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| Terrorism not ruled out in disappearance of Malaysia Airlines jet - Los Angeles Times Posted: 08 Mar 2014 08:59 AM PST BEIJING — Malaysian officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane Saturday said they were not ruling out terrorism — or any other causes — as reports emerged that two Europeans listed on the passenger manifest were not aboard and may have had their passports stolen. Vietnamese military aircraft participating in a search-and-rescue operation for the Boeing 777, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, had spotted two oil slicks in the waters off southern Vietnam, the Associated Press reported. The government said the slicks were each six miles to nine miles long and were consistent with the type that would be left by fuel from a crashed jetliner, the AP said. PHOTOS: Malaysia Airlines plane missing Malaysia's director general of civil aviation told a news conference Saturday night that authorities had reviewed closed-circuit TV footage of passengers and their luggage and hadn't seen anything of concern. But Prime Minister Najib Razak cautioned that it was "too early" to come to any conclusions, and other officials said nothing was being ruled out of consideration at this point. The plane was carrying 227 passengers and a dozen Malaysian crew members, the airline said. The biggest contingent — 154 — was from China and Taiwan. An initial passenger list posted at the Beijing airport, apparently by Chinese authorities, listed three U.S. passport holders: an adult, Philip Tallmadge Wood, and two children, Nicole Meng and Leo Meng. However, a full manifest published online Saturday evening by the airline listed the American passengers as Wood, age 51, Nicole Meng, age 4, and Yan Zhang, age 2. Wood is believed to be an IBM employee who recently began working for the company in Kuala Lumpur after several years in its Beijing offices. According to the airline, other passengers on the flight included 38 Malaysians, five Indians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, four French, two Ukranians, two Canadians and two New Zealanders. There were also a Russian, an Italian, a Dutch and an Austrian aboard, the airline said. However, shortly after the list was published on the airline's website, Italy's ANSA news agency reported that Luigi Maraldi, 37, who was listed on the manifest, was in fact not on the plane (link in Italian). The agency said he had phoned his family to say he was alive and well in Thailand. Austria's APA news agency made a similar report about an Austrian citizen listed on the passenger manifest, Christian Kozel, 30 (link in German). APA reported his passport was stolen about two years ago in Thailand. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it lost contact with air traffic controllers around 2:40 a.m. local time Saturday, two hours after takeoff, the airline said. The airline's chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur that there was no distress call or bad weather report from the pilots before the plane lost contact with air control 120 nautical miles (140 miles) off the east coast of Kota Bharu, Malaysia. As the search-and-rescue effort got underway, in addition to Vietnamese aircraft, China sent two ships to assist, state-run CCTV reported, while Singapore dispatched a C-130 aircraft. Malaysia sent three maritime enforcement ships, a navy vessel and three helicopters, a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency official told Reuters. Mikael Robertsson, cofounder of FlightRadar24, which tracks about 120,000 flights per day with 3,000 receivers around the world, said the last transmission it recorded from the flight was at 35,000 feet. While it's possible the plane veered into an area too far away from receivers to track it, he said that was unlikely. "In this case, we have quite good coverage," he said. "We had a very good stable signal and it just disappeared …. I don't want to speculate, but something very sudden happened." FlightRadar representatives also said they believed the plane had lost radar contact about 40 minutes into the flight, not two hours as the airline said. Relatives of some of the missing passengers were brought from the Beijing Capital International Airport to a nearby hotel and were sequestered in a conference room on the second floor of the complex Saturday morning. Periodically, wails could be heard coming from inside the room, and several people emerged in the midafternoon, complaining that airline officials were not providing sufficient information. "We are being treated like dogs!" one man yelled, pushing through a crowd of reporters. "We are still trying to locate the current location of the flight based on the last known position of the aircraft," the airline said in a statement. "We are working with the international search and rescue teams in trying to locate the aircraft. So far, we have not received any emergency signals or distress messages." |
| Russia Turns The Screws On Ukraine With Gas Supply Threat - TIME Posted: 08 Mar 2014 08:39 AM PST  Moscow ratcheted up pressure on Crimea Saturday by threatening to cut off crucial gas supplies to Ukraine, but the interim government in Kiev remained defiant of Russia's bare-knuckled tactics and announced Ukraine would not "not give up Crimea to anyone." On Friday Moscow brandished its sharpest weapons yet in the crisis. Russia's state-owned, monolithic gas company Gazprom warned it would switch off gas supplies to Ukraine if the financially strapped country does not pay its bills, reports the Wall Street Journal, and the Kremlin sent clear signals it is ready annex Crimea, inviting the region's separatist leader to Moscow after Russia's upper house of parliament pledged to support Crimea's bid to join the country. Ukraine's interim government stood firm under Russian pressure Saturday, saying Russia's annexation of the region would be unconstitutional and violate international law—a claim that Western leaders have also made. "Crimea is and will be Ukrainian territory, and we will not give up Crimea to anyone," Ukraine's acting foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsia said, the Washington Post reports. The announced March 16 referendum in Crimea would propose that the predominantly ethnic Russian peninsula secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The Kremlin already effectively controls the territory after invading last week and barricading Ukrainian troops in their bases. The referendum is "illegitimate and will not have any legal implications for Crimea, for Ukraine, as well as for the international community," said Deshchytsia. Tensions remained high in Crimea Saturday, a day after Russian troops attempted to storm a Ukrainian army base before retreating. A team of international military observers was again refused entry to Crimea on Saturday, reports the BBC, and two journalists were attacked and beaten during the standoff. Russian forces fired warning shots as a convoy from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe attempted to enter the peninsula. More Russian troops have been sighted unloading in eastern Crimea on Friday, reports the Associated Press. Meanwhile, the Russian defense ministry said it was considering backing off of international arms control treaties by halting foreign weapons inspections of its arsenal as a result of US and NATO responses to the crisis. |
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Ukrainian troops guard the Belbek air base outside Sevastopol, Ukraine, on Thursday, March 6. Ukrainian officials and Western diplomats accuse Russia of sending thousands of troops into the Crimea region in the past week -- a claim Russia has denied. The crisis in the former Soviet republic has revived concerns of a return to Cold War relationships. Follow the evolving story on 
