Airplane crashes into airport building in Wichita, Kansas

 

 

An airplane crashed into a two-story building at an airport in Wichita, Kansas early Thursday shortly after takeoff, leaving at least four people dead and five injured.
The 10-seater, twin-engine plane struck a building at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport at around 9:50 a.m. local time Thursday. Eyewitnesses at the scene have since posted photographs on the social media site Twitter of huge plumes of black smoke rising into the sky from the site of the crash.
Ron Blackwell, the chief of the Wichita Fire Department, said during a press conference shortly after 11 a.m. that authorities can confirm two fatalities, and said a search was ongoing. Five people at that time were unaccounted for, Blackwell said, and five had been transported to a local hospital with serious injuries.
That afternoon, the Associated Press reported that the death toll climbed to four.

A local NBC News affiliate reported shortly after that one person is listed critical condition as a result of the incident, and confirmed that the plane in question is a Beechcraft that lost an engine during takeoff, citing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Around 45 minutes after the crash occurred, the FAA said in a statement that the aircraft crashed while attempting to return to the runway shortly after takeoff.
Ryan Weatherby, a witness, told the Kansas City Star that the airport building started on fire once the plane hit. First responders have since descended on the scene and the building has been evacuated.
As many as 13 people may have been onboard the plane at the time of the crash.
 

Russia’s Central Bank lifts key interest rate to 9.5% to revive roiling ruble

 

RIA Novosti/Vitaly Belousov

55218588

The key lender raised its key rate to 9.5 percent, a 1.5 percent jump from the last increase in July. The bank said the decision greatly weighed on external conditions, such as low oil prices, sanctions, and the weakening ruble, changed “significantly.”
“In September and October, the external conditions have changed significantly: the price of oil sharply dropped amid several individual countries have imposed stricter sanctions on a large number of Russian companies. Under these conditions the ruble is weakening, and the introduction of the import ban on certain foodstuffs in August has led to further acceleration in consumer prices,” the Russian Central Bank (CBR) said in a press release Friday.
The rate went up 150 basis points. The last time the bank increased the rate was in July, when it was hiked 50 basis points to 8 percent. In April, the bank unexpectedly raised its key rate to 7.5 percent.
The key interest rate is a tool central banks uses to balance inflation and economic growth. Inflation significantly increased in Russia to 8.4 percent in September and October, far above the 5.5 percent target. The bank expects inflation will remain above 8 percent through the first quarter of 2015. Although increasing the interest rate can help trim inflation, it also means that loans become more expensive, which can slow down economic growth.
Shortly after the announcement, the ruble appreciated against the dollar and euro. The ruble traded at 41.48 per US dollar at 13:30. Since the beginning of 2014, the Russian ruble has lost more than 25 percent against the dollar.
On Thursday evening in anticipation to the bank’s rate hike the ruble gained 5.1 percent, the highest jump since 2003.
READ MORE: 6 useful things you need to know about the rapid descent of the Russian ruble
Although increasing the interest rate can help trim inflation, it also means that loans become more expensive, which can slow down economic growth.
In September Russia’s GDP growth accelerated to 1.1 percent which marked an economic revival from the flat growth last year.

Challenges to the Russian economy

Central Bank chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina said three external challenges had led the bank to raise its interest rates; oil prices, the weak ruble, and sanctions against Russia.
Low oil prices threaten the Russian economy, as revenue from oil and gas exports account for more than half of the country’s budget. The Kremlin's 2015 draft budget assumes Russia's key export blend, Urals, at $100 per barrel. WTI, the main North American blend, and Brent, European, have both lost more than 20 percent in value since the summer peak price of $116. Prices hit a four-year low in mid-October. WTI is trading at $80.44 per barrel, and Brent at $85.30 per barrel at 3:00pm MSK on Friday.
READ MORE: Oil prices won’t recover above $100 – Russian Finance Ministry

Source:ieconomics.com

One bonus of the weak ruble is that it act as a buffer to lower oil prices, since costs are in rubles, but revenue in dollars.
The Kremlin’s response to Western sanctions, a one-year food import ban, has added 1.3 percent to inflation, and weakened the ruble, according to the Central Bank.
The Russian Central Bank has the world's third largest foreign currency reserves, which stand at just over $439 billion, a four-year low. The Ukraine crisis and massive capital outflow have forced the bank to spend over $60 billion to prop up the ruble this year, and $28 billion just in October.
Last week, the Central Bank announced it was going to start a $50 billion repurchase agreement exercise, which will allow it to balance the Russian ruble, but will not use reserve currencies. The bank hopes to abandon its intervention strategy and have the ruble free floating next year.

1,000 per month: US airstrikes fail to stem tide of foreign fighters

AFP Photo/ISIL

872007

Tags
Conflict, Iraq, Syria, Terrorism, War

Hundreds of US-led airstrikes and daily multi-million dollar military operations have failed to stem the tide of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria, who continue to pour in by their thousands, according to multiple reports.
“The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a US intelligence official told the Washington Post.
Concrete changes might not be apparent for weeks the official said, noting the natural lag between the actual situation on the ground versus the scenario painted by analyzed intelligence.
With US intelligence estimating that 1,000 foreign fighters continue to enter Iraq and Syria every month, the Post estimates that their numbers now exceed 16,000. That figure eclipses the number of foreign fighters who took up arms in any analogous conflict over the past decades, including the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.
The figures fall within the same ballpark of a recent UN Security Council estimate. According to documents seen by The Guardian, 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to Al-Qaeda.”
The figures mirror US intelligence estimates in September, which also reckoned some 15,000 foreign fighters had entered the region via 80 different countries.
Reflecting the Post’s assessment, the UN committee notes that overall numbers since 2010 “are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 – and are growing.”
The committee, tasked with monitoring Al-Qaeda, did not mention the 80 states by name, though the overall geographical diversity of the fighters was unprecedented.
Meanwhile, the reports sharply underscore how expensive US-led military efforts have so far proved ineffective at stemming the tide of the IS advance in Syria and Iraq.

AFP Photo/ISIL

The United States and its allies have carried out more than 600 strikes so far in Syria and Iraq, with the strategic aim of allowing moderate opposition forces some breathing space to regroup. Since August 8, the US has flown 6,600 manned and unmanned sorties in Iraq and Syria at an estimated cost of $8.3 million a day, Defense News reports. Last week, it was reported that 32 civilians have died so far in the strikes.
Earlier this month, the Associated Press, citing Pentagon data, estimated that the United States alone had spent approximately $1.1 billion on its military operations in Iraq and Syria since mid-June.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said this week that the bombing campaign was disrupting IS, though he admitted that any major offensive “may still be a ways off,” the Post cites him as saying.
US officials have said that the uninterrupted flow of fighters is not a proper metric to measure the effectiveness of the airstrikes, which have killed an estimated 460 IS fighters since last month, on top of 60 more fighters from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
Officials have attributed the number and pace of foreign fighters arriving in the region to several factors, including sophisticated IS recruiting techniques, and the relative ease with which would-be jihadists can travel from the greater Middle East and Europe to Syria and Iraq.
The UN report similarly recognized "the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging," being conducted by the Islamic State.
A recent CNN/ORC International survey found that 54 percent of respondents believe the strikes will degrade and destroy the military capability of IS. That figure is down from 61 percent in September.
Meanwhile, the number of respondents who support sending US ground troops to engage the jihadists was 45 percent - a seven percent jump over the previous month. A majority, however, still oppose putting boots on the ground.