Faulty controls may have caused crash
Baku, Azerbaijan The failure of an Azerbaijani airliner’s control system likely caused it to crash, killing all 23 people on board, an airline official said Saturday.
But Ilham Amirov, the deputy chief of Azerbaijani Airlines, said it was too early to dismiss other possible causes, including a terrorist attack, of Friday night’s crash of the An-140 twin-engine turboprop.
The development of the An-140 – designed by Ukraine’s Antonov company – has been troubled because of the severe funding problems that crippled the country’s aviation industries after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
A plane of the same make crashed in Iran in December 2002, killing all 44 people on board. Azerbaijan was the first foreign commercial customer for the An-140, capable of carrying 50 passengers on medium-range flights.
Iran pressured to move uranium plant
Moscow Russia formally proposed to Iran on Saturday that it move its uranium enrichment facilities to Russian territory, raising pressure on the Tehran regime to accept the Western-backed plan for restraining its nuclear program.
Iran insists the program has the sole aim of making fuel for atomic reactors that would generate electricity, and denies U.S. charges it is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Washington and the European Union have warned about taking Tehran before the U.N. Security Council for consideration of sanctions over the dispute. But Russia and China, which have vetoes on the council, oppose referral, and the West has stopped short of forcing the matter.
Germany, France and Britain suggested shifting Iran’s enrichment activities to Russia, where nuclear material would be enriched to the level needed to fuel reactors. That, in theory, would reduce the possibility the technology also could be used to make weapons-grade uranium.
China, N. Korea sign oil development deal
Beijing China and North Korea signed an agreement Saturday to jointly develop offshore oil reserves, the Chinese government said, amid efforts to prod the North to speed up economic reforms.
North Korea has begun limited Chinese-style reforms in its decrepit, centrally planned economy. But Beijing is pushing Pyongyang to speed up economic development and has promised aid and advice.
Father kills daughters over choice of husband
Multan, Pakistan A father angry that his eldest daughter married for love slit her throat as she slept, then killed three other daughters in a remote village in eastern Pakistan, police said Saturday.
Nazir Ahmad, a laborer in his 40s, feared the younger girls, aged 4 to 12, would follow in their 25-year-old sister’s footsteps, police officer Shahzad Gul said.
Hundreds of women are killed in Pakistan every year, many by male relatives, after they are accused of having affairs or marrying for love without their families’ consent.
Ahmad surrendered to police in Burewala, about 70 miles east of Multan, a main city in eastern Punjab province, Gul said.