Iranian jetliner crashes; 15 people killed
TEHRAN, Iran -- A decades-old Iranian Boeing 707 military cargo plane reportedly carrying meat from Kyrgyzstan crashed on Monday while trying to land west of Iran's capital, killing 15 people on board and leaving a sole survivor, authorities said.
The crash of the jetliner marked just the latest aviation disaster for Iran, which hoped to replace its aging fleet under terms of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
But instead, President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the accord in May scuttled billions of dollars in planned sales by Airbus and Boeing Co. to the Islamic Republic, only increasing the danger for passengers in Iran planes.
The aircraft, which bore the paint scheme of the Iranian air force's civilian Saha Airlines, was making an emergency landing about 8:30 a.m. Monday at Fath Airport, an airfield controlled by Iran's powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. The plane skidded off the runway, crashed through a perimeter fence and into a residential neighborhood.
The plane was meant to land at the nearby Payam International Airport, about 25 miles west of Tehran, the Iranian capital.
Chechnya targeting gays, activists say
MOSCOW -- The Russian republic of Chechnya has launched a new crackdown on gays in which at least two people have died and about 40 people have been detained, activists in Russia asserted Monday.
The new allegations come after reports in 2017 of more than 100 gay men arrested and subjected to torture, and some of them killed, in the predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia.
The Associated Press and other media outlets have interviewed some of the victims, who spoke about torture at the hands of Chechen law enforcement officers. Chechen authorities have denied those accusations, and federal authorities conducted an investigation into the earlier reports but said they found nothing to support the charges.
Alvi Karimov, a spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, told the Interfax news agency on Monday that the latest reports are "complete lies and don't have an ounce of truth in them."
But the Russian LGBT Network, which has been monitoring the situation in Chechnya and helping victims, said in a statement Monday that about 40 men and women have been detained on suspicion of being gay since December and that at least two of them have died of torture in detention.
Igor Kochetkov, the group's program director, said the new wave of anti-gay persecution started at the end of the year, when Chechen authorities detained the administrator of a social media group popular with LGBT people.
China says NASA aided lunar landing
BEIJING -- China exchanged data with NASA on its recent mission to land a Chinese spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the Chinese space agency said Monday, in what was reportedly the first such collaboration since an American law banned joint space projects with China that do not have prior congressional approval.
The space agency's deputy director, Wu Yanhua, said NASA shared information about its lunar orbiter satellite in hopes of monitoring the landing of the Chang'e 4 spacecraft, which made China the first country to land on the far side of the moon earlier this month.
China in turn shared the time and coordinates of Chang'e 4's scheduled landing, Wu told reporters during a briefing on the lunar mission. He added that while NASA's satellite did not catch the precise moment of landing, it took photographs of the area afterward.
The state-run China Daily said that was the first such form of cooperation since the 2011 U.S. law was enacted.
NASA has not published any statements on the collaboration and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Croatia cancels jet deal with Israel
ZAGREB, Croatia -- Croatia's government on Monday formally canceled a $500 million deal to buy 12 used fighter jets from Israel after it collapsed over U.S. objections. The defense minister said the Balkan country will restart the search for the right deal.
Israel and Croatia reached a tentative deal in March for the sale of the upgraded F-16 Barak fighter planes, pending U.S. approval to allow the American-made technology to be purchased by a third party.
The deal ran into trouble after Washington said Israel needed to strip off upgrades that were added after Israel took delivery of the aircraft from the United States some 30 years ago.
The sophisticated electronics and radar systems were crucial in Croatia's decision to buy the F-16s from Israel instead of from the U.S. or Greece, which also bid for the contract together with South Korea and Sweden.
Croatian Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic said that Croatia now awaits the "best offer" from the U.S.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 01/15/2019