00:00Good day. Welcome to the Gulf News update for Wednesday, January the 21st. Here are
00:09the top stories at this hour. An AirAsia plane that crashed last month with 162 people on
00:15board was climbing at an abnormally high rate, then plunged and suddenly disappeared from
00:20radar. That's according to Indonesia's transport minister. Ignatius Jonen told parliament that
00:25radar data showed the Airbus A320 was climbing at about 6,000 feet a minute before it disappeared
00:31on December 28th. It isn't normal to climb like that. It's very rare for commercial planes,
00:37which normally climb just 1,000 to 2,000 feet per minute, he said. It can only be done by
00:42a fighter jet, he said. The plane then plunged toward the sea and disappeared from radar.
00:48Al-Houthi militiamen who seized control of Yemen's presidential palace on Tuesday are
00:52ready to face any measures by the UN Security Council, their chief Abdul Malik Al-Houthi
00:57has said. Al-Houthi's long televised speech came after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
01:03called for an immediate halt to the fighting in Yemen. Refusing to bend to the new Republican
01:09Congress, President Barack Obama unveiled an ambitious State of the Union agenda steeped
01:14in democratic priorities, including tax increases on the wealthy, education and child care help
01:20for the middle class, and a torrent of veto threats for the GOP's own plans. In a shift
01:25from tradition, Obama's address to a joint session of Congress was less a laundry list
01:30of new proposals and more an attempt to sell a story of a national economy emerging from
01:35the shadow of crisis. Sport and English Premier League champions Manchester City will tackle
01:40German Bundesliga side Hamburg in a high-profile friendly in Al Ain tonight as the host club
01:45celebrates the first anniversary of its spectacular Hazar Bin Zayed Stadium. Gulf News has become
01:51the first newspaper in the Middle East to visit the US prison camps at Guantanamo Bay.
01:56Later today, watch out for our special interactive feature online. And finally, the weather.
02:01Today's high across the UAE will be 21 degrees Celsius, dropping to 16 tonight. That's all
02:06for now. Thanks for watching. And as always, you can get the latest news on gulfnews.com�
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