The president is more concerned with attacking the federal government than with putting safety first
Few stretches of airspace on the planet are as busy or as carefully monitored as the skies above Washington DC. Commercial and military aircraft are on the move there at all times. The greatest concentration is around Reagan National airport, the city’s principal domestic hub, which sits on the west bank of the Potomac River within sight of the Capitol dome.
No one yet knows how a Black Hawk military helicopter collided with an American Eagle flight from Wichita above the Potomac on Wednesday evening. But the destruction was total. No survivors have been found from among the 64 people on board the flight from Kansas or among the three-strong crew of the helicopter. By early Thursday, the rescue effort was already a recovery operation. Bodies were being lifted from the river’s icy waters through the day.
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Continue reading...© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Western resource-hunger has fuelled a vast humanitarian crisis. Donors must now press Rwanda to pull back from this war
There are bodies on the streets, hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing and overwhelmed hospitals draining fuel from ambulances to keep respirators running. The rapidly escalating conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – which has seen rocketing sexual violence, the execution of children and the displacement of 400,000 people this year alone – has just exploded with the M23 rebel group’s seizure of Goma, in the east.
Their advance comes thanks to backing from Rwanda, despite the coyness of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. Mr Kagame suggests that M23 is defending the country’s Tutsis, victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, against an armed group set up by former genocidal killers. But the threat those fighters pose appears greatly exaggerated: analysts believe the real aim is to seize mineral-rich territory. There is a striking parallel with Russia’s tactics in eastern Ukraine in 2014. On Wednesday, Rwandan troops were seen heading towards Bukavu, another key city, with the M23 fighters.
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Continue reading...© Photograph: Moise Niyonzima/EPA
© Photograph: Moise Niyonzima/EPA
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