Intelligence checks on 153 Chinese passengers on a missing Malaysian airliner produced no red flags, China said yesterday, as Malaysia marshalled ships and planes from 26 countries to search an area the size of Australia.
Eleven days after contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew, there has been minimal progress in determining precisely what happened or where the plane ended up.
Lending fresh weight to the belief that the plane was deliberately diverted, the New York Times reported that the first turn it made off its flight path was programmed into the Boeing 777’s computer navigation system, probably by someone in the cockpit.
Rather than manually operating the plane’s controls, whoever altered flight 370’s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer situated between the captain and the co-pilot, the newspaper said, quoting US officials.
Two-thirds of those on board were Chinese, and Malaysia had asked authorities in Beijing to run an exhaustive background check on all their nationals as part of a probe into everyone aboard.
Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang (黃惠康) yesterday said no evidence had been found that would link anyone to a possible hijacking or terrorist attack on the jet.
Chinese media has been critical of Malaysia’s handling of the investigation, saying valuable time and resources were wasted in the hours and days immediately after the aircraft disappeared on March 8.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s military said its radar detected a plane that may have been Malaysia Airlines flight 370 just minutes after the missing jetliner’s communications went down, adding that it did not share the information earlier because it was not specifically asked for it.
Thai air force spokesman Montol Suchookorn yesterday said the plane followed a twisting flight path to the Strait of Malacca, which is where Malaysian radar tracked flight 370 early on March 8.
However, Montol said the Thai military was not sure whether it detected the same plane.
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
GLOBAL PROJECT: Underseas cables ‘are the nervous system of democratic connectivity,’ which is under stress, Member of the European Parliament Rihards Kols said The government yesterday launched an initiative to promote global cooperation on improved security of undersea cables, following reported disruptions of such cables near Taiwan and around the world. The Management Initiative on International Undersea Cables aims to “bring together stakeholders, align standards, promote best practices and turn shared concerns into beneficial cooperation,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said at a seminar in Taipei. The project would be known as “RISK,” an acronym for risk mitigation, information sharing, systemic reform and knowledge building, he said at the seminar, titled “Taiwan-Europe Subsea Cable Security Cooperation Forum.” Taiwan sits at a vital junction on
LONG-HELD POSITION: Washington has repeatedly and clearly reiterated its support for Taiwan and its long-term policy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday said that Taiwan should not be concerned about being used as a bargaining chip in the ongoing US-China trade talks. “I don’t think you’re going to see some trade deal where, if what people are worried about is, we’re going to get some trade deal or we’re going to get favorable treatment on trade in exchange for walking away from Taiwan,” Rubio told reporters aboard his airplane traveling between Israel and Qatar en route to Asia. “No one is contemplating that,” Reuters quoted Rubio as saying. A US Treasury spokesman yesterday told reporters
RSS