JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.
OTHER MALAYSIA MISSING PLANE STORIES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/malaysia-airlines-plane-with-239-on.html
THE MISSING PLANE MH370 SITUATION AT 9:34AM SUN MAR 09,2014
HERES OTHER NEWS NINE LEV TAHOR MEMBERS ARE BACK IN CANADA FROM GUATAMALA. AND SOME 14 CHILDREN WERE CEASED FROM 3 FAMALIES AND THE MALAYSIAN FLIGHT IS STILL MISSING AND PRESUMED CRASHED IN THE CHINA SEA.AND REPORTS HAVE IT THAT NOT JUST 2 BUT 4 PEOPLE HAD FRAUDULENT PASSPORTS ON THAT PLANE.AND REPORTS HAVE IT 2 OF THE 4 GOT THEIR TICKETS AT THE SAME TIME.AND WHEN THEY GOT TO CHINA THEY ALSO HAD FLIGHTS TO A EUROPEAN COUNTRY AREA..AND ALSO NOW THEY HAVE EXPANDED THE AREA WERE THEY ARE LOOKING FOR THE PLANE.THEY ARE NOW SAYING THE PLANE MAY HAVE TRYED TO TURN AROUND AND GO BACK TO VIET NAM BEFORE THEY FELL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.THERE IS STILL NO SIGNALS FROM THE BLACK BOX TO INDICATE WERE THEY ARE IN THE SEA.
THE MISSING PLANE MH370 SITUATION AT 1:11PM SUN MAR 09,2014
VIET NAM MIGHT HAVE FOUND A DOOR AND THE TAIL ON THE WATER OF THE MISSING PLANE.NOW THERE SAYING THE PLANE MIGHT HAVE DISINTIGRATED AND THE DEBRIS MIGHT BE AT MANY DIFFERENT SPOTS.THE BLACK BOX SHOULD STILL HAVE STAYED IN ACTIVE USE EVEN IF THE PLANE DISINTIGRATED.THE REPORT SAID THESE BLACK BOXES CAN GO THREW EXPLOSIONS AND SURVIVE- EVEN THOUGH THERE HAS NOT BEEN NO SIGNAL COMING FROM THE BLACK BOXES WERE THE PLANE WENT DOWN.
Jewish-Ukrainian MP slams Israel’s silence on Crimea
Visiting Jerusalem, Oleksandr Feldman says he expects more security, humanitarian aid for 400,000-strong community-By Raphael Ahren March 9, 2014, 5:15 pm 3-Raphael Ahren is the diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel.
Israel is not doing enough in word or deed to help the Jewish residents of Ukraine during the current crisis occurring in their country, a Ukrainian member of parliament and senior member of the local community charged Sunday in Jerusalem.“We did expect a clearer stance on everything that’s going on. There are 400,000 Jewish citizens in Ukraine and we did expect a little bit more of Israel,” said Oleksandr Feldman, a lawmaker in Kiev since 2002. “I’m a bit disappointed by [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Liberman,” he added, referring to a rather toothless statement the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem released Wednesday, reportedly after American pressure.“Israel is following with great concern the events in Ukraine, is anxious for peace for all its citizens, and hopes that the situation will not escalate to a loss of human life. Israel hopes the crisis in Ukraine will be handled through diplomatic means and will be resolved peacefully,” the ministry’s statement read in full.Feldman, a member of the center-right and pro-European Batkivshchyna party, which is led by former prime minister and current presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, said that no meetings with senior government officials have been arranged for him during his present visit to Israel. During his last trip to Israel, about two months ago, he met with Liberman and Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, he said, and “appealed to the Israeli government to take a clear stance on what’s happening in the Ukraine.”At the time, pro-European demonstrators were taking to the streets across Ukraine, protesting the government’s decision to forgo rapprochement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow. Russian troops had not yet invaded the Crimean peninsula at the time of his last visit.Eduard Dolinsky, director-general of the Kiev-based Ukrainian Jewish Committee, who is accompanying Feldman on his Israel trip, also criticized the government for its bland statement regarding the present standoff between Ukraine and Russia.“As the Jewish community of Ukraine, we are very frustrated by the reaction of the Israeli government on the current crisis,” Dolisnky said at a press conference with Feldman, organized by the Jerusalem Press Club. “It is so soft that I didn’t even understand what they are talking about. This is such diplomatic language, it is simply disappearing in words.” He urged the Israeli government to issue a “clear a statement of support for people who are struggling for their freedom, strong support for a country that is struggling for its sovereignty and independence.”
The skullcap-wearing Feldman, who has served as the Ukrainian Jewish Committee’s president since 2008, said the Israeli government “could do much, much more” to assist Ukrainian Jewry and to fight anti- Semitism. For instance, he said, nine Ukrainian citizens who were injured during the violent protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square had been flown to Israel for medical treatment but had not received any additional financial support.“It is not a lot of money. Israel could afford to make a humanitarian act out of that,” said Feldman, speaking in Russian through an interpreter.“People from all parts of Ukraine asked us, shall we stay [in Ukraine] or shall we [leave, for fear of violence], and all these questions could have been prevented if Israel had taken a clear stance on what’s happening in Ukraine,” said Feldman. “Everything we do in Ukraine we always present as a joint venture with Israel.”Dolinsky said that so far, the Jewish Agency has only provided $5,000 to the Jewish communities of the Crimea region “to help with security.” But a few weeks ago, during the Ukrainian Jewish Committee’s last visit to Israel, it had asked the Israeli government to send to Ukraine a team of Israeli security professionals, which would “inspect the situation, with the community infrastructure — first of all synagogues and Jewish schools — and come up with plan what we can do about security,” he said. “This request has not yet been implemented,” he said.Read more: Jewish Ukrainian MP slams Israel's silence on Crimea | The Times of Israel .
Malaysia Airlines plane crash: terror experts home in on fake passports as debris found-Interpol is investigating suspect passports used to board missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 as Vietnamese authorities say they have spotted possible wreckage-By Malcolm Moore, in Beijing and Harriet Alexander-6:45PM GMT 09 Mar 2014-TELEGRAPH
The FBI, Interpol and China’s Ministry of Public Security are all investigating the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, as fears grew that it had been the victim of a terror attack.As night fell on the second day since the Boeing 777’s disappearance, 35,000ft above the Gulf of Thailand, a huge search and rescue operation had found no trace of the plane or its 239 passengers.Deepening the sense of mystery surrounding the fate of the plane, Malaysia’s air force chief said “the military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back” - while others seized upon a 2012 report that showed a portion of its wing, approximately three feet long, had been damaged and subsequently repaired, following a “minor collision”.It what could be the first potential breakthrough so far, a Vietnamese search-and-rescue plane said it had spotted two pieces of debris around 50 miles south-west of Tho Chu Island.The fragments were believed to be a part of the inner door and a piece of the missing airline's tail, Vietnam's ministry of information and communication said on its website.And one Malaysian official, baffled by the lack of evidence 48 hours after the accident, said it “appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet” - something rubbished by aviation experts who said it was impossible to know whether the plane disintegrated until wreckage was found, and that that could take days.But more ominous questions emerged about who was on board after the Malaysian authorities said as many as four passengers may have used fake or stolen passports.Interpol said it was “examining additional suspect passports” and the FBI was assisting Malaysian investigators in probing the identities of the four.What was initially believed to be a piece of debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane (EPA)-Hishamuddin Hussein, the Malaysian Transport minister, said that while the authorities “do not want to jump the gun”, they have “informed the counter-terrorism units of all relevant countries”.Investigators are also reviewing the close-circuit television footage of the passengers at Kuala Lumpur airport.There is a brisk trade in stolen passports in South East Asia and Interpol currently has 39 million stolen or lost passports recorded in its database - equivalent to the population of Poland.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that went missing
“Any flight of that size in Asia would be carrying a couple of people with false passports,” said Clive Williams, a counter-terrorism expert at Macquarie university in Australia.“When you think about the number of passports that have been stolen or gone missing around the world, it could be related, but it is probably not.”However, others said if it was a coincidence, it was a remarkable one.“What are the chances that one person boards a Malaysia Airlines plane on a stolen Caucasian passport?” asked one aviation expert who asked not to be named. “Maybe it is one in a thousand. Two? One in a million,” he added.Initially, Malaysia Airlines had played down the use of two stolen passports, saying that any passengers headed to Beijing would have had to apply for a Chinese visa.However, the Telegraph confirmed with China Southern, the code-share airline which made the bookings for the men travelling under the names “Luigi Maraldi” and “Christian Kozel”, that both were merely transiting in Beijing and did not require a visa.Two separate ticketing agents at the airline confirmed that the men were booked to fly onwards from Beijing at 11.55am on March 8 to Amsterdam on a KLM flight in economy.The real Luigi Maraldi appeared at a police station in the Thai town of Phuket to clarify that he had lost his passport while renting a motorcycle in the area last year. He said the woman in the shop had told him she had given his passport to another Italian man.Luigi Maraldi, who had his passports stolen in Thailand last year, shows his current passport next to Thai police officers-Hugh Dunleavy, an executive vice president at Malaysia Airlines, said it was not the carrier’s responsibility to validate a passport.“We just need to make sure that if we see a passport, it doesn’t look like it has been forged and it has a legitimate visa. If it all looks legitimate and everything else about the customer is legitimate we will load them on the plane,” he said.Another spokesman for the airline added that all the photographs had matched the passports of the passengers. But the Malaysian authorities have promised to tighten security at Kuala Lumpur after criticism that it had grown lax in recent years.Meanwhile, the fate of flight MH370 remains a mystery. The jet was only eleven years old, had been recently serviced and was flying in clear weather. There is no sign so far of any debris and nor has any terrorist organisation yet claimed responsibility.
Its pilot, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was highly experienced and described by friends as an “aviation tech geek¡” who loved his job so much he even spent his days off tinkering with a flight simulator he had set up at home.“We used to tease him. We would ask him, why are you bringing your work home?” said a pilot who knew Capt Zaharie for 20 years. “He knew everything about the Boeing 777. Something significant would have had to happen for Zaharie and the plane to go missing. It would have to be total electrical failure.”Friends who saw him the day before the flight said he had been in a “jovial” mood, according to the New Straits Times, a Malaysian newspaper.An unnamed American government official told the New York Times that the Pentagon had reviewed its surveillance system that looks for flashes around the world, and saw no evidence of an explosion.And another Boeing 777 pilot, who was flying 30 minutes ahead of MH370 en route to Narita airport in Tokyo, told the New Sunday Times in Malaysia that he had made contact with the plane shortly before it vanished.“We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace,” said the captain, who asked not to be named.
“There were a lot of interference, static, but I heard mumbling from the other end. If the plane was in trouble, we would have heard the pilot making the Mayday distress call,” he said.
Malaysia launches terror probe over vanished jet, Interpol examining suspect passports
Agencies-Kuala Lumpur/Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, March 09, 2014-Hindutimes
Malaysia on Sunday launched a terror probe into the disappearance of a passenger jet carrying 239 people, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports, as relatives begged for news of their loved ones.The United States sent the FBI to investigate after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radar early Saturday somewhere at sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, but stressed there was no evidence of terrorism yet.After it emerged that two people boarded the missing flight with stolen European passports, Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he was looking at four suspect passengers in all."At the same time our own intelligence has been activated, and of course, the counter-terrorism units... from all the relevant countries have been informed," Hishammuddin said, refusing also to rule out the possibility that the plane may have been hijacked.A Chinese person whose passport number is among those listed for passengers aboard the flight did not in fact board the plane, state media reported on Sunday.The person, a resident of Fujian province in eastern China, has no departure record and is still in Fujian, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing police. The name listed by Malaysia Airlines for the passenger was different to that of the individual who holds the passport with the number in question, Xinhua said. The owner said the passport had never been lost or stolen, it added.A reporter working for the Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, tweeted that Vietnam forces had spotted a yellow-coloured floating object in the sea 100km from Tho Chu island. Vietnam dispatched a team which was expected to reach the floating object by 7pm Hanoi time (5.30pm IST).International police agency Interpol said at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, and said it was "examining additional suspect passports" on Sunday.Interpol said no checks of its database had been made by any country on an Austrian and an Italian passport between the time that they were stolen and the departure of the flight.The missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before vanishing from radar screens, military officers said on Sunday, deepening the mystery surrounding the fate of the plane and the 239 people aboard.
Search widened
More than 36 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, officials said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who may have been using false identity documents.Despite dozens of military and civilians vessels and aircraft criss-crossing waters to the east and west of Malaysia, no wreckage has been found, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam."What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.There were no reports of bad weather and no sign of why the Boeing 777-200ER disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing early on Saturday.European officials said it appeared two people on board were using stolen passports and Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers."All the four names are with me," said Hishamuddin, who is also defence minister. "I have indicated to our intelligence agencies and I have also spoken to international intelligence agencies for assistance."He said help was also being sought from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.
"We are looking at all possibilities," he said. "We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane."Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of the department of civil aviation, later told reporters only two passengers were being investigated and that authorities were checking CCTV footage of the two as they boarded the aircraft.The search was being extended to the west coast of the Malay peninsula, in addition to a broad expanse of the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, air force chief Rodzali said.Malaysia Airlines said it was "fearing for the worst" and that it had sought assistance from an Atlanta-based disaster recovery management specialist.
Stolen passports
Vietnamese naval boats sent from the holiday island of Phu Quoc patrolled stretches of the Gulf of Thailand, scouring the area where an oil slick was spotted by patrol jets just before nightfall on Saturday."Our two rescue boats have approached the two oil spills since 3 a.m. today but we haven't found any sign of the Malaysian plane yet. Other boats are ready to go to support if needed," Admiral Ngo Van Phat told Reuters.Besides the Vietnamese vessels, Malaysia and neighbouring countries have deployed 22 aircraft and 40 ships in the search. China and the United States have sent ships to help, and Washington has also deployed a plane.US officials from Boeing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration were on the way to Asia to help in investigations, NTSB said in a statement.The airline has said 14 nationalities were among the passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.There were no indications of sabotage nor claims of an attack. But the passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who, according to their foreign ministries, were not on the plane. Both had apparently had their passports stolen in Thailand during the past two years.
US and European security officials said that there was no proof of foul play and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports.A Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigation said the passengers being checked had bought their tickets through China Southern Airlines, which was code-sharing the flight with Malaysia Airlines."We've seen the statements about stolen passports, but we cannot validate that," Hugh Dunleavy, director of commercial operations at Malaysia Airlines, told reporters in Beijing."As far as we're aware, every one of the people onboard that aircraft had a visa to go to China. Which means those passports were in the possession of the Chinese embassy before those visas were issued."
No mayday
The 11-year-old Boeing, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. (1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport when it went missing without a distress call. Aboard were 227 passengers and 12 crew.It last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 ft (10,670 metres) and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records. Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having reached initial cruise altitude."Such a sudden disappearance would suggest either that something is happening so quickly that there is no opportunity to put out a mayday, in which case a deliberate act is one possibility to consider, or that the crew is busy coping with what whatever has taken place," he told Reuters.The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours and wreckage was found only two days later.John Goglia, a former board member of the NTSB, the US agency that investigates plane crashes, said the lack of a distress call suggested that the plane either experienced an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device."It had to be quick because there was no communication," Goglia said. He said the false identities of the two passengers was "a big red flag".
If there were passengers on board with stolen passports, it was not clear how they passed through security checks.
Contact information for Malaysia Airlines:
Malaysia: +603 7884 1234
Beijing: +8610 6437 6249
Press/Media Contact
Malaysia: +603 8777 5777
OTHER MALAYSIA MISSING PLANE STORIES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/malaysia-airlines-plane-with-239-on.html
THE MISSING PLANE MH370 SITUATION AT 9:34AM SUN MAR 09,2014
HERES OTHER NEWS NINE LEV TAHOR MEMBERS ARE BACK IN CANADA FROM GUATAMALA. AND SOME 14 CHILDREN WERE CEASED FROM 3 FAMALIES AND THE MALAYSIAN FLIGHT IS STILL MISSING AND PRESUMED CRASHED IN THE CHINA SEA.AND REPORTS HAVE IT THAT NOT JUST 2 BUT 4 PEOPLE HAD FRAUDULENT PASSPORTS ON THAT PLANE.AND REPORTS HAVE IT 2 OF THE 4 GOT THEIR TICKETS AT THE SAME TIME.AND WHEN THEY GOT TO CHINA THEY ALSO HAD FLIGHTS TO A EUROPEAN COUNTRY AREA..AND ALSO NOW THEY HAVE EXPANDED THE AREA WERE THEY ARE LOOKING FOR THE PLANE.THEY ARE NOW SAYING THE PLANE MAY HAVE TRYED TO TURN AROUND AND GO BACK TO VIET NAM BEFORE THEY FELL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.THERE IS STILL NO SIGNALS FROM THE BLACK BOX TO INDICATE WERE THEY ARE IN THE SEA.
THE MISSING PLANE MH370 SITUATION AT 1:11PM SUN MAR 09,2014
VIET NAM MIGHT HAVE FOUND A DOOR AND THE TAIL ON THE WATER OF THE MISSING PLANE.NOW THERE SAYING THE PLANE MIGHT HAVE DISINTIGRATED AND THE DEBRIS MIGHT BE AT MANY DIFFERENT SPOTS.THE BLACK BOX SHOULD STILL HAVE STAYED IN ACTIVE USE EVEN IF THE PLANE DISINTIGRATED.THE REPORT SAID THESE BLACK BOXES CAN GO THREW EXPLOSIONS AND SURVIVE- EVEN THOUGH THERE HAS NOT BEEN NO SIGNAL COMING FROM THE BLACK BOXES WERE THE PLANE WENT DOWN.
Jewish-Ukrainian MP slams Israel’s silence on Crimea
Visiting Jerusalem, Oleksandr Feldman says he expects more security, humanitarian aid for 400,000-strong community-By Raphael Ahren March 9, 2014, 5:15 pm 3-Raphael Ahren is the diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel.
Israel is not doing enough in word or deed to help the Jewish residents of Ukraine during the current crisis occurring in their country, a Ukrainian member of parliament and senior member of the local community charged Sunday in Jerusalem.“We did expect a clearer stance on everything that’s going on. There are 400,000 Jewish citizens in Ukraine and we did expect a little bit more of Israel,” said Oleksandr Feldman, a lawmaker in Kiev since 2002. “I’m a bit disappointed by [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Liberman,” he added, referring to a rather toothless statement the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem released Wednesday, reportedly after American pressure.“Israel is following with great concern the events in Ukraine, is anxious for peace for all its citizens, and hopes that the situation will not escalate to a loss of human life. Israel hopes the crisis in Ukraine will be handled through diplomatic means and will be resolved peacefully,” the ministry’s statement read in full.Feldman, a member of the center-right and pro-European Batkivshchyna party, which is led by former prime minister and current presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, said that no meetings with senior government officials have been arranged for him during his present visit to Israel. During his last trip to Israel, about two months ago, he met with Liberman and Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, he said, and “appealed to the Israeli government to take a clear stance on what’s happening in the Ukraine.”At the time, pro-European demonstrators were taking to the streets across Ukraine, protesting the government’s decision to forgo rapprochement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow. Russian troops had not yet invaded the Crimean peninsula at the time of his last visit.Eduard Dolinsky, director-general of the Kiev-based Ukrainian Jewish Committee, who is accompanying Feldman on his Israel trip, also criticized the government for its bland statement regarding the present standoff between Ukraine and Russia.“As the Jewish community of Ukraine, we are very frustrated by the reaction of the Israeli government on the current crisis,” Dolisnky said at a press conference with Feldman, organized by the Jerusalem Press Club. “It is so soft that I didn’t even understand what they are talking about. This is such diplomatic language, it is simply disappearing in words.” He urged the Israeli government to issue a “clear a statement of support for people who are struggling for their freedom, strong support for a country that is struggling for its sovereignty and independence.”
The skullcap-wearing Feldman, who has served as the Ukrainian Jewish Committee’s president since 2008, said the Israeli government “could do much, much more” to assist Ukrainian Jewry and to fight anti- Semitism. For instance, he said, nine Ukrainian citizens who were injured during the violent protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square had been flown to Israel for medical treatment but had not received any additional financial support.“It is not a lot of money. Israel could afford to make a humanitarian act out of that,” said Feldman, speaking in Russian through an interpreter.“People from all parts of Ukraine asked us, shall we stay [in Ukraine] or shall we [leave, for fear of violence], and all these questions could have been prevented if Israel had taken a clear stance on what’s happening in Ukraine,” said Feldman. “Everything we do in Ukraine we always present as a joint venture with Israel.”Dolinsky said that so far, the Jewish Agency has only provided $5,000 to the Jewish communities of the Crimea region “to help with security.” But a few weeks ago, during the Ukrainian Jewish Committee’s last visit to Israel, it had asked the Israeli government to send to Ukraine a team of Israeli security professionals, which would “inspect the situation, with the community infrastructure — first of all synagogues and Jewish schools — and come up with plan what we can do about security,” he said. “This request has not yet been implemented,” he said.Read more: Jewish Ukrainian MP slams Israel's silence on Crimea | The Times of Israel .
Malaysia Airlines plane crash: terror experts home in on fake passports as debris found-Interpol is investigating suspect passports used to board missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 as Vietnamese authorities say they have spotted possible wreckage-By Malcolm Moore, in Beijing and Harriet Alexander-6:45PM GMT 09 Mar 2014-TELEGRAPH
The FBI, Interpol and China’s Ministry of Public Security are all investigating the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, as fears grew that it had been the victim of a terror attack.As night fell on the second day since the Boeing 777’s disappearance, 35,000ft above the Gulf of Thailand, a huge search and rescue operation had found no trace of the plane or its 239 passengers.Deepening the sense of mystery surrounding the fate of the plane, Malaysia’s air force chief said “the military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back” - while others seized upon a 2012 report that showed a portion of its wing, approximately three feet long, had been damaged and subsequently repaired, following a “minor collision”.It what could be the first potential breakthrough so far, a Vietnamese search-and-rescue plane said it had spotted two pieces of debris around 50 miles south-west of Tho Chu Island.The fragments were believed to be a part of the inner door and a piece of the missing airline's tail, Vietnam's ministry of information and communication said on its website.And one Malaysian official, baffled by the lack of evidence 48 hours after the accident, said it “appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet” - something rubbished by aviation experts who said it was impossible to know whether the plane disintegrated until wreckage was found, and that that could take days.But more ominous questions emerged about who was on board after the Malaysian authorities said as many as four passengers may have used fake or stolen passports.Interpol said it was “examining additional suspect passports” and the FBI was assisting Malaysian investigators in probing the identities of the four.What was initially believed to be a piece of debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane (EPA)-Hishamuddin Hussein, the Malaysian Transport minister, said that while the authorities “do not want to jump the gun”, they have “informed the counter-terrorism units of all relevant countries”.Investigators are also reviewing the close-circuit television footage of the passengers at Kuala Lumpur airport.There is a brisk trade in stolen passports in South East Asia and Interpol currently has 39 million stolen or lost passports recorded in its database - equivalent to the population of Poland.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that went missing
“Any flight of that size in Asia would be carrying a couple of people with false passports,” said Clive Williams, a counter-terrorism expert at Macquarie university in Australia.“When you think about the number of passports that have been stolen or gone missing around the world, it could be related, but it is probably not.”However, others said if it was a coincidence, it was a remarkable one.“What are the chances that one person boards a Malaysia Airlines plane on a stolen Caucasian passport?” asked one aviation expert who asked not to be named. “Maybe it is one in a thousand. Two? One in a million,” he added.Initially, Malaysia Airlines had played down the use of two stolen passports, saying that any passengers headed to Beijing would have had to apply for a Chinese visa.However, the Telegraph confirmed with China Southern, the code-share airline which made the bookings for the men travelling under the names “Luigi Maraldi” and “Christian Kozel”, that both were merely transiting in Beijing and did not require a visa.Two separate ticketing agents at the airline confirmed that the men were booked to fly onwards from Beijing at 11.55am on March 8 to Amsterdam on a KLM flight in economy.The real Luigi Maraldi appeared at a police station in the Thai town of Phuket to clarify that he had lost his passport while renting a motorcycle in the area last year. He said the woman in the shop had told him she had given his passport to another Italian man.Luigi Maraldi, who had his passports stolen in Thailand last year, shows his current passport next to Thai police officers-Hugh Dunleavy, an executive vice president at Malaysia Airlines, said it was not the carrier’s responsibility to validate a passport.“We just need to make sure that if we see a passport, it doesn’t look like it has been forged and it has a legitimate visa. If it all looks legitimate and everything else about the customer is legitimate we will load them on the plane,” he said.Another spokesman for the airline added that all the photographs had matched the passports of the passengers. But the Malaysian authorities have promised to tighten security at Kuala Lumpur after criticism that it had grown lax in recent years.Meanwhile, the fate of flight MH370 remains a mystery. The jet was only eleven years old, had been recently serviced and was flying in clear weather. There is no sign so far of any debris and nor has any terrorist organisation yet claimed responsibility.
Its pilot, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was highly experienced and described by friends as an “aviation tech geek¡” who loved his job so much he even spent his days off tinkering with a flight simulator he had set up at home.“We used to tease him. We would ask him, why are you bringing your work home?” said a pilot who knew Capt Zaharie for 20 years. “He knew everything about the Boeing 777. Something significant would have had to happen for Zaharie and the plane to go missing. It would have to be total electrical failure.”Friends who saw him the day before the flight said he had been in a “jovial” mood, according to the New Straits Times, a Malaysian newspaper.An unnamed American government official told the New York Times that the Pentagon had reviewed its surveillance system that looks for flashes around the world, and saw no evidence of an explosion.And another Boeing 777 pilot, who was flying 30 minutes ahead of MH370 en route to Narita airport in Tokyo, told the New Sunday Times in Malaysia that he had made contact with the plane shortly before it vanished.“We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace,” said the captain, who asked not to be named.
“There were a lot of interference, static, but I heard mumbling from the other end. If the plane was in trouble, we would have heard the pilot making the Mayday distress call,” he said.
Malaysia launches terror probe over vanished jet, Interpol examining suspect passports
Agencies-Kuala Lumpur/Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, March 09, 2014-Hindutimes
Malaysia on Sunday launched a terror probe into the disappearance of a passenger jet carrying 239 people, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports, as relatives begged for news of their loved ones.The United States sent the FBI to investigate after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radar early Saturday somewhere at sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, but stressed there was no evidence of terrorism yet.After it emerged that two people boarded the missing flight with stolen European passports, Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he was looking at four suspect passengers in all."At the same time our own intelligence has been activated, and of course, the counter-terrorism units... from all the relevant countries have been informed," Hishammuddin said, refusing also to rule out the possibility that the plane may have been hijacked.A Chinese person whose passport number is among those listed for passengers aboard the flight did not in fact board the plane, state media reported on Sunday.The person, a resident of Fujian province in eastern China, has no departure record and is still in Fujian, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing police. The name listed by Malaysia Airlines for the passenger was different to that of the individual who holds the passport with the number in question, Xinhua said. The owner said the passport had never been lost or stolen, it added.A reporter working for the Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, tweeted that Vietnam forces had spotted a yellow-coloured floating object in the sea 100km from Tho Chu island. Vietnam dispatched a team which was expected to reach the floating object by 7pm Hanoi time (5.30pm IST).International police agency Interpol said at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, and said it was "examining additional suspect passports" on Sunday.Interpol said no checks of its database had been made by any country on an Austrian and an Italian passport between the time that they were stolen and the departure of the flight.The missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before vanishing from radar screens, military officers said on Sunday, deepening the mystery surrounding the fate of the plane and the 239 people aboard.
Search widened
More than 36 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, officials said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who may have been using false identity documents.Despite dozens of military and civilians vessels and aircraft criss-crossing waters to the east and west of Malaysia, no wreckage has been found, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam."What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.There were no reports of bad weather and no sign of why the Boeing 777-200ER disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing early on Saturday.European officials said it appeared two people on board were using stolen passports and Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers."All the four names are with me," said Hishamuddin, who is also defence minister. "I have indicated to our intelligence agencies and I have also spoken to international intelligence agencies for assistance."He said help was also being sought from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.
"We are looking at all possibilities," he said. "We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane."Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of the department of civil aviation, later told reporters only two passengers were being investigated and that authorities were checking CCTV footage of the two as they boarded the aircraft.The search was being extended to the west coast of the Malay peninsula, in addition to a broad expanse of the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, air force chief Rodzali said.Malaysia Airlines said it was "fearing for the worst" and that it had sought assistance from an Atlanta-based disaster recovery management specialist.
Stolen passports
Vietnamese naval boats sent from the holiday island of Phu Quoc patrolled stretches of the Gulf of Thailand, scouring the area where an oil slick was spotted by patrol jets just before nightfall on Saturday."Our two rescue boats have approached the two oil spills since 3 a.m. today but we haven't found any sign of the Malaysian plane yet. Other boats are ready to go to support if needed," Admiral Ngo Van Phat told Reuters.Besides the Vietnamese vessels, Malaysia and neighbouring countries have deployed 22 aircraft and 40 ships in the search. China and the United States have sent ships to help, and Washington has also deployed a plane.US officials from Boeing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration were on the way to Asia to help in investigations, NTSB said in a statement.The airline has said 14 nationalities were among the passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.There were no indications of sabotage nor claims of an attack. But the passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who, according to their foreign ministries, were not on the plane. Both had apparently had their passports stolen in Thailand during the past two years.
US and European security officials said that there was no proof of foul play and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports.A Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigation said the passengers being checked had bought their tickets through China Southern Airlines, which was code-sharing the flight with Malaysia Airlines."We've seen the statements about stolen passports, but we cannot validate that," Hugh Dunleavy, director of commercial operations at Malaysia Airlines, told reporters in Beijing."As far as we're aware, every one of the people onboard that aircraft had a visa to go to China. Which means those passports were in the possession of the Chinese embassy before those visas were issued."
No mayday
The 11-year-old Boeing, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. (1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport when it went missing without a distress call. Aboard were 227 passengers and 12 crew.It last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 ft (10,670 metres) and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records. Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having reached initial cruise altitude."Such a sudden disappearance would suggest either that something is happening so quickly that there is no opportunity to put out a mayday, in which case a deliberate act is one possibility to consider, or that the crew is busy coping with what whatever has taken place," he told Reuters.The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours and wreckage was found only two days later.John Goglia, a former board member of the NTSB, the US agency that investigates plane crashes, said the lack of a distress call suggested that the plane either experienced an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device."It had to be quick because there was no communication," Goglia said. He said the false identities of the two passengers was "a big red flag".
If there were passengers on board with stolen passports, it was not clear how they passed through security checks.
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