Pretoria: South African President Jacob Zuma was not involved in a wedding scandal in which a private plane of the affluent and well-connected Indian Gupta family landed at a sensitive military airbase, an investigation revealed on Sunday, reported Xinhua.
"In any event, the president is not involved in authorizing the landing or not landing of aircraft at airports," Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe told reporters in Pretoria.
There had been speculation that the Gupta family which allegedly maintains good relations with Zuma and the ruling African National Congress might have got permission from Zuma to land its plane at the Waterkloof military airbase near Pretoria on April 30.
The Gupta family landed a chartered plane at the airbase, carrying about 200 family members and friends while on way to Sun City, the North West Province to attend a wedding of Vega Gupta, a niece of the powerful Gupta businessmen who own several companies including Sahara Computers and the pro-government New Age newspaper....
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04:16 AM, May 20, 2013
London: One person was killed and two others were critically injured on Sunday after a light aircraft crashed at Caernarfon Airport in Gwynedd in Wales, police said. A man in his 60s suffered "serious multiple lower limb injuries" and a boy had head and abdomen injuries following the incident, the ambulance service said. Fire crews cut another man from the wreckage, pronounced dead at the scene, the BBC reported. Police...
11:06 PM, May 19, 2013
Yangon: Two passengers have been injured when a plane landing in Myanmar shot past the end of the runway when its brakes failed. The Facebook page of Myanmar state radio and TV reported that a Fokker plane of Myanmar Airways carrying 55 passengers went 200 meters past the end of the runway at Monghsat in northern Shan state on Thursday before it hit a fence and stopped. It said a...
09:44 PM, May 16, 2013
Kathmandu: All 22 people, including eight Japanese tourists on board a Nepal Airlines aircraft on Thursday escaped with minor injuries after the small plane skidded off the runway while trying to land and plunged into a river in northwestern Nepal. The accident occurred as the Twin Otter airplane on a flight from Pokhara skidded off the runway while trying to land at Jomsom Airport in a mountainous region and crashed...
04:22 PM, May 16, 2013
Mumbai: Life may get a little simpler for Mumbai's millions after a fresh transport option - a seaplane that will complete a two-hour road journey in 7 minutes which will cost Rs 750 equivalent to the cab fare for the same distance. Operated by a private operator Maritime Energy Heli Air Services (MEHAIR), the first-of-its-kind service aims to be take off mid-June, with most police, aviation and governmental clearances coming...
09:55 AM, May 12, 2013
Islamabad: A Pakistani court on Thursday declared that US drone strikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban elements in the country's lawless tribal belt were tantamount to a "war crime" and the armed forces would have the right to shoot down the CIA-operated spy planes. The Peshawar High Court issued the verdict against the US drones in response to four petitions that contended the missile attacks killed civilians and caused collateral damage....
12:26 AM, May 10, 2013
The flight from San Fransisco to Phoenix took 18 hours and 18 minutes on Saturday - and didn't use a drop of fuel. A solar-powered airplane that developers hope eventually to pilot around the world landed safely in Phoenix on the first leg of an attempt to fly across the United States using only the sun's energy, project organizers said. The plane, dubbed the Solar Impulse, took 18 hours and...
07:00 AM, May 05, 2013
Washington: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are among 16 Indians who have found a place in the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine's list of the 500 most powerful people on the planet. Apart from them, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister AK Antony and External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid are also in the list. Indian spiritual leaders Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravishankar are also in the...
04:45 PM, May 01, 2013
Beijing: Over 600 Chinese have applied to join an ambitious Dutch aerospace project that plans to send humans on a one-way trip to Mars for permanent settlement. The Dutch project, while triggering enthusiasm to explore outer space, is also under fire with the trip being viewed by some as a suicide mission, with applicants being shipped to a planet that is uninhabitable by humans. The project, Mars One, is being...
07:00 PM, Apr 29, 2013
New York: A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the commercial airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, has been discovered, wedged between two lower Manhattan buildings, police said on Friday. The piece of landing gear found in a narrow alleyway behind 51 Park Place and 50 Murray Street in Manhattan's financial district includes a "clearly visible" Boeing identification number, New...
06:26 AM, Apr 27, 2013
In this photo from 1997, Beverly Hills, 'The Backstreet Boys' donate an outfit from their world tour to Planet Hollywood's world renown collection of memorabilia. In this Los Angeles, California April 22, 2013 image the Backstreet Boys (from L-R) Howie Dorough, Kevin Richardson, AJ McLean, Nick Carter and Brian Littrell touch their star after it was unveiled on the Walk of Fame. ...
11:16 AM, Apr 25, 2013
New York: Applications are already pouring in for the ambitious Mars mission that aims to send an adventurous duo - a man and a woman - on a 501-day-long flyby around the Red planet in January 2018. Millionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first space tourist in 2001, had unveiled the Inspiration Mars' "Mission for America" in February this year. Applications are now rolling in from enthusiasts, despite the fact...
03:49 PM, Apr 17, 2013
Chennai: Customs officials arrested a man at the airport here with a suitcase containing five venomous snakes on Wednesday. Airport sources said the arrested Mohammed Azarudin, who arrived by a Thai Airways flight, told the Customs officials that one of his friends in Thaliand gave the suitcase to him with a request to handover it to a person in Chennai. He said he was given Rs 10,000 for carrying the...
12:20 PM, Apr 17, 2013
London: A passenger jet had to abort its landing at the last minute at Glasgow's Prestwick Airport after a deer was spotted on the airfield. A spokesman for the Ayrshire airport said the crew of the Ryanair passenger jet, which had flown from Faro in Portugal, were ordered to perform "a go-around". He said the aircraft landed safely shortly after the incident. The spokesman said the airport was investigating how...
08:18 PM, Apr 14, 2013
Bali: A Lion Air jet carrying more than 100 passengers and crew crashed into the ocean while attempting to land on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, injuring up to 45 people, officials said on Saturday. All 101 passengers and seven crew members were safely rescued from the plane, said I Made Krisna Maharta, an official with Bali's search and rescue agency. Up to 45 people were taken to several...
08:29 PM, Apr 13, 2013
Jakarta: A Lion Air plane with more than 100 passengers skidded off the end of a runway into the sea on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, police said on Saturday. Bali Police Chief Arif Wahyunadi told local TV One that all of the passengers and crew were evacuated from the plane and taken into the airport terminal for treatment. Hospital officials and paramedics said at least seven passengers were...
02:44 PM, Apr 13, 2013
Wellington: New Zealand navy divers have recovered the bodies of an American wireless executive and his wife after the plane he was piloting crashed in the South Pacific. Eric Hertz, an experienced amateur pilot, radioed authorities March 30 to say an engine had failed on the couple's twin-engine Beechcraft Baron. He and his wife Kathy, a university employee, had left from an airport near Auckland bound for the South Island...
12:31 PM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: A private jet to Karnataka carrying Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley made an emergency landing at New Delhi airport nine minutes after taking off on Monday morning. The leaders were on their way to campaign for the May 5 Assembly elections in the state. Pilot of the aircraft informed Air traffic control (ATC) of technical issue and returned back to the...
11:25 AM, Apr 08, 2013
New York: Boeing Co said it plans to make a test flight later on Friday with its 787 Dreamliner jet, aimed at returning the grounded plane to service after more than two months on the ground. Boeing said the flight is scheduled to depart around 11 am PDT (11:30 pm IST) and last about two hours. The time is subject to change, it said. The flight would gather data for...
11:34 PM, Apr 05, 2013
