NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) – A US Airways flight made an emergency landing on its belly at Newark Liberty International Airport early on Saturday after the plane’s landing gear failed to deploy, but no one was injured, airline and government officials said.

Piedmont Airlines flight 4560, operating for US Airways from Philadelphia with 34 passengers and three crew members, landed safely at 1 a.m., and passengers were evacuated on the tarmac and transported to the terminal, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said in an email.

Belly landings are unusual and dangerous because of the threat of fire from the plane fuselage skidding on a hard surface, according to aviation experts.

The airport was closed for more than an hour, and the runway was closed for more than eight hours following the incident, officials said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a Twitter post that it was investigating. A US Airways spokesman said the plane is a Dash 8-100 with a capacity of 37 passengers. The plane was made by De Havilland of Canada, which is owned by Bombardier Inc.

The plane left Philadelphia late on Friday night and the pilot made an emergency declaration after the left main landing gear failed to deploy, according to airline and FAA officials. The pilot circled the airport and then decided to land with no gear deployed.

The incident comes nearly three weeks after a Scandinavian Airlines plane with 252 people on board clipped the wing of an ExpressJet, operated by Skywest Inc., with 31 passengers as they were preparing to take off from the same airport. There were no injuries.

(Reporting by David Jones; Editing by Greg McCune and Eric Beech)

Landlocked San Marino is one of the world's smallest countries. Surrounded by Italy, it is an echo from an era when city-states proliferated across Europe.

Mount Titano, part of the Appennine range, dominates San Marino's landscape. Three defensive fortresses perch on Titano's slopes, looking out to the Adriatic coast.

San Marino is said to be the world's oldest surviving republic.

Tradition has it that the country was founded in the fourth century AD by a devout Christian stonemason called Marinus, who took refuge there and set up a small community. Its rugged isolation helped the enclave to develop and keep its independence.

An 1862 friendship and cooperation treaty with Italy, which has since been revised and expanded, reinforced San Marino's independence.

Tourism dominates the economy of the 61 square kilometre (23.6 square miles) republic, which plays host to more than three million visitors every year.

Postage stamps and coins – keenly sought by collectors – are important sources of revenue.

As one of Europe's tax havens, San Marino has traditionally attracted a large inflow of cash from non-residents, but in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9 this status has come increasingly under threat, and the republic has pledged to make its banking system more transparent.

Article continues below

Ahmad Al Matroushi, Managing Director of Emaar Properties, said: “The landmarks of Dubai have become a reference point for architects, engineers and designers across the world with the city pioneering some of the foremost projects to date. Through Strip the City, viewers will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of the fascinating scientific and technological breakthroughs that have helped the city in achieving its towering ambitions.”

The episode on Dubai will be telecast at 10.55pm on OSN channel 500 on May 19. Other major cities covered in the series are London, Rome, San Francisco, Sydney and Toronto.

Kasia Kieli, President and MD, Discovery Networks CEEMEA said: “When we chose the cities to include we knew we had to include Dubai with it now being an iconic super-city of the future.”

The sighting of the person wearing a white hood and robe was reported early Monday morning and follows a string of recent hate incidents on Oberlin’s campus that have ignited shock and confusion among the student body.

“Since the beginning, there’s been anger, frustration, sadness and fear, but we’ve been working toward a concentrated effort toward change,” said Eliza Diop, 20, a politics and Africana Studies major who serves on the college student senate and is a resident of the Afrikan Heritage House, which offers programs focused on the African diaspora, according to the college’s website.

Oberlin College is a small liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, with almost 3,000 students. An emergency meeting among the college’s officials was immediately called after the report.

In lieu of classes, college administrators asked students, faculty and staff to “gather for a series of discussions of the challenging issues that have faced our community in recent weeks,” a statement on Oberlin’s website said.

“We hope today will allow the entire community — students, faculty, and staff —to make a strong statement about the values that we cherish here at Oberlin: inclusion, respect for others, and a strong and abiding faith in the worth of every individual,” the statement said.

The programming included a campuswide teach-in led by Meredith Gadsby, an associate professor and chairwoman of the Africana Studies Department; a collective demonstration of solidarity, including musical performances by campus groups and speeches by campus leaders; and a community convocation entitled “We Stand Together.”

Gadsby has been teaching at Oberlin since 2000 and was notified of the incident at 3 a.m., just hours after the sighting was reported.

“I am worried about the students who have been made to feel incredibly unsafe and still feel targeted,” Gadsby told CNN Monday.

The reported sighting of KKK regalia is the latest in a spate of incidents on Oberlin’s campus. According to an incident report provided by the Oberlin Police Department, 15 hate-related events have been reported in the last month alone.

Police have not yet been able to substantiate the reports of the alleged KKK regalia sighting.

“We’re looking into it and we’re trying to talk to other students to see if we can verify the incident,” said Oberlin Police Sgt. David Jasinski.

The other incidents have included several posters containing multiple racial slurs and other derogatory statements targeting various student communities placed around campus. Other reports include various fliers placed around campus containing racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic language and swastika graffiti.

“The frequency of these reports is astounding,” Gadsby said. “Over the past four weeks, there has been a concentration of bias incidents in such a short period of time. I have no idea why this happened, no idea who the culprits are, no idea where this is coming from. Students are saying this is not what they came to Oberlin to experience.”

Shimon Brand, Hillel director at Oberlin for more than 30 years, noted that these types of incidents were “exceedingly out of the ordinary” but that students have worked together to address the incident.

“Instead of students acting as victims, they reacted through understanding and engagement. There’s a real sense of sadness and anger, but solidarity that there’s work to be done,” he said.

Chris Landers, 21, an English major and co-editor-in-chief of the college’s newspaper, the Oberlin Review, said the paper has welcomed letters to the editor and has asked people to contact the staff with any incident reports to encourage dialogue from all groups on campus.

“We value every member of Oberlin. We know we’re not the perfect place, but we strive to be an inclusive place. We want Oberlin to be a place where every member of every community feels valued and feels that they have a legitimate voice,” he said.

These incidents are being investigated by both Oberlin College security and the Oberlin Police Department.

Scott Wargo, director of media relations for the college, said, “No official disciplinary action has been taken.”

No official charges have been filed.

But Jasinski said that two students had been removed.

“It’s an ongoing investigation. At this time, college security caught a couple of students. Two students have been removed from campus,” Jasinski said.

Vicki Anderson, special agent for the FBI’s Cleveland Division, said, “We have been made aware of the incidents and we have been in contact with the Oberlin Police Department and will continue to assess the situation accordingly.”

Gadsby still feels that Oberlin can be a model for other campuses that have dealt with hate-related incidents. She hopes students will continue to mobilize and share information with law enforcement.

“It’s good to be made uncomfortable; it strengthens our resolve,” she said. “These incidents don’t just happen at small liberal arts colleges. These moments are important for students to engage in the theories that we teach and put them into practice.”

For students, it’s a reminder that they need to remain vigilant in their fight against hate on their campus.

“Racism is still here. It may not be as visible as it was 50 years ago, but it’s still visible. We still need to fight it, even in 2013,” Diop said. “I want us to remember that hate is unproductive. Love reigns supreme.”

In the spring of 2010, amid fears of an imminent default on debt payments and of the debt contagion spreading to other countries, Greece's fellow eurozone countries agreed an unprecedented 110bn euro package to rescue its teetering economy. The main condition attached to the loan – drastic cuts in public spending and tax hikes – prompted protracted social unrest.

The 2010 rescue package soon proved to be unequal to the task of plugging the hole in Greece's finances, and the following year an even bigger bailout of 130bn euros was required to stave off the imminent danger of the country defaulting on its debts.

At the prompting of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, Greece has been striving to reduce its debt burden from 160% of GDP to a target figure of 120%. It has also embarked on recapitalising its banks so as to put them on a sounder footing.

Greece has long been at odds with its close neighbour, Turkey, over territorial disputes in the Aegean and the divided island of Cyprus.

Relations warmed after both countries suffered earthquakes in 1999 and offered each other practical help.

Although the disputes remain unresolved, the Greek government gives strong backing to Turkey's EU bid. It sees dividends to be gained from the increased regional stability that it believes membership would bring.

Greece has been in dispute since the early 1990s with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Greece contends that the use of the name Macedonia by the neighbouring country implies a territorial claim over Greece's own region of the same name. The UN is involved in continuing mediation efforts.

Athens stepped into the global spotlight when the Olympic Games returned home in 2004. The games were hailed as a success, despite widely publicised fears that the infrastructure would not be complete in time.

Below the image ran the slogan in Arabic, “Some things can’t be covered”, and a list of phone numbers for local domestic abuse shelters. In a culture that tends to turn a blind eye to the issue of violence towards women, it was a shocking and powerful image.

“It’s a problem that’s been swept under the carpet for years,” says Scott Abbott, the creative director for Memac Ogilvy, the Riyadh-based agency responsible for the advert.

When Ogilvy approached the King Khalid Foundation, a charity that focuses on issues of advocacy and developing the country’s non-profit sector, they weren’t sure what type of reaction to expect.

“I think that there was always a real concern that, given the subject matter, it would never get through,” says Abbott.

A major push came from Saudi princess HRH Banderi A.R. Al Faisal, the foundation’s director. Though the campaign has captured the public’s attention, both within Saudi and abroad, where an English version has made the rounds online, Al Faisal says she doesn’t see the ad as shocking.

“My media and PR team were a bit nervous going into this, saying, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’” she admits. “I didn’t understand why. I don’t understand what is so controversial. Who will say, ‘Yes, it’s ok for women to be beaten up’?”

Read more: Women directors find acclaim worldwide

Saudi women are legally reliant on the permission of their male guardians to travel freely, driving is still a socially contentious issue and there are no laws that protect victims of domestic abuse. According to Al Faisal, however, change is in the air.

“For several years, domestic abuse was sort of the elephant in the room. There was nowhere for a woman to go if she was abused because a system wasn’t set up to handle that,” she admits. Though the issue is still not completely out in the open, she notes the last few years has seen a rise in shelters that cater to female victims of violence.

It has been a watershed year for women’s rights in the conservative country. So far, women have been accepted into the government’s advisory Shura Council, given the right to vote, gained entry into a range of new professions (including engineering and law) and granted permission to have their own IDs without guardian permission.

Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch, admits that though these measures are impressive, more needs to be done to protect women inside the country.

“There are no laws that protect women specifically. If, for example, a woman claims rape, and a man says it was consensual, she can face a counter charge of adultery,” he says.

Though there is currently no law that punishes a man for beating his wife, the King Khalid Foundation has prepared legislation that would do just that. In fact, it is the pending bill, which would decide the punitive measures abusers could face (a mix of imprisonment, financial restitution and loss of custody), that spurred the campaign to begin with.

Last year, the Shura Council pushed through similar legislation the foundation helped pen protecting the rights of children in abusive situations. Al Faisal is confident that the drafted legislation will meet with the same level of success.

Read more: The Saudi museum with more Facebook likes than the Louvre

Coogle, however, says that Saudi still needs to overcome considerable social hurdles before the situation improves.

“Women who speak out about emotional abuse or neglect often face societal judgments. There is a prevalent attitude that if a man hits his wife, it’s acceptable, because she’s not being a good wife.”

Coogle points to a ten year old study in the Journal of Muslim Affairs where Saudi men were polled on whether they ever hit their wives — 53% answered yes.

Al Faisal agrees that the Saudi mindset has to change and notes that a major obstacle is the naturally guarded nature of the culture.

“This is a very private society, and we tend to try to deal with things discreetly. We do not air our dirty laundry in public, as families or as communities,” she says. “The negative side of that discretion is that it allows abusive behavior to thrive, because it is not stopped.”

A main goal of the campaign is to create a countrywide social dialogue. In that regard, says Abbott, the campaign has been successful.

“Outside of the two days of ads we ran, it’s been printed on the front page of national newspapers,” he says. “People are talking about it, and it’s been largely well-received.”

A huge country the size of Western Europe, Kazakhstan has vast mineral resources and enormous economic potential.

The varied landscape stretches from the mountainous, heavily populated regions of the east to the sparsely populated, energy-rich lowlands in the west, and from the industrialised north, with its Siberian climate and terrain, through the arid, empty steppes of the centre, to the fertile south.

Ethnically the country is as diverse, with the Kazakhs making up over half the population, the Russians comprising just over a quarter, and smaller minorities of Uzbeks, Koreans, Chechens and others accounting for the rest.

These groups generally live in harmony, though Russians resent the lack of dual citizenship and having to pass a Kazakh-language test in order to work for state agencies. Since independence many ethnic Russians have emigrated to Russia.

The main religion, Islam, was suppressed like all others under Communist rule, but has enjoyed a revival since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There has been major foreign investment in the Caspian oil sector, bringing rapid economic growth, averaging about 8% in the decade since 2000. By 2010, per capita gross domestic product was estimated to have grown more than tenfold since the mid-nineties.

An oil pipeline linking the Tengiz oil field in western Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk opened in 2001. In 2008, Kazakhstan began pumping some oil exports through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, as part of a drive to lessen its dependence on Russia as a transit country. A pipeline to China opened in late 2005.

Kazakhstan is also the world's largest producer of uranium.

In the 1990s, a small minority of Kazakhs grew very rich after independence through privatization and other business deals which opposition politicians alleged to have been corrupt, while many Kazakhs suffered from the initial negative impact of economic reform.

However, as a result of the growth since 2010, inequality is now less pronounced than in other Central Asian countries, and unemployment is low by regional standards. Some economic challenges remain, though, including persistently high inflation.

Politically, independent Kazakhstan has been dominated by former Communist Party chief Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose authoritarian rule has faced few challenges from weak opposition parties. The country's reputation for stability was rocked in in December 2011 when wage protests in oil-rich Mangystau Region prompted a violent police response in which 15 people died.

The people of Kazakhstan also have to live with the aftermath of Soviet-era nuclear testing and toxic waste dumping, as well as with growing drug addiction levels and a growing incidence of HIV/Aids. Inefficient Soviet irrigation projects led to severe shrinkage of the heavily polluted Aral Sea.