KATHMANDU, 6 Mar 2015: Nepal’s only international airport will remain closed at least till 10 am on Saturday even as the Indian rescue mission tried to remove the Turkish jet that skidded off the surface on Wednesday morning, blocking the runway and stranding thousands of passengers.
The Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has extended the shutdown of international flight operations till tomorrow, Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, Director General at Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said.
“Flight operations won’t resume until 10 am on Saturday as the efforts to move the plane from the current position is in progress and like to take more time,” he added.
Indian Air Force on Thursday sent 11 technical experts and a C-130J Super Hercules transport plane with an aircraft removal kit following requests by the Nepalese government to remove the Turkish Airliner Airbus A-330, for resumption of international flights in and out of the country’s capital.
The Indian technical team has lifted the front portion of Turkish Airliner with the help of lifting airbag, TIA Chief Birendra Prasad Shrestha said, adding, all front wheels of the plane will be changed on Friday.
The grassy land in between the runways broken up by the aircraft has been smoothened with gravel and sand, Shrestha was quoted as saying by Ekantipur.
The Indian team of technicians is expected to complete the clearance work by tomorrow morning, he added.
Nepal’s only international airport had remained shut since Wednesday morning when the Turkish Airliner – with 224 passengers and 11 crew members onboard – skidded off the runway and part of the wing of the plane fell on the runway, blocking movement of other aircraft.
All the passengers were unhurt, but there was some damage to the front of the Airbus 330.
Thousands of passengers and tourists remained stranded at the TIA as flights were cancelled for the third consecutive day, affecting the upcoming tourist season, one of the main source of forex for the Himalayan nation.
Nepal’s high altitude and tricky runways that often suffer from foggy conditions and poor visibility pose a challenge to even the most accomplished of pilots and had been blamed for a string of aircraft crashes in the past.
The European Union had banned all Nepal-based airlines in December 2013 from flying to the 28-nation bloc, citing poor safety standards followed by the airlines in Nepal. PTI [Pic from www.bbc.co.uk]
‘Nepal’s airport to remain closed till today

KATHMANDU, 6 Mar 2015: Nepal’s only international airport will remain closed at least till 10 am on Saturday even as the Indian rescue mission tried to remove the Turkish jet that skidded off the surface on Wednesday morning, blocking the runway and stranding thousands of passengers.

The Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has extended the shutdown of international flight operations till tomorrow, Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, Director General at Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said.

“Flight operations won’t resume until 10 am on Saturday as the efforts to move the plane from the current position is in progress and like to take more time,” he added.

Indian Air Force on Thursday sent 11 technical experts and a C-130J Super Hercules transport plane with an aircraft removal kit following requests by the Nepalese government to remove the Turkish Airliner Airbus A-330, for resumption of international flights in and out of the country’s capital.

The Indian technical team has lifted the front portion of Turkish Airliner with the help of lifting airbag, TIA Chief Birendra Prasad Shrestha said, adding, all front wheels of the plane will be changed on Friday.

The grassy land in between the runways broken up by the aircraft has been smoothened with gravel and sand, Shrestha was quoted as saying by Ekantipur.

The Indian team of technicians is expected to complete the clearance work by tomorrow morning, he added.
Nepal’s only international airport had remained shut since Wednesday morning when the Turkish Airliner – with 224 passengers and 11 crew members onboard – skidded off the runway and part of the wing of the plane fell on the runway, blocking movement of other aircraft.

All the passengers were unhurt, but there was some damage to the front of the Airbus 330.

Thousands of passengers and tourists remained stranded at the TIA as flights were cancelled for the third consecutive day, affecting the upcoming tourist season, one of the main source of forex for the Himalayan nation.

Nepal’s high altitude and tricky runways that often suffer from foggy conditions and poor visibility pose a challenge to even the most accomplished of pilots and had been blamed for a string of aircraft crashes in the past.

The European Union had banned all Nepal-based airlines in December 2013 from flying to the 28-nation bloc, citing poor safety standards followed by the airlines in Nepal.

US actor Harrison Ford has been injured in a small plane crash in Los Angeles.

The 72-year-old star of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars films reported engine failure and crash-landed his vintage plane on a Venice golf course.

He was breathing and alert when medics arrived and took him to hospital in a “fair to moderate” condition, a fire department spokesman said.

His son Ben, a chef in Los Angeles, later tweeted from the hospital: “Dad is OK. Battered but OK!

His publicist said: “The injuries sustained are not life threatening, and he is expected to make a full recovery,”
The nature of Ford’s injuries have not been disclosed but website TMZ, which first reported the story, said he suffered “multiple gashes to his head”.

Shortly after take-off from Santa Monica Airport, he said he was having engine failure with his 1942 Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR and was making an “immediate return”.

He was unable to reach the runway and landed on the Penmar Golf Course, where onlookers pulled him from the plane fearing it could explode.

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Aerial catastrophes averted
A drone nearly struck a plane as it landed at London’s Heathrow Airport last year
Three planes carrying about 200 people came close to colliding in 2012 at Washington’s Reagan National Airport
In the “miracle of Hudson” of 2009, a pilot had to ditch into New York’s Hudson river after both engines failed. All 155 passengers and crew were saved
Two Japan Airlines jets with almost 700 people on board came within 10m (10 yards) of colliding in 2001, because of air traffic control confusion
The cargo door on a plane leaving Miami airport blew off during takeoff in 1989, but it was able to return safely
A hole blew open in the fuselage of a jet in Hawaii in 1988. A stewardess was sucked out of the plane but it landed safely, with passengers escaping with injuries
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Officials said the plane had been flying at about 3,000 feet (900m) and hit a tree on the way down.
“It just sounded like a car hitting the ground or a tree or something,” Jeff Kuprycz, who was playing golf told the Associated Press news agency. “He ended up crashing around the eighth hole.”

Christian Fry of the Santa Monica Airport Association said it was “an absolutely beautifully executed emergency landing by an unbelievably well-trained pilot”.

Film producer Ryan Kavanaugh, who also witnessed the accident from his office, told The Hollywood Reporter: “He literally had five seconds, and 99% of pilots would have turned around to go back to the runway and would have crashed.”
“Harrison did what the best pilots in the world would do,” he continued. “He made the correct turn that the plane was designed for with an engine out.”

‘Moderate trauma’
After crash-landing, Ford was initially treated by doctors who happened to be at the golf course.

Later this year, Ford is reprising his role of Han Solo in the latest addition to the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
He broke his leg in June last year on set at Pinewood Studios while filming a scene involving a door on the Millennium Falcon spaceship.

Ford took up flying when he was in his 50s and is also trained to fly helicopters.

In 1999, Ford crash-landed his helicopter during a training flight in Los Angeles but both he and the instructor were unhurt.

A year later a plane he was flying had to make an emergency landing in Nebraska. Again he and his passenger escaped unhurt.

It says the film portrays courage, sensitivity

The Editors Guild of India on Friday urged the government to revoke the ban on the film India’s Daughter to enable people to view “what is a positive and powerful documentary touching on the freedom, dignity and safety” of women.

The documentary was aired on BBC’s Channel 4 on Thursday evening and has been available online since then despite the government securing a court injunction on its screening across media platforms in the country.

In a statement, the Guild found no merit in the government claiming that the film could not be shown because the subject of the documentary — the Nirbhaya gang rape that shook India in the winter of 2012 — is sub judice. “To raise the issue of sub judice now at the stage of final appeal in the Supreme Court and seek to still discussion is absurd. Judges, particularly those in the Supreme Court, are by training and temperament immune to the happenings in the public sphere outside the court, and it is an insult to the Supreme Court to suggest that the airing of the convict’s perverted views would tend to interfere with the course of justice,” the Guild said.

Describing the ban as “wholly unwarranted” and based on a misunderstanding of the power and message behind the documentary, the Guild noted that the film portrays the courage, sensitivity and liberal outlook of a family traumatised by the brutality inflicted on the daughter, the continuing shameful attitudes towards women among the convict and the educated, including lawyers, besides multiple voices in support of women’s freedom and dignity.

Pointing out that the Supreme Court itself has advocated “the broadest freedom to express even the most unacceptable of views,” the Guild said the message that emerged from the documentary was such that it would make people re-examine their own attitudes and the attitudes of people around them.

The Guild’s statement also takes note of the fact that the government seems to have taken the proscription route on the basis of initial expressions of outrage — including by members of Parliament — and without viewing the film in its entirety. “The rationale that the ban was in the interests of justice and public order as the film ‘created a situation of tension and fear amongst women’ and as that the convict would use the media to further his case in the appeal that was sub judice seems to be an afterthought.”

A man, accused of raping a girl, was beaten to death after being pulled out of a jail by a mob at Dimapur in Nagaland. A mass protest rally against the rape was held at Dimapur this morning after which students and angry people forced into the district jail and managed to pull out the accused. The accused had allegedly raped the victim several times on February 23 and was arrested the following day following a complaint lodged by the victim. The police resorted to blank firing and fired tear gas shells but failed to control the situation, officials said.
AP
The accused was dragged naked to the main town and he died of the injuries of beatings by the public, a senior official said. An emergency cabinet meeting was held at 7 pm at the residential office of chief minister to take STOCK of the law and other situation in Dimapur. The cabinet condemned the violent incident whereby the mob took the law into their hands, leading to the death of the accused, said a release issued by CMO Media Cell.
AP
The cabinet also decided to institute a high-level committee to inquire into the incident and find out the circumstances leading to it. The committee would also inquire into the lapses or shortcomings on the part of any public servant in connection with the incident and the person or group of persons responsible for the violence leading to the death of the accused in the hands of the mob. The chief minister, being in New Delhi, the cabinet meeting was chaired by Minister for Social Security & Welfare and Parliamentary Affairs, Kiyanilie Peseyie, the CMO Media Cell added.

Colours ruled the streets today as people of all ages with faces and clothes smeared in myriad of hues celebrated Holi, a harvest festival which marks the onset of spring season.

From youngsters and the elderly to the widows of Vrindavan, the ‘gulal’ spared none as revellers danced to the accompaniment of drums. People exchanged sweets as a mark of bonhomie.

The festival is celebrated to commemorate the Hindu mythological tale of Prahlada emerging unscathed from the flames despite being drawn into the fire by demoness Holika. The Hindu month of ‘Phagun’ ended yesterday with ‘Holika Dahan’ and ‘Chaita’ starting today.

A relatively warm day paved way for a perfect Holi, as coloured water drenched people inside and outside homes, bidding adieu to winter.

President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have greeted people on the occasion of Holi, saying the festival provided an opportunity to strengthen the bonds of unity and friendship.

The Prime Minister yesterday celebrated the festival with his staff for the first time during his tenure in UPA-II.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi joined the celebrations at her residence here.
Tight security arrangements were also put in place and hospitals made arrangements to deal with any extra rush of people.

In Rajasthan, the festival was celebrated peacefully and no untoward incident took place. Pink city Jaipur erupted in a rainbow of colours as enthusiastic revellers thronged streets.

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje joined the festivities with her family members in Delhi.

In Patna, political bigwigs including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD president Lalu Prasad kept away from the celebrations. Their official residences at 1, Anne Marg and 10, Circular Road, respectively wore a deserted look.

In the national capital, police personnel were deployed across the city. Police had issued warning against hooliganism in the guise of revelry. Commuters faced inconvenience in the morning as a handful of buses plied and Metro service resumed only after 2 PM.

Dilip Shanghvi, the billionaire founder of drugmaker Sun Pharma, ended Reliance Industries promoter Mukesh Ambani’s eight-year run as India’s richest billionaire on Wednesday, according to Forbes. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, formed in 2012, also ranked Mr Shanghvi ahead of Mr Ambani for the first time ever.

According to real time data on Forbes, 59-year old Mr Shanghvi’s net worth at $21.5 billion is $1.1 billion more than Mr Ambani’s net worth of $20.4 Billion. Mr Shanghvi is a self-made billionaire, while Mr Ambani inherited the business from his father the late Dhirubhai Ambani.

Mr Shanghvi added billions to his net worth in the first two months of this year. According to Bloomberg, his fortune went up by $4.5 billion this year, while Mr Ambani’s net worth increased by just $153 million since the start of 2015.

The rapid growth in Mr Shanghvi’s net worth was on account of the stellar MARKET performance of his company Sun Pharma, India’s biggest drugmaker by market value.

Over the last three months, Sun Pharma shares have gained 22 per cent as against a 7.5 per cent drop in RIL. Mr Ambani’s company has underperformed the BSE Sensex as well.

RIL has underperformed because its business model is commodity driven. Refining and petrochemicals contribute up to 95 per cent to the company’s net sales and 85 per cent to its operating profit. The 50 per cent slump in global CRUDE OIL prices has therefore impacted RIL heavily. The December quarter marked RIL’s first profit drop in nine quarters.

On the other hand, Sun Pharma operates in the global healthcare industry, where Indian companies have a pricing advantage over their global peers. The drugmaker derives nearly 60 per cent of its sales from US.

Sun Pharma, with a MARKET cap of Rs. 2.1 trillion, is much smaller than RIL, which has a MARKET value of Rs. 2.92 trillion. The smaller size, however, is not an impediment for Mr Shanghvi because he owns nearly 61 per cent stake in Sun Pharma as compared to the 45 per cent stake the 57-year old Mr Ambani holds in RIL.

Many of Sun Pharma’s recent bets have proved successful aiding its STOCK performance. In April 2014, Sun Pharma acquired its rival Ranbaxy Labs from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo for $4 billion last year, making it the world’s fifth-largest maker of generic drugs.

Reliance has also been INVESTING heavily in consumer-facing areas like retail and telecom to expand beyond refining and petrochemicals. RIL’s retail business posted its first annual profit last year, but the company is yet to roll out its telecom services despite large investments.

I watched ‘India’s Daughter’ last week prepared to hate it. NDTV had been approached by independent filmmaker Leslee Udwin regarding her documentary for the BBC, part of a global initiative on Women’s Day to focus attention on sexual crimes against women and how societal attitudes must change. It was a film, she said, had been made as a tribute to Nirbhaya and the thousands of protesters that came out after this ghastly crime in a spontaneous show of solidarity, scenes she said she had never seen in any other country. Leslee had asked to use our footage of the time, as did many other international news channels, and now that the BBC had agreed for it to be part of a global initiative, she requested NDTV to be the Indian broadcast partner.

However, our final decision to carry it would depend on it meeting our standards, editorially, ethically and legally and most importantly, with the full consent of Nirbhaya’s family.

Why should we give this disgusting man any publicity were my first thoughts as I sat down to watch it? 59 minutes later, I had changed my mind.

While my opinion of Mukesh… a monster of a human being… remained unchanged, what sickened me the most was how ‘normal’ he sounded. His ‘defence’: it was her fault… words which were echoed further into the documentary by his two lawyers, officers of the court. The difference between Mukesh and them was that he committed this heinous crime, yet their mental processes seemed exactly the same. Worse, these arguments are ones we have all heard often made by different politicians, judges, police officers regardless of gender. What shone through, however, was the sheer heroism of “India’s Mother and Father”, as I referred to them in my programme, Nirbhaya’s parents. Asha and Badri were the true torchbearers of courage and dignity amid their deep, deep grief; their words are the ones you remember after you watch this documentary, not Mukesh and his lawyers.

Others as well – Nirbhaya’s young tutor, the doctor who examined her, the police constable who talked of how so many people stopped to stare at the gruesome accident but no one came forward to help, Justice Leila Seth, interviewed in painstaking detail by Leslee over two years. It was their voices that lingered. Contrary to the perception the title may create, the story may be set in India but statistics shown in the documentary make it clear this is a GLOBAL problem.

It was absolutely essential for us however that whatever the editorial justification, Nirbhaya’s parents’ opinion and consent be solicited before we even considered airing it. Leslee Udwin told us the parents had seen the entire documentary and she had their written approval, but I wanted to speak to Asha, Nirbhaya’s mother myself. We called her to ask and mentioned we were doing a TV programme on this documentary. Their response was instant: “We want to be part of it. We spoke to Leslee for the documentary because we didn’t want the nation to forget and we want to come on your show for the same reason.”

I insisted it would be too traumatic for them to hear us discuss the rapist’s mindset. “It doesn’t matter to me at all, I have kept a stone on my heart,” said Asha. I agreed, but insisted she should join us only in the second part when we would see what the lawyers said. “We heard them say this in court too, they want publicity but my question is why the Supreme Court hasn’t even begun hearing the appeal?” asked Asha – a question for which neither I nor my panelists had any answer.

On the panel for the show, besides Nirbhaya’s parents and Leslee Udwin were three women, coincidentally all from the BJP – Kiran Bedi, Pinki Anand, Additional Solicitor General of India and Vani Tripathi, member of the Censor Board plus Dushyant Dave of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

The first question I asked Leslee Udwin (whom I had met for the first time just the previous day) was if she interviewed the rapist to glorify him for TRPs?

She was outraged; perhaps that’s why she revealed her own trauma on the show. In her words , “…what brought me to India was respect, admiration and being inspired by those extraordinary protesters, the ordinary men and women of India, who went out on the streets, who led the world by example because I, I myself have been raped. And I say this, it’s very important that I say this, because there is no shame that should adhere to me as a result of that, the shame is the rapist’s. What I’ve discovered on my journey, and if I hadn’t met with these rapists, I wouldn’t have come to the answer I’ve come to, the deep insight I’ve gained, which is that the disease is not the rapist’s, the disease is the society and we, as a part of that society, must take responsibility for encouraging men to see women as of no value. You asked me why did I have to meet with the rapists – because I knew to get a meaningful answer to my question, ‘why do men rape? Why does violent rape happen?’ I had to go to the source. I had to hear it from them. I had to sit and ask them a hundred questions about who the significant women in their lives were, what they think of women, how a good woman should behave, what makes a bad women. I needed to understand the mentality otherwise I would have made a superficial documentary. ”

Within a few hours of our programme, the matter had escalated. MPs across parties, BJP, Congress, JDU demanded a ban, women’s activists asked for it not to be shown, Twitter gave its verdict, a government ban plus court order meant NDTV would not air it on the 8th as scheduled.

Leslee Udwin came to meet me before she left, “My lawyer has told me I may be arrested, I may never return to India again,” she said. “I’m devastated my film won’t be seen in India but I’m happy about one thing.”

“What?” I asked. “Nirbhaya’s father called my producer this morning, “she said, “Badriji asked her to tell me not to worry and thanked me for making the film. That’s all the validation, I need.”

Will the controversy around India’s Daughter focus our nation’s attention once again not just on Nirbhaya and her case, but on the case of Zaheera in Lucknow, gang raped 10 years ago at 13 but still waiting for her trial to begin ? Will we look inwards and focus on how India treats all its Daughters? Will we shift our outrage over a foreign woman daring to show us unpalatable truths to the reality of what’s being said? Whatever your opinion of the documentary – banal, stereotypical, patronizing – even if you hate it, if it makes us look at the reality around us, perhaps this sound and fury would have achieved.
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Agartala: Intellectuals, singers, writers and political activists staged a protest here on Sunday to denounce the killing of a Bangladeshi-American blog-writer in Dhaka last week
“We strongly condemn the killing,” said youth leader Amal Chakraborty, one of the organisers.

Avijit Roy (42), a bio-engineer working in the US, was hacked to death by two attackers wielding machetes in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka on February 26, when he was leaving a book fair with his wife Rafida Ahmed Banna, who was also seriously wounded in the attack.

Religious radicals had been threatening Avijit for his active campaign against Islamist extremism and for improving secularism in Bangladesh.

IANS

Taking cue from a Delhi-based lawyer who has appealed with a city court against online sale of vibrators in the country, another lawyer from the city has come up with an appeal that even sale of teddy bears should be banned in India.

“At a time when the court is seriously considering stopping women of the country to have a right to pleasure, how can little girls be allowed to play with teddies? Kids like to hug their teddies, take them to bed. They are comforters for them that last long after they have left the mother’s lap,” advocate Myopia said.

“An adult woman who can access the internet and order a vibrator for pleasure… is a potential threat to the country’s already tumultuous gender balance. How can a woman be allowed to be independent in seeking pleasure? It is all wrong,” said Mardana Singh, chief of Rashtryia Andolan Of Purush Equality, in a rejoinder to the Teddy Bear case.

Upholding Mardana Singh’s re-joinder, advocate Myopia said, “Teddy bears are not even bears. To begin with they are not even Indian. This is a twisted method used by western parents to spoil girls and ingrain a sense of self-indulgence. Toys like teddy bears should be banned for girls all across India. Girls should rightfully only be allowed to play with kitchen sets.”

The two parallel cases lying with the city court will be heard consecutively later this month. So ladies, whether you want to buy a vibrator, a teddy bear or whatever else you think you should solely for comfort or fun, do it by March.

The Teddy Police is getting armed with arsenal.

NEW DELHI: Retail prices of leafy vegetables like spinach and other winter staples such as carrots, cauliflower and peas have shot up as much as 67 per cent in the national capital over the last five days due to unseasonal rains.

Retail prices of vegetables are expected to be under pressure for the next two days due to tight supplies as the WHOLESALEmarkets will remain closed for Holi on Friday, traders said.

However, there is no supply constraint for potato and onion, and their prices are stable, a senior Union agriculture ministry official said.