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More flights a go as new ash cloud appears

REYKJAVIK, Iceland, April 20 (UPI) -- A limited number of flights resumed Tuesday in Europe, as a new ash cloud from a volcano in Iceland kept most of British airspace closed, officials said.

Eurocontrol, Europe's air traffic control agency, said it expected as many as 60 percent of flights to be green-lighted Tuesday, the BBC reported.

While many flights remain grounded, some planes took off from Paris, Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Frankfurt, Germany, officials said. Air traffic controllers said about 10,000 of Europe's 27,500 daily flights were scheduled to fly.

To address the situation created by volcanic ash drifting over Europe from Iceland, the European Union transport ministers created three levels of airspace: a no-fly area, a limited service zone and an open skies area, the BBC reported.

In Spain, where all airports were open, the government offered European countries use of its airports to get passengers moving again.

The International Air Transport Association pegged losses at more than $1 billion since most of Europe's airspace closed last week because of southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.

Olivier Jankovec, director general of Airports Council International-Europe, said in a statement airports had lost nearly $184 million as of Sunday, CNN said.

"The presence of a new ash cloud "demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working," the United Kingdom's National Air Traffic Service in London said in a statement. "Latest information ... shows that the situation is worsening in some areas."

Observers said wind was expected to shift, blowing the ash to the north, Iceland Review said.

More than 6.8 million passengers have been affected, Jankovec said in a statement.

Child, grandma rescued

BEIJING, April 20 (UPI) -- A 4-year-old girl and her grandmother, trapped in rubble for about 123 hours in China's earthquake-battered Yushu County, were rescued, authorities said.

The ordeal lasted more than five days in a village near Jiegu, the worst affected town in the county in northwest Qinghai province, and ended when rescuers brought the two to safety Monday, China Daily reported. The earthquake struck the mountainous regions April 14.

The girl, Tsering Palkyi, suffered only minor injuries and has returned to her family, rescuers said. Her grandmother, Urgyen Tsemon, 68, was under medical observation.

The two got trapped under the rubble after a building collapsed and family members could not free them because of the weight of the rubble. The family members managed to give them water and cereals while awaiting rescuers, the report said.

"They were determined to stay alive," Ao Dingqiang, who led the eight-man rescue team to save them, told China Daily.

He said his team drove to the scene after being summoned by local villagers and found both the girl and the woman still conscious. He said rescuers used a hydraulic jack to lift the collapsed mud-brick wall to make enough room for the two to get free.

In a similar rescue, a Tibetan woman in Yushu was pulled out after being trapped for about 130 hours.

Google Internet raid began in China

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 20 (UPI) -- An instant message sent to a Google employee in China using Microsoft's Messenger program was the start of an Internet raid against Google, an insider says.

A person with knowledge of last December's intrusion told The New York Times on condition of anonymity losses in the theft involved a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide.

The system allows users and employees to sign in with their password just once to operate a range of services, The Times reported Tuesday.

Intruders gained access to it by getting a Google employee to click on a link in an instant message that connected to a "poisoned" Web site.

After achieving access to the employee's personal computer, the intruders moved into the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google's California headquarters.

Independent computer experts told the Times there is a faint possibility the thieves might have found weaknesses of which even Google is unaware.

Church leaders rip Ariz. immigration bill

PHOENIX, April 20 (UPI) -- A Catholic cardinal ripped immigration legislation passed in Arizona, calling the bill "mean-spirited" and saying it would compel people to rat on each other.

The Arizona legislation, which hasn't been signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, would make it a crime to be in the state illegally and would require law enforcement officers to check the legal status of people they suspect are undocumented, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. To address the day-labor trade, a provision would bar people from soliciting work or hiring workers under certain circumstances.

"The Arizona legislature just passed the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited and useless anti-immigrant law," Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote on his blog. "The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense."

Mahony, an influential religious voice nationwide and leader of the country's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, compared the legislation to "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques" that compelled people to turn each other in. The Los Angeles archdiocese is nearly 70 percent Latino.

Religious leaders in Arizona also criticized the legislation, calling on Brewer to veto the bill. In a letter, the leaders also said the measure could drain the economy by driving down business, reducing public safety by diverting police resources and dissuading illegal immigrants from reporting crime.

U.S. planning to reduce salt in food

WASHINGTON, April 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease by reducing salt in food, insiders say.

FDA sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government intends to work with the food industry to gradually reduce sodium in everything from soup to nuts, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The sources said a gradual reduction in sodium over a period of years will adjust the American palate to a less salty and healthier diet.

The effort will involve analyzing the amount of salt in thousands of products on supermarket shelves.

One source told the Post the project would likely take as long as 10 years.

"We're talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient," the source said.

Currently there is no limit on the amount of salt in food because salt falls into a category deemed "generally recognized as safe."