Plane with 54 Aboard Goes Missing in Indonesia

Local villagers told authorities that they saw a plane crash into a mountain, and scores of rescuers were heading to the remote area and will begin searching there Monday morning. An air search for the missing plane was suspended and will resume Monday as well.

The Trigana Air Service plane was flying from Papua's provincial capital, Jayapura, to the Papua city of Oksibil when it lost contact with Oksibil's airport, said Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata. There was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call, he said.

The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew members on the scheduled 42-minute journey, Barata said. Five children, including three infants, were among the passengers.

Local media reports said all the passengers are Indonesians. The airline did not immediately release a passenger manifest.

Oksibil, which is about 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of Jayapura, was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane lost contact with the airport minutes before it was scheduled to land, said Susanto, the head of Papua's search and rescue agency.

Residents of Okbape village in Papua's Bintang district told local police that they saw a plane flying low before crashing into a mountain, said Susanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. He said about 150 rescuers were heading to the area, which is known for its dense forest and steep cliffs, and would begin searching for the plane early Monday.

Okbape is about 24 kilometers (15 miles) west of Oksibil.

A plane was sent Sunday to look for the missing airliner, but the air search was suspended due to darkness and limited visibility and will resume Monday morning, Susanto said.

Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains. Some planes that have crashed there in the past have never been found.

Dudi Sudibyo, an aviation analyst, said that Papua is a particularly dangerous place to fly because of its mountainous terrain and rapidly changing weather patterns. "I can say that a pilot who is capable of flying there will be able to fly an aircraft in any part of the world," he said.

Indonesia has had its share of airline woes in recent years. The sprawling archipelago nation of 250 million people and some 17,000 islands is one of Asia's most rapidly expanding airline markets, but is struggling to provide enough qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety.

From 2007 to 2009, the European Union barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns.

Last December, all 162 people aboard an AirAsia jet were killed when the plane plummeted into the Java Sea as it ran into stormy weather on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore.

That disaster was one of five suffered by Asian carriers in a 12-month span, including Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing in March 2014 with 239 people aboard during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Trigana Air Service, which commenced operations in 1991, had 22 aircraft as of December 2013 and flies to 21 destinations in Indonesia.

As World Sweats Iran Deal, Some EU Leaders See $$

JERUSALEM, Israel -- While most world leaders fret over bombs and stockpiles in the Iranian nuclear deal, some Europeans are focused on lining their pockets, which could mean millions with the lifting of sanctions against Iran.

That's why the German economics minister and French foreign minister ran to the front of the line to visit Tehran.

"There is a huge venue for doing business between the West and Iran, and the economic factors will be dominant while the other aspects of the deal, which is Iran compliance, will be pushed aside I'm afraid," Lt. Col. (ret.) Mickey Segall, an expert on Iran and senior analyst with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told CBN News.

Reports say European businesses are ready to compete for their share of the $77 million-strong Iranian market.

Sanction relief in the deal would pour between $50 and $150 billion into the Iranian economy, enabling it to become better at what it already does well: export terrorism.

"It's a huge amount of money that will help them recover their economy, to keep the regime in power, to use that money in order to finance those terrorist organizations in the region," Israeli Interior Minister Silvan Shalom said.
 
And though the U.S. won't initially lift sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or related terror entities, Segall believes the extra funds will be used for terrorism.

"There will be enough money -- free money -- for Iran to export the revolution to Syria, to help Hezbollah, to send missiles and the know-how -- how to build missiles, rockets -- to Hamas and the PIJ, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in the Gaza Strip," Segall said.

President Barack Obama even admitted the terrorists would benefit from sanctions relief but said it was worth the tradeoff for Iran not to get a nuclear bomb.

"Now, this is not to say that sanctions relief will provide no benefit to Iran's military," Obama said. "Let's stipulate that some of that money will flow to activities that we object to."

Iran supports terrorist organizations and even groups that have killed American troops.

"The truth is that Iran has always found a way to fund these efforts, and whatever benefit Iran may claim from sanctions relief pales in comparison to the danger it could pose with a nuclear weapon," the president reasoned.

Segall says dangerous people will be taken off the sanctions list.

"For instance, there is a guy, most of the people probably didn't hear about him. His name is Fereydoon Abbasi Davani. He was the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Association, one of the most skillful nuclear scientists, and people like him will be moved out from the sanction list," he explained.

Earlier this week, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said if he were Israeli, he'd support the agreement because it's "an important tool to take an existential threat to Israel off the table."

In response, Israeli Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz said if he were American, he'd oppose the agreement because in 10 years Iran will be capable of producing dozens of atomic bombs every month, which will likely lead to a regional nuclear arms race. It harms the national security of the U.S., Israel and every Western country.

All of this comes at a time when countries are threatening Israel with boycott, divestment and sanctions for defending itself in last summer's Gaza war.

Shalom told CBN News it doesn't make sense.

"It looks very strange and very weird," he said. "It's something that we cannot really understand."

Meanwhile, Segall says Iran sees the deal as the latest sign of divine intervention on its behalf.

"For instance they say the Taliban, which was an arch-enemy of Iran, is gone. Saddam Hussein, which [sic] fought Iran for eight years, is gone," Segall explained. "So they say Israel [was] forced to get out of Lebanon in May 2000. So they see we managed to suffer sanctions and to put ourselves together against the United States for more than 36 years of revolution. So they feel that something is helping them."

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei may soon press his advantage.

According to a New York Post report, Khamenei recently released a 416-page book called Palestine, laying out a plan to destroy Israel. In it he says Israel has no right to exist because of its loyalty to America, the "Great Satan."

Clerk Defies Order, Won't Issue Gay Marriage Licenses

A Kentucky county clerk won't issue same-sex marriage licenses despite an order from a federal judge requiring her to do so.

Rowan County clerk Kim Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses June 26 after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

This week, U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning ordered her to perform the duties her job required.

In his order, Bunning said Davis "likely violated the constitutional rights of his constituents" by standing on her Christian beliefs "at the expense of others."

Davis' attorney, Roger Gannam, says his client doesn't intend to issue any licenses until all her appeals are exhausted.

"Kim Davis is resolute in vindicating her rights," said Gannam, senior counsel with Liberty Counsel. "Fundamentally, we disagree with this order because the government should never be able to compel a person to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs."

Ben Carson Defends Use of Fetal Tissue for Research

Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson is defending the use of fetal tissue for medical research.

"If you're killing babies and taking the tissue, that's a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it," Dr. Carson told The Washington Post.

The neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate made the statement after a blog published sections of a 1992 paper, co-authored by Carson, which described research using aborted fetuses.

Carson told the Post the release of portions of the paper was "desperate" and ignorant of the way medical research was conducted.

"You have to look at the intent," he said before launching a campaign tour through New Hampshire. "To willfully ignore evidence that you have for some ideological reason is wrong."

Carson told the Post fetal tissue research should not be banned, and it was not immoral.

"When we obtain tissue like that, we want to know what the origin of that tissue is developmentally," he explained. "Knowing that helps us determine which patients are likely to develop a problem."

"It's one of the reasons why at the turn of the last century, the average age of death was 47," he said. "Now, the average age of death is 80. Using the information that you have is a smart thing, not a dumb thing."

Since last week's debate, Carson has risen in primary polls. He is one of the Republicans who've spoken out against Planned Parenthood after undercover videos showed organization executives talking about the extraction and distribution of tissue from aborted fetuses.

After the first videos surfaced, Carson in a July interview on Fox News said there was "nothing that can't be done without fetal tissue."

Dr. Jen Gunter released the 1992 paper.

"Could he think his own research was useless?" Gunter asked. "If it was non-contributory to the field, why was it published? Maybe he forgot that he'd done the research on fetal tissue?"

Carson said the previous fetal tissue research does not contradict his pro-life views.

Carson said he has not used fetal tissue samples since then.

"My primary responsibility in that research was when I operated on people and obtained the tissue," Carson said. "This has everything to do with how it's required."

Carson still favors de-funding Planned Parenthood but would not call for stopping fetal tissue research if the tissue was available.

"I may not be completely objective about Planned Parenthood because I know how they started with Margaret Sanger who believed in eugenics," he said. "But it would be good for the public to understand this whole aspect of medical research."

Death Toll Climbs after Explosions Rock China City

The death toll continues to climb in the massive explosions that rocked the Chinese port city of Tianjin Wednesday night.  Fifty people have been killed in the warehouse blasts, including a dozen firefighters.

The powerful explosions devastated the city, blowing out the windows of high rise apartments and destroying office buildings.
   
More than 500 are injured, and some people are still missing.

"I was sleeping and got woken up by a massive explosion," eyewitness Monica Andrews recalled. "I could just feel my whole building shake. I thought it was an earthquake. So I just kind of woke up in a panic, looked out the window and the sky was red."

The National Earthquake Bureau reported two major blasts before midnight – the first with an equivalent of three tons of TNT, and the second with the equivalent of 21 tons.

The explosions took place in a mostly industrial economic development zone.

Government officials and state media say the warehouse stored dangerous materials. More than a thousand firefighters responded to the explosions.

"I was in the city just a couple of hours before the explosions took place. I would like to congratulate the prompt response of the authorities in seeking to minimize the loss of life," U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said.
    
At least a half-dozen logistics companies were destroyed in the blasts and more than a thousand new cars were burned in a nearby car park.

Firefighter Found Alive in Rubble of China Blast

Good news surfaces after deadly explosions rocked a Chinese port city earlier this week - a firefighter was found alive in the rubble.

Rescuers found the man 32 hours after the blast Wednesday that killed at least 50 people, and injured more than 500. The fire was still smoldering Friday.

The National Earthquake Bureau reported two major blasts before midnight Wednesday – the first with an equivalent of three tons of TNT, and the second with the equivalent of 21 tons.

"Reinforcements had just arrived on the scene and were just getting to work when the explosions occurred and therefore there was no chance to escape, and that's why the casualties were so severe," Tianjin Fire Department head Zhou Tian said at a news conference Friday. "We're now doing all we can to rescue the missing."

Officials in Tianjin say the blast began in shipping containers owned by a company that handles hazardous material.