1. The Prime Minister demands “justice” as Julie Bishop arrives in Washington.
“We owe it to the dead, all the dead, we owe it to the families, all the families to do everything in our power to respect the bodies, to find the truth and to ensure justice is done,” Tony Abbott told the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes last night, three days after flight MH17 was downed killing all 298 people on board including 37 Australians.
His comments came as reports of widespread looting and mayhem at the crash site filled the world’s media.
Mr Abbott condemned the way the site was being handled saying that reports have emerged that bodies have been put into bags and “off to who knows where.”
Meanwhile this morning the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has arrived in Washington where she will lobby the UN Security Council to support an Australian-sponsored resolution calling” on all states and actors in the region to cooperate fully in relation to the international investigation of the incident, including with respect to immediate access to the crash site … in an effort to strengthen the safety of international civil aviation and to prevent any recurrence of such use of force against civilian aircraft”.
The UN could vote on the resolution as early as tomorrow.
2. Reaction from other world leaders
British PM David Cameron has warned that the world must “turn this moment of outrage into a moment of action” with reports that he is close to securing tougher sanctions against Russia following the downing of flight MH17 after speaking to Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande.
He told media that Mrs Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Mr Hollande, the French President, agreed that the EU must reconsider its approach and be prepared to impose further sanctions on Tuesday.
David Cameron tweeted:
He then followed this up with a tweet saying he had spoken to President Putin, demanding access to the crash site.
Meanwhile US Secretary of State John Kerry said that there is an “enormous amount of evidence” that Russia provided separatists in Eastern Ukraine with the weapons used to shoot down the airplane.
He called for Russia to become more involved in assisting the recovery. “We need Russia to become part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he said on CBS News.
3. Black box recovered
Information reported this morning is that separatist leaders of pro-Russian rebels have announced the black box has now been recovered and brought to the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
“Jet parts resembling the black boxes were discovered at the crash site,” said Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic reports Sky News.
“There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes, but we brought to Donetsk some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner,” he said.
4. #Dignity for the lost
The BBC says that the remains of up to 196 people from the MH17 crash in Ukraine have been loaded on to refrigerated rail wagons, to be taken to an “unknown destination.”
Fairfax Media reports that Volodymyr Groysman, vice prime minister of Ukraine and head of the MH17 crash taskforce, told journalists on Sunday afternoon he could not say when this train would leave the station, or identify a destination.
The ABC report that the bodies were removed “out of respect for the families” and because “it is becoming inhumane in these conditions”.
“We couldn’t wait any longer because of the heat and also because there are many dogs and wild animals in the zone”,
Ukrainian officials have said that they expect to have the bodies eventually delivered to government-held city of Kharkiv, but it is unclear if the militants will agree.
Last night Mr Abbott told the Nine Network that RAAF C-17 aircraft were on standby, fuelled and ready to fly, as soon as a safe corridor could be secured to fly the bodies to a safe haven.
4. Reports of children seeing bodies falling from the sky
Horror reports that local children saw bodies falling from the sky have emerged from the nearby towns close to the crash scene.
writes of a local orphanage where children say at first they thought they were “big birds flying to us from the sky.”
“I saw eight more bodies up the street that day, all of them mostly naked, falling right from the clouds on us,” said Larisa Zvereva, a teacher at the orphanage that houses 20 children.
5. $66 a passenger
The Australian reports that it would have cost Malaysia Airlines $66 a passenger to divert around the Ukrainian airspace where it was shot down.
A former flight planner told the newspaper that the figure showed why many airlines were still using the Ukrainian airspace.
The Australian says that “industry insiders, including pilots, believe airlines would have diverted had they thought they would have been subject to a missile attack at cruise altitudes.”
6. Sky News apologies after reporter goes through a victim’s bag
Sky News have issued an apology after a reporter went through a victim’s bag live on air – before realizing what he was doing was wrong.
Reporter Colin Brazier told viewers there were “keys, a toothbrush, and…we shouldn’t really be doing this.”
After being heavily criticized on Twitter, Sky News apologized for the incident, calling the reporter’s actions “inappropriate.”
“Today whilst presenting from the site of the MH17 air crash Colin Brazier reflected on the human tragedy of the event and showed audiences the content of one of the victims’ bags,” a Sky News spokesperson told BNO News.
“Colin immediately recognized that this was inappropriate and said so on air. Both Colin and Sky News apologize profusely for any offense caused.”
7. Lucky stars for this cyclist
A Dutch cyclist is amazed at his lucky twist of fate after missing both doomed flight MH370 and the downed MH17.
Netherlands public broadcaster RTV Oost reports that Maarten de Jonge was due to fly in March with Malaysia’s Terengganu Cycling Team to compete in a race in Taiwan, but switched to another flight to avoid having a stopover.
De Jonge was then set to take MH17 from a recent race in the Netherlands, but changed his flight for a later one this weekend.
He wrote on his website:
“How happy I am for myself and my family that I was on this flight and did not take it the last moment; my story is ultimately nothing compared to the misery in which so many people are paid. Attention should be paid to the victims and survivors. Wishing everyone affected by this disaster a lot of strength.”
Further developments on MH17 to come..