Day: March 27, 2014

By Dyana Sofya – Malay Mail Online

March 27 — One of my father’s favorite bands is the Bee Gees. I grew up listening to them especially during weekends when he would spend hours in front of his elaborated sound system listening to old classics, from Santana’s Black Magic Woman, Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall to Sweet Charity’s Teratai.

My mother who loves to chat, be it face-to-face with another person or on the phone was not fond of my father’s weekend routine because it would be too noisy for her to listen to herself but they however subconsciously insist to be in the same room despite their different needs.

The tragedy of MH370 made all of us realise the value of family, unity and togetherness. Those onboard of MH370 are someone’s father, mother, son and daughter. We may have different backgrounds, nations, languages, colours, cultures, likes, dislikes, habits, and manners in every way of life, nonetheless, they are our brothers and sisters in humanity.

The incident showed us that we are all connected, we are first and foremost, human beings. We share the same feeling of worry and disbelief throughout the seventeen days hoping for a clue, an answer to the missing MH370 together with 239 of its passengers and crew. All of us were concerned and baffled on how a technology-advanced aircraft goes missing without a sign. Our hearts stopped at once for a second when the Prime Minister made the announcement that flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean. All of our hearts, thoughts and prayers go to the passengers and crew, their family members and friends. Continue reading “How grief brings us together”

Today is the 20th day of the missing MH370 disaster with still no answer as to “”what, how and why” as to the series of events in the early hours of March 8 resulting in the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft with 239 passengers and crew on board, resulting in the longest and biggest-ever multi-national 26-nation sea-and-air search.

Although the search area has been narrowed considerably from the Northern and Southern Corridors to the south of Southern Corridor in the southern Indian Ocean, and despite the new satellite images revealing 122 objects that could be debris from the Boeing 777, the international search team today which had been bolstered to 11 military and civilian aircraft and five ships have ended empty-handed when they have to call off the search operation today due to bad weather.

Severe icing, severe turbulence and near zero visibility are forecast to deteriorate later in the day in the area some 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth in the deepest and roughest waters in the world, roiled by the “Roaring Forties” winds that cut across the sea.

The winds are named for the area between latitude 40 degrees and 50 degrees where there is no land mass to slow down gusts which create waves higher than six metres. Continue reading “Cabinet should decide tomorrow in support of an Opposition-headed Parliamentary Select Committee on MH370 to be appointed in current meeting of Parliament whether the black box is discovered or not”

The Malay Mail Online/Reuters
March 27, 2014

WASHINGTON DC, March 26 — FBI Director James Comey told a House subcommittee yesterday he expects his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight in the next one or two days.

Comey, who was testifying before an appropriations subcommittee on the FBI’s 2015 budget request, said Malaysian authorities gave the FBI forensic computer materials and that the agency’s review of those materials is nearly complete.

“I have teams working really around the clock to exploit that,” Comey said. “I don’t want to say more about that in an open setting, but I expect it to be done fairly shortly. Within a day or two we will finish that work.”

Comey did not say what results he expected from the FBI’s analysis. He also denied allegations that Malaysian authorities had not been open to assistance offered by the FBI in the investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which has been missing for over two weeks. Continue reading “FBI says review of MH370 computer files almost done”

The best evidence that flight MH370 crashed in the southern ocean.

By Jeff Wise
Slate

For the relatives of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the announcement by the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Monday must have registered as a double shock. First there was the fact that their loved ones were dead: “The past few weeks have been heartbreaking; I know this news must be harder still,” Najib said at a press conference after families were notified. More surprisingly, the announcement was made even though no bodies or wreckage had been recovered. Instead, the passengers’ fate had been determined by math alone. A U.K.-based satellite company, Inmarsat, had deployed a new kind of mathematical analysis to determine that the plane’s trajectory had carried it deep into the southern Indian Ocean, a region where there are were no landmasses upon which a plane can set down. Ergo, the passengers were all dead.

In Beijing, family members reacted with outrage, staging an impromptu march on the Malaysian embassy. One can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be told to abandon hope, to grieve in the absence of any material evidence of loss. They must have wondered if they could really believe what they were being told. Unreliable information has been reported throughout the search process, with assertions made about the flight only to be later refuted, modified, or quietly dropped. Amid all the uncertainty, how much credence should be given to this new mathematical formula, which seemed so complicated that hardly anyone could understand and whose underlying data remains veiled in secrecy?

That’s what I wondered when I heard the news, but after reviewing Inmarsat’s publicly released information with an expert, I’ve come to the conclusion that its findings are most likely sound. With caveats. Continue reading “How Can Math Decide That Someone Is Dead?”

The Malay Mail Online/AFP
March 27, 2014

PERTH, March 27 — Thunderstorms and gale-force winds threatened to impede a frantic international search today for wreckage from Flight MH370 after satellite images of more than 100 floating objects sparked fresh hopes of a breakthrough.

Malaysia said the imagery taken in recent days by a French satellite showed “122 potential objects” in the remote southern Indian Ocean, although nothing has yet been pulled from the treacherous seas despite a multinational recovery operation.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has cautioned that it was impossible to determine whether the objects were related to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 which crashed on March 8 with 239 people aboard after mysteriously disappearing.

But the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the search some 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, said they were in an area authorities have pinpointed as a potential crash zone.

“Positions in the satellite information released by Malaysia Remote Sensing Agency were within yesterday’s search area,” it said as a fleet of planes prepared to head for the search zone once again before the weather worsens. Continue reading “Bad weather forecast as new images spur MH370 search”