MH370: The search for evidence was suspended

The search for evidence of Malaysia Airlines flight #MH370 was suspended today because of rough weather, but the number of ships and planes heading to the area to hunt for the missing plane is growing.

The lack of concrete data about what happened to the plane and its 239 passengers has left their families - and the world - with more questions than answers.

Here's what we know now as of now about the investigation intomissing flight MH370.

Check out ABC News' photos of the search for the flight here, too.

Satellite Data Shows When, Where Plane Went Down
• The Malaysian government announced Monday that new data, analyzed in a groundbreaking way by British company Inmarsat, showed the flight ended in the south Indian Ocean, 1,500 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia.
• The data also showed that the plane went down between 8:10 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. local time.
• Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that there were likely no survivors of the flight, sending shock waves through the families of passengers who had gathered in Beijing to await word on the search for the plane. Many family members protested Malaysia's handling of the investigation and accused the government of lying and hiding the truth.

Search Focused on Alaska-Sized Area Off Australia

• The search along a possible "northern corridor" has been called off. Search teams are now squarely focused on the area in the south Indian Ocean.
• The current search area is some 469,407 square nautical miles, which is equal to 621,000 square miles on land. It is an area about the size of Alaska.
• Reports of objects floating on the sea in the search area have trickled in over recent days. The sightings have come from military and civilian aircraft searching the area. No ships have been able to locate floating objects on water to see if they match the plane.
• The difficulty of the search was expressed by Australia's Deputy Defense Chief Air Marshal Mark Binskin when he said today, "We're not searching for a needle in a haystack. We're still trying to define where the haystack is."
• No parts of the plane or concrete evidence of a crash has been obtained.
• The FBI is still probing the pilot's at-home flight simulator for clues, but initial looks into the simulator found nothing suspicious.

The Passengers and Their Families

• Angry Chinese family members of those on board Malaysia Airlines flight 370 defied China's ban on protests today to demonstrate outside the Malaysian embassy and demand proof that the plane had plunged into the sea with no hope of survivors.
• "We want them to give us the truth," one man who said he had a family member on board but declined to give his name told ABC News. "There is no evidence to say anything."
• Lawyers have arrived at the hotel seeking to represent families in lawsuits against various stakeholders in the plane's disappearance, including U.S. company Boeing.
• 239 people were on board the flight, including 227 passengers (including one infant and one toddler) and 12 crew members.
• Three Americans, including two children, are among the missing. Philip Wood, 50, an IBM executive, had just come from Texas where he was visiting family on his way to Beijing.
• There was a total of 14 nationalities on board, but 152 passengers were Chinese.
• Twenty passengers on the plane worked for the Austin, Texas, company Freescale Semiconductor. Another passenger, Chng Mei Ling, worked as an engineer for the Pennsylvania company Flexsys America LP.
• Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was a veteran pilot who joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had over 18,000 flying hours.

@ABC News

admin: Berdasarkan laporan ABC News, ramai yang masih menunggu bukti yang konkrit berhubung kehilangan pesawat MH370. Pengumuman terakhir oleh Perdana Menteri Malaysia bahawa lokasi terakhir pesawat adalah di Lautan Hindi selatan Australia masih beluym dapat diterima selagi bukti serpihan pesawat dapat ditunjukkan. Ini kerana pengumuman dibuat adalah berdasarkan analisa data AAIB UK dan data satelit Immarsat.

Masih banyak lagi andaian yang boleh dibuat berkenaan kejadian ini. Jika diselami secara mendalam andainya benar ia satu 'hijacking' atau rampasan pesawat, pengumuman berkenaan adalah bagaikan 'kalah' dalam rundingan dan tentunya pihak yang menguasai rundingan amat bijak dalam melupuskan bukti yang sebesar pesawat ini ke Lautan Hindi yang mempunyai kedalaman lebih 3600 meter atau lebih 10,000 kaki yang sentiasa bergelora ganas, walaupun hakikat yang sebenarnya masih tidak jelas dan samar.

Kita kena teruskan berdoa agar Allah swt tunjukkan hidayah serta jalan bukti yang benar tentang kejadian ini. Ianya insyalah akan terbongkar jika ianya perancangan manusia yang jahat. Sebijak-bijak perancangan Dajjal laknatullah, tentunya perancangan Allah swt lebih bijak dan jitu dalam menangkis dan membongkar perancangan jahat makhluknya.

Apa isu sebenar dan motif disebalik kehilangan pesawat ini, tentunya agar sukar untuk ditelah, dan bagi admin apa yang paling pasti adalah dalang utamanya adalah Amerika Syarikat yang dikuasai oleh Iluminati Yahudi dalam komplot menguasai dunia serta menunaikan rancangan Dajjal.

Dengan penguasaan teknologi terkini sekarang adalah mustahil pesawat canggih boeing itu hilang begitu sahaja tanpa dapat dikesan kecuali campur tangan tangan-tangan jahat terutama dalam memburukkan Islam dan mencapai cita-cita Dajjal.

MH370: Slow decompression may have knocked all onboard MH370 unconscious, says blog

A slow decompression may have occurred onboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and knocked its occupants, including its crew members, unconscious as the plane continued to fly on autopilot.

The decompression might have been caused by cracking or corrosion on the aircraft's fuselage skin, which might have also disabled communication.

These explanations are contained in a blog article titled "MH370 – what happened".

The article, however, does not carry the name of the writer who has come up with the "plausible explanation" on what happened to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER passenger jet and why it was missing.

The author said the United States' Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airworthiness Directive (AD) for Boeing 777 aircraft could be a clue for investigators.

According to the directive issued in September last year, the FAA had proposed the adoption of a new AD for certain Boeing 777 aircraft. This followed a report of cracking in the fuselage skin underneath the satellite communication (Satcom) antenna adapter.

The AD requires repetitive inspections of the visible fuselage skin and doubler, if installed, for cracking, corrosion, and any indication of contact of a certain fastener to a bonding jumper, and repair if necessary.

Cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin can lead to rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity of the airplane.

The nameless author said it was plausible that a fuselage section near the Satcom antenna adapter failed. It would then disable the satellite-based GPS (global positioning system), ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system), and ADS-B/C (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast/contract) communications, and leading to a slow decompression that left all occupants unconscious.

The writer said if such decompression left the aircraft intact, the autopilot would have flown on the planned route or maintained its direction or altitude until it runs out of fuel.

A slow decompression, from a golf-ball-sized hole for instance, would have gradually impaired and confused the pilots before cabin altitude (pressure) warnings sounded.

The writer offered a chain of events that could have happened onboard MH370.

"Likely fuselage failure near Satcom antenna adapter disabled some or all of GPS, ACARS, ADS-B, and ADS-C antennas and systems.

"Thus, only primary radars would detect the plane. Primary radar range is usually less than 100nm (nautical miles) and is generally ineffective at high altitudes.

"If the decompression was slow enough, it’s possible the pilots did not realise to put on oxygen masks until it was too late." The writer said oxygen masks would not deploy until cabin altitude reaches 13,500m and the passengers were likely already unconscious by then.

Since it was also a red-eye flight, most passengers would had been sleeping and perhaps unaware of oxygen deprivation.

"No confirmed debris has been found anywhere near the search area, consistent with the plane having flown for hours after it lost radar contact."

The writer said another pilot flying 30 minutes ahead of MH370 heard "mumbling" from the missing plane.

It was because very high frequency (VHF) communication would be unaffected by Satcom equipment failure, he said. It was reported earlier this week that another Boeing 777 pilot, who was flying to Narita, Japan, had established contact with MH370 just after 1.30am on Saturday around the time the plane went off the radar.

The pilot was asked by Vietnamese air traffic control to use his plane's emergency frequency to ask MH370 to establish its position after the authorities lost contact with the MAS jet.

The pilot had reported that there was a lot of interference and static, as well as mumbling before he lost contact with MH370.

On how relatives got through the mobile phones of the missing MH370 passengers, the writer said the plane was equipped with cellular communication hardware, supplied by AeroMobile, to provide GSM services via satellite.

The hardware is, however, an aftermarket product, which is not connected through Satcom to the writer's knowledge.

"This explains why 19 families signed a statement alleging they were able to call the MH370 passengers and hear their phones to ring, but with no response.

"When Malaysia Airlines tried to call the phone numbers a day later, the phones did not ring. By this time, fuel would have been exhausted."

The writer also agreed with some early reports that an “explosive decompression” or “inflight disintegration” was unlikely.

"This was likely a slow decompression that gradually deprived all crew and passengers of oxygen, leaving the autopilot to continue along the route autonomously.

"The aircraft may be at the floor of the East China Sea, Sea of Japan, or the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles northeast from the current search zone."

The author also offered some "sensible and low-cost recommendations to best aid recovery efforts". Investigators, the writer said, should obtain data logs from primary radars throughout mainland China that would have been along the planned route because they may be the best clue as to the trajectory of the aircraft.

"Per the latest reported news, the Strait of Malacca is a possibility. Investigators should also obtain all passengers’ cell phone log and location data.

"The timing of the last successful cellular connection (ring/SMS/data-packet) can predict how long the plane was in the air. iPhone/iOS location (GPS) data may be available from Apple if subpoenaed. Android location data may be available from Google.

"Add a secondary search space to include a 300nm radius around Beijing, focusing on surrounding bodies of water. Using planned routing trajectory, known autopilot logics, fuel quantities, and weather patterns, it may be possible to define a smaller 50nm x 50nm search space. Consider running the above scenario in the MH’s 777-200ER full flight simulator.

"Boeing should provide expertise about the Satcom antenna schematics and autopilot/navigation logic, so as to help plot this second search space."

The author added that an email with the recommendations had been sent to the National Transportation Safety Board's media relations.

MH370 left the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at a 12.41am on Saturday with 227 passengers and an all-Malaysian crew of 12.

The plane was supposed to land in Beijing at 6.30am the same day but it never showed.

According to reports, all contact with the plane was lost about 1.30am. Search and rescue operations around the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea have yet to yield any results. – March 12, 2014.

@Malaysian Insider

Failure to manage MH370 crisis exposing Malaysia’s leadership limit, say analysts

Inconsistencies and incompetence in handling the flight MH370 disappearance is showing that 50 years under one coalition and tight control over information is a mismatch for Malaysia in handling a rapidly growing crisis followed across the world, Bloomberg reported today.

It said China was calling on Malaysia to be more transparent as "Prime Minister (Datuk Seri) Najib Razak lets his cousin, acting Transport Minister (Datuk Seri) Hishammuddin Hussein, be the face of the investigation" into why a Malaysia Airlines plane vanished on March 8.

The Boeing 777-200ER jet was en route to Beijing with 239 people onboard when it went missing. Investigators from at least nine countries are trying to locate the jet.

“They’re handling a huge global issue as if it was domestic politics,” said Clive Kessler, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who has analysed the nation’s politics for half a century.

“With the cause of the disappearance still unknown, you can understand the need for discretion and caution but it’s being perceived in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region as a bid to hide the truth.

"Najib’s administration is sending the message that people should let the ‘government tell them what they need to know, when they need to know it, and not before’,” Kessler said.

“That’s the way they’ve acted for generations and they are starting to find out it doesn’t work any more.”

Bloomberg pointed out that Najib’s Umno leads the coalition ruling the Southeast Asian nation.

"Only in recent years has it seen a move towards more competitive elections, in some districts, that put a premium on public speaking. The government’s lack of a clear message, compounded by a series of
false leads on the plane’s whereabouts and questions on coordination, risks undermining its image internationally," the report said.

Many newspapers and television networks in Malaysia are controlled by the government directly or indirectly.

And Najib, 60, has yet to make good on a pledge to replace the nation’s Sedition Act with legislation that would protect free speech while preventing incitement of religious or ethnic hatred, the news agency said.

The law, which dates back to 1948 when Malaysia was under British control, mandates jail sentences of at least three years for words deemed seditious, including those that “excite dissatisfaction” against the government.

Government-controlled Malaysia Airlines said in a statement yesterday it would “continue to be transparent in communicating with the general public via the media” on all matters affecting flight 370.

Nations searching for the plane had little to go on with no distress calls, emergency-beacon signals, bad weather or other signs why an airliner would lose touch in one of the safest phases of flight.

Air patrols resumed for a fifth day as planes and ships prowled waters on both sides of the peninsula after failing to find debris along the jet’s route.

The discovery that two passengers boarded the missing flight using stolen passports raised concern about Malaysia’s immigration security practices, the Bloomberg report said.

“The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities,” the Global Times, a Chinese government-controlled newspaper, said in an editorial on Monday.

“The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough. There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities.”

Faced with pressure from families of the 153 Chinese nationals who were on the flight, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang for a second day yesterday noted the lack of progress in finding the Boeing 777-200.

“We once again request and urge the Malaysia side to enhance and strengthen rescue and searching efforts,” Qin told reporters in Beijing.

“The Chinese government is under quite a lot of pressure,” said Xu Liping, senior fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

Ordinary people in China feel the investigation “has not been professional”.

Broader ties between Malaysia and China probably won’t suffer, he said, citing a phone conversation between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Najib on March 8 about the missing flight.

“This channel has been unimpeded.”

China accounted for RM8.262 billion of Malaysia’s exports in January, the second-largest amount after Singapore.

Malaysia approved US$920 million (RM3.03 billion) of foreign investment from China in the manufacturing sector in 2013, up from US$646 million the year earlier, according to the Malaysian Investment Development Authority, the report said.

Najib’s government has a RM1.4 trillion 10-year plan to build roads, ports and utilities plants to elevate the country to developed-nation status by 2020.

It is understandable that Najib doesn’t want a high profile in this situation given his cautious personality, said Joseph Liow, associate dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“He’s not one who would go to the front of the camera and do lots of chest thumping and wave the flag and all that without being certain that there’s substantive” progress in the investigation, he was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

“Hisham is very different from his cousin. He’s someone who is not uncomfortable with the limelight,” he said, referring to Hishammuddin.

Hishammuddin, 52, has been the acting minister since the general election last May.

He is unable to formally take the role given internal coalition rules on which party assumes particular posts in cabinet. Other Asian leaders have faced questions for not reacting to crises immediately.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino was criticised for taking two days to visit victims of Super Typhoon Haiyan last year.

So was China’s former premier, Wen Jiabao, when he took more than two weeks to visit the site of the country’s worst snow storms in 50 years in 2008. In the US, president George W. Bush was criticised for his handling of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 after he remained on holiday as New Orleans flooded.

He cut short the break by two days to survey the damage from the air, something he later said was a “huge mistake” since it made him look “detached and uncaring”.

Najib needs to assure Malaysians and the international community that his government was doing all it can, said Vishnu Varathan, an economist at Mizuho Bank Ltd in Singapore.

“What could have been done was the prime minister delegating the transport secretary to locating the plane and assigning one other person in charge of investigating the security breach and another to handle international relations,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying.

“It’s not easy to convey all that is happening in the background and the government needs to highlight these things.”

Compounding the image that authorities leading the investigation were struggling to communicate effectively, Malaysian Airlines issued three versions of a press statement yesterday to correct several errors. One was a reference to an “expensive” rescue operation, which it meant to call “extensive”.

“There are big issues – transparency, information sharing, questions associated with security,” said Bridget Welsh, a political science professor at Singapore Management University.

“They are not in control of the discussion and the problem is they’re not instilling confidence. Everyone wants to give them the benefit of the doubt but this is a crisis of credibility for the administration.”

Najib postponed a trip to Mauritius, according to the state-run news service Bernama. He also met the families of the crew from the missing plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, his press office said on Twitter on March 8.

“I assure you we are doing everything possible within our means,” Najib said on Twitter on March 9. “We thank you for your prayers, assistance and show of solidarity.”

Najib’s office directed queries on China’s concerns about the handling of the incident to authorities involved in the investigation.

Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, was elected a vice-president of Umno in October, putting him in line to possibly succeed Najib. He is the nephew of Malaysia’s second prime minister, Najib’s father, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.

“It’s a lack of experience, anybody would be tested,” said Welsh.

“This is Hisham’s test, and Najib’s government’s test.” Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who led the country through the 1998 Asian financial crisis, “was a stronger leader,” said Liow.

Dr Mahathir responded with capital controls when investors fled Asian economies during the crisis.

He called billionaire financier George Soros a “moron” who was trying to destroy growth through speculative attacks on the currency. –  March 12, 2014.

@Malaysia Insider

Radar sweeps, binoculars, six navies, but no sign of missing plane

Ships from six navies, dozens of military aircraft, sweeps with radar technology that can spot a soccer ball from hundreds of feet in the air – all have failed to find a single confirmed trace of a Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished three days ago.

For the sailors and aircrew, it has been a frustrating operation. One reported sighting of the plane's tail turned out to be a few logs tied together.

Today, a Vietnamese jet spotted what it believed was a yellow airline life raft floating in the sea. A helicopter scrambled to investigate pulled a moss-covered cable reel cover from the sea.

The massive search is mainly in a 50-nautical-mile radius from the point of last radar contact with the plane, midway between Malaysia's east coast and the southern tip of Vietnam.

It is an area of about 27,000 sq km that includes parts of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.

There was little commercial shipping in the area today when a Reuters photographer boarded a Vietnamese air force Antonov-26, a Soviet-era transporter, on an aerial sweep.

The plane spent two-and-a-half hours circling a 400 sq km area at about 6,500 ft, but found nothing as crew members peered down with binoculars.

"The main challenge that we face during these searches is that we have to search with bare eyes from a high altitude," said Captain Vu Duc Long of Vietnam's 918 Squadron.

"We sent out three planes this morning, two conducting the search and the other being the commanding craft. But as of right now, we haven't found anything."

No confirmed sighting of any debris or part of the plane has been reported since flight MH370 vanished from radar screens early Saturday morning, about an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Scores of potential sightings have been checked out.

Typically, aircraft report sightings of objects in the water, if possible with photographs, to Malaysian authorities who are coordinating the search. The nearest low-flying aircraft, helicopter or ships are sent to verify the reports.

Malaysia has expanded the search to its west coast after theories that the plane may have turned back toward Kuala Lumpur for some reason. A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships from 10 nations are involved in the search.

The US 7th Fleet has sent a P-3C Orion surveillance plane from its base in Okinawa, Japan, and the USS Pinckney destroyer that is equipped with two MH-60R Seahawk helicopters for search and rescue.

The Orion was used for more than three hours yesterday, sweeping about 4,000 sq km every hour. It is equipped with the APS-147, an advanced radar system that can identify a soccer ball bobbing in the water from hundreds of feet in the air.

The Seahawks have been used for night searches, using a forward-looking infra-red camera.

"There are lots of challenges," said Commander William Marks, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet.

"First should the central point be the point of last communication or last radar contact? Then you have to account for winds and currents. Every hour, the area gets bigger. It's been three days since the plane was reported missing, it's a very large area."

China has sent four naval ships, a coastguard vessel and a civilian ship to help. Three other Orions have also been deployed – two from Australia and one from New Zealand.

Besides military and high-technology equipment, many others are involved in the search.

"We've ordered border guard forces and all fishing boats to check the area," Pham Thanh Tuoi, chairman of the People's Committee of Vietnam's southern Ca Mau Province, said by phone.

"Everyone is on the alert and searching out at the sea, but we haven't found anything yet." – Reuters, March 10, 2014.

Still no sign of Malaysian jet lost in "unprecedented mystery"

By Eveline Danubrata and Nguyen Phuong Linh

KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam (Reuters) - T he disappearance of a Malaysian jetliner is an "unprecedented aviation mystery", a senior official said on Monday, with a massive air and sea search now in its third day failing to find any confirmed trace of the plane or the 239 people aboard.

Vietnam scrambled helicopters to check reports of a floating "yellow object" that rescue teams suspected could be a life raft from the plane, but it was unclear whether the sighting would prove to be the first big breakthrough or merely the latest in a series of false alarms.

The head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said a hijacking attempt could not be ruled out as investigators explore all theories for the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 en route to Beijing.

"Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," he told a news conference before the Vietnamese helicopter scramble.

"As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft, we have to find a piece of the aircraft if possible."

As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over possible security lapses and whether a bomb or hijacking attempt could have brought down the Boeing 777-200ER airliner.

A Vietnamese jet spotted what could be a life raft floating off Vietnam's southern coast, but was unable to get close enough to determine what it was, Pham Quy Tieu, vice transport minister and deputy head of the country's rescue committee, told Reuters, prompting the despatch of helicopters to investigate.

Interpol confirmed on Sunday at least two passengers used stolen passports and said it was checking whether others aboard had used false identity documents.

Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday, about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 ft (10,670 metres).

Underlining the lack of hard information about the plane's fate, a U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft capable of covering 1,500 sq miles every hour was sweeping the northern part of the Strait of Malacca, on the other side of the Malaysian peninsula from where the last contact with MH370 was made.

"Our aircraft are able to clearly detect small debris in the water, but so far it has all been trash or wood," said U.S. 7th Fleet spokesman Commander William Marks in an emailed statement.

Shares in Malaysia Airlines fell as much as 18 percent to a record low on Monday morning and were down 4 percent near the close.

NO DISTRESS SIGNAL

No distress signal was sent from the lost plane, which experts said suggested a sudden catastrophic failure or explosion, but Malaysia's air force chief said radar tracking showed it may have turned back from its scheduled route before it disappeared.

A senior source involved in preliminary investigations in Malaysia said the failure to quickly find any debris indicated the plane may have broken up mid-flight, which could disperse wreckage over a very wide area.

"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," said the source.

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.

Still, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.

The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by American spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a U.S. government source said. The source described U.S. satellite coverage of the region as thorough.

Boeing declined to comment and referred to its brief earlier statement that said it was monitoring the situation.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

MASSIVE SEARCH

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. The airline said other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who were not on the plane. Their passports had been stolen in Thailand during the past two years.

An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more "suspect passports", which were being investigated.

"Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol's databases," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said.

Malaysia's state news agency quoted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the two passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance, and criticised the border officials who let them through.

"I am still perturbed. Can't these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian but with Asian faces," he was quoted as saying late on Sunday.

A European diplomat in Kuala Lumpur cautioned that the Malaysian capital was an Asian hub for illegal migrants, many of whom used false documents and complex routes including via Beijing or West Africa to reach a final destination in Europe.

"You shouldn't automatically think that the fact there were two people on the plane with false passports had anything to do with the disappearance of the plane," the diplomat said.

"The more you know about the role of Kuala Lumpur in this chain, the more doubtful you are of the chances of a linkage."

@Reuters

Investigators chasing 'every angle' on missing jet

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Dozens of ships and aircraft have failed to find any piece of the missing Boeing 777 jet that vanished more than two days ago above waters south of Vietnam as investigators pursued "every angle" to explain its disappearance, including hijacking, Malaysia's civil aviation chief said Monday.

Malaysian maritime officials found some oil slicks in the South China Sea and sent a sample to a lab to see if it came from the plane, the Department of Civil Aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told a news conference.

Hundreds of distraught relatives were gathered in a hotel in Beijing, waiting to be flown to Malaysia. Of the 227 passengers, two-thirds were Chinese. There were also 38 passengers and 12 crew members from Malaysia, and others from elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America, including three Americans.

"We accept God's will. Whether he is found alive or dead, we surrender to Allah," said Selamat Omar, a Malaysian whose 29-year-old son Mohamad Khairul Amri Selamat was heading to Beijing for a business trip. He said he was expecting a call from his son after the flight's scheduled arrival time at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Instead he got a call from the airline to say the plane was missing.

Vietnamese ships working throughout the night could not find a rectangular object spotted Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet.

"We have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft," Azharuddin said, adding that the search operation has involved 34 aircraft and 40 ships covering a 50-nautical mile radius from the point the plane vanished from radar screens early Saturday about one hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

He said officials from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. National Safety Transportation Board have arrived to help in the investigation.

As hope faded for relatives of the 239 people who were aboard Flight MH370, attention focused on how two passengers managed to board the ill-fated aircraft using stolen passports. Interpol confirmed it knew about the stolen passports but said no authorities checked its vast databases on stolen documents before the jet departed

Warning that "only a handful of countries" routinely make such checks, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble chided authorities for "waiting for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates."

Still, there was no indication that the two men had anything to do with the tragedy.

Possible causes of the apparent crash include an explosion, catastrophic engine failure, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide.

Azharuddin acknowledged many theories about the plane's disappearance, including hijacking.

"We are not discounting this. We are looking at every angle but again, we have to find concrete evidence," he said.

The baggage of five passengers who had checked in to the flight but did not board the plane were removed before it departed, he said. Airport security was strict according to international standards, surveillance has been done and the airport has been audited, he said.

On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

"I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. "We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board."

The thefts of the two passports — one belonging to Austrian Christian Kozel and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy — were entered into Interpol's database after they were stolen in Thailand in 2012 and last year, the police body said.

Electronic booking records show that one-way tickets with those names were issued Thursday from a travel agency in the beach resort of Pattaya in eastern Thailand. A person who answered the phone at the agency said she could not comment.

But no authorities in Malaysia or elsewhere checked the passports against the database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents before the Malaysia Airlines plane took off.

A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline confirmed Sunday that passengers named Maraldi and Kozel had been booked on one-way tickets on the same KLM flight, flying from Beijing to Amsterdam on Saturday. Maraldi was to fly on to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany. She said the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines.

As holders of EU passports with onward flights to Europe, the passengers would not have needed visas for China.

The Thai national police chief on Monday set up a task force to investigate the issue of the stolen passports.

Interpol said it and national investigators were working to determine the true identities of those who used the stolen passports to board the flight. White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions.

Interpol has long sounded the alarm that growing international travel has underpinned a new market for identity theft: Bogus passports are mostly used by illegal immigrants, but also pretty much anyone looking to travel unnoticed such as drug runners or terrorists. More than 1 billion times last year, travelers boarded planes without their passports being checked against Interpol's database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents, the police agency said.

Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over a large area. If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.

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Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt in Hanoi, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Didi Tang, Gillian Wong and Louise Watt in Beijing, Joan Lowy in Washington and Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed this report.

@AP

Military radar trace shows MH370 turn-back, but no distress signal

A Malaysian military radar showed trace of flight MH370 turning back before it vanished early yesterday although the pilots did not issue any distress signals, the authorities said today.

The trace has prompted the authorities to widen the search area beyond the point the Boeing 777-200ER disappeared from the air over the Malaysian-Vietnamese maritime border at 1.30am on Saturday.

The authorities are looking are studying the possibility that MH370 could have made a turn-around midway through its flight to Beijing.

Air force chief General Tan Sri Rodzali Daud said that based on the recoding of military radar, there was possible indication that the aircraft did a turn-back.

"We are still trying to make sense of this because it is collaborated by civil radar,” he said today at the latest press conference held at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

@Malaysia Insider

What we know and don’t about the missing MH370

Flight MH370 is still missing more than 30 hours after vanishing with 239 people on board as authorities widen an international search and rescue mission across the South China Sea and inexplicably, the Malacca Straits.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER had taken off at 12.40am on Saturday from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport but failed to arrive in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.

Here is what we know about MH370

* Malaysia Airlines flight loses contact hour after takeoff with the last known location off Kota Baru

* No distress signal or sign of bad weather

* The KL-Beijing flight carried 227 passengers and 12 crew members

* Two passengers were travelling under false identities

* Two more passengers have unverified identities

* The pilots are experienced

* The aircraft had undergone checks in the last 10 days

* The aircraft would have run out of fuel by 8am on Saturday

What we don't know about MH370

* Where is the aircraft now

* What happened that it suddenly lost contact with air traffic controllers

* Why didn't the emergency transponders work

* Is it in Malaysian waters or elsewhere

The following are unverified news that could be linked to MH370

* What are the oil slicks and smoke plumes detected by the Vietnamese navy

* Oil industry chatter says workers on a Talisman Energy oil rig around Block PM-3 CAA saw something crashing into the sea

* Are the stolen passports linked to terrorists. – March 9, 2014.

@yahoo news & malaysia insider