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Pro-Russian rebels name leader in Ukraine as crisis deepens
24 migrants drown as boat sinks off Istanbul |
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Blindfolded, US daredevil walks rope between towers
 hold your breath: Residents watch from their balconies as tightrope walker Nik Wallenda walks blindfolded along a wire between the towers of the Marina City condominium buildings in Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday. The Marina City towers are 588-feet tall. AFP
B’desh SC upholds Jamaat stalwart’s death sentence
Muhammad Quamaruzzaman
Canadian planes launch first airstrike in Iraq
Chinese submarine docks in Lanka despite concerns 13 yrs after 9/11,
World Trade Center reopens
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Pro-Russian rebels name leader in Ukraine as crisis deepens
Donetsk (Ukraine), Nov 3 Organisers of the vote said that Alexander Zakharchenko, a 38-year-old former mining electrician, had easily won the election as head of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, an entity proclaimed by armed rebels in the days after they seized key buildings in cities of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east last April. The rogue vote, which Kiev says Russia encouraged, could create a new “frozen conflict” in post-Soviet Europe and further threaten the territorial unity of Ukraine, which lost control of its Crimean peninsula in March when it was annexed by Russia. Kiev and the West will now be looking to see if Russian President Vladimir Putin will formally recognise the validity of the vote, despite their entreaties to him not to do so. A Russian deputy foreign minister, in an initial reaction, made no mention of formal recognition but said the newly elected leadership in eastern Ukraine had been given a mandate to negotiate with Kiev. Up to now, Kiev’s leaders have refused to hold direct talks with the separatists, whom they refer to as “terrorists” and “bandits”. If Moscow were to recognise the vote, it would narrow options too for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. He has ruled out trying to take back the region by force after big battlefield losses in August. But after a parliamentary election on October 26, he is now supported by a pro-Western power structure, determined to stop the break-up of Ukraine, and he could come under pressure to take a firmer line. Putin’s first word on the weekend election could come on Tuesday when he is due to appear at a Red Square ceremony in Moscow marking National Unity Day. “The central election commission deems Alexander Zakharchenko to be the elected head of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” an election official, Roman Lyagin, told journalists in Donetsk, the separatists’ stronghold. Numbers of ballots cast for him appeared to show he had won 79 per cent of the vote. The vote was the latest twist in a geopolitical crisis that began with the popular overthrow of Ukraine’s Moscow-backed leader, Viktor Yanukovich, last February. Russia denounced Yanukovich’s ousting as a coup by a “fascist junta” and the following month annexed Crimea and subsequently backed the separatist rebellions that sprang up in the east. — Reuters Power shift
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24 migrants drown as boat sinks off Istanbul
Istanbul, November 3 Seven people were rescued and nine more were missing from the stricken boat, which had set off earlier from Istanbul and had travelled through the Bosphorus Strait on its way to Romania. Those on board were Afghans who had paid several thousand euros each in search of a better life in the EU and had set off earlier from Bakirkoy, an Istanbul suburb on the Sea of Marmara side of the Bosphorus. Twelve children and seven women were reported to have been on board, the reports added, quoting a statement from the coastguard. A coastguard official contacted by AFP confirmed the accident but could not give the exact number of victims. The boat capsized due to overloading and bad weather conditions. Turkey has become a hub for illegal immigrants who aspire to reach Europe in the search for a better life. But the journey is frequently perilous, and hundreds of immigrants have drowned en route to Europe in recent years. — AFP
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Blindfolded, US daredevil walks rope between towers
Chicago (US), November 3 “I feel incredible,” Wallenda said at a news conference afterward last night. He said strong winds and the steeper-than-expected angle of the first high wire caused him to hurry his performance. Wallenda had practiced at a 15-degree angle but said the wire was actually at 19 degrees. “That cable looked like it was going straight up,” he said. Thousands of cheering fans packed the streets around the city’s Marina City towers to watch the 35-year-old heir to the Flying Wallendas’ family business. It took Wallenda about six and a half minutes to walk the 454-foot (138-metre) stretch from the Marina City west tower to the top of a building on the other side of the river. The next stage of Wallenda’s high-wire event he undertook blindfolded a 94-foot (28-metre) walk between the two Marina City towers. He made the stretch in little more than a minute. The Discovery Channel used a 10-second delay for the broadcast, which would have allowed producers to cut away if anything went wrong. Two of his previous televised tightrope walks over the brink of Niagara Falls in 2012 and across the Little Colorado River Gorge in 2013 drew about 13 million viewers each. A year before Wallenda was born, his great-grandfather Karl Wallenda fell to his death during a tightrope stunt in Puerto Rico. He was 73. — AP
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B’desh SC upholds Jamaat stalwart’s death sentence
Dhaka, November 3 The four-member Appellate Division of the Supreme Court headed by Justice SK Sinha pronounced the verdict four months after 62-year-old Muhammad Quamaruzzaman filed an appeal against the death penalty handed down to him in May last year by a special tribunal. The decision comes within a week after Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami and top leader of the party Mir Quasem Ali were both sentenced to death for atrocities committed during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan. “(The tribunal verdict is) upheld,” pronounced Sinha. Court officials said one of the four judges preferred life imprisonment for Quamaruzzaman. The Supreme Court upheld the tribunal judgment for the major charge of killing 164 people at a village at his home district in northern Sherpur, which was later renamed as “Bidhoba Palli” or “village of widows” as virtually all adult married men were killed by the infamous Al-Badr militia forces led by Quamruzzaman during the war. The apex court, however, commuted the highest penalty to life term imprisonment for another charge. Quamruzzaman, an assistant secretary general of Jamaat, is the third war crimes convict whose appeal was disposed off by the Supreme Court. — PTI
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Canadian planes launch first airstrike in Iraq
Toronto, November 3 A statement from Defense Minister Rob Nicholson’s office yesterday said two fighter jets attacked targets in the vicinity of Fallujah with laser-guided bombs and safely returned to their base in Kuwait. Few other details were immediately released. Canada has deployed six CF-18s along with a C-150 Polaris and two CP-140 Aurora surveillance aircraft as its contribution to the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group, which has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria. About Canadian 600 airmen and airwomen are involved. Following a request from the US, Canada’s Parliament voted last month to authorise the airstrikes. The motion authorised air strikes in Iraq for up to six months and explicitly stated that no ground troops be used in combat operations. — AP |
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Chinese submarine docks in Lanka despite concerns Colombo, November 3 Submarine Changzheng-2 and warship Chang Xing Dao arrived at the port on Friday, seven weeks after another Chinese submarine, a long-range deployment patrol, had called at the same port ahead of a visit to South Asia by Chinese President Xi Jinping. “A submarine and a warship have docked at Colombo harbour. They called on Oct. 31 and will be here for five days for refuelling and crew refreshment,” Sri Lankan navy spokesman Kosala Warnakulasuriya said. “This is nothing unusual. Since 2010, 230 warships have called at Colombo port from various countries on goodwill visits and for refuelling and crew refreshment.” However, the frequency of Chinese visits has become a concern for New Delhi, Indian officials have told Reuters. “India has raised concerns over this but not aggressively,” an Indian official familiar with diplomatic discussions between the neighbours told Reuters. China has invested heavily in Sri Lanka in recent years, funding airports, roads, railways and ports, a development that has unsettled India, traditionally the closest economic partner of the island nation of 21 million people. India has already raised concerns over an aircraft maintenance facility following speculation it could be built in the eastern port city of Trincomalee, which India considers a strategic location in national security terms. — Reuters Five-day stay
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13 yrs after 9/11, World Trade Center reopens New York, November 3 Some staffers of publishing giant Conde Nast began working at 1 World Trade Center today. The 104-story, $3.9 billion skyscraper dominates the Manhattan skyline. The publishing giant becomes the first commercial tenant in America's tallest building. It's the centerpiece of the 16-acre (6-hectare) site where the decimated twin towers once stood and where more than 2,700 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, buried under smoking mounds of fiery debris. “The New York City skyline is whole again, as 1 World Trade Center takes its place in Lower Manhattan,” said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns both the building and the World Trade Center site. The agency began moving into neighboring 4 World Trade Center last week. —AP
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Virgin ‘ignored’ space safety warnings: Expert Burkina army leader promises 'consensus' leader IS group executes 36 more tribesmen in Iraq
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Bangladesh’s Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence given to a top fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader for mass murder and war crimes during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, the third verdict within a week that went against the party’s stalwarts.
