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Monday February 19, 2018
Kaieteur News
All 65 passengers, crew feared Stunned by massacre, U.S. students demand tighter gun controls dead in Iranian plane crash
Worried relatives of passengers gathered at Yasuj airport. DUBAI (Reuters) - All 65 passengers and crew were feared dead in a plane crash in central Iran yesterday after the domestic flight came down in bad weather in a mountainous region. A spokesman for Iranian carrier Aseman Airlines had told state television everyone was killed, but the airline then issued a statement saying it could not reach the crash site and could not “accurately and definitely confirm” everyone died. The airline had also initially said 60 passengers and six crew were on board the twin-engined turboprop ATR 72 that was flying to the southwestern city of Yasuj. But it later said there were a total of 65 people on board, as one passenger had missed the flight. The Aseman-operated plane crashed near
the town of Semirom after taking off from Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, emergency services spokesman Mojtaba Khaledi told ISNA news agency. As night approached, bad weather prevented helicopters searching the probable crash site but emergency workers were scouring the mountainous area by land, the television said. “It is getting colder and darker and still no sign of the plane,” said a television reporter accompanying rescue teams searching snowcovered areas in Mount Dena which has more than 40 peaks higher than 4,000 metres (13,000 feet). Media reports said the plane disappeared from radar screens 50 minutes after taking off from Mehrabad airport in the southwest of the capital. It mainly handles domestic flights.
PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) - Stunned by last week’s bloodiest high school shooting in U.S. history, students across the country were mobilizing yesterday for stronger gun laws, while Florida officials contemplated when to reopen their badly shaken school. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a former student is accused of murdering 17 people on Wednesday, joined others on social media to plan rallies, a Washington march and a national walk-out aimed at getting the attention of an adult population many say has failed to protect them. “I felt like it was our time to take a stand, because, you know, we’re the ones in these schools, we’re the ones who are having shooters come into our classrooms and our spaces,” said Lane Murdock of Ridgefield High School in Connecticut. Murdock, a 15-old sophomore who lives 20 miles (32 km) from Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 children and six adults were
shot dead five years ago, drew more than 36,000 signatures on an online petition yesterday morning calling on students to walk out of their high schools on April 20. Instead of going to classes, she urged her fellow students to stage protests on the 19th anniversary of the mass shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. Last week’s massacre in Florida, which followed several other school shootings this year, inflamed the country’s long-simmering debate between advocates for gun control and gun ownership. Former student Nikolas Cruz, 19, faces multiple murder charges in the deaths of 14 students and three staff members, and the wounding of more than a dozen others, in a rampage that eclipsed Columbine as the country’s worst mass shooting at a high school. The charges can bring the death penalty, but prosecutors have not yet said if they will seek capital punishment.
Trump - FBI missed signs on Florida shooting due to Russia probe WA S H I N G T O N (Reuters) - President Donald Trump attacked the FBI and lawmakers probing suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and said an excessive focus on Russia led federal investigators to miss signs that could have prevented a deadly mass shooting at a Florida high school. In a series of tweets over the weekend sent from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump said congressional investigations and political “hatred” showed that Russia had succeeded in sowing “discord, disruption and chaos” in the United States. He accused his predecessor, President Barack Obama, of failing to do enough to stop Russian election interference. “They are laughing their asses off in Moscow,” Trump
Robert Mueller tweeted yesterday morning. On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies with conspiracy to tamper in
the 2016 U.S. election. Mueller’s indictment said the Russians adopted false online personas to push divisive messages and staged political rallies while posing as Americans. U.S. spy agencies concluded more than a year ago that Russia used hacking and propaganda to try to tilt the election in favour of Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that. In a tweet on Saturday night, Trump criticized the Federal Bureau of Investigation for missing warning signs in the case of Nikolas Cruz, 19, who is charged with killing 17 people on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a Fort Lauderdale suburb.
Protesters attend a rally at the Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to demand government action on firearms. (Photo: Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel/TNS)
Gambia announces moratorium on death penalty BANJUL (Reuters) Gambian President Adama Barrow yesterday announced a moratorium on the death penalty as the West African country rebuilds its international standing following the removal last year of its longtime authoritarian ruler Yahya Jammeh. Capital punishment is on the decline across Africa, where governments executed 22 people in 2016 compared to 43 the previous year,
according to Amnesty International. “I will use this opportunity to declare a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in The Gambia, as a first step towards abolition,” Barrow said in a speech to mark the 53rd anniversary of the country’s independence from Great Britain. Jammeh, who fled Gambia a year ago after losing his latest re-election bid, drew international criticism in 2012
when his government abruptly executed nine prisoners by firing squad. Since taking office a year ago, Barrow has tried to repair damage done to Gambia’s reputation by Jammeh’s 23year rule, which was marked by human rights abuses and spats with foreign governments. Earlier this month, Gambia rejoined the Commonwealth, which Jammeh withdrew from in 2013, calling it a “neocolonial institution”.
India’s Reliance, global tech firms to Egypt sentences 65 Islamists invest $9.3 billion in industrial area to jail for incitement
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India’s Reliance Industries Ltd and global technology companies will invest 600 billion rupees ($9.34 billion) over 10 years to set up an integrated industrial area in the western state of Maharashtra, the company’s chairman Mukesh Ambani said. More than 20 global firms including Cisco, Siemens, Corning Inc., HP, Dell, Nokia and Nvidia had agreed to invest in the project with Reliance, India’s largest listed company
by market value, he said. “When we contacted globally reputed technology companies to participate in this initiative, we received an instant and enthusiastic response,” Ambani said. Reliance entered the telecoms business in September 2016, upending the sector with cut-price data and free voice service. Reliance has invested more than $30 billion in it telecoms unit Jio.
CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court has sentenced 65 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group to jail over alleged incitement against the state. The decision late Saturday by a court in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig also acquitted eight individuals. Prosecutors say the group was caught with inflammatory leaflets opposing the army and state institutions, and calling for violence. Of the group, 44 were
sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, while the rest received two years. Under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt has waged its most sweeping crackdown on dissent in its modern history, a process that has intensified ahead of a March election in which el-Sissi faces no serious opposition. Most recently, police arrested AbdelMonaem Abul Fetouh, a senior Islamist leader, over his alleged links to the Brotherhood.