Pallet, belts sighting boosts search for Malaysia Airlines MH370

March 23, 2014

Pallet_belts

Perth/Australia, Mar 23: The first visual sighting of objects that might be linked to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 boosted search operations on Sunday for the missing airliner that mysteriously disappeared more than two weeks ago.

Malaysia_Airlines_MH370Australian officials said a wooden cargo pallet, along with belts or straps, was spotted on Saturday in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean that has become the focus of an intense international search in recent days.

"It's still too early to be definite," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters during a visit to Papua New Guinea.

"But obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope — no more than hope, no more than hope — that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft."

The possible breakthrough came on the same day fresh Chinese satellite images emerged showing a large floating object in the same inhospitable region around 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) confirmed it was the "first visual sighting" since Australian, New Zealand and US spotter planes began scouring the area on Thursday.

"Part of the description was a wooden pallet and a number of other items which were nondescript around it and some belts of some different colours," AMSA aircraft operations coordinator Mike Barton said.

Wooden pallets are quite common in aircraft and ship cargo holds.

The objects were spotted by observers on one of the civilian aircraft taking part in the search.

An air force P3 Orion aircraft with specialist electro-optic observation equipment was diverted to the same location, but only reported sighting clumps of seaweed.

"That's the nature of it," Barton said. "You only have to be off by a few hundred metres in a fast-travelling aircraft."

Sunday's search, involving four military and four civilian aircraft, would return to the area to try and zero in on the objects again, he added.

More ships, planes

China has dispatched seven ships to the hunt for the plane, adding to British and Australian naval assets involved.

"Obviously the more aircraft we have, the more ships we have, the more confident we are of recovering whatever material is down there," Abbott said.

If the plane did crash in the ocean, investigators are hoping to identify the impact site before the plane's black box stops emitting tracking signals — usually after 30 days.

The flight recorder will be crucial in solving the mystery of what caused the Boeing 777 with 239 passengers and crew aboard to suddenly veer off course over the South China Sea en route to Beijing.

Satellite and military radar data suggest the plane backtracked over the Malaysian peninsula and then flew on — possibly for hours — either north into South and Central Asia, or south over the Indian Ocean.

The question of what happened on board has become a topic of unbridled speculation, with Malaysian investigators standing by their assessment that the plane was deliberately diverted by someone on it.

Three scenarios have gained particular traction: hijacking, pilot sabotage, and a sudden mid-air crisis that incapacitated the flight crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

A 'humanitarian' exercise

The long, largely fruitless search for the aircraft has been especially agonising for the relatives of the 227 passengers — two thirds of whom were Chinese — and 12 crew.

Their grief and frustration boiled over Saturday at a hotel in Beijing when police had to restrain angry family members confronting Malaysian officials they accused of withholding information.

Although the plane's disappearance is already the subject of a criminal investigation, Abbott stressed that the search was essentially a "humanitarian" exercise.

"We owe it to the almost 240 people on board the plane, we owe it to their grieving families, we owe it to the governments of the countries concerned, to do everything we can to discover as much as we can about the fate of MH370," he said.

The latest Chinese satellite images showed an object measuring 22.5 metres by 13 metres (74 by 43 feet).

Abbott said it was "consistent" with one of the objects identified in satellite images released by Australia on Thursday, but it was not clear if they were believed to be the same.

"Hope we find something today," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a text message to AFP.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
March 25,2020

Wellington, Mar 25: New Zealand has declared a state of emergency as it prepares to go into an unprecedented lockdown late Wednesday for about a month.

The declaration temporarily gives police and the military extra powers. And Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says any New Zealanders returning home from overseas who show symptoms of COVID-19 will be put in isolation at an approved facility.

“I have one simple message for New Zealanders today as we head into the next four weeks: ‘stay at home,’” Ardern said. “It will break the chain of transmission and it will save lives.”

Ardern said exceptions include people working crucial jobs, those leaving to pick up essentials like groceries, and those engaging in solitary exercise.

The country has 205 reported cases of the virus, although Ardern said that number could rise into the thousands before it begins to recede even with the strict measures being taken.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
April 10,2020

Paris, Apr 10: French pharma major Sanofi said on Friday it has decided to donate 100 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug which could be a potential weapon against novel coronavirus, across 50 countries.

The company has already doubled its incremental production capacity on top of the usual production for current indications across its eight hydroxychloroquine manufacturing sites worldwide and is on track to quadruple it by the summer.

"In this global health emergency, Sanofi stands ready to assist as many countries as possible, starting with countries where its medicine is registered for current approved indications as well as countries where there are no hydroxychloroquine suppliers or countries with underserved populations," it said in a statement.

Sanofi called for coordination among the entire hydroxychloroquine chain worldwide to ensure the continued supply of the medicine if proven to be a well-tolerated and effective treatment in COVID-19 patients.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health and economic crisis which is shaking some of the very fundamentals of international solidarity and cooperation among countries," said Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson. "This virus does not care about the concept of borders, so we should not either," he added.

"It is critical that international authorities, local governments, manufacturers and all other players involved in the hydroxychloroquine chain work together in a coordinated manner to ensure all patients who may benefit from this potential treatment can access it. If the trials prove positive, we hope our donation will play a critical role for patients," said Hudson.

While hydroxychloroquine is generating a lot of hope for patients around the world, said Sanofi, it should be remembered that there are no results from ongoing studies and the results may be positive or negative.

To date, there is insufficient clinical evidence to draw any conclusion over the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in the management of COVID-19 patients.

It is one of several medicines being investigated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its international clinical trial seeking a treatment solution for COVID-19. "Sanofi is supporting ongoing trials by providing the medicine to some participating investigator sites and other independent research centres," it said.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
July 29,2020

If everything goes as Russia’s expectation, it will be world’s first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine for widespread in the second week of August despite safety and efficacy concerns, according to a report. The adenoviral vector-based vaccine developed by Russian military and government researchers is currently in phase 2 trials.

According to a report from CNN, Russian officials are hoping to get approval for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute on Agust 10 or even before that. The officials told the outlet that the vaccine will be approved for public use with frontline healthcare workers receiving it first.

“It’s a Sputnik moment,” said Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is financing Russian vaccine research, referring to the successful 1957 launch of the world’s first satellite by the Soviet Union, according to CNN.

“Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping. It’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have got there first,” he was quoted as saying.

However, Russia is yet to release the scientific data on its coronavirus vaccine trials, hence, questions remain about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, said the report. The vaccine is in the second phase of testing with developers planning to launch the phase 3 trials sometime after August 3.

Earlier, Interfax reported, citing Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, that the vaccine will be widely used in parallel with phase 3 trials. He said the country plans to vaccinate medics who are at high-risk for COVID-19 next month before clinical trials are completed.

Murashko added that individuals at higher risk of getting infected with the coronavirus such as older people or those with health conditions will also be prioritised for the vaccine, although he did not estimate or reveal when that would happen. The minister added 800 people will be recruited for the phase 3 trials.

Meanwhile, health officials were more cautious considering the fact that human testing of the vaccine is incomplete, and the state registration is expected to begin after August 3, reported The Moscow Times.

On Monday, Moderna and Pfizer announced the commencement of the final phase 3 trials of their candidate vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has so far claimed at least 654,477 lives and infected 16,514,500 people worldwide. 

Researchers will recruit up to 30,000 volunteers in separate trials both backed by the US government. India's first indigenous coronavirus vaccine, COVAXIN, is undergoing phase 1 human clinical trials across the country. More than 150 COVID-19 vaccines are being developed all over the world with at least six candidates already in late-stage clinical trials.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.