Army vows to fight terror despite attacks

BEIRUT: Lebanon's Army vowed over the weekend to battle terrorism by launching the security plan despite attacks targeting the military.

“The Army will continue to fight and pursue terrorists, and is determined to move forward and implement the security plan in all its details, whatever the sacrifices and difficulties," the Army command said in a statement issued late Saturday.

The statement came hours after a suicide bomber killed three soldiers at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal near the border with Syria.

"The Army Command knows that it is now more than ever targeted by terrorists who want to prevent the establishment of the authority of the state and its attempts to eliminate strife,” the statement said, citing the Arsal blast and the attack that killed an Army officer in the northern city of Tripoli last week.

Acting Police Chief Brig. Gen. Ibrahim Basbous arrived in Tripoli Sunday to attend a security meeting at the Tripoli Serail.

Brazil police: Worker likely without safety cable

SAO PAULO -- Brazilian authorities say the initial investigation into the accident that killed a worker at the stadium that will host the World Cup opener in a few months indicated he likely wasn't wearing a required safety cable.

The worker died on Saturday after falling about 26 feet (8 meters) while helping install temporary seats at the Itaquerao stadium, marking the seventh death in accidents at World Cup venues in Brazil.

The police official in charge of investigating the accident said initial witness accounts showed worker Fabio Hamilton da Cruz didn't connect his safety cable because he only had a "quick thing" to finish at the site.

Inspector Rafael Pavarina said "employees who were next to the victim at the time of the fall" indicated "he neglected to use the security equipment."

Hotelier gets small business honor

TUPELO, Miss. -- A Tupelo businessman is among 53 people selected by the Small Business Administration as a small business person of the year.

WTVA-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1nYnF2d ) that Fusion Hospitality CEO Bruce Patel represents Mississippi.

Patel and other honorees from the other 49 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam will be recognized during National Business Week in May.

Patel's company started with one hotel and now operates hotels across the South.

SBA will name its 2014 small business person during sessions set for May 15-16.

Ibrahim says kidnapped bishops’ case ‘complicated’

BEIRUT: The case of the bishops kidnapped in Syria for almost a year is complicated, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, director-general of Lebanon’s General Security, said in comments published Sunday, adding, however, that efforts to release them are "on the right track."

“The case of the two abducted bishops in Aleppo, Boulos Yazigi and Yohanna Ibrahim, is more complicated than the case of the Maaloula nuns, but it is on the right track,” Abbas told the Al-Raya Qatari newspaper.

“I would rather keep the information out of the public so as not to spoil the efforts being exerted in that regard, but I assure [the public] that all efforts are being exerted to resolve this humanitarian case,” he said.

Aleppo’s Greek Orthodox Archbishop, Paul Yazigi, and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim were abducted on April 23, 2013 by gunmen while returning to the northern Syrian city from the Turkish border.

Ibrahim also praised the role played by Qatar in the release of the Lebanese pilgrims, who were held in Syria's Aazaz, and a group of nuns abducted from the Syrian town of Maaloula.

Ibrahim, who helped secure the release of the Maaloula nuns earlier this month, as well as the Lebanese hostages last year, has also been following up on the case of the bishops.

Syrian woman, child killed at Army checkpoint in Arsal

ARSAL, Lebanon: A Syrian woman and her child were killed at an Army checkpoint on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal Saturday night after the driver of the pickup truck they were riding in disregarded the soldiers' orders for him to stop, security sources told The Daily Star.

Soldiers opened fire on the vehicle, killing the woman and child and wounding the driver in the leg, the sources said, adding he was transferred to a local hospital for treatment.

The incident came few hours after three soldiers were killed and four others wounded in a suicide bombing that targeted an Army checkpoint in the Wadi Ata area in Arsal.

The Army has been on high alert at all checkpoints since the bombing, the sources said.

Hezbollah, Salam denounce Arsal car bombing

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Mininster Tammam Salam and Hezbollah condemned the deadly suicide car bombing that targeted a military post in northeast Lebanon over the weekend, with both labeling the attack a “terrorist act.”

Hezbollah condemned the blast in a statement late Saturday, describing it as a “criminal terrorist explosion.”

“A new crime has been added to the takfiri terrorist [groups] growing record with the targeting of a military checkpoint in Arsal,” the statement said.

“ Hezbollah denounces this crime, which targeted the Army, and considers such crimes an attack on all Lebanese and the nation as a whole,” the statement said.

A car exploded as it drove past a recently erected military checkpoint on the outskirts of Arsal, a town on the border with Syria, killing three soldiers and wounding four others.

Hezbollah also warned against the spread of takfiri movements and said it imposes a risk to everyone.

“The creep of terrorist and takfiri movements has proven to be a [threat] to all without exception because it is a bloody and destructive [ideology] based on bigotry and the mentality of erasure, exclusion, and slaughter,” it added.

For his part, Salam described the blast as a “heinous terrorist act,” and stressed that “such acts will not affect the firm political decision to fight terrorism and all security violations.”

“Such a clear message will not crack the Army that was and always will remain an icon of sacrifice, and which enjoys full political support to protect the country and the citizens,” he said.

Australia hopeful as more items pulled from sea

PERTH, Australia -- Australia's prime minister said Sunday he was hopeful a clue will emerge soon to narrow the hunt for Flight 370, as more objects are pulled from the southern Indian Ocean and checked to see if they are part of the plane that went missing more than three weeks ago.

But so far, even though more ships are scouring the area off western Australia, none of the recovered items has been connected to the Malaysia Airlines plane that crashed March 8 with 239 people on board.

"My understanding from this morning is that there has been no discrete debris associated with the flight," Australian Navy Commodore Peter Leavy told reporters Sunday.

In Sydney, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the "intensifying search effort" as positive because objects "have been recovered from the ocean."

The Australian Maritimes Safety Authority said 10 planes took part in the search Sunday, leaving in staggered times from the western city of Perth. Eight ships were on the scene, including the Australian navy supply ship HMAS Success, which is to store any wreckage found.

The ships are trying to locate and identify the objects sighted by aircraft over the past two days.

Leavy, the commander of the search task force, said the operation was made more difficult because the particular area being combed is in a shipping lane littered with potentially more floating objects.

AMSA said there were light showers and low cloud in the area, but not enough to disrupt the search, which is about 2 ½ hours flying time from Perth, allowing the planes five hours of searching time before they have to return to base.

Among the objects spotted over the last day were three by a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 plane that were white, red and orange, according to a report from China's official Xinhua News Agency said. The missing Boeing 777's exterior was red, white, blue and gray.

In Kuala Lumpur, several dozen Chinese relatives of passengers on Flight 370 arrived Sunday to demand to meet top officials for more information about what happened to the airliner.

Two-thirds of the 227 passengers aboard the plane en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur were Chinese, and Beijing has urged Malaysia to be more open about the investigation.

One of the relatives, who gave only his surname, Xu, said that the relatives want to meet officials "at the very highest levels."

Newly analyzed satellite data shifted the search zone on Friday, raising expectations that searchers may be closer to getting physical evidence that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean. The change came after analysts determined that the Boeing 777 may have been traveling faster than earlier estimates and would therefore have run out of fuel sooner.

That would narrow the hunt for the wreckage and the plane's black boxes, which should contain clues to what caused the plane to be so far off-course.

An Australian warship with an aircraft black box detector was set to depart Sunday to join the search. It will still take three to four days for the ship, the Ocean Shield, to reach the search zone — an area roughly the size of Poland about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) to the west of Australia.

"The ship will take part in the surface search until the debris is positively identified and an underwater search area is then predicted," U.S .Navy Captain Mark Matthews told reporters in Perth.

The Ocean Shield will be equipped with a black box detector — the U.S. Navy's Towed Pinger Locator — and an unmanned underwater vehicle, as well as other acoustic detection equipment.

But even if investigators can determine that the plane went down in the newly targeted search zone, recovery of its flight data and cockpit voice recorders could be complicated.

The sea floor within the search area is covered in squishy sediment and generally flat, save for a steep slope and trench near its southern end.

Unless the plane's fuselage went down the slope or into the trench, the underwater geography should not hinder the search. The area is dominated by Broken Ridge, a plateau where depths range from as shallow as about 800 meters (2,625 feet) to about 3,000 meters (9,843 feet). At the edge of the plateau closest to Antarctica is the Diamantina trench, which sea floor mappers have found is as deep as 5,800 meters (19,000 feet), though it could be deeper in places that have not been measured.

Matthews said the Navy's ping locator has the "capability to do search and recovery operations down to a depth of 20,000 feet."

Data on the black boxes may help investigators solve what has become one of aviation's big mysteries — what happened to Flight 370, with speculation ranging from equipment failure and a botched hijacking to terrorism or an act by one of the pilots.

Abbott also announced that former Australian defense chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, will lead a new center in Perth to coordinate the international search effort.

Wong reported from Kuala Lumpur. Associated Press writers Scott McDonald and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur; Kristen Gelineau in Sydney; Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia; Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand; Aritz Parra and Didi Tang in Beijing, and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.