Daily Archives: March 15, 2014

SEPANG, Malaysia — Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia announced on Saturday afternoon that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing as the result of deliberate action by someone aboard.

Mr. Najib also said that search efforts in the South China Sea had been ended, and that technical experts now believed that the aircraft could have ended up anywhere in one of two zones — one as far north as Kazakhstan in Central Asia, and the other crossing the southern Indian Ocean.

That conclusion was based on a final signal from the plane picked up on satellite at 8:11 a.m. on March 8, nearly seven hours after ground control lost contact with the jet, he said.

While Mr. Najib said that investigators had not ruled out alternatives to hijacking, his remarks represented official confirmation that the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 a week earlier had not been an accident. He noted that one communications system had been disabled as the plane flew over the northeast coast of Malaysia and that a second system, a transponder aboard the aircraft, had stopped broadcasting its location, altitude, speed and other information at 1:21 a.m. while the plane was one-third of the way across the Gulf of Thailand from Malaysia to Vietnam.

Mr. Najib’s news conference came a day after American officials and others familiar with the investigation told The New York Times that Flight 370 had experienced significant changes in altitude after it lost contact with ground control, and altered its course more than once as if still under the command of a pilot.

Military radar data subsequently showed that the aircraft turned and flew west across northern Malaysia before arcing out over the wide northern end of the Strait of Malacca, headed at cruising altitude for the Indian Ocean.

The Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy said in a statement on Saturday that its search for the plane now encompassed the Strait of Malacca and beyond to the Bay of Bengal — an enormous area. But Mr. Najib said that representatives of many more governments across the region had been contacted, since the plane might have been flying for many hours after it left Malaysian airspace.

The flight had been scheduled to land at 6:30 a.m. in Beijing that day, so the latest time given by Mr. Najib — 8:11 a.m. — could have been toward the very end of the plane’s fuel.

By noting that investigators had not yet concluded that the episode was a hijacking, Mr. Najib seemed to leave open the possibility that the cockpit crew might have chosen to take the aircraft to an unknown destination. He declined to take any questions, and a spokesman said that technical experts would hold a separate news conference to answer questions later in the day. But officials later said that the second news conference had been canceled.

“The investigation team is making further calculations, which will indicate how far the aircraft may have flown after the last point of contact,” Mr. Najib said, reading a statement in English. “Due to the type of satellite data, we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with a satellite.

“However, based on this new data, the aviation authorities of Malaysia and their international counterparts have determined that the plane’s last communication with a satellite was in one of two possible corridors: a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean,” he said. “The investigation team is working to further refine their information.”

The northern arc described by Mr. Najib passes through or close to some of the world’s most volatile countries that are home to insurgent groups, but also over highly militarized areas with robust air defense networks, some run by the U.S. military. The arc passes close to northern Iran, through Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, and through northern India and the Himalayan mountains and Myanmar. An aircraft flying on that arc would have to pass through air defense networks in India and Pakistan, whose mutual border is heavily militarized, as well as through Afghanistan, where the United States and other NATO countries have operated air bases for more than a decade.

Air bases near that arc include Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where the U.S. Air Force’s 455th Air Expeditionary Wing is based, and a large Indian air base, Hindon Air Force Station.

The southern arc, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean, travels over open water with few islands stretching all the way to Antarctica. If the aircraft took that path, it may have passed near Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands. These remote islands, with a population of fewer than 1,000 people, have a small airport. To the east of that route is Western Australia.

The Indian Ocean, the third-largest in the world, has an average depth of more than 12,000 feet, or more than two miles.

Mikael Robertsson, a co-founder of Flightradar24, a global aviation tracking service, said the way the plane’s communications were shut down pointed to the involvement of someone with considerable aviation expertise and knowledge of the air route, possibly a crew member, willing or unwilling.

The Boeing’s transponder was switched off just as the plane passed from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control space, thus making it more likely that the plane’s absence from communications would not arouse attention, Mr. Robertsson said by telephone from Sweden.

“Always when you fly, you are in contact with air traffic control in some country,” he said. “Instead of contacting the Vietnam air traffic control, the transponder signal was turned off, so I think the timing of turning off the signal just after you have left Malaysian air traffic control indicates someone did this on purpose, and he found the perfect moment when he wasn’t in control by Malaysia or Vietnam. He was like in no-man’s country.”

The signs thus indicated involvement of the crew, Mr. Robertsson said, but he stressed that those signs were not definitive, nor did they prove whether any involvement was willing or coerced.

The possible northern corridor of the missing flight described by Mr. Najib bristles with military radar, making it more likely that the plane either went south or, if it did fly north, did not make it far, Mr. Robertsson said.

“I don’t really think that the aircraft could have flown so far over the land, because it would need to pass over so many countries that someone should have picked it up,” Mr. Robertsson said. “If they had taken the northern corridor, they could have gone down before they reached land, so it’s also possible.”

The disappearance of the jet has mesmerized many in China, partly because nearly two-thirds of the 239 people aboard were Chinese citizens. After Mr. Najib’s statement Saturday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded to know more, and said that China was sending technical experts to Malaysia.

“We ask that the Malaysian side provide even more comprehensive and accurate information,” the spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement on the ministry’s website. “We urge that based on the new circumstances, Malaysia further expand and clarify the scope of the search and intensify search efforts, and we ask that Malaysia call on even more countries to become involved in the search.”

Huang Huikang, China’s ambassador to Malaysia, sat impassively in a light gray suit in the front row of Mr. Najib’s news conference, at an airport hotel here on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

According to a person who has been briefed on the progress of the investigation, the two “corridors” described by Mr. Najib were derived from calculations made by engineers from the satellite communications company Inmarsat, which were provided to investigators. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the search operation remain confidential.

The satellite communications box fitted on the plane is of an older generation and is not equipped with a global positioning system, the person said. But investigators have managed to calculate the distance between the “ping” from the plane and a stationary Inmarsat-3 satellite orbiting above the Equator and over the Indian Ocean. The satellite can “see” in an arc that stretches to the north and south of its fixed position, but without GPS it can only say how far away the ping is, not where it is coming from, the person said.

“Imagine a torch beam coming from a satellite going left and right,” the person said, referring to a flashlight beam. “It is the maximum arc in the two directions that is being calculated.”

But based on what is already known about the flight’s trajectory, investigators are strongly favoring the southern corridor as the likely flight path, the person said. “The U.S. Navy would not be heading toward Kazakhstan,” the person said.

Radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appeared to show that the missing airliner climbed to 45,000 feet, above the approved altitude limit for a Boeing 777-200, soon after it disappeared from civilian radar and turned sharply to the west, according to a preliminary assessment by a person familiar with the data.

The radar track, which the Malaysian government has not released but says it has provided to the United States and China, showed that the plane then descended unevenly to 23,000 feet, below normal cruising levels, as it approached the densely populated island of Penang.

There, officials believe, the plane turned from a southwest-bound course, climbed to a higher altitude and flew northwest over the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean.

An officer from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Center, which oversees searches for missing ships and planes in seas under Australian responsibility, said the center had not started a search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, and could not do so unless the scope of the search was narrowed to a more specific point that fell under Australia’s responsibility.

He also said the center could act only if Malaysia, which has been leading the search, made a request. “It’s still half the Indian Ocean,” he said, “so where do you start at this point?”

source: nytimes.com

Σοκ προκάλεσε στην Καλιφόρνια η είδηση οτι 18χρονος πατέρας έκοψε τη μύτη του παιδιού του επειδη δεν σταματούσε να κλαίει.

Ο Τζόσουα Κούπερ, κρατείται στη φυλακή της κομητείας Σολάνο με την κατηγορία της παιδικής κακοποίησης, σύμφωνα με την εφημερίδα San Francisco Chronicle.

Ο νεαρός πατέρας ενοχλημένος απο το συνεχές κλάμα του μωρού δάγκωσε τη μύτη του. Το μωρό, μεταφέρθηκε σε σοβαρή αλλά σταθερή κατάσταση στο νοσοκομείο, όπου οι γιατροί διαπίστωσαν ότι λείπει το ένα τρίτο της μύτης του ενώ έχει υποστεί κάταγμα κρανίου.

Η αστυνομία στην έκθεση της ανέφερε ότι ο Τζόσουα Κούπερ κακοποίησε το μωρό του καθώς απελπίστηκε από το συνεχές κλάμα του βρέφους.

Περισσότερα: Έκοψε τη μύτη του μωρού επειδή δεν σταματούσε το κλάμα! | E-Radio.gr Daily

Βέρα, το σύμβολο της αγάπης και της δέσμευσης ανάμεσα σε ένα ζευγάρι. Όμως πώς ξεκίνησε αυτή η παράδοση;

Το έθιμο αυτό μας πάει πίσω 4.800 χρόνια, στην Αρχαία Αίγυπτο. Εκεί χρησιμοποιούσαν καλάμια και αγριόχορτα για να φτιάξουν τη βέρα. Ο κύκλος της βέρας ήταν η αιωνιότητα, ένα σχήμα χωρίς αρχή και τέλος.

Έπειτα η βέρα έγινε από δέρμα και οστά. Όσο πιο ακριβό ήταν το υλικό, τόσο μεγαλύτερη η αγάπη που έδειχνε ο δωρητής στον παραλήπτη.

Το έθιμο υιοθέτησαν και οι Ρωμαίοι, όμως με άλλο συμβολισμό. Τότε η βέρα δεν συμβόλιζε την αγάπη του συζύγου προς τη γυναίκα του, αλλά ότι εκείνη ήταν πλέον ιδιοκτησία του. Οι βέρες ήταν σιδερένιες και λέγονταν «Annulus Pronubus». Στην Πομπηία έχουν βρεθεί τέτοια δαχτυλίδια, που έχουν και επιγραφές. Οι πιο συνηθισμένες ήταν οι: «Ama me», δηλαδή  «αγάπα με».

Το δαχτυλίδι αρραβώνων γεννήθηκε μετά τον 13ο αιώνα, όταν ο πάπας Ιννοκέντιος είπε πως πρέπει να υπάρχει μια περίοδος ανάμεσα στον αρραβώνα και το γάμο. Η βέρα λειτουργούσε ως δήλωση πως ο συγκεκριμένος άνθρωπος έχει δοθεί σε κάποιον και θα υπάρξει σύντομα γάμος.

Η πέτρα, που συχνά κοσμεί το δαχτυλίδι των αρραβώνων, είναι ιδέα του Μαξιμιλιανού των Αψβούργων. Το 1477 προσέφερε στην αγαπημένη του ένα διαμαντένιο δαχτυλίδι – το πρώτο καταγεγραμμένο μονόπετρο.

Το 860 μ.Χ. ο πάπας Νικόλαος έκανε υποχρεωτική τη χρυσή βέρα για το γάμο.
Πηγή: E-Radio.gr

Flights continue … A Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by Malaysian Airlines is prepared for take off at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, Malaysia. Photo: Bloomberg

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet had its communication devices switched off and was deliberately flown back on its original course, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, said on Saturday.

But he stopped short of confirming media reports citing Malaysian officials stating that it was hijacked.

“Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked I wish to be very clear that we are still investigating all possibilities,’’ he said.

He said the plane’s last known communication was at 8.11am on the day it disappeared – more than six hours after its last reported position in the South China Sea.

Dato’ Sri Najib named two possible “corridors’’ thousands of kilometres from the original search locations, in official statements that serve to further deepen the mystery surrounding the disappearance of MH370.

Mr Najib described how ‘‘primary radar data’’ showed how the plane turned from its north-easterly course, flew west back over Malaysia, then turned north west after reaching the Straits of Malacca on the country’s west coast.

‘‘These movements are consistent with deliberate actions by someone on the plane,’’ Mr Najib said said.

‘‘The aircraft could now be in one of two possible corridors. A northern corridor stretching  approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand.

“Or, a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to southern Indian ocean.”

source: smh.com.au

THE Prime Minister of Malaysia has given a lengthy update into missing Flight MH370.

With the plane still missing, and no information on where it is, Prime Minister Najib Razak said investigators were concluding the plane had been hijacked by someone on board the plane – someone experienced with flying.

From the radar evidence coming to light, he said the search window extended into flight corridors which stretched from Kazakhstan to southern Thailand and the southern Indian Ocean.

He said: “As of today, 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft are are involved in the search.

“At every stage we acted on the basis of verified information and we followed every credible lead. Sometimes these leads have led nowhere.” – Attributed to…

“It is widely understood that this has been a situation without precedent. We have conducted search operation over land in the South China Sea, the Straits of Malacca, the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean.

“At every stage we acted on the basis of verified information and we followed every credible lead. Sometimes these leads have led nowhere.”

The primary radar data showed the aircraft proceeding on the flight path which took it to an area north of the straight – Straits of Malacca. Given this credible data which was subsequently corroborated with the relevant international authorities, we extended the area of search to include the Straits of Malacca and later to the Andaman Sea.

“Based on new data the aviation authorities of Malaysia and their international counterparts have determined that the plane’s last communication with the satellite was in one of two possible corridors. The northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turk man Stan to southern Thailand or the southern corridor stretching across from Indonesia to southern Indian Ocean. The investigation team is working to further refine the information.

“Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear, we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path.

Meanwhile an extraordinary claim has suggested the jetliner may have flown off the west coast of Australia.

Regarding the Australian connection, a source cited by Bloomberg news agency, said the last satellite transmission from the airliner has been traced to the Indian Ocean off Australia, somewhere to the west of Perth.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had no reliable information to indicate MH370 may have approached Australia.

A spokesman said: “AMSA has not received reliable information indicating that Malaysian Airlines’ flight MH370 may have approached Australia or entered the Australian search and rescue region.

“The Bloomberg report will be passed to coordinating authorities for their assessment in the context of all of the other information they have available to them,” he said.

If the search does move to Australian waters, it will be coordinated by AMSA.

Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of “human intervention’’ in the plane’s disappearance, adding it may have been “an act of piracy.’’

The Boeing 777’s communication with the ground was severed under one hour into its flight on March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials have said radar data suggest it may have turned back and crossed back over the Malaysian peninsula westward, after setting out toward the Chinese capital.

The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea, and that it appeared to have been steered to avoid radar detection. The official said it had been established with a “more than 50 percent’’ degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

The New York Times reported that radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appear to show the plane ascending to 45,000 feet and making a sharp turn to the right not long after it disappeared from civilian radar.

Forty-five thousand feet is above the approved altitude limit for a Boeing 777-200.

The information comes from “a preliminary assessment by a person familiar with the data”, the paper said.

HOW COULD MALAYSIA AIRLINES’ FLIGHT MH370 BE STOLEN?               

The same data suggests the plane descended to 23,000 feet as it approached the Malaysian island of Penang, but then re-ascended and flew northwest over the Straits of Malacca.

CNN is reporting that authorities think the plane may have gone in one of two directions after it passed through the Straits of Malacca: either northwest, towards the Bay of Bengal and the coast of India, or southwest, out into the expanse of the Indian Ocean.

FIVE THINGS ABOUT INDIA’S ANDAMAN ISLANDS               

The reports are the strongest suggestion yet that the plane was being piloted after the last known contact was made with air traffic control, at 1.07am, when the plane was flying over the Gulf of Thailand.

The Wall Street Journal earlier today quoted aviation industry experts who said it was looking like the plane was the victim of sabotage, based partly on two of the disabling of the plane’s internal systems.

The paper quoted Richard Healing, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, who said: “Increasingly, it seems to be heading into the criminal arena”.

“The emphasis is on determining if a hijacker or crew member diverted the plane,” he said.

The Star Malaysia reported that security checks are being made by intelligence agencies into the profiles of the crew and the passengers.

Indian navy ships supported by surveillance planes and helicopters scoured Andaman Sea islands for a third day today without any success in finding evidence of the missing jet, an official said.

V.S.R. Murthy, a top Indian coast guard official, said the search has been expanded farther west into the Bay of Bengal.

Nearly a dozen ships, patrol vessels, surveillance aircraft and helicopters have been deployed but ”we have got nothing so far,’’ Murthy said.

Bangladesh also joined the search effort in the Bay of Bengal with two patrol aircraft and two frigates, said Mahbubul Haque Shakil, an aide of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Seeing no headway, Malaysian authorities suggested yesterday a new search area of 9,000 square kilometers to India along the Chennai coast in the Bay of Bengal, India’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Yesterday, India used heat sensors on flights over hundreds of uninhabited Andaman Sea islands that stretch south of Myanmar, covering an area 720 kilometers long and 52 kilometers wide. Only 37 of 572 are inhabited, with the rest covered in dense forests.

The island chain has four airstrips, but only the main airport in Port Blair can handle a large commercial jet.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said Malaysia was sharing information with foreign agencies and confirmed that agents were examing the activities and backgrounds of the pilots and crew. further checks are also being made on all passengers.

“I cannot confirm that there was no hijacking,” he said overnight.

Investigators are examining the possibility the plane’s disappearance was “an act of piracy”, another US official said yesterday.

The official, who wasn’t authorised to speak publicly, told AP news agency overnight while other theories are still being looked at key evidence for “human intervention” in the plane’s disappearance is that contact with its transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system quit.

The official said it was also possible the plane may have landed somewhere.

It has been suggested the plane may have continued to fly on for around four hours after it lost contact with ground control.

A P-8 Poseidon aircraft and a guided missile destroyer, the USS Kidd, were due to aid the international hunt for the jet as the search effort extended further west, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said overnight.

The Kidd was preparing to search the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, he said.

“The P-8 will be searching a much larger search area … the southern portion of the Bay of Bengal and the northern portion of the Indian Ocean”.

The Boeing 777 vanished off radar early last Saturday over the South China Sea.

Its fate has vexed investigators and Malaysia authorities have dramatically expanded the scope of the search.

source: news.com.au

“Super Sunday” στην Αγγλία με ManUtd – Λίβερπουλ και Τότεναμ – Άρσεναλ, ντεμπούτο Στέφενς και Μπάγερν – Λεβερκούζεν στην Γερμανία, Σπόρτινγκ – Πόρτο στην Πορτογαλία.

Για μία ακόμη φορά τα φώτα πέφτουν στην Αγγλία, καθώς στην “Super Sunday” υπάρχουν δύο μεγάλα ντέρμπι, με την Μάντσεστερ Γιουνάιτεντ να υποδέχεται την Λίβερπουλ και την Τότεναμ να φιλοξενεί την Άρσεναλ.

Στην Γερμανία ο Χουμπ Στέφενς κάνει ντεμπούτο ως προπονητής της Στουτγκάρδης στην Βρέμη κόντρα στην Βέρντερ, ενώ η Μπάγερν αντιμετωπίζει στο Μόναχο την Λεβερκούζεν.

India used heat sensors on flights over hundreds of Andaman Sea islands such as North Sentinel Island and will expand its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet farther west into the Bay of Bengal, officials said.

Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of kilometres off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday.

Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe, said sources familiar with investigations into the Boeing 777’s disappearance.

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country’s northwest coast.

The New York Times is reporting the flight experienced significant changes in altitude after it lost contact with ground control, climbing to 45,000 feet – above the approved limit for a Boeing 777-200 – and then descending unevenly to 23,000 feet.

This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said.

The last plot on the military radar’s tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India’s Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.

Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.

A third source familiar with the investigation said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight.

“What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards,” said that source, a senior Malaysian police official.

All three sources declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media and due to the sensitivity of the investigation.

Officials at Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport, the official point of contact for information on the investigation, did not return calls seeking comment.

Malaysian police have previously said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

As a result of the new evidence, the sources said, multinational search efforts were being stepped up in the Andaman Sea and also the Indian Ocean.

ANDAMAN ISLANDS

Indian aircraft on Friday combed Andaman and Nicobar, made up of more than 500 mostly uninhabited islands, for signs of the missing jetliner that evidence suggests was last headed towards the heavily forested archipelago.

Popular with tourists and anthropologists alike, the islands form India’s most isolated state. They are best known for dense rainforests, coral reefs and hunter-gatherer tribes who have long resisted contact with outsiders.

The Indian Navy has deployed two Dornier planes to fly across the island chain, a total area of 720 km (447 miles) by 52 km (32 miles), Indian military spokesman Harmeet Singh said in the state capital, Port Blair. So far the planes, and a helicopter searching the coast, had found nothing.

“This operation is like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Singh, who is the spokesman for joint air force, navy and army command in the islands.

NARROW CORRIDOR

The Defence Ministry said the Eastern Naval Command would also search across a new area measuring 15 km by 600 km along the Chennai coast in the Bay of Bengal.

The shape of this area, located 900 km west of Port Blair, suggested the search was focusing on a narrow flight corridor.

On standby is India’s most advanced maritime air surveillance plane, the P-8I Poseidon, a long range anti-submarine variant of the U.S. Navy’s P-8A. India, the first overseas customer for the aircraft, has ordered eight P-8Is.

Indian ships are also helping in the search by more than a dozen nations for the missing plane, by looking in an area north of Sumatra, in the south Andaman Sea.

The 2004 Asian tsunami devastated much of Andaman and Nicobar. In the wake of that disaster, a member of the reclusive Sentinelese was photographed shooting arrows at an Indian coastguard helicopter.

Another nomadic tribe, the Jarawa, are increasingly in contact with outsiders. Tribal rights group Survival accuses travel agencies of organising “human safari” tours to view the Jarawa, who are fish and turtle hunters and number about 400.

Andaman and Nicobar is of strategic importance for India, because of its location near the busy Malacca Straits shipping route. Over the past decade, India has built up its military presence on the islands.

LAST SIGHTING

In one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation, no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage has been found despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries.

The last sighting of the aircraft on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1.30am. Malaysian time last Saturday (1730 GMT Friday), less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur, as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand. That put the plane on Malaysia’s east coast.

Malaysia’s air force chief said on Wednesday an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2.15am, 320 kilometres northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia’s west coast.

This position marks the limit of Malaysia’s military radar in that part of the country, a fourth source familiar with the investigation said.

When asked about the range of military radar at a news conference on Thursday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it was “a sensitive issue” that he was not going to reveal.

“Even if it doesn’t extend beyond that, we can get the co-operation of the neighboring countries,” he said.

The fact that the aircraft – if it was MH370 – had lost contact with air traffic control and was invisible to civilian radar suggested someone on board had turned off its communication systems, the first two sources said.

They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading – following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.

In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 10,600 metres about 145 kilometres off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called “Igari”. The time was 1.21am.

The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called “Vampi”, northeast of Indonesia’s Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.

From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called “Gival”, south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called “Igrex”, on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2.15am. That is the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane’s possible direction.

The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbours Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands.
source: smh.com.au

Sydney FC are reportedly set to part ways with Alessandro Del Piero at the end of the A-League season.

The Sydney FC board met during the week and decided not to offer the Italian striker the one-year contract extension he was seeking, according to Fairfax Media.

De Piero, who’s earning about $4 million a season with the Sky Blues and turns 40 in November, sat out Friday night’s 1-1 draw with the Brisbane Roar at Allianz Stadium due to back and hamstring tightness.

Similar complaints have restricted his game time this season after a brilliant debut campaign in 2012-13 with Sydney FC that yielded a club-record 14 goals.

source: ninemsn.com.au

Hungry python: A WIRES volunteer takes away the snake.

A large python has swallowed a pet dog that was chained up inside its kennel in a backyard in northern NSW.

The dog’s owner received a “nasty shock” when she approached the kennel to let her Chihuahua-Maltese cross off its chain, only to find a carpet python in its place with a large bulge in its body and the dog’s chain emerging from its mouth.

Volunteers from the Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (WIRES) were called to the home in Caniaba, near Lismore, on Thursday morning and arrived to find the 2.5-metre snake still lying in the kennel.

WIRES Northern Rivers secretary Sue Ulyatt said the volunteers cut the chain and observed the python, which is about 50 years old, for 24 hours to see if it would regurgitate the chain.

However, when it didn’t, the python was taken to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, where it would be examined by a veterinarian to see if it would require surgery.

Mrs Ulyatt said the dog’s owner was upset but calm when she rang the wildlife service’s hotline on Thursday morning.

“She realised that she had made a dreadful mistake. She hadn’t thought about the possibility of a snake taking the dog,” she said.

“The lady went out to let dog off the chain, but instead of the dog being on the chain, it was large carpet python.

The dog owner was shocked to find a python in her dog’s kennel. Photo: WIRES

“It’s only the second incident like this we’ve had in over 10 years. Usually it’s the other way around, the snake comes off second best.”

Mrs Ulyatt said the incident occurred on a rural property, and carpet pythons were very common in the area.

The python would have strangled the dog before swallowing it whole, she said, and estimated such a meal would sustain a python for about a month.

Mrs Ulyatt said the woman was trying to do the responsible thing by chaining up her dog at night so it did not stray and potentially attack and kill wildlife.

“Chaining up a dog in a wildlife area is certainly a responsible thing to do, but the dog was too small. It should have been inside,” Mrs Ulyatt said.

If the snake does undergo surgery, it will remain under care for “quite some time” before being released into the wild, Mrs Ulyatt said.

Thursday morning’s incident is the latest in a string of captivating encounters this month involving pythons devouring other animals.

On March 2, an enormous water python swallowed a metre-long fresh water crocodile following an epic duel that shocked onlookers at Lake Moondarra, near Mount Isa.

Mount Isa mother Tiffany Corlis captured the contest on camera, taking a series of shots that documented the huge snake’s assault on the croc.

The previous day, a python was captured on camera making a meal of a rather large possum in full view of North Lakes residents, north of Brisbane.

That spectacle drew a large crowd of curious onlookers, including amateur photograph Caroline Hubbard, who arrived to find much of the possum already in the snake’s bulging stomach.

“As it was, the [snake’s] tail was wrapped around a prickly branch of the tree … and it was so thick with the body of the possum in it,” she said.

“Sadly every week we see snakes come in as a result of trauma when people have deliberately tried to attack them,” Michael Pine, Senior Vet at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary said.

“It’s tragic the number of injuries we see from people attacking snakes. Carpet pythons are the good guys. They eat all the rodents that people don’t want in their houses – the carpet pythons eat all the food so the other more poisonous snakes aren’t going to hang around if there’s a carpet python about.”

source: smh.com.au