Plane crashes into river, killing dozens

FATAL FLIGHT:It was TransAsia Airways’ second plane crash in less than a year. Aviation authorities have ordered special inspections of all ATR 72-type aircraft

By Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

A TransAsia Airways (復興航空) airplane flying from Taipei to Kinmen crashed into the Keelung River yesterday, killing at least 25 people, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said.

Flight GE235 took off from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) at 10:52am, said the agency, which confirmed that it received a “Mayday” signal from the plane’s pilots at 10:53:35am.

Air traffic control personnel tried raising the pilots, but to no avail. Weather data provided by the control tower showed that visibility was 10km when the plane, an ATR 72-600, departed from Songshan airport.

The weather was quite stable, the CAA said.

The Aviation Safety Council, which is in charge of investigating the cause of the accident, said that it had found the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder — also known as the “black boxes” — and would soon start decoding the data.

The data are critical in identifying the cause of the air crash.

The plane was carrying 58 people on board: 53 passengers and five cabin crew members.

Thirty-one of the passengers are Chinese tourists, and 27 are Taiwanese. The plane was jointly piloted by 42-year-old Liao Chien-tsung (廖建宗) and 45-year-old Liu Tse-chung (劉自忠), with 4,914 hours and 6,922 hours of flying experience respectively.

Hong Bing-chung (洪炳衷), the copilot, served as an observer during flight as he was training to operate ATR 72-600 aircraft.

Both Liao and Liu are experienced in flying ATR 72-type aircraft, with their flying hours topping 3,400 and 6,500 respectively.

The accident yesterday is TransAsia’s second crash within a year’s time. One of the airline’s ATR 72-500 aircraft crashed on July 23 last year at a village near Magong Airport in Penghu County, killing 48 people and injuring 10 people on board.

TransAsia management bowed and apologized to the victims and their families.

CEO Peter Chen (陳欣德) said that seven of the Taiwanese passengers purchased their tickets at Songshan airport’s check-in counters and only left their ID numbers, adding that the company was still trying to reach the families of the seven passengers.

Ten of the Taiwanese passengers are from Kinmen, he said.

Chen said the Chinese passengers were traveling with the Kaohsiung-based travel agencies Flying Tours (飛揚旅行社) and Sweet Tour (德運旅行社), in cooperation with agencies in Xiamen, China.

TransAsia has asked the travel agencies to help contact the families of the victims, Chen said.

Chen said the company would not speculate on the cause of the air crash, and would fully cooperate with the authorities in the investigation.

The company confirmed that the airplane’s No. 1 engine was replaced with a new one provided by the manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney Canada, when the plane first landed in Macau on its way to Taiwan. The No. 1 engine had only been in operation for 800 hours, the company said.

Chen said the ATR 72-600 aircraft were purchased to replace the company’s ATR 72-500 airplanes as part of its move to upgrade its fleet.

Yu Yi-shi (喻宜式), deputy director of the CAA’s flight standards division, said that Uni Air (立榮航空) has 12 ATR 72-600 planes, while TransAsia has six ATR 72-500s and four ATR 72-600s.

He said that all of the nation’s ATR 72-type airplanes will undergo special inspection in the next two days.

“Because the accident happened with TransAsia’s airplanes, the airline is given one night to complete all the examinations before their aircraft could be cleared to take off on Feb. 5, including engines, propellers. Uni, on the other hand, must finish the same process before Feb. 6,” Yu said.

Information from both the CAA and TransAsia showed that the airline received the aircraft on April 14 last year, with the last maintenance being done on Jan. 26.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) responded shortly after the crash to address possible fuel leakage.

EPA Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management Director-General Chu Yu-chi (朱雨其) said his agency had deployed four survey sites along the section of the river between Nanhu Bridge (南湖大橋) and Minquan Bridge (民權大橋), where the accident took place, to monitor water quality within a 5km stretch along the Keelung River every two hours.

The EPA has also requested help from the Taipei City and New Taipei City governments to deploy two fuel locks under the Rainbow (彩虹橋) and Chengmei (成美橋) bridges to contain possible leakage and driftage, Department of Water Quality senior specialist Wei Wen-yi (魏文儀) said.

Additional reporting by Sean Lin

URL:http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/02/05/2003610844/1

WHO-TransAsia Airways
WHEN- 4 February 2015
WHAT- PLANE CRASH
WHY-
WHERE- TAIWAN ,TAIPEI,Keelung River
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French hunt for two after attack on magazine

HIGH ALERT:Authorities have detained seven people over the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ attacks, as police warned that the two main suspects are ‘armed and dangerous’

AP, PARIS

With tensions high across Paris, authorities yesterday hunted for two heavily armed brothers they feared would strike again after the methodical killing of 12 people at a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Mohammed.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the possibility of a new attack “is our main concern” and announced several overnight arrests as the country began a day of national mourning.

The most senior security official abandoned a top-level meeting after just 10 minutes to rush to a shooting on the city’s southern edge that killed a policewoman. The shooter remained at large and it was not immediately clear if her death was linked to Wednesday’s deadly attack on the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo, where two police were among the 12 dead.

Valls said the two suspects still at large in the Charlie Hebdo slayings — Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his 34-year-old brother Said Kouachi — were known to intelligence services and preventing them from carrying out another attack “is our main concern.”

Police swarmed a gas station in the northern Aisne region, where the two men were reportedly spotted early yesterday, and helicopters hovered above the site.

Valls told RTL radio several people had been arrested overnight; a security official put the total at seven, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. A third suspect in the Charlie Hebdo killings has already turned himself in.

Fears have run high in Europe that jihadists trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home. The French suspect in a deadly attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium last year had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in southern France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

“France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty — and thus of resistance — breathed freely,” French President Francois Hollande said yesterday.

The attack on Wednesday took place midway between France’s Bastille and the city’s enormous Republique plaza.

At noon yesterday, the Paris metro came to a standstill and people gathered in homage near Notre Dame cathedral fell silent to honor the victims.

One of the Charlie Hebdo suspects, Cherif Kouachi, was convicted of terrorism in 2008 for being involved in a network sending radical fighters to Iraq. He and his brother, Said, should be considered “armed and dangerous,” French police said in a bulletin, appealing for witnesses after a fruitless search in the city of Reims, in French Champagne country.

A third man, Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at an eastern police station after learning his name was linked to the attacks in the news, the Paris prosecutor spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said. She did not specify his relationship to the Kouachi brothers.

France raised its terror alert system to the maximum and bolstered security with more than 800 extra soldiers guarding media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas.

Fears arose that the deadly attack would ignite a backlash against France’s large and diverse Muslim community.

A mosque in the city of Le Mans, 200km southwest of Paris, was hit overnight with training grenades and gunfire, local prosecutor Philippe Varin said.

No one was in the building at the time and no one was injure

URL: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/01/09/2003608801

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WHO-Cabu,Cayat,Charb,Honoré,Tignous,Wolinski

WHEN-From 11:30  on 7 January to 18:35  on 9 January 2015

WHAT- Mass shooting

WHY-terrorist attacks

WHERE-French,Paris,the Charlie Hebdo offices

HOW-At the Charlie Hebdo offices; a satirical magazine facility. Two gunmen, identified as Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, entered the building and fatally shot eight employees, two police officers, and two others, and injured eleven other people. The perpetrators fled the scene following the shooting. The primary motive behind the shooting is said to be the Charlie Hebdo cartoons making fun of numerous Islamic leaders. The shooting received widespread condemnation internationally and a National Day of Mourning was held in France on 8 January.

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Taliban kill 132 at school in Pakistan

ATROCITY:The victims were mostly schoolchildren, in the deadliest terror attack in the country since at least 2007, in what Islamabad has called ‘a decisive moment’

Bloomberg

Taliban militants killed dozens of children in an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistan, that has left 132 people dead so far, the country’s deadliest terrorist attack since at least 2007.

Two attackers were holding 40 teachers and 20 students hostage, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Minister of Information Mushtaq Ghani said by telephone before a military source announced that a nine-hour Pakistani Army operation to retake the school was complete

All nine attackers were reportedly killed, the source said.

Four attackers blew themselves up and another was shot dead by soldiers, he said.

The strike is the worst since the army began an offensive against Taliban insurgents near the Afghan border earlier this year.

The military is expected to want to hit back hard as the Taliban looks for more so-called “soft targets,” such as shopping centers and restaurants affiliated with the armed forces, according to Omar Hamid, head of Asia-Pacific country risk at IHS Inc.

“A lot of the kids that go to this school would have parents in the army who are taking part in the operation,” Hamid said by telephone from London. “It’s an attempt to bring the conflict into the homes of the military, especially in Peshawar.”

The dead included 123 male students, as well as nine staff members, including a female teacher, Peshawar government spokesman Feroze Shah said by telephone.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the Express Tribune, citing Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khorasani.

The attack was in retaliation for the military’s operation in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agency, it said.

“This is a decisive moment in the fight against terrorism,” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told reporters in televised remarks from Peshawar. “The people of Pakistan should unite in this fight. Our resolve will not be weakened by these attacks.”

Terrorism has killed more than 50,000 people in Pakistan since 2001 and complicated efforts to revive South Asia’s second-biggest economy.

Yesterday’s strike is the deadliest on a school since a 2004 assault by Islamic militants in Russia, according to Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

About 350 people died then in Beslan, North Ossetia, half of them children.

It also came a day after a self-proclaimed Islamic cleric from Iran held 17 hostages at a Sydney cafe for 16 hours. He died along with two hostages.

“Due to the momentum of events in Syria and Iraq, the number of groups in Pakistan have become more galvanized,” Gunaratna said. “You can see a trend toward hostage-taking and barricade-type situations. It’s a very serious situation.”

The prime minister and Pakistani Army Chief Raheel Sharif both flew to the site of the attack yesterday, according to news reports.

The US embassy condemned the attack.

Television images showed armored vehicles rolling into the area near the school building as soldiers leaped out of vans. Mothers were shown running toward the gate of the school and crying inside the hospital.

Pakistan’s benchmark KSE100 Index fell 2.6 percent, the most in four months. Oil and Gas Development Co., the nation’s biggest explorer, fell by the limit of 5 percent, the most in three years.

Pakistan’s military started a ground offensive in June to flush out militants from North Waziristan, a tribal region on the Afghan border the US has called the “epicenter” of terrorism.

That came after successive Taliban attacks on a Pakistan International Airlines Corp flight and Karachi’s international airport.

After the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, North Waziristan became a safe haven for foreign militants like Uzbeks and Turks who fought alongside the fallen Taliban regime.

In 2007, militant groups in the area united to form the Tehrik-e- Taliban Pakistan, which went on an offensive toward Islamabad.

Additional reporting by Reuters

URL: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/12/17/2003606919

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Ting Hsin’s Wei Ying-chun indicted

Staff writer, with CNA

Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充) was indicted yesterday on charges of fraud, forgery and food-related regulatory violations for his role in an oil adulteration scandal that erupted last year. Wei, former chairman of Cheng I Food Co (正義股份), Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業) and Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品工業), faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted.

Also indicted was former Wei Chuan general manager Chang Chiao-hua (張教華) and former Ting Hsin Oil and Fat general manager Chang Mei-feng (常梅峰), as well as 10 other Wei Chuan employees.

Ting Hsin Oil and Fat, which made cooking oils marketed under the Wei Chuan brand, was found in November last year to have used adulterated oils obtained from Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統長基) in its finished products.

Chang Chi used cottonseed oil and other cheap oils in its more expensive grapeseed and olive oils, and, in some cases, used copper chlorophyllin to make the substitutes look more like olive oil.

According to the indictment, Ting Hsin Oil and Fat manufactured 65 olive oil and grapeseed oil products for Wei Chuan using oils supplied by Chang Chi between 2007 and last year, generating more than NT$792 million (US$26 million) in revenue.

Prosecutors allege that Wei and Chang were aware that they were buying adulterated oils from Chang Chi because they were informed by their quality-control department that Chang Chi’s oils were problematic, but insisted that the supplier’s products continue to be purchased.

Wei and Chang have denied the charges.

Wei has been detained by prosecutors since Oct. 17 over his involvement in a more recent edible oil scandal.

In the latest case, Ting Hsin Oil and Fat and Cheng I, another company previously led by Wei, was found to have used oils meant for animal feed in lard-based cooking oil products. The oils were also used by Wei Chuan in its food products.

Wei resigned from his posts as chairman of Wei Chuan, Ting Hsin Oil and Fat, and Cheng I — all subsidiaries of the Wei family-owned Ting Hsin International Group — on Oct. 9 following the more recent food scare.

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