Drug trafficking: 158 Nigerians on death row in China, Malaysia

A total 158 Nigerians are waiting to be executed over drugs related offences in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the Senate said on Tuesday.

Moving a motion tagged: “Nigerians involvement in illicit global drugs trade and increase in domestic drug abuse by Nigerian youth”, Senator Gbenga B. Ashafa  (APC, Lagos East) said 120 of persons are in China.

He said 30 are in Malaysia, seven in Indonesia and one in Singapore and that six Nigerians were executed for drugs related offences last year.

He noted that the Malaysian authorities have again issued a strong statement that 40 percent of the foreigners being arrested for drug offences are from Nigeria.

Student disguise

He observed that in their desperation, Nigerians are disguising as “university students”, colluding with drug syndicates to undermine the visa system and gain entrance into Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and other drug traffic routes.

“On getting there, they abandon the education agenda and get busy with their illicit and illegal drug business activities; trading in opiates, cocaine, heroin, cannabis and amphetamines,” he said.

He said that the Federal Government has not swung into strategic action to curb the menace of drug couriers and their sponsors both in and out of Nigeria.

He noted that the incidence of young Nigerians abusing substances including Codeine, Rochephenol, Tramadol, heroin, Cannabis Sativa (Indian Hemp) and even different grades of crack cocaine have become prevalent in across the country.

Traffickers and couriers

He said Nigeria topped the list of the countries involved in drug trafficking and drug use in West Africa’s and also the list of drug couriers arrested in Europe in 2011 and 2012.

Contributing to the motion, Senator Jibrin Barau (APC, Kano North) said the rates at which housewives are abusing drugs are alarming.

“We need to do something about, it has gone beyond youth and now it is very prevalent among married women. Women who are in charge of upbringing of children are now drugs addicts,” he said.

The Senate however urged the Federal Government to restructure and reposition the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to be able to meet the challenges of evasive drug traffickers using Nigerians to traffic drugs.

 

Drug trafficking: 158 Nigerians on death row in China, Malaysia

Nigerian footballer, Oniya collapses, dies in Malaysia

NIGERIAN defender David Faramola Oniya collapsed on the pitch and died after playing just a few minutes of a local friendly in Malaysia on Saturday, reports said.

Oniya, 30, went down about three minutes into the game for T-Team and was pronounced dead at hospital around half-an-hour later, the club`s chief executive told The Star newspaper.

CEO Syahrizan Mohd Zain said Oniya, who was in his first season with second-tier T-Team, had barely touched the ball in the friendly with Super League side Kelantan in Kota Bharu.

“There was no hard running and it was a slow tempo match. It`s only a friendly game,” Syahrizan was quoted as saying.

“The match was called off in the 60th minute when we received a call from the hospital that Oniya had died.”

Deaths on the pitch, often from heart failure, are not unheard of and Belgium lost two players in two weeks in late April and May.

The most prominent case was Cameroon midfielder Marc-Vivien Foe, who collapsed and died while playing a Confederations Cup semi-final against Colombia in Lyon in 2003.

Nigerian footballer, Oniya collapses, dies in Malaysia

Missing Flight QZ8501: 40 bodies recover from Java Sea

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The hunt for a missing AirAsia passenger plane appeared over Tuesday as wreckage and dozens of bodies were spotted at sea off Indonesia, prompting raw scenes of emotion from sobbing relatives of the 162 people aboard.

AirAsia

The Airbus A320-200 disappeared en route from Indonesia’s second largest city Surabaya to Singapore during a storm early Sunday.

All indications now are that it crashed in the Java Sea southwest of the island of Borneo, with debris and dozens of bodies retrieved so far.

An air force plane saw a “shadow” on the seabed believed to be of the missing Flight QZ8501, National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told a news conference in Jakarta.

Relatives of the 162 missing hugged each other and burst into tears in Surabaya as they watched footage of one body floating in the sea on a television feed of Soelistyo’s press conference.

An Indonesian warship had recovered more than 40 bodies from the sea “and the number is growing”, navy spokesman Manahan Simorangkir told AFP shortly afterwards.

AirAsia’s flamboyant chief executive, Tony Fernandes, expressed his grief over the first fatal incident to hit the region’s biggest budget airline.

“My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501,” Fernandes said on Twitter, adding that he was rushing to Surabaya.

Initial news of the debris dimmed the faint hopes of relatives of those missing.

“If that news is true, what can I do? I cannot bring him back to life,” said Dwijanto, 60, whose son was on the plane along with five colleagues.

“My heart will be totally crushed if it’s true. I will lose a son,” he said.

Search chief Soelistyo said all efforts were now being concentrated on the location where the “shadow” and debris had been found, around 160 kilometres (100 miles) southwest of the town of Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan on Borneo island.

The town has the nearest airstrip and is not far from the plane’s last known position.

President Joko Widodo was expected in Pangkalan Bun shortly and then head to Surabaya to meet the relatives, officials said.

Indonesian officials had already been preparing relatives for the worst, with Soelistyo saying Monday it was likely the plane was at “the bottom of the sea”, based on its estimated position.

The aircraft lost contact early on Sunday about 40 minutes after takeoff, after the crew requested a change of flight plan due to stormy weather, in the third crisis for a Malaysian carrier this year.

In his last communication, the pilot said he wanted to avoid a menacing storm system, before all contact was lost.

Before take-off the pilot had asked for permission to fly at a higher level to avoid the storm but his request was not approved due to heavy traffic on the popular route, according to AirNav, Indonesia’s flight navigation service.

In his final communication, the pilot asked to alter his course and repeated his original request to ascend to avoid the bad weather.

“The pilot requested to air traffic controllers to deviate to the left side due to bad weather, which was immediately approved,” AirNav safety director Wisnu Darjono told AFP.

“After a few seconds the pilot requested to ascend from 32,000 to 38,000 feet but could not be immediately approved as some planes were flying above it at that time,” he said.

That was the last communication with the flight.

“Two to three minutes later when the controller was going to give a clearance to a level of 34,000, the plane did not give any response,” Darjono said.

– International response –

Indonesia’s neighbours had responded swiftly with offers of help.

Australia, Singapore and Malaysia sent maritime surveillance aircraft and warships to assist in the search, joining Indonesian planes, ships and scores of fishing boats scouring the waters for signs of the ill-fated aircraft.

The operation had drawn comparisons with the ongoing search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 off Australia, but Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot said it did not appear to be a great mystery, with bad weather the likely cause this time.

 

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Missing Flight QZ8501: 40 bodies recover from Java Sea

Missile fired from rebel-held Ukraine area – Obama

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama said Friday that a missile fired from rebel-held territory in Ukraine downed a Malaysian passenger jet and confirmed that one American was among the dead.

“Their deaths are an outrage of unspeakable proportions,” Obama told reporters.

“Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine,” Obama said

Obama, while saying he was waiting for the full picture, highlighted that the pro-Russian rebels have in the past downed Ukrainian aircraft.

Obama, who earlier this week ramped up sanctions on Russia over the conflict, called on President Vladimir Putin to “take the path that would result in peace in Ukraine.”

“I think it’s important for us to recognize that this outrageous event underscored that it is time for peace and security to be restored in Ukraine,” Obama said.

“Now is, I think, a somber, appropriate time for all of us to step back and take a hard look at what has happened. Violence and conflict inevitably lead to unforeseen consequences,” he said.

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Missile fired from rebel-held Ukraine area – Obama

Father, son, 11 others gang-rape two teenagers

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Malaysian police have arrested at least 13 people, including a father and his two sons, over the alleged gang-rape of two teenage girls, an officer said Friday.

The girls — aged 15 and 17 — were raped on May 20 for hours by a group of men in an abandoned hut in the northern state of Kelantan, Lai Yong Heng, the state’s director of crime investigation, said.

Police have arrested 13 men, aged from 15 to 38, and are looking for “a few more” in connection with the gang-rape, he added.

Lai dismissed early reports that almost 40 people took turns in the rape, saying it was fewer but that some raped the girls more than once.

“It’s definitely more than 10. We are still investigating,” he told AFP.

All those detained are from the same village, where the assault took place, and some are related, Lai said. Most of them were believed to have been on drugs, and the girls were lured to the hut.

Suri Kempe, an official with women’s rights group Sisters in Islam, said the frequent number of rape cases being reported was “extremely worrying”.

“Boys are being raised in a culture where being masculine means being aggressive, and that it’s perfectly acceptable to use violence to get what you want,” she said in a statement.

Almost 3,000 rape cases were reported in 2012 in the Southeast Asian country of 28 million people, according to police statistics, with many of the victims aged 16 and below.

But activists say many more cases go unreported due to a continuing stigma for rape victims in the Muslim-majority country.

 

Father, son, 11 others gang-rape two teenagers

Search continues for missing Malaysian plane

A robotic submarine has continued its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight on the seabed of the southern Indian Ocean.

Malaysia flight search

The mini-sub was deployed late on Tuesday, but was forced to resurface due to a technical issue, officials said. It has since been redeployed.

The data downloaded from the mini-sub on Wednesday had “no significant detections,” Australian officials added.

The BBC reports that Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with it over the South China Sea while it was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Based on satellite data, officials believe it ended its flight thousands of kilometres off course, in seas west of the Australian city of Perth.

However, so far not a single piece of debris from the jet has been found.

On Monday, the United States Navy’s Bluefin-21 robotic submarine was sent on its first mission to search the sea floor for wreckage after signals believed to be consistent with “black box” flight recorders were detected.

Search continues for missing Malaysian plane

Missing Malaysia airline: Full audio transcript MH370 communication

Malaysian authorities on Tuesday released their full transcript of the audio communications between Flight 370′s cockpit and air traffic controllers before the plane disappeared March 8. The conversation, heavy with aviation shorthand, is in English with the one Indonesian comment meaning, “Good morning.” The conversation, as it was released, between the cockpit and various units of air traffic control, Delivery, Ground, Tower, Approach and Radar, the time the audio was recorded, and what was spoken:

FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF MH370 COMMUNICATIONS

Cockpit at 12:25:53: Delivery MAS 370 Good Morning

Delivery at 12:26:02: MAS 370 Standby and Malaysia Six is cleared to Frankfurt via AGOSA Alpha Departure six thousand feet squawk two one zero six

Delivery at 12:26:19: … MAS 370 request level

Cockpit at 12:26:21: MAS 370 we are ready requesting flight level three five zero to Beijing

Delivery at 12:26:39: MAS 370 is cleared to Beijing via PIBOS A Departure Six Thousand Feet squawk two one five seven

Cockpit at 12:26:45: Beijing PIBOS A Six Thousand Squawk two one five seven MAS 370 Thank You

Delivery at 12:26:53: MAS 370 Welcome over to ground

Cockpit at 12:26:55: Good Day

Cockpit at 12:27:27: Ground MAS370 Good morning Charlie One Requesting push and start

Ground at 12:27:34: MAS370 Lumpur Ground Morning Push back and start approved Runway 32 Right Exit via Sierra 4

Cockpit at 12:27:40: Push back and start approved 32 Right Exit via Sierra 4 POB 239 Mike Romeo Oscar

Ground at 12:27:45: Copied

Cockpit at 12:32:13: MAS377 request taxi.

Ground at 12:32:26: MAS37….. (garbled) … standard route. Hold short Bravo

Ground at 12:32:30: Ground, MAS370. You are unreadable. Say again.

Ground at 12:32:38: MAS370 taxi to holding point Alfa 11 Runway 32 Right via standard route. Hold short of Bravo.

Cockpit at 12:32:42: Alfa 11 Standard route Hold short Bravo MAS370.

Ground at 12:35:53: MAS 370 Tower

Ground at 12:36:19: (garbled) … Tower … (garbled)

Cockpit (no time given): 1188 MAS370 Thank you

Cockpit at 12:36:30: Tower MAS370 Morning

Tower at 12:36:38: MAS370 good morning. Lumpur Tower. Holding point.. (garbled)..10 32 Right

Cockpit at 12:36:50: Alfa 10 MAS370

Tower at 12:38:43: 370 line up 32 Right Alfa 10.

Cockpit (no time given): Line up 32 Right Alfa 10 MAS370.

Tower at 12:40:38: 370 32 Right Cleared for take-off. Good night.

Cockpit (no time given): 32 Right Cleared for take-off MAS370. Thank you Bye.

Cockpit at 12:42:05: Departure Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Approach at 12:42:10: Malaysian Three Seven Zero selamat pagi identified. Climb flight level one eight zero cancel SID turn right direct to IGARI

Cockpit at 12:42:48: Okay level one eight zero direct IGARI Malaysian one err Three Seven Zero

Approach at 12:42:52: Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Lumpur Radar One Three Two Six good night

Cockpit (no time given): Night One Three Two Six Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Cockpit at 12:46:51: Lumpur Control Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Radar at 12:46:51: Malaysian Three Seven Zero Lumpur radar Good Morning climb flight level two five zero

Cockpit at 12:46:54: Morning level two five zero Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Radar at 12:50:06: Malaysian Three Seven Zero climb flight level three five zero

Cockpit at 12:50:09: Flight level three five zero Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Cockpit at 01:01:14: Malaysian Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero

Radar at 01:01:19: Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Cockpit at 01:07:55: Malaysian…Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero

Radar at 01:08:00 Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Radar at 01:19:24: Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal 9 Good Night

Cockpit at 01:19:29: Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero

Missing Malaysia airline: Full audio transcript MH370 communication

Missing Malaysia plane: Co-pilot ‘spoke last words’

CCTV images are thought to show the pilot and co-pilot going through security checks at Kuala Lumpur airport

Malaysia flight search

BBC.com reports that Malaysia officials say they believe the co-pilot of missing flight MH370 spoke the last words to ground controllers before it vanished.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that the aircraft’s crew were involved in its disappearance.

The search for the plane has extended into two vast air corridors.

Twenty-six countries have been asked to help find the jet, which went missing over a week ago with 239 people on board.

Malaysia says the plane was intentionally diverted and could have flown on either a northern or southern arc from its last known position.

Ahmad Jauhari Yahy, chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, told a press conference on Monday that initial investigations had indicated that co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had calmly said “all right, good night” shortly before the plane disappeared.

However it is not clear whether the last words came before or after one of the plane’s tracking devices was switched off. Officials believe the communications systems were deliberately disabled.

Police have searched the homes of Captain Zaharie Shah, 53, and Mr Hamid, 27. A flight simulator taken from the captain’s home was being reassembled and examined at police headquarters, officials said.

Investigators are also looking at passengers, engineers and other ground staff who may have had contact with the aircraft before take-off.

The plane left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 00:40 local time (16:40 GMT) on 8 March.

Officials say the sign-off to air traffic controllers came at 01:19 as it left Malaysian airspace.

The last transmission from the plane’s Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was received at 01:07.

“We don’t know when the ACARS was switched off after that,” Mr Ahmad Jauhari said. “It was supposed to transmit 30 minutes from there, but that transmission did not come through.”

It disappeared off air traffic controllers’ screens at 01:21, when it was over the South China Sea.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Saturday that satellite and radar evidence showed the plane had changed course and could have continued flying for a further seven hours. (0)

Missing Malaysia plane: Co-pilot ‘spoke last words’