Week 2 -Malaysia Airlines MH370

MH370: search moves further south to unmapped area in Indian Ocean

The search for missing flight MH370 has moved further south in the Indian Ocean, with searchers forced to spend three months mapping previously uncharted waters before a proper investigation can take place.

The Australian deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, announced the search for the plane off Western Australia had moved further south and was still about 1,800km offshore.

An expert satellite working group defined a new search zone of up to 60,000 square kilometres along the arc in the southern Indian Ocean in the hunt for the plane which has so far been fruitless. The new search area has not been mapped and Chinese and Australian ships are mapping the seafloor. This is expected to take three months.

The search will be able to start properly in August and could last for 12 months.

The chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Martin Dolan, joined Truss for the press conference in and said it was “highly, highly likely” that MH370 was on autopilot for hours before it crashed.

He said the conclusion was reached because of the orderly path the plane took.

The federal budget set aside $90m over two years for the search and authorities are still confident the Malaysian Airlines plane is off Australia’s west coast.

“Specialists have analysed satellite communications information, information which was never initially intended to have the capability to track an aircraft, and performed extremely complex calculations,” Truss said of how the new search area was established.

“The new priority area is still focused on the seventh arc, where the aircraft last communicated with satellite. We are now shifting our attention to an area further south along the arc based on these calculations.”

Structure of the Lead :

who: Warren Truss

when: start properly in August and could last for 12 months
what: search further south to Indian Ocean
why: hunt for the plane
where: unmapped area in Indian Ocean
how:

Keywords :

investigation(n.)調查

announce(v.)宣布

fruitless(a.)無結果的;不成功的
arc(n.)弧形物
satellite(n.)衛星

Week 1-Ukraine crisis

Pro-Russia rebels attempt to seize Donetsk airport in Ukraine

Pro-Russia rebels attempted to seize a key airport in eastern Ukraine on Friday despite fierce resistance from government forces.

An Associated Press reporter saw three rebel tanks firing their cannons at the main terminal of Donetsk airport, where government forces are holed up. Sniper shots rang out around the area.

Rebels have made some gains in the area near the airport, seizing some buildings on its fringes and using them to target the main terminal.

Ukraine’s national security and defence council spokesman Col Andriy Lysenko said two servicemen had been killed and another nine wounded since Thursday. He said Ukrainian forces at the airport had undergone rotation and firmly stood their ground.

The airport, located just north of Donetsk, the largest city in the east, gives the Ukrainian forces a convenient vantage point to target rebel positions. Its loss would be a major blow to Ukraine and would also allow the rebels to receive large cargo planes with supplies in addition to truck convoys from Russia.

Fighting for the airport has intensified this week, threatening to derail the truce declared on 5 September. A follow-up deal which called for both parties to pull back their artillery to create a buffer zone hasn’t been implemented.

Kiev and the west have asserted that Moscow is fuelling the separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine by providing arms and personnel, something Russia denies. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Yuriy Sergeyev, told reporters on Friday that “it is evident that Russia demonstrates little resolve to fully comply with obligations under the Minsk arrangements.”

He said the failure to follow the agreement “would be absolutely disastrous”.

Sergeyev said Russia still regularly shells Ukrainian military and civilian areas.

“So far, positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been shelled about 800 times,” he said. “As a result of these attacks, about 40 Ukrainian servicemen were killed and about 200 wounded.”

At least a dozen civilians have been killed since the ceasefire, he added.

Residential areas in Donetsk have been caught in the crossfire. A Red Cross worker died on Thursday when a shell landed near the group’s office in the city.

The rebels said the shelling came from the Ukrainian side, while the Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin blamed the death on “terrorists”.

A spokesman for the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, issued a statement saying the aid worker’s death, along with the shelling of a school that killed three people earlier this week, “underscore the fragility of the current ceasefire and the importance of ensuring a secure environment in south-eastern Ukraine that will allow humanitarian actors to carry out their work and deliver critical assistance to those most in need.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/03/pro-russia-rebels-donetsk-airport-ukraine


Structure of the Lead :

who: pro-Russia rebels
when:Friday 5 September 2014
what:seize a key airport
why:the loss of Donetsk Airport would be a major blow to Ukraine
where:Donetsk Airport in Ukraine
how:



Keywords :

seize(v.)攻佔
terminal(n.)航廈
serviceman(n.)軍人
intensify(v.)加劇;增強