World 12 Ashburton Guardian
www.guardianonline.co.nz
Friday, April 17, 2015
■ UNITED NATIONS
Special envoy steps down The UN’s special envoy to Yemen has stepped down after four years of efforts at a peaceful political transition in the Arab world’s poorest country fell apart amid a Shiite rebel uprising and Saudi-led airstrikes. A UN statement said Jamal Benomar “has expressed an interest in moving on to another assignment” and that his successor will be named “in due course.” Benomar’s departure creates a diplomatic vacuum in Yemen, where he had been the key international figure working to bring the feuding parties together, even after diplomats fled embassies and the UN staff pulled out. Benomar, who previously served as an envoy in Iraq and Afghanistan, had come under criticism from some in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, as his recent efforts to broker peace showed little success. Yemen is now under weeks of airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition in an attempt to push back Shiite Houthi rebels who swept south and caused the president to flee. The UN said it will “spare no efforts to re-launch the peace process,” but the challenge has grown as the fighting in Yemen has become a kind of proxy war between Saudi Arabia and
Contempt charge A Lebanese television network is on trial at a special UN tribunal, accused of obstructing justice by releasing identities of confidential witnesses in the long-running probe into the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. AlJadeed television and its deputy news director, Karma Khayat, pleaded not guilty to charges of contempt of court. The network says the case raises concerns about media freedom. The proceedings began yesterday near The Hague in the Netherlands. The network is accused of publishing a list of prosecution witnesses in the Hariri case in 2012, which the tribunal said could compromise the proceedings. - AP
Bundchen bows out
Jamal Benomar, the UN’s special envoy to Yemen has stepped down after a peaceful political transition in the Arab world’s poorest country fell apart. PHOTO AP
its Sunni allies and Iran, a Shiite power that has supported the Houthis. More than 700 people have been killed since the airstrikes began. UN diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks were private, said that ministers from the Sunniled Gulf Co-operation Council met Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon during a trip to Kuwait in late March and told him of their unhappiness with Benomar. The pressure on Benomar, a Moroccan-born diplomat who holds British citizenship, had grown as the Houthis advanced in recent weeks. By late last week, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN was
strongly hinting that Benomar was on the way out. “We continue to support the mission of the special adviser to the secretary-general. ... Whoever the secretary-gener al designates as his special adviser, for the time being Jamal Benomar, yes,” the ambassador, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, told reporters last week. - AP
■ SOUTH KOREA
■ FLIGHT MH370
Ferry tragedy survivors struggle with guilt
Searchers not giving up
“Field Trip” is still written in big letters on a calendar hanging on Yang Jeong-won’s old classroom wall. The letters cover four days in April last year and mark one of the highlights of the year – a trip, by ferry, to a southern resort island. The sight still manages to shock Yang, one of the few students to survive a disaster that continues to horrify South Korea. For many of the second-year high school students, the trip marked a last bit of freedom before nearly two years of gruelling preparation for college entrance exams. Teachers and other students waved at them from school windows as 17-year-old Yang and her classmates boarded buses at Danwon High School in the city of Ansan, about an hour’s drive south of Seoul. Several hours later, on the morning of April 16, 2014, the ferry listed, flipped upside
In brief
down and sank. More than 300 people died, many of them students trapped in cabins because the crew ordered them to stay put, even as the captain and others jumped onto an early coast guard boat. Yang, who had on a life jacket, managed to get to an exit and called out to rescuers, who saved her. A year later, Yang still can’t believe what happened to her friends. “I sometimes wonder if some of the other students are still in the classroom, but no, this is all we have now,” she said. Yang, a freckled, short-haired girl, takes medicine for anxiety. The feeling of the tilting ship still traumatizes her. She feels guilty about surviving. “I came out of this alive, but my friends didn’t,” she said. “I once dreamed that relatives of those who died came to kill the survivors.”
The search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be expanded by another 60,000 square kilometres in the Indian Ocean if the jetliner is not found by May, officials said yesterday, affirming their commitment to not give up until it is located. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said that Malaysia, Australia and China, which are leading the hunt for the Boeing 777 that went missing on March 8 last year, are “committed to the search”. He told reporters after meeting with his counterparts from the other two countries that so far 61 per cent of the 60,000 kilometre search area has been scoured off Australia’s west coast. The remaining 39 per cent would have been searched by the end of May, he said. “If the aircraft is not found within the 60,000 square kilometres, we have collectively decided to extend the search to another 60,000 square kilometres within the highest probability area,” he said. However, searchers are hope-
ful that they can find the plane in the current search area, he said. The announcement removes some ambiguity about the future of the search as it was never made clear what would happen if the plane is not found. It will also come as a solace to the relatives of the victims, who are holding out the hope of recovering the bodies. Liow said the two areas together would cover 95 per cent of the flight path of the plane, which went missing while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Most of the passengers were Chinese. It dropped off the radar, and investigators using satellite data later figured out that it made a series of turns and headed in a completely opposite direction from where it was going before crashing into the Indian Ocean. “We are confident we are searching in the right area,” Australian Deputy Prime Minister and transport minister Warren Truss said. - AP
Gisele Bundchen bid adieu to the catwalk yesterday, strutting her stuff at an emotionally charged show in Sao Paulo that she said will be her last stroll down a runway in a 20-year career that has made her a fashion legend. The 34-year-old Brazilian mother of two has said she wants to spend more time with her family but has also vowed to continue working in the industry. As the world’s highest-paid model, according to a 2014 ranking by Forbes magazine, Bundchen is the face of Chanel, Carolina Herrera, Pantene and other top brands. She also designs her own line of flip flops and lingerie. - AP
Guilty of murder Former NFL star Aaron Hernandez was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in a late-night shooting, sealing the downfall of an athlete who once had a $40 million contract and a standout career ahead of him. Hernandez faces further legal trouble: He is still awaiting trial on murder charges in a drive-by shooting. He is accused of gunning down two men over a spilled drink at a nightclub. The first-degree murder conviction carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole and automatically triggered an appeal to Massachusetts’ highest court. - AP
Unexpected visitor Police arrested a man who steered his tiny aircraft onto the lawn of the US Capitol, which houses Congress, after flying through restricted airspace around the National Mall yesterday. The pilot was Doug Hughes, 61, a Postal Service worker from Florida. On his website, Hughes took responsibility for the stunt and said he was delivering letters to all 535 members of Congress to draw attention to campaign finance corruption. “As I have informed the authorities, I have no violent inclinations or intent,” Hughes wrote on his website, thedemocracyclub.org. “An ultralight aircraft poses no major physical threat — it may present a political threat to graft. I hope so. There’s no need to worry — I’m just delivering the mail.” A second source, a Senate aide, said police knew of the plan shortly before Hughes took off, and said he had previously been interviewed by the US Secret Service. - AP