Malaysian Airlines Plane Missing Over Vietnam

[Coss]

I note that the Malaysians, Airline and Govt, are being very careful not to admit anything, from sightings to even the initial loss. Paranoia?

[bust]

Due diligence perhaps....

[bust]

Nice timing..........

 

Amid missing plane crisis, Islamic groups want Muslim rules on MAS flights

 

KUALA LUMPUR, March 10 — A lawyers group today urged Malaysia Airlines (MAS) to introduce Muslim prayers before flights and for flight hostesses to be dressed according to Islamic standards.

 

With the flag carrier still grappling with the crisis of its missing flight MH370, the Malaysian Muslim Lawyers Association also sought for the airlines to refrain from serving alcohol aboard its flights.

“Everything that happens on Earth and in the sky is Allah’s decision. We pray that Allah gives us signs and pointers so that the passengers can be found,†PPMM said in statement here.

The group pointed out that musafir (travel) prayers were read out by many other airlines in Islamic countries.

It also expressed sympathy for the families of the passengers aboard the missing plane.

Flight MH370 has now been missing for more than two days since it lost contact after departing Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing, China on March 8.

 

 

http://www.themalaym...-on-mas-flights

[Flashermac]

Maybe Allah can give you a sign pointing to the Islamists who may have blown it up.

[Flashermac]

Unheard-of Chinese group claims responsibility - reports

 

 

A group that calls itself the Chinese Martyrs' Brigade has claimed responsibility for crashing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which has remained missing after losing contact with ground control at 1:20am on Saturday.

 

The previously unheard-of group sent a PDF statement to various journalists in China on March 9, saying, "You kill one of our clan, we will kill 100 of you as pay back."

 

The majority of Chinese media outlets have expressed skepticism over the statement or dismissed it outright, suggesting it is likely a hoax made up by opportunists looking to inflame ethnic tensions following a series of attacks by separatists in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region and a mass stabbing in the Yunnan capital of Kunming this month that left at least 33 people dead.

 

Analysts say the credibility of the statement is dubious as the group claiming responsibility for flight MH370 did not divulge any details as to how it crashed the plane. The PDF statement was also sent via the encrypted Hushmail anonymous remailer service which cannot be replied to or easily traced.

 

Chinese authorities have not responded to the statement or its claims.

 

The Boeing 777-200 commercial jet, carrying 239 people including 153 Chinese citizens and a Taiwanese national, was scheduled to travel from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysia Airlines said it was not ruling out any possibilities, including terrorism, after it was discovered that two of the passengers aboard the flight were carrying stolen passports.

 

Malaysia’s home minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has confirmed following review of closed-circuit television footage that the two passengers are of Asian appearance, which raises questions over the adequacy of customs security given that the passports were stolen from an Italian and an Austrian national.

 

A spokesperson for Malaysia Air, however, said that all the photographs had matched the passports of the passengers.

 

Records show that the two passengers had booked their flights together with China Southern, which was codesharing MH370 with Malyasia Air. It was the first time the passports had been used since they were stolen in Thailand in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

 

Two other suspect identities are also being checked as Malaysian authorities continue to work with international agencies including the FBI. One of them is a Chinese passenger surnamed Zhao whose passport number is identical to that of a 37-year-old Fuzhou man surnamed Yu.

 

Yu told authorities that the passport has never been used and remains in his safe at home after he applied for it in 2007. Fuzhou police said they suspect the passport number on the manifest may have been printed in error.

 

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Unheard-of-Chinese-group-claims-responsibility--re-30228844.html

[Flashermac]

Malaysia identifies one of MH370's stolen passport users: police

 

 

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia has identified one of two men who boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines flight with stolen passports, the country's police chief said Monday.

 

Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said the man is a non-Malaysian. Authorities were able to identify him using airport video surveillance.

 

"That’s all we can reveal," he told AFP. "We are still ascertaining whether they (the two suspects using stolen passports) came in legally or illegally."

 

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Malaysia-identifies-one-of-MH370s-stolen-passport--30228854.html

[Flashermac]

Debris not from plane, Vietnam says

 

Hanoi - A floating object previously reported as resembling an overturned liferaft was not part of the Malaysia Airlines plane missing over the South China Sea, Vietnamese authorities said Monday.

 

A Vietnamese navy vessel reached the object around 4 pm (0700 GMT),and found it was algae-covered debris that had been in the water along time and not related to the aircraft, Lieutenant General Vo VanTuan, deputy chief of the general staff of the Veitnam People’s Army,told dpa.

 

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Debris-not-from-plane-Vietnam-says-30228877.html

[cavanami]

It is all over the TV News here in the USA.

 

Lots of speculation, yet not definite facts....yet...

 

The stolen passports have surfaced, which is weird.

[Flashermac]

Thailand grapples with 'massive' fake passport racket

 

 

BANGKOK (Reuters) - With huge numbers of visitors and patchy law enforcement, Thailand has a booming black market for fake identity documents, and it was here that two passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines jet were apparently able to get hold of stolen passports.

 

Thai authorities struggle to track thousands of lost or stolen passports each year. Some are known to be sold on through syndicates to drug traffickers. Others are suspected to have ended up in the hands of Islamist militants.

 

"Fake passports and identity fraud in general is a massive problem in Thailand," police commander and Thailand's Interpol director Apichart Suriboonya told Reuters.

 

Sometimes documents are sold by their owners to cover travel costs, Apichart said.

 

They are passed on to middlemen, Thai or foreign, who work with criminal networks, he said. The passports may be altered, for example with a new photograph, but sometimes the fraudulent user hopes to pass as the real owner.

 

The passenger manifest issued by Malaysia Airlines included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who were not on the plane. Both had passports stolen on the Thai holiday island of Phuket.

 

The passports were used to buy tickets from travel agents in the resort town of Pattaya, to Beijing and on to Europe. Thai and foreign investigators were questioning staff at one travel agent on Monday.

 

There is no evidence the plane's disappearance is linked to the two passengers travelling under the stolen passports.

 

Police showed Reuters a copy of Maraldi's passport used to make the travel booking with what was apparently the original photograph of Maraldi in it. It was not immediately clear if the tickets were bought online or collected.

 

Thailand's fake document business has been flourishing for years.

 

In 2010, Thai and Spanish authorities arrested suspected members of an international ring providing forged passports to militants. Thai authorities say the ring may have passed fake documents to those behind the Madrid train bombings in 2004.

 

Pockets of Bangkok are notorious counterfeit goods emporiums with fake drivers' licenses, press cards and airline cabin crew identity cards on display. The Thai capital also boasts experts in forging visas.

 

"Thailand is fertile territory for people looking to steal European passports, there are lots of foreigners and many foreigners visit," a European diplomat said.

 

"UNSAVOURY CHARACTERS"

 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said more than 60,000 passports - both Thai and foreign - were reported missing or stolen in Thailand between January 2012 and June 2013.

 

Police in Phuket said Maraldi reported his passport stolen in June last year, while Kozel's passport was reported stolen in March 2012. Police said they get reports of up to 10 lost passports a month in the province.

 

Phuket police officer Angkarn Yasanop said foreigners can earn $200 to sell their passport and then report it stolen. Many lost or stolen passports end up with Thais and other Southeast Asians trying to migrate for work, he said.

 

Larry Cunningham, who recently retired as Australia's honorary consul in Phuket, said a huge problem was tourists leaving passports as a deposit when renting jet-skis or motorbikes.

 

Crooked operators then make a false allegation of damage. The tourist, unwilling to pay, reports the passport stolen at an embassy on consulate and gets a new one. The old passport is sold on into the underworld.

 

"Phuket has some very, very unsavory characters and they're not all Thais," Cunningham said. "Nothing would surprise me about Phuket."

 

Interpol's stolen and lost travel documents (SLTD) database contains 40 million records from 167 countries but its secretary general, Ronald Noble, says not enough countries are using it.

 

"The bad news is that, despite being incredibly cost effective and deployable to virtually anywhere in the world, only a handful of countries are systematically using SLTD to screen travelers," Noble told a conference last month.

 

Apichart said Thai databases were not properly linked to Interpol data.

 

"The technology we use in Thailand to check fraudulent identity cards is outdated at many points of entry," he said.

 

 

http://mobile.reuter...140310?irpc=932

[Flashermac]

Missing MH370: Iranian "Mr Ali" bought impostors' tickets in Pattaya

 

 

KUALA LUMPUR: Travel arrangements for the two passengers with fake identities on the missing flight MH370 bound for Beijing were made in the Thai resort town of Pattaya and paid for in cash, according to a report.

 

The British newspaper Financial Times quoted the Thai travel agent who booked the tickets for the men as saying that she had been asked to arrange the travel by an Iranian contact.

 

Benjaporn Krutnait, owner of the Grand Horizon travel agency in Pattaya, was quoted as saying the Iranian, a long-term business contact who she knew only as "Mr Ali", first asked her to book cheap tickets to Europe for the two men on March 1.

 

Benjaporn initially reserved one of the men on a Qatar Airways flight and the other on Etihad. But the tickets expired when Benjaporn did not hear back from Ali.

 

When he contacted her again on Thursday, she rebooked the men on the Malaysia Airlines flight through Beijing because it was the cheapest available, the paper said.

 

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Missing-MH370-Iranian-Mr-Ali-bought-impostors-tick-30228913.html