Divers reported seeing the fuselage and engines of Lion Air flight JT610 on the seafloor and a ping locator had detected a signal that might be from the cockpit voice recorder, Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency officials said yesterday.
“Two engines and more landing gear have been found,” agency head Muhammad Syaugi said.
“I haven’t seen it myself, but I got information from some divers that they have seen the fuselage,” Syaugi said.
Photo: Reuters
The brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet on Monday plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people onboard.
The plane nosed downward so abruptly that it might have reached speeds of 965kph or more before slamming into the sea, according to three experts who made calculations based on preliminary flight-tracking data.
It dived with little or no turns and its nose was pointed about 45 degrees below the horizon shortly before impact, an unusually steep dive for an airliner, according to the analysis of data provided by flight-tracking company FlightRadar24.
Syaugi said that a “low ping signal” was detected that could be the black box voice recorder.
“We have made major breakthroughs, as we have recovered two turbines, one wheel,” Syaugi said. “There are reports of team members seeing the body of the plane.”
However, diver Syachrul Anto, 48, who was volunteering in the search operations, died on Friday.
“He was a volunteer with the Search and Rescue Agency,” Isswarto, commander of the Indonesian Navy’s search and rescue division, told reporters.
It is believed he died from decompression, Isswarto said.
Anto had previously served in Palu after it was struck by an earthquake and tsunami in September and also took part in the evacuation process of an Air Asia plane crash nearly four years ago.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS