World

KIEV — Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of invading a region bordering Crimea and vowed to use “all necessary measures” to ward off an attack that came on the eve of the peninsula’s breakaway vote.

The dramatic escalation of the most serious East-West crisis since the Cold War set a tense stage for the referendum on Crimea’s secession from Ukraine in favour of Kremlin rule — a vote denounced by both the international community and Kiev.

The predominantly Russian-speaking Black Sea region of two million people was overrun by Kremlin-backed troops days after the February 22 fall in Kiev of a Moscow-backed regime and the rise of nationalist leaders who favour closer ties with the West.

President Vladimir Putin defended Moscow’s decision to flex its military muscle by arguing that ethnic Russians in Ukraine needed “protection” from violent ultranationalists who had been given free reign by the new Kiev administration.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told Secretary of State John Kerry in London on Friday that Moscow “has no, and cannot have, any plans to invade the southeast region of Ukraine”.

The invasion reported by the Ukrainian foreign ministry was small in scale and concerned a region that lies just off the northeast coast of Crimea called the Arabat Spit.

The Ukrainian ministry said 80 Russian military personnel had seized a village on the spit called Strilkove with the support of four military helicopters and three armoured personnel carriers.

The Ukrainian “foreign ministry declares the military invasion by Russia and demands the Russian side immediately withdraw its military forces from the territory of Ukraine”, it said in a statement,

“Ukraine reserves the right to use all necessary measures to stop the military invasion by Russia.”

There was no immediate response to Ukraine’s announcement from Moscow but Washington’s UN representative Samantha Power called any new Russian troop movement in south Ukraine an “outrageous escalation”.

Russia isolated at UN 

Ukraine’s claim of the invasion came on the second successive day of bloodshed that has now killed three people in the heavily Russified southeast of the culturally-splintered nation of 46 million.

The latest deadly violence flared on Friday evening in Kharkiv when a group of nationalists opened fire on pro-Russian supporters in the heart of the eastern industrial city of 1.4 million.

No one was hurt but police said the pro-Russians then chased the gunmen to the headquarters of a far-right group called Patrioty Ukrainy (Ukrainian Patriots).

Police said a pro-Russian protester and a passerby were killed when the nationalists holed up inside the building opened fire. Six others were hurt — including one officer — when police arrived at the scene.

That incident and another death in the Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv on Thursday prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry — its forces already conducting snap drills on Ukraine’s doorstep — to report “receiving many requests to protect peaceful citizens” in its western neighbour.

“These requests will be considered,” the Russian foreign ministry said.

Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov gravely told a session of parliament that Moscow’s repeated warnings meant “there is now a real danger of a [Russian] invasion on the territory of Ukraine”.

Yet Russia’s seizure of Crimea and ominous threats against the rest of Ukraine found the nuclear power staring in the face of international isolation when it was abandoned by key geopolitical ally China at a crucial UN Security Council vote on the crisis in New York.

Russia was alone in vetoing a US-drafted UN Security Council resolution reaffirming that the Crimean referendum “can have no validity” and that Ukraine must remain a sovereign state.

“Russia, isolated, alone and wrong, blocked the resolution’s passage,” Power said. “This is a sad and remarkable moment.”

The measure was backed by 13 of the Security Council’s 15 members, including Jordan, and saw Russia’s geopolitical ally China abstain — a massive blow that could shake the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of its deteriorating relations with the West.

‘No common vision’ 

The rugged diamond-shaped region that has housed tsarist and Kremlin navies since the 18th century is widely expected to vote in favour of Kremlin rule after its lawmakers declared independence from Kiev earlier this month.

The referendum comes in direct response to three months of deadly protests that toppled the pro-Kremlin president and brought to power a new European-leaning team in Kiev that threatens to shatter Putin’s dream of rebuilding a post-Soviet empire.

Kiev has denounced the Crimean vote as illegal but is also warily watching as separatist sentiments spread through other southeastern regions with centuries old cultural and trade links to Russia.

Yet Moscow backs the ballot despite a new round of painful sanctions against top Russian officials that Washington and EU nations are expected to unveil on Monday.

The worst standoff in East-West relations since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall found no solution when Kerry and Lavrov locked horns in six-hour talks in London about Crimea that ended in a handshake and an agreement that the two sides remained as far as before.

“We have no common vision of the situation,” Lavrov grimly told reporters.

A US diplomat said Kerry found himself at checkmate when Lavrov “made it clear that President [Vladimir] Putin is not prepared to make any decision regarding Ukraine until after the referendum on Sunday”.

That timing is far too late for US officials who accuse Crimea’s separatist leaders and their Kremlin backers of holding the vote at “gunpoint”.

Crisis hits Russia’s tycoons 

The European Union will debate travel bans and asset freezes on Monday against Russian officials held responsible for threatening Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Germany’s Bild daily cited Western diplomats as saying that the Russians on the joint US-EU travel ban list will include Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Kremlin Chief-of-Staff Sergei Ivanov along with other top Putin advisers.

US officials have stressed that Putin himself is not on the sanctions list.

The threat of Western economic sanctions saw the Moscow stock market lose 11 per cent of its value last week — a drop that the Wealth-X research firm said cost the country’s top 10 tycoons $6.6 billion and may put additional domestic pressure on Putin.

ISTANBUL — Prime Minister Rece[ Tayyip Erdogan accused protesters on Thursday of trying to sow chaos to influence local elections after Turkey’s worst day of civil unrest since anti-government demonstrations swept the nation last summer.

Late on Wednesday, a man in Istanbul was shot dead and a police officer in eastern Turkey suffered a fatal heart attack. Erdogan said demonstrators had “burned and destroyed” offices of his ruling AK Party in Istanbul.

“You were supposed to be democrats, pro-freedom. These are charlatans, they have nothing to do with democracy, they do not believe in the ballot box,” Erdogan said at an opening ceremony for an underground train line in the capital Ankara.

“They are saying let’s cause chaos and maybe we’ll get a result. But my brothers in Ankara and Turkey will give the necessary answer on March 30 [in the local polls],” he added.

Erdogan portrays the clashes, and a corruption scandal dogging his government, as part of an anti-government plot embracing foreign and domestic forces. He accuses Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally, of using influence in police and judiciary to engineer the graft inquiry to undermine him.

Gulen denies such intrigues. The cleric’s supporters accuse Erdogan of increasingly authoritarian conduct compromising liberal reforms of the first years of his 11 years in office.

Riot police clashed with demonstrators in several Turkish cities on Wednesday as mourners buried a teenager, wounded in the protests last June, whose death this week after nine months in a coma sparked a fresh wave of disturbances.

On Wednesday night, police fired water cannon, tear gas and rubber pellets on a major Istanbul avenue to stop tens of thousands of protesters reaching the central Taksim square. There were similar scenes in the centre of Ankara and in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir.

Officers in riot gear chased groups of protesters into side streets late into the night in Istanbul.

Deaths and injuries

An unidentified assailant shot dead a 22-year-old in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district late on Wednesday after a verbal dispute between two groups turned into a fight, the provincial governor’s office said in a statement.

It said one man suffered a gunshot wound to the hand and another a wound to the stomach during the gunfire. They were not in a critical condition.

In the eastern province of Tunceli, which also saw protests on Wednesday, a police officer died after suffering a heart attack, which the local governor’s office said occurred when protesters threw stones at his vehicle.

The local elections will be the first real test of Erdogan’s popularity since the Summer riots, the unfolding of the graft scandal and the power struggle with Gulen. Opinion polls suggest the prime minister, whose AK Party dominates the electoral map, remains fiercely popular, especially in the conservative Anatolian heartlands after a decade of rising prosperity.

The death on Tuesday of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who got caught up in street battles in Istanbul between police and protesters last June while going to buy bread for his family, has hit a raw nerve with many Turks.

Views of Wednesday’s events highlighted the polarised political atmosphere in Turkey. While Erdogan attacked anti-democratic forces “setting fire to the streets”, main opposition CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu held him responsible for the death of Elvan, whom he described as a “martyr of democracy”.

“I urge all our citizens, please don’t respond to the provocation. We will seek our rights through the democratic path,” he told reporters after visiting Elvan’s family.

In a written statement on Wednesday, Kilicdaroglu had accused Erdogan of a “dangerous provocation”, saying the prime minister saw “dragging Turkey into great disorder and an atmosphere of chaos as his only path to salvation”.

Speaking to Hurriyet Daily News about those comments, he said he had heard rumours that a fake assassination attempt could be staged against Erdogan to shore up his support.

At Wednesday’s funeral, crowds chanting “Tayyip! Killer!” held up photos of Elvan earlier in the day as his coffin, draped in red and covered in flowers, was carried through the streets of Istanbul’s working class Okmeydani district for burial.

Those attending the protests said Erdogan’s silence on Elvan’s death, in contrast to President Abdullah Gul and other public figures who issued messages of condolence, highlighted how out of touch he was with a large segment of Turkish society.

NEW YORK — Rescuers working amid gusty winds, cold temperatures and billowing smoke pulled four additional bodies Thursday from the rubble of two New York City apartment buildings, raising the death toll to at least seven from a gas leak-triggered explosion that reduced the area to a pile of smashed bricks, splinters and mangled metal.

The blast Wednesday morning in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighbourhood injured more than 60 people, with searchers still trying to locate others a day later. Crews used generator-powered floodlights and thermal imaging cameras to identify heat spots — bodies or pockets of fire — at the site on Park Avenue and 116th Street. Police guarding the scene wore surgical masks and neighbourhood residents covered faces with scarfs amid the thick, acrid air.

Fire department spokesman Jim Long said it was “a very terrible and traumatic scene”.

Mayor Bill de Blasio told firefighters at the scene Thursday morning, “I can only imagine knowing that at any moment you might find a body, how difficult that is”.

Edward Kilduff, the fire department’s chief of department, said the amount of debris had been reduced to about 1½ floors by Thursday morning.

Firefighters were perched on surrounding rooftops Thursday morning, dousing the still-smoldering debris from above, drawing huge clouds of thick smoke that swirled over Park Avenue and wafted through the neighbourhood.

Construction equipment with iron jaws picked up the smoldering debris, first depositing it on the pavement, then hoisting it onto trucks that hauled it away. The debris was a wrecked collection of what were once apartment buildings, from structural beams and wood to pieces of windows and residents’ belongings.

The weather also posed a challenge, with temperatures dropping well below freezing and rain falling, but workers remained at the site.

The fiery blast erupted just 15 minutes after a neighbouring resident reported smelling gas, authorities said. The Con Edison utility said it immediately sent workers to check out the report, but they didn’t arrive until it was too late.

The explosion shattered windows a block away, rained debris onto elevated commuter railroad tracks close by, cast a plume of smoke over the skyline and sent people running into the streets.

Hunter College identified one victim as Griselde Camacho, a 45-year-old security officer who worked for the university since 2008.

Also killed was Carmen Tanco, 67, a dental hygienist. Her cousin News 12 cameraman Angel Vargas said the family started a frantic search when she didn’t show up for work Wednesday.

Officials in Mexico said two of the victims came from the central Mexican state of Puebla. The state’s government identified them as Rosaura Barrios Vazquez, 43, and Rosaura Hernandez Barrios, 22. The government did not say whether the women were related.

New York police had put Hernandez Barrios’ age at 21.The bodies of three unidentified men also were pulled from the rubble, authorities said.

At least three of the injured were children; one, a 15-year-old boy, was reported in critical condition with burns, broken bones and internal injuries. Most of the other victims’ injuries were minor and included cuts and scrapes.

A tenant in one of the destroyed buildings, Ruben Borrero, said residents had complained to the landlord about smelling gas as recently as Tuesday.

A few weeks ago, Borrero said, city fire officials were called about the odor, which he said was so bad that a tenant on the top floor broke open the door to the roof for ventilation.

“It was unbearable,” said Borrero, who lived in a second-floor apartment with his mother and sister, who were away at the time of the explosion. “You walk in the front door and you want to turn around and walk directly out.”

The fire department said a check of its records found no instances in the past month in which tenants of the two buildings reported gas odors or leaks.

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia said Thursday that satellite images of suspected debris from a missing jet were yet another false lead, and debunked a report the plane had flown on for hours after losing contact — leaving the nearly week-old mystery no closer to being solved.

China had sparked talk of a breakthrough in the riddle of the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) jet with satellite images of three large floating objects near where flight 370 with 239 people on board lost contact on Saturday, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But Vietnamese and Malaysian planes that searched the area in the South China Sea on Thursday found no sign of wreckage of the Boeing 777, which has one of the best safety records of any jet.

Adding to confusion, the Wall Street Journal reported that US investigators suspected the plane flew for four hours after its last known contact with air traffic control at 1:30am Malaysian time, based on data automatically sent from its Rolls-Royce engines.

It would mean flight MH370 travelled for hundreds of kilometres after it dropped off the radar, expanding the potential crash site far beyond the vast zone under scrutiny now.

The WSJ said US counterterrorism officials were probing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board diverted the jet towards an unknown location after turning off its communication transponder.

But Malaysia denied the report as “inaccurate”.

“The last [data] transmission from the aircraft was at 0107 hours which indicated that everything was normal,” Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.

“Rolls-Royce and Boeing teams are here in Kuala Lumpur and have worked with MAS and investigation teams since Sunday. These issues have never been raised.”

He added that China had told Malaysia that the satellite photos posted on the website of a Chinese state science agency were released “by mistake and did not show any debris”.

‘Every day like eternity’ 

The day of Malaysian denials only exacerbated the puzzles surrounding the search for flight MH370, which has been blighted by false alarms, swirling rumours and contradictory statements about its fate.

Authorities have chased up all manner of leads, including oil slicks, a supposed life raft found at sea and even witness accounts of a nighttime explosion, only to rule them all out.

“Every day it just seems like it’s an eternity,” Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul was on board, told CNN from their home in the Australian city of Perth.

Fighting back tears, she described how Paul had left his wedding ring and watch with her for safekeeping before starting his journey to a mining venture in Mongolia.

“I’m praying that I can give [them] back to him. It’s all I can hold onto. Because there’s no finality to it and we’re not getting any information,” she said.

Malaysia has contributed to the confusion by saying the plane may have turned back after taking off.

Military radar detected an unidentified object early Saturday north of the Malacca Strait off west Malaysia but it is unclear if it was the missing airliner.

The search for the plane now encompasses both sides of peninsular Malaysia, over an area of nearly 90,000 square kilometres — roughly the size of Portugal — and involves the navies and air forces of multiple nations.

Theories about the possible cause of the disappearance range from a catastrophic technical failure to a midair explosion, hijacking, rogue missile strike and even pilot suicide.

Beijing will keep up the search “as long as there is a glimmer of hope”, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said.

The passengers included 153 Chinese citizens, and Li told his once-a-year news conference: “Those people’s families and friends are burning with anxiety.”

The satellite information prompted the focus of the search to swing back Thursday to the original flight path, after a shift in recent days to Malaysia’s west coast — far from the last known location.

“We will look at all areas especially the ones with concrete clues,” a spokesman for Malaysia’s civil aviation department said.

The China Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application said in a statement on its website earlier this week that it had deployed eight land observation satellites to scour the suspected crash area.

By Tuesday morning, it had obtained images covering 120,000 square kilometres, describing their quality as “rather good”.

China has also requested assistance from a fleet of Earth-monitoring satellites under an international charter designed to aid emergency efforts.

US authorities said their spy satellites had detected no sign of a mid-air explosion.

Malaysian police said Thursday they were investigating the two pilots, after an Australian television report of a past cockpit security breach, although the transport minister denied that their homes had been raided.

Malaysia Airlines has said it was “shocked” over allegations that First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, along with a fellow pilot, violated airline rules in 2011 by allowing two young South African women into their cockpit during a flight.

KIEV — Leading world powers in the Group of Seven 

(G-7) warned Wednesday against Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea as the Ukrainian premier prepared to seek US President Barack Obama’s help against the Kremlin’s expansionist threat.

The first meeting between Obama and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk comes with the nation on the EU’s eastern border in danger of breaking apart when the predominantly ethnic Russian region holds a Moscow-backed referendum Sunday on switching over to Kremlin rule.

Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said his heavily outnumbered army would never try to seize back the Black Sea peninsula from Russian troops who made their landgrab days after the February 22 ouster in Kiev of pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych.

“We cannot launch a military operation in Crimea, as we would expose the eastern border and Ukraine would not be protected,” Turchynov said in an interview with AFP.

But Turchynov also said Russian President Vladimir Putin had so far resisted intense international pressure and refused all contacts with Kiev aimed at resolving the worst breakdown in East-West relations since the Cold War.

Putin’s growing diplomatic isolation intensified when the G-7 industrialised nations issued a joint call on Russia “to cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law”.

“The annexation of Crimea could have grave implications for the legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states,” said the statement from countries accounting for more than 60 per cent of global wealth.

EU foreign ministers are now expected to discuss punitive measures against senior Russian officials at a meeting in Brussels on Monday.

The 28-nation bloc’s leaders will then meet for a March 20-21 summit that German Chancellor Angela Merkel said could witness the signing of a historic EU-Ukraine accord whose rejection by ousted president Viktor Yanukovych in November sparked the deadly protests against his rule.

“We agreed to sign the political part of the association agreement with Ukraine as soon as possible, probably at the next EU summit,” Merkel said.

Washington said Moscow could still avoid punishments if it showed a willingness to soften its stance on Crimea during talks in London on Friday between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“We will offer certain choices to Foreign Minister Lavrov and through him President Putin in the hopes, and I think the hopes of the world, that we will be able to find a way forward,” Kerry told lawmakers.

Russia’s first military involvement in a neighbouring nation since its brief 2008 war with Georgia has sparked an explosive security crisis and exposed previous rifts between Western allies over ways to deal with Putin’s undisguised efforts to rebuild vestiges of the Soviet state.

Washington has already imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Russians held responsible for violating the territorial integrity of the culturally splintered nation of 46 million people.

But the European Union — its financial and energy sectors much more dependent on Russia than those of the United States — has only threatened tougher measures after taking the lighter step of suspending free travel and broad economic treaty talks.

French President Francois Hollande told Putin in a phone conversation that any annexation of Crimea would be “unacceptable” but said there was still time to prevent a “dangerous” escalation.

Yet the international community’s almost unanimous rejection of the referendum’s legitimacy has done little to slow Russia’s attempt to redraw Europe’s post-war borders by absorbing a region that was handed to Ukraine as a “gift” when it was still a Soviet republic in 1954.

Russia’s parliament is due on March 21 to consider legislation to simplify the procedure under which Moscow can annex a part of another country that has proclaimed independence — as Crimean lawmakers did Tuesday.

Oval Office handshake

The White House is leaving no doubt about the message it intends to send to Russia with the visit of Yatsenyuk — a premier Moscow considers illegitimate.

He will be greeted by Obama in the Oval Office — a symbol of US power — like any other foreign leader and also meet Vice President Joe Biden who rushed back from a trip to South America to join the talks.

Washington said Yatsenyuk’s reception was intended to show that it believed that Kiev’s interim government has been playing a responsible role in the crisis.

“We strongly support Ukraine, the Ukrainian people and the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian government,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

Yatsenyuk will also use the chance to iron out details of a $35-billion (25-billion-euro) aid package he says his nation’s teetering economy needs to stay afloat over the coming two years after being mismanaged by Yanukovych — now living in self-imposed exile in Russia.

Ukraine ‘will not attack’ 

Ukraine’s soldiers and marines have won plaudits from Western leaders for refusing to open fire against Russian troops and Kremlin-backed militia who have encircled their bases and kept their ships from going out to sea.

Turchynov said that as commander in chief he understood fully the futility of launching an all-out war against a much larger invading force that had nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of additional troops stationed just inside Russia.

“Significant tank units are massed near Ukraine’s eastern border,” Turchynov told AFP.

“They’re provoking us to have a pretext to intervene on the Ukrainian mainland... [but] we cannot follow the scenario written by the Kremlin.”

Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy added to the tinderbox atmosphere by noting that Russia’s forces stood “just a few hours away from Kiev”.

Putin has accused Turchynov and Yatsenyuk of rising to power through an “unconstitutional coup” that came at the apex of last month’s street unrest in Kiev in which nearly 100 people died.

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia denied Wednesday that the hunt for a missing jet was in disarray, after the search veered far from the planned route and China said that conflicting information about its course was “pretty chaotic”.

Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia would “never give up hope” of finding the plane’s 239 passengers and crew, dismissing allegations that efforts were mired in confusion after a series of false alarms, rumours and contradictory statements.

“I don’t think so. It’s far from it. It’s only confusion if you want it to be seen as confusion,” he said at a press conference, where military and civilian officials faced a grilling from a combative crowd of journalists.

“I think it’s not a matter of chaos. There are a lot of speculations [sic] that we have answered in the last few days,” he said.

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 now encompasses nearly 27,000 nautical miles (over 90,000 square kilometres) — roughly the size of Portugal — and involves the navies and air forces of multiple nations.

The search focus had been on an area off Vietnam’s South China Sea coast, where it last made contact Saturday on a journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But Malaysian authorities said Wednesday they were expanding it to the Andaman Sea, north of Indonesia, hundreds of kilometres away.

“So right now there is a lot of information, and it’s pretty chaotic, so up to this point we too have had difficulty confirming whether it is accurate or not,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said of accounts of the jet’s course. There were 153 Chinese nationals on the flight.

India’s coastguard joined the aerial search off the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands Wednesday and the Indian Air Force was put on standby.

Mystery object 

Malaysian air force chief General Rodzali Daud attempted to explain why the search zone had been expanded, telling the press conference that military radar detected an unidentified object early Saturday north of the Malacca Strait off Malaysia’s west coast.

He said that the reading, taken less than an hour after the plane lost contact over the South China Sea, was still being investigated and they were not able to confirm it was MH370.

The confusion has fuelled perceptions that Malaysian authorities are unable to handle a crisis on this scale and infuriated relatives.

Analysts said there were burning questions over what information — if any — Malaysia has gleaned from both military and civilian radar, and the Boeing 777’s transponders and over discounted reports it was later detected near Indonesia.

“It’s bad enough for a wide-body jet to go missing with 239 people on board, but then for the responsible country’s government and aviation agencies to handle the associated information with total incompetence is unforgivable,” said David Learmount from industry magazine Flightglobal.

“There are so many information sources that do not appear to have been used effectively in this case. As a result the families of the missing passengers and crew are being kept in the dark,” said Learmount, Flightglobal’s operations and safety editor.

One new detail did emerge — the words of MH370’s final radio transmission.

Malaysia’s ambassador to China, Iskandar Sarudin, said one of the pilots said “alright, good night” as the flight switched from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace, according to Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper.

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, later confirmed to AFP that those were the last words from the cockpit.

Public anger 

Frustrations boiled over in Malaysia, with the country’s active social media and some press outlets turning from sympathy for the families of relatives to anger over the fruitless search.

“The mood among Malaysians now is moving from patience... to embarrassment and anger over discrepancies about passengers, offloaded baggage and concealed information about its last known position,” Malaysian Insider, a leading news portal, said in a commentary.

Twitter users took aim at the web of contradictory information that has fuelled conspiracy theories.

“If the Malaysian military did not see MH370 turn toward the Malacca Strait, then why the search? Who decided to look there and why?” one comment said.

The anger was compounded by a report aired on Australian television of a past cockpit security breach involving the co-pilot of the missing jet.

Malaysia Airlines said it was “shocked” over allegations that First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, along with a fellow pilot violated airline rules in 2011 by allowing two young South African women into their cockpit during a flight.

WASHINGTON — A man who spent 30 years on death row in Louisiana has walked free after a court threw out his murder conviction.

Glenn Ford, 64, one of the longest serving death row prisoners in the United States, was ordered to be released after new information cleared him of a 1983 murder.

“My mind’s going all kinds of directions, but it feels good,” Ford told reporters outside the Louisiana State Penitentiary after his release Tuesday, according to CNN affiliate WAFB.

Ford, an African-American who had been on death row since 1984 after his conviction by an all-white jury, said he has missed out on much of his life.

“My sons — when I left — was babies. Now they grown men with babies,” he said.

“Thirty years of my life, if not all of it,” he said. “I can’t go back.”

A judge ordered that Ford be freed after prosecutors petitioned the court to release him, said the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana.

New information corroborated what Ford has maintained all along: that he was not present at nor involved in the November 1983 slaying of jeweller Isadore Rozeman, the project said.

Rozeman, 56, was found shot to death behind the counter of his shop on November 5, 1983. Reports say no murder weapon was ever found and there were no eyewitnesses to the crime.

“Glenn Ford is living proof of just how flawed our justice system truly is,” Amnesty International USA senior campaigner Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris said in a statement, according to CNN.

“We are moved that Mr Ford, an African-American man convicted by an all-white jury, will be able to leave death row a survivor.”

CBS said that under Louisiana law, those who have served time but are later exonerated are entitled to receive compensation.

The law calls for payments of $25,000 for every year of wrongful incarceration up to a maximum of $250,000, plus another $80,000 for loss of “life opportunities”.

ISTANBUL — Protesters clashed with police in Turkey on Wednesday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to mourn a teenage boy who died from injuries suffered during last year’s anti-government protests.

Riot police fired teargas and water cannon at protesters in the capital Ankara, while in Istabanbul, crowds shouting anti-government slogans lit a huge fire as they made their way to a cemetery for the burial of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan.

Elvan, who died in an Istanbul hospital on Tuesday after 269 days in a coma, was hit on the head by a teargas canister while going to buy bread during the demonstrations against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that gripped Turkey in June.

“Berkin’s murderers are the AKP police,” protesters shouted in Istanbul, referring to Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“The rage of mothers will suffocate the killers,” screamed others as they marched through the streets after Elvan’s funeral.

His death prompted protests reminiscent of last year’s unrest, with thousands of people clashing with police on Tuesday in at least 32 cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, where the most violent clashes took place.

The renewed unrest is likely to add to pressure on Erdogan, whose government has been rocked by an escalating corruption scandal ahead of elections that could decide his fate.

“How many young people have to die for Erdogan to resign? My only wish is this fascism to end without spilling more blood,” said retired worker Atilla Izmirlioglu.

Elvan’s story became a symbol of the heavy-handed police tactics against demonstrators in June, the biggest of Erdogan’s 11-year rule.

Erdogan has vowed to step down if the AKP, in power since 2002, loses local elections on March 30 that are seen as a key test of his popularity after last year’s unrest and the graft probe.

Government spokesman Bulent Arinc said Turkey had been in mourning since Elvan’s death.

“It is very sad that a child has died in an incident that occurred on the street,” he said.

According to local media, some 20 demonstrators were injured and 150 arrests made after Tuesday’s clashes.

President Abdullah Gul expressed his sadness Tuesday at the boy’s death and appealed for calm, urging everyone “to do everything to prevent this from happening again”.

The protests of June last year started as a relatively small environmentalist movement to save Istanbul’s central Gezi Park but evolved into a nationwide wave of protests against Erdogan, who is seen as increasingly authoritarian.

An estimated 2.5 million people took to the streets across Turkey over three weeks in June to demand Erdogan’s resignation. More than 8,000 people were injured, according to medics.

Elvan’s death brought the toll from the unrest to at least eight, including one policeman.

‘Enough is enough’ 

The boy’s mother Gulsum Elvan had challenged Erdogan, who praised police “heroism” during the protests.

“It’s not God who took my son away but prime minister Erdogan,” the tearful mother told reporters on Tuesday.

One student who gave her name as Ayse also blamed the embattled prime minister for the boy’s death.

“Erdogan’s police killed this guy. He should be ashamed but he didn’t even send his condolences to the family.

“Enough is enough, we are fed up with this government of murderers,” she told AFP.

Several political parties and trade unions had called for mass demonstrations on Wednesday after Elvan’s funeral.

“Their children steal millions and our children are killed when they go to buy bread,” said the Disk union.

The union was referring to a corruption scandal that broke in December, implicating Erdogan’s inner circle and their families.

Since then, sporadic protests have continued against controversial measures taken by Erdogan in response to the scandal, including laws tightening state control over the Internet and the judiciary.

KIEV — Crimea’s Parliament said Tuesday that if the public votes to become part of Russia, the peninsula will declare itself independent and propose becoming a Russian state. That could offer a way of de-escalating the standoff between Russia and the West.

The vote in Crimea’s parliament about Sunday’s referendum could give Moscow the option of saying there is no need for Crimea to become part of Russia while keeping it firmly within its sphere of influence.

The dispute between Moscow and the West over Crimea is one of the most severe geopolitical crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Russian forces have secured control over the peninsula, but Ukraine’s government and Western nations have denounced the referendum as illegitimate and strongly warned Russia against trying to annex Crimea.

The Crimean Parliament’s declaration could put the bid to join Russia on hold, depending on the outcome of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bargaining with the West.

In Sunday’s referendum, the public will be given two options: Becoming part of Russia, or remaining in Ukraine with broader powers.

Crimea, where Russia maintains its Black Sea Fleet base, became the epicentre of tensions in Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych fled last month in the wake of months of protests and outbreaks of bloodshed.

Kiev-based political analyst Vadim Karasyov said the Crimean Parliament’s move is “a message to the West that there is no talk about Russia incorporating Crimea”. He said: “It’s a tranquiliser for everybody — for the West and for many in Ukraine who are panicking.”

Karasyov speculated that Crimea could exist as a “quasi-legitimate” state, while Russia and the West negotiate.

After a brief war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, some leaders in Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia lobbied to join Russia, but their request was never granted.

Putin’s “task now is to get a stake in the shareholding company called Ukraine. He believes that the West now has the majority stake and he doesn’t even have a blocking package”, Karasyov told the AP. “So Crimea is an attempt to get a blocking package.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry later said in a statement that the Crimean parliament’s action was legitimate. “Russia will respect the results of Crimea’s referendum that will be monitored by OSCE observers,” the ministry said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone Tuesday at Washington’s initiative.

“From the Russian side, the necessity was underlined of taking into complete account the interests of all Ukrainians and all regions in the search for an exit from the crisis and also the respect of the right of the residents of Crimea to determine their fate on their own in accordance with the norms of international law,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Sergei Zheleznyak, a deputy speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, rejected proposals to draft new legislation to facilitate Crimea’s accession into Russia.

Zheleznyak wouldn’t elaborate, and it wasn’t clear whether his statement signaled the Kremlin’s willingness to relax tensions or was part of legal manoeuvring over the annexation plans.

If Putin can’t negotiate a solution to the crisis with the West, the Crimean parliament’s move could also facilitate accession into Russia. Under current law, Russia needs to reach agreement with a foreign state to incorporate part of it. Crimea’s declaration of independence could solve that, though the West made it clear it would not recognise the annexation.

In a sign that some members of Putin’s entourage would prefer a negotiated solution to an all-out confrontation with the West, Konstantin Remchukov, the well-connected publisher and editor of the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, spoke strongly against annexing Crimea.

Remchukov, who avoids criticising Putin, said on Ekho Moskvy radio that the move will trigger painful Western sanctions and cripple the Russian economy.

Remchukov said he believes Russia could negotiate a deal that would have the West guarantee the rights of Russian speakers and ensure its Black Sea Fleet’s continuing presence in Crimea. Russia could promise concessions on the Syrian and Iranian crises in response to the Western willingness to respect Russian interests in Ukraine, Remchukov suggested.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s acting president on Tuesday called for the formation of a national guard and for the mobilisation of reserves and volunteers into the country’s armed forces.

At the same time, acting Ukrainian Defence Minister Ihor Tenyukh admitted that Ukrainian armed forces and equipment were significantly outnumbered by the Russian army and exhorted wealthy Ukrainians to donate money to equip the nation’s army.

He said Russia has some 220,000 troops, 800 tanks, 400 helicopters, 150 planes and 60 ships used in Crimea and in military exercises near Ukrainian borders, “several times” more than what the Ukrainian army has.

“What secures victory at war is organisation, resources, strategy, tactics and fighting spirit. Today, the armed forces only have the latter two elements — tactics and fighting spirit,” Tenyukh told parliament.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who will fly to Washington to meet President Barack Obama on Wednesday, called on Western nations to defend Ukraine against a nation “that is armed to the teeth and that has nuclear weapons”.

Yatsenyuk asked Russia, the US and European Union member Britain to abide by a treaty signed in 1994, in which they pledged to guarantee Ukraine’s security in exchange for surrendering its share of Soviet nuclear arsenals to Russia.

“We are not asking for anything from anyone,” Yatsenyuk told parliament. “We are asking for just one thing: Military aggression has been used against our country. Those who guaranteed that this aggression will not take place must from the one side pull out troops and from the other side must defend our independent, sovereign state.”

Later in the day, parliament passed a resolution calling on the US and Britain to “use all possible diplomatic, political, economic and military measures for an immediate stopping of aggression”.

Yanukovych, speaking in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, repeated Russia’s claim that the new Ukrainian authorities are kowtowing to radical nationalists, and posed a threat to Russian-speaking eastern regions.

Yanukovych, who fled last month after months of protests, said he would soon return to Ukraine.

The European Union, meanwhile, on Tuesday proposed a package of trade liberalisation to support Ukraine’s economy, unilaterally abolishing almost all import tariffs on Ukrainian products in a step that is expected to save the country’s exporters 500 million euros ($695 million) annually.

The measure comes without asking Ukrainian concessions in return.

Europe “is committed, and ready, to support Ukraine to stabilise its economic and financial situation,” said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

“I’m delighted that we have been able to act so swiftly to prepare the way for help to Ukraine,” said EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht.

The decision still requires approval from the European Parliament and the 28-nation bloc’s member states, but that is widely considered to be uncontroversial.

NAMIE, Japan — Japan observed a moment of silence Tuesday to mark the third anniversary of the quake-tsunami disaster which swept away thousands of victims, destroyed coastal communities, and sparked the nuclear emergency that forced a re-think on atomic power.

Survivors bowed deeply and joined hands at remembrance ceremonies in towns and cities around the disaster zone and in Tokyo, where Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko led tributes to those who died in Japan’s worst peace-time disaster.

A national moment of silence followed the cry of tsunami alarm sirens which were set off at 2:46pm (0546 GMT), the moment a 9-magnitude undersea quake hit.

Its raw force unleashed a towering wall of water that travelled at the speed of a jet plane to the coast. Within minutes, communities were turned to matchwood, and whole families drowned.

Giant waves also crashed into the Fukushima nuclear plant, sparking reactor meltdowns and explosions, and setting off the worst atomic crisis in a generation.

The crippled plant remains volatile and the complicated decommissioning process is expected to last for decades, as fears persist over the health effects of leaked radiation. Tens of thousands were evacuated from the stricken area.

As night fell, an event in a Fukushima park saw about 2,000 lit candles arranged to read “Fukushima 3/11”.

“We must sincerely regret the accident and tackle the reconstruction by keeping the hardships faced by Fukushima people in mind,” Naomi Hirose, head of embattled plant operator Tokyo Electric Power, told employees at the wrecked site.

In Tokyo, Emperor Akihito paid tribute to victims killed in the tragedy, and those struggling in its aftermath.

“Many still lead difficult lives in devastated areas and places that were evacuated,” he said.

“I pray for a return of peaceful times.”

Although no one died as a direct result of Fukushima, about 1,650 area residents passed away from complications related to stress and other problems following the accident.

A total of 15,884 people are confirmed to have died in the tsunami with another 2,633 still listed as missing. Human remains are sometimes still found years later.

In the shattered town of Namie, just eight kilometres from the stricken plant, about 200 former residents, police and firefighters searched for remains. They raked a beach where broken timber and cars pulled by the waves once lay half buried.

“Our parents are still missing,” said 25-year-old former resident Miho Suzuki, joined by her sister.

“I don’t think we’ll ever find them, but we came here to take part because we felt like doing something to help.”

For another former Namie resident, Morihisa Kadoya, returning to a town that remains uninhabitable due to health concerns seems like a distant dream.

“It’s impossible to come back — the decommissioning at the plant is going to take years,” he said.

Despite the government pledging billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, progress in disaster-hit regions has been slow, some communities remain ghost towns, and thousands of disaster refugees struggle to cope.

Among almost 270,000 evacuees from the tsunami and Fukushima, about 100,000 are in temporary housing while others found shelter in new cities or with relatives.

Japan has so far built only 3.5 per cent of the new homes promised to disaster refugees in heavily affected Iwate and Miyagi prefectures.

“I’m determined to accelerate the recovery and not let this disaster fade from memory,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament Monday.

“Japan’s revival won’t come without the restoration of devastated areas.”

Nuclear fears still raw 

On Sunday, tens of thousands came to an anti-nuclear rally in Tokyo, voicing anger at Abe’s plan to switch on shuttered nuclear reactors, which had supplied more than a quarter of the resource-poor nation’s power.

“Prime Minister Abe and the nuclear industry are hoping the Japanese people and the world will forget the victims and the terrible lessons of Fukushima, hoping that they will allow the restart of old, risky reactors,” said Junichi Sato, executive director of Greenpeace Japan.

All of Japan’s reactors were switched off after the accident, forcing the country to turn to pricey fossil-fuel alternatives to plug the energy gap.

Despite Tokyo’s push to boost renewable energy, power sourced from wind farms and solar energy remains a fraction of Japan’s needs. Concerns have also been raised about meeting greenhouse-gas reduction targets without atomic power.