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Poland weeps for its dead Pilot error behind crash? |
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Thailand in turmoil after bloody clashes
B’desh renews claim on New Moore Island
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Poland weeps for its dead
Smolensk (Russia), April 11 Tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Warsaw and other Polish cities to show their grief after the jet came down in thick fog near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing 97 persons, including President Lech Kaczynski and a host of top state, military and religious officials. Poland started a week of national mourning and the President's identical twin brother, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was among the first to go to Russia to identify the victims. Russia ordered a day of national mourning on Monday. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is leading an official investigation into the crash on Saturday, but Russian officials have already said the Polish pilots ignored the air traffic control warnings that they were too low. The Russian-built Tupolev Tu-154 jet was taking the presidential party to a memorial service for 22,000 Poles massacred by the Soviet troops in World War II when it hit tree tops in fog while approaching the Smolensk airport, officials said. Tens of thousands of mourners gathered in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw and the nearby Pilsudski Square. They prayed, sang the national anthem, waved the red and white Polish flag and lay a carpet of candles and flowers in the national colours. — AFP
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Pilot error behind crash?
Moscow, April 11 Russian investigators are trying to find out whether pilot error was the cause behind the fatal crash in which the Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 96 others were killed. “At the distance of 1.5 km, the air traffic control
(ATC) group detected that the crew had increased the vertical speed of descent and began to decrease the altitude below the landing trajectory. ATC instructed the pilot to enter into horizontal mode, when the crew ignored the instruction ordered it to go to reserve airfield. In spite of this the crew continued the descent. Unfortunately it ended in a tragedy,” first deputy chief of the Air HQ, Lt Gen Alexander Alyoshin told reporters. —
PTI
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Thailand in turmoil after bloody clashes
Bangkok, April 11 Protest leaders, who have promised to maintain their campaign until the government dissolves parliament and calls fresh elections, demanded Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva step down and leave the country. Seventeen civilians, including a Japanese TV cameraman, and four soldiers were killed in Saturday’s crackdown on the red-shirted supporters of fugitive ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra in Bangkok, the emergency services told AFP. Today evening Reds gathered to mourn the loss of their comrades at the city’s Democracy Monument, the scene of a fierce battle on Saturday, where grieving relatives led a procession holding up gold-framed pictures of the dead. They were followed by crying men carrying caskets, a couple containing bodies draped with Thai flags and flowers. Some onlooking protesters prayed and others waved red banners. It was the latest chapter in years of turmoil pitting the ruling elite against the mainly poor and rural Reds, who say the government is illegitimate as it came to power in 2008 after a court ousted Thaksin’s allies from power. The violence erupted when troops tried to clear one of two sites in the centre of the capital occupied by the protesters for the past month. Soldiers fired in the air while the Reds responded by hurling rocks. As the clashes intensified gunshots echoed around the city and both sides accused the other of using live ammunition. Emergency services said two protesters were killed by gunshot wounds to the head. The government denied troops had opened fire on protesters with live rounds. “Weapons were used only in self defence and to fire into the air. We don’t find any evidence that soldiers used weapons against people,” government spokesman said. —
AFP
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B’desh renews claim on New Moore Island
Dhaka, April 11 “Be it there or disappeared, under the Radcliff map, it falls within sovereign territory of Bangladesh,” Foreign Secretary Mirajul Quayes told newsmen at a press briefing. He added that the location of the South Talpatty, called New Moore Island in India, fell on the eastern side of the demarcation line between Bangladesh’s Khulna and India’s Chabbish Pargana district meaning “Bangladesh has the sovereign authority over it.” The uninhabited island, is known as South Talpatti in Bangladesh, was 3.5-km long and 3-km wide before it was engulfed in the Bay of Bengal. The demarcation line, named after Sir Cyril Radcliffe, became the border between India and Pakistan after the partition of British India in 1947 while Bangladesh was part of Pakistan at partition until its 1971 independence after nine months of Liberation War, crucially backed by India. Additional foreign secretary retired navy commodore Khurshid Alam, a maritime boundary expert, added that while India dubs it an “island” Bangladesh called it an unstable “sandbar formation” or “low tide elevation” which appears during he high tide and disappears during the low tide since early 1980s. The assertion of Bangladesh sovereignty over South Talpatty came days after newspaper reports quoting a research finding of the West Bengal’s Jadavpur University said the island disappeared beneath the waves due to rising sea levels and erosion. — PTI
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Britons ‘eating, drinking too much’ Discovery mission
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Russian investigators focused on the pilots' last decisions as a plane crash, which killed the Poland's President and wiped out its military leadership plunged the Polish nation into deep mourning today.
