Two oil slick sightings are first sign Malaysia Airlines plane may have crashed

Vietnamese air force planes have spotted two large oil slicks that authorities suspect are from a Malaysian jetliner that went missing early Saturday. A Vietnamese government statement says the slicks were spotted off the southern tip of Vietnam. The slicks were each between 10 kilometers (6 miles) and 15 kilometers (9 miles) long. The statement said the slicks were consistent with the kinds that would be left by fuel from a crashed jetliner. The oil slicks spotted between Malaysia and Vietnam Saturday afternoon are thought to be the first sign that a missing Malaysia Airlines flight with 239 people aboard went down in the waters between southernmost Vietnam and northern Malaysia, according to Vietnam’s director of civil aviation.

“An AN26 aircraft of the Vietnam Navy has discovered an oil slick about 20 kilometers in the search area, which is suspected of being a crashed Boeing aircraft -- we have announced that information to Singapore and Malaysia and we continue the search,” Lai Xuan Thanh, the director of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam said in reporting the sighting of the slick.

He said he did not know whether the slick was closer to the Malaysian or Vietnam side of the entrance to the Gulf of Thailand. The last coordinates automatically transmitted by the aircraft were from near the midpoint between the two countries, when the plane appeared to be in stable flight at 35,000 feet.

The discovery came as Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Singapore and the Philippines staged an intensive search for the missing aircraft, a redeye flight that vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur’s airport early Saturday morning, bound for Beijing, where it was to arrive at 6:30 a.m.

Fredrik Lindahl, the chief executive of Flightradar24, an online aircraft tracking service, said that the missing plane, a Boeing 777-200, had been equipped with a transponder that regularly transmitted its position, as calculated from the global positioning system of satellites. The last recorded position of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was 150 kilometers, or 93 miles, northeast of Kuala Terengganu, a port on the northeast coast of peninsular Malaysia, he wrote in an email.

That position is a little less than halfway across the entrance of the Gulf of Thailand from northern Malaysia toward southernmost Vietnam.

Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, noted in a statement that there had been speculation that the plane might have landed safely somewhere along the route to Beijing, and said that the airline was checking on this. But in a telephone interview before reporting the sighting of the slick, Mr. Lai expressed concern about the aircraft’s fate even while saying that his country was committed to the rescue effort.

“Vietnam has ordered airplanes and military ships for the work, " he said, adding, “"the possibility of an accident is high.”

Lt. Col. Pham Hong Soi, the head of the propaganda department of the Vietnam Navy for the region near the crash site, said that one rescue vessel had already been ordered to sea and two more had been made ready for departure.

China Central Television said that according to Chinese air traffic control officials, the aircraft never entered Chinese airspace.

Malaysia Airlines said that the plane had 227 passengers aboard, including two infants, and an all-Malaysian crew of 12. The passengers included 154 citizens from China or Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans, as well as two citizens each from New Zealand, Ukraine and Canada and one each from Russia, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

The airline said that it was notifying the next of kin of the passengers and crew that the plane was missing. Hundreds of family members gathered in rooms set aside for them at a Beijing hotel, and at least two medical personnel went in to monitor them.

Boeing said in a statement that it was assembling a team of technical experts to advise the national authorities investigating the disappearance of the aircraft.

One uncertainty about the flight involved when it disappeared from radar and how quickly the search began in the Gulf of Thailand. Malaysia Airlines said that the plane took off at 12:41 a.m. Malaysia time, and that the plane disappeared from air traffic control radar in Subang, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, at 2:40 a.m.

That timeline seemed to suggest that the plane stayed in the air for two hours — long enough to fly not only across the Gulf of Thailand but also far north across Vietnam. But Mr. Lindahl of Flightradar 24 said that the last radar contact had been at 1:19 a.m., less than 40 minutes after the flight began.

A Malaysia Airlines spokesman said on Saturday evening that the last conversation between the flight crew and air traffic control in Malaysia had been around 1:30 a.m., but he reiterated that the plane had not disappeared from air traffic control systems in Subang until 2:40 a.m.

Arnold Barnett, a longtime Massachusetts Institute of Technology specialist in aviation safety statistics, said that prior to the disappearance of Saturday’s flight, Malaysia Airlines had suffered two fatal crashes, in 1977 and 1995. Based on his estimate that Malaysia Airlines operates roughly 120,000 flights a year, he calculated that the airline’s safety record was consistent with other fairly prosperous, middle-income countries but had not yet reached the better safety record of airlines based in the world’s richest countries.

Malaysia, located near the Equator, is a popular winter vacation destination for affluent residents of chilly, smoggy Beijing, and the large number of Chinese nationals aboard the plane prompted strong concern in China. President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang ordered “all-out efforts” to search for the aircraft and prepare to help those who were aboard and their families.

As the day wore on with no new information about the missing plane, China’s civil aviation authority urged the Malaysian government to be more forthcoming. “The Civil Aviation Administration of China has urged the Malaysian civil aviation authority to clarify the situation of Flight MH370 as quickly as possible, and to brief the Chinese side as quickly as possible,” the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported, citing an unnamed Chinese aviation official. “It also urged Malaysia Airlines to provide active assistance to families of passengers in accordance with the regulations in international civil aviation covenants.”

Saturday 08 March 2014

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?referrer=

Death toll rises to 11 in SW China minibus accident

Death toll rises to 11 after a minibus fell into a river in southwest China's Sichuan Province on Thursday, local authorities said Friday.

The minibus crashed through the barriers on a bridge in Yilong County of Nanchong City and fell into the river. Five bodies were retrieved on Friday, raising the death toll to eleven. The driver was rescued.

Search is still going on.

Authorities said the depth of the river, 14 meters, and freezing temperatures have made rescue difficult.

Saturday 08 March 2014

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90882/8558851.html

Zimbabwe: Repatriation of miners bodies from SA begins

Government have started repatriating 21 bodies of illegal miners who died at the Durban Deep mine in Roodepoort, South Africa on February 21 this year. Twenty-three Zimbabweans died in the abandoned gold mine.

In a statement on Tuesday evening, Zimbabwe's Consul-General in Johannesburg, Mr Godfrey Magwenzi, said Government had -- through relatives and two Zimbabwean companies -- mobilised R53 000 for the repatriation of the bodies.

He said a survivor, Solani Ndhlovu, indicated that the miners had entered the abandoned mine in the afternoon of February 20 and worked the whole night.

"Ndhlovu said the miners encountered smoke with a pungent smell when they were returning to the surface which made them weak. He lost four colleagues who died on the spot while another man who was part of the group survived.

"The poisonous gas also killed a number of other illegal miners who were working in different sections of the mine," he said.

Rescue efforts were abandoned due to high levels of poisonous gas in the shafts.

The authorities also discovered that the tunnel used by the illegal miners to enter the mine was too narrow, making it difficult for rescue workers to enter with their equipment.

"The Consulate was informed that among the trapped miners were Zimbabwean nationals. Two diplomats from the Consulate visited the mine on February 26 where two bodies of Zimbabweans were brought to the surface.

"It took the rescuers 10 hours to bring the two bodies to the surface. The South African police were at the mine throughout the operation to record the names of the deceased and take the bodies to a nearby government mortuary," Mr Magwenzi said.

The Consul was on February 28 informed that 23 Zimbabweans had died in the accident and two bodies had been collected by relatives for burial.

"On March 2, we engaged representatives of a Zimbabwean-owned company, Lionshare, owners of Powerhouse Bus Station in Johannesburg, who offered to provide financial assistance.

"However, the victims' relatives indicated that another Zimbabwean-owned company, Kings and Queens Funeral Services, had offered to provide 21 coffins and handling services at no charge if the relatives paid R53 000 for transportation of the bodies to Zimbabwe. The relatives raised R23 000, while Lionshare paid the balance of R30 000."

Mr Magwenzi said 13 of the bodies will be going to Nkayi, five to Gokwe South, two to Tsholotsho and one to Zhombe.

"The Consulate is working closely with the Registrar-General's Office to clear five of the deceased who did not have identification documents when they died."

The Consulate will also issue gratis temporary travel documents to 37 relatives to accompany the bodies to Zimbabwe.

"The convoy consisting five vehicles started the journey around 10 o'clock in the morning and we expected it to drive through Roodeport where our colleagues lost their lives before they head straight to the border."

He said the bodies would be taken straight to a funeral parlour in Bulawayo.

"We expect the bodies to be dispatched to the various centres where the victims came from. The memorial service scheduled Nkayi has been moved to Mapiwa Primary School in Gokwe South," he said.

Saturday 08 March 2014

http://allafrica.com/stories/201403060874.html

Exhumed bones from Franco period bring crimes of Spanish dictatorship back to surface

Nuria Maqueda is carefully cleaning the dirt off a bone with a small, fine-toothed brush. She still doesn’t know the sex of the person it belonged to or how old they were when they died – a forensic expert will confirm those details at a later date. But she does know that he or she was killed during Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war, before being thrown into a mass grave.

“This is an arm bone,” Maqueda explains, as she brushes encrusted mud off it on to an old newspaper. “These remains are from an exhumation we did in 2012 near here in a place called El Grillo. We dug up the bodies of 10 people.”

She is working in a small laboratory in Ponferrada, in northwestern Spain. Like so many young people in Spain, she and her two colleagues in the laboratory cannot find paid work. Instead, they have thrown themselves full-time into the painstaking, unpaid task of identifying mass graves containing anonymous victims of the civil war and the ensuing reprisals carried out by the right-wing dictator Francisco Franco, who governed from 1939 until 1975.

It’s a huge task, with some estimates putting the number of Franco victims who are still in mass graves at 150,000. But the volunteers who do it receive minimal official support and rely on donations for funding.

Gaze averted

“Amnesty International says that we are the second country in the world, behind Cambodia, in terms of missing people and yet our government is looking the other way,” says Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, which oversees the exhumations.

Silva has done more than anyone to keep alive the debate over Spain’s violent past. In 2000, he organised the first scientific exhumation of a mass grave, that of Priaranza del Bierzo, near Ponferrada, where 13 people were shot dead in 1936. One of them was his grandfather, a local trader whose crime was to sympathise with the leftist Republican government which was resisting the rebellion led by Gen Franco.

“It’s a political problem,” Silva adds. “Still today, the Spanish institutions and the main political parties – the Popular Party [PP] and the Socialists – have a great tolerance towards the memory of Franco’s regime.”

He gives examples, such as the streets still named after Franco and his allies – one road in Madrid commemorates Gen Juan Yagüe, who became known as “the Butcher of Badajoz” after he oversaw the massacre of thousands of civilians in the southern city. The biggest reminder is the Valley of the Fallen, a huge mausoleum in the hills north of Madrid where Franco is buried beneath a huge stone cross, the highest of its kind in the world. For Silva, this is the equivalent of Germany maintaining monuments to Hitler and funding them with public money.

The Socialist Party, now in opposition, insists it has tried to change this, having introduced a historical memory law in 2007 which sought to remove most tributes to Franco, such as statues, and give “moral redress” to his victims. However, that law was eventually watered down so much that it is seen as having had little impact, other than riling the political right.

But 75 years after the civil war ended and four decades after the dictator’s death, pressure is building on Spain from beyond its own borders to change its handling of the legacy of Franco.

Buenos Aires extradition

In September, an Argentinian judge, María Servini de Cubría, ordered the extradition to Buenos Aires of four officials from the Franco regime, so that they could face charges of torture. The move was a response to a legal request filed by Spanish relatives of victims, who believed their own country’s justice system had failed them by refusing to investigate. In recent weeks, Judge Servini de Cubría has been taking testimonies from relatives via videoconference as she continues her investigation.

Two of the four officials are dead. But the other two are still alive, including former policeman José Antonio González Pacheco. Nicknamed “Billy the Kid”, he was particularly sadistic when interrogating detainees, according to a number of his victims from the early 1970s.

“He enjoyed it, it was like a hobby for him,” Luis Suárez, who was tortured for being a member of a Communist group, told El País newspaper.

Spain’s judiciary has so far not co-operated. Neither González Pacheco, nor the other official named in the Argentinian extradition request, Jesús Muñecas Aguilar, has been extradited.

Meanwhile, a United Nations working group has called on the Spanish state to assume responsibility for helping victims’ families and to roll back the amnesty law which still protects those who violated human rights during the Franco era.

Earlier this year, UN special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, Pablo de Greiff, spent 10 days in the country investigating.

“What concerns me the most is the distance between victims and the state,” he said last month. He compares Spain’s handling of its historical memory unfavourably with Argentina, where the state has been closely involved in helping relatives of victims of the military dictatorship and pursuing those responsible.

“In Argentina there are so many court cases under way that the issue has become normalised. Trials are no longer considered newsworthy,” de Greiff added. “There is a sector here [in Spain] that thinks this should not be discussed because underlying hatreds will rise to the surface again. But nothing leads me to believe this is true.”

The conservative government of Mariano Rajoy firmly believes that the past should remain buried. In opposition, his PP opposed the 2007 historical memory law and, since coming into power, has eliminated state funding for the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. The PP argues that leaving the past behind helped Spain make the successful transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1970s. It sees the recovery of historical memory, therefore, as a dangerous and pointless exercise.

Past as trap

In a bitter congressional debate on the issue recently, the justice minister, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, faced accusations of letting down the relatives of Franco victims. In response, he said his critics were “trapped in the past”.

But as Spain’s handling of its violent 20th century comes under increasing scrutiny, there is a feeling that although the divisions of the past have been buried, they remain very close to the surface.

Saturday 08 March 2014

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/exhumed-bones-from-franco-period-bring-crimes-of-spanish-dictatorship-back-to-surface-1.1716945

History's deadliest commercial jet crashes

The plight of 239 souls aboard Malaysia Airlines' Flight MH37 remained unresolved Saturday, after the aircraft went missing somewhere between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing, China. Whatever happened, the ordeal raises sad memories of horrific airplane crashes that have cost thousands of lives in recent decades.

Some of the worst such incidents -- like four crashes in frightening succession into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001; the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland; and a 1977 crash involving the apparent hijacking of a Malaysian Airlines jet that left 100 dead -- involved terrorist activity.

But there are many others that did not, with mechanical problems, pilot error or other reasons blamed for loss of life.

Below are some examples of the latter: crashes that left at least 200 people dead in each incident.

March 3, 1974: 346 people are killed when a Turkish Airlines DC-10 experiences a sudden decompression shortly after takeoff from Paris and slams into a park in Ermeonville, France.

March 27, 1977: A KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747 beginning its takeoff crashed into Pan American World Airways Boeing 747 then still on the runway at the Los Rodeos Airport at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. A total of 574 people, aboard both planes, died.

May 25, 1979: The left wing of an American Airlines DC-10 falls off as it's trying to take off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, setting off chaos that results in 275 deaths on board and three others on the ground. The Federal Aviation Administration later faults American Airlines maintenance techniques for the crash for Flight 191.

November 28, 1979: Some 275 people died when their Air New Zealand plane, a DC-10, hits Mt. Erebus on Antarctica -- a crash that it believed to stem from navigational error.

August 12, 1985: The deadliest-ever commercial air crash involving a single plane occurred nearly 30 years ago in the mountains of central Japan. A total of 520 people were killed when Japan Airlines Flight 123 -- a Boeing 747 -- crashed not long after takeoff from Tokyo. Four people miraculously survived.

May 26, 1991: Twelve minutes after takeoff, Lauda Air's Flight 004 stalls in midair. The Boeing 767 ultimately crashes some 70 miles northwest of Bangkok, Thailand, killing all 223 passengers and crew.

July 11, 1991: The landing gear of a Nigeria Airways DC-8 catches fire shortly after takeoff from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It doesn't make it back to the airport, crashing nose-down less than 10,000 feet short of the runway and killing all 261 people aboard.

April 26, 1994: The pilot of a China Airlines' Flight 140 alerts the control tower at Japan's Nagoya Airport of his intention not to land and try another approach. But something goes wrong and, a short time later, the Airbus A300 crashes leading to 264 fatalities -- though a few passengers do survive.

July 17, 1996: TWA Flight 800 explodes in mid-air shortly after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, then falls into pieces off the coast of Long Island. All 230 aboard die. The National Transportation Safety Board later blames the blast on an electrical short circuit that found its way into the center wing fuel tank.

November 12, 1996: A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakhstan Airlines II-76 collide over the airport in New Delhi, India, killing 349 people on both airplanes.

August 6, 1997: Flight 801 that had left Seoul, South Korea, was near its final destination in Guam when it smacked into a jungle and hit the ground. The plane, a Boeing 747, was destroyed and 228 people were killed, though there were 26 survivors.

September 26, 1997: Garuda Indonesia airlines' Flight 152 crashes in Buah Nabar, Indonesia, killing 234 people. A National Transportation Safety Board report issued three years later found the crash's most likely cause was an electrical short circuit in the Airbus A300 that ignited vapors in the fuel tank.

February 16, 1998: Flying through rain and fog, the crew of China Airlines' Flight 676 from Indonesia to Taiwan requests another landing approach at Taipei International Airport. In the process of turning around, the aircraft crashes into a neighborhood, killing all 196 aboard and another seven on the ground.

September 2, 1998: A Swissair jetliner that had departed New York's Kennedy airport on its way to Geneva, Switzerland, goes down off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada; none of the 229 people aboard Flight 111 make it. Investigators believe that the MD-11 lost all electrical power immediately before the crash.

November 12, 2001: A few weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attack, American Airlines' Flight 587 stirs fears and panic when it plummets into Belle Harbor, Queens. Despite the initial concerns, the National Transportation Safety Board found no evidence of sabotage. Still the Airbus A300 crash had a huge toll -- the highest, in fact, for any single airliner crash in U.S. history -- with all 260 dead on the plane killed plus five more innocents on the ground.



May 25, 2002: Twenty minutes after takeoff, China Airlines' Flight 611 plummets into the Taiwan Strait -- resulting in 225 fatalities. The crash is later attributed to metal fatigue and cracks throughout the Boeing 747. June 1, 2009: Air France Flight 447 is en route from Rio de Janiero to Paris when it and its 228 passengers and crew go missing somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. It's not until five days later that the first bodies are found about 600 miles off the northern coast of Brazil. Two years later, French authorities blame the crash on equipment malfunction.

Saturday 08 March 2014

http://www.news8000.com/lifestyle/travel/History-s-deadliest-commercial-jet-crashes/24875198

Desperate search for plane missing for 12 hours: Boeing 777 with 239 passengers on board vanishes over Vietnam

A major search and rescue operation is today underway after a Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew disappeared off the coast of Vietnam, after losing contact with air traffic controllers.

The Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.21am (4.21pm GMT) bound for Beijing, where it was expected to land at 6.30am (10.30pm GMT).

But after reaching 35,000ft and 120 nautical miles off the coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu the plane vanished, prompting fears the aircraft 'could have crashed'.

Aviation expert Chris Yates said the plane would not be carrying enough fuel to still be in the air and would 'definitely have crashed'.

He told Sky News: 'Frankly the plane would not have been carrying enough fuel to stay aloft much longer than an hour after it was due to arrive in Beijing.

'We simply don't know the circumstances behind what caused that crash at the moment.

'There will be two areas for the investigation: the maintenance of the aircraft and also possible terrorism.'

Less than one hour after Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, the plane disappeared from radar.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots sent a distress signal. The fact that there was apparently no call for help suggests that whatever happened to the flight occurred quickly.

The Malaysian Transport Minister said 14 hours into the search and rescue missions, that no trace of a crash site in the sea has been found, after reports the plane had crashed off the coast of southern Vietnam.

'We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane. We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed,' Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein told reporters near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

'We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side,' he said.

Ships in the area have been involved, scouring the vast site for signs of a wreckage.

Malaysian Airlines has confirmed the majority of those on board are from Malaysia and China, with four Americans, two Canadians and seven Australians and passengers from France.

Vietnamese state media, quoting a senior naval official, had reported that the Boeing 777-200ER flight had crashed off south Vietnam, but those reports have been denied, with the plane listed as 'missing'.

The Vietnamese Navy confirmed it detected the aircraft's emergency locator signal 153 miles south of Phu Quoc island in the South China sea.

Admiral Ngo Van Phat told the Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre that radar showed the aircraft had crashed into the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam, close to the border with Cambodia.

The paper later reported the Admiral qualifying his statement, saying the radar had revealed the presumed crash site.

Malaysian naval vessels saw no immediate sign of wreckage when they reached the maritime area off the country's northeast coast this morning, a senior rescue official said.

Malaysia has sent three maritime enforcement ships and a navy vessel to the area, backed by three helicopters, a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency official said.

'Our aircraft asset spotted an orange speck in the sea where the last signal came from. We sent a vessel to search the area and it was confirmed that it was nothing,' he said.

The signal picked up by the Navy is believed to be the Emergency Locator Transmittor, which can be activated manually by the flight crew or automatically upon impact.

Crying relatives of Chinese passengers on board the plane wept at Beijing airport earlier today as it became clear the jet had probably crashed.

An unconfirmed report on a flight tracking website said the aircraft had plunged 650ft and changed course shortly before all contact was lost.

The route would have taken flight MH370, a B777-200 aircraft, across the Malaysian mainland in a north-easterly direction and then across the Gulf of Thailand.

Malaysia and Vietnam were conducting a joint search and rescue, he said but gave no details. China has also sent two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help in any rescue, state television said on one of its microblogs.

“We are extremely worried,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing before the Vietnamese report that the plane had crashed. “The news is very disturbing. We hope everyone on the plane is safe.”

The flight left Kuala Lumpur at 12.21 a.m. local time Saturday. CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said at a news conference that Flight MH370 lost contact with Malaysian air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. The plane, which carried passengers mostly from China but also from other Asian countries, Canada and Europe, had been expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. Saturday.

Malaysia Airlines said people from 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians, six Australians and three Americans. It also said a Chinese infant and an American infant were on board.

If it is confirmed that the plane has crashed, the loss would mark the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year and by far the worst since the jet entered service in 1995.

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180.

Saturday 08 February 2014

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/07/malaysia-airlines-loses-contact-with-flight-mh370-carrying-239-people-from-kuala-lumpur-to-beijing/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576087/Malaysia-Airlines-says-plane-missing.html