In a bombshell revelation on the eve of his hotly anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill, Comey said Trump had raised the sensitive FBI probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the US election in multiple discussions, leaving him deeply uneasy over whether the president was attempting to interfere.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy,” Comey quoted Trump as telling him on February 14 as they sat alone together in the Oval Office, in prepared testimony for Thursday’s Senate hearing.

“I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with his false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” added Comey, who was fired by Trump in early May.

However, Trump felt “completely and totally vindicated” by the written testimony, his private attorney said, as Comey confirmed he had told the president he was not personally under investigation.

Comey also said Trump demanded a pledge of loyalty in a meeting on January 27, just days after the Republican billionaire took office under a cloud of allegations that Russia’s interference had helped him win the election.

“The president said, ‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.’ I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed,” Comey said.

His comments, which confirmed the details of a number of press reports about his interactions with Trump published in recent weeks, came ahead of his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

They also came shortly after two top US spy agency chiefs skirted questions from the Senate panel about whether Trump asked them to intervene in the Flynn probe, as reported by The Washington Post.

Neither Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats nor National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers denied the Post story. But both said they never felt “pressured” to act.

“I’ve never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way or in relationship to an ongoing investigation,” Coats said.

‘Very concerning’

Trump began the day by announcing his new nominee to lead the FBI — Christopher Wray, a career white-collar crime attorney and former Justice Department official under former president George W. Bush.

Wray’s nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.

Trump fired Comey on May 9, expressing deep frustration with the continuing investigation into whether members of his election campaign colluded with a covert Russian operation against Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton.

In the wake of the firing, the Justice Department named an special prosecutor, former FBI director Robert Mueller, to lead the government’s investigation.

In parallel, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees are leading their own probes, and a number of key former Trump aides as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner have been asked for, or subpoenaed to provide, information and testimony.

In his statement, Comey made clear he had been uncomfortable discussing an ongoing investigation with the president, even as he assured Trump that he himself was not a target of the probe.

Comey did not say whether he thought the president’s actions amounted to obstructing the investigation — an issue lawmakers are expected to highlight Thursday in their questions.

“I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynn’s departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls,” Comey said.

“Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBI’s role as an independent investigative agency,” he added.

At the same time, Comey recalled that in a March 30 phone call, Trump asked Comey how to “lift the cloud” of the overall Russia probe that made it difficult for him to lead the country.

Dems up in arms

Lawmakers said Thursday’s hearing will focus on whether Trump was obstructing justice — the charge that led to president Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1973.

Asked if Trump had acted appropriately, Republican Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr said: “I don’t think that from what I’ve read there’s anything of wrongdoing, but I will match that with his verbal testimony, and weight it against the evidence of our investigation to date.”

Among the Democrats, Congresswoman Kathy Castor said in a tweet that Trump’s demand of a loyalty pledge “looks like obstruction,” while Senator Ron Wyden said Trump’s request to drop the Flynn probe “is almost a Watergate-level effort to interfere with an ongoing investigation.”

And Congressman Al Green said he had drafted articles of impeachment that were under review.

“The question really is not whether the president has obstructed justice,” he said. “The question really is whether the president can obstruct justice with impunity.”//AFP

Navy ships and aircraft had been searching since the afternoon when the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

More than a dozen children were believed to be among the passengers on the plane travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

“Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 136 miles (218 km) away from Dawei city,” said Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik, adding the navy was still searching the sea.

An air force source confirmed to AFP that a navy search and rescue ship had found pieces of the plane in the sea an hour’s flight south of Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital.

The commander in chief’s office said the plane lost contact at about 1:35 pm (07:05 GMT) off Myanmar’s southern coast.

There was conflicting information about the number of people on board.

Giving an updated figure, the office said 106 passengers were on board — soldiers and family members — along with 14 crew.

The air force source said more than a dozen of those on board were children.

Four naval ships and two air force planes were sent to search for the plane, which was flying at an altitude of more than 18,000 feet (5,486 metres).

It is monsoon season in Myanmar but there were no reports of bad weather at the time the plane went missing.

Military air woes

The plane was a Y-8F-200 four-engine turboprop, a Chinese-made model still commonly used by Myanmar’s military for transporting cargo.

The army said it was delivered in March last year and had logged 809 flying hours.

The former military junta bought many of the aircraft from Myanmar’s giant neighbour during their 50 years of isolated rule, when they were squeezed by Western sanctions.

A former executive at the aviation ministry said many of the aircraft in Myanmar’s fleet were old and decrepit.

“Myanmar air force has very bad safety performance,” he said, asking to remain nameless.

Myanmar’s military fleet has a chequered recent history of plane crashes.

All five crew died when an air force plane burst into flames soon after taking off from the capital Naypyidaw in February last year.

Three army officers were killed in June when their Mi-2 helicopter crashed into a hillside and burst into flames in south-central Bago.

A surge in demand for air travel as Myanmar opens up has stretched the impoverished country’s aviation infrastructure, in particular in remote airports.

Commercial jets have also suffered frequent incidents.

The worst in recent years was in 2012 when an Air Bagan jet crash-landed in thick fog and burst into flames short of the runway at Heho airport, killing one passenger and a motorcyclist on the ground.

The woman lost her temper after she was told by ground staff that check-in for her flight from Wuhan to Paris had closed fourteen minutes earlier on Thursday morning, the Wuhan Evening News reported.

Staff advised her to alter or refund her tickets, but the woman refused saying she was about to go abroad to take part in an important conference.

She then rushed to the staff working area and slapped a member of staff twice after negotiations failed, the report said.

Police were called and arrested the woman, whose real name was not given in the article. She has now been blacklisted from taking flights on Air France, The Beijing News reported.

The woman, a 36-year-old doctoral student from a prestigious university in Wuhan, was with her husband and child when the incident occurred.

Internet users in China strongly criticised her actions and said harsher punishments should have been enforced.

“Domestic flight companies should also blacklist the woman … and all flights should refuse to take this kind of passenger,” one person wrote.

Another said: “So barbarous and wayward. Did she major in kick-boxing for a doctoral degree?”

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil to see a major commemoration of the military’s brutal crushing of pro-democracy protests in central Beijing in 1989.

But in the past two years, student unions have boycotted the longstanding vigil in Victoria Park as they say its message is increasingly irrelevant.

The vigil, organised by an umbrella group of veteran democracy activists, demands justice for the victims of the crackdown and also pushes for the democratisation of China.

Some young activists in Hong Kong say they want to prioritise the democratic future of the city itself and not China as a whole, as anti-Beijing sentiment grows.

Younger generations tend to see themselves as distant from mainland China, with some calling for more autonomy or even independence for Hong Kong after mass rallies for political reform in 2014 failed to win concessions.

Mak Kwan-wai, vice president of Hong Kong Baptist University’s student union, told AFP that building a democratic system in China was not Hong Kongers’ responsibility.

“What Hong Kongers should do is protect themselves,” Mak added.

Baptist is among several universities whose student unions have said they would not attend the vigil.

However, democracy campaigner Joshua Wong, who led the 2014 pro-democracy rallies, said people should not forget the victims of June 4 as he arrived at the park for the vigil.

“Young people are increasingly adopting their own identity as Hong Kongers and are not satisfied with the commemoration under the traditional banner of patriotism,” said Wong, 20.

“But I believe we all share the same goal, which is to demand that the central government take responsibility for the massacre.”

Wong added it was particularly important to support the vigil and its call for justice as the city approaches the 20th anniversary of its handover from Britain to China on July 1, 1997.

China’s President Xi Jinping is expected to visit as part of the celebrations.

One mainland human rights activist, Wang Yan, 52, was among the crowds arriving in Victoria Park.

Wang, who has been living in Hong Kong for the past seven years, warned against complacency over the Tiananmen crackdown.

“We have to keep persisting. If we give up, are we just going to let it go if people get killed in the future?” he told AFP.

A small gathering of pro-Beijing supporters also rallied near the park.

Their banners accused protesters at the June 4 commemoration and in 2014 of “using students as chess pieces” and denounced both as “despicable”.

Scuffles broke out briefly among rival protesters before police separated them.

The main vigil will start at 8:00 pm (1200 GMT) when the crowds will light candles in remembrance.

Most were plucked from a sinking boat which had broken down, leaving them stranded at sea when Cyclone Mora hit on Tuesday, killing seven people and destroying thousands of homes.

The navy said its ships were conducting an “extensive search” of the area after the storm left a trail of devastation along the coast.

They are also carrying food, emergency relief and two medical teams to Kutubdia and Saint Martin’s, two coastal islands that were hit hard by the cyclone.

“At least 15 ships have been deployed to search for survivors in the Bay of Bengal after the storm,” a senior Navy official said.

“They are still in the sea and have rescued 23 fishermen from the water.”

A navy helicopter and a maritime patrol aircraft are also conducting aerial searches for survivors, it said.

As the cyclone advanced on Bangladesh, local authorities increased the maritime threat to its highest level and ordered all fishing vessels to remain at port.

However Mushtaq Ahmed, a fishing industry representative in Cox’s Bazar, said eight boats carrying around 150 fishermen had failed to return.

“We heard some 60 fishermen were rescued by Bangladeshi and Indian navy ships. If they’re our men, we think some 90 fishermen are still missing,” he told AFP.

“They could be moored on a island or adrift at sea. In the past we have seen that most of the fishermen return to their fishing ports within a week or two. We hope this time they will also be back in good health.”

Bangladesh suffers frequent cyclones and fishermen are often reported missing only to be found in their villages after the storm has subsided.

 Extensive search 

Ahmed said it was the first time the navy had conducted such an extensive search for missing fishermen after a cyclone.

The rescues brought the total number of people plucked from the sea since Tuesday to 56.

An Indian navy ship rescued 33 Bangladeshi survivors on Wednesday and handed them over to the local authorities, senior government official Zillur Rahman Chowdhury told AFP.

“All 33 are fishermen,” Chowdhury said, adding they were tossed into the sea after their boats were caught in the cyclone.

Meanwhile, aid workers said emergency food and aid had reached tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees living in camps in Cox’s Bazar, which bore the brunt of the storm.

The World Food Programme said it was handing out 100 tonnes of high-energy biscuits to nearly 20,000 refugee families after the cyclone destroyed or damaged thousands of homes.

“After a day of going hungry with my kids, this is amazing,” said Rohingya refugee Abdul Khalek after he received 30 packs of biscuits for his family of eight.

Thousands of Rohingya have been sleeping in the open since the storm hit, despite continuing rain.

Cyclone Mora came after heavy rains in Sri Lanka caused the worst flooding the island has seen in well over a decade, killing more than 200 people.

South Asia is frequently hit by flooding in the summer with the arrival of the annual monsoon rains.