 | Fast and flexible way to recover virtualized apps and data. Try now! 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. |
Ferry survivors return to school
4/30/2014 4:22:21 PM
- NEW: Coast guard: The death toll rises to 219, with 83 missing
- About 70 survivors from the ferry visit Danwon High School in Ansan
- The school sent 325 students on a field trip; scores have died at sea
- South Korea's president apologizes for the initial response to the ferry sinking
Ansan, South Korea (CNN) -- They left school two weeks ago on a field trip with hundreds of classmates.
They came back Wednesday without the scores of students who died at sea.
About 70 survivors from the sunken South Korean ferry visited a memorial at the Danwon High School in Asnan -- the high school that sent 325 students on a field trip to Jeju Island.
Inside the hallways, it didn't take long for the tears to flow. Many students sobbed as they walked past images of their classmates and hurried back onto waiting buses.
For these students, school will never be the same.
Losing hope
The ferry, en route from Incheon to Jeju, sank April 16 on the country's southwest coast.
Any hope for survivors largely hinged on the possibility of air pockets within the sunken ship, which was carrying 425 people.
Hundreds of relatives camped out near a harbor in Jindo, waiting for news. But after officials said there were no more air pockets, the grim reality set in.
"All we are asking for is bring the dead bodies out," a father wailed Tuesday. "We know they are not alive now."
Videos capturing ferry's final moments fuel fresh outrage
Images of ferry captain abandoning ship are shocking
Lots of blame, no answers
As the web of blame widens, even the country's president is apologizing for the disaster that has killed at least 219 passengers. Another 83 people are missing, the South Korean coast guard reported Thursday.
"I am losing sleep as there is no news about saving more lives and because there are many families who don't know whether their loved ones are dead or alive still," President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday.
"I am at a loss for words for an apology that can be enough to console the pain and suffering even for a little while over insufficiency in efforts made to prevent the accident and also in the initial response to the accident," she added.
"We'll fix the problems and change our practices so we'll have safer nation and won't let them die in vain," Park said.
South Korean authorities arrested have arrested three people on suspicion of destroying evidence connected to the ferry sinking. Investigators also raided a Coast Guard office in a probe of how officials handled the first emergency call from a passenger.
The director and two other people with the Korea Shipping Association's Incheon office were arrested and accused of destroying evidence related to the probe of Chonghaejin, the company that owns the ferry.
The Korea Shipping Association is a trade group that promotes the interests of the country's shipping industry.
The site raided was the Coast Guard building in Mokpo, which includes the South Jeolla province emergency center -- a facility that provides 119 services, akin to the 911 emergency service in the United States.
Investigators are looking into possible dereliction of duty.
Ferry disaster's toll on South Korea's national psyche
Andrew Stevens reported from Ansan; Holly Yan reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Steven Jiang and Stella Kim also contributed to this report.
New Kenya law legalizes polygamy
5/1/2014 6:38:29 AM
- The bill initially allowed the first wife the right to veto husband's choice of additional spouses
- Male members of parliament successfully pushed to get that clause dropped
- Now the first wife has no say
(CNN) -- A new law that went into effect in Kenya this week makes it legal for a man to marry as many women as he wants. And a leading women's group is applauding it.
President Uhuru Kenyatta signed the polygamy measure into law Tuesday, formally recognizing what has long been a cultural practice in the nation.
Parliament passed the bill in March despite protests from female lawmakers who angrily stormed out of the late-night session at the time.
The bill initially allowed the first wife the right to veto the husband's choice of additional spouses. Male members of parliament successfully pushed to get that clause dropped.
Christine Ochieng, executive director of Federation of Women Lawyers
"Marriage is the voluntary union of a man and a woman whether in a monogamous or polygamous union," Kenyatta said in a statement. "The Marriage Act 2014 defines various types of marriages including monogamous, polygamous, customary, Christian, Islamic and Hindu marriages."
No limit on number of wives
The law legalizes polygamous unions, but does not provide an official limit on the number of wives a man can have.
The Federation of Women Lawyers, a powerful women's rights group, applauded aspects of the bill and criticized others.
Polygamy already is a common fixture among many cultures in Kenya and in some other African countries.
The bill, the group said, is long overdue because polygamous unions were previously not regarded as equal to regular marriages.
"We are happy with the law because finally all marriages are being treated equally," said Christine Ochieng, executive director of the nation's Federation of Women Lawyers.
"All marriages will be issued with marriage certificates, including customary marriages. Before this, customary marriages were treated as inferior with no marriage certificates. This opened up suffering for the women because they could not legally prove they were married to a particular man. "
First wife has no say
However, she said, the first wife should have a say in picking her husband's co-wives.
"What we are not happy about is that now a man can marry another wife or wives without the consent of the first wife," she said. "That section of the law is potentially open to abuse because a man can secretly marry other wives because he doesn't need his wife's consent to marry."
But Jane Kimani, a Nairobi resident, said the bill is archaic and has no place in modern society.
"Polygamous marriages should not even be an issue today," she said. "Kenya is moving backward instead of changing with the times."
READ: Opinion: It's time to reconsider polygamy
Why Russia will never trust NATO
5/1/2014 12:55:00 PM
- In cadet school, Russian pupils have questions for NATO
- They ask: why do you need to be on our border
- Putin used strategic military reasoning to annexe Crimea
- Among general public, there's a feeling that Russia is at last standing up for its rights
Moscow (CNN) -- In a telephone call Monday between Russia's Defense Minister General Sergei Shoigu and the U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, Shoigu described the activity of U.S. and NATO troops near Russia's border as "unprecedented."
According to the official Russian version of the call, his American counterpart assured him the alliance did not have "provocative or expansionist" intentions -- and that Russia should know this.
But it hardly seems to matter how often NATO makes these assurances. The Kremlin will never trust them. Fear of the Western military alliance's steady march east is deep-rooted. It strikes at the very heart of Russia's national sense of security, a relic of Cold War enmity which has seeped down to post-Soviet generations.
Ilya Saraev is a 15-year-old pupil at the First Moscow cadet school in Moscow. He thinks long and hard when I ask him about NATO. "I think NATO might be a friend to Russia but there's one point I don't understand: Why it needs to approach the border with Russia more and more," he says.
Cadet school is an education in patriotism, like something from a bygone era. Besides the regular classes, there are lessons in ballroom dancing. Teenage cadets proudly leading local beauties through the waltz while outside their classmates rehearse the goosestep.
After the takeover of Crimea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia of behaving in a 19th century fashion in the 21st century. In some ways it's an epithet that seems to ring true here. The children are immaculately mannered and thoughtful. They write to their fellow cadets in Crimea. They say they feel sad there's this tension between brother nations -- Russia and Ukraine.
"People still don't realize that war means despair and grief," says 16-year-old Vlad Voinakov. "They can't find a compromise because people's interests become involved and that's where the problem lies."
Russia and NATO have never been able to find much of a compromise. Russia's repeated stance is that after German reunification, promises were made that NATO would never expand eastward -- and were promptly broken. NATO says this is simply not true. "No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia's claims has ever been produced," the alliance wrote in an April fact sheet entitled "Russia's accusations -- setting the record straight."
NATO says it has tried hard to make Russia a "privileged partner." It has worked together with Russia on a range of issues from counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics to submarine rescue and emergency planning. NATO says that fundamentally Russia's anti-NATO rhetoric is an attempt to "divert attention away from its actions" in Ukraine. Now all cooperation is off the table.
"From the Russian side, that NATO-Russian cooperation was just a camouflage," says Vladimir Batyuk of Russian think tank, the Institute of USA and Canada Studies. "After the Cold War Russia tried several times to become a member and the Americans always said, 'it's not going to happen.'" He quotes Lord Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General, on the object of NATO's existence: "To keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down."
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared at his annual direct call with the Russian people that part of his reasoning for annexing Crimea was to protect Sevastopol, home of Russia's Black Sea fleet, from ever falling into NATO's hands. "If we don't do anything, Ukraine will be drawn into NATO sometime in the future. We'll be told: "This doesn't concern you," and NATO ships will dock in Sevastopol, the city of Russia's naval glory," he said.
Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yetsenyuk has said Ukrainian accession to NATO is not a priority. The nation is currently in such a state of disarray that NATO membership seems unimaginable. But a membership action plan was discussed for both Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. It was put on hold. But Putin does not forget.
"Ever since (former Ukraine President Viktor) Yanukovych fled his country and a pro-Western government took power in his country, of course this is something [Putin] couldn't stop thinking about," says Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center. "So for him, to prevent Ukraine from becoming part of the western orbit if not of NATO, was something he absolutely cannot afford."
This is why the rotation of 600 U.S. troops, small as it is, through the Baltic states and Poland for joint-training exercises is such an affront for Russia. This is why it is perhaps not strictly fair to accuse Russia of just engaging in propaganda when it declares its mistrust of NATO.
Batyuk says he feels that the general public's attitude to the alliance has worsened since the end of the Cold War. Then, people were able to dismiss the Kremlin's line towards NATO as Soviet propaganda, he says. Now it's different. "A store of unsuccessful mishaps in relations between Russia and the West after the end of the Cold War has contributed to a rise in suspicions on the Russian side to Western policy in general and NATO in particular."
That's one of the reasons Putin's popularity has soared since the annexation of Crimea. There is a feeling among the general public that, at last, Russia is standing up for its rights in the post-Soviet space where it has sat maligned for decades. Much as the Kremlin likes to nurture that narrative, it is also easy to see why it resonates with the Russian public.
READ: Fighter jets, special forces: Photos 'show Russian military buildup' near Ukraine
READ: Dutch fighter jets intercept 2 Russian bombers in their airspace
READ: Ukraine crisis: Small numbers, global impact
Grieving Flight 370 relatives told to go home
5/1/2014 9:24:56 PM
- Malaysia Airlines is closing relatives' support centers, urging relatives to return home
- Relatives wail, yell after being told to go home
- Airline says it will open "family support centers" in Beijing and Malaysia's capital
- GeoResonance talks about its wreckage claim but won't give specifics on technology
Beijing (CNN) -- Relatives of vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers wailed and yelled in a Beijing hotel Thursday as the airline announced it was closing the assistance centers where they'd been gathered for weeks -- effectively telling the families to go home.
The closures also will mean no more mass daily briefings for the relatives -- news that sparked a new wave of anguish and despair for the hundreds who heard it at Beijing's Lido Hotel.
"What can we do?" a relative yelled, as others kneeled in front of police who had assembled in the hotel briefing room to keep order.
"Who will find our family members?" another shouted.
The airline said the center at the Lido Hotel, where the company has hosted families since March, would close Friday. Centers elsewhere will close by May 7, it said.
"Instead of staying in hotels, the families of MH370 are advised to receive information updates on the progress of the search and investigation and other support by Malaysia Airlines within the comfort of their own homes, with the support and care of their families and friends," the airline said in a news release.
The briefing at the Lido Hotel came on the day that the Malaysian government released its preliminary report on the plane's March 8 disappearance.
The hotel has been an important hub of information for relatives in China. More than 100 passengers on the plane are Chinese.
The airline said it would open different "family support centers" in Beijing and Malaysia's capital; it wasn't immediately clear what those centers would do.
'People started to break down'
Sarah Bajc, the American partner of Flight 370 passenger Philip Wood, said she was one of about 500 people at Thursday's Lido Hotel meeting.
The briefing began with the airline's CEO making a seven-minute statement in English by video, Bajc said. Most of the relatives didn't understand the message until a Chinese translation was given afterward, she said.
"That's when people started to break down," she said.
Bajc said she left the room, saying the scene started to feel tense.
"I could hear a lot of yelling. Some of the police officers that were outside went in, and they started to file family members out through a separate exit," she told CNN's "New Day."
Calm was restored when Chinese officials continued the briefing and ensured the families that the search would continue, and that the relatives wouldn't be forgotten, a CNN crew outside the briefing room reported.
Bajc said Chinese relatives previously told her they dreaded the day that the hotel centers would close, fearing they wouldn't get timely updates at their rural homes.
"They are very distraught, because the average Chinese family member will be sent home to mostly a very rural place with limited access to (the) Internet, and they just feel like all lines of communications will be cut," she said.
Airline to begin compensation payments
The airline also said Thursday it would begin making advance compensation to the Flight 370 passengers' next of kin, to help with their immediate economic needs.
Under an international treaty known as the Montreal Convention, the airline must pay relatives of each deceased passenger an initial sum of around $150,000 to $175,000. Relatives of victims can also sue for further damages.
The airline didn't say how much of an advance the families would receive.
"Such advanced payments will not affect the rights of the next-of-kin to claim compensation according to the law at a later stage, and will be calculated as part of the final compensation," the airline's news release said.
Report: Four-hour gap before official search began
The news of the hotel center closures came on the day the Malaysian government publicly released the initial report on the plane's disappearance -- the report that it initially sent to the to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. body for global aviation.
The report said officials apparently didn't notice for 17 minutes that the flight had gone off radar -- and didn't activate an official rescue operation for four hours.
It wasn't immediately clear whether officials also gave the report to the relatives at the Lido Hotel on Thursday night. Bajc, who left the meeting early, said she hadn't received it.
GeoResonance defends Bay of Bengal claim
Meanwhile, the private company that says it may have found plane wreckage in the Bay of Bengal defended its claim, even though it wouldn't detail the technology it used.
GeoResonance said it used spectral analysis from satellite and plane images to reach its conclusion about the Bay of Bengal site.
The company said it conducted "large scale remote sensing" and detected the presence of aluminum, titanium and copper. Scientists went back to test for other elements that the company says make up a commercial jet.
GeoResonance has faced questions about how it could have found wreckage deep underwater, thousands of miles from the official search area.
"What we say to those people is that that is not about technology, that is about the fact that an object or a combination of objects which produce exactly the same signal as materials used in a plane are detected," GeoResonance Managing Director Pavel Kursa told CNN's Anna Coren.
The company said its search was self-funded and it wants to keep intellectual property private.
"Our technology comprises of 20 different technologies, and a lot of it is very valuable intellectual property," director David Pope said. "And we are not in the business of just giving out intellectual property for nothing."
Analyst: Experts don't support claim
The company said its analysis was done by a team of its scientists in Europe. But GeoResonance declined to name the scientists or the country they worked in and declined to give a reason.
CNN aviation expert Miles O'Brien said GeoResonance's claims are not supported by experts.
"My blood is boiling," he told CNN's "New Day." "I've talked to the leading experts in satellite imaging capability at NASA, and they know of no technology that is capable of doing this. I am just horrified that a company would use this event to gain attention like this."
Nevertheless, the company got its wish Wednesday, when Bangladesh sent two navy vessels into the Bay of Bengal to the location cited by GeoResonance.
The chief coordinator of the international search effort, Australian Angus Houston, held out little optimism that any such search would prove fruitful. He told Sky News International that the search area in the Indian Ocean had been set based on pings believed to have come from one or both of the plane's voice and data recorders.
"The advice from the experts is that's probably where the aircraft lost power and, somewhere close to that, it probably entered the water," he said.
But some aviation experts said officials have little choice but to look into the company's claim.
"The investigators are going to be hard-pressed to blow this off," said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. "I think at this point, because of the lack of results where they've been searching for six weeks, they're almost stuck. They have to go look."
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 David McKenzie reported from Beijing. CNN's Jason Hanna and Holly Yan wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Tom Watkins, Allen Shum and Dayu Zhang contributed to this report.
Kids 'could be executed in Maldives'
5/1/2014 8:29:30 AM
- Maldives reinstates the death penalty after 61 years
- Some provisions of the new law mean minors could potentially be executed
- U.N and EU have expressed their opposition to the decision
(CNN) -- The Maldives overturned a six-decade-old moratorium on capital punishment with the adoption of a new regulation this week that allows for the death penalty to be used to punish certain crimes.
The Maldivian government enacted the regulation, which makes provision for execution by lethal injection, for the crimes of premeditated murder or deliberate manslaughter.
While the age of criminal responsibility is 10 in the Maldives, some crimes under the country's Sharia laws -- known as Hadd offenses -- have an age of responsibility of 7. This means that juveniles could potentially face execution in the archipelago.
Execution facilities at the Maldives' Maafushi Prison were being built to carry out sentences. Since reenacted, 20 people have been sentenced to death, although one of these sentences was overturned by the High Court, a report in the country's Haveeru newspaper said.
Local Maldives media reported that Minister of Home Affairs Umar Naseer defended the decision to reinstate the penalty, saying that the Maldives was suffering from overcrowded prisons and a "lively criminal environment."
He was also quoted as saying that the Maldives was "a hundred percent Islamic country and there are certain values that we all believe in."
The U.N. and EU have expressed their concerns about the move, which could potentially see minors killed by the state.
"According to the new regulation, minors convicted of intentional murder shall be executed once they turn 18. Similar provisions in the recently ratified Penal Code, allowing for the application of the death penalty for crimes committed when below the age of 18, are also deeply regrettable," Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.
"We urge the Government to retain its moratorium on the use of the death penalty in all circumstances, particularly in cases that involve juvenile offenders and to work towards abolishing the practice altogether."
EU High Representative Catherine Ashton was also "deeply concerned" about the adoption of the regulations and urged the Maldives to retain the moratorium on the death penalty.
"The High Representative holds a strong and principled position against the death penalty," a statement issued by her office said.
"The death penalty is cruel and inhumane, and has not been shown in any way to act as a deterrent to crime."
READ MORE: Execution, a 19th-century relic we still can't get right
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