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A plane comes into land at an RAAF Base Pearce in Perth. AP Photo/Rob Griffith/Pool

Thailand spots 300 floating objects in Indian Ocean as weather halts search

The pictures were taken by Thailand’s only earth observation satellite on Monday.

THAI SATELLITE IMAGES have shown 300 floating objects in the southern Indian Ocean during a search for the missing Malaysian airliner, an official said Thursday.

The objects, ranging from two to 15 metres in size, were scattered over an area about 2,700 km southwest of Perth, according to the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency.

“But we cannot,  dare not, confirm they are debris from the plane,” the agency’s executive director, Anond Snidvongs, told AFP.

He said the information had been given to Malaysia.

The pictures were taken by Thailand’s only earth observation satellite on Monday but needed several days to process, Anond added.

He said the objects were spotted about 200 km away from an area where French satellite images earlier showed potential objects in the search for the Boeing 777 which vanished on 8 March with 239 people aboard.

Thailand faced criticism after announcing more than a week after the jet’s disappearance that its radar had picked up an “unknown aircraft” minutes after flight MH370 last transmitted its location.

The Thai air force said it did not report the findings earlier as the plane was not considered a threat.

Search called off

The announcement comes as thunderstorms and gale-force winds grounded the international air search for wreckage from Flight MH370.

It frustrated the luckless effort yet again just as new satellite images of floating objects sparked hopes of a breakthrough.

It marked the second suspension within three days for the planes from several nations that, along with ships, have fought a losing battle against fierce winds and mountainous seas in the remote southern Indian Ocean as they hunt for hard evidence that the plane crashed.

“Today’s search operations have been suspended due to bad weather,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the search, said on its Twitter account.

The agency initially said ships were leaving the search area along with the planes, but later announced the ships would stay and try to continue the search.

“Bad weather expected for next 24 hours,” it tweeted.

Malaysia had said late Wednesday that images taken in recent days by a French satellite showed “122 potential objects” adrift in the vast area, but nothing has been recovered yet that would confirm the plane’s fate.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 is presumed to have crashed on 8 March in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard after mysteriously diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing path and apparently flying for hours in the opposite direction.

© – AFP 2014

Read:  Journalists filled in gaps on MH370 plane with ‘baseless speculation’ – Mark Little >

Read: “Tell us the truth!” Police intervene as families of missing passengers confront officials >

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    Sep 28th 2017, 10:54 AM

    Aren’t we lucky our country doesn’t have issues like this or others.

    179
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    Mute Shawn O'Ceallaghan
    Favourite Shawn O'Ceallaghan
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    Sep 28th 2017, 12:27 PM

    Helps not building on an island with a Volcano.

    To be fair though, we did settle beside arguably the biggest and strongest colonial power in the world. So we all make mistakes.

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    Mute Brown Boots
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    Sep 28th 2017, 12:41 PM

    I dunno, I guess you’ve not seen Mrs Boots erupting at the slightest thing!

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    Mute Harry Whitehead
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    Sep 28th 2017, 5:34 PM

    @Shawn O’Ceallaghan: People settle near volcanoes for the same reason they settle near rivers and shorelines – it’s a tradeoff between convenience and the occasional disaster. In the case of volcanoes, the convenience is agricultural – volcanic soil is known for being rich and fertile.

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    Mute dangermouse
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    Sep 28th 2017, 10:46 AM

    Isn’t prince Philips a god to these people maybe he can peg the top with the duchess of York

    35
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    Mute TravellingTheWorld
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:11 AM

    Surprised AFP haven’t blamed ‘Global warming’

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    Mute Gerald Kelleher
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:28 AM

    @TravellingTheWorld: Well they once tried to incorporate plate tectonics into ‘climate change’ , looking on 9 years later at the propaganda that Goebbels would have be delighted with , it is time to normalize climate as a research topic -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGGgncVq-4

    The big idea is comparing evolutionary geology between our planet and our sister planet Venus which are roughly the same size but with very different dynamics. The current batch of geologists don’t have the expansive view to investigate these comparisons much the same as climate guys can’t manage to look at planetary climate within context of all planets in the solar system.

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    Mute Michael Geraghty
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    Sep 28th 2017, 1:05 PM

    @Gerald Kelleher: venus is 42 million miles closer to the sun so pointless comparing the two

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    Mute Gerald Kelleher
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    Sep 28th 2017, 2:43 PM

    @Michael Geraghty: It is not entirely your fault that you can’t adapt to more challenging reasoning but the distance of Venus and the Earth from the nothing has nothing whatsoever to do with evolutionary geology on either planet.

    The Earth has a 26 mile spherical deviation between Equatorial and Polar diameters, in other words it is not a perfect sphere while Venus is. The Earth has both plate tectonic and volcanic activity while Venus has only volcanic activity. When I showed about a decade ago that it is impossible to exempt the Earth’s fluid interior beneath the thin fractured crust from differential rotation across latitudes, the community threw the kitchen sink at rotation and made a balls of it. I trust readers here to see to see how the planet’s rotation connects the planet’s Equatorial bulge (misnomer) with the motion and evolution of the surface crust (plate tectonics).

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    Mute Tomás Havana Kavanagh
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:54 PM

    @Gerald Kelleher: so are ye saying earth is wobbling about the sun like a water balloon?

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    Mute Noel Allan
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:36 AM

    Is it just me that noticed on the aircraft wingtip a new website address with an added w?
    when did wwww. become the norm…..lol?

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    Mute Brown Boots
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    Sep 28th 2017, 12:43 PM

    @Noel Allan: and they wonder why their branding ain’t working!

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    Mute Pa Curran
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    Sep 28th 2017, 7:13 PM

    Maybe they’ll pack in the prank calls now.

    11
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    Mute Nicholas O'Halloran
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:12 AM

    They should watch Von ryan’s express, plenty of tips

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    Mute Brown Boots
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:16 AM

    @Nicholas O’Halloran: what sinatra running at the end, beaten only by the scene from Heat as the greatest movie running scene ever!!! What actors they all were!

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    Mute Mark Dervan
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    Sep 28th 2017, 1:54 PM

    That’s freaky! I had a missed call this morning from a strange number and when I looked up the country code it was Vanuatu which I’ve never heard of ever!

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    Mute Brian Murphy
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    Sep 28th 2017, 2:51 PM

    @Mark Dervan: So did I!

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    Mute Robc
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    Sep 28th 2017, 10:23 PM

    @Mark Dervan: so did I. I googled it and found out its a phone scam

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    Mute Jonathan Power
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    Sep 28th 2017, 2:16 PM

    I wonder could we do the same for Ireland ‘entire population evacuated prior to Leo’s budget’

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