Tag: Six In The Morning

Malaysia flight MH370: Indian Ocean search resumes

 23 March 2014 Last updated at 07:39

  The BBC

More planes have joined an increasingly international search of the south Indian Ocean for missing flight MH370.

Eight planes were sent out on Sunday over a wider search area after China released new images of possible debris.

Australia is leading the search and said it was investigating sightings of a wooden pallet and other items.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board.

Malaysian officials believe the plane was deliberately taken off course.

Ukraine crisis: Crimea holds secession referendum

 16 March 2014 Last updated at 08:30

  The BBC

Crimea is voting on whether to rejoin Russia or stay with Ukraine but with more autonomy.

The referendum has been condemned as “illegal” by Kiev and the West but is backed by Moscow.

Since the fall of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, Russian troops have in effect taken control of the majority ethnic-Russian region.

Voters are expected to support leaving Ukraine, but Crimean Tatars are boycotting the poll.

The BBC’s Ben Brown at a polling station in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, reported a strong turnout – with 100 people arriving in the first 10 minutes after polls opened.

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane ‘may have turned back’

 9 March 2014 Last updated at 08:14

  The BBC

Radar signals show a Malaysia Airlines plane that has been missing for more than 24 hours may have turned back, Malaysian officials have said.

Rescue teams looking for the plane have now widened their search area.

Investigators are also checking CCTV footage of two passengers who are believed to have boarded the plane using stolen passports.

Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared south of Vietnam with 239 people on board.

Air and sea rescue teams have been searching an area of the South China Sea south of Vietnam for more than 24 hours.

But Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur the search area had been expanded, to include the west coast of Malaysia.

Kerry condemns Russia’s ‘invasion and occupation’ of Ukrainian territory

 

 By Chelsea J. Carter. Diana Magnay and Victoria Eastwood, CNN

March 2, 2014 — Updated 0429 GMT

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be dismissing warnings from world leaders to avoid military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, even amid growing evidence that pro-Russian forces were already in control of the region.

The rhetoric escalated Saturday night, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemning what he called “the Russian Federation’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory” despite a statement by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that no decision had been made on whether Moscow would dispatch forces.

Russia has not confirmed it deployed thousands of troops to the region following reports that armed, Russian-speaking forces wearing military unifo

Freed Tymoshenko addresses Ukraine protesters

 Former prime minister tells crowds in Kiev to stay in central square as parliament impeaches President Yanukovich.

 Last updated: 23 Feb 2014 07:48

Hours after her release from prison, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has appeared before protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square, praising the demonstrators killed in violence this week and urging the crowds to keep occupying the square

Tymoshenko’s speech to about 50,000 people, made from a wheelchair because of the severe back problems she suffered in two and a half years of imprisonment, was the latest development in the country’s fast-moving political crisis, the AP news agency reported.

Tymoshenko, who appeared close to exhaustion, said: “You are heroes, you are the best thing in Ukraine!

“In no case do you have the right to leave the Maidan [Independence Square] until you have concluded everything that you planned to do.”

Earlier on Saturday, parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovich from office, hours after he abandoned his Kiev office to protesters and denounced what he described as a coup.

Egypt’s Morsi due to stand trial on spying charges

 16 February 2014 Last updated at 07:56

 The BBC

Deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is due to start a new trial, on charges of espionage and conspiring to commit acts of terror.

He and 35 others are accused of working with Lebanese and Palestinian groups to carry out attacks in Egypt.

The charges are one of four prosecutions that the Islamist former leader now faces.

Mr Morsi was ousted by the military last July following mass street protests against his rule.

Since then there has been a severe crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, as well as on other activists seen as hostile to the military-backed government.

UN vows to press on with Homs aid delivery

 World body’s humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, said aid workers were deliberately targeted by gun and mortar fire.

 Last updated: 09 Feb 2014 07:24

The UN’s humanitarian chief Valerie Amos has vowed to push on with relief deliveries to civilians trapped in Homs, after a Red Crescent aid convoy was attacked.

Amos’ comments come after the convoy came under mortar and gun attack on Saturday in the Syrian city, despite an agreed three-day ceasefire which began on Friday.

“I am deeply disappointed that the three-day humanitarian pause agreed between the parties to the conflict was broken today and aid workers deliberately targeted,” Amos said in a statement released late on Saturday.

“Today’s events serve as a stark reminder of the dangers that civilians and aid workers face every day across Syria,” she added.

Thailand elections: Politics of crisis

 

By Peter Shadbolt, for CNN

February 2, 2014 — Updated 0531 GMT

A state of emergency, streets paralyzed with protesters, the fatal shooting of a leading pro-government activist and an election campaign teetering on chaos may not sound like the script from a rising Southeast Asian economic powerhouse.

But for Thailand — which manages to combine economic success and political mayhem in equal measure — this weekend’s elections are just another page in an eight-year struggle between supporters and opponents of Thaksin Shinawatra.

Philippines and Rebels Agree on Peace Accord to End Insurgency

 

By FLOYD WHALEY

The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim insurgency group negotiated the final details of a peace accord on Saturday that many hope will end more than 40 years of violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and helped nurture Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia.

The agreement will create an autonomous Muslim-dominated region in the restive south of the predominantly Christian country, handing much of the responsibility for security there to local authorities as well as a large share of revenues from the region’s wealth of natural resources. The militants have agreed to disarm, with many expected to join Philippine security forces.

Syria crisis: US hails opposition move to attend peace talks

 19 January 2014 Last updated at 04:41 GMT



US Secretary of State John Kerry has welcomed a decision by Syria’s main political opposition group to attend next week’s peace talks in Switzerland.

His praise for the Syrian National Coalition’s “courageous” move was echoed by the UK and France.

The aim of the talks, to be held in Montreux, is to start the process of setting up a transitional government to end the war in Syria.

The three-year conflict has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.

An estimated two million people have fled the country and some 6.5 million have been internally displaced.

Ariel Sharon: Peacemaker, hero… and butcher

 He was respected in his eight years of near-death, with no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker. Thus do we remake history

ROBERT FISK Sunday 12 January 2014

Any other Middle Eastern leader who survived eight years in a coma would have been the butt of every cartoonist in the world. Hafez el-Assad would have appeared in his death bed, ordering his son to commit massacres; Khomeini would have been pictured demanding more executions as his life was endlessly prolonged. But of Sharon – the butcher of Sabra and Shatila for almost every Palestinian – there has been an almost sacred silence.

Cursed in life as a killer by quite a few Israeli soldiers as well as by the Arab world – which has proved pretty efficient at slaughtering its own people these past few years – Sharon was respected in his eight years of near-death, no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker.

After typhoon, Philippines faces one of the most profound resettlement crises in decades

 

By Chico Harlan, Sunday, January 5, 8:19 AM E-mail the writer

TACLOBAN, Philippines – The typhoon that recently barreled through the Philippines has left in its wake one of the most profound resettlement crises in decades, with the number of newly homeless far exceeding the capacity of aid groups and the government to respond.

Two months after one of the strongest typhoons on record, recovery in the central Philippines has been marked by a desperate scramble for shelter, as people return to the same areas that were ravaged and construct weaker, leakier and sometimes rotting versions of their old homes.

That urgent but crude attempt to rebuild has raised the prospect that the storm-prone areas devastated by Typhoon Haiyan will emerge more vulnerable to future disasters.