The Rosarito Beach-Ensenada coastal road is typically populated by speeding and chortling cars,  but twice a year it shuts down and the roadway is taken over by the swooshing hum of bicycles. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that this may be the event's last year because of declining attendance. An organizer tells the newspaper that they need to have at least 7,000 to possibly keep the event going after 28 years. So far they are expecting just 5,000 for the Sept. 27 Saturday event (go to the article to learn more about why).

Doesn't that sound like a challenge? Maybe it's time for all of us to dust off our rusty two-wheelers. I know people who have done this 50-mile ride and they say it's not about being the fastest or having the most sophisticated bike, or sporting the most Lycra; It's more of a communal event with the highlight being the chance to see the stunning Baja California peninsula up front and close without the fear of being rear-ended.

For more information about registering, go here.

For a first-person account of what the Rosarito-Ensenada ride is like (two guys who start it off in Tijuana) , go here.

YouTube video of the ride from BajaGeoff.

But who would openly mock community organizers?  Who are they going to go after next?  Public health nurses?  Public library employees?  Block parents? (that's a Canadian thing)

I might understand if it was one person doing it, or if it was off-the-cuff and not an actual planned part of the speech.  But three of the speeches to directly mocked community organizers!  And lots of people at the convention were laughing!  One speech was given by Rudy Giuliani (the former mayor of New York City during 9/11, and presidential nominee rival of John McCain this year), and the last one was given by Gov. Sarah Palin, the new Vice Presidential running mate of John McCain!

I'm surprised that the public outrage isn't mounting.  Or is it about to?  I found this blog on Wordpress:

Community Organizers Fight Back

It seems that community organizers are at least as outraged as I am that they would be attacked so systematically by the Republican Party.  It's like shooting at the Red Cross medics during WWII! (who does that?  while on national television?)

Anyways, the community organizers' first blog post records the following quotes from the RNC this week.  I'll let you guys read them for yourselves.

-Former Governor George Pataki said: “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.”

-Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said: “On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? [Laughter]…I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”

-Governor Sarah Palin said: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Anyways, it's not like a totally a Republican supporter or totally a Democrat supporter.  I'm an evangelical Christian who's socially conservative (in the sense of pro-life and traditional definition of marriage) with a liberal slant on things like poverty and universal health care (I am Canadian, after all).  So I guess I should try and be bi-partisan :P

It's just... sometimes there are things going on in this Presidential race that I feel the need to yell about!

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Chasing tips about tunnels is the kind of thing that border reporters do. After a few years of this, I developed a routine: Change into jeans and tennis shoes, grab a map, and bring a sweater in case the search drags into the night.

Typically, but not always, the tunnels would be discovered on the U.S. side. Being based out of Tijuana, my job was to find their entrance. Often times this was what the Mexican authorities were doing, too, so the process involved us - reporters, mostly Mexican - hanging around the periphery of whatever area seemed to be of interest to the investigators.  Sometimes the hunt took up to 24 hours, but it was often worth the wait. Since Mexican authorities were less strict with liability issues, this could mean a chance to poke around a recently-found tunnel (used to either smuggle people or drugs).

The last big tunnel I got to cover along the California border was the large one found December, 2007, in Tecate. It happened at the exact moment I learned my then-employer, The San Diego Union-Tribune, would be offering buyouts. My former colleague Sandra Dibble has since taken over tunnel duty, and writes this story about the latest incomplete tunnel found in Mexicali that included a hydraulic pulley. For a story by the Los Angeles Times, go here; for KPBS-San Diego, go here.

The Union-Tribune also has  an interactive map and description of border tunnels since 1990. I'm not sure it has been updated, but at the end of December, 2007, I had counted 73 tunnels found since 1990 along the California and Arizona border.

Photo: Looking up from inside the Tecate tunnel, found December, 2007

The first time I went to a Sinaloan seafood restaurant in Tijuana, I was a little nervous. Based on their reputation, I was prepared for ear-splitting live music and perhaps a gunshot or two.

The state of Sinaloa is considered to be the craddle of Mexican drug trafficking, and I've occasionally heard Baja California law enforcement officials bemoan the "Sinaloan factor." Never mind that Sinaloans here comprise the majority of migrants* from other Mexican states so they are also bound to be your in-laws, neighbors and fruit vendors.

Sinaloan associations have tried to get the public to see the more positive side of their contributions, namely their food, but it's been a tough sell. I finally went to Negro Durazo** for the first time a few years ago and found the food to be scrumptious: fish and seafood battered in cheese and unbelievably rich sauces. 

This weekend, The New York Times ran a story about how ongoing drug-related violence is affecting people's lives in large and small ways, and it quotes an unnamed source as saying he's avoiding Sinaloan restaurants lately for their fair-or-not association with gangster clientele. I know a few people who have avoided Sinaloan food places their entire lives, which is an unfortunate reaction to the convergence of reality and perception.

If you want to try Sinaloan food in Tijuana without the ambience, there's a mini-branch of Negro Durazo at the Zona Rio mall food court, just a few minutes from the San Ysidro Border on Paseo de Los Heroes,  There's also a Negro Durazo north of the border, in Chula Vista.

* A study on Baja California migration says 16.6 percent of the state's residents come from Sinaloa.

**I once tried to get someone at Negro Durazo to explain to me the origin of the nickname, but no one seemed to have an answer. Perhaps the most famous "Negro Durazo" was Arturo Durazo, a controversial Mexican police chief from more than two decades ago, who amassed an illicit fortune.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which is reportedly being considered for sale, is going through another round of voluntary staff reductions. Exempt from this option is Sandra Dibble, a veteran journalist who arguably knows the Baja California border better than any other U.S. reporter.

Sandra is all that's left of the paper's long-standing Mexico staff (reporter Leslie Berestein covers immigration out of San Diego, and Omar Millan writes primarily for the paper's Spanish-language Enlace). Sandra and I used to work together at the paper's Tijuana office. In December, I took a voluntary buyout and so did border business reporter Diane Lindquist. The company's long-time Mexico City correspondent, S. Lynne Walker, also opted out.

Since then, I've started this blog and graduate school. Diane created a border business web site. And S. Lynne Walker is vice president of the UCSD-based Institute of the Americas. The media landscape is changing drastically as the Internet creates new ways of sharing information and disrupts traditional advertising models. The paper's decision to protect the lone-standing border reporter is both a hopeful and sad testimony to journalism's struggle to survive.

I recently wrote a paper on the past and future of border journalism, "Border Journalism in the New Media Age," that was published by the University of San Diego-based  Trans-Border Institute. For an interesting graphic on journalism layoffs and buyouts go here.

Map image from Wikimedia Commons classified as being in the public domain.

To Obama's credit, he is calling for action to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortion.  So if you care about protecting the lives of the unborn, you should care about supporting any action that would reduce abortion in America.  But does that outweigh the potential effect of overturning Roe v. Wade?  Maybe it would, since overturning Roe v. Wade simply means that the U.S. or individual states will be able to decide for themselves whether to pass laws making abortion legal or illegal - it doesn't mean that abortion would suddenly become illegal in America.

But man, what a speech.  He even ended his speech by quoting from this verse (albeit out of context, but with a "somewhat" similar sentiment):

Hebrews 10:23 - Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

If only there were more people who were able to bring people together in unity while confronting the misguided ideas and actions (and sin) that hold us back from glorifying God.  Thankfully we have John Piper (and friends).

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For more info: CNN coverage - video

Chase Jarvis RAW - Advanced Testing the Nikon D90

You can find out more from Nikon's promotional D90 site - here - or read their promotional PDF brochure - here.

Maybe one day I will try and get a used D90.  It's bigger than my D40 (it's the same size as the D80), but that also means that it has an auto-focus drive pin (so I won't have to always manual focus my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens).  What I think is really the deal maker is the new D-movie mode.  Basically, it lens you take High Definition videos using your DSLR camera, which is amazing because DSLR's are usually used with really nifty lenses.  Yup, I'd be able to make cinematic-like movies (with shallow depth of field, and also low-light performance).

If you have no idea what this whole blog post was about, here's the summary: the D90 is a powerful upgrade, but the real news item is the world's first movie mode on a DSLR.

EDIT: Oh, and if you have no idea why I'm so excited about DSLR's making movies, you need to check out this link:

Sample D-movies in action (DSLR movies)

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The New York Times ran a story this weekend about Alberto Capella, the city of Tijuana's brash top law enforcement official who survived an attack by gunmen on his house last year by repelling them with gunfire before he even started the job.

Prior to his appointment as Secretary of Public Security, Capella had been a rabble-rousing activist who led marches to bring attention to public security problems. Journalists gravitated to him for that perfect quote to counterbalance the latest government official line. Well, now Capella is part of that government and one of his quotes caught my eye as the angle less explored:

“I know what the society thinks about police because I once thought the same thing,” he said. “Now that I’m on the other side, I’m seeing the other side, the sacrifices that police make."

Being on the other side seems to have given him some perspective. While I have little doubt that Capella's intentions are good, the power of the criminal underworld here places limits on what a person can do. Telling that story can be extremely difficult, but we all want to believe in a hero and people like him represent hope to the rest of us. For more on why it's so hard to be a hero in Mexican law enforcement, read this indepth story about Mexicali police officer Jose Luis Montoya.

Wow.  I actually don't know too much about Sen. Joe Biden, but here are my very superficial thoughts on this: this will be a significant benefit to help get over any racial or other biases against Obama that might take away a small percentage of votes come November when the U.S. goes to the polls.  I personally think a small but significant percentage of U.S. voters would not vote for an African-American man to be their president, or perhaps they wouldn't vote for him because he's relatively young.  The United States has a lot more racial tension than what I think we're used to seeing here in Canada (i.e. relatively little), so I think the race factor is a significant factor in this upcoming election.  With an experienced, established, older white male as his Vice Presidential running mate, I think it will have a psychological effect of demonstrating that the average American voter can be comfortable in voting for Barack Obama.  If someone like Senator Joe Biden has no problem following a leader like Obama, why not me? That's what I think and hope will be going through voters' minds this election.

Anyways, that's just one angle on this VP pick by Obama.  I don't think the racial aspect will get too much play in the media analysis, just because it's such a sensitive issue and people generally don't want to "accuse" significant portions of the country of racial prejudice, but I think it's something that has to be considered.

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When Vicente Fox was elected president of Mexico in 2000, the streets of Tijuana erupted in celebratory screams and shouts to mark the end of more than seventy years of rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party. 

During his six-year term, Fox returned regularly to Tijuana and  Baja California, a state that has historically been a stronghold of his National Action Party. As a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune, I caught up with him at the San Ysidro border where he announced a program to ensure a safe passage for Mexican-Americans heading south for the Christmas holidays. Another time, during a visit to a poor colonia, I trotted up to him to ask a question but he brushed me off. With all the bodyguards, convoys and the media mash of microphones and cameras, there were plenty of barriers between the president and me. 

This week, I had my chance to chat with the ex-president in Los Angeles during breakfast with a small group of USC (University of Southern California) deans and faculty. The meeting was held to discuss potential collaborations with Fox's latest project, Centro Fox, a research and cultural center in his home state of Guanajuato. Afterwards, Fox mentioned to me his concern about Tijuana. We chatted a bit about his recent visit to Baja's wine country, Valle de Guadalupe, and about his friendship with ex-Baja Governor Eugenio Elorduy.

He's not the only high-ranking official I've run into again up here. Just last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, who also once held a press conference at the San Ysidro border, visited the university. In a funny sort of come-full-circle of my past and present, I ended up writing short stories as a media rep about both recent events:

"Homeland Security Secretary Visits USC"

"Vicente Fox Meets USC Leaders"

Photo of Fox identified by Wikimedia Commons as available for public use

CTV has been doing this series of commercials for ER, because apparently the final season is coming up.  ER is a longtime running show that I used to watch growing up (like, as long as 12 years ago?) and is credited with featuring stars like Anthony Edwards (who played "Goose" in Top Gun) and for inspiring the career aspirations of my sister (Dr. Shermeen Chan).  Plus, it had George Clooney in it.

Anyways, the series of ads has been cool, because it recaps significant moments across the series' 14 year run (wow, I was watching it 14 years ago), like the time that Dr. Carter and that female (medical) resident got stabbed from behind by the guy with paranoid delusions.  Whose great idea was it to bring out a giant knife to cut birthday cake earlier in the episode?!  I blame that episode for making me afraid to walk into my bedroom in the dark without checking behind the door for, like, a couple of years (I was probably 14).  I think it's part of the reason that I'm uneasy very cautious around knives to this day.

Anyways, I just wanted to end off with this observation: Abby married Luka?!  What the?!...  I guess that's what happens when you don't watch a show for like 6 years.

Memorable characters: Dr. Benton, Dr. Ross, Nurse Hathaway, Dr. Greene (and Dr. Greene day, August 25th), Dr. Maluchi (the guy who wasn't very good at medicine), the girl resident who got (fatally) stabbed, Sally Fields' character, the cool nurses who ran the desk and stuff, the arrogant surgeon guy whose arm got cut off by a helicoptor tail rotor, Dr. Morgenstern (played by William H. Macy), the list goes on and on....  Oh yeah, and Dr. what's-her-name-because-I-should-really-remember-it who is Caucasian but grew up in South Africa or something and had to walk with a crutch/arm brace thingie (ok, I looked it up - her name was Dr. Weaver).  Btw, all of these characters aren't on the show anymore (except maybe the last one is still on it).

Memorable moments: (other than the stabbing one), there was that episode where George Clooney's character was a total hero and saved this kid from a storm drain during a huge storm (it was more dramatic than that).  George Clooney was rumored to be leaving the series at that point or something, but they decided to keep him and wrote up that episode I think.  Then there are all those crazy times they went to Africa and filmed on location (or so it seemed).  And there was that huge crazy bus crash that had Dr. Weaver's character ranting about how school buses should be forced to use seat belts ("it's like sending our kids off to the slaughter").

Anyways, my point is that ER has probably influenced my life more than would be apparent.  Just like a lot of the other TV I've watched (I came to this conclusion about the influence of certain TV shows in my life when I started watching Star Trek: Voyager after a long... "absence").  The power of the story-telling medium.

In this endless cat-and-mouse chase, sometimes surprise tactics work and sometimes they don't. And occasionally innocent people get caught up in the system's imperfections.

Just ask a Mexican painter printer who was awarded more than half a million dollars in a case against the U.S. government, according to a story in The San Diego Union-Tribune. That episode started when he bought a previously confiscated car - with drugs still inside - from a government auction north of the border. When the drugs were eventually found at a checkpoint in Mexico, Rivera was arrested and spent a year in a Mexican prison, according to the article.

Several other similar Kafkaesque cases emerged between 1999 and 2003 along this part of the border. Attorneys who represented Rivera told the Union-Tribune they believe the U.S. government has since improved its inspections of seized vehicles.

In my own case this weekend, there was a moment when the Customs dog seemed to have a leaning towards one of the vehicles at the front. But after a few roundabouts he or she moved on and everyone who came with their cars left with their cars.

Picture of cars waiting to cross into the United States from the Otay Mesa border.

                                               Photo by Nathan Gibbs

Many tires come to Tijuana, not to die, but to take on a second life for creative and practical purposes. It's common to see tires used as stairways or reinforcement along the dangerously-sloped hillsides. Painted yellow, they become curb fences. Others turn into playground apparatus.

But many other tires end up languishing in limbo, creating potential fire hazards or breeding grounds for pests. This past week, tires were part of the talk at the Border Governors Conference in Los Angeles. Environmental secretaries from all ten U.S.-Mexico states signed the Tire Initiative Letter of Understanding, "which implements tire pile prevention measures and strives to eliminate tire piles public health risks," according to a press release from the EPA. 

I meant to snap some pictures this weekend of tires in odd places, but I missed a few opportunities so I'm borrowing from Nathan Gibbs, who has a blog that includes interesting videos and multimedia mashups of Tijuana life and scenes.

Read about another border issue - pollution - discussed at the conference here.

The San Diego Union-Tribune published an interesting story about the transfer of controversial Mexican General Sergio Aponte Polito (pictured above), who oversaw military operations in the state of Baja California and who had been writing some damning letters about other agencies.

Aponte's public allegations came as a surprise to many reporters here who were more used to military officials providing vague and meaningless quotes during occasional drug-burning events. But the military, with its larger role in combatting drug trafficking here,  appeared to have a change of heart in the wake of drug-related violence earlier this year. 

The military reached out to the media (serving, from what I hear, better cookies at their events than the police agencies). Then the General started scribbling letters to the media, accusing state officials of corruption. He even listed names. People started to wonder how long he would last before he was gunned down or removed from his post. Whether Aponte was being imprudent or brutally honest, it's probably safe to say the military's brief glasnost period has ended.

Update: The Los Angeles Times writes about the General. See another story by the Associated Press here.

photo of Aponte from July 25, 2008,  Zeta weekly cover

CBC was doing this story on bike theft and how it's way too easy and too big of a problem in Canadian cities these days.  They basically set up a bait bike with a lock, and then waited to see if anybody would steal it.  Turns out someone came and did steal it, and then they confronted him:

(See half-way mark; some profanity because it's allowed on Canadian news)
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/23745/thenational/archive/bicycletheft-073108.wmv

I would like to point out a few things to you, the viewer/reader:

1. Look how ashamed and guilty Kevin (the name of the guy who was stealing the bike) immediately was when he was confronted.  He clearly expressed what most people fail to realize about themselves every day: the things we do are wrong, and there's something... wrong with that.
2. The reason Kevin ended up stealing bikes and selling them off for $20 each was because he's addicted to heroin.  Drug abuse (not the drug addicts themselves) are a scourge on our country.  It must be fought so that people like Kevin have a chance.
3. If you let yourself get numbed to the reality of broken lives and very real problems in our own city, you will end up like how the CBC journalist appears to be - largely unmoved by his encounter with Kevin.  Not a hint of sympathy expressed to Kevin, not even a soft shot of him pausing his interview to comfort Kevin.  Instead, he seems to be focussed only on things related to his original story's angle (the prevalence of bike theft).  I think it's really easy for us to react the exact same way (i.e. not caring).

It should bother us that no one was able to comfort Kevin, and that no one brought him real hope.

This is where I challenge you, the reader, to stop and consider why you might be tempted to go on indifferently after glancing over this story.  Do something to help people like Kevin; do something to fight the causes or effects of drug abuse.  If you have no idea where to start, then your action might be simply to start thinking of where to start (here's the first place to look, just off the top of my head - Union Gospel Mission).

And I do wish someone was able at that moment to give Kevin a big hug, validate his feelings of shame (I mean, that's a legit feeling in that situation!), and to go a step further and tell him why shame isn't the final word.

...the reason I voiced some negative thoughts about The Shack was because of some excerpts that I read from it from the review. For example,

"In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges" (65-66, emphasis added).
- According to Tim Challies, this excerpt is part ofThe Shack's tendency to downplay the importance of Scripture. From this passage, it even seems to denigrate the Bible ("God's voicehad been reduced to paper"). This is contrary to what God tells us clearly in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and Psalm 19:7 as Tim Challies pointed out. So if you believe that the Bible is merely God's word "reduced to paper", what you actually find in the pages of that paper contradicts that opinion.

Here's another, quite different, example of what seems to be false teaching. Granted, I don't know the entire context around this sentence, but the sentence itself doesn't leave much room for doubt as to its meaning:

(as taken from Tim Challies review)
He is not a God who could have poured out upon His Son His just wrath for sin. In fact, God does not need to punish sin at all, says Papa. "I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it" (120).

God doesn't need to punish people for their sin? Sin itself is its own punishment? What the hell (so to speak)? While sin does often have nasty consequences here on Earth, those consequences aren't truly just. Why else would the Bible speak/observe that the wicked often get away with what they're doing? (examples) Sin itself is not its own punishment. Otherwise, there'd be nothing to worry about. Do something wrong or terrible? Just move on, because "sin is its own punishment", so you're good to go.

So those are my thoughts on a couple things that were pointed out by Tim Challies review of The Shack. My assumption is that little tidbits, or even overarching themes in the book, can easily be glossed over, but it's a big deal if you actually stop to consider what they mean.

U.S. and Mexican officials publicly define cross-border relations in positive terms such as "cooperation" and "strides." I get the impression that things have improved, but behind the scenes Mexico still gets flak for not doing enough to stop drug trafficking while the United States is criticized for not doing enough to stop the southbound flow of guns.

Things get even touchier when officials are allegedly involved in the activities. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that last week U.S. authorities in the Los Angeles area arrested a Mexican federal investigator, Carlos Alberto Cedano Filippini, and several other people on drug related charges. Cedano oversaw the Mexicali (Baja California) office of a Mexican federal investigations unit (AFI) that's often compared to the FBI.

Interestingly, several days later, two Monterey County police officers were detained in Tijuana by Mexican authorities after allegedly bringing guns and ammunition across the border, according to the Monterey County Herald.

The Los Angeles Times also ran a story of Cedano's arrest here.

Highway crew blasts rock cliff above slide - CBCnews.ca

The photos are cool. Basically, they're blowing up a big chunk of the cliff above the rockpile on the road, so that they can be sure there won't be any more rockslides in the future (e.g. while they're clearing the rocks off the road this week).

Sometimes things have to get worse before they become better.

In other news, some of my friends who were stuck in Whistler made it back tonight, finally. Others who are up there for a staff conference are gonna have to take the 9-hour road detour (at the end of the week) to get back to Vancouver, I think.

Ok, I'm going to relate the theme of this blog post to a Bible passage, now, because it's so true:

"Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

- 1 Peter 5:6-11 (ESV)

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John and Eloise Bergen are back home in Calgary, now.  I'm really glad they made it back, because it seemed to be a little difficult getting them back.  Apparently, their daughter-in-law Robyn McGough left a comment on my last post - she told us about some of the financial difficulties regarding bringing them back.  Anyways, I'm glad they're back.

MANILA, Philippines - The 346 passengers were cruising at 29,000 feet Friday when an explosive bang shook the Qantas jumbo jet. The plane descended rapidly. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling as debris flew through the cabin from a hole that had suddenly appeared in the floor.

It wasn't until they were safely on the ground after an emergency landing that they realized how lucky they had been: A hole the size of a small car had been ripped into the Boeing 747-400's metal skin and penetrated the fuselage.

The eerie scene aboard Flight QF 30, captured on a passenger's cell phone video-camera, showed a tense quiet punctuated only by a baby's cries as passengers sat with oxygen masks on their faces. The jerky footage showed a woman holding tightly to the seat in front of her as rapidly approaching land appeared through a window. Loud applause and relieved laughter went up as the plane touched down.

There were no injuries and only a few cases of nausea, airline officials said. An official of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said initial reports indicated no link to terrorism.

Investigators appeared to be focusing on a structural problem.

"From the pictures that we've seen out of Manila during the course of the day, it would seem that one of the panels to the outer skin of the aircraft has literally come away from the rest of the fuselage," Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane's Aviation, told The Associated Press.

"As a consequence of this, the aircraft experienced rapid decompression," he said.

While it is not uncommon for metal panels to be lost from aircraft in flight, he said: "It's relatively rare that when a bit falls off the airplane it causes the sort of instance that we saw in relation to Qantas. In other words that it causes the aircraft cabin to depressurize."

Yates said investigators will examine closely the fracture points that showed up on the skin of the aircraft to determine whether metal fatigue or manufacturing defect caused the panel to peel away.

The passengers, on a flight from London to Melbourne, had just been served a meal after a stopover in Hong Kong when they described hearing a loud bang, then their ears popping as air rushed out the hole. The pilots put the plane into a quick descent to 10,000 feet, where the atmosphere is still thin but breathable.

The Manila airport authority, quoting pilot John Francis Bartels, said the plane suffered an "explosive decompression."

"One hour into the flight there was a big bang, then the plane started going down," passenger Marina Scaffidi, 39, from Melbourne, told The Associated Press by phone from the airport. "There was wind swirling around the plane and some condensation."

She said a hole extended from the cargo hold into the passenger cabin.

After the pilots' initial rapid descent, "the plane kept going down, not too fast, but it was descending," Scaffidi said, adding the staff informed passengers they were diverting to Manila. TV screens on the backs of seats allowed them to track their route to the Philippine capital.

"No one was very hysterical," she said.

June Kane of Melbourne agreed, telling Australia's ABC radio: "It was absolutely terrifying, but I have to say everyone was very calm."

Amazingly calm, in fact.

Video footage showed people looking almost as if nothing was wrong as they glanced from side to side, their nearly untouched meals still in front of them. The cabin crew continued to work, smiling as they walked down the aisles to reassure nervous passengers.

After the plane touched down safely amid applause, one of the pilots could be heard saying over the intercom: "Fire vehicles and emergency vehicles are going to take a look at us."

What they found was a stunning sight. A 9-foot-wide hole gaped at the joint where the front of the right wing attaches to the plane. Luggage from the cargo hold strained against the webbing used to keep it from shifting during a flight.

A curved line of rivets was still visible on the plane's body at the front edge where the missing sheet once was; a straight line of rivets was along the other.

Boeing spokeswoman Liz Verdier said it was too soon to determine what caused the hole, but the company was providing technical assistance as part of an investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board.

"We are dispatching four personnel from Boeing, an investigator and three engineers," who were leaving immediately, she said.

The probe into the 17-year-old aircraft was likely to be lengthy, Verdier said, and the Boeing team expects to interview the crew and examine the structure of the plane, among other things.

Friday's incident carried some echoes of a 1988 case in which a large section of an older Aloha Airlines jetliner was torn off over Hawaii because of metal fatigue. Although the pilots were able to land, a flight attendant died and many of the 89 passengers were seriously injured.

Geoff Dixon, the chief executive officer of Qantas, Australia's largest airline, praised the pilots and the rest of the 19-member crew for how they handled Friday's events.

"This was a highly unusual situation and our crew responded with the professionalism that Qantas is known for," he said.

The passengers were taken to several hotels in Manila, then left just before midnight on another plane to Melbourne.

Qantas boasts a strong safety record and has never lost a jet to an accident, although there were crashes of smaller planes, the last in 1951. Since then, there have been no accident-related deaths on any Qantas jets.

However, the airline has had a few scares in recent years.

In February 2008, a Qantas 717 with 84 passengers on board sustained substantial damage in a heavy landing in Darwin, Australia. And the year before, Qantas acknowledged that an unlicensed mechanical engineer had conducted safety checks on more than 1,000 international flights over a 12-month period at Sydney airport.

In September 1999, a Qantas Boeing 747-400 with more than 400 people on board overshot a runway in Bangkok, Thailand, during bad weather.

Union engineers — who have held several strikes this year to demand pay raises — say that safety is being compromised by low wages and overtime work.

As of December 2007, Qantas was operating 216 aircraft flying to 140 destinations in 37 countries, though in recent months it has announced it will retire some aircraft and cancel some routes — as well as cutting 1,500 jobs worldwide — due to skyrocketing fuel prices.

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Associated Press writers Lily Hindy in New York, Oliver Teves and Teresa Cerojano in Manila, and Tanalee Smith in Sydney, Australia, contributed to this report.