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JANUARY 14, 2021 | The Jewish Home
The Week In News
Lost at Sea
Sixty-two people were killed after an Indonesian passenger jet plunged into the sea north of Jakarta over the weekend. Sriwijaya Air flight 182 took off from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta on Saturday morning and was headed to the city of Pontianak when it lost contact with air traffic controllers. Indonesia’s Ministry of Transport announced later that day that the jet crashed near between the islands of Laki and Lancang. According to data provided by in-
ternational tracking service Flightradar24, the doomed aircraft plunged 10,000 feet in under a minute less than four minutes after takeoff. The Indonesian Navy dispatched five warships and two diving units to the area but did not find any survivors. The fatalities included 43 adults and seven children along with 12 flight crew. The cause of the crash is currently unknown and is being investigated by Indonesia’s National Transport Safety Board. Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency announced on Sunday that it had pinpointed the location of the plane’s two black boxes. By Tuesday, it was able to retrieve the flight data recorder; the cockpit voice recorder has not yet been located. Sriwijaya Airlines CEO Jefferson Irwin Jauwena said that the jet never had any mechanical trouble and recently passed its annual inspection. “Of course, we are very concerned about what happened to us with SJ 182,” said Jauwena. “We hope that your prayers can help the search process run smoothly. We hope all is well.” The Boeing 737-500 had been in service for 26 years and was operated by Sriwijaya Air since 2012.
Passport Power

Not all passports are equal. With COVID-19 resulting in widespread travel bans, travel documents now determine which countries travelers may access. The Henley Passport Index ranks the world’s passports according to how many countries the document allows its owner to access without needing to obtain a visa. Topping the index this year was Japan, whose passport offers visa-free access to 191 countries worldwide. Coming in second place was Singapore with 190 countries; South Korea and Germany tied for third place. New Zealand finished in seventh place with access to 185 countries, ahead of Australia with 184. The United States also came in at the seventh spot on the list, although due to be pandemic, Americans can
in reality only visit fewer than 75 destinations. Meanwhile, the worst passports belong to Afghanis, with their travel documents allowing them to enter only 26 countries. Ahead of Afghanistan was Iraq and then Syria, which offer visa-free travel to 29 destinations worldwide. The 2021 index was the first to be published since the coronavirus outbreak resulted in countries implementing travel restrictions that severely limited available destinations. The pandemic devastated the aviator industry and resulted in countries reducing travel to the bare minimum. “Just a year ago, all indications were that the rates of global mobility would continue to rise, that travel freedom would increase, and that holders of powerful passports would enjoy more access than ever before,” Henley and Partners Chairman Christian H. Kaelin noted. “The global lockdown negated these glowing projections, and as restrictions begin to lift, the results from the latest index are a reminder of what passport power really means in a world upended by the pandemic.”
