Relatives of the missing sailors reacted with grief and anger to the news after holding out hope since the sub was reported overdue at its Mar del Plata base on November 17, two days after the explosion.

“An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event consistent with an explosion,” occurred shortly after the submarine’s last communication, navy spokesman Captain Enrique Balbi told a news conference in Buenos Aires.

After days of false hopes, some of the relatives said the navy had withheld information about the sub and lied to them over the past week.

“I feel cheated,” said Itati Leguizamon, whose husband German Suarez was a sonar operator on the ARA San Juan.

“They did not tell us they died. But they tell us they are three thousand meters (9,800 feet) deep,” added Leguizamon as other family members shouted angrily around her.

“They lied to us,” said Leguizamon, a lawyer.

A sobbing Jessica Gopar, whose husband was an electrician aboard the San Juan, said “they just told us that the submarine exploded.” She spoke as she came out from the sub’s base.

“He was the love of my life, engaged seven years before we got married,” Gopar said of her husband, Fernando Santilli. “And how can I tell my son that he no longer has a father?”

Underwater sounds detected in the first days of the search by two Argentine search ships were determined to originate from a sea creature, not the vessel. Satellite signals were also determined to be false alarms.

The San Juan, a 34-year-old German-built diesel-electric submarine, had reported a battery problem on November 15 and said it was diverting to Mar del Plata, but did not send a distress signal, according to the navy.

Balbi admitted on Wednesday that the situation for the sub and its crew appeared to be worsening.

However, he refused to speculate at that point on the origin of what he initially described as a “hydro-acoustic anomaly” detected in the ocean almost three hours after the sub’s communication and 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of its last known position.

Balbi explained that information about the unusual noise only became available Wednesday after being relayed by the United States and “after all the information from all agencies reporting such hydro-acoustic events was reviewed.”

Explaining the lack of debris on the surface, Balbi said “nothing will end up floating to the surface” because a submarine “implodes”.

Gustavo Mauvecin, director of the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine at Mar del Plata, said hydrogen “is always an issue with submarines with electric engines”.

The San Juan “has 500 tons of lead-acid batteries, which release hydrogen if there is an overcharge in the battery. Hydrogen in contact with oxygen is explosive”.

An explosion ‘so violent’

“In my opinion, after an explosion like that, it’s difficult for there to be survivors,” a former submarine commander told AFP.

The newspaper La Nacion said one hypothesis is that there was a short circuit in the batteries. It said this would explain the sub’s failure to communicate and the fact that it did not have time to send off a distress signal.

The commander said a problem with batteries, as the sub had reported, could in fact cause a blast.

“A severe problem with batteries might generate hydrogen. Hydrogen above a certain percentage is explosive,” said the commander who requested anonymity.

Horacio Tobias, former chief of diving for the San Juan, said it “was so violent that they would not have had time to realize what happened”.

The San Juan would have had enough oxygen for its crew to survive underwater in the South Atlantic for seven days since its last contact, according to officials. That time had elapsed by 0730 GMT Wednesday.

Argentina is leading an air-and-sea search to try to still find the sub. It is getting help from several countries now including Brazil, Britain, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Peru, Russia, the United States and Uruguay.

Russia was the latest navy to volunteer help, sending an oceanographic research ship as the operation shifted from rescue to recovery.

The Russian defense ministry said the Yantar was steaming to the area from the western coast of Africa on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.

The weeklong search has focused on the sub’s last known position, around 200 miles off the Argentine coast, but has been hampered by bad weather.

Putin offered “words of support over the situation with the San Juan submarine” in a phone call to Argentine President Mauricio Macri late Wednesday, the Kremlin said.

Russia said the Yantar “is equipped with two deep water submersibles which allow exploratory searches at a depth of up to 6,000 meters.”

US President Donald Trump offered his support, tweeting: “May God be with them and the people of Argentina!”//AFP

A 58-year-old man identified as Erhan G. was arrested in Berlin on Monday on suspicion of dealing in the stolen goods. Prosecutors said he has “given a broad confession” in the case and provided information about stolen personal items from Lennon that remain undiscovered.

Police had on Tuesday announced the recovery of around 100 items, including diaries, a cigarette case and two pairs of Lennon’s trademark round spectacles.

One of the three diaries from the haul contains an entry penned by Lennon on December 8, 1980 — hours before he was shot dead by a disturbed fan outside his Manhattan apartment building. But numerous items are still missing.

“Among those we are looking for are a sculpture, walking sticks as well as several personal recordings and other writings,” said prosecutors in a statement.

The objects were allegedly stolen by the driver of Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono from her New York home in 2006. They were discovered this year at a bankrupt Berlin auction house.

The driver, Koral Karsan, lives in Turkey and is out of reach of German law enforcement.

The former chauffeur worked for Ono from 1995 to 2006. He already spent 60 days in jail in 2007 in the United States for trying to blackmail Ono.

Along with co-Beatle Paul McCartney, Lennon wrote some of the Fab Four’s biggest hits including “Help” and “With a Little Help from My Friends”, before the band split in 1970. His possessions have since become collectors’ items.

A leather jacket supposedly worn by Lennon sold for 11,700 euros; $13,800 at an auction in England in February.//AFP

A wing of extremist monks has been stirring Islamaphobia in Myanmar for years, earning a reputation as incubators of “Buddhist terror”.

But their cause has received new support since August, when the army launched a brutal crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya, expelling more than half a million from the country.

Global outrage over the violence — which the UN and the US have called ethnic cleansing — has triggered an ultra-nationalistic reflex inside Myanmar, pushing the public towards firebrand monks who have long cast the Rohingya as ill-intentioned outsiders.

“Our ideas have now won the vast majority of the population,” said Ottama, a prominent monk in Buddhist nationalist circles.

Speaking to AFP in a temple in Yangon, the saffron-robed monk repeated a well-worn falsehood that Muslims are poised to “swallow the nation” in a demographic assault on Myanmar’s Buddhist majority.

“Fifty years ago, only 12 percent people in Myanmar were Muslim. Now their population is about 38 percent,” he said.

Census figures show Muslims make up less than five percent of the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation.

That fraction has been chiselled down further by the latest violence in Rakhine state, which has pushed over half of the 1.1-million Rohingya into Bangladesh.

The pope, who will head to Bangladesh after Myanmar, has thrown himself into the centre of the crisis rippling across the two nations’ border.

In Yangon he will press for peace in masses expected to draw hundreds of thousands from the country’s Catholic community.

But he will also meet with Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and army chief Min Aung Hlaing — a highly symbolic sit-down between a peace icon and a general whose troops are accused murder, rape and arson.

– All in the name –

Francis is already in the crosshairs of Buddhist hardliners for expressing sympathy for the Rohingya, whom he has referred to as “brothers”.

His public comments in Myanmar will be closely scoured for any mention of the group by name — the term is rejected by the army, government and many in the Buddhist public, who insist the Muslims are “Bengalis”.

“I do not understand why the Pope is coming in the middle of a conflict, many people say he’s coming for the Bengalis,” Nyo Nyo Aung, a follower of an ultra-nationalist monk, told AFP.

Myanmar’s Catholic leaders have advised the Pope not to use the ‘R-word’, a path Suu Kyi has also taken to avoid triggering backlash from Buddhist nationalists, a powerful political bloc.

Myanmar’s Buddhist clergy has taken some steps to rein in radical members, including banning notoriously Islamaphobic monk Wirathu from giving sermons for one year, though with little enforcement.

A few days before the pope’s visit, another prominent ultra-nationalist abbot, Parmaukkha, was detained over an anti-Rohingya protest he organised in 2016.

But those moves have done little to draw the toxicity from anti-Rohingya hatred pinballing across social media in the form of rants, memes and grotesque cartoons.

This hyper-nationalism stretches back to Myanmar’s British colonial past, when the mass migration of people from South Asia caused economic and social tensions, according to Burmese historian Thant Myint-U.

“It created a sour, defensive nationalism, and remains at the heart of Myanmar’s political DNA,” he said.

Analysts warn the animus threatens to unpick fragile democratic gains in the former junta-run country and have chastised Suu Kyi for failing to use her moral authority to defend the Rohingya.

The Nobel laureate has avoided dangerous political territory by not condemning the army crackdown that sparked the refugee crisis. The Pope’s visit will test that intransigence.//AFP

The two neighbouring nations struck the instrument in the afternoon following a meeting between Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in the morning at Suu Kyi’s office.

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Minister for State Counsellor’s office Kyauw Tint Swe signed the instrument.

They also exchanged ratification of the boundary agreement 1998.

Bangladesh’s Minister Mahmood Ali made the disclosure of signing the ‘Arrangement on Return of Displaced Persons from Rakhine State’ after they reached a much-sought consensus on the Rohingya repatriation.

Talking to UNB, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said the repatriation process will start soon. “This is the first step. We’ll start our second step work now.”

Asked about deadline, he said there is timeframe but he will tell details in Dhaka and it does not make it clear whether Myanmar agreed on specific timeframe for taking back all the Rohingyas.

When approached, a diplomat told UNB that there no such timeframe over completion of Rohingyas repatriation. “Our best efforts were there.”

The bilateral instrument was being negotiated by officials of the two countries for the last couple of months.

On Wednesday morning, the senior officials of both countries negotiated the draft at their level. Later in the afternoon, Foreign Minister Mahmood Ali and the Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe resolved the remaining issues and finalised the draft after discussion.

The ‘arrangement’ stipulates that the return shall commence within two months, said the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry in a statement.

A Joint Working Group will be established within three weeks of signing the ‘Arrangement’. A specific bilateral instrument (physical arrangement) for repatriation will be concluded in a speedy manner.

During the visit, Mahmood Ali and U Kyaw Tint Swe also exchanged the long-awaited “Instrument of Ratification” of the agreement on demarcation of the land section of the boundary north of the Naaf River concluded in 1998.

The two countries also signed “Supplementary Protocol on the demarcation of a fixed boundary in the Naaf River” earlier agreed in 2007.

Minister Ali also handed over three ambulances for Rakhine State as gift from the government of Bangladesh to the Union Minister of Social Welfare, Relief Resettlement U Win Myat Aye at latter’s office in Nay Pyi Taw on Thursday morning.

The Foreign Minister will brief the media on Saturday.

He said since their houses are destroyed and burned in Rakhine State it might take time to create conditions for their living.

The government did not share what are the terms and conditions mentioned in the signed arrangement creating confusion on how the repatriation will be executed.

Earlier, Minister Ali’s meeting with Suu Kyi began at 10:00 am (Myanmar time) and it lasted for 45 minutes.

Over 622,000 Rohingyas have crossed the border and taken shelter in Cox’s Bazar district since August 25 amid persecution by Myanmar military in their Rakhine State.

Referring to the influx of Rohingyas to Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told a programme on the outskirts of Dhaka on Thursday that these Myanmar nationals are a burden on Bangladesh and urged Myanmar to start their repatriation soon.

Bangladesh in its senior officials meeting here on Wednesday raised the issue of keeping a provision for a timeframe over completion of the Rohingya repatriation, a senior official told UNB.

Dhaka also sought involvement of the international community, including the UN agencies in verification process.

Myanmar did not meet Bangladesh’s full expectation on the repatriation timeframe as it only agrees on starting time but not the ending point, a senior diplomat told UNB.

Another diplomat said Myanmar wants to start the repatriation within the next two months from now.

He said Bangladesh wants to end the Rohingya repatriation by one year though Myanmar keeps it as an open-end one without giving any specific timeframe for completion.

On involvement of UN agencies in repatriation process, Myanmar shows a bit of soft position but nothing will be legally-binding one, an official told UNB.

Bangladesh and Myanmar, however, agreed on formation of joint working group at foreign-secretary level to start the repatriation process of all Rohingyas.

Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque, Bangladesh Ambassador to Yangon M Sufiur Rahman and representatives from Home Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office also attended the negotiations on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Foreign Minister and the Myanmar’s Minister for State Counsellor’s office had a marathon meeting when they discussed various issues of bilateral interest, including the Rohingya issue.

Soon after the one-to-one lengthy meeting, the Foreign Minister attended the ministerial meeting on ‘Arrangement on Return of Displaced Persons from Rakhine State’.

The senior officials’ meeting was co-chaired by Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Myanmar U Myint Thu and Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque.

US Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson has said the United States will pursue accountability through US law, including possible targeted sanctions on Myanmar if the situation does not improve in Rakhine State.

“After a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said the US Secretary of State on Wednesday.

The international community is also watching the talks and its subsequent outcome as they want to see the safe and dignified return of the Rohingyas as quickly as possible.

Amid mounting international pressure, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday said they have planned to sign a MoU with Bangladesh which will enable them to start the repatriation process of all the Rohingyas from Bangladesh to Myanmar.

European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini, earlier, expressed her hope that Bangladesh and Myanmar will reach a decision to sign a MoU and an agreement on safe repatriation of Rohingyas from Bangladesh.

She said the EU is supporting this process and will stand ready to accompany this process in the coming week.

Earlier, the foreign ministers of Asian and European countries, in general, agreed in many areas on Rohingya issue and asked for immediate cessation of hostilities, halting of outflow, early return of externally displaced Rohingyas from Bangladesh.

They also asked for implementation of recommendations of the Kofi Annan Commission for durable solutions.