till her death. Carol Yager was unable to stand or walk because of her muscles were not strong enough. She died at the  young of 34. Main causes of her death were kidney failure, multiple organ failure and morbid obesity.

Jon Brower Minnoch (peak weight 635 kg / 1400 lbs)

Likewise Carol Yager, Job Brower started gaining weight from his early childhood. At the age of 12 his weight was 132 kg (292 lbs). He married Jeannette, a woman of normal weight and had two sons. Minnoch was admitted to hospital for 16 months where he lost 419 kg but after being discharged, his weight doubled. Unfortunately he died on September 10, 1983, at age 42.

Manuel Uribe (597 kg / 1,316 lb)

Like other heavy people, Manuel Uribe is also living a hard life. He spends 9 years in bed from 2001 to 2009. Even he got married in bed with Claudia on October 26, 2008. On his wedding, he spoke loud and clear to all dishearten people saying “I am proof you can find love in any circumstances. It’s all a question of faith. I have a wife and will form a new family and live a happy life”.

Walter Hudson (544 kg / 1,200 lb)

World’s fourth heaviest power house was born in Brooklyn, New York.  Walter came into lime light when he was trapped inside of his room’s door. Recue team had to break the wall to take him out. He loved to eat as once he said and I quote “”I just ate and enjoyed it”. Although he announced his wedding plans but that remains a dream for his. He died few weeks later.

Rosalie Bradford (544 kg / 1,200 lb)

Rosalie Bradford was Foodaholic since her childhood. Like all other weight giants, she gained weight in young age. At the age of 14 her weight was 92 kg and 140 kg at the age of 15. Rosalie married and had one son. After her marriage, she mostly spent her time at home and gain more weight. All that depressed her much and she tried to kill her using painkillers. Her weight eventually reduced to 136 kg (300 lb). She died on November 29, 2006 in the age of 63.

Photo of the Day: put it, where-ever

Kitty Royalty