Russian passenger jet reported missing in Indonesia

An image of Russian Sukhoi Superjet

A Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 passenger plane with 46 people aboard has gone missing on a demonstration flight in Indonesia, reports say.

The plane disappeared from radar screens during a flight from Jakarta meant to last 30 minutes, a blogger with the Sukhoi delegation said.

A helicopter was dispatched to look for the jet, thought to have been flying near a mountain, Sergey Dolya said.

Emergency services confirmed a Sukhoi plane was missing.

The plane, which took off at 07:00 GMT, is believed to have had about four hours' fuel aboard, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani reports from Jakarta.

Gagah Prakoso, spokesman for Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, said 46 people had been aboard the plane, which vanished from radar near Bogor, a city in West Java province.

He told BBC News it was unclear who was on board because they were people invited by Sukhoi, but they were "likely to be reps of Indonesian airlines".

Eight of those are Russians, Dolya tweeted.

As darkness fell, the helicopter search was called off but rescuers continued looking for the plane on the ground, he said.

'Guests aboard'

The plane took off from east Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma airport, which is used for some commercial and military flights, at 14:00 (07:00 GMT), the Indonesian search and rescue agency spokesman said.

"At 14:50 it dropped from 10,000ft [3,000m] to 6,000ft," the agency told AFP.

Herry Bakti, head of the transport ministry's aviation division, said the aircraft had been on the second of two demonstration flights, and those on board were invited guests.

The Russian embassy in Jakarta said in a statement earlier this week that a Sukhoi Superjet 100 demonstration would take place in Jakarta on Wednesday, AFP added.

The embassy could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Superjet, a mid-range airliner that can carry up to 100 people, is military plane-maker Sukhoi's first commercial aviation plane.

It was created by a joint venture, majority-owned by Sukhoi, with Italy's Finmeccanica and a number of other foreign and Russian firms also involved.

Gagah Prakoso told the BBC that Sukhoi had been offering the Superjet to Indonesian airlines.

News by BBC

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Hillary Clinton arrives in Bangladesh today-Saturday on difficult mission

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

DHAKA: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived on Saturday for a difficult mission in Bangladesh where violence and a crackdown on the opposition threaten new instability.

Clinton, coming from a row in China over a Chinese dissident, was set to sign a new partnership agreement with the impoverished South Asian nation.

She is the first US secretary of state to visit Bangladesh since Colin Powell in 2003 amid chronic political infighting in the world's third largest Muslim-majority country.

The last few weeks have seen rallies and strikes over the disappearance of regional opposition figure Ilias Ali in mid-April, who supporters say was abducted by security forces. Four people have died in the unrest.

Following a rally in the capital last weekend and a series of explosions at a government building complex, police have charged and arrested a number of senior figures from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

A US official said that Clinton would meet Saturday with both Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, who have dominated Bangladesh's politics for decades and whose mutual dislike is as intense as it is personal.

The official said Clinton would promote democracy and good governance but look to broader interests with Bangladesh, a US partner in counter-terrorism efforts and the world's largest contributor to UN peacekeeping.

"Secretary Clinton's trip is an opportunity to take the bilateral relationship to a new level with this moderate, tolerant, democratic, Muslim-majority nation that offers a viable alternative to violent extremism," the State Department official said on customary condition of anonymity.

Bangladesh is "a voice for regional stability in a troubled region," the official said.

Analyst Manzur Hasan, a professor of Brac University in Dhaka, believes Clinton will press Hasina over governance problems in the notoriously corrupt and politically unstable country.

"She is arriving at an awkward moment in a situation of political turmoil when the country is facing some serious issues and difficulties because of the return of the confrontational politics and street protests," he told AFP.

Recent problems for Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh's only Nobel peace prize winner and a personal friend of Clinton and her husband Bill, will be another thorny issue for the secretary of state to address in her meetings.

Yunus was forced out of his ground-breaking micro-credit bank last year and has since claimed he is the victim of a vendetta that will result in the government seizing his empire of social businesses aimed at alleviating poverty. Clinton will meet Yunus on Sunday, the US official said.

In Dhaka, the government has talked up Clinton's visit as an event that will take ties to "a new height".

"It will be a new beginning of bilateral relations between the two countries," Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said on Thursday. "Her visit is extremely important for Bangladesh."

Moni told reporters Dhaka would press for lower tariffs on its exports to the US, its largest market, and the two nations were in the final stage of signing an agreement to boost economic ties.

Gowher Rizvi, international affairs adviser to the Bangladeshi prime minister, told AFP the partnership dialogue would be "similar to the ones the US have with India and China".

Clinton's trip to China has been overshadowed by a row over blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng who fled to the US embassy last week.

US officials said Friday that Beijing had agreed to let Chen leave for the United States, after a controversial initial deal under which the activist left US protection with promises for his safety inside China.

Clinton was due to leave Dhaka on Sunday for the eastern Indian city of Kolkata and then proceed to New Delhi for talks on expanding an alliance that has grown in its importance but is widely seen as having failed to blossom.

News by Channelnewsasia

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Cambodian dad chains son to pole over online gaming

The Cambodian boy chained to a power pole by his father

PHNOM PENH: An irate Cambodian father chained his teenage son by the neck to a power pole to punish him for skipping school to play online games, police said yesterday.

The 13-year-old’s public ordeal came to an end in under two hours when neighbours alerted the police who brought in a locksmith to free the child.

“The father was so angry that he found his son at an Internet cafe instead of at school that he chained him up in public for people to see, to teach him a lesson,” Battambang deputy police chief Cheth Vanny told AFP, adding that the boy said he was also beaten by his father.

The 40-year-old father, Sok Thoeun, who works as a motorbike taxi driver, fled the scene after the incident Tuesday in the northern town of Battambang, and is now wanted on child abuse charges.

“He is still on the run,” the official said.

“This kind of torture is not acceptable.”

Impoverished Cambodia’s Internet usage rate is among the lowest in southeast Asia, with less than 1.5 per cent of its 14 million people listed as Internet subscribers in 2010, according to government statistics.

But as more Internet cafes have sprung up in urban areas in recent years, the popularity of online gaming has soared among the country’s teenagers, most of whom have no Internet access at home. — AFP

News by Theborneopost


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Warehouse blast kills 17 in Mayanmar

Warehouse blast in Mayanmar

YANGON — A pre-dawn blast at a warehouse in Myanmar's biggest city killed at least 17 people and injured dozens more on Thursday, sparking a blaze that took firefighters hours to tame, officials said.

Officials ruled out a bomb but said they had yet to determine the cause of the explosion in Yangon, formerly the capital.

Residents in several areas of the city were woken around 2:00 am (1930 GMT) by the blast, which appeared to have hit a medical warehouse in the eastern township of Mingalar Taung Nyunt, witnesses told AFP.

The flames engulfed several buildings in the warehouse compound and destroyed around 50 homes in the area, most of them wooden dwellings.

At least 17 people, including four firefighters, had died, while 79 others were injured, including around 30 firemen, a government official told AFP.

"It was not a bomb explosion," another official said, though he added that the cause of the blast, which sparked a large fire that destroyed many nearby storage units and houses, remained unknown.

Firefighters battled through the night to douse the flames and finally succeeded in extinguishing the massive fire at around 6:45 am, revealing a scene of utter devastation.

An AFP photographer saw rescue workers frantically searching for survivors, carrying young children to safety and pulling a dead body from the burnt-out rubble.

The blaze left hundreds homeless, a third official said.

"Around 900 people are homeless now and they are sheltering at nearby monasteries serving as rescue centers," he said.

"About seven warehouses were totally destroyed. The responsible officials are still trying to find out what happened," he told AFP.

One resident, Khin Hla Kyi, said she feared for her life as she fled the encroaching fire, which devoured her home and all of her possessions.

"We had to run for our lives," she told AFP. "Now we have nowhere to go. My house was destroyed."

The blast also created a huge crater at least 10 metres (yards) wide and several metres deep, filled with plastic and metal debris.

Dozens of rescue workers and onlookers crowded around the gaping hole to take stock of the damage on Thursday, when white smoke could still be seen billowing from the site.

An exhausted firefighter said he was unable to give details about the blaze, saying only: "We are really tired because we have been putting out the fire all night."

The first funerals for the victims were due to be held Thursday afternoon.

In a city not unused to bomb blasts, the sound of the unexplained explosion overnight brought hundreds of worried locals into the streets.

"We heard a very loud noise from the explosion and saw smoke in the sky. Our building was also shaken by the explosion. We have no idea what's happening," a resident in nearby Botahtaung township told AFP.

Last week, a blast caused by an explosive device killed one woman and wounded another in northern Yangon.

Myanmar has been hit by several bomb blasts in recent years, most of them minor, which the authorities have blamed on armed exile groups or ethnic minority fighters.

News by AFP


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Euro-league Basketball: Nancy loses big against Fenerbahçe

Euro-league Basketball

AFP - Nancy has lost much of his illusions in Euroleague basketball in his room leaning heavily against the Turks of Fenerbahce (53-73) Wednesday night at a great shortage of offensive.


The champions of France are now virtually condemned to win their last two matches to hope to qualify for the Top 16, this second phase that no club has not seen since ProA Pau-Orthez in 2007.




That is to say how Wednesday's defeat, his first this season at home, is expensive to Sluc who had run after the score throughout the game and never actually digested anemic first period (25-32) .


Denied by the pace of basketball academic "Fener" players Jean-Luc Monschau never managed to break free of their chains. Expelled from the Turkish bat, they tried their luck from distance, but were too clumsy (30% in the two-point shots, 22% three!) To hope for better.


Stronger after the break, they managed to return a moment to a point (40-41, 28th). But as soon as they sniffed the equalizer, their opponents took up the wide, taking advantage of their awkwardness and their waste in the game to impose a night Lorraine terribly frustrating.


Orphans of Nicolas Batum, left in the NBA, players Nancy did not receive much support from their new winger Kenny Gregory. Arrived only the night before the United States, the former Manceau did with the means at hand but did not logically that weighed (8 points).


Victor Samnick and Adrien Moerman is even less inspired, the Sluc tried to rely on Jamal Shuler (17 points) in an attempt to erase its chronic deficit in the wings. But it would have taken much to trouble Wednesday as serene as a Fenerbahçe Sluc was the draft.

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Golf: American Tiger Woods won his first tournament in two years

Tiger Woods

AFP - American Tiger Woods found the colors on the golf course by winning Sunday in Thousand Oaks (California) the Chevron World Challenge, two weeks after helping the U.S. win in Australia the Presidents Cup.

His victory in Thousand Oaks is the first individual trophy for two years (Masters of Australia November 15, 2009). Shortly after, triggered the much-publicized sex scandal that cost him a divorce, the loss of many sponsors and also greatly altered the image of the world No.1 at the time.

This scandal, his many injuries the past two seasons and his decision to change his swing have contributed to make him fall beyond the 50th place worldwide and has accumulated against performance-worthy player with 14 Grand Slam victories that the world knew before.

This success, however, is to relativize the tournament because of Thousand Oaks, which organizes itself in favor of its foundation, is not an official event sanctioned by a major professional tour and only had 18 players.

But it does offer points for the world ranking and his opponents in California were not anonymous. Four of the first eleven players in the world were also present on the greens of Thousand Oaks (Americans Steve Stricker, Matt Kuchar, Nick Watney and Webb Simpson).

"It feels good," he soberly said Woods, who shackled 27 individual tournaments without a win. The Californian could not suppress a roar of joy after her successful birdie the final hole. With two birdies on holes n.17 and n.18, Woods erased a disbursement from a blow to compatriot Zach Johnson to win a step ahead with a total of 278.

"I screamed, said Woods. I won birdie-birdie by the last two holes when I was a late hit, we could not do better as a scenario," said one who should go back to 21st place worldwide. "It is under pressure, the last two holes, I hit three of my best shots of the week, it's really a good thing."

Johnson, former Masters champion, had taken control of the tournament after the third round Saturday, but Woods was able to find this killer instinct that he cultivated so well before his career takes an unexpected turn one evening in November 2009 with the accident car out of his home in Florida, followed by the revelation of his many extramarital affairs.

Woods made one last card of 69, three under par, to finish on a total of 278.

"The Tiger", 35, had already distinguished himself in late November, giving the point of victory in the U.S. at the Presidents Cup, won in Melbourne at the expense of the rest of the world (best non-European international players).

In early November, said Woods had to take "fun again" playing golf. He can look with more confidence towards the ultimate goal of his career beating the 18 major titles of Jack Nicklaus.

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NATO blunder in the northwest, Islamabad closes the "Khyber Pass"

Pakistani Soldiers

AFP - Pakistan said Saturday it would review all its agreements with Washington and NATO, especially in the diplomatic, military and intelligence, following the worst blunder of Westerners in Pakistan in a decade, which killed 26 soldiers. Following an extraordinary meeting of its main leaders, the Pakistani government has also ordered the Americans to withdraw within 15 days of the Shamsi air base, located in south-western Pakistan, and closed all supply routes for NATO in Afghanistan from its territory. The ministers and heads the largest of the army attended Saturday's meeting of the Committee for the Defence of the Government (DCC) under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, said the latter's office.

"The DCC decided to close with immediate effect logistic supply routes to NATO / ISAF (the NATO force in Afghanistan)," the source said. The vast majority of these supplies arrive by boat to Pakistan in Karachi (south), the country's main port, before being sent to Afghanistan by road. "The DCC has also decided to ask the U.S. to leave within fifteen days of the Shamsi air base" that would be used by the CIA as part of its drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Moreover, "the DCC decided that the government would completely rethink all its programs, activities and cooperation agreements with the United States, NATO and ISAF, including diplomatic, political, military and intelligence" announced Gilani's office.

Pakistan has accused NATO of killing up to 26 Pakistani soldiers in an attack before dawn Saturday in one of the tribal areas, the main rear base for Taliban insurgents and Al Qaeda who regularly attack NATO on Afghan soil. According to Islamabad, NATO helicopters bombed a Pakistani military post Baize, in the tribal district of Khyber. "They killed 26 soldiers and wounded 14," he told AFP Masood Kausar, the governor of KPK, Northwest Province of Pakistan, before paying tribute to the "martyrs". In the evening, a spokesman for ISAF, General German Carsten Jacobson, said Afghan forces and NATO operating in the Afghan province of Kunar called for air support had and it was " very likely that the air support (...) has caused losses "in Pakistan.

The officer assured that ground troops were now near the Pakistani border. Denouncing "a serious breach Pakistan's sovereignty and a violation of international law", Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has protested "in the strongest terms" with NATO and the United States, who lead the ISAF , providing the two-thirds of his troops. Gilani interrupted his weekend to return to Islamabad and talks with President Asif Ali Zardari and the leaders of the powerful army which has denounced an attack "deliberate" and "unacceptable." The Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan for his part believed that the attack would strengthen the anti-American sentiment among his compatriots.

The U.S. ambassador in Islamabad Cameron Munter, meanwhile, said his country would work "closely with Islamabad to investigate this incident." Pakistan has repeatedly criticized in recent years for violations of its airspace by ISAF. The latest crisis began in September 2010. Islamabad had then accused the force of killing three Pakistani soldiers and blocked the supply trucks of NATO for almost two weeks, until Washington apologizes. The United States regularly bombed the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas with drone raids Islamabad denounces as lip service, as long as they do not kill many civilians.

Americans regularly accuse their ally Pakistan playing a double game and secretly supporting the Taliban to defend its strategic interests in Afghanistan, where NATO plans to withdraw all its combat troops by the end of 2014 . Already stormy relations between the two countries soured after the unilateral U.S. operation in which killed the head of al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden last May in Abbottabad, a garrison town in Northern Pakistan.

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Small businesses hiring more online workers

Small business

When Casey McConnell started text messaging marketing company Qittle he took the traditional route of hiring onsite employees. But he soon realized it was more advantageous to hire workers online.

“We found it was easy to find these specialists or people that we could hire for a certain amount,” said McConnell, the CEO of Qittle. “We didn’t have the extra overhead and we just got the project done. It’s really easy for us to ramp up our needs or pull back using contractors. If we had an internal staff it’s pretty hard to fluctuate like that.”

Qittle’s preference to hire workers in the cloud is reflected in Elance’s recent survey that shows 83 percent of small businesses plan to hire half their workers online within the next 12 months. Only 10 percent of those surveyed plan to hire predominantly onsite workers (90 percent).

Elance, a marketplace for online workers, has posted more than 600,000 jobs ranging from programers to virtual assistants. Small businesses prefer to hire online because of flexibility, speed and economy of the process cost, according to Fabio Rosati, the CEO of Elance.

“So if you’re a small business owner, you can think of a hybrid model of hiring (online and onsite workers),” said Rosati. “You can think about what skills and what talent you need onsite. You can also decide what skill set you need to be in the cloud which is much more cost-effective and much more flexible.”

Elance’s Online Employment Report shows the number of businesses hiring online has increased 107 percent since last year. Elancers earned 51 percent more last year and earned a record $38 million in Q3 2011.

Rosati said more and more companies will decide to hire in the cloud. “I predict that at some point 99 percent of businesses will have between 5-10 percent of their hiring done online because it makes so much sense.”

But for McConnell, hiring online is the only way to go. Qittle plans to only hire workers from the cloud. “As a business we’d rather stay small and nimble and we’d rather contract out through individuals or businesses.”

News By Reuters

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Falling German satellite enters atmosphere.

scientific satellite

BERLIN (AP) — A defunct satellite entered the atmosphere early Sunday and pieces of it were expected to crash into the earth, the German Aerospace Center said.

There was no immediate solid evidence to determine above which continent or country the ROSAT scientific research satellite entered the atmosphere, agency spokesman Andreas Schuetz said.

Most parts of the minivan-sized satellite were expected to burn up during re-entry, but up to 30 fragments weighing 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could crash into Earth at speeds up to 280 mph (450 kph).

Scientists were no longer able to communicate with the dead satellite and it must have traveled about 12,500 miles (20,000 kilometers) in the last 30 minutes before entering the atmosphere, Schuetz said.

Experts were waiting for "observations from around the world," he added.

Scientists said hours before the re-entry into the atmosphere that the satellite was not expected to hit over Europe, Africa or Australia. According to a precalculated path it could have been above Asia, possibly China, at the time of its re-entry, but Schuetz said he could not confirm whether the satellite actually entered above that area.

The 2.69-ton (2.4 metric ton) scientific ROSAT satellite was launched in 1990 and retired in 1999 after being used for research on black holes and neutron stars and performing the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope.

The largest single fragment of ROSAT that could hit into the earth is the telescope's heat-resistant mirror.

During its mission, the satellite orbited about 370 miles (600 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, but since its decommissioning it has lost altitude, circling at a distance of only 205 miles (330 kilometers) above ground in June for example, the agency said.

Even in the last days, the satellite still circled the planet every 90 minutes, making it hard to predict where on Earth it would eventually come down.

A dead NASA satellite fell into the southern Pacific Ocean last month, causing no damage, despite fears it would hit a populated area and cause damage or kill people.

Experts believe about two dozen metal pieces from the bus-sized satellite fell over a 500-mile (800 kilometer) span of uninhabited portion of the world.

The NASA climate research satellite entered Earth's atmosphere generally above American Samoa. But falling debris as it broke apart did not start hitting the water for another 300 miles (480 kilometers) to the northeast, southwest of Christmas Island.

Earlier, scientists had said it was possible some pieces could have reached northwestern Canada.

The German space agency puts the odds of somebody somewhere on Earth being hurt by its satellite at 1-in-2,000 — a slightly higher level of risk than was calculated for the NASA satellite. But any one individual's odds of being struck are 1-in-14 trillion, given there are 7 billion people on the planet.

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The German space agency on ROSAT: http://bit.ly/papMAA