Heathrow reopens and chaos eases, but critics say the airport’s shutdown exposes UK vulnerability

Update Heathrow reopens and chaos eases, but critics say the airport’s shutdown exposes UK vulnerability
A traveller arrives at Terminal 5 as Heathrow Airport slowly resumes flights after a fire cut power to Europe's busiest airport in London, Saturday, March 22, 2025.(AP)
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Updated 22 March 2025
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Heathrow reopens and chaos eases, but critics say the airport’s shutdown exposes UK vulnerability

Heathrow reopens and chaos eases, but critics say the airport’s shutdown exposes UK vulnerability
  • Friday’s travel mayhem raised concerns about Britain’s ability to withstand disasters or attacks on critical infrastructure
  • “It’s a huge embarrassment for the country that a fire in one electricity substation can have such a devastating effect,” said Toby Harris, a Labour Party politician

LONDON: London Heathrow Airport said it was “fully operational” on Saturday, after an almost daylong closure sparked by an electrical substation fire.
But thousands of passengers remained stuck, and airlines warned that severe disruption will last for days as they scramble to relocate planes and crews and get travelers to their destinations.
Friday’s travel mayhem raised concerns about Britain’s ability to withstand disasters or attacks on critical infrastructure. Inconvenienced passengers, angry airlines and concerned politicians all want answers about how one seemingly accidental fire could shut down Europe’s busiest air hub.
“This is a huge embarrassment for Heathrow airport. It’s a huge embarrassment for the country that a fire in one electricity substation can have such a devastating effect,” said Toby Harris, a Labour Party politician who heads the National Preparedness Commission, a group that campaigns to improve resilience.
Heathrow said it had “hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers.” It advised passengers to check with their airline before going to the airport.
British Airways, Heathrow’s biggest airline, said it expected to operate about 85 percent of its 600 scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday. It said that “to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex.”
While many passengers managed to resume stalled journeys, others remained in limbo.
Laura Fritschie from Kansas City was on vacation with her family in Ireland when she learned that her father had died. On Saturday she was stranded at Heathrow after her BA flight to Chicago was canceled at the last minute.
“I’m very frustrated,” she said. “This was my first big vacation with my kids since my husband died, and ... now this. So I just want to go home.”
More than 1,300 flights were canceled and some 200,000 people stranded Friday after an overnight fire at a substation 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away from the airport cut power to Heathrow, and to more than 60,000 properties.
The explosion and fire reveals a wider problem
Residents in west London described hearing a large explosion and then seeing a fireball and clouds of smoke when the blaze ripped through the substation. The fire was brought under control after seven hours, but the airport was shut for almost 18. A handful of flights took off and landed late Friday.
Police said they do not consider the fire suspicious, and the London Fire Brigade said its investigation would focus on the electrical distribution equipment at the substation.
Still, the huge impact of the fire left authorities facing questions about Britain’s creaking infrastructure. The government acknowledged that authorities had questions to answer and said a rigorous investigation was needed to make sure “this scale of disruption does not happen again.”
Harris, from the preparedness commission. said the airport shutdown points to a broader problem with Britain’s economy and infrastructure.
“The last 40, 50 years we’ve tried to make services more efficient,” he said. “We’ve stripped out redundancy, we’ve simplified processes. We’ve moved toward a sort of ‘just in time’ economy.
“There is an element where you have to make sure you’re available for ‘just in case.’ You have to plan for things going wrong.”
Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said he was “proud” of the way airport and airline staff had responded.
“Remember, the situation was not created at Heathrow Airport,” he told the BBC. “The airport didn’t shut for days. We shut for hours.”
One of the busiest airports
He said Heathrow’s backup power supply, designed for emergencies, worked as expected, but it wasn’t enough to run the whole airport, which uses as much energy as a small city.
“That’s how most airports operate,” said Woldbye, who insisted “the same would happen in other airports” faced with a similar blaze.
Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports for international travel, and saw 83.9 million passengers last year.
Friday’s disruption was one of the most serious since the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which shut Europe’s airspace for days.
Passengers on about 120 flights were in the air when Friday’s closure was announced and found themselves landing in different cities, and even different countries.
Mark Doherty and his wife were halfway across the Atlantic when the inflight map showed their flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Heathrow was turning around.
“I was like, you’re joking,” Doherty said before the pilot told passengers they were heading back to New York.
Doherty called the situation “typical England — got no back-up plan for something happens like this. There’s no contingency plan.”


Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained

Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained
Updated 10 sec ago
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Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained

Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained
  • President Trump hints abandoning peace effort “if one of the two parties makes it very difficult”
  • Kremlin spokesman cites moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure as progress

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Friday that some progress had already been made in talks about a possible peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine but that contacts were rather complicated with the United States.
“Contacts are quite complicated, because, naturally, the topic is not an easy one,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Russia is committed to resolving this conflict, ensuring its own interests, and is open to dialogue. We continue to do this.”
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he wanted to achieve a peace deal quickly, but could not be involved in the search for a settlement indefinitely “if one of the two parties makes it very difficult.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking earlier in Paris after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, said the sides had just days to show progress or Washington would abandon its efforts.
Asked if the United States could withdraw from the search for a peace settlement in Ukraine, Peskov said that was a question for Washington.
“We believe that some progress can already be noted,” Peskov said, citing a temporary moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure, though he said Ukraine had not adhered to it.
“Therefore, certain developments have already been achieved, but, of course, there are still many complex discussions ahead.”
Peskov, when asked if the energy moratorium was over, said that it had already been a month but that no orders from the president had been received to change Russia’s position.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and a representative of Russian hawks, expressed approval for the US remarks on the X social media platform.
“American officials have said that if there is no progress on the Ukrainian case, the United States will wash its hands of it. Wisely,” Medvedev wrote in English. “And the EU should do the same. Then Russia will figure it out faster.”


10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order
Updated 8 min 43 sec ago
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10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

WASHINGTON: About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
Many of the files had been made public previously, while others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Their release continued the disclosure of historical investigation documents ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy’s older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website.
The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy, commended the release.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” the health secretary said in a statement.
Documents include interviews with assassin’s acquaintances
The files surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person” others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
“Well, I don’t agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said there have always been conspiracies surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination. He believes the rollout of documents Friday would be similar to the JFK documents released earlier this year.
He cautioned that a review needs to be done carefully and slowly, “just in case there is a hint in there or there is an anecdote” that could shed more light on the assassination.
“I hope there’s more information,” Sabato said. “I’m doubtful that there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Some redactions remained in the documents posted online Friday, including names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration came under criticism over unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, during the release of records surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he has also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK still stands as a hero to American liberals
Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path.
He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson’s political weakness.
Kennedy’s older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK’s assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family’s political legacy.


Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont
Updated 22 min 22 sec ago
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Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

A Tufts University student from Turkiye being held in Louisiana must be returned to New England by May 1 to determine whether she was illegally detained by immigration officials for co-writing an op-ed piece in the student newspaper, a federal judge ruled Friday.
US District Judge William Sessions in Burlington, Vermont, said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.
“The Court concludes that this case will continue in this court with Ms. Ozturk physically present for the remainder of the proceedings,” the judge wrote. “Ms. Ozturk has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review on the merits. The Court plans to move expeditiously to a bail hearing and final disposition of the habeas petition, as Ms. Ozturk’s claims require no less.”
Immigration officials surrounded the 30-year-old doctoral student as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday, citing “danger and flight risk” as the rationale.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressing support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the US can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
A lawyer for the Justice Department said her case should be dismissed, saying the immigration court has jurisdiction.
Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts. Initially, they didn’t know where she was. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.


China, Cambodia sign major canal deal

China, Cambodia sign major canal deal
Updated 18 April 2025
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China, Cambodia sign major canal deal

China, Cambodia sign major canal deal
  • The canal project, which was previously estimated to cost $1.7 billion — nearly 4 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product — and stretching 180 km, is now valued at $1.16 billion with a length of 151.6 km, the Cambodian government said in a

BEIJING:  China and Cambodia have agreed to build safe and stable supply chains and strengthen cooperation in transportation infrastructure, they said in a joint statement released by China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday.
The two countries also signed a deal to construct a major canal, which Cambodia hopes will transform its economic fortunes.
The agreements came after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-nation tour of Southeast Asia, which included stops in Vietnam and Malaysia.
The trip was part of Beijing’s effort to consolidate economic and trading ties with close neighbors.
“China supports Cambodia in building the Funan Techo Integrated Water Conservancy Project in accordance with the principles of feasibility and sustainability,” the joint statement said.
The canal project, which was previously estimated to cost $1.7 billion — nearly 4 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product — and stretching 180 km, is now valued at $1.16 billion with a length of 151.6 km, the Cambodian government said in a separate statement.
The statement showed that it will be financed through a public-private partnership, with Cambodian investors holding a 51 percent stake and Chinese investors holding 49 percent.
China also commended Cambodia’s efforts in cracking down on illegal online gambling and telecom fraud in the joint statement, with the two countries agreeing to strengthen law enforcement cooperation further.
Before Xi’s visit, the Cambodian government said it had deported to China several “Chinese criminals,” including people from Taiwan, in a move that angered Taipei and was praised by Beijing.
The two countries also agreed to establish a ministerial dialogue between their foreign and defense ministers to facilitate coordination on major strategic issues.

 


Three tourists among 4 killed after Italian cable car crashes into a ravine south of Naples

Three tourists among 4 killed after Italian cable car crashes into a ravine south of Naples
Updated 18 April 2025
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Three tourists among 4 killed after Italian cable car crashes into a ravine south of Naples

Three tourists among 4 killed after Italian cable car crashes into a ravine south of Naples
  • An Arab woman with Israeli citizenship was the third foreign victim to be identified following Thursday’s accident
  • The fourth victim was the Italian driver of the cable car

ROME: Three tourists, including a brother and sister from Britain, were among four people who were killed when a mountain cable car plunged into a ravine south of Naples, an Italian official said Friday.
An Arab woman with Israeli citizenship was the third foreign victim to be identified following Thursday’s accident, said Marco De Rosa, a spokesperson for the mayor of Vico Equense.
The fourth victim was the Italian driver of the cable car. A fifth tourist, said to be the brother of the Israeli victim, is in a stable but critical condition at a Naples hospital, officials said.
Initial reports suggested that a traction cable may have snapped as the cable car ascended Monte Faito, in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The cable car plunged into a ravine after stopping very close to the station at the top of the peak, at around 1,050 meters (3,400 feet).
Sixteen passengers were helped out of another cable car that was stuck mid-air near the foot of the mountain following the incident.
The accident happened just a week after the cable car, which is popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season. It averages around 110,000 visitors each year.
The emergency services, including Italy’s alpine rescue, more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection personnel, worked into the evening in severe weather conditions, with fog and strong winds making rescue operations difficult.
“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station,” Luigi Vicinanza, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, said on Thursday. He added that there had been regular safety checks on the cable car line, which runs 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the town to the top of the mountain.
Local prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter, which will involve an inspection of the cable stations, the pylons, the two cabins and the cable, officials said Friday.
The company running the service, the EAV public transport firm, said the seasonal cable car had reopened with all the required safety conditions.
“The reopening had taken place a week ago after three months of tests every day, day and night,” said EAV President Umberto De Gregorio. “This is something inexplicable.”
De Gregorio said technical experts believed there was no connection between the severe weather and the cause of the crash. “There is an automatic system. When the wind exceeds a certain level, the cable car stops automatically,” he said.
The Monte Faito cable car opened in 1952. Four people died in 1960 when a pylon broke.
Italy has recorded two similar fatal accidents involving cable cars in recent years.
A cable car crash in May 2021 in northern Italy killed 14 people, including six Israelis, among them a family of four. In 1998, a low-flying US military jet cut through the cable of a ski lift in Cavalese, in the Dolomites, killing 20 people.