The lack of debris puzzled experts... “This unprecedented missing aircraft mystery -- as you can put it -- it is mystifying,” Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director-general of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation said... Hopes briefly centered on a rectangular orange object that authorities said might have been a lifejacket. But when a Vietnamese helicopter recovered the piece of flotsam, it was identified as “a moss-covered cap of a cable reel,” the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website..... Two oil slicks, between six and nine miles long, consistent with fuel left by a downed jetliner, were located on Saturday in the region where the plane vanished. Samples were being sent for testing to see if the slicks contained jet fuel..... Malaysian authorities said Sunday that the plane may have turned around before disappearing from radar without a distress call. If true, aviation experts said this could offer a clue as to why no debris had yet been found. “If the airplane deviated from its planned flight path (as a turn might indicate), they are looking in the wrong place. Also, the fact that no debris whatsoever has emerged from where they are looking, this certainly suggests to me they are looking in the wrong place, whatever the reason.” .....In Taiwan, the head of national intelligence said a telephone call had been received on March 4 suggesting that an extremist Muslim group from China’s ethnic Uighur minority would mount a terrorist attack on Beijing International Airport – but added he did not believe the call was linked to the vanished airliner... Similarly, a Chinese Internet activist and journalist based in New York said he had received an email claiming the plane had been attacked to protest Chinese “oppression and persecution” of its Uighur minority. The email said the attack was also a personal act of revenge against the Malaysian government, which has “cruelly persecuted me before.” In February, Human Rights Watch criticized Malaysia for repatriating to China six Uighur refugees seeking asylum there, saying it had put the men’s lives in danger. Malaysia also sent back 11 Uighurs in 2011... washingtonpost/world/debris-may-be-from-mssing-malaysia-airlines-flight/2014/03/10/2669f16a-a822-11e3-b61e-8051b8b52d06_story.html
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:09:10 +0000
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