Malcolm Turnbull, a former investment banker and lawyer, became the prime minister of Australia on Monday night after defeating Tony Abbott in a vote of Liberal Party lawmakers.
The vote was the second challenge to Mr. Abbott’s leadership in seven months. He won the government in September 2013.
Mr. Turnbull is a moderate Liberal, whose views, most recently on the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, had conflicted with those of his prime minister. The Liberals, despite their name, are the more conservative of Australia’s two major parties.
American Airlines Endangers Passengers Sending Ill-Equipped Plane Long-Haul
American Airlines “screwed up” last month when the company sent the wrong plane to Hawaii from Los Angeles, one unable to fly over water for long distances.
The airline acknowledged its mistake but only after it was too late — the Airbus A321S unauthorized to fly over Pacific was already en route to the island loaded with passengers and crew onboard, according to American Airlines spokesman Casey Norton.
On August 31, the Federal Aviation Administration and American Airlines made a risky decision to let AA Flight 31 reach the destination after “someone on the ground” realized the unprecedented situation.
The Honolulu-bound aircraft did not have Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards certification to make the flight over Pacific.
The plane also lacked emergency oxygen and fire suppression equipment required for long-haul flight, meaning the crew that prepared the flight violated FAA regulations.
Norton said that the A321-H aircraft meant to fly to Honolulu was part of American Airlines’ long-term strategy to renew its aircrafts including Boeing 757s which had been making regular flights to Hawaii until August 18 when the A321-H was put into service.
“Somebody screwed up big-time, somewhere,” an American Airlines pilot told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The pilot gave details on how the process of preparing a cargo for such a flight usually goes: the maintenance crews must sign off on all extended operation certified equipment on any long-haul aircraft and check all related items before approving a plane as certified to fly.
“All (extended operation) related equipment must be certified and be operational before a plane is cleared to fly. That means everything from oil quantities, to crew oxygen
quantities, to retardants — they all have to be looked at,” he said.
“All I can say is, thank God they didn’t have an emergency on that flight.”
For its part, the airline claimed that they acted quickly when they figured out their mistake.
“When we realized what happened, we immediately notified the FAA and began a thorough review of our procedures,” Norton said. “Already, we have revised our software to properly identify the correct aircraft are operating the correct routes.”
Though the plane safely landed in Honolulu, it was shortly been returned back to LAX with no passengers on board.
Source: sputniknews
Turkish FM to visit Azerbaijan to steer more problem between Karabakh & Azerbaijan
Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu will pay an official visit to Azerbaijan on Sept. 15-16, the Foreign Ministry has announced.
During his visit, Sinirlioğlu will discuss Turkish-Azerbaijani relations and regional and international developments, including the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, with his counterpart Elman Memmedyarov, the ministry said in a statement. Sinirlioğlu is also expected to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.
In another statement, the Foreign Ministry stated that the “local elections” that are scheduled for Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh are “a clear breach of principles of international law, UN Security Council resolutions and the principles of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe].”
The conflict between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan broke out as result of the ethnic cleansing launched by the Azeri authorities in the final years of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh War was fought from 1991 (when the Nagorno Karabakh Republic was proclaimed) to 1994 (when a ceasefire was sealed by Armenia, NKR and Azerbaijan). Most of Nagorno Karabakh and a security zone consisting of 7 regions are now under control of NKR defense army. Armenia and Azerbaijan are holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group up till now.
Russia: Excluding Syrian army from fighting ISIS is absurd – Lavrov
The Syrian army could be a crucial force in fight against Islamic State, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, reiterating that Russia will support the Syrian government in the fight against the extremist group.
READ MORE: Russia backs Syria’s fight against ISIS, not Assad’s regime – Lavrov
“To exclude Syrian army from fighting Islamic State [formerly ISIS/ISIL] is absurd… Syrian armed forces will be the most effective military force on the ground,” Lavrov said in an interview to Russia’s Channel One TV.
Lavrov added that when there was a question of destroying chemical weapons a year ago, Assad was considered a “legitimate” president of Syria and his actions were welcomed in UN Security Council resolutions.
“A year passed and he [Assad] stopped being legitimate, because the threat is now not chemical weapons or substance but a terror menace,” Lavrov said, describing that as an “ideologized” approach.
“All our western partners, without any exceptions, tell us that they clearly understand what is the main threat in the Middle East and North Africa. And this [threat] is not Assad’s regime, but Islamic State,” he said.
READ MORE: US backs those who want to use terrorists against Assad – Lavrov
Sometimes the US would not authorize an airstrike on a confirmed Islamic State position, sources in the US-led coalition tell Moscow. That raises questions, Lavrov says.
“I hope that I won’t fail anyone, saying that some of our colleagues from the coalition states say that they receive information where exactly, on which positions the Islamic State troops are located, but the commander of the coalition [of course, from the US] doesn’t approve the strike.”
“I could suspect that apart from the claimed purpose – fighting Islamic State – there is something else [as the aim] of the coalition, ” he added.
Lavrov said that Russia will assist Syrian government in the way it assists the governments of all countries, including the Iraqis, which face the threat of terrorism. Such help includes weapons deliveries as well as assistance of Russian specialists who help to set equipment and teach Syrian troops how to handle such equipment.
Troops loyal to the Assad government are fighting a number of enemies, the most powerful of which are Islamic State and the Al Nusra Front. Only two countries, Russia and Iran, internationally support the Syrian authorities, while all of the Arab world and particularly the Persian Gulf monarchies are backing what they call “moderate” Syrian rebel forces.
About 220,000 people have being killed during the ongoing conflict in the war-torn country which started in 2011.
Source: rt.com
Turkey Rights activist Kaya: Gross human rights violations committed in Kurdish town Cizre
After a nine-day round-the-clock curfew in the southeastern district of Cizre, just north of the Syrian border, the extent of the devastation to civilian life and property has not yet been revealed, but the first photographs from the region have shown a war-torn town.
“Security reasons cannot be an excuse for killing children and other civilians, for preventing citizens’ access to food, water, electricity and healthcare services. There can be no legitimate excuse for what the government has been doing in Cizre. Civilians have been punished by being made hostages in Cizre,” said Nurcan Kaya, a member of Barış Meclisi (Peace Assembly) based in İstanbul and Turkey coordinator for Minority Rights Group International (MRG), a London-based NGO.
The curfew left residents living in dire conditions due to constant gunfire and explosions that have destroyed many homes in the district.
While Interior Minister Selami Altınok said that up to 32 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the US) had been killed in Cizre, in addition to one civilian, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said that at least 20 civilians, including children, were killed in the violence.
Opposition politicians hold President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan completely responsible for the surge in terrorism and chaos after the June 7 election, in which former Prime Minister Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was unable to form a single-party government due to the success of the HDP passing the election threshold with 13 percent of the vote.
Many HDP politicians — including members from the interim Cabinet steering the country to the Nov. 1 snap election — attempted a 55-mile march to Cizre as security forces blocked roads to the town, but their entry was not allowed for “security” reasons.
Elaborating on the issue, Kaya answered our questions.
Israeli police storm al-Aqsa, clash with Palestinians
Israeli police raided the plaza outside Jerusalem‘s al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday in what they said was a bid to head off Palestinian attempts to disrupt visits by Jews and foreign tourists on the eve of the Jewish New Year.
Police used tear gas and threw stun grenades towards Palestinian youths, who barricaded themselves inside the mosque and hurled rocks and flares, a Reuters witness said. Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, in a statement, claimed the Palestinian youngsters also had pipe bombs.
There was no sign that these had been detonated. No serious injuries were reported and the compound, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount, was opened to visitors after the violence subsided, police said.
Turkey Curfew re-declared in tense Cizre, where numerous civilians were killed in clashes
A curfew, which was lifted as of Saturday morning after it had been in place for eight days in the restive district of Cizre in the southeastern Şırnak province, has been re-declared on Sunday.
According to media reports, the Şırnak Governor’s Office declared a new curfew in Cizre, the district where the prolonged curfew has left behind a scene resembling a battlefield due to days-long clashes between Turkish security forces and terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The curfew reportedly began at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) reported on Saturday that 22 civilians were killed in clashes in the district with a population of more than 100,000.
On Saturday, Interim Minister of European Union Affairs Ali Haydar Konca also reported the deaths of more than 20 civilians, adding that approximately 50 had been injured while the curfew was in place.
Clashes, militant bombing kill nine in southeast Turkey
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey | ,
Kurdish militants killed two police officers in a car bomb attack on a checkpoint in southeast Turkey on Sunday, as authorities imposed a curfew in the region’s largest city Diyarbakir where clashes broke out, security sources said.
Turkish forces backed up by helicopters and commandos shelled a mountainous area where the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters had fled after the checkpoint attack in Sirnak province, killing six of them, the sources added.
A police officer was reported killed in another confrontation.
Hundreds of militants and more than 100 police and soldiers have died since a ceasefire collapsed in July, shattering a peace process launched in 2012. It is the worst violence Turkey has seen in two decades.
The Diyarbakir governor’s office said it had placed the central historic Sur district under a round-the-clock curfew. Security sources said seven police officers were wounded in clashes there.
In other central areas of the city, police fired tear gas and water cannon at small groups of youths who threw stones and tried to set up street barricades in protest against the curfew.
Speaking to reporters near the Sur district, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, called for the Turkish state and PKK leadership across the border in Iraq’s Qandil mountains to halt the violence and return to peace talks.
Source: reuters
Western Armenia: Ararat, the mountain of mystery – Paolo Cossi
According to the Bible, after the flood of Noah’s Ark to have landed on Mount Ararat, one of the highest peaks of modern Turkey, with more than 5000 meters. What reality corresponds to this story? This is what Azad Vartanian, the main character of Ararat, undertook to discover. Because it is convinced that by comparing testimonies and historical reports we can get to precisely determine the location of the site has yet to keep track of the Ark. Arrived on Ararat, he understands that, beyond the sacred aura that surrounds it, this site is mostly a place eternally disputed, marked by a long history of conflicts that have left incurable wounds in the memory of all populations of Anatolia, and is still tightly controlled by the army of the Turkish state. These wounds resurface over the words, gestures and silences old Kurdish shepherds who receive Azad with friendship, inform him, guide him through the deserts and dark places where took place in 1915, the massacre of Armenians who lived Mountain. With modesty, they make him discover what remains of their villages and their inhabitants. Reached the end of his research on the ancient mystery of the Ararat mountain, Azad scientific discoveries Vartanian will import him less than, painfully, he will have learned from it, the world in which he lives and men who inhabit …
Once BD speaking on condition of the Armenian genocide, the main character what this album Azad Vartanian, Armenian Italian adventurer, aims to reach Mount Ararat where, according to some legends, stories and especially after Aerial reconnaissance of the US Air Force, would have failed the Ark of Noah. But before we get there he will have to avoid military that prevent access to the mountainous area to tourists especially because of the hunt against members of PPK. Greeted by a man of the mountains Azad will be confronted with an event of the past which he was unaware of the existence and extent, to know whether certain customs and special way to bake bread.
This comic speaks of the oppression of the Kurds, Armenians, a genocide and hidden secrets that must be preserved, the scenario is supported by black and white drawings as to alleviate suffering. The negative fact remains that these drawings are more air sketches, probably with more details the story would have taken more depth, but this detail does not spoil anything in the history of this adventurer.
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Stéphane © armenews.com
Nagorno-Karabakh – Armenian People Artzakh of the struggle for freedom and democracy
In 1921 the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin from Moscow decided to create two Soviet Socialist Republics in the region that are placed under their political influence: Armenia and Azerbaijan. The mountain then became border separating one people, and Artzakh passed under the control of Baku, the capital of a Turkish-speaking Azeri people, culture and history totally foreign to the Armenian people that inhabits the mountains . It was at that time military theory that outweighs the reality of peoples: a frontier must be a “high point” from which the guns can fire far into enemy territory, in anticipation of possible wars. Since aviation exists, this theory is absurd, but it has emerged in the Caucasus as in the Alps (confer the Tirol, Austria and Italy between separate or separated from the Val d’Aosta Savoy, Catalonia divided in two by the Pyrenees, and so many other examples including the Caucasus).
Armenia, in 1921, out of a terrible trauma, that of the first genocide in history, committed in Turkey, where more than a million Armenians were exterminated because of their language and their religion, that the Christian church of Armenia, among the oldest in Christendom. Their emblem is Mount Ararat, perpetually snow-capped peak above 5,000 meters, omnipresent in the landscape of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and where, according to the Bible, Noah and his ark providential failed after surviving the Flood which swept from the top. At the foot of the mountain, from the memorial erected in Yerevan in memory of the great Armenian genocide, there are watchtowers, and the dust raised by the movements of troops of the Turkish army. For an impenetrable border now separates Armenia Mount Ararat: the border with Turkey, the state in which one million Armenians were exterminated for no other reason than to eliminate all risk of reunification of the territories populated by Armenians with neighboring Armenia. The reference to the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Yerevan is omnipresent, and, despite several failed attempts, the trigger is still not on the agenda with the Turkish regime.
In Artzakh also the awareness of the peril is great, facing the majority Turkic Azerbaijan led by one of the most brutal dictators in the world, Alyev son who took Alyev father’s estate, in a political climate that evokes Korea North. In the 20s until 1990 under the communist boot that was deported to Siberia countless political opponents, Armenians underwent Moscow’s decisions. The Artzakh was called Karabakh, the name given to this area by the Iranians, as if suddenly decided to call Brussels Frankreich France a country named by its inhabitants because it is the name used in Germany. And for Soviet, they have that Russian Deputy Nagorno means mountainous. Thus was born the Nagorno-Karabakh, “oblast” (district) of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. Nagorno-Karabakh remains, a century later, the official name of the Artzakh for the international community. In addition, at the time, Stalin, who saw far, decided to create from scratch a “Azeri corridor” between the Republic of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh oblast to separate fictitiously the Karabakhi Armenians and . Arbitrary decision which, 95 years later, still determines the political situation as it is built after the collapse of the Soviet empire.
The Republic of Armenia was the first of the Union Republics to shake off the Soviet yoke, by general strikes and a climate of widespread revolt. This time, Soviet tanks remain powerless and the democratic revolution will prevail, installing a democracy in Yerevan recognized by all international bodies. Azerbaijan will also erect an independent country after the end of the Soviet Union, with its oil wealth in the Caspian Sea, off the capital Baku. But it is a dictatorship that it will soon impose, and that continues today, the Alyev son who replaced his father. For them Azerbaijan is “one and indivisible”, and Nagorno-Karabakh must “azériser” speak the language since Azeri Russian, which served previously language of communication between the two peoples, is now banned, and submit to the law of large numbers becoming Azeris and renouncing be Armenians.
The revolt broke out in 1990 and four years of war will devastate Artzakh. On September 2, 1991, the Karabakhi proclaim their independence as the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh according to the internationally common designation. On September 2 became the National Day of Artzakh. A referendum in December 1991 confirm the proclamation of independence. The Azeri army then committed a war that lasted until 1994. Given their numerical inferiority, the Karabakhi require the support of Armenia sends his troops to protect against the pogroms that threaten Armenians in Azerbaijan and who began to massively kill karabakhi established communities in Baku and Sumgait, the two major industrial cities in Azeri territory. The memory of the 1915 genocide is still there!
Lachlin row, and all the territorial strip artificially created by Stalin to separate Artzakh of Armenia, Armenian are put under protection to avoid encirclement and the fighting inside the country turn to the advantage of Karabakhi. The stronghold of the Azeri army stormed to Shuchi and the Azeri army, routed, demand a cease-fire which will be negotiated under the auspices of the “Minsk Group” that brings new Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Russia, France and the United States. It is signed May 12, 1994, and is still officially in force. But since then, the Azeri army periodically tries to supply a new military escalation by organizing a merciless air blockade, and increasing incidents along the front lines. Just a few weeks a gunfire shot down a helicopter karabakhi army, and it took the intervention of commandos to recover the bodies of the three drivers. The border with Armenia is also the scene of sporadic clashes. Most recently civilians were wounded and one Armenian serviceman killed by artillery fire. The situation is unstable, dangerous, and Azerbaijan has oil weapon to influence the international scene, through corruption or buying support from petro-dependent states to isolate the Armenian authorities in Stepanakert and Yerevan.
In the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh separatist authorities have installed a flawless democracy, with regular and fair elections, a struggle noticed against corruption, a large place of women in public life and total freedom of the press. The contrast is striking with the dictatorship which prevails in Baku!
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