MH370: Quarto mês de um mistério

The new underwater search will initially focus on the orange area indicated

A new search area for the missing Malaysian plane has been announced by the Australian government after further analysis of satellite data.

The search will now shift south to focus on an area 1,800km (1,100 miles) off the west coast of Australia, Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss confirmed.

Flight MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March with 239 passengers on board.

Officials said they believed the plane had been on autopilot when it crashed.

A 64-page report released by the Australian government concluded that the underwater search for the plane should resume in the new 60,000 sq km area.

An extensive search of the ocean floor was conducted in April after several acoustic pings, initially thought to be from the plane's flight data recorders, were heard. However, officials now believe the pings were not caused by the plane.

"It is highly, highly likely that the aircraft was on autopilot otherwise it could not have followed the orderly path that has been identified through the satellite sightings," Mr Truss said.

Martin Dolan from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said data showed the plane was on autopilot

Analysis: Jonathan Amos, science correspondent, BBC News
The new search area focuses on the "7th arc" - a line through which the analysis suggests the jet had to have crossed as it made a final, brief, connection with ground systems. The interpretation of the data is that this "electronic handshake" was prompted by a power interruption onboard MH370 as its fuel ran down to exhaustion. As auxiliary power came on, the jet tried to log back into the satellite network.

In normal circumstances following such a logon request, there would usually have been additional "chatter" between the network and MH370. That these connections are not seen in the data log are a very strong indication that the jet was in its crash descent.

Several teams within the investigation have been running the numbers; this is not the sole work of the satellite system's operator - Inmarsat.

The collective opinion of several independent teams has therefore arrived at a zone of highest priority covering some 60,000 sq km. Once the ocean floor there is mapped, the investigation team can then summon the best - but also the most appropriate - submersibles in the world to go hunt for sunken wreckage.

Nigéria: Mais um atentado sangrento

Un "centre de visionnage" des matchs de la Coupe du monde de football d'une ville du nord du Nigeria a été visé mardi au moment où commençait la retransmission du match opposant le Brésil au Mexique. Au moins 21 personnes ont été tuées.
Nouvel attentat sanglant au Nigeria. L'explosion s'est produite mardi 17 juin à proximité d'un "centre de visionnage" des matches de la Coupe du monde de football à Damaturu, dans le nord du pays.
"Nous avons reçu 21 cadavres et 27 blessés après l'explosion, survenue mardi soir dans le quartier de Nayi-Nama", a déclaré cette source médicale de l'hôpital Sani Abacha. Un premier bilan mardi soir ne faisait état que de plusieurs blessés.
Selon des habitants, la bombe avait été dissimulée dans un pousse-pousse motorisé devant le centre de retransmission.
"Il y a eu une explosion à l'extérieur d'un "centre de visionnage" de Damaturu", a dit Sanusi Ruf'ai, commissaire de police pour l'État de Yobe ou est située la ville. "Nos hommes se sont rendus sur les lieux mais il est trop tôt pour donner des détails", a-t-il ajouté.
L'explosion s'est produite vers 20H15 locales (19H15 GMT) au moment où commençait la retransmission du match opposant le Brésil au Mexique. Dans un premier temps, les sources médicales n'ont pas fait état de morts mais ont indiqué que plusieurs blessés avaient été transportés dans des hôpitaux.
Un résident a indiqué que des cordons de policiers et de soldats envoyés sur place avaient encerclé la zone de l'explosion.
>> Lire aussi : Craintes pour les plus de 200 lycéennes enlevées par Boko Haram
Dans de nombreuses vidéos, le chef de Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, a décrit le football et la musique comme des perversions venues d'Occident dans le but de dévier les musulmans de la religion.
Début juin, au moins 40 personnes ont été tuées quand une bombe a explosé après un match de football à Mubi dans l'État d'Adamawa.
En mai, trois personnes ont été tuées à l'extérieur d'un "centre de visionnage" à Jos, la capitale de l'État du Plateau, où était retransmis un match entre le Real Madrid et l'Atletico Madrid.
(Avec AFP)


Lire l'article sur Jeuneafrique.com : Terrorisme | Nigeria : une bombe explose près d'"un centre de visionnage" du Mondial 2014, au moins 21 morts | Jeuneafrique.com - le premier site d'information et d'actualité sur l'Afrique
Follow us: @jeune_afrique on Twitter | jeuneafrique1 on Facebook

MH370: O mais estranho dos mistérios

The Australian-led search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 is yet to examine an area of the Indian Ocean where scientists believe the passenger jet is most likely to have crashed, a British satellite company has told the BBC.
Sunday marked 100 days since the Boeing 777 vanished from radar screens shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Beijing with 239 people on board. The international search for the doomed plane has focussed on a large swathe of the southern Indian Ocean, but no trace of aircraft has been found.
But the British satellite company Inmarsat, whose data has been relied upon during the search, told the BBC that investigators were yet to search a "hotspot" it had identified in the Indian Ocean as the most likely crash site.

Relatives of passengers aboard the missing jet gather at a Beijing temple on June 15 to mark the 100th day since the plane disappeared. Photo: Reuters

An Australian naval ship, the Ocean Shield, was heading towards that hotspot off the coast of Perth when it picked up a series of pings some distance away that initially were thought to have come from the missing plane's flight recorders, Inmarsat spokesman Chris Ashton told the BBC.

Advertisement

The Ocean Shield diverted to investigate those pings, and authorities subsequently spent two months searching that area of the ocean, the BBC said.
However those pings turned out to be a false trail, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau revealed last month. The US Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering, Michael Dean, told CNN that the pings were likely to have been produced by the ship or search equipment itself.
Mr Ashton told the BBC that the area where the pings were detected was "by no means an unrealistic location, but it was further to the north-east than our area of highest probability".
He said Inmarsat experts used their data to plot a series of arcs across the Indian Ocean where its systems made contact with the jet.
By modelling a flight with a constant speed and a constant heading consistent with the plane being flown by autopilot, the team found one flight path that lined up with all its data.
"We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is," Mr Ashton said.
When the search resumes, the Inmarsat "hotspot" will be a key focus, the BBC reported.
Authorities are now conducting sea floor mapping in the Southern Indian Ocean, and a new underwater search could begin in August and take up to one year to complete.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/area-where-mh370-most-likely-crashed-has-not-been-searched-20140617-zsakl.html#ixzz34vlgFBnc

Aviões sumiram dos radares

Os dados de voo de pelo menos 13 aviões desapareceram dos radares da Áustria por cerca de 25 minutos em duas ocasiões em menos de dez dias, de acordo com a agência de segurança aérea austríaca.

Os incidentes foram descritos como sem precedentes por Marcus Pohanka, da agência austríaca Austro Control. Ele afirmou que a altura, localização, identificação e outras informações de 13 aeronaves desapareceram dos radares do país nos dias 5 e 10 de junho, e por aproximadamente 25 minutos.

Segundo Pohanka, diversos países vizinhos tiveram o mesmo problema, e as autoridades de segurança aérea da União Europeia foram contatadas para que seja iniciada uma investigação – as nações que também relataram os incidentes não foram identificadas.

O diário Kurier, de Viena, afirmou que as cidades de Munique e Karlsruhe, na Alemanha, e Praga, na República Checa, tiveram problemas similares. Segundo especialistas consultados pelo jornal vienense, interferências entre os transponders dos aviões e a equipe de terra seriam a causa do desaparecimento nos radares. Marcus Pohanka não quis confirmar o conteúdo publicado pelo Kurier.

Pohanka, no entanto, disse que não houve perigo nas ocasiões, uma vez que controladores de voo extras foram imediatamente convocados e medidas de emergência, incluindo contato de voz com os pilotos e aumento dos corredores aéreos, foram acionadas.

Com informações da agência AP

O caótico Iraque

As many as 500,000 people have been forced to flee the Iraqi city of Mosul after Islamist militants effectively took control of it, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.

Troops were among those fleeing as hundreds of jihadists from the ISIS group overran the city and much of the surrounding province of Nineveh.

PM Nouri Maliki has asked parliament to declare a state of emergency.

The US said the development showed ISIS was a threat to the entire region.

ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is also known as ISIL - is an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

It now controls considerable territory in eastern Syria and western and central Iraq, in a campaign to set up a militant enclave straddling the border.
'Chaotic situation'
Residents of Mosul - Iraq's second city - said jihadist flags were flying from buildings and that the militants had announced over loudspeakers they had "come to liberate" the city.

"The situation is chaotic inside the city, and there is nobody to help us," said government worker Umm Karam. "We are afraid."

ISIS in Iraq

• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has 3,000 to 5,000 fighters, and grew out of an al-Qaeda-linked organisation in Iraq
• ISIS has exploited the standoff between the Iraqi government and the minority Sunni Arab community, which complains that Shia PM Nouri Maliki is monopolising power
• It has already taken over Ramadi and Falluja, but taking over Mosul is a far greater feat than anything the movement has achieved so far, and will send shockwaves throughout the region
• The organisation is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - an obscure figure regarded as a battlefield commander and tactician. He was once the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became ISIS.

Staff working for the IOM in Mosul say that all official buildings there have been taken over, including police and military bases, and the airport.

Many police stations were reported to have been set on fire and hundreds of detainees set free.  BBC

Os Khazars, entre o Cáucaso e o Mar de Aral

Shortly after the death of Mohammed in AD 632, according to Columbia University Professor, D. M. Dunlop, Arab armies began a campaign northward, sweeping "through the wreckage of two empires and carrying all before them till they reached the great mountain barrier of the Caucasus. This barrier once passed," Dunlop observes, "the road lay open to the lands of eastern Europe."  Had the Caliphate (the armies of the Muslim Caliph) surmounted that immense geological deterrent unchallenged, the history of Europe and, indeed, the rest of the Judeo-Christian world would have been vastly different than it now is.
    It was at the Caucasus, however, that the Arabs encountered the Khazars, initiating a war that lasted over a century and effectively prevented Europe from becoming Islamic. So powerful, socially and militarily, were the Khazars that, as Kevin Alan Brook relates in his work The Jews of Khazaria, "a 10th-century emperor of the Byzantines [Roman Empire], Constantine Porphyrogenitus, sent correspondence to the Khazars marked with a gold seal worth 3 solidi - more than the 2 solidi that always accompanied letters to the Pope of Rome, the Prince of the Rus, and the Prince of the Hungarians."
    Rutgers University Professor Peter Golden, referred to by Brook as "one of the principal authorities on the Khazars," wrote, "Every schoolchild in the West has been told that if not for Charles Martel and the battle of Poitiers there might be a mosque where Notre Dame now stands. What few schoolchildren are aware of," Golden emphasizes, "is that if not for the Khazars...Eastern Europe might well have become a province of Islam."
    The Khazarian mounted forces, with a soldiery of mainly Turkic and pagan origin, could at times and when accounted for, show a disastrous fierceness and cruelty to the enemies of Khazaria. They were also probably the most disciplined, as well as tactically and strategically the most potent, martial power at that time and in that region. Evidence that they were supremely calculating in their approach to international matters lay in the fact that, in contrast to their brutality, Khazar officials were often consulted as diplomatic emissaries and mediators by all the political powers surrounding Khazaria. The Khazars and their empire were at that time both highly respected and greatly feared -- with good reason.
    At the peak of their empire it is believed that the Khazars had a permanent standing army that could have numbered as many as one hundred thousand and controlled or exacted tribute, astonishingly, from thirty different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains and the Ukrainian steppes.  During their zenith, Khazaria completely girded the lands of what are currently Astrakhan, Kalmykia, Daghestan, Volgograd, Rostov, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkarsk, North Ossetia, and Chechnya. "At its maximum extent (in the ninth century)," says Brook, "Khazaria not only encompassed the northern Caucasus and the Volga delta, but also extended as far west as Kiev [Russia]."
    Soviet archaeologist M. I. Artamonov states that, for a century and a half, the Khazars were the supreme masters of the southern half of Eastern Europe and presented a virtually impenetrable bulwark, blocking the Ural-Caspian gateway from Asia into Europe. During that entire period, they held back the onslaught of the nomadic tribes from the East.
    Until recently, a great part of the problem with the historical obscurity of ancient Khazaria lay with the fact that the geographical area of the country was part of the Soviet Union, which insisted on interpreting archaeological data "within the framework of Marxist historical materialism." 10 This Iron Curtain version of historical revisionism caused the Soviets to interpret that data in such a way as to present as fact that which was well fabricated -- but wrong.
    This peculiar and obscure race inhabiting that land were described as blue-eyed and of very fair complexion. Commonly they had long reddish hair and were reported as very large of stature and fierce of countenance.  Other sources have added observations that there were "Black Khazars" and "White Khazars," noting that the latter were "light-skinned and handsome, while the former were dark-skinned." This has, however, been rather conclusively refuted by scholars who have established that the distinction was not racial but social. The "Black" or "Kara" Khazars constituted the lower strata or caste, while the "White" or "Ak" Khazars were of the noble or royal classes. This type of class distinction was fairly common in Eastern Europe as evidenced by the more commonly known terms "Black Russian" and "White Russian," denoting not skin color but class.
    In his book An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, Peter Golden claims that the Chinese T'and-shu chronicle describes the Khazars, generally, as "...tall, with red-hair, ruddy-faced and blue-eyed. Black hair is considered a bad omen."

Igreja, sinagoga e mesquita num só templo

Como casa das três grandes religiões monoteístas, proposta da House of One é celebrar diversidade e tolerância. Cristãos, judeus e islâmicos projetam juntos local para prece e discussão – com espaço até para ateus.

Da esq. para a dir.: pastor Hohberg, rabino Ben Chorin e imame Sanci

Berlim vai ganhar um templo multirreligioso: a House of One (Casa de Um Só) – o primeiro edifício sacro do mundo a reunir, sob o mesmo teto, uma sinagoga, uma mesquita e uma igreja. Com início das obras programado para os primeiros meses de 2016, a construção será um teste de tolerância.
Na apresentação do projeto à imprensa, nesta terça-feira (03/06), o rabino Tovia Ben Chorin ficou lado a lado com o pastor luterano Gregor Hohberg e o imame Kadir Sanci no futuro canteiro de obras. Num gesto simbólico, os três empilharam nas mãos três tijolos claros, o material com que será erguido o futuro templo.
"Cidade das feridas, cidade dos milagres" é como o rabino Ben Chorin define a capital alemã, local onde foi planejado o Holocausto, um dos maiores crimes contra a humanidade do século 20. Os pais do religioso fugiram em 1935 da Alemanha para a então Palestina, e ele veio de Jerusalém para Berlim há seis anos.
Público jovem como alvo
Uma união assim seria, sem dúvida, rara no Oriente Médio ou em países como a Nigéria, onde conflitos religiosos custam tantas vidas humanas – mas tampouco é corriqueira na Alemanha, onde ainda se esbarra na rejeição aos que seguem outras religiões.
Membros de outras religiões também serão convidados para os diferentes cultos na House of One. Essa demonstração de abertura visa atrair, sobretudo, os jovens, que raramente são vistos nas igrejas cristãs. Por sua vez, a comunidade judaica de Berlim, praticamente exterminada no Holocausto, cresce lentamente.
Apenas os seguidores do Islã veem aumentar a presença dos jovens fiéis na vida religiosa. Visando esse público, fora alguns versos em árabe, as preces de sexta-feira serão basicamente realizadas em alemão. Tal opção não é comum nas mesquitas, onde geralmente se celebra em turco, árabe ou bósnio. No meio tempo, fundamentalistas islâmicos mais linha dura vêm criticando na internet a participação muçulmana no projeto.

Maquete da futura House of One de Berlim

Renovar sem confundir
O projeto de arquitetura sacra na capital é iniciativa da Comunidade Judaica de Berlim, do Seminário Abraham Geiger, do islâmico Fórum de Diálogo Intercultural e da Congregação Luterana das Igrejas de São Pedro e Santa Maria. Orçado em 43 milhões de euros, a intenção é que seja inteiramente financiado por crowdfunding (patrocínio público). No site da House of One, em sete idiomas, qualquer pessoa poderá contribuir, comprando um tijolo.
Seu futuro endereço é a Praça Petriplatz, no centro histórico da cidade: um terreno baldio na antiga Alemanha Oriental, usado como estacionamento até algum tempo atrás. Porém, há 700 anos, cristãos têm celebrado aqui os seus cultos – primeiro numa igreja gótica, depois numa neobarroca e, então, numa em estilo neogótico.
Essa última igreja foi seriamente danificada durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial e demolida durante os anos do regime comunista da República Democrática Alemã (RDA). O novo templo ecumênico será erguido exatamente sobre os fundamentos dessa última casa de oração.
"Nós não queríamos simplesmente construir uma igreja", explica o pastor Hohberg. "A cidade se transformou. Gente de todas as confissões vive aqui e quer um lugar onde possa se congregar." Por isso, as três religiões monoteístas vão projetar, construir e habitar juntas a nova casa.
"Mas não estamos à procura de uma nova religião e não queremos confundir nossas identidades", acrescenta o imame Sanci. Por sua vez, o rabino liberal Ben Chorin almeja um lugar para aprender sobre religião sem missionarismo, para discuti-la criticamente. Ele lembra que "a fala é mais lenta do que as armas".

Arquiteto Winfried Kühn apresenta projeto na Petriplatz

O "Um" da diversidade
Espaços multirreligiosos – ou ecumênicos – existem em outros lugares, como em aeroportos ou na Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU). Em Berna, capital da Suíça, está sendo construído um centro com esse caráter. Mas a iniciativa berlinense é diferente: trata-se de um edifício sacro interreligioso.
O escritório de arquitetura Kuehn Malvezzi, de Berlim, foi quem venceu a concorrência internacional. Seu projeto pretende se destacar majestosamente na paisagem urbana, com uma torre de 32 metros de altura pairando sobre um cubo e uma cúpula central.
Cada uma das três religiões vai dispor de dependências próprias para seu culto, com dois andares – como de praxe nas mesquitas e sinagogas – ou apenas um – no caso da igreja. "Nós voltamos bem atrás na história e constatamos que as formas originais dos locais de culto para cristãos, judeus e muçulmanos não diferem tanto assim entre si", revela o arquiteto Winfried Kühn.
Ainda assim, o projeto foi várias vezes adaptado às necessidades das diferentes religiões. Sinagogas e mesquitas precisam estar direcionadas para o leste, e a sinagoga precisa de espaço na parte superior para as cabanas do Sucot, a Festa dos Tabernáculos.
Graças às frestas de inspiração oriental na alvenaria, o edifício todo será banhado de luz. O espaço mais amplo será a nave abobadada central, um local de encontro e diálogo para fiéis e ateus.
Uma questão, porém, permanece em aberto e sujeita a diálogo: "Quem é o 'One', o Deus único?". A resposta do rabino Ben Chorin é bem direta e singela: "É alguém que criou a diversidade. Senão seria muito chato."

DW.DE