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Syria-bound Russian military jet crashes with 92 onboard

[email protected] (Agencies)
December 25, 2016

Moscow, Dec 25: A Russian military plane crashed today in the Black Sea as it made its way to Syria with 92 people onboard, including Red Army Choir members heading to celebrate the New Year with troops.plane

Local news agencies, citing the defence ministry, said the Tu-154 plane had crashed shortly after take-off from the southern city of Adler at 5:40 am local time.

Defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies that one body had been recovered six kilometres off the coast of the resort city of Sochi, as a frantic search operation continued to hunt for the missing.

"Fragments of the Tu-154 plane of the Russian defence ministry were found 1.5 kilometres from the Black Sea coast of the city of Sochi at a depth of 50 to 70 metres," the ministry said.

The plane had been on a routine flight to Russia's Hmeimim airbase in western Syria, which has been used to launch air strikes in Moscow's military campaign supporting its ally President Bashar al-Assad in the country's devastating civil war.

Among the 84 passengers of the plane were Russian servicemen as well as members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, the army's official musical group internationally known as the Red Army Choir, who were headed to Syria to participate in New Year celebrations at the airbase.

There were also eight crew members onboard, the ministry said.

Nine journalists were among the passengers, with state-run channels Pervy Kanal, NTV and Zvezda saying they each had three staff onboard the flight.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told news agencies that President Vladimir Putin had been informed of the situation and was being kept updated on the search operation.

"It's too early to say anything," agencies quoted Peskov as saying, adding that Putin was in constant contact with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

"The president is waiting for the picture to be clear."

Konashenkov said that Deputy Defence Minister Pavel Pop
ov had flown to Adler along with a team tasked with clarifying the circumstances surrounding the crash.

Russia's Investigative Committee said a criminal probe had been launched to determine whether violations of air transportation safety had led to the crash.

Investigators are currently questioning the technical personnel responsible for preparing the plane for take-off, the committee said.

Tu-154 aircraft have been involved in a number of accidents in the past.
In April 2010 many high-ranking Polish officials, including then president Lech Kaczynski, were killed when a Tu-154 airliner went down in thick fog while approaching the Smolensk airport in western Russia.

Moscow has been conducting a bombing campaign in Syria in support of Assad since September 2015 and has taken steps to boost its presence in the country.

In October, Putin approved a law ratifying Moscow's deal with Damascus to deploy its forces in the country indefinitely, firming up Russia's long-term presence in Syria.

Russian warplanes have flown out of the Hmeimim base to conduct air strikes, and the base is also home to an S-400 air defence system.

Comments

HOFZ
 - 
Sunday, 25 Dec 2016

RUSSIAN PRESEDENT PUT IN NOW REALIZING

Abdul
 - 
Sunday, 25 Dec 2016

Innocent people of Syrian children prayer will burn Russia one by one.

Mohammed
 - 
Sunday, 25 Dec 2016

Trust Allha every one........ will be punish...............

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coastaldigest.com web desk
June 18,2020

Kathmandu, June 18: Nepal's National Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed the Constitution Amendment Bill to update the country's political and administrative map incorporating three Indian territories. 

The new map also includes land controlled by India. It requires President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's approval.

India, which controls the region - a slice of land including Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani areas in the northwest - has rejected the map, saying it is not based on historical facts or evidence.

India has termed as untenable the "artificial enlargement" of territorial claims by Nepal after its lower house of parliament on Saturday unanimously approved the new political map of the country featuring areas which India maintains belong to it.

The National Assembly, or the upper house of the Nepalese parliament, unanimously passed the constitution amendment bill providing for inclusion of the country's new political map in its national emblem.

The bill was passed with all the 57 members present voting in its favour.

The dispute

The latest border dispute between the countries began last month after India inaugurated Himalayan link road built in a disputed region that lies at a strategic three-way junction with Tibet and China.

The 80km (50-mile) road, inaugurated by Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, cuts through the Lipulekh Himalayan pass, considered one of the shortest and most feasible trade routes between India and China.

The road cuts the travel time and distance from India to Tibet's Mansarovar lake, considered holy by the Hindus.

But Nepal says about 19km of the road passes through its area and fiercely contested the inauguration of the road, viewing the alleged incursion as a stark example of bullying by its much larger neighbour.

Nepal, which was never under colonial rule, has long claimed the areas of Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipulekh under the 1816 Sugauli treaty with the British East India Company, although these areas have remained under the control of Indian troops since India fought a war with China in 1962.

Comments

Angry indian
 - 
Sunday, 21 Jun 2020

acche din after deshbakth become ruling party...now even weakist country started conquring indian..what a shame on so0 called 56 inch chest..we need tiger leader not Pm who always speak in air and lie alot..

 

this is how an hindu nation is build ? Bjps cant rule india for more than 10 year...

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News Network
July 10,2020

Lahore, Jul 10: The Punjab government enforced smart lockdown in seven cities of the province for 15 days with an immediate effect from Thursday night, The News International reported.

The Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Thursday issued a notification under the Punjab Infectious Diseases Ordinance 2020, about enforcement of lockdown in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat and Rawalpindi, till July 24 midnight.

In Lahore, the lockdown will be enforced in A2 Block Township, EME Society, Main Bazaar Chungi Amr Sadhu, Punjab Government Servants Housing Scheme, Wapda Town, C-Block Jauhar Town and Green City.

The basic necessities of life will remain available in smart lockdown areas. "The purpose of the smart lockdown is to minimise movement of people in hotspots of positive coronavirus cases," said Capt (retd) Muhammad Usman, Secretary, Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department.

The country registered 2,751 new COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 243,599 on Friday. The province-wise breakup includes 85,261 cases in Punjab, 100,900 cases in Sindh, 29,406 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,099 in Balochistan, 13,829 in Islamabad, 1,619 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,485 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The death toll due to the virus reached 5,058 with 75 more deaths reported over the last 24 hours, as per data cited by Radio Pakistan.

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Agencies
August 5,2020

Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.

A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.

The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.

According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.

Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.

Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.

Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.

The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.

Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.

IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.

It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.

The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.

"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.

The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.

Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.

The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.

Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.

China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.

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