MH370 – praag.org

Classified information on missing MH370 stolen

Classified information from the computers of officials involved in the investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 has been stolen, The Star Online reported Wednesday.

The computers of the high-ranking officials are said to have been hacked and the stolen information was allegedly being sent to a computer in China before the Malaysian Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry blocked the transmissions, the website reported.

The national cyber security specialist agency CyberSecurity Malaysia said that the malware that led to the information leak was sent to the officials via email on March 9, one day after the aircraft disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, according to The Star Online.

According to the security agency’s estimates, about 30 computers were infected by the malware. The agency is said to be working with Interpol on the incident at the moment. CyberSecurity Malaysia suspects that the motivation for the attack was the accusations of the Malaysian government made by some people of concealing crucial information about the investigation.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight MH370 traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, of which there were 227 passengers and 12 crew members. On March 24, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that, according to the satellite data, MH370 crashed in the southern part of the Indian Ocean.

Media blackout on Michelle’s China diplomacy

First Lady Michelle Obama will be accompanied by her children and her mother on her trip to China, which begins on Wednesday. But she won’t be accompanied by the press and she will take no questions from the media.

“Michelle Obama’s trip to China starting on Wednesday will be nonpolitical, the White House says, a ‘people-to-people exchange’ emphasizing the importance that both nations place on education. As if to underscore the point, no reporters are traveling with the first lady, and she does not plan to give interviews while there,” reports the New York Times.

The White House is defending the first lady bringing her family along for the ride by saying it’s what the Chinese would want. “Tina Tchen, Mrs. Obama’s chief of staff and a first-generation Chinese-American, said a multigenerational visit would be appreciated by the Chinese, who value tradition,” says the Times.

‘The most powerful message we can deliver [to the Chinese people] is one of the examples of not just the first lady’s life story but of America and our values,’ Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters during the Monday call.

‘That alone I think speaks to things like respect for human rights that are interwoven into the DNA of the United States of America.’

American and Chinese leaders have not had especially close personal relationships and there is hope among foreign relations experts that Obama and Peng will form a bond.

Obama’s trip comes as fears about China’s economy mount, the country flexes its muscles in disputed areas of the South China Sea and a missing Malaysian plane carrying Chinese nationals.

“In the US, women enjoy equal rights as men in politics,” said Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai. “But in Chinese traditional culture, we have a saying: ‘a woman without talent is virtuous’.” While female Chinese business leaders are common, he said, women barely appear at the highest levels of the country’s political elite – only two rank among its 25 top officials.

US officials say they want to spread the “power of American values,” and the importance of education. On her second day in Beijing, Obama will give a speech about cultural exchange at the Stanford Center at Peking University, where she’ll meet with Chinese and American students.

About 200,000 Chinese students are studying in the US, more than from any other country. Only 20,000 American students study in China each year. The Obama administration wants to boost that number.

She won’t meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping, but will visit with his wife Peng Liyuan, visit schools and tourist highlights and eat lunch at a Tibetan restaurant.

Source: The Weekly Standard/Washington Post/The Guardian

Malaysian jet not the first to vanish

For those suggesting that the disappearance of Flight 370 is unparalleled in aviation history, Vocativ would like to remind them that another large Boeing jet took off from an airstrip in Angola in 2003 and hasn’t been seen since.

Big difference: That jet had no passengers aboard, but the circumstances surrounding its disappearance are pretty strange nonetheless. Two mechanics—American Ben Charles Padilla and Congolese assistant John Mikel Mutantu—boarded the Boeing 727 on a Luanda airstrip to get it in shape for its next flight.

Neither had a pilot’s license, which is why flight controllers were stunned when the plane taxied to the runway and then took off.

Leased to deliver diesel fuel to diamond mines, the 727 carried 10 500-gallon fuel tanks and a few passenger seats in its cabin.

Was it Padilla? Mutantu? Both? Hijackers who had slipped aboard? Investigators still don’t know, and no sign of the plane has turned up despite an intense international hunt.

Some of the theories being tossed around in regard to Flight 370—it crashed into the ocean, it landed secretly, it got shot down by some nation’s military—were similarly floated back then.

But “we never knew for sure where it went,” concluded an earlier investigation by Air & Space magazine. It was at the time the largest aircraft to go missing, but the Malaysian jet will take that distinction if it doesn’t turn up.

After her brother disappeared from Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport in Angola, Benita Padilla-Kirkland tried to persuade the FBI to re-open his case. In 2005, the FBI had closed its case.

She believes she has the “new information” agents told her they require. But she suspects that the agency already has more information than agents will admit to

According to press reports, the aircraft began taxiing with no communication between the crew and the tower; maneuvering erratically, it entered a runway without clearance. With its lights off and its transponder not transmitting, 844AA took off to the southwest, and headed out over the Atlantic Ocean. The 727 and the two men have not been seen since.

Retired U.S. Marine General Mastin Robeson, commander of U.S. forces in the Horn of Africa when 844AA went missing, says word of the 727 “came up through the intelligence network.” According to Robeson, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) considered moving U.S. fighter aircraft to Djibouti on the Red Sea coast, where the Combined Joint Task Force shares a base with the French military.

Robeson continues: “It was never [clear] whether it was stolen for insurance purposes…by the owners, or whether it was stolen with the intent to make it available to unsavory characters.”

Source: Newser