Poll: Oz should stop footing hefty search bill
Latest developments:
- Oz polls finds many believe search is in wrong place
Follow us as we bring the latest updates and coverage for the search of Flight MH370:
60pct holding to hope plane will be found
4.40pm: Searchers are looking in the wrong place and Australians don't want to pay for it, reveals a News Corp Australia survey on the ongoing MH370's search.
In fact, according to International Business Times reports that 77 percent of those polled don't believe the search area off Western Australian in the south Indian Ocean is the right one.
This is in view of reports MH370 is claimed to be in Bay of Bengal, South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand, Maldives and Diego Garcia naval base.
Meanwhile, majority of the respondents, or 71 percent, thought Australia should stop footing the hefty bill.
To date, it says Australia, through its naval support, have spent on the upside of A$43 million (RM129.9 million).
However, of the 3,411 people surveyed, up to 60 percent are hopeful that MH370 can be found.
Boeing unsafe to fly, says Dr M
2pm: Dr Mahathir Mohamad hits out at plane-maker Boeing, accusing it of being “deathly quiet” over communication failure on Flight MH370 the day the plane mysteriously disappeared.
The former premier says in his blog that unless more information comes to the light, Boeing aircraft must be seen considered “dangerous to fly”.
He writes: “Boeing has a lot to answer. Until the plane is found and the causes of the failure of communication equipment and the disappearance are fully explained, one must conclude that Boeing aircraft are dangerous to fly in.”
Read more here .
Ocean Shielf heads out to sea again
11.30am: After a short maintenance turnaround at Perth's Fleet Base West, Australia-led Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) says today that its team is ready to head out to sea again to find MH370, together with a band of civillian experts.
"The Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield will return to the MH370 seabed search area equipped with the Phoenix International's Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), following the ship’s resupply," JACC states in a media statement.
The Bluefin failed to find anything last month and took a break from May 4 to resupply as talks continued in Canberra on the new search phase.
In the interim period, Australia had previously decided that it was best to press on with its search in the south Indian Ocean despite finding nothing last month after scouring 400 square kilometres of ocean floor with the blind US-made robot Bluefin-21.
The media is invited to send the mission team off at 8am on Saturday.
Inmarsat data doesn't tally, say experts
11.02am: Mathematics experts outside of Inmarsat say the British satellite service provider may have calculated the final flight path of MH370 wrongly, and if they are right, then this renders the current search in the south Indian Ocean futile.
In a long and technical explanation on website of
The Atlantic
, computer scientist and GPS expert Ari N Schulman says that he and several other analysts who have been trying to verify Inmarsat’s calculations can show many inconsistencies in Inmarsat's analysis.
He claims that Inmarsat has refused to fully share its data and methodology, therefore casting doubt on its own theory that MH370 definitely headed south and ended in the ocean.
"Either Inmarsat’s analysis doesn’t totally make sense, or it’s flat-out wrong.... Until officials provide more information, the claim that Flight 370 went south rests not on the weight of mathematics but on faith in authority," Ari writes.
Read the complete explanation here .
US president jokes on CNN's MH370 coverage
10.45am: CNN 's over-the-top MH370 coverage becomes the brunt of a joke by none other than US president Barack Obama in his annual White House Correspondent's dinner.
"I am happy to be here even though I am a little bit jet lagged from my trip to Malaysia — the lengths one has to go through to get CNN coverage these days...I think they are still searching for their table," he says, cracking a joke to a room full of reporters.
This is not the first time the major American news network has been chided for its coverage of the crisis, with ex- CNN anchor and veteran interviewer Larry King also questioning its obsession with the missing plane, even to the point of ignoring other major world events.
Previously, talk show host Jon Stewart of the Daily Show got his hooks into CNN , dedicating a segment ridiculing the coverage.
Yesterday, CNN put out a survey that revealed nine percent of Americans think space aliens and beings from another dimension were responsible for the plane's disappearance.
Chinese tourist skipping Malaysia stop
10.30am: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) states that Chinese tourists are skipping Malaysia ever since MH370 disappeared, quoting China Real Time survey of Beijingers too.
This confirms the revelation by Tourism and Culture Minister Nazri Abdul Aziz ( right ), who allegedly said in Dubai that visitor arrivals have dropped 30 percent over the last two months.
A clothing store owner, who went by the name Ann, says, “I thought it was a good place to travel. Now I think it’s a closed, timid country with no international view.”
The WSJ states that several travel agencies that normally market a Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand trip to Chinese citizens has changed that itinerary to Singapore-Vietnam-Thailand over this year’s recent May Day holiday, adding that Chinese tourists could easily go elsewhere for what Malaysia can offer - beaches, sightseeing, gambling.
Background:
- The Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200ER aircraft went missing not long after taking off from KL International Airport in the early hours of March 8, with 12 crew members and 227 passengers.
