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MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov landed in Tehran on Tuesday for talks with Tehran’s foreign minister, news agency Tasnim reported.
KUALA LUMPUR: A fresh search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been launched more than a decade after the plane went missing in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries.
Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity has resumed the hunt for the missing plane, Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke said Tuesday.
Loke told reporters contract details between Malaysia and the firm were still being finalized but welcomed the “the proactiveness of Ocean Infinity to deploy their ships” to begin the search for the plane which went missing in March 2014.
Loke added that details on how long the search would last had not been negotiated yet.
He also did not provide details on when exactly the British firm kicked off its hunt.
The Malaysian government in December had said it had agreed to launch a new search for MH370, which disappeared more than a decade ago.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has never been found.
“They (Ocean Infinity) have convinced us that they are ready,” said Loke.
“That’s why the Malaysian government is proceeding with this,” he added.
In December, Loke had said new search would be on the same “no find, no fee” principle as Ocean Infinity’s previous search, with the government only paying out if it finds the aircraft.
The contract was for 18 months and Malaysia would pay $70 million to the company if the plane was found, Loke previously had said.
Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, carried out an unsuccessful hunt in 2018.
The company’s first efforts followed a massive Australia-led search for the aircraft that lasted three years before it was suspended in January 2017.
The Australia-led search covered 120,000 square kilometers in the Indian Ocean but found hardly any trace of the plane, with only some pieces of debris picked up.
The plane’s disappearance has long been the subject of theories – ranging from the credible to outlandish – including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had gone rogue.
A final report into the tragedy released in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the course of the plane was changed manually.
JAKARTA: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu held talks in Indonesia with President Prabowo Subianto and his defense minister on Tuesday, as Moscow and Jakarta seek to boost defense ties.
Southeast Asia’s biggest economy maintains a neutral foreign policy, refusing to take sides in the Ukraine conflict or in the great power competition between the United States and China.
Shoigu, Russia’s former defense minister and now secretary of its Security Council, is seen as influential in the decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine in 2022 and is a staunch ally of President Vladimir Putin.
He met Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin for a courtesy call in the capital Jakarta on Tuesday morning, Indonesia’s defense ministry said in a statement.
Prabowo then received Shoigu at the presidential palace on Tuesday afternoon, the presidential palace said in a statement.
“This visit marks an important moment in strengthening bilateral relations between Indonesia and Russia, particularly in the fields of security and defense,” the statement said.
“They discussed various strategic issues related to bilateral relations and regional security.”
The palace said the visit opened up “broader opportunities for future cooperation” with both sides committed to “strengthening their strategic partnership.”
Recently inaugurated Prabowo has pledged to be bolder on the world stage and visited Moscow in July for talks with Putin.
In November, Indonesia and Russia held their first joint naval drills.
Russia sent three corvette-class warships, a medium tanker ship, a military helicopter, and a tugboat for the drills held in the east of Indonesia’s main island Java.
Jakarta has billion-dollar trade ties with Moscow, yet major arms imports have stalled in recent years after Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and launched its offensive on Ukraine.
Still, since becoming defense minister in 2019, Prabowo has kept alive a $1.1 billion Russian fighter jet deal agreed a year earlier, despite the reported threat of US sanctions.
SEOUL: South Korea’s ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol was facing his final impeachment hearing on Tuesday before judges decide whether to formally remove him from office over his disastrous martial law declaration.
Yoon’s short-lived suspension of civilian rule plunged democratic South Korea into political turmoil, and he was removed from office by parliament in December.
After weeks of fraught impeachment hearings at the Constitutional Court in Seoul, Tuesday’s proceedings began at 2:00 p.m. (0500 GMT) but Yoon was not present, an AFP journalist in the courtroom said.
In opening remarks, Yoon’s defense team cited a 2024 US Supreme Court ruling, Donald Trump v. the United States, arguing that the ousted president cannot be punished for “exercising his core constitutional powers.”
That ruling “should be considered in the context of impeachment proceedings,” Yoon’s lawyer Lee Dong-chan said.
In response, prosecutor Lee Gum-gyu spoke emotively about his son, an active duty soldier he said would have been forced to participate in Yoon’s martial law.
“As a citizen and a father, I feel a sense of rage and betrayal toward Yoon, who tried to turn my son into a martial law soldier,” he told the court.
Thursday’s session is Yoon’s last before the eight judges go behind closed doors to decide his fate.
A number of lawmakers from his ruling People Power Party were in attendance.
Yoon is expected to deliver a closing argument in his defense, with representatives of parliament given time to present the case for his removal.
Outside the court, pro-Yoon protesters chanted “Drop impeachment!”
Some held signs denouncing the Chinese Communist Party and North Korea – which some of Yoon’s supporters have accused, without evidence, of interfering in recent South Korean elections to the benefit of the opposition.
Others held signs saying “Stop the Steal,” echoing US President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud when he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
A verdict is widely expected in mid-March.
Previously impeached presidents Park Geun-hye and Roh Moo-hyun had to wait 11 and 14 days, respectively, to learn their fates.
If Yoon is removed from office, the country must hold a fresh presidential election within 60 days.
The 64-year-old has also been behind bars since he was arrested last month on charges of insurrection, for which he could be sentenced to life in prison or even face the death penalty. His trial began last week.
Much of the impeachment trial has centered on whether Yoon violated the constitution by declaring martial law, which is reserved for national emergencies or times of war.
The opposition has accused the suspended president of taking the extraordinary measure without proper justification.
Yoon’s lawyer Kim Hong-il insisted last week that “the declaration of martial law was not intended to paralyze the state.”
Instead, he said, it was meant to “alert the public to the national crisis caused by the legislative dictatorship of the dominant opposition party.”
Yoon’s lawyers have also argued that his martial law declaration was necessary to investigate unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud in last year’s parliamentary poll.
A survey by polling company Realmeter released on Monday said 52 percent of respondents support Yoon’s formal removal from office.
But a Gallup poll, released last week, showed 60 percent in favor and 34 percent against his impeachment.
TAIPEI: Taiwan detained a Chinese-crewed cargo ship on Tuesday after a subsea telecoms cable was severed off the island, the coast guard said.
It is the latest in a series of Taiwanese undersea cable breakages, with previous incidents blamed on natural causes or Chinese ships.
Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom reported the cable between Penghu, a strategic island group in the sensitive Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan was disconnected early Tuesday, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said.
The Togolese-registered ship Hongtai was intercepted in the area and escorted back to Taiwan, the coast guard said.
The case was being “handled in accordance with national security-level principles,” it added.
“Whether the cause of the undersea cable breakage was intentional sabotage or a simple accident remains to be clarified by further investigation.”
The Hongtai, using a flag of convenience, was crewed by eight Chinese nationals and had Chinese funding, the coast guard said.
Flags of convenience allow shipping companies to register their vessels in countries to which they have no link — for a fee and freedom from oversight.
Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control.
And Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt to seize the island or blockade it.
“It cannot be ruled out that it was a grey zone intrusion by China,” the coast guard said, referring to actions that fall short of an act of war.
“The coast guard will cooperate with the prosecutors in the investigation and make every effort to clarify the truth.”
Taiwan has 14 international underwater cables and 10 domestic ones.
The ministry ordered Chunghwa Telecom to transfer voice communications and Internet services for Penghu to other undersea cables.
The world’s data and communications are carried across oceans by great bundles of subsea fiber optic cables — with their high strategic value making them potential targets for attack.
There is growing concern in Taiwan over the security of its cables after a Chinese-owned cargo ship was suspected of severing one northeast of the island this year.
Separately, two aging subsea cables serving Taiwan’s Matsu archipelago stopped functioning last month, with the outages blamed on “natural deterioration.”
In February 2023, two subsea telecoms lines serving Matsu were cut within days of each other, disrupting communications for weeks.
Locals and Taipei officials suspected that Chinese fishing vessels or sand dredgers, which often drop anchor or scrape the seabed in Taiwanese waters, may have been responsible.
The Taiwanese coast guard identified last month 52 “suspicious” Chinese-owned ships flying flags of convenience from Mongolia, Cameroon, Tanzania, Togo, and Sierra Leone for close monitoring.
The stricter regime involves watching for anomalies in a ship’s automatic identification system operation and fake vessel names.
Vessels suspected of loitering or anchoring near subsea cables will be warned by radio to leave the area, and boarding inspections carried out when needed.
AFP does not know yet if Hongtai is among the 52.
SEOUL: Elevated parts of a highway under construction collapsed in South Korea on Tuesday, killing four workers and injuring six others, officials said.
Ten people were working on the site in the city of Cheonan, about 90 kilometers south of Seoul. They fell when it collapsed and were trapped in the rubble, the National Fire Agency said.
One was found dead in the rubble. Eight injured workers were sent to hospitals before two of them were declared dead there later, according to fire agency officials.
The fire agency said in a statement that five remained in serious condition. It said that rescue workers were trying to find the missing worker.
The cause of the collapse wasn’t immediately known.
Acting President Choi Sang-mok urged authorities to mobilize all available personnel and equipment to salvage the workers.
