Search for missing US Marines becomes recovery effort after crash off Australia
August 6, 2017 by admin
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SYDNEY/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps suspended their search and rescue efforts on Sunday for three U.S. Marines missing after their aircraft crashed into the sea off Australia’s northeast coast a day earlier, the U.S. Marine Corps said.
The Marine Corps said they had shifted to recovery efforts in coordination with the Australian Defence Force, which could last several months, and had notified the next-of-kin of the three missing Marines.
“The transition comes after teams led continuous sustained search efforts supported by aircraft and ships,” the III Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Okinawa, Japan, said.
“As the sea state permits, recovery efforts will be conducted to further search, assess and survey the area …,” they said in a statement.
The U.S. Marines have described the incident involving the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft as a “mishap” and said it was under investigation.
Ospreys have been involved in incidents resulting in deaths or injuries in recent years.
Twenty-three other personnel aboard the aircraft had been rescued. Australian emergency officials said one person had been taken to hospital in Rockhampton in northeastern Queensland state but gave no other details.
“All other personnel are accounted for and safe,” the III Marine Expeditionary Force said on Twitter.
The incident happened off the coast of Shoalwater Bay in Queensland at about 4 p.m. local time on Saturday (0600 GMT), the Marine Corps said. They called off the search at about 3 a.m. on Sunday (1700 GMT Saturday).
“BENIGN” WEATHER
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology described wind, swell and atmospheric conditions at the time of the incident as “benign”.
“There was a light northeasterly wind with high cloud … but that would have had no impact whatsoever on conditions at the surface,” meteorologist Michael Paech said.
The aircraft that crashed had launched from the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) amphibious assault ship and was on regular operations when it hit the water, according to the Marines Corps. Boats and aircraft on the ship immediately began search-and-rescue efforts.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who was on his first full day of vacation at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, was briefed on the crash by his chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, a White House official said.
The Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group was in Australia to participate in joint training maneuvers involving more than 33,000 U.S. and Australian military personnel, which ended two weeks ago.
“On behalf of all Queenslanders, our prayers are with those U.S. military personnel involved in the incident,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in a statement.
The exercises in the Coral Sea included the participation of MV-22 Ospreys practising the deployment of U.S. Marine reconnaissance teams.
The Osprey, built by Boeing Co and Textron Inc’s Bell Helicopter unit, is designed to take off like a helicopter and rotate its propellers to fly like a plane.
Its development was nearly canceled after the deaths of 23 Marines during flight testing in 2000, but its speed and range have made it very popular in recent years.
In December, the U.S. military grounded its Osprey fleet in Japan after one of the aircraft ditched into the sea, injuring its crew of five, when a hose connected to the aircraft broke during a refueling exercise.
Reporting By Valerie Volcovici in WASHINGTON and Joseph Hinchliffe in SYDNEY; Editing by Mary Milliken and Paul Tait
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United Nations bans key North Korea exports over missile tests
August 6, 2017 by admin
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Saturday that could slash by a third the Asian state’s $3 billion annual export revenue over its two intercontinental ballistic missile tests in July.
The U.S.-drafted resolution bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. It also prohibits countries from increasing the current numbers of North Korean laborers working abroad, bans new joint ventures with North Korea and any new investment in current joint ventures.
“We should not fool ourselves into thinking we have solved the problem. Not even close. The North Korean threat has not left us, it is rapidly growing more dangerous,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council.
“Further action is required. The United States is taking and will continue to take prudent defensive measures to protect ourselves and our allies,” she said. Washington would continue annual joint military exercises with South Korea, Haley said.
North Korea has accused the United States and South Korea of escalating tensions by conducting military drills.
China and Russia slammed U.S. deployment of the THAAD anti-missile defense system in South Korea. China’s U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi called for a halt to the deployment and for any equipment in place to be dismantled.
Liu also urged North Korea to “cease taking actions that might further escalate tensions.”
U.S. President Donald Trump hailed the vote in a Twitter message on Saturday evening.
“The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 to sanction North Korea. China and Russia voted with us. Very big financial impact!” Trump wrote.
Trump “appreciates China’s and Russia’s cooperation in securing passage” of the resolution, the White House said in a later statement. The U.S. president “will continue to work with allies and partners to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to ends its threatening and destabilizing behavior,” it said.
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U.S. PRESSURE ON CHINA
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said he hoped recent remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “were sincere – that the U.S. is not seeking to dismantle the existing situation or to forcibly unite the peninsula or to militarily intervene in the country.”
While the Security Council has been divided on how to deal with other international crises like Syria, the 15-member body has remained relatively united on North Korea. Still, negotiating new measures typically takes months, not weeks.
North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The new measures came in response to five nuclear weapons tests and four long-range missile launches.
The United States negotiated with China for a month on the resolution, then expanded negotiations to the full council on Friday.
Washington, frustrated that China has not done more to rein in North Korea, has threatened to exert trade pressure on Beijing and impose sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang.
“We had tough negotiations this week,” Haley told reporters. “I think that the Chinese realized that the United States was going to push, but they responded and we appreciate how they cooperated with us during these negotiations.”
Liu, asked about U.S. negotiating pressure, said China has been consistent on trying to achieve denuclearization, peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and “to re-launch negotiations to achieve this end.”
He told reporters China was “opposed to any unilateral sanctions outside the agreed framework set by the U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
RUSSIA/U.S. COOPERATION
It had been unclear whether strained U.S.-Russia relations would hamper negotiations on North Korean sanctions. On Wednesday, Washington imposed unilateral sanctions on Moscow to punish Russia over accusations of interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
“We are not hostages to our relations when we have to work together on issues which are far more important,” Russia’s Nebenzia told Reuters.
The new U.N. resolution adds nine individuals and four entities to the U.N. blacklist, including North Korea’s primary foreign exchange bank, subjecting them to a global asset freeze and travel ban.
“I would think China and Russia signed on the sanctions hoping that they would force North Korea back to the negotiating table,” said Thomas Byrne, president of the New York-based Korea Society. “However, North Korea will try to evade the new sanctions.”
The new resolution completely bans North Korean exports of coal. In November, the Security Council capped the North’s coal exports at $400 million annually. China, its largest buyer, halted imports in February.
A U.N. diplomat said North Korea had been expected to earn an estimated $251 million from iron and iron ore in 2017, $113 million from lead and lead ore, and $295 million from seafood. The diplomat said it was difficult to estimate how much North Korea was earning from sending workers abroad.
A United Nations human rights investigator said in 2015 that North Korea had forced more than 50,000 people to work abroad, mainly in Russia and China, earning between $1.2 billion and $2.3 billion a year for the government.
Joseph DeThomas, a former State Department official who worked as an adviser on Iran sanctions and on previous rounds of North Korea sanctions, said freezing foreign labor would be difficult to enforce.
“Overall I doubt that $1 billion number. I doubt it will hit that hard in terms of economic damage,” he said. “You cannot expect North Korea to buckle for anything less than the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990.”
These sanctions, he said, remain “a very long way” from there.
Reporting by Michelle Nichols,; addtional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by David Gregorio and Paul Tait