MH370: Two new 'pings' boost confidence that missing plane could be found

April 9, 2014

MH370Sydney/Perth, Apr 9: Australian officials said on Wednesday that two new "ping" signals had been detected in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, boosting confidence after more than a month of fruitless searching for the missing jetliner.

The signals, which could be from the plane's black box recorders, bring to four the number of overall "pings" detected in recent days within the search area by a US Navy "Towed Pinger Locator"(TPL).

Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the search, struck an optimistic tone when announcing the information, but urged caution as the task of searching the remote Indian Ocean region remained enormous.

"I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370," Houston told reporters in Perth.

"I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future."

The black boxes record cockpit data and may provide answers about what happened to the plane, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished on March 8 and flew thousands of kilometres off its Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing route.

But the batteries in the beacons have already reached the end of their 30-day expected life, making efforts to swiftly locate them all the more critical.

Authorities say evidence suggests the plane was deliberately diverted by someone familiar with the aircraft, but have not ruled out mechanical problems.

Analysis of satellite data led investigators to conclude the Boeing 777 came down in a remote area of the Indian Ocean, some 2,261 kms (1,405 miles) northwest of the Australian city of Perth.

Fresh pings but in a large area

Up to 11 military aircraft, four civilian aircraft and 14 ships were planned to carry on Wednesday with a massive search that has, so far, yielded frustratingly little concrete information.

On the weekend, the sophisticated US Navy TPL picked up what officials said were two signals consistent with black box locator beacons — the first for more than two hours and the second for about 13 minutes.

On Wednesday, Houston said that another ping was detected on Tuesday afternoon and lasted five minutes, 25 seconds, while a second was picked up on Tuesday night and lasted seven minutes. That brings to four the number of pings found in the area.

But two US Navy officers told Reuters on Wednesday that while the pings had been found within a 1,300 square kilometre area, they were not confident that they represented reoccurances of the same signal.

"I'd say they are separate acoustic events," said US Navy Captain Mark Matthews, citing the fact that the pings are not close together.

"There has been variability in the geographic position which leads me to be less optimistic than I would be if I could consistently reacquire the signal so that I have a nice, small geographic area to focus the autonomous under water vehicle search on," he added.

An autonomous underwater vehicle named Bluefin-21 is onboard the Ocean Shield and could be sent to look for wreckage on the sea floor once intelligence narrows the search area.

The potential search area is currently about 4.5 km (2.8 miles) deep, the outer reach of the Bluefin's range.

A race against time

Although the batteries in the black box recorders are thought to have a lifespan of roughly 30 days, officials have said they can last for as long as two weeks beyond that time.

That meant the search was becoming even more of a race against time than it has been up to now, said Houston.

"I mean, we are looking at this stage for transmissions that are probably weaker than they would have been early on because the batteries of both devices are passed their use-by date and they will very shortly fail," he said.

Despite the new signals being detected, Houston insisted that search teams should exhaust the capability of planes and vessels before deploying underwater vehicles.

"Bear in mind, that the time spent on the surface we're covering six times more area and any given time than we'll be able to do when we go underwater," Houston said.

"So with the batteries likely to fade or fail very shortly, we need to get as much positional data as we can so that we can define a very small search area."

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News Network
June 6,2020

Washington, Jun 6: US President Donald Trump has said that countries like India and China would have much more coronavirus cases than America, the worst-hit country in the world, if they conduct more tests.

Trump, in his remarks at Puritan Medical Products in Maine, said that the US has carried out 20 million tests.

Compared to the US, Germany is at four million and much talked about South Korea is about three million tests, he said on Friday.

According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the US has reported nearly 1.9 million cases and over 1,09,000 deaths, making America the worst affected country, while the total number of coronavirus cases in India and China stand at 2,36,184 and 84,177 respectively.

India has so far conducted over 4 million coronavirus tests, according to the health ministry.

Commenting on the COVID-19 tests in the US, Trump said: "We will be well over 20 million tests. Remember this, when you test more, you have more cases.

"I say to my people every time we test; you find cases because we do more testing. If we have more cases, if we wanted to do testing in China or in India or other places, I promise you there would be more cases... you are doing a fantastic job in getting out the swabs".

Puritan is one of the only manufacturers in the world producing the high-quality medical swabs that are crucial for rapid testing.

"And every swab you make at Puritan is proudly stamped with the beautiful phrase made in the USA."

"Thanks to the testing capacity that you are making possible, our country is reopening and our economy is recovering like nobody would've thought possible," he said.

Referring to the latest monthly employment numbers, Trump said that the economy is now back on track.

"We absolutely shattered expectations, and this is the largest monthly jobs increase in American history, think of that; that's a long time.

"I think it's more than double or about double of what our highest was before so this is the largest monthly job increase in American history. And we're going to have a phenomenal next year. We're going to have a tremendous couple of months prior to the election on November 3 very, very important date," the president said.

Seeking re-election for his second consecutive term, Trump is pitted against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in November 3 presidential elections. Most of the opinion polls shows that Biden is several points ahead of Trump.

"It's going to be a very important election because the only thing that can screw it up is if you get the wrong president and they raise your taxes, and they open up your borders so that everybody pours into our country," Trump said.

Reiterating that he has built a strong economy in the last three years, Trump vowed to bring the economy back on track, which has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Describing the fight against coronavirus as the greatest national and industrial mobilisation since the World War II, Trump said that his administration has marshaled the full power of the US government and US industry to defeat the invisible enemy.

"It is indeed an enemy. It came from China, should have been stopped in China. They didn't do that," he alleged.

The administration, he said, has delivered over 1.5 billion pieces of personal protective equipment to doctors and nurses on the front lines. "We slashed the red tape to speed up the development of vaccines. And vaccines are coming along incredibly well, wait till you see, and therapeutics. And we partnered at private sector leaders such as Puritan to build the largest and most advanced testing capacity on the face of the earth, like this one," he said.

The Puritan factory in Maine, he said, quickly ramped up the production to produce nearly 20 million foam tipped swabs each month.

"Then in April, my administration invoked the Defence Production Act to help you scale up even more. Under a USD 75 million public-private partnership, Puritan will soon double production to 40 million swabs per month," Trump added.

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News Network
January 20,2020

Langkawi, Jan 20: Malaysia will not take retaliatory trade action against India over its boycott of palm oil purchases amid a political row between the two countries, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Monday.

India, the world’s largest edible oil buyer, this month effectively halted imports from its largest supplier and the world’s second-biggest producer in response to comments from Mahathir attacking India’s domestic policies.

“We are too small to take retaliatory action,” Mahathir told reporters in Langkawi, a resort island off the western coast of Malaysia. “We have to find ways and means to overcome that,” he added.

The 94-year-old premier of Muslim-majority Malaysia has criticised New Delhi’s new religion-based citizenship law and also accused India of invading the disputed region of Kashmir.

Mahathir again criticised India’s citizenship law on Monday, saying he believed it was “grossly unfair”.

India has been Malaysia’s largest palm oil market for the past five years, presenting the Southeast Asian country with a major challenge in finding new buyers for its palm oil.

Benchmark Malaysian palm futures fell nearly 10% last week, their biggest weekly decline in more than 11 years.

New Delhi is also unhappy with Malaysia’s refusal to revoke permanent resident status for controversial Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who has lived in Malaysia for about three years and faces charges of money laundering and hate speech in India.

Mahathir said even if the Indian government guarantees a fair trial, Naik faces the real threat of vigilante action and that Malaysia will only relocate the preacher if it can find a third country where he would be safe.

“If we can find a place for him, we will send him out.”

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News Network
May 13,2020

Islamabad, May 13 : The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pakistan rose to 34,370 on Wednesday after new infections were confirmed in the country.

As per province-wise breakup of the total tally cited by Radio Pakistan, so far 13,225 cases have been registered in Punjab, 12,610 in Sindh, 5,021 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2,158 in Balochistan, 759 in Islamabad, 475 in Gilgit Baltistan and 88 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

As many as 2,255 cases positive were confirmed, while 31 deaths reported during the last 24 hours.

At least 737 patients have died so far while 8,812 stand recovered, the media reported further.

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