Cathay Pacific Airliner Makes Emergency Landing in Singapore

 

HONG KONG — A Cathay Pacific airliner was forced to make an emergency landing after engine trouble on Monday, prompting the airline and the engine maker Rolls-Royce to start an investigation into the incident.

No one was hurt. The Airbus A330 aircraft carrying 136 passengers and 13 crew members left Singapore shortly after 1 a.m. local time, bound for Jakarta. The flight, CX 715, returned to Singapore’s Changi International Airport shortly after takeoff when one of the aircraft’s engines emitted a stall warning, Cathay Pacific said in a statement.

Cathay Pacific, which is based in Hong Kong and is one of the biggest airlines in the Asia-Pacific region, said fire crews met the aircraft on landing and used extinguishers to douse what it described as “sparks” from the affected engine. A separate statement from Changi Airport indicated the engine was on fire.

The passengers disembarked “without incident,” and most were transferred to other flights on Monday morning, according to Cathay.

“Cathay Pacific and Rolls-Royce are investigating the incident which has been reported to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department,” the airline said in its statement.

The aircraft was purchased new by Cathay in February 2001. It has logged approximately 11,250 takeoffs and landings and 37,000 flight hours, according to Ascend, an aviation industry consultancy in London. The engine involved was a Trent 700, built by Rolls-Royce of Britain. A Rolls-Royce spokesman said Monday that 900 engines of the same model were in service worldwide. The Trent 700 fleet, which first entered service in 1995, has logged a total of 16 million flight hours.

Nicola Clark contributed reporting from Paris.

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Bahrain Says It Will End State of Emergency

JERUSALEM — The king of Bahrain said Sunday that the state of emergency he imposed in mid-March to quell antigovernment protests on that strategic and contested island will end June 1.

The announcement is a sign that Bahrain is seeking to assure banks and foreign governments that the chaos of recent months is over and that the kingdom, which depends heavily on financial business, is trying to return to normal.

It is also a sign that the numerous arrests and rushed trials of opposition figures in military courts could be running their course. Some leading opposition figures went on trial as the announcement was being made.

Bahrain is a majority Shiite Muslim country run by a Sunni royal family and elite. The government cracked down hard on the protests, which the organizers said were inspired by Egypt and Tunisia but which the government accused of being aided by Iran, which is predominantly Shiite.

The day before declaring the three-month state of emergency, the king brought in about 2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries.

Since then, hundreds of protesters and activists, including opposition leaders, have been arrested. Under the emergency statutes, they are tried in military courts and face harsh punishment through antiterrorism laws, including the death penalty. The protests have led to the deaths of at least 30 people. Among those due to be tried are journalists and medical personnel.

Some people reacted with joy to the impending end to the emergency statute.

“I am quite pleased,” Jasim Husain Ali, a legislator with the opposition Wefaq party, said by telephone. “This is what Bahrain needs now: to get on with business and with developing the political economy.”

But others saw the announcement as a ruse.

“This is a cosmetic step trying to show the international community that everything is back to normal when it is not,” Nabil Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said in a telephone interview. “I don’t see it as a real initiative that will solve problems. Otherwise they would release political prisoners. The dispute is wider now than it was one month ago between the ruling elite and the people.”

The Bahrain Grand Prix, originally scheduled for March 13 and a source of a big government investment, was postponed because of the unrest.

Formula One’s governing body said last week that Bahrain had until June 3 to decide if a new date could be set for this year. If Bahrain does plan to go ahead with the race, that would help explain the lifting of the state of emergency on June 1 rather than June 15 as originally planned, several Bahrainis said.

 

Japan Announces Emergency Budget for Rebuilding

The $48.5 billion budget is likely to be followed by more spending as Japan takes on the gargantuan task of rebuilding the section of its Pacific coastline ravaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Parliament is expected to pass the budget next week.

At least 14,133 people have been found dead, an additional 13,346 remain missing and more than 130,000 are living in evacuation centers. Government estimates put the total damage from the quake and tsunami at $300 billion.

The nuclear crisis set off by the tsunami has added to the human and economic toll. On Friday, the government banned residents from a 12-mile evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where several reactors have suffered explosions and radiation leaks. A previous order urged but did not require evacuation from that zone; the government still recommends that residents leave if they are within 19 miles of the plant.

“We all share the hope that reconstruction does not mean a return to where we were, but the building of a brighter future,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

“I feel it was my fate to be prime minister at a time of great adversity,” said Mr. Kan, whose handling of the crises has been criticized sharply in Parliament and in the country at large.

Japan has rebounded from other catastrophes: The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake killed as many as 140,000 people and caused widespread destruction in Tokyo. It also is thought to have wiped out almost 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. In comparison, the death toll from the March 11 quake and tsunami is far lower, and the economic damage is likely to add up to just a few percent of G.D.P.

Still, Japan faces different challenges now, which could weigh heavily as it rebuilds: a rapidly aging population, a long-stagnant economy and public debt that is already at twice the size of its economy, thanks to profligate public works projects of the 1990s. That debt burden adds serious obstacles to financing the great reconstruction. Raising taxes, for which there appears to be a measure of public support, will dampen already tepid personal consumption levels. Issuing more government bonds will add to the ballooning deficit.

Mr. Kan’s grip on leadership also appears to be weakening under the withering criticism, including charges that he bungled the initial response to the nuclear crisis, causing it to worsen.

The president of Fukushima Daiichi’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, visited an evacuation center on Friday. “I have no words to express my regret,” the president, Masataka Shimizu, told the evacuees after making his way through cardboard beds and blankets. Television cameras in tow, he knelt and bowed deeply — the ultimate posture of apology in Japan.

Some refugees bowed back, but others heckled him. “We all just want to go home,” one told him quietly.