The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Third Chinese schoolgirl dies in Asiana air crash
- Egypt's divide turns brother against brother
- Fugitive Snowden to seek temporary asylum in Russia
| Third Chinese schoolgirl dies in Asiana air crash Posted: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Chinese girl died in a San Francisco hospital on Friday, becoming the third fatality in the crash of an Asiana Airlines jet at the city's airport last Saturday, doctors and Chinese officials said. The teenage girl, who died on Friday morning, had been in critical condition, according to a statement from two doctors at San Francisco General Hospital. Her parents asked the hospital not to release further information. The girl was a Chinese national, according to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. She was part of a group of students from eastern China who were visiting the United States to attend summer camp, one of the trip organizers said. He said she was 16. The crash landing of the Boeing 777 also killed two other Chinese girls from the school group and injured more than 180 people. Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, the two teenagers who died on Saturday, were sitting in the back of the plane, which hit the seawall and suffered the most damage. One of the girls was run over by a fire truck rushing to the scene, the San Francisco Police Department said on Friday, although it was unclear whether she was still alive at the time. She was obscured by fire retardant foam and was found in the fire truck's tracks when it moved to fight flames in the fuselage, police spokesman Albie Esparza said. The coroner in San Mateo County, where the airport is located, has said he will release the autopsy results of the two girls who died on Saturday within two weeks. Most of the injured passengers were taken to San Francisco General Hospital and to Stanford Hospital & Clinics. San Francisco General, which originally received 67 patients, still has six, including two in critical condition. The six suffered a combination of spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, abdominal injuries, internal bleeding, road rash and fractures, the hospital said. Stanford still has one patient, who is in serious condition, a spokesman said. It treated 55 patients from the crash. At least seven patients remain at other hospitals. (Reporting By Sarah McBride, Gerry Shih and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Sandra Maler and Peter Cooney) |
| Egypt's divide turns brother against brother Posted: CAIRO (Reuters) - Islam Ibrahim has no idea if his older brother Nasim was one of the Republican Guardsmen shooting at him when he and hundreds of other Egyptians were wounded and more than 50 killed. The brothers, who moved together to Cairo from a village near the Suez canal, stayed close until last week, when the army in which Nasim serves toppled the president that Islam has vowed to defend. "I don't know if he was there with them or not," said Islam, 24, with a bandage from a gunshot on his knee and an open wound from birdshot on his shoulder. "I don't like to think about it. If he was, I know he wouldn't fire on unarmed demonstrators," he said. He sat on a plastic chair behind the stage at the camp near a Cairo mosque where thousands of supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Mursi, say they will keep a protest vigil until he is restored. The overthrow of Mursi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, has split the country like no other event in memory, dividing brothers from brothers, fathers from daughters and husbands from wives. Two days after the army ousted Mursi following escalating street protests against his rule, Islam called his brother to invite him to a pro-Mursi rally. "He said I should be at home celebrating and that the army had saved the country from chaos," recalled Islam. The brothers have not spoken since. A few days later, Islam was among protesters outside the headquarters of his brother's Republican Guard when they were fired upon in one of the deadliest incidents in more than two years of political unrest. "I was still praying when I heard the gunfire. I was 300 metres away from the soldiers. They were shooting teargas over our heads," said Islam, wearing a tracksuit and red flip-flops, clutching a walking cane in one hand and a Quran in a brown leather case in the other. BULLETS FLYING "I heard bullets flying in all directions. Everyone was running left and right. Some of my friends were throwing rocks at the soldiers. We made a shield out of steel traffic barriers, but my leg was sticking out and a bullet struck me in the knee. "My friend helped me stop the bleeding with his shirt. As I was running back another bullet hit me in the shoulder." The army says the violence was provoked by terrorists who attacked its troops. The Brotherhood says its supporters were fired upon while peacefully praying. Footage circulated widely on the Internet shows uniformed snipers firing from rooftops. The Ibrahim brothers moved to Cairo three years ago. Nasim, already a soldier, was sent to the capital to serve in the Republican Guard; Islam, a young follower of the Muslim Brotherhood, found a job teaching Arabic at a mosque. Their father, head of a tourism company, had been a member of the Brotherhood in the 1980s and 90s who quit after he was arrested and tortured by the secret police under autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Islam joined the Brotherhood at 18 after he heard a sermon from a preacher from Alexandria. He revealed his membership to his father, but kept it from his mother so she would not worry about him. The Ibrahim brothers' politics overlapped during the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak. They attended protests together then, but drifted apart somewhat after Mubarak's fall - Islam knew that Nasim disapproved of his ties to the Brotherhood. Still, they remained on good terms until now. Today, he cannot imagine how Nasim can remain in an army that toppled an elected president and shot so many people. "He has to leave the army now. It is no longer possible to support Egypt and support the Army. Those two things are incompatible," Islam said. "I have called him but he doesn't answer his phone." |
| Fugitive Snowden to seek temporary asylum in Russia Posted: MOSCOW (Reuters) - Fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, breaking weeks of silence, said in Moscow on Friday he was seeking temporary asylum in Russia and had no regrets about spilling U.S. spy secrets. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone on Friday, but appeared to make no headway on Washington's demand that Moscow send Snowden back to the United States, where he is wanted on espionage charges. Putin has made clear Russia would not extradite Snowden to the United States. The disclosures have raised Americans' concerns about domestic spying and strained relations with some U.S. allies. Meeting with rights activists summoned to Sheremetyevo airport where he has been camped since late June, Snowden assailed Western nations he said had prevented him getting to Latin America. He said he hoped to stay in Russia until he had "safe passage" there. The State Department repeated its call on Russia to send Snowden to the United States, saying granting the American fugitive asylum would "raise concerns" and criticising Moscow for giving him a "propaganda platform". Snowden has not been seen publicly since he arrived at Sheremetyevo from Hong Kong on June 23 and Russian officials say he has not formally entered the country because he has remained in the airport's transit zone. Snowden, 30, who lived with his girlfriend in Hawaii and worked at a National Security Agency facility there before fleeing the country, said he had sacrificed a comfortable life to disclose details of secret surveillance programmes. "A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise," Snowden said at the closed-door meeting, footage of which was shown on Russian television and a news website with close ties to Russian law enforcement agencies. "I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's fates," he said. A Kremlin spokesman said Snowden should not harm the interests of the United States if he wants refuge in Russia - a condition initially set by Putin on July 1 and which the Kremlin said prompted Snowden to withdraw an asylum request at the time. "Snowden is serious about obtaining political asylum in the Russian Federation," said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker who attended the meeting that authorities helped organise at an undisclosed location at the airport. Snowden, who has been offered asylum by Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, asked for help "requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America". But it was unclear when that might happen, or how. "He wants to move further on, he wants to move to Latin America - he said it quite clearly," Tanya Lokshina, deputy head of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "But in order to be guaranteed safety here in Russia, the only way for him to go was to file a formal asylum plea." South American leaders at a meeting of the Mercosur trade bloc on Friday defended their right to offer asylum to Snowden. NO EASY WAY OUT The United States has urged nations not to give him passage to an asylum destination. Bolivian President Evo Morales, returning from a visit to Russia last week, had to land in Austria after he was denied access to the airspace of several European countries on suspicion Snowden might be on board his plane. "Some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behaviour persists today," Snowden told the activists. "This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights." Snowden's predicament has thrust him into the hands of Russia as Washington and Moscow are seeking to improve relations that soured over issues including Syria and human rights since Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012. Putin has made a show of impatience over Snowden's stay, saying twice since he arrived that he should choose a destination and leave. But it had also become clear that he has no easy route to a safe haven from Moscow. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it would raise concerns in the U.S.-Russian relationship if Moscow were to accept an asylum request from Snowden. "However we are not at that point yet. They still have the opportunity to do the right thing and return Mr. Snowden to the United States and that's what our hope is," she said. A White House statement about the Obama-Putin call offered no indication of a breakthrough over Snowden. "The two leaders noted the importance of U.S.-Russian bilateral relations and discussed a range of security and bilateral issues, including the status of Mr. Edward Snowden and cooperation on counter-terrorism in the lead-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics," the statement said. Putin has frequently accused the United States of double standards on human rights and has championed its critics, but he has invited Obama to Russia for a summit in early September and does not want to ruin the chances for that. Putin's spokesman repeated earlier conditions that Snowden should stop harming the interests of the United States if he wants asylum. "As far as we know, he considers himself a defender of human rights and a campaigner for democratic ideals," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Peskov said Snowden should "fully refrain from actions inflicting damage on our American partners and on Russian-American relations", Interfax news agency reported. Lawmaker Nikonov said that message had got through. "I asked him if he was ready to give up his political activity against the United States. He said, 'Definitely, yes, all this activity was in the past'," he said. He later said Snowden had submitted the asylum request. CONCERNS ABOUT DEATH PENALTY RISK After Snowden's meeting, pro-Kremlin politicians lined up to cast the American as a rights activist who deserved protection because he could be charged in the United States with espionage, a crime that carries the death penalty. "There is a really great risk that Edward Snowden is facing this very punishment," Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the lower house of parliament, told state TV. "We simply can't allow this." Snowden cast himself in similar terms. "I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets," he said. "That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets." Lokshina, of Human Rights Watch, said U.S. officials asked her to tell Snowden the United States did not see it that way. "I was contacted on my phone on my way to the airport on behalf of the ambassador and they asked me to relay to Snowden the official position of the U.S. authorities - that he is not a whistleblower, but had broken the law and should be held accountable," she said. She said she passed on the message. A senior U.S. official, however, told Reuters: "At no point, did any U.S. government official ask anyone to convey a message to Mr. Snowden. The embassy officer who was in contact with Human Rights Watch did so to explain that we do not consider Mr. Snowden to be a whistleblower - not to convey any message to him." After the activists were led through a grey door marked "staff only", Lokshina said they were put on a bus, driven around until they reached a different part of Sheremetyevo and taken to a room where Snowden was waiting. (Additional reporting by Alessandra Prentice, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia and Steve Holland and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Steve Gutterman, Thomas Grove; and Peter Cooney; Editing by Alison Williams and Sandra Maler) |
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