An airplane seat cushion, a life jacket, metallic debris and signs of fuel were found in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean yesterday by Brazilian airplanes searching for a missing Air France airliner.
The debris was spotted from the air by Brazilian military pilots searching 650km north of the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, roughly along the path that the jet was taking before it disappeared with 228 people on board, Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral said.
There were no signs of life.
Amaral said authorities would not be able to confirm that the debris was from the plane until they can retrieve some of it from the ocean for identification.
Brazilian military ships were not expected to arrive at the area until today.
The discovery came more than 24 hours after the jet bound from Rio to Paris went missing, with all feared dead.
Stormy seas and heavy clouds hampered the search yesterday for the wreckage of Air France Flight 447. French investigators said a series of extraordinary events likely brought the airliner down.
The four-year-old Airbus jet was last heard from at 2:14am GMT on Monday en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Investigators on both sides of the ocean worked through the night to determine what brought it down — wind and hail from towering thunderheads, lightning, or a catastrophic combination of factors.
France’s junior minister for transport, Dominique Bussereau, predicted a “very long investigation. It could be several days, several weeks or several months.”
French police were studying passenger lists and maintenance records and preparing to take DNA from passengers’ relatives to help identify any bodies. If there are no survivors, as feared, it would be the worst aviation disaster since 2001.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said “we have no signs so far” indicating terrorism was involved, but told French radio “all hypotheses must be studied.”
The French minister overseeing transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo, said officials did not think that lightning, even from a fierce tropical storm, could have brought down the aircraft.
“There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation,” Borloo said.
The chance of finding survivors now “is very, very small, even nonexistent,” Borloo said.
“The race against the clock has begun” to find the plane’s two black boxes, which emit signals up to 30 days.
On board were 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians. A smaller number of citizens from 27 other countries were also on board.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)