Seconds before crash, passengers knew they were too low

By Holly Yan and Greg Botelho, CNN

July 7, 2013 — Updated 0822 GMT

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was seconds away from landing when the passengers sensed something horribly amiss.

The plane was approaching San Francisco International Airport under a beautifully clear sky, but it was flying low. Dangerously low.

Benjamin Levy looked out the window from seat 30K and could see the water of the San Francisco Bay about 10 feet below.

“I don’t see any runway, I just see water,” Levy recalled.

Further back in the Boeing 777, Xu Das had the same realization.

The Boeing 777-200LR has been in service since March 2006

The airline was voted Airline of the Year by Global Traveler in 2011

In 1993, Asiana Airlines Boeing 737 crashed killing 68 people

“Looking through window, it looked on level of the (sea)wall along the runway,” he posted on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE

Officials at the justice ministry are proposing a simplified immigration system for foreigners who are “deemed unlikely to be a terrorist or criminal.”

A survey by a Tokyo-based cram-school operator found that 55 percent of college students would like to study abroad but feel that it’s “too late… to deal with a globalizing world.”

A newspaper poll suggests that 41 percent of Japanese people approve of making it easier for politicians to change the Constitution.

Authorities at the justice ministry have proposed serving prison meals to elderly people who are living alone.

Thousands gather for rival rallies in Egypt

Pro- and anti-government protesters converge in Cairo on first anniversary of inauguration of Mohamed Morsi.

Gregg Carlstrom Last Modified: 30 Jun 2013 07:13

Egypt braced for mass protests on Sunday as pro- and anti-government protesters gathered in the capital on the first anniversary of the inauguration of country’s first democratically elected president.

Thousands of people opposed to President Mohamed Morsi have already gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square calling for him to resign, while the president’s supporters have vowed to defend his legitimacy to the end, leading to fears of confrontation.

Morsi supporters held their own rally outside a Cairo mosque on Friday, an effort to preempt Sunday’s demonstrations, and thousands of them are holding an open-ended sit-in.

The anti-Morsi protests are being organised by a grassroots campaign calling itself Tamarod, meaning “rebellion” or “insubordination”, which claims to have collected signatures from 22 million Egyptians demanding the president’s ouster.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

An NPO in Tokyo has released a DVD for job seekers that details the sleaziness of so-called black corporations-“companies that disregard labor laws, harass employees and overwork them while paying low wages.”

A major pachinko manufacturer was forced to recall about 12,000 pachislot machines because of a “defect that makes it difficult for players to win the jackpot.”

Officials in Shizuoka have released a guidebook that lists “more than 300 Mt Fuji lookalikes across Japan.”

According to a survey by the land ministry, 79.8 percent of Japanese people say they want to own their own home. It’s the first time in 12 years that the figure has dipped under 80 percent.

It pays to use slave labour, says watchdog

Gangmasters Licensing Authority is dismayed at tiny fines levied on unscrupulous employers

EMILY DUGAN    SUNDAY 23 JUNE 2013

Sentences for criminal bosses who use forced labour are “unduly lenient” and do not deter modern slavery, the head of Britain’s worker exploitation watchdog believes.

Sentences for criminal bosses who use forced labour are “unduly lenient” and do not deter modern slavery, the head of Britain’s worker exploitation watchdog has told The Independent on Sunday.

The fines for agencies and farmers exploiting staff are so small that they are seen as a “hazard of the job” and not a deterrent, Paul Broadbent, chief executive of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority said in an interview.

World exclusive: Iran will send 4,000 troops to aid Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria

US urges Britain and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing Sunni-Shia conflict

ROBERT FISK    SUNDAY 16 JUNE 2013

Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.

FINDINGS

Japanese researchers have discovered that people with diabetes are 1.2 times more likely to develop cancer than non-diabetics.

The internal affairs ministry says the number of workers aged 60 or over has hit a record high for the sixth straight year. The figure stands at 11.92 million.

A museum in Meguro-ku has put on display 10 notebooks containing the schoolboy scribblings of acclaimed writer Osamu Dazai (1909-1948).

Meanwhile, a trove of nine unpublished drawings by famed manga-ka Osamu Tezuka was discovered by Space Battleship Yamato illustrator Leiji Matsumoto.

Obama and Xi end ‘constructive’ summit

The BBC

US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have ended a two-day summit described by a US official as “unique, positive and constructive”.

US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said Mr Obama had warned Mr Xi that cyber-crime could be an “inhibitor” in US-China relations.

He also said that both countries had agreed that North Korea had to denuclearise.

The talks in California also touched on economic and environmental issues.

The two leaders spent nearly six hours together on Friday and another three hours on Saturday morning at the sprawling Sunnylands retreat in California.

PUBLIC ENEMIES

The Consumer Affairs Agency upbraided Coca-Cola Japan for using the word tokuhou (“news flash”) in ads for a new fiber drink. The agency said consumers might confuse the term with tokuho, a word used to describe healthy food.

The MPD received 14,104 entries in a contest to name a new type of bank scam where fraudsters pretend to be the victim’s son over the phone. The official name is now “Kaasan, tasukete sagi,” or “Mom, help me scam.”

The newest hire at the justice ministry’s clerical department is… a juvenile delinquent on probation. Officials hope to foster understanding about criminal rehabilitation.

The MPD has asked NTT Docomo to be more careful with cellphone-rental companies, some of which are apparently fronts for crime groups.

Syria conflict: Red Cross ‘alarmed’ over Qusair

2 June 2013 Last updated at 06:50 GMT

The BBC

The Red Cross has expressed alarm over the situation in the besieged Syrian town of Qusair, and has appealed for immediate access to deliver aid.

Thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped in the town, which lies close to the border with Lebanon.

The battle for control between pro-government forces and rebel fighters has made medical supplies, food and water scarce, the Red Cross says.

Russia has also reportedly blocked a UN “declaration of alarm” on Qusair.

The draft Security Council declaration, which was circulated by Britain, voiced “grave concern about the situation in Qusair, and in particular the impact on civilians of the ongoing fighting”.