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Malaysia Airlines: Interpol releases image of passengers
Malaysia Airlines: Interpol releases image of passengers (Reuters) / 11 March 2014 One of the holders of a stolen passport on the missing Malaysian airliner was a young Iranian, not believed to have terrorist links, Malaysian officials say. Interpol has released an image of two Iranians who were traveling with stolen passports on a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner. The image showed the two Iranian men boarding a plane at the same time. Interpol secretary general Ronald K. Noble said Tuesday the two men traveled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to the stolen Austrian and Italian documents. Noble said the recent information about the men made terrorism a less likely cause of the plane’s disappearance, but that did not allay concerns about the ease of travel involving stolen passports. He identified the men as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 19, and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza, 29. The 19-year-old is believed to have planned to seek asylum in Germany. Malaysian police official at a press conference near Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang shows 19-year-old Iranian Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad (L) and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza,29 (R) at the airport, who both boarded missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight using stolen European passports. Malaysia is investigating whether any passengers or crew aboard a missing airliner had personal or psychological problems that might explain its disappearance, along with the possibility of a hijack, sabotage or mechanical failure, police said on Tuesday. A massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER is in its fourth day, with no trace yet of the aircraft or the 239 people on board, one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history. Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early on Saturday morning, vanishing from radar screens about an hour after take-off over the sea separating Malaysia from the southern tip of Vietnam. Adding to the puzzle, Malaysian military radar tracking suggested it may have turned back from its scheduled route. See pictures: Praying for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 There was no distress signal or radio contact indicating a problem and, in the absence of any wreckage or flight data, police have been left trawling through passenger and crew lists for potential leads. “Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities,” Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told a news conference. “We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioral pattern of all the passengers.” Stolen passports The fact that at least two passengers on board had used stolen passports, confirmed by Interpol, has raised suspicions of foul play. But Southeast Asia is known as a hub for false documents that are also used by smugglers, illegal migrants and asylum seekers. Police chief Khali said one of the men had been identified as a 19-year-old Iranian, who appeared to be an illegal immigrant. The identity of the other was still being checked. “We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group, and we believe he was trying to migrate to Germany,” Khali said of the teenager. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said. Asked if that meant he ruled out a hijack, Khalid said: “(We are giving) same weightage to all (possibilities) until we complete our investigations.” Both men entered Malaysia on Feb 28, at least one from Phuket, in Thailand, eight days before boarding the flight to Beijing, Malaysian immigration chief Aloyah Mamat told the news conference. Both held onward reservations to Western Europe. Police in Thailand, where the passports were stolen and the tickets used by the two men were booked, said they did not think they were linked to the disappearance of the plane. “We haven’t ruled it out, but the weight of evidence we’re getting swings against the idea that these men are or were involved in terrorism,” Supachai Puikaewcome, chief of police in the Thai resort city of Pattaya, told Reuters. The massive search for the plane has drawn in navies, military aircraft, coastguard and civilian vessels from 10 nations. The search was widened on Tuesday to cover a larger swathe of the shallow waters of the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea around the last known position of the plane. But searches were also being conducted on the western coast of Malaysia and northwest towards the much deeper Andaman Sea – based on a theory that the plane may have flown on for some time after deviating from its flight path. “This will be a long search. We need a long-term search plan,” Do Ba Ty, Vietnam’s army chief of staff and deputy defence minister, told reporters. “We will expand search to the east in the sea and to the west on land and ask for Cambodia help…we will go where our friends go and make sure we inform our citizens and fishermen to request their help in the search.” Neither Malaysia’s Special Branch, the agency leading the investigation, nor spy agencies in the United States and Europe, have ruled out the possibility of a hijack or bombing. But Malaysian authorities have indicated the evidence so far does not strongly back an attack as a cause for the aircraft’s disappearance, and that mechanical or pilot problems could have led to the apparent crash, US government sources said. “There is no evidence to suggest an act of terror,” said a European security source, who added that there was also “no explanation what’s happened to it or where it is”. The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a US government source said. Vietnam said it was allowing ships and planes from Malaysia, Singapore, China and the United States to enter its waters to search for the plane. About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. Other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans. China has deployed 10 satellites using high-resolution earth imaging capabilities, visible light imaging and other technologies to “support and assist in the search and rescue operations”, the People’s Liberation Army Daily said on Tuesday. The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people. US planemaker Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation. Read more: Malaysia Airlines’ lack of information angers relatives Read more: Search widens for missing Malaysian passenger jet Thai police doubt terror link to stolen passports on missing flight For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Shortages, deprivation blight Syria after 3 years of war
Shortages, deprivation blight Syria after 3 years of war (AFP) / 11 March 2014 The agency released a striking picture showing thousands of residents crammed into a war-scarred street queuing for aid, illustating their desperation. Some survive by eating animal feed, others are reduced to living off vegetable peel. The human degradation in Syria, notably in areas besieged by the army, has reached levels unimaginable three years ago. Since the protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011 descended into a bloody civil war, images of Syrian civilians suffering have become commonplace. Areas such as Yarmuk, Eastern Ghouta and Homs city have become synonymous with dire living conditions and shortages of basic goods, after regime forces besieged them. Authorities say they blockade the areas to root out “terrorists” — the government’s term for the rebels fighting to overthrow it — but NGOs like Amnesty International accuse them of using starvation as a “weapon of war”. Delivery of vital aid has also been hindered by groups hostile to international NGOs in parts of rebel-held northeastern Syria, according to the World Food Programme. The WFP said insecurity in the country had prevented food deliveries reaching 500,000 people. One of the worst affected areas is the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus. Once a buzzing neighbourhood that was home to 170,000 people, Yarmuk became a battlefield between rebel and regime forces in 2012, and government troops imposed a choking siege on the area. Nearly 40,000 Yarmuk residents, both Syrian and Palestinian, are trapped inside, living in abject conditions: Amnesty says at least 60 percent are malnourished, and a Syrian monitoring group has says 120 people have died from hunger and lack of medical care in the camp. “The lexicon of man’s inhumanity to man has a new word: Yarmuk,” Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, told AFP. He said some people have been “reduced to eating animal feed,” adding women in the camp were “dying in childbirth for lack of medical services”. The agency released a striking picture showing thousands of residents crammed into a war-scarred street queuing for aid, illustating their desperation. Amnesty said the Yarmuk siege was “the deadliest of a series of armed blockades of other civilian areas, imposed by Syrian armed forces or armed opposition groups… across the country.” Sahar, a 56-year-old Yarmuk resident has already paid a heavy price in the conflict in Syria, losing her husband and son in the violence. But since the government cut the camp off from the outside world, she has lost “20 kilograms,” she told AFP via the Internet, a problem aggravated by her hypoglycemia and osteoporosis. “The shortages are an insult to our dignity”. For Sahar and thousands of others like her trapped in the camp, regular meals are a distant memory. “Days ago, some neighbours managed to bring in aubergines and rice from Babbila,” an area near the camp, she says. “It was the first time that I have had a meal in months,” she says, choking back tears. “We had almost forgot what ‘cooking’ meant.” Others in the camp told AFP stories that showed the extent of the degradation of a country that was once self-sufficient for food. “People are dying at home and the rats eat them before their neighbours can find their bodies,” says Jassem, an activist in Yarmuk. Since January, UNRWA has distributed nearly 8,000 food parcels in the camp, calling this “a drop in the ocean compared with the rising tide of need”. And in besieged areas, shortages of medical supplies, fuel, water and electricity are just as pressing. “Things that were normal before the siege, like television or heating, have become a luxury.” says Tarek, a teacher in the Eastern Ghouta area, which was nicknamed “Damascus’ orchard” before the siege. “A kilogram of margarine has risen from 50 Syrian pounds to 750 ($0.30 to $5), and a litre of diesel from 20 to 1,700 pounds,” he says over Skype. Eastern Ghouta residents have resorted to “digging wells, like in the olden times, but the water there is very polluted,” says Tarek, who teaches by candlelight in basements in case of shelling. The army has also encircled several areas of the central city of Homs, where 1,500 civilians were evacuated by the UN in February. At the beginning of March, the UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry on the human rights situation in Syria said more than 250,000 people were under siege across the country. It said government forces and rebels were using the tactic to force “people to choose between starvation and surrender”. The conflict has already claimed a terrible human toll, with more than 140,000 people killed since the uprising began Another 2.5 million people have fled abroad while 6.5 million have sought refuge inside the country. More than half of the country’s hospitals have been destroyed and 2.2 million children have been forced out of school in a country that once offered free healthcare and education to all. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Dinosaur skeleton goes on display at Dubai Mall
Dinosaur skeleton goes on display at Dubai Mall Kelly Clarke / 11 March 2014 The 155 million-year-old dinosaur was discovered recently at the Dana Quarry in Wyoming. The 155 million-year-old dinosaur, discovered recently at the Dana Quarry in Wyoming, USA on display at Dubai Mall. Photo by Juidin Bernarrd/Khaleej Times A 155 million-year-old dinosaur has taken up residence at the Dubai Mall, and the public has been tasked with the job of naming it. The surprise unveiling of the 24.4 metre-long Diplodocus Longus saw the jaws of hundreds of shoppers drop to the floor at Monday evening’s reveal. The colossal exhibit has been noted as the rarest paleontology find in history, with more than 90 per cent of its skeleton intact. So what’s it going to be? Matilda, Penny, Candy… who knows, but let’s get naming. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
