Rabu, 21 Desember 2022

Volodymyr Zelenskyy strikes defiant tone after White House meeting with Joe Biden - Financial Times

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy struck a defiant tone at the White House on Wednesday, questioning whether Kyiv could ever reach a “just peace” with Moscow and pressing Joe Biden to send additional weapons to sustain his war effort through the winter.

The US president used a joint appearance with Zelenskyy, whose Washington trip was his first abroad since the Russian invasion, to tout $1.85bn in new assistance including a long-sought Patriot missile defence battery. He assured his Ukrainian counterpart that Washington was prepared to stand by Kyiv “as long as it takes”.

Zelenskyy was effusive in his thanks to the US president and the American people, and during a meeting in the Oval Office made a highly-symbolic presentation to Biden of a military medal from a frontline soldier commanding a unit armed by US-supplied mobile artillery system.

But after nearly four hours of meetings at the White House, there were some signs of tension between the two presidents even amid the warm affirmations of unity.

Zelenskyy’s questioning of whether he could ever reach a “just peace” with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin came after Biden and US officials publicly argued Ukraine’s leader was seeking just that.

“For me as a president, ‘just peace’ is no compromises,” he said, standing next to Biden during a news conference in the White House’s East Room.

“There can’t be any ‘just peace’ in the war that was imposed on us,” he added, saying Kyiv would not agree to anything short of a return to full territorial integrity and “payback for all the damages inflicted by Russian aggression”.

In addition, Biden sought to temper Zelenskyy’s demands for even more armaments, arguing that an effort to provide weapon systems that are “fundamentally different” could risk rupturing the alliance of Western countries the US is pressing to maintain.

Still, the White House appearance of the two wartime allies in Washington — Zelenskyy clad in his customary military green cargo pants and sweatshirt, Biden wearing a striped tie of Ukraine’s national colours of blue and yellow — was a dramatic showing of unity for two leaders who have staked their countries’ future on bloodying a common Russian foe.

Zelenskyy arrived in Washington shortly after the Biden administration announced $1.85bn in new lethal assistance for Kyiv, including the advanced Patriot system.

His visit on the more than 300th day of the war comes at a critical moment in the Russian invasion. Officials in Kyiv have warned Moscow is gearing up for a possible winter offensive as Ukraine fends off Russian attacks on two fronts: on the ground, where grinding combat between the militaries is under way, and in the skies, where Moscow has pummeled Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure.

Western weaponry will be critical for Ukraine’s ability to maintain its defences. Kyiv has long sought the Patriot system, which analysts say will be a powerful addition to the country’s air defences, although it will not offer immediate respite from the mass Russian missile and drone attacks that are smashing Ukraine’s power infrastructure.

A senior US defence official said the Patriots will complement other weaponry already provided by the US and its Nato allies.

“For air defence, there is no silver bullet,” the official said. “Patriot will complement a range of medium and short-range air defence capabilities that we’ve provided and the allies have provided in prior donation packages.”

Ukrainian forces will need several months of training before they will be able to employ the system successfully, the official said.

The Biden administration sought to use the visit to showcase US support for Ukraine as the country heads into a tough winter. Biden and his wife Jill kicked off the White House meeting by greeting Zelenskyy outside the south portico not long after Ukraine’s leader touched down outside Washington on a US air force plane, which flew to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland from Poland.

Later in the day, Zelenskyy is due to address a joint session of Congress before returning to Kyiv.

In addition to the Patriot system, the US also announced it will for the first time transfer joint direct attack munitions, which convert unguided aerial munitions into “smart bombs”, allowing Ukrainian forces to more precisely target Russian military positions.

The US will train Ukrainian troops on the Patriot system, likely in Germany, for weeks before it arrives in Ukraine. It is expected to take some time before the system is operational on the battlefield.

Congress is also set to vote this week on a spending bill that includes $45bn in additional funds for Kyiv. The US has already committed tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February.

However, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have suggested that passing additional aid for Kyiv will be more challenging next year when they take control of the lower chamber of Congress.

The Kremlin on Wednesday said it did not expect any positive developments or changes in Kyiv’s position on peace talks following Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington.

“The weapons supply to Ukraine continues, and their range is expanding. It leads to the conflict aggravation and does not bode Ukraine any good,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Additional reporting by Aime Williams in Washington, Anastasia Stognei in Riga and Christopher Miller in Kyiv

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2022-12-21 23:29:17Z
1708583562

Biden pledges continued support for Kyiv at White House meeting with Zelenskyy - Financial Times

President Joe Biden pledged to continue US military support for Kyiv in a highly-symbolic Oval Office meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the Ukrainian president’s first foreign trip since Russia invaded more than 300 days ago.

Wearing a striped tie in Ukraine’s national colours of blue and yellow, Biden told Zelenskyy he was “delighted” his counterpart could visit even as Russia was escalating assaults on Ukrainian civilians and “trying to use winter as a weapon”. He pledged the two countries would maintain a “united defence”.

Shortly before Zelenskyy arrived in Washington, his aides announced $1.85bn in new lethal assistance for Kyiv, including the long-coveted advanced Patriot missile defence system.

“We will support Ukraine pursuing a just peace,” Biden said.

Zelenskyy, clad in his customary military green cargo pants and a sweatshirt with Ukraine’s state emblem, described his visit as “a great honour” and said he had wanted to come earlier.

He thanked Biden, Congress and “ordinary people” in the US for their support, and presented the US president with a medal awarded to the captain of a unit in the Donbas that uses Himars — a US-supplied mobile artillery system — which the soldier asked to be passed to Biden.

Zelenskyy’s visit comes at a critical moment in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Officials in Kyiv have warned Moscow is gearing up for a possible winter offensive as Ukraine fends off Russian attacks on two fronts: on the ground, where grinding combat between the militaries is under way, and in the skies, where Moscow has pummeled Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure.

Western weaponry will be critical for Ukraine’s ability to maintain its defences. Kyiv has long sought the Patriot system, which analysts say will be a powerful addition to the country’s air defences, although it will not offer immediate respite from the mass Russian missile and drone attacks that are smashing Ukraine’s power infrastructure.

A senior American defence official said the Patriots will complement other weaponry already provided by the US and its Nato allies.

“For air defence, there is no silver bullet,” the official said. “Patriot will complement a range of medium and short range air defence capabilities that we’ve provided and the allies have provided in prior donation packages.”

Ukrainian forces will need several months of training before they will be able to employ the system successfully, the official said.

The Biden administration sought to use the visit to showcase US support for Ukraine as the country heads into a tough winter. Biden and his wife Jill greeted Zelenskyy outside the White House shortly after Ukraine’s leader touched down outside Washington on a US air force plane, which flew to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland from Poland.

Later in the day, Zelenskyy is due to address a joint session of Congress before returning to Kyiv.

In addition to the Patriot system, the US also announced it will for the first time transfer joint direct attack munitions, which convert unguided aerial munitions into “smart bombs”, allowing Ukrainian forces to more precisely target Russian military positions.

The US will train Ukrainian troops on the Patriot system, likely in Germany, for weeks before it arrives in Ukraine. It is expected to take some time before the system is operational on the battlefield.

Congress is also set to vote this week on a spending bill that includes $45bn in additional funds for Kyiv. The US has already committed tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February.

However, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have suggested that passing additional aid for Kyiv will be more challenging next year when they take control of the lower chamber of Congress.

The Kremlin on Wednesday said it did not expect any positive developments or changes in Kyiv’s position on peace talks following Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington.

“The weapons supply to Ukraine continues, and their range is expanding. It leads to the conflict aggravation and does not bode Ukraine any good,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Additional reporting by Aime Williams in Washington, Anastasia Stognei in Riga and Christopher Miller in Kyiv

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2022-12-21 21:11:04Z
1708583562

Toronto: Eight teenage girls charged with killing man - BBC

Toronto emergency police vehicleGetty Images

Eight teenage girls have been charged with the murder of a 59-year-old man in Toronto, Canadian police say.

The girls, aged between 13 and 16, are accused of stabbing the victim in what police describe as "a swarming" just after midnight local time on Sunday.

The man, who has not been identified, had been living in a shelter for the homeless at the time of the attack.

Toronto Mayor John Tory said he was "deeply disturbed" by the case in a statement.

A group of bystanders flagged down emergency services after finding the man with stab wounds shortly after midnight on Sunday, Toronto Police Detective Sergeant Terry Browne told reporters.

The victim, who had only recently moved into sheltered housing, later died in hospital.

The girls, whose identities are protected under Canadian law, were arrested near the scene of the attack and a number of weapons were seized.

They had met via social media and three of them had had previous contact with police, Detective Sergeant Terry Browne said.

"We don't know how or why they met on that evening and why that destination was downtown Toronto."

They were believed to have been involved in an earlier altercation the same evening, he added.

A resident of a nearby homeless shelter told CBC Toronto the victim was stabbed in the stomach after trying to protect her when the girls approached her for alcohol.

"I didn't know if they had a knife or what. I was just scared," she said, explaining how she walked away from the attackers and sought refuge in the shelter.

"I am extremely troubled by the young age of those accused and by the number of people allegedly involved in this murder," Mayor Tory said.

"My thoughts are with this man's friends and all those who knew him as they mourn his loss," he added.

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2022-12-21 10:37:35Z
1697762510

Afghanistan: Taliban ban women from universities amid condemnation - BBC

Students walk along a street near the Kabul University after it was reopened in Kabul on February 26, 2022. (Photo by Ahmad SAHEL ARMAN / AFP)Getty Images

The Taliban have banned women from universities in Afghanistan, sparking international condemnation and despair among young people in the country.

The higher education minister announced the regression on Tuesday, saying it would take immediate effect.

The ban further restricts women's education - girls have already been excluded from secondary schools since the Taliban returned last year.

Some women staged protests in the capital Kabul on Wednesday.

"Today we come out on the streets of Kabul to raise our voices against the closure of the girls' universities," protesters from the Afghanistan Women's Unity and Solidarity group said.

The small demonstrations were quickly shut down by Taliban officials.

The United Nations and several countries have condemned the order, which takes Afghanistan back to the Taliban's first period of rule when girls could not receive formal education.

The UN's Special Rapporteur to Afghanistan said it was "a new low further violating the right to equal education and deepens the erasure of women from Afghan society."

The US said such a move would "come with consequences for the Taliban".

"The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all in Afghanistan," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement.

"No country can thrive when half of its population is held back."

Female students have told the BBC about their anguish. "They destroyed the only bridge that could connect me with my future," one Kabul University student said.

"How can I react? I believed that I could study and change my future or bring the light to my life but they destroyed it."

Another student told the BBC she was a woman who had "lost everything".

She had been studying Sharia Islamic law and argued the Taliban's order contradicted "the rights that Islam and Allah have given us".

"They have to go to other Islamic countries and see that their actions are not Islamic," she told the BBC.

Western countries have demanded all year that the Taliban improve female education if they wish to be formally recognised as Afghanistan's government.

However in neighbouring Pakistan, the foreign minister said while he was "disappointed" by the Taliban's decision, he still advocated engagement.

"I still think the easiest path to our goal - despite having a lot of setbacks when it comes to women's education and other things - is through Kabul and through the interim government," said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

'The last thing they could do'

The Taliban had promised a softer rule after seizing power last year following the US' withdrawal from the country. However the hardline Islamists have continued to roll back women's rights and freedoms in the country.

The Taliban's leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and his inner circle have been against modern education - particularly for girls and women.

There has been opposition to this stance from more moderate officials, and analysts say this issue has been a point of factional division all year.

Yet on Tuesday, the education ministry said its scholars had evaluated the university curriculum and environment, and attendance for girls would be suspended "until a suitable environment" was provided.

It added that it would soon provide such a setting and "citizens should not be worried".

However in March, the Taliban had promised to re-open some high schools for girls but then cancelled the move on the day they were due to return.

The crackdown also follows a wave of new restrictions on women in recent months. In November, women were banned from parks, gyms and public baths in the capital.

A university lecturer and Afghan activist in the US said the Taliban had completed their isolation of women by suspending university for them.

"This was the last thing the Taliban could do. Afghanistan is not a country for women but instead a cage for women," Humaira Qaderi told the BBC.

The Taliban had just three months ago allowed thousands of girls and women to sit university entrance exams in most provinces across the country.

But there were restrictions on the subjects they could apply for, with engineering, economics, veterinary science and agriculture blocked and journalism severely restricted.

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, universities had already been operating under discriminatory rules for women since the Taliban takeover in 2021.

There were gender segregated entrances and classrooms, and female students could only be taught by women professors or old men.

However, women were still getting education. Unesco noted on Tuesday that from 2001 and 2018 - the period between Taliban rule - the rate of female attendance in higher education had increased 20 times.

Several women have told the BBC they gave up after the Taliban regained rule because of "too many difficulties".

2px presentational grey line

Issue splits Taliban

Analysis by Yogita Limaye, BBC South Asia correspondent

There has been speculation for over a month now that the Taliban government would ban university education for women.

One female student predicted it a few weeks ago. "One day we will wake up and they will say girls are banned from universities," she had said.

And so, while many Afghans might have expected that sooner or later this decision would be taken, it still comes as a shock.

Last month women were barred from parks, gyms and swimming pools. In March this year, the Taliban government did not deliver on its commitment to open secondary schools for girls.

From conversations with Taliban leaders over the past year, it is evident that there is disagreement within the Taliban on the issue of girls' education.

Off the record, some Taliban members have repeatedly said they are hopeful and working to try and ensure girls get an education.

Girls were allowed to sit for graduation exams for secondary schools two weeks ago, in 31 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, even though they haven't been allowed to be in school for more than a year.

That provided a glimmer of hope, which has now been extinguished.

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2022-12-21 07:00:43Z
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Selasa, 20 Desember 2022

Irmgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,500 murders - BBC

96-year-old defendant Irmgard F., a former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp, sits in the courtroom at the start of her trial at the court room in Itzehoe, northern Germany, on October 19, 2021.AFP

A former secretary who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,500 people.

Irmgard Furchner, 97, was taken on as a teenaged shorthand typist at Stutthof and worked there from 1943 to 1945.

Furchner, the first woman to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term.

Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp.

Some 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers.

Furchner was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murder of 10,505 people and complicity in the attempted murder of five others. As she was only 18 or 19 at the time, she was tried in a special juvenile court.

At Stutthof, located near the modern-day Polish city of Gdansk, a variety of methods was used to murder detainees and thousands died in gas chambers there from June 1944.

The court at Itzehoe in northern Germany heard from survivors of the camp, some of whom have died during the trial.

When the trial began in September 2021, Irmgard Furchner went on the run from her retirement home and was eventually found by police on a street in Hamburg.

Stutthof commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe was jailed in 1955 for being an accessory to murder and he was released five years later.

A series of prosecutions have taken place in Germany since 2011, after the conviction of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk set the precedent that being a guard was sufficient evidence to prove complicity.

That ruling also meant that civilian worker Furchner could stand trial, as she worked directly to the camp commander, dealing with correspondence surrounding Stutthof detainees.

It took 40 days for her to break her silence in the trial, when she told the court "I'm sorry about everything that happened".

"I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time - that's all I can say," she said.

Her defence lawyers argued she should be acquitted because of doubts surrounding what she knew, as she was one of several typists in Hoppe's office.

After the war, Furchner married an SS squad leader called Heinz Furchstam whom she probably met at the camp.

She went on to work as an administrative worker in a small town in northern Germany. Her husband died in 1972.

Survivor and co-plaintiff Manfred Goldberg returned to Stutthof in 2017 with the Prince and Princess of Wales
Holocaust Educational Trust

Historian Stefan Hördler played a key role in the trial, accompanying two judges on a visit to the site of the camp.

It became clear from the visit that Furchner was able to see some of the worst conditions at the camp from the commandant's office.

The historian told the trial that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.

Mr Hördler described Hoppe's office as the "nerve centre" for everything that went on at Stutthof.

During his evidence he read out evidence provided by Furchner's husband in 1954 when he said: "At the Stutthof camp people were gassed. The staff at the commandant's HQ talked about it."

Presiding judge Dominik Gross said it was "beyond imagination" that Furchner could not have noticed the smoke and stench of mass killing: "The defendant could have quit at any time."

Concentration camp survivor and witness Josef Salomonovic
Getty Images

Camp survivor Josef Salomonovic, who travelled to the court to give evidence at the trial, was only six when his father was murdered by lethal injection at Stutthof in September 1944.

"She's indirectly guilty," he told reporters at the court last December, "even if she just sat in the office and put her stamp on my father's death certificate."

Another Stutthof survivor, Manfred Goldberg, said his only disappointment was in the nature of the sentence.

"It's a foregone conclusion that a 97-year-old would not be made to serve a sentence in prison - so it could only be a symbolic sentence," he told the BBC.

"But the length should be made to reflect the extraordinary barbarity of being found to be complicit in the murder of more than 10,000 people."

line

Nazi crime cases since 2011

  • John Demjanjuk - jailed in 2011 for five years for his part in the murder of more than 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp but released pending an appeal and died the following year aged 91
  • Oskar Gröning - the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz", sentenced in 2015 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. He never went to jail, dying in 2018 aged 96 during the appeals process
  • Reinhold Hanning - former SS guard at Auschwitz convicted of helping to commit mass murder in June 2016 but died a year later aged 95 with appeals still pending
  • Friedrich Karl Berger - former guard at the Neuengamme concentration camp, deported to Germany from the US in February 2021 aged 95. German prosecutors dropped charges against him and his current fate is unknown
  • Josef S - jailed for five years in June 2022 for assisting in the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Aged 101, he is the oldest person to be convicted for Nazi-era war crimes in Germany, but because of age and ill health is unlikely to spend any time in prison
line

Furchner's trial could be the last to take place in Germany into Nazi-era crimes, although a few cases are still being investigated.

Two other cases have gone to court in recent years for Nazi crimes committed at Stutthof.

Last year a former camp guard was declared unfit for trial even though the court said there was a "high degree of probability" he was guilty of complicity.

In 2020, another SS camp guard, Bruno Dey, was given a two-year suspended jail term for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners.

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2022-12-20 15:15:16Z
1707372747

Irmgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,500 murders - BBC

96-year-old defendant Irmgard F., a former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp, sits in the courtroom at the start of her trial at the court room in Itzehoe, northern Germany, on October 19, 2021.AFP

A former secretary who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,505 people.

Irmgard Furchner, 97, was taken on as a teenaged typist at Stutthof and worked there from 1943 to 1945.

Furchner, the first woman to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term.

Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp.

Some 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers. As Furchner was only 18 or 19 at the time, she was tried in a special juvenile court.

At Stutthof, located near the modern-day Polish city of Gdansk, a variety of methods was used to murder detainees and thousands died in gas chambers there from June 1944.

The court at Itzehoe in northern Germany heard from survivors of the camp, some of whom have died during the trial.

When the trial began in September 2021, Irmgard Furchner went on the run from her retirement home and was eventually found by police on a street in Hamburg.

Stutthof commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe was jailed in 1955 for being an accessory to murder and he was released five years later.

A series of prosecutions have taken place in Germany since 2011, after the conviction of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk set the precedent that being a guard was sufficient evidence to prove complicity.

That ruling also meant that civilian worker Furchner could stand trial, as she worked directly to the camp commander, dealing with correspondence surrounding Stutthof detainees.

It took 40 days for her to break her silence in the trial, when she told the court "I'm sorry about everything that happened". "I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time - that's all I can say," she said.

Her defence lawyers argued she should be acquitted because of doubts surrounding what she knew, as she was one of several typists in Hoppe's office.

Historian Stefan Hördler played a key role in the trial, accompanying two judges on a visit to the site of the camp. It became clear from the visit that Furchner was able to see some of the worst conditions at the camp from the commandant's office.

The historian told the trial that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.

Mr Hördler described Hoppe's office as the "nerve centre" for everything that went on at Stutthof.

Concentration camp survivor and witness Josef Salomonovic
Getty Images

Camp survivor Josef Salomonovic, who travelled to the court to give evidence at the trial, was only six when his father was shot dead at Stutthof in September 1944.

"She's indirectly guilty," he told reporters at the court last December, "even if she just sat in the office and put her stamp on my father's death certificate."

Another survivor, Manfred Goldberg, said his only disappointment was that the two-year suspended sentence "appears to be a mistake".

"No-one in their right mind would send a 97 year old to prison, but the sentence should reflect the severity of the crimes," he said.

"If a shoplifter is sentenced to two years, how can it be that someone convicted for complicity in 10,000 murders is given the same sentence?"

line

Nazi crime cases since 2011

  • John Demjanjuk - jailed in 2011 for five years for his part in the murder of more than 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp but released pending an appeal and died the following year aged 91
  • Oskar Gröning - the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz", sentenced in 2015 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. He never went to jail, dying in 2018 aged 96 during the appeals process
  • Reinhold Hanning - former SS guard at Auschwitz convicted of helping to commit mass murder in June 2016 but died a year later aged 95 with appeals still pending
  • Friedrich Karl Berger - former guard at the Neuengamme concentration camp, deported to Germany from the US in February 2021 aged 95. German prosecutors dropped charges against him and his current fate is unknown
  • Josef S - jailed for five years in June 2022 for assisting in the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Aged 101, he is the oldest person to be convicted for Nazi-era war crimes in Germany, but because of age and ill health is unlikely to spend any time in prison
line

Furchner's trial could be the last to take place in Germany into Nazi-era crimes, although a few cases are still being investigated.

Two other cases have gone to court in recent years for Nazi crimes committed at Stutthof.

Last year a former camp guard was declared unfit for trial even though the court said there was a "high degree of probability" he was guilty of complicity.

In 2020, another SS camp guard, Bruno Dey, was given a two-year suspended jail term for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners.

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2022-12-20 10:30:38Z
1707372747

Senin, 19 Desember 2022

Turbulence injures dozens on Hawaiian Airlines flight - BBC

A Hawaiian Airlines planeHawaii Airlines

At least 36 people have been injured, 11 seriously, after a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Phoenix to Honolulu was hit by severe turbulence.

One passenger said the shaking became so severe they were "pretty much floating off of our chairs".

Twenty people were taken to local hospitals with injuries ranging from lacerations, bruising and loss of consciousness to head injuries.

Thunderstorms were reported in the area at the time of the turbulence.

On Monday, the US National Transportation Safety Board announced it is investigating the incident.

There were 278 passengers and 10 crew on board the Airbus A330-200.

The incident on Flight HA35 happened on Sunday morning, shortly before the plane came in to land at Honolulu's Daniel K Inouye International Airport.

A statement from Hawaiian Airlines read: "Medical care was provided to several guests and crew members at the airport for minor injuries while some were swiftly transported to local hospitals for further care."

Of the people taken to hospital, about 17 were passengers and three were crew members. A 14-month-old baby and a teenager were among them.

Hawaiian Airlines' chief operating officer Jon Snook said he was "grateful" for the support provided by emergency services and that "it looks like everybody's going to survive".

He added there had been unstable weather conditions in Hawaii recently that created challenges for airlines.

One passenger told Hawaiian broadcaster KHON2 that the severe turbulence only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to injure the passengers.

"It was just rocky. And then, it quickly just escalated to, like, the point where we're shaking so much that we were, like, pretty much floating off of our chairs," Jacie Hayata Ano said.

"You could see people were hurt around us and things are just everywhere... that's pretty surreal," she added.

The airline said it was conducting a "thorough investigation" of the plane before it returns to service.

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Why turbulence is (usually) nothing to worry about

Turbulence is a fact of flying - however severe incidents like those on flight HA35 experienced are rare, and a bit of a bumpy flight is usually nothing to worry about.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), turbulence can be caused by:

  • air movement not normally seen
  • atmospheric pressure
  • jet streams
  • air around mountains
  • cold or warm weather fronts
  • thunderstorms

Sometimes it can be predicted - and pilots are known to radio to each other to give advanced warnings - but it can also come out of nowhere. Even though it is a weather phenomenon, turbulence can happen anywhere and in any conditions.

The most important thing to do is to keep your seatbelt on - on average 58 people in the US are injured during turbulent flights when not wearing seatbelts every year, according to the FAA.

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2022-12-19 13:48:09Z
CBMiMWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy93b3JsZC11cy1jYW5hZGEtNjQwMjQwMjHSATVodHRwczovL3d3dy5iYmMuY29tL25ld3Mvd29ybGQtdXMtY2FuYWRhLTY0MDI0MDIxLmFtcA