Asia

North Korea fires 10 short-range missiles: Yonhap

(Reuters) – North Korea fired 10 short-range missiles into the sea off the east of the Korean peninsula on Sunday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified government officials in South Korea. Yonhap said the missiles flew for 70 km (45 miles) before splashing into the sea. North Korea is not banned from short-range missile launches under U.N. sanctions and frequently tests its arsenal. The North has toned down its bellicose rhetoric towards the South, although it has […]

Japanese parents of North Korea abductee meet granddaughter

(Reuters) – The parents of a Japanese girl who was abducted by North Korea more than three decades ago met their child’s daughter for the first time last week, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. North Korea admitted in 2002 that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies and said eight of them had died, including Megumi Yokota, who was abducted in 1977 on her way home […]

Investigators look for motive in Malaysia plane disappearance

(Reuters) – Police are combing through the personal, political and religious backgrounds of pilots and crew of a missing Malaysian jetliner, a senior officer said on Sunday, trying to work out why someone aboard flew the plane hundreds of miles off course. No trace of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has been found since it vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, but investigators believe it was diverted by someone who knew how […]

India scours jungle islands for lost Malaysian jetliner

(Reuters) – Indian aircraft on Friday combed Andaman and Nicobar, made up of more than 500 mostly uninhabited islands, for signs of a missing Malaysia Airlines (MASM.KL) jetliner that evidence suggests was last headed towards the heavily forested archipelago. Popular with tourists and anthropologists alike, the islands form India’s most isolated state. They are best known for dense rainforests, coral reefs and hunter-gatherer tribes who have long resisted contact with outsiders. The search for lost […]

Lost airliner was diverted deliberately: Malaysian PM

(Reuters) – A missing Malaysian airliner was likely to have been deliberately steered to a course that could have taken it anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysia’s prime minister said on Saturday. Minutes after Malaysian leader Najib Razak outlined investigators’ latest findings about flight MH370, police began searching the house of the aircraft’s 53-year-old captain for any evidence that he could have been involved in foul play. The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER vanished […]

Exclusive: Radar data suggests missing Malaysia plane deliberately flown way off course – sources

(Reuters) – Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlinesjetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday. Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe, […]

MH370 search widened to the Indian Ocean

Malaysian officials have officially expanded the search for missing flight MH370 to the Indian Ocean. However, officials declined to comment on US reports that the plane had flown on for hours after losing contact. “The aircraft is still missing, and the search area is expanding,” said Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein on Friday during a press conference in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur. “Together with our international partners, we are pushing further east into the South China […]

Search planes checking China satellite report on missing airliner

(Reuters) – Search planes were flying on Thursday to an area where a Chinese satellite has seen objects that could be debris from the Malaysian airliner missing for almost six days, but those waters had been checked before and nothing found, officials said. At the same time, China heaped pressure on Malaysia to improve its coordination over the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared early on Saturday on a flight from Kuala Lumpur […]

Malaysia military may have traced missing jet

(Reuters) – Malaysia’s military has traced what could have been the jetliner missing for almost five days to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket, hundreds of miles to the west of its last known position, the country’s air force chief said on Wednesday. His statement followed a series of conflicting accounts of the flight path of the Boeing 777-200ER with 239 people on board, which left authorities uncertain even which ocean […]

Malaysia military source says missing jet veered to west

(Reuters) – Malaysia’s military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometers to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country’s east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday. In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the […]