 | Over 80,000 ecommerce brands trust Shopify. Get started with a free 14 day trial. From our sponsors |
| CNN.com - Top Stories |
| CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more. |
India's Modi in trouble after sign
5/1/2014 2:02:41 AM
The man who may be India's next PM, Narendra Modi, is in trouble after flashing his party's symbol. Sumnima Udas explains.
If your browser has Adobe Flash Player installed, click above to play. Otherwise, click below.
Blast, then knives at China station
5/1/2014 4:21:34 AM
- NEW: President Xi -- who was visiting region -- urges "decisive actions" against terror attacks
- NEW: Station reopens 2 hours after blast, as passengers return as armed police watched
- The explosion happened at an exit to a train station in Urumqi in China's restive northwest
- There have been tensions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang
(CNN) -- Three people died and 79 others were injured, four seriously, in a suspected terror attack Wednesday in China's restive northwestern region.
The incident spurred the nation's President Xi Jinping -- who was completing a four-day tour to the area -- to vow action against separatist attacks, state news reported.
An explosion rocked the South Railway Station of Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, followed by a knife attack at the same location.
Xinhua announced the casualty toll via Twitter early Thursday, as well as Xi's urging "decisive actions" in response.
"The battle to combat violence and terrorism will not allow even a moment of slackness, and decisive actions must be taken to resolutely suppress the terrorists' rampant momentum," state-owned media reported Xi as saying.
Xinhua, quoting police, also said "knife-wielding mobs" attacked people at one of the station's exits following the blast, which occurred around 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Police evacuated people from the square in front of the station, deployed armed officers and cordoned off entrances to the station, where train services had been suspended.
The station reopened about two hours later. with passengers re-entering under a heavily-armed police presence.
Frequent outbreaks of violence have beset Xinjiang, a resource-rich region where the arrival of waves of Han Chinese people over the decades has fueled sectarian tensions with the Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim ethnic group.
China was shocked in March as a violent terror attack in another train station, in Kunming, saw 10 men armed with long knives kill 29 commuters.
The fight against separatist violence in the autonomous region was a focus of the Chinese leader's visit.
During his tour, Xi visited security forces and watched an anti-terror drill, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported.
"The battle to combat violence and terrorism will not allow even a moment of slackness, and decisive actions must be taken to resolutely suppress the terrorists' rampant momentum," Xinhua quoted Xi as saying during his tour.
He also stressed the importance of "long-term stability" in the region as "vital to the whole country's reform, development and stability; to the country's unity, ethnic harmony and national security as well as to the great revival of Chinese nation."
Speaking to local officials, the President called for national unity and opposition to separatism. He said China will use a "strike-first" strategy against militants in the region and forge policies to promote ethnic harmony.
CNN's Pierre Meilhan and Euan McKirdy contributed to this report.
Strauss-Kahn may sue sex club
5/1/2014 12:32:11 AM
- Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York in 2011
- He was indicted on seven counts, including criminal sexual acts and sexual abuse
- The charges were dropped, but the maid filed a civil lawsuit and settled for undisclosed amount
Paris (CNN) -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief who was at one time accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York, is threatening to sue a Belgian sex club using the initials "D.S.K."
The Dodo Sex Klub is due to open Wednesday in Blaton, a town on the Belgian-French border.
Strauss-Kahn is often referred to as "DSK," especially by the French media.
The former head of the IMF "will take all legal measures necessary to cease the smearing of his name," according to a statement released by five French and Belgian lawyers. Strauss-Kahn's attorney had no further comment when contacted by CNN.
The club's owner, Dominique Alderweireld, owns a string of prostitution houses in Belgium. And he's no stranger to Strauss-Kahn. Later this year, Alderweireld will be on trial, along with Strauss-Kahn, on charges of "aggravated pimping" for their alleged participation in a prostitution ring at the Hotel Carlton in Lille, in northern France.
In 2011, a maid at New York's Sofitel Hotel accused Strauss-Kahn of trying to force himself on her when she came to clean his room. He was indicted on seven counts, including sexual assault and attempted rape, but all the charges were dropped after prosecutors found inconsistencies in the woman's story.
The woman later filed a civil lawsuit against Strauss-Kahn. The two reached a settlement in 2012, but the terms were not disclosed.
READ: 2013: Exclusive: 'I don't think I have any kind of problem with women,' Strauss-Kahn says
Vein 'exploded' in botched execution
5/1/2014 12:16:49 PM
- NEW: Anti-death penalty advocate says the state government "acted in sin"
- Witnesses say the inmate moved, seemingly tried to talk well after being given drugs
- The inmate, Clayton Lockett, later suffered what appeared to be a heart attack -- and died
- "The doctor observed the line and determined that the line had blown," an official says
(CNN) -- A vein on an Oklahoma inmate "exploded" in the middle of his execution Tuesday, prompting authorities to abruptly halt the process and call off another execution later in the day as they try to figure out what went wrong.
The inmate, Clayton Lockett, died 43 minutes after the first injection was administered -- according to reporter Courtney Francisco of CNN affiliate KFOR who witnessed the ordeal -- of an apparent heart attack, Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton said.
That first drug, midazolam, is supposed to render a person unconscious. Seven minutes later, Lockett was still conscious. About 16 minutes in, after his mouth and then his head moved, he seemingly tried to get up and tried to talk, saying "man" aloud, according to the KFOR account.
Other reporters -- including Cary Aspinwall of the Tulsa World newspaper -- similarly claimed that Lockett was "still alive," having lifted his head while prison officials lowered the blinds at that time so that onlookers couldn't see what was going on.
Dean Sanderford, Lockett's attorney, said that he saw his client's body start "to twitch (and) he mumbled something." Then "the convulsing got worse, it looked like his whole upper body was trying to lift off the gurney."
Yet the office of Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued a statement indicating "execution officials said Lockett remained unconscious after the lethal injection drugs were administered."
After the ordeal, Patton told reporters that Lockett, a convicted murderer, had been sedated and then was given the second and third drugs in protocol.
"There was some concern at that time that the drugs were not having the effect, so the doctor observed the line and determined that the line had blown," he said, before elaborating that Lockett's vein had "exploded."
"I notified the attorney general's office, the governor's office of my intent to stop the execution and requested a stay for 14 days for the second execution scheduled this afternoon," said Patton, referring to the execution of Charles Warner.
Dianne Clay, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office, said Tuesday night that her office was "gathering information on what happened in order to evaluate."
The state's governor ordered an investigation and issued an executive order granting a 2-week delay in executions.
"I have asked the Department of Corrections to conduct a full review of Oklahoma's execution procedures to determine what happened and why during this evening's execution of Clayton Derrell Lockett," Fallin said in a statement.
The constitutionality of lethal injection drugs and drug cocktails has made headlines since last year, when European manufacturers -- including Denmark-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital -- banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions. Thirty-two states were left to find new drug protocols.
Opinion: End secrecy in lethal injections
According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, its protocol includes midazolam, which causes unconsciousness, vecuronium bromide, which stops respiration, and potassium chloride, which is meant to stop the heart.
Lockett was convicted in 2000 of a bevy of crimes, including first-degree murder, first-degree rape, kidnapping and robbery in a 1999 home invasion and crime spree that left Stephanie Nieman dead and two people injured.
His final moments gave new life, at least temporarily, to Charles Warner.
Warner was convicted in 2003 for the first-degree rape and murder six years earlier of his then-girlfriend's 11-month-old daughter, Adrianna Waller.
The state decided to put off his execution set for Tuesday. But it has given no indication this delay will be indefinite despite calls from the likes of Adam Leathers, co-chair of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who accused the state of having "tortured a human being in an unconstitutional experimental act of evil."
"Tonight, our state government has acted in sin and violated God's law," Leathers said. "We will pray for their souls."
Notably, Lockett and Warner -- who were both held at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester -- had been at the center of a court fight over the drugs used in their execution.
They'd initially challenged the state Department of Corrections' unwillingness to divulge which drugs would be used, only for the department to budge and disclosed the substances.
But Lockett and Warner didn't stop there, taking issue with the state's so-called secrecy provision forbidding it from disclosing the identities of anyone involved in the execution process or suppliers of any drugs or medical equipment.
Oklahoma's high court initially issued stays on their executions, only to lift those stays last week in ruling the two men had no right to know the source of the drugs intended to kill them.
Warner's attorney, Madeline Cohen, said that further legal action can be expected given how "something went horribly awry" Tuesday.
"Oklahoma cannot carry out further executions until there's transparency in this process," Cohen said. "...I think they should all be looking at themselves hard. Oklahoma needs to take a step back."
Death penalty Fast Facts
Death penalty in the United States gradually declining
CNN's Eliott C. McLaughlin and Ross Levitt contributed to this report.
MH370: Report reveals 4-hour gap before search began
5/1/2014 1:04:14 PM
- An initial report by Malaysian officials describes the night the plane went missing
- It shows a 4-hour gap from when the plane left radar to when the official search began
- The plane probably had enough fuel to last through that gap and for another 2½ hours
- The report recommends real-time tracking for all commercial air transport aircraft
(CNN) -- On the fateful night that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, officials apparently didn't notice for 17 minutes that it had gone off radar -- and didn't activate an official rescue operation for four hours.
Those are two of the details outlined in a preliminary report by Malaysia's Transportation Ministry released to the public Thursday. The report had been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. body for global aviation.
What's remarkable about the report is what's missing from it.
When did the plane disappear?
At 1:21 a.m. on March 8, the plane -- carrying 239 people to Beijing -- disappeared from radar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
By then, the plane's crew should have contacted air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, but apparently it didn't.
And it wasn't until 17 minutes later that Ho Chi Minh asked Malaysian air traffic control where the plane was.
"We are left to assume (that) for those 17 minutes, Kuala Lumpur either didn't notice or didn't act," CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said.
Why was there a four-hour gap in response?
Then came a four-hour gap -- from the time when officials noticed the plane was missing to when the official rescue operation was launched.
The report gives an account of the conversation air traffic controllers in Vietnam and Malaysia had at that time. Ho Chi Minh City let Kuala Lumpur know at 1:38 a.m. that it was not able to establish verbal contact with Flight 370.
Kuala Lumpur also contacted Singapore, Hong Kong and Cambodia.
Those four hours may have been crucial.
On Tuesday, a Malaysia Airlines official said the plane probably ran out of fuel about 7½ hours into the flight. That means it might have been flying during that four-hour gap, and possibly for another 2½ hours after the search started.
Where was the military?
The Malaysian Prime Minister has said the military tracked the plane as it headed back across Malaysia.
According to the report, a playback of a recording from military primary radar revealed that an aircraft that may have been MH370 had made a westerly turn, crossing Peninsular Malaysia. The search area was then extended to the Strait of Malacca.
But it's unclear when that happened. The report makes no mention of the military's role the night of the disappearance.
Where are the details?
Preliminary reports are by their nature brief and to the point. It is up to the country to choose whether to release additional details, such as a cargo manifest, seating plan and air traffic control transcripts.
"This report and any other documents released should be an audit of what happened and factually who did what," Quest said.
Compared to the preliminary reports of other recent major flight investigations, the one released by Malaysia is scant.
Read the report
The equivalent preliminary report on Air France 447 was 128 pages long. That report by, produced by France's aviation safety agency just one month after the plane went missing in 2009, offered specific details on communication between various air traffic control centers.
Flight 447 was found more than a year later in the Atlantic Ocean; all 228 people on board had died.
And a preliminary report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau into the Qantas engine explosion in 2010 ran more than 40 pages, including diagrams and charts.
"I can certainly understand that the authorities had more pressing matters in finding the plane than writing a long report, when there will be plenty of other chances to do so," Quest said, "but this report is the barest possible they could get away with."
Debate over transparency
The report released Thursday was the same one Malaysia submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization but had not been made public. Malaysian officials came under heavy criticism last week for submitting the report to the U.N. body but not making it available to relatives of passengers.
While authorities are not required to make a preliminary report public, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak acquiesced.
Reporters could not ask questions raised by the report since the document was released by e-mail and not at a news conference.
One safety recommendation
The report makes one safety recommendation: the need for real-time tracking.
Authorities noted that while commercial planes spend considerable time operating over remote areas, there is no requirement for real-time tracking of such aircraft.
"There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing and their last position was not accurately known," the Malaysian report states. "This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner."
CNN reported on this detail from the report last week.
The officials asked the International Civil Aviation Organization to examine the benefits of introducing a standard for real-time tracking of commercial planes.
It's the same recommendation that was made after the Air France 447 disaster in 2009. But nothing seems to have happened after that report.
READ: Searchers dispute company's claim that it may have found aircraft wreckage
READ: Is GeoResonance on to something?
READ: MH370: Plane audio recording played in public for first time to Chinese families
CNN's Ivan Watson contributed to this report.
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at feedmyinbox.com
If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions
No comments:
Post a Comment