Free Republic

A search by a U.S. firm for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is expected to complete its survey by mid-June, the Southeast Asian nation said on Saturday, as families marked the fourth anniversary of one of aviation’s greatest mysteries. Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Australia, China and Malaysia ended an unsuccessful A$200-million ($159.38 million) search across a 120,000 square-kilometer area in the Indian Ocean in January 2017, despite investigators urging authorities to extend the operation 25,000 sq km north of the search area.

Indonesia seize luxury yacht Equanimity sought in 1MDB probe: Police JAKARTA (REUTERS) - Indonesia on Wednesday (Feb 28) seized a luxury yacht on the island of Bali sought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) as part of a multi-billion dollar corruption investigation linked to Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). “We have been inspecting the crew since yesterday and now we are taking action since we have received approval from the court to seize the boat,” Agung Setya, director of economic and special crimes at the Indonesia’s criminal investigation bureau, told Metro TV. Television footage in Indonesia...

In a Nov. 25, 2017 article marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Lebanese journalist Karam Al-Hilu compared the meager accomplishments of the Arab world in the past century with those of the rest of the countries, particularly Israel. He noted that Israel’s supremacy in the areas of science, economy, society and politics is the source of its strength, as well as the source of Arab failure in confronting it. The following are excerpts from his article:[1] “A century after the Balfour Declaration . . . the Arabs have not managed to build...

<p>KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysia has apologised after a government ad in Chinese-language newspapers featuring a picture of a barking rooster to mark the Year of the Dog sparked a flood of mockery.</p> <p>The full-page advert by the domestic trade, cooperatives and consumerism ministry showed a rooster emitting the word "wang", used to represent a dog's bark in Mandarin.</p>

A leading Malaysian newspaper has published a list of pointers for identifying potential gay and lesbian people, drawing anger from activists who said lives were being put at risk. The article in Sinar Harian featured bullet points of supposedly distinctive qualities that revealed LGBT people. They stated that gay men were easy to identify because of their love of beards, going to the gym – not for exercise but to check out other men – and branded clothing. Their eyes light up when they see handsome men, the article said. The stand-out attributes for lesbians were that they tend to...

“When our country needs us, we will go without a second thought to defend China’s rights,” said Chen Yuguo in a recent interview with the Washington Post. If Chen were a sailor in China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, or perhaps an officer of the Chinese Coast Guard, his pledge to use force for his country would not be particularly noteworthy. But Mr. Chen is a fisherman. As captain of a trawler based in the port of Tanmen, Chen is one of China’s 6 million plus fishermen. He pilots one of the country’s 2,600 distant-water fishing ships. And much of this...

A MASSIVE new search for the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 using underwater drones has begun today.The aircraft vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 in one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. The southeast Asian nation has now agreed to pay US firm Ocean Infinity up to $70 million if it finds the plane within 90 days. Its search vessel, the Seabed Constructor, today reached the remote spot in the Indian Ocean where Australian scientists believe the plane went down. Eight drone-like underwater vehicles will now scour the ocean floor for wreckage in an area...

Despite the “rise and fall of the unipolar concert,” China and Russia’s balancing strategies have backfired: they are not leading to multipolarity, but are actually reinforcing unipolarity. The reason is that China and Russia’s balancing strategies have focused on regional “revisionism,” which has provoked powerful responses in East Asia and Europe to contain them. Russia’s balancing strategy has to a large extent proven to be counter-productive. Instead of preventing the expansion of NATO through a “divide and conquer” strategy, or driving a diplomatic wedge between the United States and Europe, Russian revisionism has united NATO...Perhaps most illustrative of all, a...

A remote part of the Indian Ocean has become, by chance, one of the best-mapped parts of the underwater world. The ocean is vast, deep, and unexplored. When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared three years ago this week, the search brought the ocean’s vastness into sharp relief. This is how deep and dark it is three miles down. This is how unlikely you are to spot a downed airliner in 120,000 square nautical miles of open ocean. This is how much we know about the ocean floor—less than we know about the surface of Mars. As the search dragged on...

The lawsuit, filed Friday against Boeing in U.S. District Court in South Carolina, names seven malfunctions, from an electrical fire to depressurization of the plane's cabin, that could have led to the crew losing consciousness, the plane's transponder stopping its transmission and the plane flying undetected until it crashed after running out of fuel. It came as families of the missing passengers and officials marked Wednesday's third anniversary of the Boeing 777's crash. ... The U.S. lawsuit was filed by Gregory Keith, a special administrator for families who lost loved ones on the Malaysia Airlines flight. It names 44 victims...

Malaysia said on Friday pieces of debris found in Seychelles are not from missing flight MH370, which vanished in March 2014 on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The location of the plane has become one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. It is believed to have gone down in the Indian Ocean. Various pieces of debris have been collected from Indian Ocean islands and Africa's east coast and at least three of them have been confirmed as coming from the missing Boeing 777. Seychelles reported on Thursday the discovery of two pieces of...

Top searchers at the Dutch company leading the underwater hunt for Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 say they believe the plane may have glided down rather than dived in the final moments, meaning they have been scouring the wrong patch of ocean for two years. Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew onboard en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Searchers led by engineering group Fugro (FUGRc.AS) have been combing an area roughly the size of Greece for two years. That search, over 120,000 square kilometers of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia, is expected to...

STARTLING new evidence has virtually pinpointed the location of MH370 — 1258 days since it disappeared. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has today released an explosive new report that effectively narrows the search zone for the missing plane down to an area half the size of Melbourne. GeoScience Australia has been examining four satellite images taken in the weeks after the plane went missing in the area identified late last year as MH370’s likely resting spot. They found 12 objects in those images that they deemed man-made and 28 that they regard as possibly man-made. The images were taken by...

The report added that “debris drift modeling results present strong evidence that the aircraft is most likely to be located to the north of the current indicative underwater search area”. It identified an area of approximately 25,000 sq. km “with the highest probability of containing the wreckage of the aircraft. The report went on: “The experts concluded that, if this area were to be searched, prospective areas for locating the aircraft wreckage, based on all the analysis to date, would be exhausted.” The governments of Australia, Malaysia and China, where most of the passengers were from, have previously agreed to...

...Blaine Gibson, who has been gathering suspected MH370 debris as it washes up on Madagascar and Mozambique, said Mr Raza had been due to deliver new items to Malaysian investigators in Kuala Lumpur when he was unexpectedly slain. The timing has rattled Mr Gibson, who says he has been receiving death threats because of his self-financed mission to solve the baffling aviation mystery. He had planned to keep details of his latest finds — which included two items he considered particularly promising — under wraps until they had been safely transported off the island but changed his mind after Mr...

“Despite every effort using the best science available, cutting-edge technology, as well as modelling and advice from highly skilled professionals who are the best in their field, unfortunately, the search has not been able to locate the aircraft,” the Joint Agency Coordination Center in Australia said in a statement. “The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness,” the agency said. The jet carrying 239 people on board vanished from civilian radar in the early hours of March 8, 2014, without so much as a distress call from its pilots. After several false starts,...

Blaine Alan Gibson has been called a modern-day Indiana Jones – though in temperament he’s probably a lot closer to Sherlock Holmes. Blaine Alan Gibson has been called a modern-day Indiana Jones – though in temperament he’s probably a lot closer to Sherlock Holmes. Gibson, 59, made headlines around the world earlier this year after he found debris from a Boeing 777 that was later confirmed to be a piece of the infamous Malaysia flight 370 aircraft, which went missing shortly after take-off on 8 March 2014 with 239 people on board. After diligently working to transfer the panel to...

US-based company Ocean Infinity dispatched a search vessel this past week to look in the southern Indian Ocean for debris from the plane. "The basis of the offer from Ocean Infinity is based on 'no cure, no fee,'" Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Saturday, meaning payment will be made only if the company finds the wreckage. "That means they are willing to search the area of 25,000 square kilometres pointed out by the expert group near the Australian waters. I don't want to give too much hope ... to the [next of kin]," he added. Ocean Infinity...

In Malaysia — where nearly half the adult population are overweight or obese, and dubbed the fattest country in Asia — nutritionists are being financially supported by major food companies, New York Times (NYT) reported today. The report pointed at the Nutrition Society of Malaysia, whose research on local diets and lifestyle habits was not only financed, but also reviewed by Nestlé, the world’s largest food company whose malted chocolate beverage Milo is popular with consumers here. It was also revealed that the work of the society headed by the country’s leading nutrition expert Dr Tee E Siong, 70, has...

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian tourism and culture minister Nazri Aziz has told ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN) to take a page out of US president Donald Trump’s campaign strategy. In a report by The Star, Mr Nazri said Mr Trump had won because American voters wanted leaders who focus on bread and butter issues rather than national ones. “The local communities wanted to be noticed and they wanted the government to work for them. People are not interested in national issues. Instead, they want a government that works for them. “That’s why Trump won, because Americans are just fed up...