Two Myanmar jet pilots, young girl killed Check-in with facial recognition now possible in Shanghai Koreas and UN Command discuss demilitarising border

YANGON: Two Myanmar fighter pilots were killed in separate crashes due to heavy fog Tuesday, officials said, with the debris from one of the planes killing a young girl in her home.

Poor visibility caused one F-7 jet to fly into a telecommunications tower near Magway air force base more than 500 kilometres northwest of Yangon, an air force official told AFP. “He had no time to eject,” said the official, who did not want to be named.

A 10-year-old girl, who was studying at home, was hit by a piece of the plane after it struck the tower, lawmaker Kyaw Swan Yee from nearby Min Buu town said.

“She died after arriving at hospital,” he said.

In the other incident -which ocurred just 10 miles (16 kilometres) away -- the pilot managed to eject from his plane but was killed when he hit the ground according to the official. The pilots were named as Captain Hein Thu Aung and Captain Phyo Maung Maung, both in their thirties.

Magway's chief minister and a delegation of lawmakers paid their respects to the girl's family, Kyaw Swan Yee said.

The crashes are the latest aviation catastrophes to blight the country's air force.

In April an F-7 pilot died after his jet crashed due to a technical failure.

In June last year a Chinese-built Shaanxi Y8 carrying military personnel and their families plunged into the Andaman sea after taking off, killing 122 people, 15 of whom were children.

The F-7 is a Cold War-era fighter jet –a Chinese made variant of the Soviet Union's MIG-21. SHANGHAI: It's now possible to check in automatically at Shanghai's Hongqiao airport using facial recognition technology, part of an ambitious rollout of facial recognition systems in China that has raised privacy concerns as Beijing pushes to become a global leader in the field.

Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport unveiled self-service kiosks for flight and baggage check-in, security clearance and boarding powered by facial recognition technology, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Similar efforts are underway at airports in Beijing and Nanyang city, in central China's Henan province.

Many airports in China already use facial recognition to help speed security checks, but Shanghai's system, which debuted Monday, is being billed as the first to be fully automated.

"It is the first time in China to achieve self-service for the whole check-in process," said Zhang Zheng, general manager of the ground services department for Spring Airlines, the first airline to adopt the system at Hongqiao airport. Currently, only Chinese identity card holders can use the technology.

Spring Airlines said Tuesday that passengers had embraced automated check-in, with 87 per cent of 5,017 people who took Spring flights on Monday using the self-service kiosks, which can cut down check-in times to less than a minute and a half. Across greater China, facial recognition is finding its way into daily

life. Mainland police have used facial recognition systems to identify people of interest in crowds and nab jaywalkers, and are working to develop an integrated national system of surveillance camera data.

Chinese media are filled with reports of ever-expanding applications: A KFC outlet in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, where it's possible to pay using facial recognition technology; a school that uses facial recognition cameras to monitor students' reactions in class; and hundreds of ATMS in Macau equipped with facial recognition devices to curb money

laundering. SEOUL: The two Koreas and the Us-led United Nations Command held talks Tuesday on demilitarising a section of the heavily fortified border dividing the peninsula, as a diplomatic thaw gathers pace.

"The three parties examined the progress in removing

landmines at the Joint Security Area (Jsa)...and discussed other practical matters regarding steps toward disarming the area," Seoul's defense ministry said in a statement. The JSA, also known as the truce vil

lage of Panmunjom, is the only spot along the tense, 250-kilometre frontier where troops from the two countries stand face to face.

It was a designated neutral zone until the "axe murder incident" in 1976, when North Korean soldiers attacked a work party trying to chop down a tree inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), leaving two US army officers dead.

South and North Korea -- which are technically still at war -- agreed to take measures to ease military tensions Us-led United Nations Command, left, South Korean and North Korean, right, military officers attend a meeting at the southern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea, on Tuesday