Airport
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FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A340-300 of Iranian airline Mahan Air takes off from Duesseldorf airport DUS, Germany January 16, 2019. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
April 8, 2019
LONDON/CARACAS (Reuters) – Mahan Air, a private Iranian airline accused by the West of transporting military equipment to Middle East war zones, on Monday launched a direct flight to Venezuela, as Tehran voices support for Caracas against a U.S. backed opposition.
Mehr news agency quoted the spokesman of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization Reza Jafarzadeh as saying that the route was launched early Monday, and the plane will carry foreign ministry officials to Caracas.
Jafarzadeh said a delegation from Mahan Air was also traveling to Caracas to discuss maintaining regular flights between the two countries. The non-stop Tehran-Caracas flight will take 16 hours.
A Reuters photographer saw a Mahan Air plane parked at Caracas’ main Maiquetia airport on Monday morning. Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request to comment about the flight’s purpose.
Mahan Air, established in 1992 as Iran’s first private airline, has the country’s largest fleet of aircraft.
France and Germany banned the airline’s flights earlier this year, accusing it of transporting military equipment and personnel to Syria and other regional war zones.
The United States imposed sanctions on the company in 2011, saying it provided financial and other support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
Iran has voiced support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who faces demands from the United States to step down. Russia, China and Turkey have also backed Maduro.
The U.S. government has recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president. Most Latin American countries have done so as well, while European governments are also throwing their support behind Guaido, albeit more cautiously.
Since Guaido began a campaign in January to oust Maduro, whom he denounces as illegitimate, Chinese and Russian planes have also flown supplies and military personnel to Venezuela in support of the government.
(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London and Carlos Garcia Rawlins in Caracas; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Richard Chang)
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Libyan National Army (LNA) members, commanded by Khalifa Haftar, head out of Benghazi to reinforce the troops advancing to Tripoli, in Benghazi, Libya April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Esam Omran Al-Fetori
April 8, 2019
By Ahmed Elumami and Ayman al-Warfalli
TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – Eastern Libyan forces sought to reach the center of Tripoli on Monday after their easy advance through desert hit a trickier urban phase, with deaths and displacements mounting and the West aghast at the threat to its peace plan.
Renewed civil war in Libya, splintered into areas of factional control since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. threatens to disrupt oil and gas supplies, trigger more migration to Europe, and allow Islamist militants to exploit the chaos.
The eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) forces of Khalifa Haftar, a former officer in Gaddafi’s army, said 19 of their soldiers had died in recent days as they closed in on the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.
The United Nations said 2,800 people were displaced by clashes and many more could flee, though some were trapped.
The LNA has made air strikes on the south of the city as it seeks to advance into the center from the disused airport.
But the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, which reported 11 deaths without specifying on which side, has armed groups arriving from nearby Misrata to block the LNA.
Al-Serraj, 59, who comes from a wealthy business family, has run the Tripoli government since 2016 as part of a U.N.-brokered deal boycotted by Haftar.
The LNA, allied with a parallel eastern administration based in Benghazi, took the oil-rich south of Libya earlier this year before its surprisingly fast push towards the coastal capital.
While that advance was straightforward through mostly sparsely populated areas, taking Tripoli is a far bigger challenge.
U.S. AND U.N. APPEAL FOR TRUCE
The violence has thrown into doubt a U.N. plan for an April 14-16 conference to plan elections as a way out of the anarchy since the Western-backed toppling of Gaddafi eight years ago.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the latest international appeal for talks to end the fighting.
“We have made clear that we oppose the military offensive by Khalifa Haftar’s forces and urge the immediate halt to these military operations against the Libyan capital,” he said.
A contingent of U.S. forces evacuated at the weekend.
The U.N. mission to Libya called on Sunday for a truce for two hours in southern Tripoli to evacuate civilians and wounded, but it did not appear to have been heeded.
Haftar casts himself as a foe of extremism but is viewed by opponents as a new dictator in the mould of Gaddafi, whose four-decade rule saw torture, disappearances and assassinations.
Haftar enjoys the backing of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which see him as a bulwark against Islamists and have supported him militarily, according to U.N. reports.
Forces with the Tripoli government have announced an operation to defense the capital called “Volcano of Anger”.
Allied groups from Misrata down the coast have been moving pickup trucks fitted with machine guns into Tripoli.
The LNA says it has 85,000 men but this includes soldiers paid by the central government that it hopes to inherit. Its elite force, Saiqa (Lightning), numbers some 3,500, while Haftar’s sons also have well-equipped troops, LNA sources say.
Since NATO-backed rebels ousted Gaddafi, Libya has been a transit point for hundreds of thousands of migrants trekking across the Sahara in hope of reaching Europe across the sea.
(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami and Ayman al-Warfalli; Additional reporting by Ulf Laessing in Cairo, Tom Miles in Geneva, Diane Bartz in Washington; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways aircrafts are seen parked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
April 8, 2019
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Prospective bidders of struggling Jet Airways Ltd need to settle the airline’s existing debt obligations as part of any deal to take over the airline, Jet’s consortium of lenders, led by State Bank of India (SBI), said in a statement.
Jet’s lenders last month agreed to bail out the airline in a complex deal that involved the banks taking a temporary majority stake in the company – while they look for a new investor – and providing a fresh loan of $218 million.
In a notice on its website, SBI Capital Markets, a unit of SBI, said prospective bidders were required to submit expressions of interest for Jet by 6 pm India time on April 10.
(Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
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A study published by the Center for Advanced Defense has determined that the Russia security services are using a cutting-edge new technique, presumably to protect President Putin – as well as several government buildings in Russia, and military facilities in Syria – from drone attacks.
Using publicly available data sets and reports on social media and in the press, the organization pinpointed incidences of “GPS spoofing” when an electronic weapon scrambles the data stream between nearby ships, vehicles and aircraft and the satellites that help power their navigation systems. In many cases, like one incident that occurred near the Kerch Strait, the site of a skirmish late last year between Ukrainian and Russian forces. As Putin and a convoy of construction vehicles crossed a new bridge over the Strait, the GPS of ships docked in a nearby harbor suddenly went “haywire.”
Here’s more on that from CBS News:
The ships’ GPS systems suddenly began to indicate they were actually 65 kilometers away, on land, in the middle of an airport.
The incident is one of many highlighted in a new report that found the Kremlin “spoofed” global positioning systems, or GPS, to effectively place a bubble around Putin or properties associated with him. The researchers, with a nonprofit called C4ADS and the University of Texas at Austin, used public marine GPS databases, as well as a GPS monitoring device on the International Space Station to track similar instances.
The report, which documented a pattern of spoofing surrounding the movements of the Russian head of state…
…surmised that the GPS scrambling technology was employed to protect him against drone attacks, or airborne robot spies.
The researchers theorize that one reason “spoofing” is deployed is to protect Putin and other Russian officials from attacks or surveillance by drones that rely on GPS.
“The purpose of this spoofing activity was likely to prevent unauthorized civilian drone activity as a VIP protection measure,” they wrote in the study.
The report also identified buildings used by Russian security services or the president that appeared to be hotspots for spoofing activity, and detailed several incidents of suspected mass-spoofing activity.
While the technology was presumably employed to protect Putin, there is an inadvertent drawback that could be used by exploited by malicious actors to stalk the president.
However, there’s a drawback to creating a GPS bubble around a world leader, said Todd Humphreys, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who was involved with the study. It also makes it easier to keep track of Putin.
“What’s ironic is if you look at these patterns, and if you coordinate it with the movements of the leader of Russia, it appears you have a Putin detector,” Humphreys said. In other words, if you detect spoofing, there’s a good chance Putin may be nearby.
It also creates the possibility for collateral damage.
The technique could also prove dangerous. The 24 maritime vessels that reported the Kerch bridge incident were otherwise unaffected. But Humphreys said a similar tactic in Syria could affect airplanes, which require functioning GPS to stay out of harm’s way.
The researchers identified Russian equipment in Syria emitting what Humphreys described as “a whole different signal, one that was much much stronger, but not spoofing.” The signal appeared to be jamming airplane GPS units, effectively rendering their navigation systems inoperable.
When the same tactic was apparently deployed during large-scale Russian military exercises in eastern Europe, civilians saw the effects, according to the report.
“Norway and Finland reported severe GPS outages affecting commercial airliners and cell phone networks for several days,” according to the report.
Unfortunately, this drawback would probably exclude GPS spoofing from the list of possible anti-drone techniques employed by airports…we imagine the security staff at Heathrow and Gatwick will be very disappointed.
Alex Jones breaks down how the crisis in Venezuela could trigger a world war as other nations choose sides in the country’s democratic dispute, and he shows how the socialist nightmare is connected to the complete collapse of the United States’ southern border as people flee north from South America.
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A Turkish Airlines plane is seen on the tarmac of the city’s new Istanbul Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
April 6, 2019
By Yesim Dikmen
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The last commercial passenger flight took off from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on Saturday and convoys of trucks ferried thousands of tonnes of equipment across the city to a giant new airport which Turkey plans to make the biggest in the world.
The mammoth transfer between the two hubs, described by Turkish authorities as unprecedented in scale and speed, was already largely complete a little more than 24 hours after it began before dawn on Friday.
The new Istanbul Airport, costing some $8 billion and one of several mega-projects championed by President Tayyip Erdogan, will initially be able to handle 90 million passengers a year, close to the world’s largest existing airport capacity.
Authorities plan to expand that capacity to expand to 200 million.
Overnight hundreds of trucks carried equipment such as aircraft-towing vehicles and security sensors from Ataturk, on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, 20 miles (30 km) north to the new airport by the Black Sea.
By early Saturday more than 90 percent of the move was complete, Turkish Airlines executive Yahya Ustun said.
Overnight the final commercial passenger flight from Ataturk took off for Singapore, a departure which Transport Minister Mehmet Turhan described as historic.
“I am glad to send you off as the last commercial passengers of Ataturk Airport,” he said moments before the plane took off at 2.44 am (2344 GMT). “Upon your return, you will land in Istanbul Airport, a monument of victory, the world’s biggest airport.”
The new airport, which was formally opened nearly six months ago but which has been handling less than 20 flights a day, inaugurated its new chapter on Saturday afternoon with a domestic flight taking off for the capital Ankara.
(Reporting by Yesim Dikmen; Editing by Dominic Evans and David Holmes)
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The U.N. Envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salame, speaks during a news conference in Tripoli, Libya April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara
April 6, 2019
By Ahmed Elumami
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – The United Nations is determined to hold Libya’s national conference on possible elections on time despite a surge of fighting in the country’s eight-year conflict, a senior U.N. envoy said on Saturday.
G7 foreign ministers warned eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar to desist from his thrust on the capital Tripoli, menacing the internationally recognized government there, or face possible international action.
Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) said on Friday its forces had advanced into the capital’s southern outskirts and taken its former international airport.
The offensive by the LNA, which is allied to a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi, escalated a power struggle that has fractured the large, oil-producing country since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
The United Nations aims to stage a conference in the southwestern town of Ghadames on April 14-16 to weigh elections as a way out of the country’s factional anarchy, which has seen Islamist militants establish a toehold in some areas.
Salame, then U.N. special envoy to Libya, said he was striving to prevent the new crisis from getting out of control. “We have worked for one year for this national conference, we won’t give up this political work quickly,” he said.
“We know that holding the conference in this difficult time of escalation and fighting is a difficult matter. But we are determined to hold it on time unless compelling circumstances force us not to.”
At a G7 meeting in France, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he and his counterparts had agreed they must exert pressure on those responsible for the intensification of fighting in Libya, especially Haftar.
Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi said Haftar must heed international warnings to halt his advance on Tripoli or else “we will see what can be done”.
CRUCIBLE OF INSTABILITY
The United Nations wants to find agreement on a road map for elections to resolve the prolonged instability in Libya, an oil producer and transit point for refugees and migrants trekking across the Sahara with the aim of reaching Europe.
In Cairo on Saturday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the crisis in neighboring Libya could not be resolved through military means, though insecurity there had long been a source of worry.
“Egypt has supported from the beginning a political agreement as a tool to prevent any military solution” in Libya, Shoukry said during a joint news conference with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov broadcast on state TV.
Lavrov said Russia wanted all political forces in Libya to find an agreement and warned against foreign meddling there.
There were no reports of significant fighting on Saturday, a day after an LNA spokesman and residents reported that Haftar’s forces had seized Tripoli’s former international airport.
Haftar’s LNA said its positions were attacked in an air strike south of Tripoli but there were no casualties.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres departed after meeting Haftar to try to avert full-blown civil war. “I leave Libya with a heavy heart and deeply concerned. I still hope it is possible to avoid a bloody confrontation in and around Tripoli,” he said on Twitter.
Haftar, 75, who casts himself as a foe of Islamist extremism but is viewed by opponents as a new dictator in the mold of Gaddafi, was quoted by Al-Arabiya TV as telling Guterres his offensive would continue until terrorism was defeated.
The coastal capital Tripoli is the ultimate prize for Haftar’s eastern parallel government.
In 2014, he assembled former Gaddafi soldiers and in a three-year battle seized the main eastern city of Benghazi.
This year, he took Libya’s south with its oilfields.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and John Irish in Dinard, France; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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FILE PHOTO: A Firefly ATR 72-500 airplane approaches to land at Changi International Airport in Singapore June 10, 2018. REUTERS/Tim Chong
April 6, 2019
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore and Malaysia reached an agreement to end their months-long airspace dispute, the transport ministers of the two neighboring countries said in a joint statement on Saturday.
Under the deal, Singapore will halt instrument landing system procedures at its Seletar Airport, while Malaysia will open up a restricted area near the countries’ border.
“Singapore will withdraw the Instrument Landing System procedures for Seletar Airport and Malaysia will indefinitely suspend its permanent Restricted Area over Pasir Gudang,” the statement of Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke and Singapore’s Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said.
This will allow Malaysia Airlines’ subsidiary Firefly to start operations at Seletar Airport this month, the statement said. Media reports said the airline postponed its plans to fly out of Seletar Airport last year due to the dispute.
In December, Malaysia said it wanted to take back control of airspace managed by the city-state since 1974, as Singapore’s new instrument landing system at its small Seletar airport involved a flight path over Malaysian airspace.
The ministers also said in the joint statement that the two countries have set up a committee to review the 1974 airspace agreement.
Singapore was once part of Malaysia but they separated acrimoniously in 1965, clouding diplomatic and economic dealings for years.
In another dispute, the sides previously agreed to the establishment of a working group to discuss issues around port limits after Singapore protested in December about Malaysia’s plan to extend the limits of a port, saying it encroached on its territorial waters.
(Reporting by Fathin Ungku; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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The Swedish social services’ decision to place three Christian girls in a Muslim Lebanese family has resulted in an international scandal, involving Poland.
After the Swedish social services attempted to place Denis Lisov’s three children in a Muslim foster family, the Russian father took his daughters and fled Sweden, unleashing a thriller-like sequence of events.
Denis Lisov came to Sweden seven years ago. In 2017, his wife fell ill, whereupon social services decided to take away his children on the grounds that he had no full employment and was therefore unable to take care of them. Instead, they were placed in a Muslim Lebanese family. Lisov’s family formally retained the custody of the children, but only had the right to see them six hours a week, the Swedish news outlet Samhällsnytt reported.
According to Babken Khanzadyan, who represents the Lisovs, they weren’t given any opportunity to defend their rights, and the girls didn’t want to stay there.
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After his daughters had spent over a year in the Muslim family, about 300 kilometers from their real father, Denis had had enough. He took his daughters and decided to return to Russia. However, he was stopped at Warsaw airport, as the Swedish authorities reported his daughters missing. Therefore, he has applied for asylum in Poland instead.
A Polish court ruled that the Swedish social service had violated an EU convention that forbids the placement of children in foreign cultural environments. The court also noted that Lisov’s paternity rights had not been revoked, which is why the children could stay with their father.
“The children have a very strong bond with the father, and when I talked to them they told me that they want to stay with their father and love him and do not want to be separated from him” judge Janeta Seliga-Kaczmarek said, as quoted by Samhällsnytt.
According to Lisov, the youngest girls didn’t understand anything, but the eldest one had problems adapting to the harsh environment of the Muslim family.
Their lawyer Bartosz Lewandowski tweeted that the family was happy and rested after the first night spent on their own.
Trwa spotkanie @OrdoIuris, Rzecznika Praw Dziecka Mikołaja Pawlaka i mec. Babkena Khanzadyan z Denisem Lisovem i jego córeczkami. Za chwilę przystąpią do podpisywania wniosku o azyl w Polsce. Rodzina jest szczęśliwa i wypoczęta po pierwszej nocy spędzonej w spokoju. pic.twitter.com/GkYUfeI0F2
— Bartosz Lewandowski (@BartoszLewand20) April 4, 2019
According to Lewandowski, the Muslim foster father also appeared in court. There, he admitted that his visit to Poland had been paid for by the Swedish social services, Samhällsnytt reported.
Lewandowski also tweeted that a representative of the Swedish social services arrived to pick up the three girls, but was stopped by the police. He told them something in Swedish, which nobody understood.
“3 Russian girls were to be illegally taken away from their father by Swedish officials on Polish soil”, lawyer Jerzy Kwaśniewski tweeted.
3 rosyjskie dziewczynki miały być bezprawnie odebrane ojcu przez szwedzkich urzędników na polskiej ziemi.
Naruszeniu prawa międzynarodowego sprzeciwiło się @OrdoIuris
Błyskawiczna reakcja mec. @BartoszLewand20, wsparcie rządu oraz RPD doprowadziły do skierowania sprawy do sądu! pic.twitter.com/DbOzTTuaHr
— Jerzy Kwaśniewski (@jerzKwasniewski) April 3, 2019
”Poland is a beautiful country. It is blossoming in my eyes, because here can finally be with Dad”, Sofia Lisova, Denis’s eldest daughter said after the court’s verdict, as quoted by Artur Stelmasiak, the editor of the Catholic weekly Niedziela.
Polska jest pięknym krajem. Polaka rozkwita w moich oczach, bo dzięki niej wreszcie możemy być z tatą- powiedziała tuż po wyroku sądu Sofia Lisova, najstarsza córka Denisa Lisova.
Gratulacje dla wszystkich zaangażowanych w sprawę i także dla pani sędzi Żanety Seliga-Kaczmarek. pic.twitter.com/iSRcY2bTDK
— Artur Stelmasiak (@ArturStelmasiak) April 3, 2019
The court’s actions were also praised by Poland’s authorities.
“The court has decided that the children stay with their father. Well done the police and the border police”, Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński tweeted.
In Sweden, the social services have the possibility of immediately taking children and young people up to the age of 19 by force owing to legislation in place to intervene in order to protect children or youths in an emergency situation. Why exactly the social services decided to take away Lisov’s daughters remains unknown.
Alex Jones breaks down how the globalists are attempting to collapse civilization within the next six months by intensifying their migrant fueled destabilization of the west.
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FILE PHOTO: Employees are seen at the desk of Avianca airlines at Afonso Pena International Airport in Sao Jose dos Pinhais, Brazil December 13, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo
April 5, 2019
By Marcelo Rochabrun
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A new plan by cash-strapped carrier Avianca Brasil to sell its most coveted airport slots to Brazil’s two largest airlines will draw intense antitrust scrutiny, which may delay or derail a pressing cash injection.
Antitrust regulator CADE said on Friday that it could block the plan, which Avianca Brasil hopes could raise some $210 million later this month. The airline filed for bankruptcy protection in December.
Under the plan, Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA and LATAM Airlines Group would buy Avianca Brasil’s airport rights, known as slots, in three high-traffic terminals in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Gol and LATAM already control over two-thirds of the slots in each of those three airports.
Representatives for LATAM, Avianca Brasil and Gol did not respond to requests for comment.
Avianca Brasil’s plan would raise much-needed funds but is high-risk, lawyers said, and could leave it hanging without quick cash. Creditors will vote later on Friday whether to approve the plan which would allow Gol and LATAM to bid on the assets.
Avianca Brasil would not receive any funds until CADE greenlights the operation, said antitrust lawyer Tatiana Lins Cruz in an interview on Thursday. She said CADE could take up to eight months to analyze a case in which buyers already control more than 20 percent of a given market.
Meanwhile, the airline would have to continue operations with its own money. But Avianca Brasil has been so cash-strapped that it fell behind its payroll in March.
A person familiar with LATAM’s thinking said the airlines hoped CADE would approve the deals because they only involve a modest increase in their presence at Brazil’s busiest airports.
AZUL SIDELINED
The new plan is a setback for rival Azul SA, which ranks as Brazil’s third largest airline and has a small presence in those three airports. In Sao Paulo’s domestic Congonhas airport, Gol and LATAM already control a combined 92 percent of the slots, whereas Azul has just 3 percent.
Azul had struck a preliminary deal with Avianca Brasil to take over the slots for $105 million and had already provided some $8 million so the carrier could meet its March payroll.
But that deal was off once Gol and LATAM came in.
CADE appeared to take a more positive view of an Azul takeover on Friday.
“A scenario where Azul becomes the buyer represents a lower antitrust concern than in a scenario with LATAM or Gol,” the regulator said in its report.
The plan could also draw scrutiny from Brazil’s civil aviation regulator, because airport slots are not meant to be bought and sold. Azul was planning to buy Avianca Brasil’s assets as a single airline, but the new plan would create seven different companies, each holding little more than slots.
“In our view, it is not clear whether the Brazilian Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) will approve this new structure,” wrote analysts at Brazil bank Bradesco BBI in a note to clients.
(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Brad Haynes and Richard Chang)
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FILE PHOTO: The Boeing logo is pictured at the Latin American Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition fair (LABACE) at Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil August 14, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo
April 5, 2019
PARIS (Reuters) – Boeing and suppliers are looking at scenarios including a slowdown in production of the 737 MAX if the plane’s grounding in the wake of two accidents lasts for a number of months, as many analysts expect, a person familiar with the process said.
Boeing declined to comment.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Editing by Sarah White)
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