10/08/2020

India begins examination of plane’s black box after deadly crash

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian investigators on Sunday began examining the black box of a Boeing-737 that overshot a runway on its second attempt, killing 18 people in the country’s worst aviation accident in a decade.

A security official inspects the site where a passenger plane crashed when it overshot the runway at the Calicut International Airport in Karipur, in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 8, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer

The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut International Airport in heavy rain near the southern city of Kozhikode on Friday.

The aircraft fell into a valley and broke in half.

In an interview with Reuters partner ANI on Sunday, Arun Kumar, head of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said the country would open the recovered transcripts to international investigators, as well as manufacturer Boeing (BA.N).

“Only after conducting a thorough and unbiased probe, can we tell what exactly happened,” Kumar said.

The 2,700 metre runway at the airport is known as a “table-top”, an aviation term for runways with steep drops at one or both ends.

They leave little room for error should a pilot overshoot the runway, either through human error or mechanical failure.

Late on Saturday, Kumar told CNN-News18 in an interview that the pilot made an aborted landing attempt into a headwind and then made a second approach with a tail wind, landing 1,000 metres down the runway.

An air traffic control official familiar with the crash confirmed this version of events, adding it is unusual to attempt a landing at the airport with a tailwind, which is typically used for takeoffs.

“The length of the runway in Calicut is around 2,700 metres and the plane touched the ground after crossing 1,000 metres of the length, leaving less room to bring the aircraft to a halt,” the official, who declined to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters.

“It was windy and rainy and the runway surface was wet. In such instances the weather is dynamic.”

“An aircraft typically lands and departs in a headwind as a tailwind increases the plane’s speed.”

Source: Reuters

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09/08/2020

India begins examination of plane’s black box after deadly crash

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian investigators on Sunday began examining the black box of a Boeing-737 that overshot a runway on its second attempt, killing 18 people in the country’s worst aviation accident in a decade.A security official inspects the site where a passenger plane crashed when it overshot the runway at the Calicut International Airport in Karipur, in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 8, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer

The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut International Airport in heavy rain near the southern city of Kozhikode on Friday.

The aircraft fell into a valley and broke in half.

In an interview with Reuters partner ANI on Sunday, Anil Kumar, head of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said the country would open the recovered transcripts to international investigators, as well as manufacturer Boeing (BA.N).

“Only after conducting a thorough and unbiased probe, can we tell what exactly happened,” Kumar said.

The 2,700 metre runway at the airport is known as a “table-top”, an aviation term for runways with steep drops at one or both ends.

They leave little room for error should a pilot overshoot the runway, either through human error or mechanical failure.

Late on Saturday, Kumar told CNN-News18 in an interview that the pilot made an aborted landing attempt into a headwind and then made a second approach with a tail wind, landing 1,000 metres down the runway.

An air traffic control official familiar with the crash confirmed this version of events, adding it is unusual to attempt a landing at the airport with a tailwind, which is typically used for takeoffs.

“The length of the runway in Calicut is around 2,700 metres and the plane touched the ground after crossing 1,000 metres of the length, leaving less room to bring the aircraft to a halt,” the official, who declined to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters.

    “It was windy and rainy and the runway surface was wet. In such instances the weather is dynamic.”

“An aircraft typically lands and departs in a headwind as a tailwind increases the plane’s speed.”

A spokesman for Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has already said it will pay compensation to the families of the deceased.

Source: Reuters

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08/08/2020

Death toll from Indian passenger aircraft accident rises to 18

KOZHIKODE, India (Reuters) – The death toll from an Indian passenger aircraft accident has risen to 18, while 16 people have been severely injured, a senior government official said on Saturday.

Rescue workers look for survivors after a passenger plane crashed when it overshot the runway at the Calicut International Airport in Karipur, in the southern state of Kerala, India, August 7, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer

The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut International Airport in heavy rain near the southern city of Kozhikode on Friday. This was India’s worst passenger aircraft accident since 2010.

RELATED COVERAGE

The flight was carrying 190 passengers and crew.

The plane’s pilot and the co-pilot were killed in the accident, K Gopalakrishnan, chief of the Malappuram district in the southern state of Kerala, told Reuters.

“All passengers have been admitted to various hospitals, and they are also being tested for COVID-19,” Gopalakrishnan said, adding autopsy of the bodies would be carried out according to the COVID-19 protocol.

The Boeing-737 the plane skidded off the table-top runway of Calicut, crashing nose-first into the ground. Such runways are located at an altitude and have steep drops at one or both ends.

In 2010, another Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot the table-top runway at Mangalore, a city in the south, and slid down a hill, killing 158 people

Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri last night told national broadcaster DD News that only an investigation would reveal the cause of the crash.

Puri said authorities managed to rescue most of the passengers because the plane did not catch fire while descending the slope at the end of the runway.

India, which shut down all air travel in late March to try to contain the novel coronavirus, has restarted limited international air travel.

Air India Express AXB1344 was a government-operated repatriation flight for Indians previously unable to return home because of travel restrictions.

Source: Reuters

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07/08/2020

Standoff with China will be long, India warns in pulled statement

FILE PHOTO: An Indian Army convoy moves along a highway leading to Ladakh, at Gagangeer in Kashmir’s Ganderbal district on June 18, 2020. REUTERS/Danish Ismail/File Photo

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) – India’s defence ministry has warned, in a statement since removed from its website, that a military standoff with China that began with border fighting in June is likely to be a long one, despite multiple rounds of talks between the nuclear-armed rivals to defuse the tension.

The ministry said in an update for June – which has now been removed – that Chinese forces had breached the border in the Kugrang Nala and Gogra areas and the north shore of Pangong Tso lake in the northern Indian territory of Ladakh on May 17-18.

New Delhi says a “violent face-off” that followed the intrusion killed 20 of its soldiers in the western Himalayas.

It was the worst outbreak of violence between the giant Asian neighbours in decades. China accuses the Indian side of crossing the de facto border and provoking its soldiers.

“While engagement and dialogue at military and diplomatic level is continuing to arrive at mutually acceptable consensus, the present standoff is likely to be prolonged,” the Indian defence ministry said in the now-removed statement, which was posted to Twitter by Reuters partner ANI and others on Thursday.

A ministry spokesman did not respond to a call and a text message asking for comment on the document.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said the government was not being candid about the situation on the border, especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement in June that “nobody has intruded into our border, neither is anybody there now, nor have our posts been captured”.

“Forget standing up to China, India’s PM lacks the courage even to name them (Chinese),” Gandhi tweeted. “Denying China is in our territory and removing documents from websites won’t change the facts.”

Source: Reuters

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06/08/2020

India appoints veteran politician in-charge of restive Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – India’s federal government named a former telecoms minister on Thursday to lead the restive region of Kashmir, where it hopes to accelerate economic development and end years of strife.

Manoj Sinha, a leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, will replace career bureaucrat G.C. Murmu as lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, a government statement said.

The appointment came a day after authorities ensured that the first anniversary of the revocation of Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy passed off without any street protests amid heavy deployment of police and restrictions on public movement.

Last August, Modi’s government removed special privileges accorded to Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, took away its statehood and split it into two federally-administered territories by carving out Buddhist-dominated Ladakh.

The move angered Kashmiris as well as Pakistan. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

On Thursday, anti-India militants shot dead a village council head from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in Kashmir’s Kulgam district, police said.

“He was shot multiple times outside his residence,” a police officer said.

Source: Reuters

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05/08/2020

Factbox: India’s long Ayodhya dispute as temple construction starts

(Reuters) – Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay a foundation stone for a Hindu temple on a site in northern India where a 16th century mosque was demolished by supporters of his Hindu nationalist party in 1992.Temples and other buildings on the bank of Sarayu river are seen illuminated ahead of the foundation-laying ceremony for a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, India, August 4, 2019. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar

The events in Ayodhya sparked communal riots in several parts of India. About 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.

The rights to the site were unresolved until last year, when the Supreme Court decided in favour of building a Hindu temple there, on condition that Muslims were given another plot to build a mosque.

WHAT WAS THE DISPUTE ABOUT?

The Hindu epic scripture Ramayana mentions Ayodhya, a town in Uttar Pradesh state nearly 700 km (435 miles) east of New Delhi, as the birthplace of Ram, a god-king believed by Hindus to be a physical incarnation of Lord Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism.

A mosque had been constructed there in 1528, during the rule of Babur, India’s first Mughal emperor. Many Hindus believe it was built on the spot where Ram was born, and there is some evidence that a temple had once stood there.

In December 1949, Hindu activists placed idols of Ram inside the disputed structure, leading to the mosque’s seizure by authorities. Court orders restrained people from removing the idols, and the structure’s use as a mosque effectively ceased from that point.

Hindu and Muslim groups filed separate claims over the site and the structure. In 1989, a high court ordered the maintenance of the status quo.

MOSQUE RAZED

Hindu and Muslim groups tried unsuccessfully to resolve the dispute through negotiations.

Then in 1990, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party launched a nationwide campaign to build a temple in Ayodhya with its then president Lal Krishna Advani embarking on a cross-country journey on a truck designed like a chariot.

It whipped up Hindu fervour across the country, deepened divisions with Muslims but also catapulted the BJP into national prominence.

On Dec.6, 1992, the BJP campaign for Hindu awakening climaxed in a rally in Ayodhya, when a mob, cheered on by BJP leaders, climbed the mosque and started smashing the domes with axes and hammers. Within a short time, the entire structure was razed to the ground, triggering riots across India soon after.

Modi was a foot soldier in the party at the time, helping organise Advani’s chariot journey through his home state of Gujarat. In 2014 he became prime minister as his Hindu nationalist party vowed to transform India into a military and economic power. Last year, Modi was re-elected with the biggest parliamentary majority in three decades.

Source: Reuters

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04/08/2020

WHO says China team interviewed Wuhan scientists over virus origins

GENEVA (Reuters) – A World Health Organization team in China to probe the origins of COVID-19 had “extensive discussions” and exchanges with scientists in Wuhan where the outbreak was first detected, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) are pictured during the World Health Assembly (WHA) following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 18, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

The talks included updates on animal health research, he said. China shut down a wildlife market in Wuhan at the start of the outbreak, a day after discovering some patients were vendors or dealers.

The WHO says the virus most likely came from bats and probably had another, intermediary animal “host”.

The results of the WHO investigation are keenly awaited by scientists and governments around the world, none more so than Washington, which lobbied hard for the mission. The Trump administration accuses the WHO of being China-centric and plans to leave the agency over its handling of the pandemic.

“The team had extensive discussions with Chinese counterparts and received updates on epidemiological studies, biologic and genetic analysis and animal health research,” Christian Lindmeier told reporters, saying these included video discussions with Wuhan virologists and scientists.

The three-week advance mission comprising two specialists in animal health and epidemiology was tasked with laying the groundwork for a broader team of Chinese and international experts that will seek to discover how the virus that causes COVID-19 jumped the species barrier from animals to humans.

Lindmeier did not provide details on the timing or composition of the broader mission.

Terms of reference for the broader mission have been produced together with Chinese authorities in draft form, he said, and were not yet publicly available.

The team’s composition is bound to be sensitive since any exclusion of U.S. experts would be controversial. Another question will be the degree of access granted by Beijing.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said the pathogen may have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, although they have presented no evidence for this and China has denied it. Scientists and U.S. intelligence agencies have said it emerged in nature.

WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan said on Monday that surprises were possible.

“The fact that that fire alarm was triggered (in Wuhan) doesn’t necessarily mean that that is where the disease crossed from animals to human,” he said.

Source: Reuters

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04/08/2020

India on guard in Kashmir ahead of anniversary of lost autonomy

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian soldiers patrolled streets and kept watch from the rooftops in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar on the eve of the first anniversary of the Muslim majority region’s loss of autonomy.An Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officer stands guard at a post during curfew ahead of the first anniversary of the revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy, in Srinagar August 4, 2020. REUTERS/Danish Ismail

Late on Monday, authorities imposed a curfew in Srinagar until Wednesday due to intelligence about potential violent protests, according to a government order.

On Aug. 5, 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government took away Jammu & Kashmir state’s special privileges, provoking anger in the region and in neighbouring Pakistan.

It also took away Jammu & Kashmir’s status as a state by creating two federally controlled territories, splitting off the thinly populated, Buddhist-dominated region of Ladakh.

Jammu & Kashmir had been the only Muslim-majority state in mainly Hindu India.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, and the disputed Himalayan region was again the focus of a flare-up between the two nuclear powers last year.

Police had received information that separatist groups including those supported by Pakistan planned to observe a “Black Day” on Wednesday and there was a risk to life and property, the Srinagar’s district magistrate said in a public order.

Modi’s government has said the move last August was necessary to spur economic development and to better integrate the region with the rest of country.

But the removal of Kashmir’s special status – granted to the state via the Indian Constitution’s Article 370 – was accompanied by harsh movement restrictions, mass detentions and a complete communication blackout to forestall protests.

Shabir Ahmad Dar, 40, who works in a juice factory, said he was stopped at one of Srinagar’s several checkpoints on Tuesday morning and was told by soldiers to return home.

“Other workers from our locality were also sent back”, he said.

Pakistan has said it will observe the anniversary of Kashmir’s loss of autonomy as a “siege day” in solidarity with Kashmiris.

New Delhi has along accused Pakistan of backing militant groups operating in Kashmir – a charge that Islamabad denies, saying that it only provides moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.

Sourcej: Reuters

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03/08/2020

With a heavy hand, India rides out Kashmir’s year of disquiet

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – The scars of last summer remain in Soura, an enclave that became a symbol of Kashmir’s resistance to India’s central government a year ago on Wednesday.

FILE PHOTO: Barbed wire is seen laid on a deserted road during restrictions in Srinagar, August 5, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Ismail

Coils of concertina wire, remnants of makeshift road blocks, lie close to the broken tar of roads dug up to keep the security forces of Prime Minister Narendra Modi out of this area of 15,000 people in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar.

A year after stripping Kashmir of its autonomy, Modi’s government has prevented widespread protests and violence, with a heavy hand on people who for weeks had barricaded themselves in and staged protests, hurling stones at federal troops armed with pellet guns and tear gas.

Security forces eventually broke through.

But local politicians warn that anger is rife with young men still picking up arms – and stones.

This Himalayan region has been at the heart of tensions between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan for decades, the cause of two of the three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Both countries claim the region in full, but each rules only in part.

On Aug. 5, 2019, Modi split the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federally controlled territories and took away its special privileges, saying this was necessary to better integrate the region with the rest of India.

New Delhi flooded troops into the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, where insurgents have fought since the 1990s. India detained thousands, imposed harsh movement restrictions and forced a communications blackout.

Many of those measures have since been eased, but the internet remains throttled and a subsequent COVID-19 lockdown – India has the world’s third-highest coronavirus infections and rising fast – has forced millions of Kashmiris to stay in their homes for 12 months.

“The government said that they did it for the good of Jammu and Kashmir. What good things have happened since then? They have destroyed our economy,” said Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami, a former lawmaker. “Where is the development?”

Modi’s government says it has undertaken reforms but that the pandemic, hitting Kashmir hard like the rest of India, got in the way.

Reforms include legal changes to help non-Kashmiris who can now apply for government jobs and secure seats in colleges for their children, 10,000 new government jobs, extending federal schemes to the territory and bolstering the village-level administrative system.

“We have to try and win public sentiment,” a government official told Reuters, adding there is a push to improve roads, water and electrification.

Jammu and Kashmir police chief Vijay Kumar said security forces had kept up the pressure on the insurgency, killing 138 militants in the year to July, slightly more than the 129 killed in the same period last year.

Still, officials express concern that there is little sign of a let-up in disaffected youth joining the armed revolt.

This year around 60 new recruits have joined the militant groups through July, compared with 80 for the same period last year, according to a government estimate.Slideshow (4 Images)

“The challenge would be how do we tamp down the recruitment,” the government official said.

SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE

Two of Fatima Wani’s three sons have found little work as labourers in the past 12 months, making it difficult to make ends meet.

But the 62-year-old housewife’s worry is with her eldest son, picked up for allegedly taking part in a protest and booked under the Public Safety Act, which allows for detention for up to two years without charge.

About 150 people arrested last year are still detained, two-thirds of them charged under the law, according to government data.

Wani said her family had to sell a cow to pay for their travel to the northern town of Agra to meet her son in prison.

“He is innocent,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I want justice.”

Police chief Kumar said arrests had been made of stone-throwers and associates of militants trying to stir up violence in the streets, some of whom had been booked under the security act.

In Soura, the indignation remains. A young man, who gave his name as Sahil and claimed he had been detained three times by police for clashing with troops, said he wasn’t going to back down.

“We are being suppressed, and I will fight against that suppression in whatever way I can,” he said. “I will continue stone pelting.”

Source: Reuters

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02/08/2020

Apple’s Taiwan suppliers, Samsung apply for India’s smartphone scheme

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) Taiwan contract manufacturers Foxconn (2317.TW), Wistron Corp (3231.TW) and Pegatron Corp (4938.TW) have applied for funds from India’s $6.65 billion scheme to boost smartphone manufacturing, the technology minister said on Saturday.

FILE PHOTO: People wear masks to protect themselves from coronavirus disease (COVID-19), while listening to the annual general meeting at the lobby of Foxconn’s office in Taipei, Taiwan, June 23, 2020. REUTERS/Ann Wang/File Photo

The production-linked incentive (PLI) plan offers companies cash incentives on additional sales of devices made locally over five years, with 2019-2020 as the base year. India wants to become a global smartphone export hub like China.

Apple assembles some smartphones, including the iPhone 11, at Foxconn and Wistron’s plants in two southern Indian states.

Pegatron, one of Apple’s top suppliers, has yet to open a plant in India, but is in talks with various states to set up operations, according to sources. Pegatron officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) has also applied for incentives under the plan, technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told a news conference.

Samsung has a plant on the outskirts of New Delhi that it describes as the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturing plant. It also exports devices from the factory.

Lava, which once assembled models for China’s Lenovo (0992.HK), was among the Indian companies which have sought funds, Prasad added.

A total of 22 firms have applied to the scheme, which the government expects will generate smartphone production worth $154 billion (117.7 billion pounds) and create 300,000 direct jobs over five years.

Smartphone production has emerged as a bright spot in India’s economy, thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on local manufacturing in a bid to create jobs.

With more than 1 billion wireless subscribers, of which about a third rely on basic handsets, India provides huge growth prospects for smartphone makers, as well as offering cheap labour.

Foxconn plans to invest up to $1 billion to expand a factory in Tamil Nadu state where it assembles iPhones, sources told Reuters last month.

Source: Reuters

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