Category: World

According to data from the flight recorder, both of the plane’s fuel control switches moved from the run to the cut-off position in the space of a second, shortly after take-off.

The switches are usually only cut off to turn off the engines after landing, or during emergency situations such as an engine fire – rather than during take-off.

The cut-off caused both engines to lose thrust, the AAIB report said.

There is then confusion heard in the cockpit, with one pilot asking the other why he had switched off the fuel, which the other denied. The Gatwick-bound plane was being piloted by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kundar. The report does not specify which voice is which.

The fuel switches then moved back into their normal in-flight position, automatically starting the process of relighting the engines. One engine, the report said, was able to regain thrust – but could not reverse the plane’s deceleration.

One of the pilots submitted a Mayday call just before the plane plummeted and crashed into a building used as doctors’ accommodation, causing an explosion.

Both pilots had an “adequate rest period prior” to the flight, the report said.

Experts had previously speculated that birds could have caused the crash, but the report said that “no significant bird activity” was observed in the vicinity of the plane’s flight path.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin in 2019 highlighting that some Boeing 737 fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged, the report said.

The issue was not deemed an unsafe condition requiring an Airworthiness Directive – a legally enforceable regulation.

The same switch design is used in Air India’s VT-ANB aircraft which crashed. As the bulletin was advisory, Air India did not perform inspections.

Experts who spoke to the BBC offered differing opinions on whether this could have played a factor.

An Air India spokesperson said the airline acknowledged receipt of the preliminary report.

“We continue to fully co-operate with the AAIB and other authorities as their investigation progresses. Given the active nature of the investigation, we are unable to comment on specific details and refer all such enquiries to the AAIB,” the Air India spokesperson added.

In a statement, Boeing said it would defer to AAIB to provide information about the crashed plane, in adherence with protocol under the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao). It also said it continued to support the investigation and its customer, Air India.

The US National Transportation Safety Board said that there were no recommended actions in the report aimed at operators of Boeing-787 jets or the GE engines.

The accident marked the first time a 787-8 Dreamliner suffered a fatal crash since entering service in 2011.

The crash is a major setback for Air India, which is in the middle of a business turnaround following its privatisation. It was bought out by the Tata Group from the Indian government in 2022.

The airline has announced a cut in international operations on its wide-body aircraft as it grapples with several disruptions in the aftermath of the crash.

(BBC)

(AFP) – Israel increasingly appears eager to oust the clerical leadership that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution but is taking a gamble given the Iranian opposition is divided and there is no guarantee new rulers would be any less hardline, analysts say.

By striking targets other than nuclear or ballistic facilities, such as Iran’s IRIB broadcaster, expectations have grown that Israel has goals beyond degrading Iranian atomic and missile capabilities and eyes removing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But while President Donald Trump has warned “we know” where Khamenei “is hiding”, what would follow his removal after over three-and-a-half decades in power is shrouded in uncertainty and risk.

European leaders are haunted by the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the NATO-led intervention in Libya in 2011.

They resulted in the removal of dictators Saddam Hussein and Moamer Kadhafi but also in years of bloody mayhem in both countries.

“The biggest mistake today is to seek regime change in Iran through military means because that would lead to chaos,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at the end of the G7 summit in Canada.

“Does anyone think that what was done in Iraq in 2003… or what was done in Libya the previous decade was a good idea? No!” Macron said.

Analysts say ousting Khamenei and his fellow clerical leaders risks creating a vacuum that could be filled by hardline elements in the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) ideological force or the Iranian military.

“Israel’s strikes seem more focused on regime change than non-proliferation,” said Nicole Grajewski, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

“Of course Israel is targeting ballistic missile and military related facilities but they are also targeting leadership and symbols of the regime like the IRIB,” she told AFP.

“If the regime were to fall, the hope would be for a liberal and democratic government.

“However, there is a strong likelihood that other powerful entities like the IRGC could emerge as the replacement,” she said.

‘No organised alternative’

Among the highest-profile opposition figures is the US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

He has declared that the Islamic republic is “on the verge of collapse”, accusing Khamenei of “hiding underground” like a “frightened rat”.

Pahlavi has long called for the restoration of the warm relationship that existed between his late father and Israel, to reverse the Islamic republic’s refusal to recognise the existence of Israel.

Monarchists would like such a rapprochement to be termed the “Cyrus Accords” after the ancient Persian king credited with freeing the Jews from Babylon.

But Pahlavi is far from enjoying universal support inside Iran or among exiles.

The nationalism of supporters and his ties with Israel are divisive, especially after he refused to condemn the Israeli air strikes on Iran.

Another major organised group is the People’s Mujahedin (MEK), whose leader Maryam Rajavi told the European Parliament on Wednesday: “The people of Iran want the overthrow of this regime.”

But the MEK is despised by other opposition factions and regarded with suspicion by some Iranians for its support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war.

“Part of the challenge in thinking about alternatives to the Islamic Republic in case it collapses is that there is no organised, democratic alternative,” said Thomas Juneau, professor at the University of Ottawa.

He said that while Reza Pahlavi is the opposition leader “who has by far the most name recognition both in and out of Iran”, his supporters “tend to exaggerate his support inside the country”.

“The only alternative — and this is among the worrying scenarios — is a coup d’etat by the Revolutionary Guards or changing from a theocracy to a military dictatorship.”

‘Unpredictable scenario’

Analysts also warn that a potential — and often overlooked — factor for future instability could be Iran’s complex ethnic make-up.

Large Kurdish, Arab, Baluch and Turkic minorities co-exist alongside the Persian population.

“There will also be an effort to capitalise on ethnic divisions by hostile countries,” said Grajewski.

Analysts at the US-based think tank Soufan Center said that with the survival of the Iranian regime now viewed as a “strategic failure”, the prospect of an “Iraq 2.0” is looming.

“The post-regime-change scenario remains unpredictable and could trigger regional destabilisation on a scale greater than Iraq, with global ramifications,” they said.

Over several decades in power, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has built up regional proxy forces and a formidable missile arsenal with the aim of deterring precisely the kind of direct assaults being carried out by Israel. With his allies defanged and Israeli planes controlling the skies over Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader is now fighting for his survival and that of his regime, with few options left.

Iran’s undisputed leader since 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has weathered decades of international sanctions, near-constant regional tensions and protest movements he ruthlessly suppressed to maintain his iron grip on the Islamic Republic.

Israel’s unprecedented strikes on nuclear, military and infrastructure targets in Iran mark by far his most serious crisis yet, threatening both the clerical regime he has led for the past 36 years and his own survival.

In five days of bombardment, Israel has decapitated Iran’s top military brass, repeatedly struck its main nuclear sites, and killed many of Khamenei’s closest aides. It has also bombed other parts of the state and security apparatus as well as key energy infrastructure, triggering an exodus of Tehranis from the capital.

While Iran has responded with deadly strikes on Israeli cities, the mismatch in firepower has left Tehran at the mercy of the Israeli air force, facing the possibility of a US intervention on Israel’s side – and with no major allies to call upon.

Echoes of Iraq

Many Iranians will feel they have been there before. The Islamic Republic was just one year old in 1980 when it was dragged into a gruesome eight-year war by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein – who at the time enjoyed the backing of most Western and regional powers.

The enduring trauma of the Iran-Iraq war persuaded Khamenei to build a coalition of proxy forces in the region that would engage in asymmetrical warfare and, crucially, deter Iran’s foes from directly attacking its territory. For further deterrence, the Islamic Republic also rushed to build up its missile and drone manufacturing capability, acquiring what was believed to be the largest missile arsenal in the region.

Those deterrents have long allowed the hardline ruler to keep up his rhetoric of confrontation with the US and project an image of power to rival Israel’s, while keeping conflict away from Iran’s borders and giving the regime a free hand to crack down on dissent.

Since the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, however, Khamenei has looked on impotently as his key allies – Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, Yemen’s Houthis and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad – have been defanged, diminished or toppled, one by one. The demise of the “Axis of Resistance” has effectively stripped Khamenei’s regime of its outer defences, allowing Israel to bring the fight directly to Tehran.

Iran’s air defences took a first pummelling when the two bitter foes exchanged missile strikes last October. With Israeli jets now in control of the Iranian air space, and free to track down Iranian missile launchers, it is unclear how long the Islamic Republic’s other key deterrent – its ballistic missiles arsenal – can sustain the fighting.

‘We won’t take him out – for now’

Khamenei, 86, has remained typically defiant in the face of the Israeli onslaught, stating on Wednesday in a post on X: “We must give a strong response to the terrorist Zionist regime. We will show the Zionists no mercy.”

Israel’s success in killing several of his top aides, however, shows just how far Israel has penetrated Iranian defences and intelligence. It has also raised the question of whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could give an order to seek to kill Khamenei himself.

Speaking to ABC News on Monday, Netanyahu neither denied nor confirmed media reports that US President Donald Trump rejected an Israeli plan to assassinate Khamenei.

“It’s not going to escalate the conflict, it’s going to end the conflict,” Netanyahu insisted, adding that Israel was “doing what we need to do”.

The supreme leader has not left Iran since taking up the position and made his last foreign visit to North Korea in 1989 while still Iran’s president. His movements are subject to the tightest security and secrecy.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump claimed Washington was aware of Khamenei’s whereabouts but that it didn’t want him killed “for now”.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” the US president wrote. “He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

Nuclear boomerang

While his messaging has been contradictory and mixed, Trump appears to have welcomed Israeli military action as a means to drag Iran back to the negotiating table on US terms – which he has described as Tehran’s “unconditional surrender”.

Analysts, however, have cautioned that any attempt to assassinate Khamenei could have the opposite effect, precipitating Iranian efforts to go nuclear and thereby working against the stated purpose of Israel’s offensive.

Over the years, the Islamic Republic has maintained a form of strategic ambiguity over its nuclear programme, which it has used as a bargaining chip in talks with world powers and as a warning to foes. According to Western intelligence assessments, this has involved reaching a higher degree of enrichment than is needed for civilian purposes but without actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Known for blending ideological rigidity with strategic pragmatism, Khamenei has shown a willingness to bend when the regime’s survival is at stake, including on the nuclear dossier. He notably offered guarded endorsement of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers including the US, calculating that sanctions relief was necessary to stabilise the economy and cement his grip on power.

More than a decade earlier, amid the fallout from the 2003 Iraq invasion, Iran’s supreme leader had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, condemning nuclear and chemical weapons – though critics have questioned its real worth.

“The irony is that Khamenei, through his indecision and his supposed fatwa, has been one of the factors in Iran for not developing nuclear weapons,” said Rouzbeh Parsi, a Middle East scholar and senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. “If he is removed, it will destroy all chances of resuming negotiations and guarantee that Iran goes for nuclear weapons.”

Regime change

The mere fact that assassinating the Iranian leader is part of the conversation is a measure of how far Israel has pushed its paradigm shift for the Middle East, with at least the tacit support of the Trump administration. According to Parsi, it also reflects the lack of a clear strategic objective for Israel’s military operation.

“Ultimately, the political solution is either a negotiation with Tehran or a removal of the Islamic Republic,” he said. “The Israelis have made clear they don’t want any type of negotiation with the Iranian regime, but they also cannot bring about regime change without US help.”

He added: “The US could indeed destroy the Islamic Republic, which begs the question that these wars never answer beforehand, nor explain afterwards, namely: what would replace it?”

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Netanyahu suggested that “regime change” could be the outcome of the Israeli strikes, while insisting that it would be for the Iranian people to bring this about. He claimed that “80 percent of the people would throw these theological thugs out” once they had realised the regime’s weakness.

Writing in Le Monde, Iran expert Farid Vahid said the “rupture between Iran’s people and the regime has grown so deep” the Islamic Republic can no longer count on patriotic sentiment to drum up support among the population. However, the Iranian opposition, both at home and in exile, remains riven by division, and while Persian-language television channels based abroad have broadcast images of groups shouting anti-Khamenei slogans, there have been no reports of mass protests.

“The idea that this ends in a popular uprising that changes the regime or gives power to someone in the Iranian opposition abroad has no basis in reality,” said Iran expert Arash Azizi, a senior fellow at Boston University, in an interview with AFP.

Iran watchers say a more plausible outcome would be for elements within the regime to seek to wrest control from Iran’s ageing supreme leader.

“Khamenei is at the twilight of his rule, at the age of 86, and already much of the daily command of the regime is not up to him but to various factions who are vying for the future,” said Azizi. “This process was already underway, and the current war only accelerates it.”

(France24)

A London-bound Air India plane carrying 242 people has crashed shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad, western India.

Flight AI171 was travelling from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick.

The plane – a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – gave a mayday call to air traffic control after taking off, but then gave no response.

There were 169 Indian nationals on the flight, as well as 53 Britons, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals, Air India says.

Tracking website Flightradar24 says it received the last signal from the aircraft at 625 feet (190m) “just seconds after take off”.

The plane came down in a residential area near the airport.

Videos show black smoke rising over a residential area.

The BBC reporter in Ahmedabad says the scene is shocking, with ambulances and rescue workers still trying to put out a fire.

A senior police officer in Ahmedabad told ANI news agency that the London-bound plane crashed into a doctors’ hostel.

He said police, firefighters and other civic workers reached the spot within minutes. Rescue operations are still underway.

(BBC)

He was rejected again.

“The information submitted regarding the justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay were not reliable,” read a checklist returned with his passport from the Spanish consulate in Lagos. The 32-year-old gaming consultant said he felt humiliated.

“I had to cancel meetings with partners at the conference I was attending,” he told CNN. “I emailed the embassy to understand why I was denied but it has not been answered to date.”

Anyaegbu’s was among the 50,376 short-stay Schengen visa applications rejected in Nigeria last year, nearly half of all submissions, according to newly released data from the European Commission.

Applicants worldwide pay a non-refundable visa fee of 90 euros (about $100), so Nigerians alone lost over 4.5 million euros (about $5 million) seeking permission to travel to the 29 European countries that make up the Schengen Area.

In total, African countries lost 60 million euros ($67.5 million) in rejected Schengen visa fees in 2024, analysis from the LAGO Collective shows. The London-based research and arts organization has been monitoring data on European short-term visas since 2022 and says Africa is the continent worst affected by the cost of visa rejections.

“The poorest countries in the world pay the richest countries in the world money for not getting visas,” its founder Marta Foresti told CNN. “As in 2023, the poorer the country of application, the higher the rejection rates. African countries are disproportionately affected with rejection rates as high as 40-50% for countries like Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria.” She says this proves “inbuilt discrimination and bias” in the process.

A European Commission spokesperson told CNN that member states consider visa applications on a case-by-case basis. “Each file is assessed by experienced decision-makers on its own merits, in particular regarding the purpose of stay, sufficient means of subsistence, and the applicants’ will to return to their country of residence after a visit to the EU,” the spokesperson said via email.

Africans have long complained about inconsistent, sometimes baffling decisions about who gets approved or denied while applying for European visas. Cameroonian Jean Mboulé was born in France but when he applied for a visa in 2022 alongside his wife using similar documents, his application was rejected but hers was not.

“At the time she was unemployed but with a South African passport. She had no income but received a visa on the back of my financial statement,” he told CNN. “But the embassy said they refused my application because my documents were fake, and they weren’t sure I would come back to South Africa, where I am a permanent resident, if I went to France.”

The 39-year-old regional executive took legal action in French courts and won, forcing the French embassy in Johannesburg to grant his visa and pay him a fine of 1,200 euros.

He told an administrative tribunal in the French city of Nantes that the embassy’s decision to deny him a visa was “tainted by insufficient reasoning.”

Mboulé pointed out that he had provided sufficient guarantees that he would return at the end of his trip to his wife and daughter in South Africa where he owns a building. After he got the visa, he chose to go to Mauritius instead as he didn’t want to spend his money in France.

The Cameroonian’s case is unique as many Africans denied Schengen visas rarely appeal or contest the decisions in court. Like Anyaegbu, the Nigerian gaming consultant, they often reapply, losing more money in the process. Mboulé has travelled several times to the UK and other African countries but was still denied twice for Schengen.

“The financial cost of rejected visas is just staggering; you can think of them as ‘reverse remittances,’ money flowing from poor to rich countries, which we never hear about,” the LAGO Collective’s Foresti says. Schengen visa fees increased from 80 to 90 euros in July 2024, making it even more expensive for the world’s poorest applicants.

But South African management lecturer Sikhumbuzo Maisela said the visa rejection rates for Africans were lower than he expected. “The visa vetting process seems to be shaped less by outright prejudice and more by historical patterns of behaviour,” he told CNN via email.

“Western countries have had instances where visa holders overstayed or violated terms, and this has influenced how future applications are scrutinized.”

Though he hasn’t conducted formal academic research on the issue, Maisela said Africans should treat visas as an act of trust and hospitality, and observe the rules.

“When one person violates these principles, it impacts all of us,” he said. “It makes it harder for the next applicant — someone who may be fully compliant — to be granted the same opportunity. So, in a way, those who break the rules contribute to the very discrimination others face.”

Younger Africans are the most vocal about visa rejections online but older applicants face similar barriers. Julius Musimeenta, a 57-year-old Ugandan engineer, applied for a visa to attend an engineering fair in Munich last year with his family. All six of them were rejected even though they had all previously traveled to Europe.

“Africans contribute a lot to funding these embassies through these rejections. They always think negatively about us travelling to their countries,” he told CNN. He has three grown-up children who are also engineers and the entire family has a long history of international travel so they were surprised by the blanket denial, he says.

The European Commission said it does not comment on individual cases but EU law allows visa applicants to appeal negative decisions if they feel that the refusal was unjustified.

“The reasons for refusals vary, and include for example the submission of false or forged supporting documents such as bank statements or civil status documents, and weak socio-economic ties to the country of residence and hence a heightened risk of irregular migration,” it said.

While Schengen visa rejections get the most attention due to the large number of countries, African applicants to the UK complain of similar access challenges.

UK visa fees rose from £100 to £115 in July 2024 ($134 to $154) and then to £127 ($170) in April this year. There was a 13.5% spike in the cost of rejected visas to £50.7 million ($68.8 million) in 2024, the LAGO Collective estimates. Nigerians alone paid an extra £2 million trying to travel to their former colonial master, according to its calculations.

Britain is considering mandating the use of chemical castration for sex offenders under an overhaul of the justice system aimed at freeing up more space in its overcrowded prisons.

One of the first acts of the Labour government in July was to announce plans to release more prisoners early to tackle a crisis of overcrowding in jails which ministers said threatened a “total breakdown of law and order.”

The prison population in England and Wales then reached a record high in September, and earlier this year the government said police cells would be used temporarily to hold prisoners as an emergency stopgap measure to cope with overcrowding in prison.

Announcing the findings of a review into how to tackle the crisis, justice minister Shabana Mahmood said it had recommended continuing a pilot of so-called “medication to manage problematic sexual arousal.”

“I am exploring whether mandating the approach is possible,” she told lawmakers.

Options include pharmaceuticals that suppress libido and those that reduce sexual thoughts, the review said.

The Independent Sentencing Review said there was an overreliance on custody, and that more should be invested in the Probation Service, with greater electronic monitoring and a supervision system to reduce reoffending.

The review also proposed a system where offenders can earn earlier release through good behaviour and compliance with prison rules, and said custodial sentences of less than a year should only be used in exceptional circumstances.

The government said it would accept these recommendations but would not proceed with a recommended maximum sentences, meaning the worst offenders could spend longer in prison.

David Gauke, the former Conservative justice minister who chaired the review, said the government could not simply build more prisons to end overcrowding, and more radical reform was needed.

“To stabilise the prison system and end the dangerous cycle of emergency releases the government must take decisive action,” Gauke said in a statement.

“Taken as a package, these measures should ensure the government is never again in a position where it is forced to rely on the emergency release of prisoners,” he added.

(Reuters)