“A former First Lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at the age of 92,” said a statement from the office of her now widower George H.W. Bush. They were married for 73 years.

Barbara Bush has long been considered the rock at the center of one of America’s most prominent political families, as the wife of a president, the mother of another, George W. Bush, and the mother also of a former Florida governor and onetime presidential aspirant, Jeb Bush.

She first met her husband-to-be at the age of 16; she was a schoolgirl and he was a student at an elite preparatory school in Massachusetts. They married in 1945 while he was on leave from wartime service as a naval officer. The couple had six children.

As first lady, from 1989 to 1993, she embraced the cause of universal literacy, and founded a foundation for family literacy.

She gained a reputation for toughness, wry humor and straight-speaking. Asked in 2010 about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin — who sought the vice presidency in 2008 — she told an interviewer, “I sat next to her once, thought she was beautiful, and I think she’s very happy in Alaska, and I hope she’ll stay there.”

The Boeing 737-700 took off without incident but minutes into the flight, passengers heard an explosion in the left engine, which sent shrapnel flying through the window, shattering the glass and leading oxygen masks to drop, witnesses said.

Photo from : Twitter @joeasaprap

“We believe there were parts coming out of this engine,” Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference, confirming engine failure but no fire. “There is one fatality,” Sumwalt said.

US media said seven people were slightly injured. The identity of the dead person was not immediately disclosed.

“We are saying this is an engine failure,” Sumwalt said.

Southwest Airlines said flight 1380 had been en route from New York’s LaGuardia domestic airport to Dallas Love Field with 144 passengers and five crew members onboard.

It landed at Philadelphia International Airport at 11:20 am (1520 GMT) after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

“The entire Southwest Airlines family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the customers, employees, family members, and loved ones affected by this tragic event,” the company said in a statement.

‘Part of it’s missing’

NBC News released a recording of what it identified as communications between air traffic control in Philadelphia and the pilot, giving dramatic insight into what witnesses called a terrifying flight.

“We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit,” said a woman, who appeared to be the pilot. “Use caution for the downtown area,” replies air traffic control.

“Could you have the medical meet us there on the runway as well? We’ve got injured passengers,” says the voice from the plane.

“Is your airplane physically on fire?” asks air traffic control.

“No, it’s not on fire but part of it’s missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out,” the pilot replies.

Passengers aboard the Southwest Airlines flight that made an emergency landing. Photo: Facebook/Marty Martinez

“Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down!” wrote passenger Marty Martinez on a Facebook live-stream that showed him looking panicked and breathing through oxygen mask.

“Engine exploded in the air and blew open window 3 seats away from me. Explosion critically injured woman sitting in the seat next to the window,” he added.

Shrapnel blew out a window in row 17, injuring the woman and leading to the immediate deployment of the oxygen masks. The woman was later stretchered off the plane, he said.

US television footage showed the jet on the tarmac at Philadelphia as officials swarmed around the fuselage examining the stricken engine, manufactured by CFM, a joint venture between French company Safran and America’s General Electric.

‘Blood everywhere’

“There’s blood everywhere,” Martinez told CBS News, recounting his terrifying experience, after his live stream with the help of on board wifi.

“All of a sudden we heard an explosion,” he told CBS. “There was a boom and within five seconds the oxygen masks dropped.”

“I thought I was cataloging the last moments of my existence,” he said of his Facebook transmission. “It was absolutely terrifying.”

A blown out window taken from inside the Southwest Airlines plane. Photo: Facebook

Passengers tried in vain to plug the hole in the window as the plane started to plummet and tilt in turbulence with flight attendants crying and passengers instructed to brace for landing, Martinez said.

“It just felt like a free fall,” he said. “It was the scariest experience.” The woman was hit by flying shrapnel, causing her to pass out and bleed, Martinez told CBS.

It was the first fatal incident in US commercial aviation since the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in February 2009, a Bombardier Dash-8 on a scheduled flight from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. Fifty people were killed.

Aviation experts drew comparisons on US television to another engine failure on a Southwest Airlines 737 flight from New Orleans to Orlando in 2016, which precipitated an emergency landing in Pensacola, Florida.

“We want to look at this particular event and see what the factors are related to this. Maybe they’re related to the previous event or maybe not. But we need to understand what’s going on here,” said the NTSB chairman.

Malaysia’s police chief Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement on Monday (April 16) that six members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) cell were arrested between Feb 27 and March 1.

But four others were still on the run. Police said the men were “dangerous” and “capable of launching attacks that could pose a threat to national security”.

Clockwise from top left: The suspects listed were named as Muhamad Faizal Muhamad Hanafi, Muhamad Hanafi Yah, both of whom are from Kelantan state, Awae Wae-Eya, a Thai national living in southern Thailand and Nor Farkhan Mohd Isa, whose address was given as being in southern Johor. (Courtesy of Royal Malaysian Police/-)

Two of the suspects listed were named as Muhamad Faizal Muhamad Hanafi and Muhamad Hanafi Yah, both from Kelantan state.

A third suspect is Nor Farkhan Mohd Isa, whose address was given as being in Taman Ungku Tun Aminah in Skudai, southern Johor.

The fourth suspect is Awae Wae-Eya, a Thai national living in Narathiwat province in southern Thailand.

“We have been monitoring the cells for the last few months. We are asking the public to share with us if they have any information on the whereabouts of these four suspects. They should approach the police if they know anything,” Bukit Aman Special Branch’s Counter Terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay told The Straits Times.

Intelligence sources say they believe Awae is the group’s mastermind, based on interrogation of the six men arrested, and that he is trying to establish an ISIS cell in southern Thailand.

The arrests of the other members of the terror cell, which included two men working as janitors in Singapore, were previously announced on March 24.

The plot was uncovered after Malaysian counter-terrorism police, aided by their Singaporean counterparts, detained the terrorists in a series of swoops.

The order to kidnap and kill policemen was the first of its kind, according to an intelligence source.

The six men who were nabbed earlier included a 37-year-old technician who was initially thought to have masterminded the plans to attack places of worship in Johor Baru.

The second suspect, a 49-year-old security guard, was the cell’s adviser and responsible for keeping the cell and its plans secret.

Also picked up during the raids was a 30-year-old security guard, who was tasked with acquiring firearms from a neighbouring country and scouting for non-Muslim houses of worship to target.

Another suspect, a 25-year-old waiter, had been ordered to kidnap and kill policemen.

Two others, aged 23 and 22, were arrested on March 1 and worked as janitors in Singapore. One of them acted as the intermediary in the purchase of firearms for the cell, while the other was picked up to facilitate police investigations.

A member of the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines was also arrested during the police crackdown, in Sabah, on March 15.

The 31-year-old man is said to be a trusted lieutenant to Furuji Indama, the group’s leader based in Basilan. Believed to have connections to Malaysian militant Mahmud Ahmad, he is also wanted by Philippines authorities for involvement in a kidnap-for-ransom syndicate. He is an expert in making improvised explosive devices and had planned to attack several locations in Sabah.

Malaysia has arrested nearly 400 people since 2013 for suspected links to terrorism.

The Muslim-majority nation faces threats from self-radicalised ISIS sympathisers at home, and regional militant groups which seek funding and refuge in South-east Asia.

Malaysia’s only terrorist attack took place in June 2016, when two men on a motorcycle lobbed a grenade into a nightclub in Selangor, injuring eight people. The men were sentenced to 25 years’ jail each.

The blooming of cherry blossoms is an annual event many Japanese and tourists look forward to. This year some individuals decided to take home some cherry blossoms by stealing the branches they grew out of.

Residents near the Kanokita Park in Higashi, Osaka, Japan, discovered in late March that 18 branches and 3 trunks had gone missing from surrounding cherry blossom trees.

At first the residents assumed the missing tree parts were cut down as a form of maintenance to prevent rot or disease, as reported by The Mainichi via SoraNews24.

Image: Twitter/@Norikyuu

Judging by the cuts, authorities believe the thieves used power tools like chainsaws to cut away the missing pieces. Some of the tree parts stolen measured around three meters or nearly 10 feet in length.

Image: Twitter/@Norikyuu

Netizen and local resident Norikyuu (@Norikyuu) shared some photos of the crime scene in a tweet posted on April 1.

Image: Twitter/@Norikyuu

When the branches were cut still remains a mystery. Norikyuu suspects the thieves came in the middle of the night since the trees were in the middle of an industrial park and few people pass through the area at night. Norikyuu also thinks the branches may have been cut down in daytime as well where the thieves disguised themselves as park maintenance personnel.

The prestigious prize was awarded to the Times team led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow, for reports that disgraced the Hollywood mogul and sparked an avalanche of accusations against other powerful men.

Since the Times and New Yorker articles last October, more than 100 women have publicly accused the producer of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment to rape, sparking the #MeToo movement that has seen a string of influential men lose their jobs and reputation.

Weinstein’s marriage has ended, he has been under police investigation in London, Los Angeles and New York, hit by a litany of civil lawsuits and his former production company has been forced to file for bankruptcy.

Farrow, 30, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and film director Woody Allen, and something of a prodigy who has previously fronted his own television show, worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, and formerly advised then Hillary Clinton on global youth issues when she was secretary of state.

The former Rhodes scholar, who graduated from Yale Law School at just 21, has sided with his sister Dylan’s claims that Allen molested her when she was seven. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations.

“So so so proud,” tweeted Mia Farrow minutes after her son’s award was announced. Ronan Farrow paid tribute to his co-winners and The New Yorker.

“This moment gets called a reckoning, but we just started telling the truth about old abuses of power. Thanks to all who keep doing so,” he wrote on Twitter to his nearly half a million followers.

The 102th edition of the Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University in New York by administrator Dana Canedy at a time when the US news media still under assault from the White House for peddling “fake news.”

Canedy praised the winners but also counselled the media to do more to improve trust with a skeptical public and to work harder to include more varied gender and racial perspectives.

‘Most trying of times’ 

The Washington Post won the Pulitzer in the investigative category for relentless reporting seen as having influenced the outcome of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, revealing Republican candidate Roy Moore’s alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls.

Moore’s opponent Doug Jones won the race last December, becoming Alabama’s first Democratic senator in 25 years and dealing a humiliating blow to President Donald Trump’s Republican administration.

The New York Times and The Washington Post shared the national reporting prize for furthering understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the connections between Russian actors and the Trump campaign, his transition team and administration, Canedy said.

“Winners uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press even in the most trying of times,” she announced.

“These courageous, inspiring and committed journalists and their news organizations are undaunted in their mission in support of the fourth estate.

“It is a mandate that has been under a seemingly relentless assault of late but that remains central to a healthy democracy,” she added.

Reuters won the 2018 prize in international reporting for coverage of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. Reuters also won in the feature photography category for its coverage of the Rohingya crisis.

The prize for breaking news photography went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress for a chilling image that captured the moment of impact by a car at a racially-charged protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that left one woman dead last August.

The Pulitzer for fiction went to Andrew Sean Greer for “Less” about growing older and love. The history prize was awarded to “The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea,” and the prize in drama for “Cost of Living” by playwright Martyna Majok.//AFP

Anastasia Vashukevich, known by her pen name Nastya Rybka, was arrested with nine other foreigners in February when Thai police raided their sex training course in the seaside city of Pattaya.

She and six others were initially charged with lacking a work permit but are now facing additional charges of soliciting prostitution and criminal association, according to Apichai Krobpetch, Pattaya’s police chief.

Vashukevich, who is embroiled in a political scandal in Russia, made international headlines after she offered to reveal secrets to American journalists in a video posted on Instagram shortly after her arrest in Pattaya.

“They are trying to put us behind bars… That is why I am ready to tell you about all those missing puzzle pieces that you lacked… regarding a link between our esteemed lawmakers and (Paul) Manafort, Trump and all this brouhaha, the US elections,” she said in the video.

The model, who has written a book about seducing oligarchs, has not substantiated her claims but does have links to Russia’s elite.

She is facing a lawsuit in Russia over footage she filmed purporting to show an influential deputy prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko, enjoying lavish hospitality on a yacht owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

The video went viral after it was published by top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in February.

Deripaska, one of several Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the US this month, denied any wrongdoing and later sued Vashukevich and Alexander Kirillov, a “sex guru” who was also detained in Thailand, for invasion of privacy.

Deripaska, an aluminium tycoon, was once an associate of US President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Manafort has been indicted on money laundering and tax-related charges as part of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

A participant in the sex training session who was not among those arrested told AFP that Vashukevich fears being deported back to Russia.

Three other participants have either been deported or are awaiting deportation, an immigration official told AFP.

The US Embassy in Bangkok has declined to comment on the case.//AFP

Choi Eun-hee was the South’s most famous actress for decades before being brazenly abducted by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in 1978 at the request of the North’s then leader-in-waiting Kim Jong Il, an avid film fan.

During her visit to Hong Kong to meet a potential investor in her arts school, she was reportedly lured onto a boat by her guide before being transferred against her will to a cargo ship destined for North Korea.

Her husband Shin Sang-ok, a top director, was taken to the North soon after, although circumstances over his alleged abduction remain unclear.

Choi remained trapped in the North for eight years, where the two made more than 10 films together under the instruction of Kim Jong Il.

In a 2011 interview, Choi said Kim “respected us as artists and fully supported us,” but that she could never forgive him for the “outrageous and unforgivable” kidnapping.

They were allowed to make “films with artistic values, instead of just propaganda films extolling the regime,” Choi said, but always longed for their freedom.

During their ordeal, the couple travelled overseas extensively for movie production missions and to attend film festivals — always under heavy surveillance by the North’s agents.

Choi even won the best actress award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1985 for her role in “Salt” — a film about Korean guerrillas fighting against the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

The couple — who had divorced in 1976, before their abductions — remarried during a trip to Hungary at Kim’s urging.

But they finally staged a daring escape to the US embassy in Vienna after attending the Berlinale film festival in 1986, and sought asylum in the US due to fear for their personal security.

The couple returned to the South in 1999 after spending more than a decade in the US. They remained married until Shin’s death in 2006.

Their dramatic life inspired several books and movies.

Choi, who made her cinematic debut in 1942, had risen to stardom in the wake of the 1950-53 Korean War that sealed the division between the communist North and the capitalist South.

She was called the “queen” of South Korean cinema from the 1950s to the 1970s while appearing in more than 100 movies — many made by Shin.

North Korea abducted hundreds of South Koreans under a state-sanctioned policy in the decades following the Korean War.

Choi’s funeral will be held in Seoul on Thursday.

The operation was “to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations,” Washington and London said in a joint statement.

“Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations,” they said.

“Whoever controls the routing infrastructure of a network essentially controls the data flowing through the network.”

The US Department of Homeland Security said the hacking was part of a broad operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe, which DHS says comprises concerting cyberattacks by Moscow’s civilian and military intelligence agencies.

The router hacking operation has targeted both government and private sector groups, and the key providers of network infrastructure and internet services serving them.

The announcement came in an unprecedented joint alert that underscored closer cooperation between Western governments fighting what they say is an ongoing, multifaceted hacking and online disinformation campaign by Moscow.

The alert came from the Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, DHS and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In came after more than one year of separate warnings over the attempted hacking of key infrastructure like power and water utilities in Western countries.

The two sides did not give any examples of systems that had been broken into, but said those compromised risked losing data, identities, passwords and even control of their own systems.

Critical network components targeted

The hacking effort goes to the critical components of a computer network: the routers, switches and firewalls designed to safely and accurate deliver data from one computer to another.

Taking over a router virtually would give a hacker the ability to manipulate, divert or stop any data from going through it.

In an operation like an electric power plant, the hacker could shut down the service or physically damage a plant.

A hacker could also “potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations,” the joint alert said.

“The current state of US and UK network devices, coupled with a Russian government campaign to exploit these devices, threatens our respective safety, security, and economic well-being,” it said.

Both countries have accused Moscow of concerted efforts to use social media to interfere with public affairs, particularly with the British Brexit referendum and US presidential election in 2016.

During their two-day meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago vacation resort starting later Tuesday local time, Abe will seek cooperation to resolve the outstanding issue of Japanese nationals abducted by the North decades ago. He will ask Trump to take up the issue when the U.S. president meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The first-ever U.S.-North Korean summit is expected to be held by early June, after Kim meets with South Korean President Moon Jae In on April 27.

Abe has said he will also request Trump to seek the elimination of not only North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, but its short- and medium-range missiles that could threaten Japan and South Korea.

On the economic front, the Japanese prime minister is planning to impress upon the U.S. president the significance of multilateral free trade as Trump has pushed for bilateral trade agreements.

Tokyo is preparing to propose setting up a new framework to discuss trade involving the two countries, in the hope of Washington rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, according to a government source.

Although Trump pulled the world’s largest economy out of the regional free trade pact upon taking office in January last year, he instructed officials last week to look into returning to it amid a simmering trade spat with China, a non-TPP member.

Following Washington’s withdrawal, the remaining 11 members, led by Japan, succeeded in signing a revised version in March.

Japan envisions TPP minister Toshimitsu Motegi and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer heading the new trade dialogue, separate from the existing economic dialogue helmed by Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, the source said.

During his sixth face-to-face talks with Trump, Abe is also expected to seek to win an exemption from steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports Washington recently invoked.

The two leaders are also likely to exchange views on the situation in the Indo-Pacific region, including China’s increasing maritime assertiveness in the South China Sea, as well as recent U.S.-led airstrikes on Syria, among other topics.

Abe and Trump played golf two times at previous summits in Florida and Japan last year, but it has not yet been decided whether they will do so this time.

The accident happened in Cirebon, about 220 kilometres (135 miles) east of Jakarta.

The wall of warehouse next door fell over and crushed the local art centre where the junior high school students were preparing for a show.

Seven were killed as the building caved in, including six boys between 13 and 15 years-old and the centre’s 48-year-old manager, police said.

Two 13-year-old girls were also injured, with one in a critical condition, they added.

Police are investigating the cause of the collapse, but they said initial suspicion has fallen on the age of the art centre which had been operating since around the 1940s.

“The building is very old, but we still need to ask experts to determine the cause of the collapse,” local police spokesman Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko told AFP.

Lax construction standards have raised widespread concerns about building safety in Indonesia.

In January, at least 75 people were injured when a mezzanine floor at Indonesia’s stock exchange building in Jakarta collapsed into the lobby.

In February, the government temporarily halted all elevated transportation projects in Indonesia, after a dozen major accidents killed five and injured dozens more.