The weekslong search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is “an extraordinarily difficult exercise,” but it will go on as long as possible, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday.
Abbott told reporters in Perth, the base for the search, that although no debris has been found in the southern Indian Ocean that can be linked to the plane, searchers are “well, well short” of any point where they would scale the hunt back.
The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, and after experts sifted through radar and satellite data, they gradually moved the hunt from seas off of Vietnam, to areas west of Malaysia and Indonesia, and then to several areas west of Australia.
“This is an extraordinarily difficult exercise .... we are searching a vast area of ocean and we are working on quite limited information,” Abbott said, adding that the best brains in the world and all the technological mastery is being applied to the task.
“If this mystery is solvable, we will solve it,” he said.
He said the search that has been going on for more than three weeks is operating on “guestimates ... until we locate some actual wreckage from the aircraft and then do the regression analysis that might tell us where the aircraft went into the ocean.”
Ten planes were either over the search zone or heading there by late yesterday afternoon, and another 11 ships were scouring the area, about 1,850km west of Australia.
More than 100 personnel in the air and 1,000 sailors at sea were involved in yesterday’s hunt for debris.
After several days no debris has been found that can be linked to the flight, Australian officials said. Only fishing equipment and other flotsam have been spotted.
Abbott said he was not putting a time limit on the search.
“We owe it to everyone to do whatever we reasonably can and we can keep searching for quite some time to come ... and, as I said, the intensity of our search and the magnitude of operations is increasing, not decreasing,” he said.
The Ocean Shield, an Australian warship which is carrying a US device that detects “pings” from the flight recorders, was expected to leave Perth yesterday for the search zone, a trip that will take three to four days.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the search, said it was first to conduct sea trials yesterday afternoon to test the search equipment on board.
The search area remains vast, so investigators are hoping to first find debris from the plane floating on the ocean surface that will help them calculate where the plane crashed into the water.
Meanwhile, at a Buddhist temple near Kuala Lumpur yesterday where Chinese relatives prayed for their loved ones, Buddhist nuns handed out prayer beads to them.
“You are not alone,” one nun said. “You have the whole world’s love, including Malaysia’s.”
Several relatives were overcome with emotion, tears streaming down their faces.
The family members later made a media statement, expressing their appreciation to Beijing, the people of Malaysia and the volunteers who have been assisting them.
They bowed as a show of gratitude, but also said they were still demanding answers.
“To those who are guilty of harming our loved ones, hiding the truth, and delaying the search and rescue, we will also definitely not forgive them,” said Jiang Hui, a representative of the families.
The relatives’ comments yesterday were seen as a conciliatory move after their angry protest in front of reporters on Sunday at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese