Tag: InternationalNews

{{A bag from a missing plane carrying a member of the famed Missoni fashion house has been found on the Caribbean island of Curacao, according to U.S. Missoni spokeswoman Angela Mariani.}}

The plane went missing off the coast of Venezuela on January 4. Aboard were Vittorio Missoni, his wife and four others. Missoni, 58, is a director of the fashion house, which he runs with his siblings, Luca and Angela.

According to Mariani, the bag belonged to an Italian tourist whose plane took off just minutes after the Missoni plane departed. Because there was no room on the tourist’s plane for his bag, it was put on the Missoni plane.

The aircraft was traveling from Los Roques, an archipelago and resort, south to Caracas.

The bag was discovered by a German tourist on the island of Curacao, about 124 miles west of Los Roques.

“The Missoni family is aware of this news. However, no conclusions can be drawn from this information. The search is continuing in full force,” the family said in an official statement.

Although the waters around Curacao have been searched by local authorities, Venezuelan officials will continue the effort.

{wirestory}

{{According to a police inspector leading the investigation into this weekend’s deadly blaze.}}

Inspector Marcelo Arigony told reporters at a news conference Tuesday that members of the band knowingly purchased flares meant for outdoor use because they cost a mere $1.25 a piece, compared with the $35 price tag for an indoor flare.

“The flare lit was for outdoor use only, and the people who lit them know that,” said Arigony, adding that members of the group acknowledged regularly opting for the less expensive flares.

“They chose to buy those because they were cheaper than those that can be used indoors.”

Arigony, whose cousin died in the fire, added: “The pyrotechnics were part of their show — the guys even wore gloves onstage so they wouldn’t burn their hands.”

The repercussions of the band’s choice to use flares continued to send shock waves through Santa Maria, a college town of 260,000 people that’s been stunned by the early Sunday morning tragedy in the Kiss nightclub.

The Rio Grande do Sul state forensics department raised the death toll Tuesday from 231 to 234 to account for three victims who did not appear on the original list of the dead.

Authorities say more than 120 people remain hospitalized for smoke inhalation and burns, with dozens of them in critical condition.

The blaze began at around 2:30 am local time, during a performance by Gurizada Fandangueira, a country music band that had made the use of pyrotechnics a trademark of their shows.

The band’s guitarist told media that the 615 square-meter (6,650-square-foot) club was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people. The police have said the capacity for a club of that size is under 700 people.

Police said the club’s ceiling was covered with insulating foam made from a combustible material that appeared to have ignited after it came in contact with a spark from a flare lit during the performance.

After the fire extinguisher malfunctioned, the blaze spread throughout the packed club at lightning speed, emitting a thick, toxic smoke.

Because Kiss apparently had neither an alarm nor a sprinkler system and only one working exit, the crowd was left to search desperately for a way out.

About 50 of the victims were found in the club’s two bathrooms, where the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.

Police investigator Arigony said people headed to the bathrooms because the only lights in the dark club were coming from there, and the patrons mistook them for exits.

The foam, which emitted a toxic gas, was not proper soundproofing equipment and was likely only used to cut down on the echo inside the club, Arigony said.

He added that a full analysis of the foam was ongoing. The malfunctioning fire extinguisher was not legal, he said, and the club’s operating license had expired in August.

“There were diverse irregularities,” Arigony said. “Any child could have seen that this establishment should not have been open.”

Outraged locals, mostly young people like those who died in the blaze, marched through Santa Maria Tuesday to demand justice for the dead, an unusual move in a country where public protests are rare.

The demonstration interrupted the police news conference, even as Arigony pledged to investigate everyone involved in the tragedy — including the authorities charged with making sure such establishments are up to code, such as firefighters and city officials.

“There could have been an administrative failure in the mayor’s office or with the firefighters,” he said.

“We have no proof, but we will investigate, we will look into everything.”

No charges have been filed. Under Brazilian law, prosecutors can only file charges after police complete their investigation, which in this case could take 30 days.

Prosecutors have said manslaughter charges could be filed.

The fire inspired nationwide action, and several mayors said they would crack down on nightclubs and other venues in their cities.

The government of the country’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, promised tougher security regulations for nightclubs and other places where many people gather.

The mayor of the city of Americana, Sao Paulo state, ordered the temporary shutdown of 10 of the city’s nightclubs.

Mayor Diego de Nadai suspended the operating permits of the nightclubs pending inspections into the fire and accident prevention measures in place, local media reported.

The Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that in Manaus, nightclubs with empty fire extinguishers and unmarked emergency exits have been shut down and fined.

And in Rio de Janeiro, a consumer complaint hotline has received more than 60 calls since Sunday’s tragedy denouncing hazardous conditions at night spots, theaters, supermarkets, schools, hospitals and shopping malls around the state.

Blocked emergency exits and nonexistent fire alarms and extinguishers top the list of most common complaints.

Brazil’s O Globo newspaper reported on its website that the mayor’s office in Santa Maria ordered all nightclubs closed for 30 days while inspections are carried out.

In Brasilia, the nation’s capital, lawmakers in the lower house worked on a proposal that would require federal safety minimum standards across Brazil — now, states individually create such laws.

Investigator Arigony said police searched two other Santa Maria nightspots owned by Mauro Hoffmann, one of the partners of the Kiss nightclub, for evidence that could help shed light on the investigation.

Police said earlier that computers that had stored footage from security cameras inside the club were missing — but Arigony said police had found them at a computer repair shop, where they were dropped off a week ago, meaning images from the disaster would not be on them.

Owners of the club told police the security cameras hadn’t worked in months.

Both owners of the club were provisionally detained, along with two of the band members. A judge froze the assets of the club’s owners, pending the investigation.

The fire appeared to mark a possible turning point for a country that has long turned a blind eye to safety and infrastructure concerns.

The disaster, the worst fire of its kind in more than a decade, has also raised questions of whether Brazilian authorities are up to the task of ensuring safety in such venues as the country prepares to host next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

O Globo published an editorial Tuesday saying it was time for action.
“The tragedy in Santa Maria forces us to seriously reflect over our national culture of leniency, contempt and corruption,” it said.

“We must start from the principle that the mea culpa belongs to us all: public servants, owners of establishments that disregard safety regulations, and regular citizens who flout them.”

Soccer legend Pele, too, urged the Brazilian government to “make safety and security a priority in this country.”

“So many young people are no longer with us, they had entire lives ahead of them. I ask God to protect them and take care of their families,” he wrote on Twitter.

According to state safety codes here, clubs should have one fire extinguisher every 1,500 square feet as well as multiple emergency exits.

Limits on the number of people admitted are to be strictly respected. None of that appears to have happened at the Santa Maria nightclub.

Rodrigo Martins, a guitarist for the group playing that night, told Globo TV network in an interview Monday that the flames broke out minutes after the employment of a pyrotechnic machine that fans out colored sparks.

“I thought I was going to die there,” Martins said. “There was nothing I could do, with the fire spreading and people screaming in front.”

Most of the dead were college students 18 to 21 years old, but they also included some minors. Almost all died from smoke inhalation rather than burns.

The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.

Sunday’s fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub anywhere in the world since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.

AP

{{Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch apologised on Monday for a “grotesque” cartoon in his London-based Sunday Times newspaper depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a bloody wall trapping the bodies of Palestinians, after complaints from Jewish groups.}}

The image, which shows Netanyahu holding a trowel dripping blood, was published on Holocaust Memorial Day and carried the caption “Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said the cartoon was “shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press”.

The so-called “blood libel” – accusations that Jewish peoples murder children and use their blood in rituals – go back centuries and have led to persecution and attacks.

The wall image by the weekly paper’s cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was a reference to the barrier that Israel has been building for a decade on West Bank territory.

The project was launched at the height of a Palestinian uprising and was billed as a way to stop suicide bombers from penetrating the country.

The Sunday Times’s acting editor was due to meet Jewish community leaders in Britain on Tuesday to express his regrets over the cartoon, said a spokesman for Murdoch’s News International, the paper’s publisher.

Murdoch said Scarfe had never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times. “Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon,” he said in a Twitter message.

The Board of Deputies, representing Jewish communities in Britain, said it had lodged a complaint over the image with the Press Complaints Commission, an industry-run watchdog.

“Its use is all the more disgusting on Holocaust Memorial Day, given the similar tropes levelled against Jews by the Nazis,” the board added.

The paper denied the cartoon was anti-Semitic, saying it was aimed at Netanyahu and not the Israeli people.

It said the timing of its publication was linked to the victory of Netanyahu’s party in last week’s Israeli elections.

{{News out of North Korean in notorious unreliable, but food shortages in the country have gotten so bad and people so desperate that there are now reports of men murdering their own children for food. }}

These startling reports were compiled by independent reporters commissioned by Asia Press, a independent press agency focusing on Asia, and were published by the Sunday Times.

And here’s one of the most disturbing thing you’ll read this morning:

The source said: “While his wife was away on business he killed his eldest daughter and, because his son saw what he had done, he killed his son as well. When the wife came home, he offered her food, saying: ‘We have meat.’

“But his wife, suspicious, notified the Ministry of Public Security, which led to the discovery of part of their children’s bodies under the eaves.”

And another from Gu Gwang-ho, one of the Asia Press’s citizen journalists said:

“There was an incident when a man was arrested for digging up the grave of his grandchild and eating the remains.”

The big question here is whether this is all true or new urban legends. Considering this is North Korea and taking into account the country’s propensity to keep secrets and publish propaganda pieces—we’ll likely never get real confirmation from their end.

But Asia Press has worked with citizen reporters in the famine-struck regions of North and South Hwanghae for the past year, and The Independent considers their reports credible.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard reports of cannibalism from North Korea.

Back in 2003, during another food shortage there were refugee accounts that people in the country began killing and eating their children and then selling their children’s corpses. The Telegraph’s Mark Nicol reported at the time:

Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees’ reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food.

Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to “farmers’ markets”, where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing “security reasons”.

And then there’s the fact that we know North Korea was devastated by storms and flooding in the summer of 2012. You can’t hide a tropical cyclone.

Thing have grown so desperate, that they almost took South Korean aid this September, which is a big deal considering the rocky relationship between the two countries and the North’s fierce pride of independence.

Reports of previous famines have been well documented and Asia Press claims that as many as 10,000 people may have died because of the “Hidden Famine” this year.

Agencies

{{A Vietnamese court has begun the trial of 22 democracy activists on charges of plotting to overthrow the Communist government in one of the biggest such trials in years.}}

A court official in central Phu Yen province says the defendants appeared in court Monday.

The official didn’t give his name, citing government policy.
He says the trial could last five days.

State-controlled media have quoted the indictment as saying the group operated under the cover of an ecotourism company.

The media say the group allegedly authored documents that distorted Communist Party policies to create distrust.

The government appears to be stepping up its campaign on dissidents despite criticism from Western governments.

Earlier this month, 14 activists were sentenced to up to 13 years.