AirAsia jet's black box found, to be retrieved tomorrow

January 11, 2015

Jakarta/Singapore, Jan 11: The crucial black box of the crashed AirAsia jet was today found in the Java Sea stuck under debris from the plane's fuselage and will be retrieved tomorrow as the major breakthrough in the search raised hopes of unravelling the mystery of the crash soon.Air Asia found

Indonesia's Directorate General of Marine Transport confirmed that the black box of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 has been found. The breakthrough comes exactly two weeks after the flight from Surabaya to Singapore went down with 162 people on board.

Coordinator of the Directorate General of Marine Transport Tonny Budiono said navy divers from Indonesia navy ship KN Jadayat found the black box at a depth of 30 to 32 metres.

The black box is currently wedged between pieces of wreckage making it difficult for divers to retrieve, and due to time constraints, retrieval will take place tomorrow morning, said Budiono.

The search crew will attempt to retrieve the black box by moving parts of wreckage to loosen it from where it is currently stuck, and if that fails, the same balloon method used to lift the tail of the plane will be employed, he said.

To facilitate recovery efforts, a marker buoy has been installed at the site where the black box is, Budiono said.

The black box was found after strong "pings" were heard in the Java Sea and a large object likely to be the plane's fuselage was located near the spot from where the tail section was retrieved.

The black box was located amid poor weather conditions which continued to hamper search efforts to locate the wreckage of the Airbus A320-200.

The developments come a day after the tail of the doomed AirAsia jet was lifted out of the choppy waters of the Java Sea using inflatable balloons.

The black box was not found inside the section. The 10-metre-long metal chunk, with the words "AirAsia" clearly visible across it, became the first major wreckage lifted off the seabed.

The recorders are important because they should contain the pilots' final words and possibly various flight data.

Indonesia AirAsia plane lost contact with ground control on December 28, less than half way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia to Singapore and crashed possibly due to bad weather.

Only 48 bodies, including at least two strapped to their seats, have been found in the Java Sea.

The Indonesian meteorological agency has said weather was the "triggering factor" for the crash, with ice likely damaging the engines of the plane.

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Agencies
July 17,2020

Washington, Jul 17: US President Donald Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that TikTok may cut off ties to its Chinese parent and become a 100 per cent American company to circumvent demands to ban it as India has done.

"I think TikTok is going to pull out of the holding company which is China-run and operate as an independent American company," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

The US has not made a final decision on whether to ban it - which has been suggested by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said.

TikTok being divested by ByteDance Technology Company "is a much better solution than banning or pushing away", said Kudlow, who is the Director of the National Economic Council.

He said that its services will be located in the US and "it will become an hundred per cent American company".

If it becomes a US company without Chinese links, India may have to reconsider the ban on the short video app wildly popular in the country.

India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on June 29 citing threats to its defence and national security.

The ban came after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

Under Beijing's National Security Law, all Chinese companies have to provide intelligence requested by the government, creating risks for users and their countries.

India was TikTok's biggest market outside of China, where it operates as Douyin.

There were about 200 million users in India and over 300 million downloads.

The US comes next with over 30 million users for the app.

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June 1,2020

Washington, Jun 1: As protesters gathered outside the White House on Friday night in Washington DC, US President Donald Trump was briefly taken to the White House underground bunker, The New York Times reported citing a person having firsthand knowledge about the incident.

Trump was there for less than an hour before being brought upstairs. After hundreds of people surged towards the White House on Friday, Secret Service and the United States Park Police officers sought to block them.

Trump's team was surprised by the protests that were witnessed outside the White House on Friday night, according to the US daily. It is, however, unclear if Melania Trump and Barron Trump were also taken down with him.

in response to the continuing protests against the death of African-American man George Floyd in police custody.

National Guard members have been activated in 15 states and Washington, DC with another 2,000 prepared to activate if needed.

Demonstrators across the United States have been protesting since May 25, when George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died under the police custody in the city of Minneapolis.

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Agencies
January 21,2020

Fifty-six journalists were killed in 2019 and most of them died outside conflict zones, a United Nations spokesperson said.

The number dropped by nearly half from the year 2018, but perpetrators enjoyed almost total impunity, Xinhua news agency quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Monday citing Unesco figures.

The figure was published in the 'Unesco Observatory of Killed Journalists' on Monday.

In total, Unesco recorded 894 journalist killings in the decade from 2010 to 2019, an average of almost 90 per year. The number in 2019 was 99.

Journalists were murdered in all regions of the world, with Latin America and the Caribbean recording 22 killings, the highest number, followed by 15 in Asia-Pacific, and 10 in Arab States.

"The figures show that journalists not only suffer extreme risks when covering violent conflict, but that they are also targeted when reporting on local politics, corruption and crime - often in their hometowns," the Unesco said.

Almost two thirds (61 per cent) of the cases in 2019 occurred in countries not experiencing armed conflict, a notable spike in a wider trend in recent years, and a reversal of the situation of 2014, when this figure was one third.

More than 90 per cent of cases recorded in 2019 concerned local journalists, consistent with previous years, it added.

In response to these figures, Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of Unesco, said: "Unesco remains deeply troubled by the hostility and violence directed at all too many journalists around the world.

"As long as this situation lasts, it will undermine democratic debate."

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