Part definitely from missing Flight 370
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- A piece of an aircraft wing found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius has been identified as belonging to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysian and Australian officials said Friday.
The piece of wing flap was found in May and subsequently analyzed by experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the search for the plane in a remote stretch of ocean off Australia's west coast. Investigators used a part number found on the debris to link it to the missing Boeing 777, the agency said in a statement. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai also confirmed the identification.
It is the sixth piece of wreckage investigators have said either definitely or almost certainly came from Flight 370.
The pieces have washed ashore on coastlines around the Indian Ocean since the aircraft vanished with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
So far, none of the debris has helped narrow down the precise location of the main underwater wreckage. Investigators need to find that in order to locate the flight data recorders that could help explain why the plane veered so far off course.
Search crews are expected to finish their sweep of the 46,000-square mile search zone in the Indian Ocean by December.
Russia relooks at Cuba, Vietnam bases
MOSCOW -- The Russian military is considering the possibility of regaining its Soviet-era bases on Cuba and in Vietnam, the Defense Ministry said Friday, a statement that comes amid growing U.S.-Russia tensions over Syria.
Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov told lawmakers Friday that the ministry is considering the possibility of establishing footholds far away from Russia's borders.
Responding to a lawmaker's question about whether the military could return to Cuba and Vietnam, Pankov said the military is "reviewing" a decision to withdraw from them, but didn't offer any specifics. "As for our presence on faraway outposts, we are doing this work," he said.
In 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military to pull back from Cuba and Vietnam as he sought to bolster ties with the United States.
Asked Friday about the possibility of the Russian military's return to Cuba and Vietnam, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov refrained from specific comment but said the global situation requires various players to consider possible responses.
Obama lifts economic limits for Burma
President Barack Obama on Friday lifted U.S. economic sanctions on Burma, the culmination of years of rapprochement that Obama has worked to facilitate.
The Southeast Asian nation, also known as Myanmar, has pursued new political policies over the past five years after decades of oppressive military rule.
Obama had announced plans to lift the sanctions last month, when Burma's new civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, visited the Oval Office. Suu Kyi concurred it was time to remove all the sanctions that had hurt the economy and urged Americans to come to the country and "to make profits."
The U.S. has already eased broad economic sanctions on Burma, including prohibitions on investment and trade. But the U.S. had retained more targeted economic restrictions on military-owned companies and officials and associates of the former ruling junta. U.S. companies and banks have remained leery of involvement in one of Asia's last untapped markets.
6 in custody after Turkey bomb attack
ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey's state-run news agency says police have detained six people in connection with a bomb attack near a police station in Istanbul that wounded 10 people.
Authorities said Thursday's attack -- carried out with a bomb mounted onto a motorcycle -- was the work of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party.
The Anadolu Agency said Friday that the suspected bomber was detained overnight in the central Turkish province of Aksaray. Two other people traveling with him inside a vehicle were also detained. Police in Istanbul later detained three other suspected accomplices, the agency reported.
The Workers' Party has been waging a decades-long insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. Violence flared anew last year with the collapse of a 2½-year cease-fire.
A Section on 10/08/2016