The Lede: Real Madrid Drops the Spanish Cup

 Kiko Huesca/European Pressphoto Agency Hours after Real Madrid lifted one of Spanish soccer’s most prestigious trophies, the team’s bus crushed it.

As my colleague Rob Hughes reports, late Wednesday night, the Spanish soccer club Real Madrid managed to win the Copa del Rey, or King’s Cup, for the first time in 18 years, defeating their archrivals, Barcelona, 1-0 in extra time.

Then, during the wild celebrations that ensued in the Spanish capital, one of the team’s stars dropped the trophy from the upper level of an open-topped double-decker bus. As this video of the mishap shows, seconds later, the team bus ran over the prestigious cup, which was smashed into “at least 10 pieces,” according a report in El Mundo.

The jeweler who made the trophy explained to El Mundo on Thursday that soccer officials on the scene immediately activated their “Plan B,” bringing out a copy of the trophy that is always kept on hand, to be deployed in just such an emergency.

The player who dropped the trophy, Sergio Ramos, made light of the incident, writing on Twitter that the cup had not fallen, but leapt from his hands in delight at seeing so many delighted Madrid supporters.

While the mishap left the door open for plenty of schadenfreude from Barcelona fans — who passed links to the video around social networks and quipped that the Madrid’s players are “not used to handling trophies” — fans of the Madrid club celebrated long into the night in the Spanish capital, and around the world.

Like all matches between the two giants of Spanish soccer, the clash between Real Madrid and Barcelona was closely watched far from Spain.

This video, posted on YouTube early on Thursday, shows that the Real Madrid victory was even celebrated by protesters camping in a square in the center of Sana, Yemen’s capital:

 

Students Hurt as 6-Year-Old Drops Pistol

 

HOUSTON — The kindergarten students were just sitting down in a cafeteria at Betsy Ross Elementary School on Monday when a loaded pistol tumbled out of the pocket of a 6-year-old boy and discharged, injuring him and two other children, school officials said.

The children’s injuries were not life threatening, the police said. They were taken by ambulance to a hospital, while school counselors tried to calm traumatized children and frantic parents rushed to the school in central Houston to pick up their children.

The police said it remained unclear how the boy obtained the weapon or who owns it. Only one shot was fired. School officials said the boy who had brought the gun suffered an injury to his leg that may have been caused by the bullet. The other two children, a boy and a girl, both 5, appeared to have been hit by flying debris or shrapnel. None were identified.

The shooting happened about 10:35 a.m. as the kindergartners were taking their seats in the cafeteria and some older children were filing in, said Sam Sarabia, the chief elementary schools officer for the Houston Independent School District. Mr. Sarabia said the gun fell from the boy’s pocket as he sat down to eat.

Two children, interviewed with their parents, said they heard the shot and saw a girl bleeding from her right foot.

“It dropped on the floor under the table, and it was loud, so loud,” said Kennedi Glapion, 6. “And she got shot in the foot.”

Isaiah Green, 7, said the gun “popped real loud” and “everybody was screaming — they was crying because the girl got shot.”

Teachers rushed children to their classrooms and locked them in for nearly an hour while the police secured the scene and medics tended to the injured children, school officials said.

District officials said that the school would have extra security guards and a team of counselors on hand Wednesday, but that no decision had been made about searching children entering the building.