Russian plane crash in Egypt: It's too early to determine cause, officials say

Flight 9268 was on its way from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg early Saturday when it dropped off radar about 23 minutes into the flight, Egyptian officials say.

Air traffic controllers apparently didn't receive any distress calls. 

"There was nothing abnormal before the plane crash," Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel said Saturday. "It suddenly disappeared from the radar."

The website Flightradar24, which tracks aircraft around the world, said it had received data from the Russian plane suggesting sharp changes in altitude and a dramatic decrease in ground speed before the signal was lost. 

A U.S. satellite that was over Sinai at the time of the crash detected a heat flash, according to a U.S. official directly familiar with the latest information in the investigation. U.S. intelligence and military officials are analyzing the data to determine whether the flash occurred in midair or on the ground and what that can tell them about what happened to the plane, the official said.

Analysts say heat flashes could be tied to a range of possibilities: a missile firing, a bomb blast, a malfunctioning engine exploding, a structural problem causing a fire on the plane or wreckage hitting the ground.

"The number of heat signatures is crucial," said CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien. "If, in fact, only one was detected, that in some respects might steer one away from a missile launch and onto some idea of an explosion onboard the aircraft." 

A top Russian aviation official has said the plane broke apart in midair.

Alexander Smirnov, a Metrojet official, told reporters in Moscow on Monday the airline had ruled out technical problems and human error. Protection systems on the plane would have prevented it from crashing, he said, even if there were major errors in the pilot's control equipment.

The Egyptian military said militants in Sinai have shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft weapons that shoot only as high as 14,000 feet, far short of the more than 30,000 feet at which Flight 9268 was flying when it dropped off radar.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov refused to discount terrorism, telling CNN's Matthew Chance on Monday that "only (the) investigation can rule out something."

Metrojet executives also said Monday that it was too early in the investigation to speculate or draw any conclusions. But Smirnov referred to purported footage of the crash posted by militants, saying: "Those images you have seen on the Internet, I think they are fake."

South Africa asks appeal court to convict Pistorius

South African paralympian Oscar Pistorius, freed on parole last month after serving a fifth of his prison term for killing his girlfriend, faces years more in jail if state lawyers can get his conviction scaled up to murder from culpable homicide.

Prosecutors will argue before the Supreme Court that a high court judge was wrong to let Pistorius off the more serious charge after he fired four shots through a door on Valentine's Day 2013, killing Reeva Steenkamp.
The 28-year-old track star will not be present at the one-day hearing in Bloemfontein, 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Johannesburg, his lawyer Barry Roux told Reuters.

A panel of five judges will hear the appeal, and could either order a retrial, convict Pistorius of murder themselves or reject the prosecution's appeal, legal experts have said.
"The (high) court not only approached the circumstantial evidence incorrectly, but also incorrectly excluded relevant evidence," prosecutors said in documents filed at the court.

Pistorius, dubbed "Blade Runner" because of the carbon fibre prosthetic blades he uses to compete, denied deliberately killing his girlfriend during his six-month trial, saying he mistook her for an intruder at his home.

Prosecutors said Pistorius intended to kill Steenkamp, who they said fled to the toilet during a row.
But high court Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled last year that the state had failed to prove intent or "dolus eventualis", a legal concept that centres on a person being held responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions.

The state insists Masipa misinterpreted some parts of the law and that Pistorius must have known that the person behind the door could be killed.
A murder conviction would result in a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.
After the trial last September, Pistorius, a gun enthusiast, was also convicted of firing a pistol under the table of a Johannesburg restaurant but was let off on charges of illegal possession of ammunition and firing a gun out of a car sun-roof.

The athlete was freed two weeks ago in line with South African sentencing guidelines that say non-dangerous prisoners should spend only a sixth of a custodial sentence behind bars.
He has not been seen in public since then and is under house arrest that confines him to his uncle's home in a wealthy Pretoria suburb for the duration of his sentence.

Kim Kardashian shares behind-the-scenes look at her awesome birthday party

On Monday Kim Kardashian shared a behind-the scenes look of her 35th birthday  party on her website kimkardashianwest.com.

The pregnant star was seen playing with her 2 year old North, and glowed next to husband Kanye   West''''.......

OCTOBER PAYROLL FOR ALL CIVIL SERVANT

The Federal government say civil servants under its payroll will get their October salaries today November 3rd.

A statement from the Senior Special Assistant to President Buhari on media and publicity, Shehu Garba, states that the delay in the salaries was due to the crashing of some computers that were being used when the salaries were to be disbursed last week. The salaries were meant to have been paid a week before the end of October.