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- Czech billionaire among 5 killed in Alaska helicopter crash
- Trash scavengers who help keep cities clean plea for vaccine
- Newlywed militant suspects blamed in Indonesia church attack
| Czech billionaire among 5 killed in Alaska helicopter crash Posted: 29 Mar 2021 07:55 PM PDT ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A helicopter carrying guides and guests on a heli-skiing excursion north of Anchorage slammed into a mountain and then rolled downhill hundreds of feet, killing the pilot and four of the five passengers, officials said Monday. Among the dead in the Saturday evening crash was billionaire Petr Kellner, the richest man in the Czech Republic. The survivor, identified as David Horvath, 48, of the Czech Republic, was listed in serious condition Monday, said Mike Canfield, a spokesman at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. The chartered helicopter, an Airbus AS350 B3, was "conducting heli-ski operations in an area of steep and remote terrain within the Chugach Mountains near Knik Glacier," National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said Monday during a briefing with reporters. The crash site, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) southeast of Palmer, is only accessibly by helicopter because of the rugged terrain and snowy conditions. Palmer is located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Anchorage. Recovery of the bodies was accelerated on Sunday because another snowstorm is forecast. The bodies were turned over to the Alaska State Medical Examiner. Clint Johnson, the NTSB's chief in the Alaska division, was also able to document the crash site with photos from the air "before the snowfall could obscure the site," Chapman said. Recovery of the wreckage is now the main focus for investigators, but that timing is uncertain given the terrain and forecast of additional snow. The five people killed were identified as Kellner, 56, and Benjamin Larochaix, 50, both of the Czech Republic; Gregory Harms, 52, of Colorado; and two Alaska residents, Sean McManamy, 38, of Girdwood, and the pilot, Zachary Russel, 33, of Anchorage, troopers said Sunday. Authorities initially released McManamy's name as McMannany. The five passengers included three guests and two guides from the Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, said company spokesperson Mary Ann Pruitt. Kellner was a businessman with a net worth over $17 billion, according to the Forbes 2020 list of the world's richest people. Kellner owned a 98.93% stake in the PPF Group, an international investment company. The group operates in 25 countries in Europe, Asia and North America with assets of $52 billion (44 billion euros). PPF Group confirmed Kellner's death. "His professional life was known for his incredible work ethic and creativity, but his private life belonged to his family," a message posted on the PPF Group website said. The funeral is planned for only close family members, and the company asked the media to respect the privacy of the family. Kellner and Larochaix "were loyal and frequent" guests at the lodge, Pruitt said in an email to The Associated Press. Vacation packages at the lodge start at $15,000 per person. Harms was a pioneering heli-ski guide in Alaska and worked for many years at the lodge, Pruitt said. "Greg was one of the most experienced guides in the business," she said. He also founded a heli-ski company that led trips across the world. McManamy had been a guide for over 10 years and had been with the lodge for the last five, she said. He was also an experienced mountain guide on Denali, North America's tallest peak. Russel was a pilot for Soloy Helicopters, a company based in the small city of Wasilla that is contracted by the lodge to provide transportation, Pruitt said. "This news is devastating to our staff, the community in which we operate and the families of the deceased," a statement from the lodge said. Chapman, the NTSB member, said based on Johnson's observations, the helicopter appears to have hit the mountain 10 feet (3.05 meters) to 15 feet (4.57 meters) below a ridgeline at an elevation of approximately 5,500 feet (1,676 meters). The helicopter then rolled 800-900 feet (244-274 meters) downhill. Using satellite-based signals broadcast from the helicopter, the NTSB said the aircraft was last heard from at 6:34 p.m. Saturday and reported overdue at about 8:30 p.m. Another operator participating in the search found and identified the wreckage about an hour later, Chapman said. Chapman said the team investigating the crash will look at airworthiness, operations, meteorology, structures, helicopter performance, recording devices and human performance. "Our mission is to understand not just what happened, but why and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again," he said. The NTSB does not yet have precise information about the weather at the time of the accident, but preliminary reports have indicated it was relatively clear, he said. Chapman said it was his understanding the helicopter carried some type of recording equipment on board, but he couldn't immediately say if it was a black box. If it did have some type of recording device, "that will be an important part of the investigatory process," he said. The NTSB is also hoping to interview the survivor, but investigators have not yet had direct contact with Horvath. It's also not yet known if there was any type of communication from the pilot before the crash. (AP)  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Trash scavengers who help keep cities clean plea for vaccine Posted: 29 Mar 2021 07:20 PM PDT NEW DELHI — The scavengers wait patiently for a dump truck to tip the trash on the summit of the landfill outside New Delhi. Armed with plastic bags, they plunge their bare hands into the garbage and start sorting it. Every day, more than 2,300 tons of garbage is dumped at the landfill at Bhalswa that covers an area bigger than 50 football fields, with a pile taller than a 17-story building. And every day, thousands of these informal workers climb the precarious slopes to pick through what can be salvaged. They are among the estimated 20 million people around the world — in rich nations and poor — who are pivotal in keeping cities clean, alongside paid sanitation employees. But unlike those municipal workers, they usually are not eligible for the coronavirus vaccine and are finding it hard to get the shots. The pandemic has amplified the risks that these informal workers face. Few have their own protective gear or even clean water to wash their hands, said Chitra Mukherjee of Chintan, a nonprofit environmental research group in New Delhi. "If they are not vaccinated, then the cities will suffer," Mukherjee said. Manuwara Begun, 46, lives in a cardboard hut behind a five-star hotel in the heart of New Delhi and feels the inequity keenly. Chintan estimates that each year, those like her save the local government over $50 million and eliminate over 900,000 tons of carbon dioxide by diverting waste away from landfills. Still, they are they not considered "essential workers" and thus are ineligible for vaccinations. Begun has started an online petition pleading for vaccines and asking, "Are we not human?" Sanitation workers employed by local governments in South Africa and Zimbabwe are likely to be in line for the COVID-19 vaccine after health workers, unlike those who sort through the trash. At the Dandora landfill in Kenya's capital of Nairobi, some of the scavengers who are not eligible for a shot wear medical gear discarded by hospitals and health clinics, saying it especially protects them from the weather during the rainy season. There is no doubt that these people provide an essential service, says Louise Guibrunet, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico who has studied the issue. In Mexico, scavengers help municipal workers on garbage trucks and often collect trash from neighborhoods not served by authorities. The work is dangerous, and injuries are common, so governments have an incentive to not recognize them or provide benefits like health care, she said. They often are already poor, moving to unfamiliar cities to eke out a living by sorting garbage, says Robin Jeffrey, a professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. That many of these workers in India belong to poor Muslim or Dalit communities, who once were known as "untouchables" at the bottom of the country's caste system, adds a layer of prejudice. "The vaccine is just another, and very dramatic, example of an exclusion that has prevailed before COVID-19 came on the horizon," said Jeffrey, who co-authored a book on waste in India in 2018. India said it will give vaccines to everyone over 45 starting April 1. At private hospitals, each shot is sold for 250 rupees ($3.45), but they are free at government hospitals. Because the pandemic sent the price of oil crashing, it became cheaper to make new plastic than to recycle it. In many countries, closed borders brought recycling markets to a halt, lowering demand for reused materials that the workers collect. In New Delhi, a pound of plastic bottles sells for the equivalent of 11 U.S. cents, half of what it brought before the pandemic. Sahra Bano, 37, who lives near the Bhalswa landfill and sells what she can scavenge, says she used to earn about 400 rupees ($5) per day. Now, getting even half that is difficult. Toxic runoff from the landfill infiltrates the groundwater, so she must spend 40 rupees (5 cents) per day on bottled water; the rest of what she earns goes for food. To earn enough to get one shot of the vaccine, she said she would have to collect and sell an additional 31 pounds of plastic bottles. "We are struggling to feed our family. How can we buy vaccines?" she asks. To get the free vaccine from an overburdened public hospital, she would have to wait there for days, and each day away from work is one without food on the table. Moreover, the stigma associated with waste workers in India means they are often turned away from such facilities. "They don't treat us well," Bano says. Any illness means visiting a drugstore, not a doctor, for medicine. If they're lucky, the person recovers, she says, adding: "If not, what can we do?" (AP)  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Newlywed militant suspects blamed in Indonesia church attack Posted: 29 Mar 2021 04:17 AM PDT MAKASSAR, Indonesia -- A recently married couple with suspected terrorist links used pressure cooker bombs to blow themselves up outside a Roman Catholic cathedral during Palm Sunday Mass, Indonesian officials said Monday, March 29, 2021. The attack wounded 20 people, including four church guards, and broke windows at the church and nearby buildings in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province. The couple was married six months ago and police were investigating their house in Makassar, National Police spokesperson Argo Yuwono said. Police identified them only by their initials, L and his wife, YSF. Neighbors of the couple identified the man as Lukman and his wife as Dewi and said they were between 23 and 26 years old. The attackers detonated their bombs when they were confronted by guards outside the church. The pressure cookers contained explosive materials and nails to increase their harm to victims, said Makassar city police chief Witnu Urip Laksana. Police carried out DNA tests to determine the attackers' identities, Laksana said. The couple was believed to have been members of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and carried out a series of suicide bombings in Indonesia. They included a 2016 Starbucks attack in Jakarta that killed four civilians and four militants, an attack on a bus terminal in the capital that killed three police officers and an attack on a church in Kalimantan that killed a two-year-old girl a year later. Several other children suffered serious burns in the Kalimantan attack. Indonesia's last major terrorism attack was in May 2018, when two families carried out suicide bombings on churches in Surabaya, killing a dozen people including two young girls whose parents involved them in one of the attacks. Police said the father was the leader of a local affiliate of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah. One of the attackers in Makassar was believed to have had links to a 2019 suicide attack that killed 23 people at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral in Sulu, Philippines, Indonesian National Police Chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo said. He said the two attackers were linked to a group of suspected terrorists arrested in Makassar on January 6, when a police counterterrorism squad killed two suspected militants and arrested 19 others. The two men who were killed were being sought for their alleged role in the Philippine attack. Prabowo told reporters on Monday, March 29, that the police elite counterterrorism squad, known as Densus 88, arrested four suspected terrorists believed to have links with the attackers in a raid Sunday in Bima, a city on Sumbawa island in West Nusa Tenggara province. Another suspect was arrested a day later in a separate raid in the province, he said. The five suspects were in the same Koran study group as the two alleged attackers, Prabowo said. Before he died, the man left a will to his parents, saying goodbye and that he was ready to become a martyr, he said. He said the counterterrorism squad on Monday also arrested four suspected terrorists in Condet neighborhood in eastern Jakarta. They seized five homemade pipe bombs and more than five kilograms (11 pounds) of chemicals for use in explosives in separate raids in the Jakarta outskirts. The attack a week before Easter in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation came as the country was on high alert following the arrest in December of the leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been designated a terror group by many nations. President Joko Widodo condemned Sunday's attack and said it has nothing to do with any religion as all religions would not tolerate any kind of terrorism. He ordered police to "thoroughly investigate the networks of the perpetrators and hunt them to the roots." Indonesia has been battling terrorists since Jemaah Islamiyah carried out bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Attacks aimed at foreigners have been largely replaced in recent years by smaller, less deadly strikes targeting the government, police and anti-terrorism forces and people terrorists consider as infidels. Since the arrest in December of Jemaah Islamiyah leader Aris Sumarsono, also known as Zulkarnaen, the counterterrorism squad has arrested more than 70 suspects, including 19 in Makassar, following a tipoff about possible attacks against police and places of worship. Jemaah Islamiyah was once considered the preeminent terror network in Southeast Asia, but has been weakened over the past decade by a sustained crackdown. In recent years, a new threat has emerged in terrorists who fought with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and returned to Indonesia or those inspired by the group's attacks abroad. (AP)  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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