Six In The Morning

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane ‘may have turned back’

 9 March 2014 Last updated at 08:14

  The BBC

Radar signals show a Malaysia Airlines plane that has been missing for more than 24 hours may have turned back, Malaysian officials have said.

Rescue teams looking for the plane have now widened their search area.

Investigators are also checking CCTV footage of two passengers who are believed to have boarded the plane using stolen passports.

Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared south of Vietnam with 239 people on board.

Air and sea rescue teams have been searching an area of the South China Sea south of Vietnam for more than 24 hours.

But Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur the search area had been expanded, to include the west coast of Malaysia.

Crimea’s Tatars Fear Long-Simmering Tensions Will Explode

 

BY ED FLANAGAN

SMFEROPOL, Ukraine – Despite the Crimean parliament voting to secede from Ukraine and join Russia Thursday, there is a restive minority ethnic group who could rock these plans: the Crimean Tatars.

The Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group who make up about 12 percent of the approximately 2 million people in the Crimean Peninsula, are not supporters of the March 16 referendum to align closer to Russia.

The speaker of the Tatar National Assembly, Refat Chubarov, has gone so far as to call for a boycott of the referendum, which he said, “completely ignores the opinion of the peninsula’s native population – the Crimean Tatars.”

Venezuela divisions deepen as protest over food shortages is halted

National Guardsmen prevent ’empty pots’ march from reaching food ministry as Maduro government denounces US

Associated Press in Caracas

theguardian.com, Sunday 9 March 2014 04.38 GMT

Hundreds of National Guardsmen in riot gear and armoured vehicles prevented an “empty pots march” from reaching Venezuela’s food ministry on Saturday to protest against chronic food shortages.

President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government, meanwhile, celebrated an Organisation of American States (OAS) declaration supporting its efforts to bring a solution to the country’s worst political violence in years, calling it a diplomatic victory. The United States, Canada and Panama were the only nations to oppose the declaration.

Japan to halve bluefin tuna catch

Japanese media say the nation’s fisheries agency has decided to boost protection for juvenile bluefin tuna by halving Japan’s northern Pacific catch. Studies show a dramatic decline in tuna prized by eaters of sushi.

DW

The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun said Sunday that Japan’s Fisheries Agency had decided from next year to drastically reduce catches of juvenile bluefin tuna in the northern Pacific.

Yomiuri said Japan had concluded that cuts agreed internationally last year were insufficient. Japan was encouraging other nations to also adopt bigger cuts, said the news agency Kyodo.

Late last year, moderate catch limits were agreed by nations whose boats fish the Pacific but conservation experts said these were insufficient to halt overfishing.

Another sushi favorite, bigeye tuna, has also come under pressure.

Boko Haram violence hits healthcare in NE Nigeria: Doctors

Healthcare services have collapsed in the northern part of Nigeria’s Borno state as doctors, nurses and pharmacists flee for their lives from brutal violence unleashed by Islamist Boko Haram militants.

Sapa -AFP | 09 March, 2014 10:09

Medical professionals say health services in the region have largely shut down, with mortality rates and vaccination programmes severely hit and pressure heaped on the skeleton staff that remain.

“The whole healthcare system in northern Borno has collapsed and healthcare delivery is nil,” said Musa Babakura, a surgeon at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH).

Babakura said the situation was a “growing health crisis”, with the sick forced to trek vasts distances to receive medical attention and vaccination programmes for children compromised.

Violence by Boko Haram militants has raged since 2009, but has been particularly ferocious in recent weeks, with some 500 people killed in suspected Islamist attacks since the start of the year.

Israel to display Iranian ship in hope of derailing talks with West

 Israel brought an Iranian ship it had seized to dock Saturday. Claiming the ship was carrying Syrian-made rockets bound for Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, ‘This is the real face of Iran,’ and expressed hope the West would rethink outreach to Iran.

 By Dan Williams, Reuters

A ship seized by the Israeli navy on suspicion of smuggling arms from Iran to the Gaza Strip docked on Saturday in Israel, which planned to put the cargo on display in hope of denting Tehran’s rapprochement with the West.

The Klos C was taken without resistance in the Red Sea on Wednesday. Israel said it found dozens of advanced Syrian-made rockets hidden on board in Iran and destined for the ship’s next port in Sudan, from where they would have been trucked through Egypt to Gaza.

Iran and Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers, both hostile to the Jewish state, rejected the Israeli findings as fabrications.