Two pieces of debris found in Mozambique have arrived in Australia for experts to determine if they came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, an official said.
An extensive search for the Boeing 777, thought to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, has so far failed to find any wreckage, although a piece of wing washed up on a distant island last year.
Two pieces of debris found in Mozambique — a flat grey fragment, with the words “No Step” printed along one side, found on a sandbank and 1m-long piece of metal picked up in December last year by a South African holidaymaker — have since come to light.
“Both pieces of debris were packaged in Africa and remained that way until arrival,” an Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman said yesterday.
“They are being opened [yesterday], with investigators from a range of countries and organizations in attendance. Procedures appropriate to maintain the integrity of this potential evidence have been followed,” the official added.
Flight MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 passengers and crew on board, mostly Chinese and Malaysians.
A wing fragment confirmed to be from Flight MH370 was found last year on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, the first proof that the plane indeed went down.
The bureau last week said that a second piece of debris found in Reunion was “unlikely to be from an aircraft.”
The bureau said it did not anticipate any statements on the Mozambique debris until the examination process was complete.
The search for Flight MH370 is expected to wrap up in June or July if the aircraft is not found in the target zone of 120,000 square kilometers.
No crash site has been located, but Australian authorities said ahead of the two-year anniversary of the plane’s disappearance that they are still hopeful it would be found.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of