Malaysia rejects jet 'debris' images and 4-hour flight report

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia said Thursday that satellite images of suspected debris from a missing jet were yet another false lead, and debunked a report the plane had flown on for hours after losing contact -- leaving the nearly week-old mystery no closer to being solved.

China had sparked talk of a breakthrough in the riddle of the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) jet with satellite images of three large floating objects near where flight 370 with 239 people on board lost contact on Saturday, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But Vietnamese and Malaysian planes that searched the area in the South China Sea on Thursday found no sign of wreckage of the Boeing 777, which has one of the best safety records of any jet.

Adding to confusion, the Wall Street Journal reported that US investigators suspected the plane flew for four hours after its last known contact with air traffic control at 1:30 a.m. Malaysian time, based on data automatically sent from its Rolls-Royce engines.

It would mean flight MH370 travelled for hundreds of miles after it dropped off the radar, expanding the potential crash site far beyond the vast zone under scrutiny now.

The WSJ said US counterterrorism officials were probing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board diverted the jet towards an unknown location after turning off its communication transponder.

But Malaysia denied the report as "inaccurate".

"The last (data) transmission from the aircraft was at 0107 hours which indicated that everything was normal," Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.

"Rolls-Royce and Boeing teams are here in Kuala Lumpur and have worked with MAS and investigation teams since Sunday. These issues have never been raised."

He added that China had told Malaysia that the satellite photos posted on the website of a Chinese state science agency were released "by mistake and did not show any debris".

'Every day like eternity'

The day of Malaysian denials only exacerbated the puzzles surrounding the search for flight MH370, which has been blighted by false alarms, swirling rumours and contradictory statements about its fate.

Authorities have chased up all manner of leads, including oil slicks, a supposed life raft found at sea and even witness accounts of a night-time explosion, only to rule them all out.

"Every day it just seems like it's an eternity," Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul was on board, told CNN from their home in the Australian city of Perth.

Fighting back tears, she described how Paul had left his wedding ring and watch with her for safekeeping before starting his journey to a mining venture in Mongolia.

"I'm praying that I can give (them) back to him. It's all I can hold onto. Because there's no finality to it and we're not getting any information," she said.

Malaysia has contributed to the confusion by saying the plane may have turned back after taking off.

Military radar detected an unidentified object early Saturday north of the Malacca Strait off west Malaysia but it is unclear if it was the missing airliner.

The search for the plane now encompasses both sides of peninsular Malaysia, over an area of nearly 27,000 nautical miles (more than 90,000 square kilometres) -- roughly the size of Portugal -- and involves the navies and air forces of multiple nations.

Theories about the possible cause of the disappearance range from a catastrophic technical failure to a mid-air explosion, hijacking, rogue missile strike and even pilot suicide.

Beijing will keep up the search "as long as there is a glimmer of hope", Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said.

The passengers included 153 Chinese citizens, and Li told his once-a-year news conference: "Those people's families and friends are burning with anxiety."

Pursuing all 'concrete clues'


The satellite information prompted the focus of the search to swing back Thursday to the original flight path, after a shift in recent days to Malaysia's west coast -- far from the last known location.

"We will look at all areas especially the ones with concrete clues," a spokesman for Malaysia's civil aviation department said.

The China Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application said in a statement on its website earlier this week that it had deployed eight land observation satellites to scour the suspected crash area.

By Tuesday morning, it had obtained images covering 120,000 square kilometres, describing their quality as "rather good".

China has also requested assistance from a fleet of Earth-monitoring satellites under an international charter designed to aid emergency efforts.

US authorities said their spy satellites had detected no sign of a mid-air explosion.

Malaysian police said Thursday they were investigating the two pilots, after an Australian television report of a past cockpit security breach, although the transport minister denied that their homes had been raided.

Malaysia Airlines has said it was "shocked" over allegations that First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, along with a fellow pilot, violated airline rules in 2011 by allowing two young South African women into their cockpit during a flight.

It also emerged that months before the Malaysia Airlines jet vanished, US regulators had warned of a "cracking and corrosion" problem on Boeing 777s beneath their satellite antenna that could lead to a drastic drop in cabin pressure and possible mid-air break-up.

But Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based independent aviation analyst, said the warning did not apply to the missing aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, which has a different kind of antenna.

"When an aircraft simply disappears from radar with no trace whatsoever, normally it means a rapid deterioration of the aircraft -- an explosion or structural failure that's very rapid," he added.

"That means the wreckage would be found near where it was last reported. But in this case, this doesn't seem to be the case."

On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines said it would retire the flight codes MH370 and MH371 -- the return flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur -- as a mark of respect.

source: interaksyon.com

Malaysian jet passenger with stolen ID is Iranian, but with no terror link

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian police said Tuesday one of two suspect passengers who boarded a missing passenger jet was an Iranian illegal immigrant, as relatives of some of the 239 people on board said they were losing hope for a miracle.

Authorities have doubled the search radius to 100 nautical miles (equivalent to 185 kilometres) around the point where Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappeared from radar over the South China Sea early Saturday, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Fears of terrorism were stoked by the weekend revelation that two men boarded the flight using stolen European passports. But police said people-smuggling was emerging as the likeliest explanation for the identity fraud.

One of the pair had been identified as a 19-year-old Iranian, Malaysia's national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters.

"We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terror group and we believe he was trying to migrate to Germany," he said, adding that authorities had not yet identified the other man.

The passports -- one Italian and one Austrian -- were stolen over the past two years in Thailand, where police have long been battling a thriving trade in Western documents used by criminal gangs.

An Iranian man identified as "Mr Ali" made the two bookings by phone through a travel agency in the Thai resort of Pattaya on March 1, asking for the two cheapest tickets to Europe, Thai police say.

"We believe that these two passports were stolen by a human-smuggling gang who send people to work in third countries, especially European countries," Lieutenant General Panya Maman, commander of Thailand's southern region police, told AFP.

One of the tickets was from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt, via Beijing and Amsterdam, while the final destination for the other ticket was Copenhagen, according to travel documents seen by AFP.

'Divine intervention'

China, which had 153 of its nationals on board the plane, said it would harness 10 satellites equipped with high-resolution imaging to help in the search, as Boeing said it was joining a US government team to try to unravel the mystery of what happened to its 777-200 plane.

At a hotel in Beijing where relatives are gathered, a woman surnamed Cao told AFP that her husband's brother had been on board as part of a group accompanying Chinese artists to an exhibition in Malaysia

"We feel really helpless and haven't been to sleep for days as we are very worried," she said. "We are mentally prepared for the worst."

The vastness of the search zone reflects authorities' bafflement over the plane's disappearance. On the fourth day of searching, the operation had grown to involve 41 ships and 36 aircraft from Southeast Asian countries, Australia, China, New Zealand and the United States.

The 34-year-old son of Malaysian security guard Subramaniam Gurusamy was on the flight to do business in Beijing for an oil company.

"My three-year-old grandson is asking: 'where is Dad?' We tell him father has gone to buy sweets for you," Gurusamy, 60, said as he broke down in tears.

"Please bring back my son. I am praying for divine intervention. That is the only hope we have."

Malaysian authorities and airline officials have come under fire from China for their inability to provide any indication of what happened, and for a string of contradictory statements.

But a Malaysia Airlines (MAS) statement stressed: "We are as anxious as the families to know the status of their loved ones."

The search sphere now includes land on the Malaysian peninsula itself, the waters off its west coast, and an area to the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

That covers an area far removed from the scheduled route of MAS flight MH370, which officials say may have inexplicably turned back towards Kuala Lumpur.

Emotional breakdown
Hapless authorities and airline officials have held a number of press conferences since the drama erupted but have had no answer for the most burning questions over whether the plane exploded, ditched in the sea, was hijacked, or any number of other scenarios.

The plane, captained by a veteran MAS pilot, had relayed no indications of distress, and weather at the time was said to be good.

Vietnam asked fishing boats off its southern coast -- where the flight dropped off radar -- for help in the effort but said it feared the worst.

"In terms of our assessments and predictions - we have little hope of a positive outcome," Pham Quy Tieu, deputy minister of transport, said Tuesday.

Emotions were running high after China's state media blamed Kuala Lumpur for a lack of information. Tearful relatives of the missing Chinese passengers voiced frustration, while some clung to fading hopes.

"I hope it is a hijacking, then there will be some hope that my young cousin has survived," a man in his 20s surnamed Su said in Beijing.

"My uncle and aunt had an emotional breakdown, they are not eating, drinking and sleeping."

Conflicting information has deepened the anguish of relatives, with tests on oil slicks in the South China Sea showing they were not from the Boeing 777 and reports of possible debris from the flight also proving to be false alarms.

Malaysian embassy officials have been processing visa applications for Chinese families wanting to take up an offer from MAS to travel to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to the operation.

A team of Chinese officials from government ministries came to Malaysia, tasked with investigating the incident and helping family members already there.

source: interaksyon.com

Jobseekers warned as 4 more Filipino victims of human trafficking are rescued in Malaysia

MANILA, Philippines – Four Filipino women victimized by human traffickers and forced to work in nightclubs were rescued by the Royal Malaysia Police earlier this week, the Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur has reported.

The four were locked up and forced to work in a night club in Johor Baru, some 220 kilometers away from Kuala Lumpur and is near the Malaysian border with Singapore.

The Embassy lauded the quick action undertaken by the Malaysian police, through its Criminal Investigation Division (CID)-Anti-Human Trafficking Section, Ambassador J. Eduardo Malaya said.

The victims, all residents of Metro Manila, were allegedly recruited and escorted by a certain Ramil Garcia from Manila to Zamboanga and then Sandakan in Sabah, with the promise of high-paying jobs in Malaysia .

When they arrived in Sandakan, Garcia turned them over to a certain Norminda Buko Whigan for "sale" to night club owners as customer service workers. The Filipinas were informed of their real work only upon their arrival in Sandakan .

After a two-week stay in Sandakan and with no offers from club owners there, the traffickers brought the women by plane to Johor Bahru in West Malaysia, where they were offered to a club owner Emy Wong.

The ladies were locked up at the Wong residence, and made to work at the club the following day.

The women, with ages between 27 to 36 years old, eventually were able to ask for help from the Blas F. Ople Policy Center and others, which alerted the Embassy.

In the evening of April 18, Malaysian CID agents, accompanied by two Embassy officials, proceeded to Johor Bahru in West Malaysia and raided the club.

The club owner had left the club, together with the Filipinas, minutes before the police arrived.

The team then proceeded to the Wong residence, where the Filipinas were locked up, and rescued the four Filipinas. The police also arrested Mrs. Wong's husband, who was in the house. Mrs. Wong is now being pursued by authorities.

The Filipinas were then brought before a local judge, who issued an interim protection order. They are now in a shelter run by Malaysian police and welfare authorities. They will later be turned over to the Embassy for repatriation to Manila .

The Embassy reminded Filipinos to be aware of the modus operandi of trafficking syndicates, so as to protect themselves from becoming victims.

"Our Filipinos should already beware anytime they are made to exit through the ‘back door’ in the Tawi-Tawi area without proper documentations. In most likelihood, they are being trafficked already," the Embassy said.

source: interaksyon.com