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Crimeans vote on union with Russia
Ukraine seeks 20,000 men for National Guard
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100 killed in Nigeria attacks
Missing Malaysian airliner: On Day 8, no headway in one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of modern aviation
Indian Ocean poses daunting challenge
Flight MH 370, Bermuda Triangle — is a pattern emerging?
China criticises Malaysia, US over handling of crisis
India-China talks to focus on high speed rail tracks
Temple set on fire in Pak over alleged blasphemy
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Crimeans vote on union with Russia
Simferopol/Kiev, March 16 RIA news agency said 93 per cent backed annexation, citing an exit poll released as voting ended at 8 pm (1800 GMT). Another Russian agency said turnout was over 80 per cent. Caught in an East-West crisis reminiscent of the Cold War, Kiev said Russia's build-up of forces in the Black Sea region was in "crude violation" of an international treaty, and announced plans to arm and train 20,000 members of a newly-created National Guard to defend the nation. US Secretary of State John Kerry told Moscow that Washington would not accept the outcome of the vote, which is likely to favour union with Russia for a region which has a Russian-speaking majority. The White House also warned Moscow to expect sanctions while foreign ministers from the European Union, which has major trade ties with Russia, will decided on possible similar action in Brussels on Monday. But Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Western accusations that the referendum was illegal, saying it respected the will of the Crimean people, while his foreign ministry said it had agreed with the United States to seek a solution to the crisis through constitutional reform. In Kiev, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk threatened dire consequences for the Crimean politicians who had called the vote, saying separatist "ringleaders" wanted to destroy Ukrainian independence "under the cover of Russian troops". "We will find all of them - if it takes one year, two years - and bring them to justice and try them in Ukrainian and international courts. The ground will burn under their feet," he told a cabinet meeting. Yatseniuk had just returned from a US trip where he won expressions of moral support but no offers of weapons. Kiev's pro-European rulers, who took power after last month's fall of Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovich to popular unrest, have been as powerless as Western governments to prevent the referendum or buildup of Russian forces on Ukrainian territory. At a polling booth at a school in Simferopol, the Crimean regional capital, dozens of people lined up outside to cast their ballots early. "I have voted for Russia," said Svetlana Vasilyeva, 27, a veterinary nurse. "This is what we have been waiting for. We are one family and we want to live with our brothers." Vasilyeva voiced fears common among some of Ukraine's native Russian-speakers about the consequences of Yanukovich's downfall after protests in which over 100 people were killed. "We want to leave Ukraine because Ukrainians told us that we are people of a lower kind. How can you stay in such a country?" she said. But ethnic Tatars — Sunni Muslims who make up 12 percent of Crimea's population — said they would boycott the vote despite promises by the regional authorities to give them financial aid and proper land rights. Crimea's 1.5 million voters have two options: union with Russia or giving their region, which is controlled by pro-Kremlin politicians, the broad right to determine its own path and choose relations with whom it wants - including Moscow. Provisional results were to be released late on Sunday and the final tally expected a day or two later. — Reuters US will not accept outcome of Crimea referendum: Kerry WASHINGTON: The United States told Russia on Sunday that it would not accept the results of Crimea's referendum on seceding from Ukraine and it continued to urge a
political resolution on Moscow, a senior US State Department official said. The official, describing a telephone conversation between US Secretary of State John Kerry and
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday morning, the day of the Crimean vote, urged Russia to back constitutional reform in Ukraine that would protect the rights of minorities such as Crimea's Russian-speaking population. Merkel wants more observers in Ukraine
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin that more Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers should be sent to Ukraine, a plan he welcomed, Merkel's spokesman said on Sunday. "The Russian president viewed this initiative positively. He promised he would instruct Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov accordingly."
NATO websites hit in cyber attack
BRUSSELS: Hackers brought down several public NATO websites, the alliance said on Sunday, in what appeared to be the latest escalation in cyberspace over growing tensions over Crimea. The Western military alliance's spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, said on social networking site Twitter that cyber attacks, which began on Saturday evening, continued on Sunday, although most services had now been restored. |
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Ukraine seeks 20,000 men for National Guard
Kiev, March 16 Keeping tension high as pro-Russian Crimean leaders staged a referendum for the peninsula to secede to Russia, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk vowed to bring to justice all those who were trying to destroy Ukrainian independence "under the cover of Russian troops". Earlier, acting defence minister Ihor Tenyukh said Russia was pressing ahead with a military build-up in Crimea in violation of an agreement covering basing rights for its Black Sea fleet. Instead of an agreed limit of 12,500 Russian servicemen in Crimea, Moscow now had 22,000 there, he said. "This is a crude violation of the bilateral agreements and is proof that Russia has unlawfully brought its troops onto the territory of Crimea," Tenyukh said. He later told journalists that the defence ministries in Kiev and Moscow had declared a truce until March 21 during which Russian forces, who have been arriving by boat and helicopter, would leave Ukrainian military facilities untouched. Yatseniuk, just returned from a trip to the US where he won expressions of moral support but no offers of weapons, urged Ukrainians to sign on for service with the embryonic National Guard. — Reuters |
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Kano, March 16 About 40 assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed the villages of Angwan Gata, Chenshyi and Angwan Sankwai, attacking locals in their sleep and torching their homes, Yakubu Bitiyong, a lawmaker at the Kaduna state parliament told AFP. "We have at least 100 bodies from the three villages attacked by the gunmen" overnight Friday-Saturday, he said, adding that scores of residents were also injured. Some of the victims "were shot and burnt in their homes while others were hacked with machetes," Bitiyong said. According to a local government official who asked not to be named, around 2,000 people displaced by the attacks were now sheltering in a primary school in Gwandong village. Kaduna state police spokesman Aminu Lawan confirmed the attacks but refused to give a casualty toll or say who was behind the violence. Local residents, mostly Christians, blamed the bloodshed on Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who have been accused of similar raids in the past. Chenshyi village was the worst affected with at least 50 people killed, said Adamu Marshall, a spokesman for the Southern Kaduna Peoples' Union, a regional political and cultural body. — AFP
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Missing Malaysian airliner: On Day 8, no headway in one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of modern aviation
Kuala Lumpur, March 16 Malaysian police said they are refocusing the probe on the crew, passengers and ground staff based on "new leads" that the aircraft was deliberately disabled and its transponder switched off before the plane veered from its path. Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said they have dismantled the simulator found at pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's residence and reassembled it in their office to examine it. "Investigations include possibility of hijack, sabotage and terrorism," he added. Defence and acting Transport Minister Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said, "The search area has been significantly expanded. The nature of the search has changed. From focusing mainly on shallow sea we are now looking at large tracts of land, crossing 11 countries, as well as deep and remote oceans." Malaysia got in touch with countries along the northern and southern corridors about the flight. These countries include: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and France. He said that the search operation, which entered the ninth day today, was already "highly complex". The minister said that the number of countries involved in the search and rescue operation has increased from 14 to 25, which brings new challenges of coordination and diplomacy to the search effort. "The investigation is refocusing on the backgrounds of the passengers, pilots and even ground staff. The families of the pilot and co-pilot have been interviewed," Hishammuddin said. He said the search has entered a new phase. "The information released yesterday has produced new leads and given new directions to the search process" to trace the Boeing 777-200 aircraft. Bakar said they are seeking background checks on all passengers from foreign counterparts but "there are still a few countries yet to respond to our requests". He said few foreign intelligence agencies, however, have cleared all the passengers. Malaysia has appealed for help and international coordination in a search for its missing passenger jet that stretches across two corridors from the Caspian Sea to the southern Indian Ocean, diplomats said on Sunday. Malaysian officials briefed envoys from various countries on the progress of the investigation after calling off a search in the South China Sea for the jet. Although countries have been coordinating individually, the broad formal request at a meeting of ambassadors marked a new diplomatic phase in a search operation thought increasingly likely to rely on the sharing of sensitive material such as military radar data. "The meeting was for us to know exactly what is happening and what sort of help they need. It is more for them to tell us, 'please put in all your resources'," T.S. Tirumurti, India's high commissioner to Malaysia, told Reuters. The diplomatic initiative could become significant as nations ponder whether to share any military data on the Boeing 777's fate, and fills a void left by the failure of Southeast Asian nations to work as a bloc on the crisis, a diplomat said. "There are clearly limits to military data," the diplomat said, adding that nations were nonetheless aware of the strong public interest in cooperation on a civilian issue. Experts say military forces mainly use primary or classic radar, which works by listening for its own echo bouncing back off a potentially unfriendly object. Civil air traffic control mostly uses secondary radar, which relies on hearing a signal sent back from the aircraft's transponder along with data designed to identify the plane. It was the apparently deliberate decision to turn the jet's transponder off that left Malaysian authorities relying on the blips picked up by primary military radar to form the theory that the aircraft - on a flight to Beijing - had turned back west before disappearing. Underscoring the caution surrounding the request for deeper co-operation, at least one country represented at Sunday's ambassadorial meeting asked Malaysia to supply its request in writing, a diplomat present at the talks said. Southeast Asia has been at the centre of a regional arms race for several years amid tensions in the South China Sea, with maritime surveillance and air defences high on the list. — Agencies Focus on new leads
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Indian Ocean poses daunting challenge
Sydney, March 16 The empty expanse of water is one of the most remote and deepest places in the world, posing potentially enormous challenges for the international search effort now refocusing on the area, one of several possible crash sites. Even Australia, which has island territories in the Indian Ocean and sends rescue planes to pluck stricken yachtsmen from the cold, mountainous seas in the south from time to time, has no radar coverage much beyond its Indian Ocean coast. "In most of Western Australia and almost all of the Indian Ocean, there is almost no radar coverage," an Australian civil aviation authority source said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak on the record. "If anything is more than 100-km offshore, you don't see it." The Indian Ocean, the world's third largest, has an average depth of more than 12,000 ft, or two miles. That's deeper than the Atlantic where it took two years to find wreckage on the seabed from an Air France plane that vanished in 2009 even though floating debris quickly pointed to the crash site. So far, search operations by navies and aircraft from more than a dozen nations have failed to find even a trace of Flight MH370, which went missing a week ago after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing and diverting from its intended flight path. The search effort has focused mainly on the South China Sea but is now switching to the Indian Ocean after investigators, having pieced together radar and satellite tracking data, began to suspect the Boeing 777-200ER had been deliberately flown off course. — Reuters No radar coverage
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Flight MH 370, Bermuda Triangle — is a pattern emerging?
New Delhi, March 16 Flight MH 370 went missing early morning on March 8. It left Kuala Lumpur at 12.41 am and was to land in Beijing at 6.30 am the same day. Contact with the plane and its radar signal was lost at at 1.40 a.m. when it was flying over the Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control area in Vietnam. It was initially thought that the plane had crashed into the sea off Vietnam and hopes of locating it rose after two oil slicks were reported from the area. It turned out to be a false alarm. Then, there were reports that the plane could have actually turned back and ditched in the Strait of Malacca, almost diametrically opposite to its scheduled flight path. The area was subsequently expanded west into the Andaman Sea and possibly to the Indian coast. Dozens of ships and planes from around 10 countries, including India, are scouring the waters around Flight MH 370's last known location, but no credible clues have been found as to its whereabouts. On Saturday, three events deepened the mystery: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the communications system of the jet was deliberately disabled just before it reached the east coast of peninsular Malaysia; investigators hinted that the jet had been hijacked; and the Inmarsat British telecommunications company said it had picked up signals from the plane five hours after it went off the radar. How could a plane as large as a Boeing B-777ER with 239 passengers and crew on board just vanish off the face of the earth, particularly in an area that is counted as one of the busiest sea lanes of the world; and particularly when the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 operated by an equally large aircraft -- an Airbus A-330-230 -- was located by the Brazilian Navy five days after it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, while on a flight from Rio de Janerio to Paris, killing all 227 on board? Will Flight MH 370 go the way of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo for which she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, who disappeared on July 2, 1937, while attempting to be the first woman to circumnavigate the world solo? There has been no trace of Earhart or her twin-turboprop Lockheed Electra that is suspected to have gone down in the central Pacific near Howland Island, almost half-way between Hawaii and Australia. Is it just a coincidence that both disappearances occurred within the first 10 days of the month, as did the first in the Bermuda Triangle, formed by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico at its three ends. On December 5, 1945, five US Navy Avenger torpedo bombers disappeared in the area, killing the 14 crewmen on board. — IANS Mystery deepens
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China criticises Malaysia, US over handling of crisis
Beijing, March 16 "It is undeniable that the disclosure of such vital information is painfully belated, more than seven excruciating days after the 227 passengers and 12 crew members lost contact with their beloved relatives and friends," state-run Xinhua said in a commentary. The remarks came after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak yesterday said that the communications systems of Flight MH370 had been deliberately disabled before the plane turned back and flew for seven hours in a different direction. China is facing public outrage as 154 of 227 passengers aboard the missing Boeing 777 are Chinese nationals. "Due to the absence - or at least lack - of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumours have been spawned, repeatedly racking the nerves of the awaiting families," the hard-hitting commentary said. China pressed eight ships, three aircraft and several helicopters for seven days to search for the Beijing-bound plane, which mysteriously vanished from radar screen an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8. Winding up its search operations in South China Sea, Beijing is now diverting its fleet to Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea where plane was confirmed to have flown by new satellite data. Besides Malaysia, the commentary also targeted the US. "Given today's technology, the delay smacks of either dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information in a full and timely manner. That would be intolerable," it said. "As the leader of the international search and rescue mission, Malaysia bears inescapable responsibility. Other parties that possess valuable data and information, including plane maker Boeing, engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce and intelligence superpower the US, should also have done a better job," the commentary said. — PTI The grouse
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India-China talks to focus on high speed rail tracks
Beijing, March 16 Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia will arrive here tomorrow for the Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) to be held here on March 18. Five working groups covering different areas are finalising the details for the high-level economic and trade dialogue between the two countries. Besides attending SED, Ahluwalia would call on Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on March 19. The Chinese delegation will be headed by Chairman of the National Reforms Development Commission (NDRC) Xu Shaoshi. The working groups covered areas such as infrastructure, mainly the railways and operationalise the agreement for service centres to be set up in India for Chinese power equipment, environment and resources protection, water management and policy coordination, collaboration on planning and urbanisation, cooperation in high technology including the IT sector. Officials said the working group on infrastructure focussed discussions to work out collaboration in strengthening the existing tracks in India to increase speed of the trains, official sources told PTI. They said talks would be centered on high-speed tracks, not high-speed trains in which China has developed expertise in recent years. The two sides would also discuss collaboration in heavy haul of rail stock and redevelopment of the railway stations. — PTI
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Temple set on fire in Pak over alleged blasphemy
Karachi, March 15 The mob attacked the temple overnight in Larkana city, the hometown of the Bhutto family and the stronghold of the Pakistan People's Party. It surrounded the house of a Hindu man accused of burning the pages of the holy book, prompting the police to fire warning shots and teargas shells. A local police official said soon after the news of the man desecrating the book spread, angry students and followers of local religious seminaries started gathering in groups and demanded the man be handed over to them. "They set on fire the main Hindu temple in the Jinnah Bagh Chowk area which also completely gutted the adjoining dharmashala," the official said. "Curfew has now been imposed in the area with heavy patrolling by the paramilitary rangers and police who had to baton charge and use teargas shells to disperse the mob," he said. The Hindu man, who was accused of blasphemy, has been taken into protective custody. According to local media reports, initial investigation indicates that the man had rented the house from a Muslim family and cleaned it before he moved in. "He may have burned the holy book inadvertently," a policeman said. Tensions gripped the Larkana's Jinnah Bagh and some other parts of the city after mob went berserk. —PTI
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Indian-origin girl saved from drowning in Australia Indian commits suicide in Jeddah airport restroom France curbs Paris car drivers to combat smog Paramilitary personnel to be deployed in Islamabad China to connect more cities with high speed trains Car bombs kill 19 in Baghdad
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The mystery of the missing Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing since March 8 continued to baffle aviation and security authorities who have not succeeded in tracking the aircraft despite deploying hi-tech radar and other gadgets.
