Malaysia Says It’s Certain: Indian Ocean
Monday, March 24, 2014
Vol. 3, No. 83
Getting Close: Malaysia’s prime minister says an analysis of data shows there’s no longer doubt that the missing Flight 370 crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean. “This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites,” said Prime Minister Najib Razak. He said Malaysian airlines has already informed the relatives of 239 missing people.
Ships are rushing to what may be a debris field after a Chinese search plane reported large floating objects and other debris in an area of several square miles. The sighting was from 33,000 feet. The US is sending a black box locator, which can be towed at slow speeds behind a ship to detect the box’s “ping.”
Ukraine: Russian troops have overrun a second Ukrainian naval base in Crimea, this one in Feodosia on the Black Sea. The Ukraine defense ministry said the Russians used stun grenades and automatic rifle fire.
The NATO commander in Europe warned yesterday that Russian troops massed on the Ukraine border are in a position to strike all the way to Moldova on the far west side of Ukraine bordering Romania.
Russia is also ratcheting up the economic pressure on Ukraine, raising the price of natural gas and closing the border to most trucks. About a quarter of Ukraine’s exports go to Russia.
So far Ukraine has refrained from similar action toward Crimea, which gets most of its food, water, and electricity from its former country. Some electricity outages were reported yesterday, but Ukraine claims it was a maintenance issue.
Nation: The death toll from Saturday’s massive landslide in Oso, Wash. has risen to at least eight. Heavy rain caused a hillside to collapse, sweeping away houses and blocking a river 55 miles north of Seattle. An uncertain number of people are still missing. The mud and debris cover a square mile.
>An eight-car commuter train derailed at Chicago’s O’Hare airport this morning, plowing across the platform and hitting the bottom of the escalator. Thirty-two people were injured.
World: An Egyptian court today sentenced 529 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death, most of them in absentia. The charges included violence, inciting murder, and storming a police station. Only 123 of the defendants were present. The rest were out on bail or are fugitives.
>The search for Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony is intensifying. President Obama is sending 150 Air Force special ops troops and V-22 Osprey vertical takeoff aircraft to join Americans already in the area. Kony commands the Lord’s Resistance Army ranging over Uganda, Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His forces have been accused of thousands of kidnappings, rapes, and murders. African troops have been unable to find him. Most Americans had never heard of him until the posting of the video “Kony 2012” got 100 million viewings on YouTube.
The Obit Page: James Rebhorn, a steadily working character actor known better by his face than his name, died in New Jersey of skin cancer at age 65. Most recently he played the father of Claire Danes’ bipolar CIA officer in the Showtime series “Homeland.” Thin and authoritative, but not leading-man handsome, Rebhorn had a presence that allowed him to play anything from priests to prosecutors. He was the judge who sent the “Seinfeld” characters to jail for living meaningless lives.
Forgive Me Father: Twelve ounces of cocaine addressed merely to the Vatican post office were intercepted by German customs in January, according to a German weekly publication. It could have been intended for any of 800 Vatican residents. Possibly as shocking as coke sent to the capital of Catholicism is that it was packed inside 14 condoms.
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