A4 Friday, March 14, 2014
WORLD
Russian troops engage in war games near Ukraine SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Russia conducted new military maneuvers near its border with Ukraine on Thursday, and President Vladimir Putin said the world shouldn’t blame his country for what he called Ukraine’s “internal crisis.” In Crimea, where the public will vote on Sunday whether to break away from Ukraine and become part of Russia, jittery residents lined up at their banks to withdraw cash from their accounts amid uncertainty
over the future of the peninsula, which Russian troops now control. Violence engulfed the eastern Donetsk region, where violent clashes between proRussia demonstrators and supporters of the Ukrainian government left at least one person dead.
“These people are afraid their bank will collapse and no one wants to lose their money,” said resident Tatiana Sivukhina. “Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.” U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov plan to meet in London on Friday in a lastditch bid to end the international standoff over the Crimean referendum, which Ukraine and the West have rejected as illegitimate.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel sharply criticized Russia, saying the territorial integrity of Ukraine cannot be compromised.
Speaking to Germany’s Parliament, Merkel said Russia risks “massive”
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political and economic consequences, if it does not enter into “negotiations that achieve results” over the situation in Ukraine.
She said the only way out of the crisis is through diplomacy and that “the use of the military is no option.”
On Wednesday, Moscow rejected the Ukrainian government’s claim that a massive Russian military buildup near the countries’ border was raising the threat of a possible invasion.
AP Photo
An Indonesian Air Force officer draws a flight pattern flown earlier in a search operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, during a post-mission briefing at Suwondo air base in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Thursday.
Missing plane sent signals to satellite for hours
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysia Airlines plane sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing, an indication that it was still flying for hundreds of miles or more, a U.S. official briefed on the search said Thursday.
Six days after the plane with 239 people aboard disappeared, Malaysian authorities expanded their search westward toward India, saying the aircraft may have flown for several hours after its last contact with the ground shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. A string of previous clues about Flight MH370 have led nowhere.
“MH370 went completely silent over the open ocean,” said Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. “This is a crisis situation. It is a very complex operation, and it is not obviously easy. We are devoting all our energies to the task at hand.”
tion to the plane’s home base. The idea is to provide information before the plane lands on whether maintenance work or repairs are needed.
Malaysia Airlines didn’t subscribe to that service, but the plane still had the capability to connect with the satellite and was automatically The U.S. official, who spoke on sending pings, the official said. condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the sit“It’s like when your cell phone is uation by name, said the Boeing off but it still sends out a little ‘I’m 777-200 wasn’t transmitting data to here’ message to the cellphone netthe satellite, but was instead send- work,” the official said. “That’s how ing out a signal to establish contact. sometimes they can triangulate your Boeing offers a satellite service position even though you’re not callthat can receive a stream of data ing because the phone every so often during flight on how the aircraft is sends out a little bleep. That’s sort functioning and relay the informa- of what this thing was doing.”
AP Photo
Pro Ukraine protestors, some of them injured, are shielded by police at right during clashes with pro Russia protestors following a rally in Donetsk, Ukraine, Thursday.
Hamas in its worst cash crisis since Gaza seizure
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Gaza’s Hamas rulers have been hit by the worst economic crisis since seizing the territory seven years ago and face growing discontent, even among core supporters, because there’s no sign of relief from a blockade enforced not only by Israel but also by a suddenly hostile Egypt. Hamas gover nment employees have complained publicly about getting only partial salaries for the past four months. Bus drivers have staged a strike over soaring fuel prices. Laborers have lost jobs as construction has dried up. Hamas’ own surveys show its popularity plummeting. “I never experienced a situation worse than this one,” said Ahmed Zeitouniya, 32, who has been walking to his job in the Culture Ministry because he can no longer afford $1 in bus fares and is in debt to the neighborhood grocery and his oldest son’s kindergarten. Gaza’s isolation is
unlikely to ease soon. Instead, Israel and Egypt have tightened their border closures.
Israel sealed its only cargo crossing with Gaza on Wednesday after the Islamic Jihad group fired dozens of rockets from the territory at Israel. Hamas seems to tolerate occasional Islamic Jihad attacks on Israel as a release valve for the public’s discontent. However, Hamas has largely observed a truce with Israel since 2012 and does not seem interested in further escalation. The game changer for Hamas was the Egyptian military’s ouster last July of then-President Mohammed Morsi. The military-backed government in Cairo has since banned Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood — the region-wide movement that also spawned Hamas — and has shut down most of the smuggling tunnels along the Gaza border, which were an economic lifeline for the strip.