BRASILIA: An Avianca Airlines passenger jet safely made an emergency landing in Brasilia on Friday after its front landing gear failed to deploy, authorities said. None of the 49 passengers and crew of five on the Fokker 100 jet were injured when the plane landed on its rear wheels before lowering the nose onto the runway, the Brazilian Air Force said. Airport fire crews foamed the plane to prevent fire. The pilot calmly declared an emergency and circled the Brazilian capital to shed fuel and lower the weight of the aircraft, according to a recording of his conversation with the control tower played on Globo News television channel. “The plane suffered a hydraulic problem and the front landing gear did not open, so the pilot did a belly landing,” an Air Force spokesman said.
NSA had over 300 reports on Merkel
FRANKFURT: The US National Security Agency’s vast eavesdropping programmes amassed more than 300 reports on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Der Spiegel reported yesterday, citing information leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. Merkel was on a list of some 122 heads of state and government about whom the NSA gathered intelligence in May 2009, the German weekly reported on its website. Der Spiegel said it had seen documents showing the more than 300 reports on Merkel along with the presidents of Peru, Somalia and Belarus. The purported NSA files could “be an important element of proof” for the German judiciary, which is to “decide in the coming days whether to open an inquiry into suspected espionage,” it said. Documents made public by Snowden in October revealed that the NSA had listened to Merkel’s cellphone conversations for several years.
Nurse charged over UK deaths
LONDON: A male nurse has been charged with the murder of three patients who were poisoned with contaminated medical products at a British hospital, police said yesterday. Eight patients died following the poisoning at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, near Manchester in northwest England, in June and July 2011. Victorino Chua, a 48-year-old father of two children, has been charged with murdering three of them — Tracey Arden, 44, Arnold Lancaster, 71, and Derek Weaver, 83. He has also been charged with one count of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, 22 counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent and eight offences of attempting to administer poison.
Agencies
