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Vietnam cannot find object from missing Malaysian jet
KUALA LUMPUR: Vietnamese searchers on ships worked throughout the night but could not find a rectangle object spotted on Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that went missing more than two days ago.
Doan Huu Gia, the chief of Vietnam’s search and rescue coordination centre, said on Monday that four planes and seven ships from Vietnam were searching for the object but nothing had been found.
The Boeing 777 went missing early Saturday morning on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
The plane lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam, and searchers in a low-flying plane spotted an object that appeared to be one of the plane’s doors, the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper said, citing the deputy chief of staff of Vietnam’s army, Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan.
The jetliner apparently fell from the sky at cruising altitude in fine weather, and the pilots were either unable or had no time to send a distress signal, adding to the mystery over the final minutes of the flight.
There are also questions over how two passengers managed to board the ill-fated aircraft using stolen passports.
Interpol confirmed it knew about the stolen passports but said no authorities checked its vast databases on stolen documents before the Boeing jetliner departed on Saturday.
Warning “only a handful of countries” routinely make such checks, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble chided authorities for “waiting for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates”.
On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight’s manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.
“I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV,” Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late on Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. “We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board.”
The thefts of the two passports one belonging to Austrian Christian Kozel and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy were entered into Interpol’s database after they were stolen in Thailand in 2012 and last year, the police body said.
Electronic booking records show that one-way tickets with those names were issued on Thursday from a travel agency in the beach resort of Pattaya in eastern Thailand. The agency refused to comment.
But no authorities in Malaysia or elsewhere checked the passports against the database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents before the Malaysian Airlines plane took off.
Possible causes of the crash included some sort of explosion, a catastrophic failure of the plane’s engines, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide. Establishing what happened with any certainty will need data from flight recorders and a detailed examination of any debris, something that will take months if not years.
Malaysia’s air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar indicated that before it disappeared, the plane may have turned back, but there were no further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.
“We are trying to make sense of this,” Daud said at a news conference. “The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back, and in some parts this was corroborated by civilian radar.”
Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots are supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn. “From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled,” he said.
A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States were deployed to the area where ground controllers lost contact with the plane on the maritime border between Malaysia and Vietnam.
Of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, two-thirds were Chinese, while the rest were from elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America, including three Americans.
Family members of Philip Wood, a 50-year-old IBM executive who was on board the plane, said they saw him a week ago when he visited them in Texas after relocating to Kuala Lumpur from Beijing, where he had worked for two years.
Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over a large area. If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.
A team of American experts was en route to Asia to be ready to assist in the investigation into the crash. The team includes accident investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, as well as technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the safety board said in a statement.
Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San Francisco, killing three passengers, all Chinese teenagers.
Details also emerged Sunday about the itineraries of the two passengers travelling on the stolen passports.
A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline confirmed Sunday that passengers named Maraldi and Kozel had been booked on one-way tickets on the same KLM flight, flying from Beijing to Amsterdam on Saturday. Maraldi was to fly on to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany.
She said the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, but she had no information on where they bought them.As holders of EU passports with onward flights to Europe, the passengers would not have needed visas for China.
Interpol said it and national investigators were working to determine the true identities of those who used the stolen passports to board the flight. White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions.
Interpol has long sounded the alarm that growing international travel has underpinned a new market for identity theft — bogus passports are mostly used by illegal immigrants, but also pretty much anyone looking to travel unnoticed such as drug runners or terrorists. More than 1 billion times last year, travellers boarded planes without their passports being checked against Interpol’s database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents, the police agency said.
- Agencies
Fresh snowfall in Kashmir Valley
SRINAGAR: Kashmir Valley, including
Srinagar city, today received fresh snowfall, forcing authorities to close schools for two days.The residents of the Valley woke up to a white cover of snow which had enveloped the landscape.
Nearly three inches of snow had accumulated in Srinagar city while more than one-and-a-half foot was recorded in Gulmarg tourist resort and several other parts of north Kashmir.
In Pahalgam resort, one foot of snow had been recorded till 8.30 AM, officials said.
The snowfall was preceded by heavy rainfall in most parts of the Valley last evening with Srinagar recording 46.3 mm of rainfall.
Divisional Administration of Kashmir announced that schools upto standard VIII will be closed for two days due to a dip in temperature caused by the downpour, an official spokesman said.
Schools in the Valley had reopened on March 3 after three months of winter vacation.
The downpour has led to water-logging of all major roads around the commercial hub of Lal Chowk and surrounding areas.
Traffic was moving at a snail's pace while pedestrians were facing difficulty in moving around due to puddles on the roads.
- PTI
Haryana,
Punjab lashed by rains
CHANDIGARH:
Moderate to heavy rains lashed many parts of Haryana and Punjab today.
The sky was heavily overcast in Chandigarh this morning and sharp
showers later brought down the day temperature here.
Rains also lashed many places in Haryana including Panchkula,
Kurukshetra, Hisar, the NCR areas of Sonepat, Gurgaon and Faridabad, MeT
office here said.
In Punjab, Mohali, Amritsar, Patiala and Ropar were among other places
which were lashed by rains.
A MeT official said that the change in weather was due to a Western
Disturbance, which hovered over J-K and neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, the minimum temperatures settled in the range of 13-16
degrees Celsius at most places in Haryana and Punjab today, which were
above normal by up to four notches.
Weathermen have warned that hailstorm/thundersqualls with wind speed
exceeding 45 kmph may occur at isolated places in the two states within
next 24-hours. - PTI
Modi takes a dig at
Rahul, Nitish
PURNEA (Bihar): Rahul Gandhi is behaving as if he has come from planet Mars, Narendra Modi today said taunting the Congress leader for levelling accusations on others, instead of accounting for his party's 10-year rule at the Centre.
Addressing a rally here, Modi also attacked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, saying the arrogance of the person who claims to be the "most suitable" and "able" candidate for the Prime Minister's post, was higher than even Mt Everest.
Referring to Rahul as 'Shehzaada' (prince) numerous times during his address, Modi said, "he is moving around the country giving sermons and lectures. Should he not give an account of the 10 years of rule at the Centre." "He is delivering lectures and accusing others as if he has come from planet Mars. Congress' 'Shehzaade' should declare first whether this government belongs to his party or not," The BJP's PM candidate said while criticising Rahul for attacking others and remaining silent on Congress-led UPA's performance in the last 10 years.
Modi accused the Congress vice president of not answering any questions posed to him on corruption, unemployment, price rise and lack of development under his party's rule.
"The Prince makes allegations but is not ready to answer any question," Modi said. The Gujarat Chief Minister asked the gathering if Congress government gave them computers or mobiles when they could not even provide electricity to charge them.
"Shehzaadeji, you claim to give them mobiles, but does India have power to charge them. Please answer. I want to ask you how much are you interested in India's future," Modi said citing figures that only 2 per cent schools in Bihar had computers.
Modi also cited example of other states with Congress governments. Assam, he said, had seven per cent computers in schools, Haryana 40 per cent, Maharashtra 45 per cent, Rajasthan (which till now had a Congress regime) with 22 per cent and Uttar Pradesh, where laptops were distributed to gain votes had only 10 per cent computers in schools.
He said against the national average of 22 per cent schools having computers in schools, Gujarat "which was being attacked and abused day and night over various issues had 71 per cent computers in schools".
The BJP Prime Ministerial candidates took a jibe at Kapil Sibal questioning the Minister, who he said thought himself to be a reservoir of knowledge, as to where the Akash tablets disappeared.
"Where are the Akash tablets gone. Are they lost in the sky. Where has the money gone," he said.
Taking a pot shot Nitish Kumar, Modi said the JD(U) leader is not getting sound sleep these days due to his dream of becoming the Prime Minister.
"His arrogance is such that it is even higher than Mt Everest. He thinks no one in the world is as able as he is," he said.
Modi also attacked the Third Front saying it is a group of leaders "who were either former Prime Ministers or were PM-hopefuls, who had also got their clothes stitched waiting anxiously to be the Prime Minister".
"It is a 'toli' (group) of ex-prime ministers and more than a dozen PM-hopefuls who wake up with the bugle of polls and go to sleep again. They will again wake up when the next election comes," he said.
He also questioned where such leaders were during the Kosi river flood which unleashed misery on the people of the state.
"When Kosi was in spate, did the Third Front come. Did you hear them. Did they shed tears on your misery or expressed their condolences, or come to help you.... Where were they when people were dying in Kosi river. I want to ask them," he said.
Lauding the NDA steered by Atal Behari Vajpayee, Modi said it is only such a coalition led by BJP which will keep all together and treat all as partners.
Modi said that there were three kinds of alliances -- 'gathbandhan' (coalition) represented by NDA under Vajpayee, 'brashtbandhan' (grouping of corrupt persons) and 'lathbandhan' (alliance of those indulging in violence). - PTI
CBI chargesheets Navabharat Power
NEW DELHI: The CBI on Monday filed its first charge sheet in a Delhi court in the coal blocks allocation case against Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd for allegedly misrepresenting facts and making “fraudulent” claims to “embellish” its applications to get allotments between 2006 and 2009.
Besides Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd, its two directors -- P Trivikrama Prasad and Y Harish Chandra Prasad were named in the chargesheet filed before Special CBI Judge Madhu Jain.
According to court sources, the CBI has chargesheeted Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd and its two directors under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC.
CBI has not charged them under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, the sources said.
They further said that other documents and annexures which are to be filed along with the charge sheet will be submitted before the judge later in the day.
The CBI in its FIR filed on September 3, 2012, had named Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd, its two directors along with some unknown public servants of the Ministry of Coal and Jharkhand government and others in the case.
The FIR was lodged after a preliminary enquiry was initiated on the reference of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).
In the FIR, the CBI had also accused unknown officials of the Coal Ministry of entering into conspiracy and “wilfully” not scrutinising documents to allow “undue advantage” for the company in getting the blocks.
The agency, in its FIR against Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd, had said that in order to “embellish its claim for allocation of coal block”, the firm “fraudulently” claimed that it was having the required net worth to get the coal mines.
The CBI had said that after allocation of coal blocks, the promoters and shareholders of Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd sold off their entire shareholdings in July 2010 to Essar Power Ltd and its subsidiary company at “huge profit of over Rs 200 crores.”
However, court sources said Essar Power Ltd has not been named as an accused in the chargesheet. - PTI
BKU
not to support any party in LS polls
MUZAFFARNAGAR:
The Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) today said that it will not support any
political party in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
"BKU has decided not to support any political party in the Lok
Sabha polls and no activist of the organisation would be allowed to
contest the elections," BKU National Spokesperson Rakesh Tikait
told reporters here.
However, the BKU activists will be free to cast their votes as per their
own choice, he said.
Bhartiya Kisan Union, a non-political organisation was founded by
Mahendra Singh Tikait on 17 October,1986 to protect the interests
farmers across the country. - PTI
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