Malaysia Airlines MH370 Debris Hunt: US Black Box Locator Arrives in Australia

A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion aircraft searches for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 over the southern Indian OceanReuters

The US Navy's Towed Pinger Locator 25 (TPL-25) has been brought to Australia to assist the ongoing hunt for the black box of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

The navy equipment, which can be used to detect signals in up to 20,000 ft depths, would help in pinpointing the exact location of MH370's black box using 'pings' - (high-pitched signals for detection).

Consisting of a tow fish, tow cable, winch, generator and a control console operated from topside, the locator would be towed to another vessel to track down the flight recorder.

The pingers on the commercial aircraft's black box, which has a battery life of 30 days, usually emit short signals every second at 37.5 kHz.

The US naval equipment would be able to detect signals which are transmitted anywhere between 3.5 kHz and 50 kHz. The US has also sent a robotic underwater vehicle.

The black box is expected to provide answers to several key questions pertaining to the mysterious disappearance of the Boeing 777 passenger jet with 239 people aboard.

Meanwhile, the search operations to find the plane's wreckage has resumed in the stormy stretch of the southern Indian Ocean after it was hampered by gale force winds, rain and huge waves.

At least 12 aircraft, led by Australia's search team, will be scouring the suspected debris region while the jets will be accompanied by several vessels.

"Today's search is split into three areas within the same proximity covering a cumulative 80,000 sq kms. AMSA (Australia Maritime Safety Authority) has tasked a total of 12 aircraft today to search for possible objects in the search area," the agency said in a statement.

Six countries - Australia, New Zealand, the US, Japan, China, and South Korea - are participating in the hunt.

"We are just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle. It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Nine Network.

India's Trade Minister Anand Sharma Hopes for Central Bank Rate Cut on 1 April

India's trade minister Anand Sharma.Reuters

India's commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma hopes its central bank will cut interest rates to boost growth, but analysts expect the Reserve Bank of India to leave its monetary policy unchanged at the 1 April review.

Indian industry has been demanding a rate cut, which could encourage investment and promote growth in Asia's third-largest economy.

However, analysts at Barclays, ICRA and Care Ratings have said the central bank could leave monetary policy on hold at the upcoming review.

"We hope that they will factor this in," Sharma told the Press Trust of India, when asked whether the RBI would reduce interest rates in the wake of softening inflation.

Naresh Takkar, chief executive at ratings agency ICRA, said: "Consumer inflation eased to 8.1% in February 2014, close to the target of 8.0% for the end of this calendar year suggested by the Urijit Patel Committee.

"As a result, we expect a status quo on the policy rate in the upcoming policy review."

RBI's monetary policy.Barclays Capital

Barclays Capital said in a 24 March note: "After its surprise January rate hike, we expect the Reserve bank of India (RBI) to stay on hold in April, while the new government's economic policies and monsoon trends will likely have considerable influence on monetary policy in H2.

"Meanwhile, tight liquidity conditions have kept short-term interest rates high. Longer-term interest rates also stayed elevated and moved sideways (10y IGB: 8.8%)."

Earlier, Care Ratings said in a note: "Although inflation is on the desired path now, we expect RBI to still maintain interest rates status quo in the policy announcement in April 2014 to ensure that the decline in inflation continues before the monetary policy looks to promote growth."

Shock Therapy

RBI governor Raghuram Rajan warned in February against any sudden moves regarding the country's rate of inflation and said that the policy interest rate was appropriately set.

Rajan also warned against waiting to act until inflation expectations become ingrained, but said the central bank would ignore temporary spikes in inflation.

The RBI unexpectedly raised interest rates in January, in a bid to rein in inflation and defend the rupee from the volatility that affected emerging markets that month.

The Indian central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 8% from 7.75% in January.

Taiwan Riot Police Remove Anti-China Protesters

Baton-wielding riot police cleared Taiwan's Cabinet offices of angry protesters opposed to a trade pact with China as tensions escalated over the island's ties with the communist mainland.

Authorities said they arrested 58 protesters and 137 were injured, including 24 who had to be taken to hospital. The crackdown came five days after students occupied the nearby legislature to protest against the ruling party's decision to renege on a promised review of the trade agreement.

China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing has long sought to reassert its control over the island.

March 19, 2014: Students occupy the Taiwanese parliament building to protest against the ruling Kuomintang party ratifying a controversial trade agreement with ChinaGetty

March 20, 2014: Students barricade the doors to prevent the police from coming inGetty

March 23, 2014: Student protesters occupy Taiwan's legislature and executive yuan, a branch of government in charge of administrative affairsGetty

March 23, 2014: Police talk to student protesters inside the executive yuanGetty

March 23, 2014: Student protesters pull down fences outside the executive yuanGetty

March 24, 2014: Chaotic scenes as riot police begin to remove students from Executive Yuan PlazaGetty

March 23, 2014: A riot policeman vomits after clashing with student protestersGetty

March 24, 2014: Riot police wade into a crowd of students protesting outside the executive yuanGetty

March 24, 2014: Riot police clash with student protesters outside the executive yuanGetty

March 24, 2014: Police use a water cannon to disperse demonstrators during a protest against a trade pact with mainland ChinaReuters

March 24, 2014: Student protesterssoaked by police water cannonGetty

March 24, 2014: Students protesters barricade the stairs that lead to the legislature hall of parliamentGetty

March 25, 2014: Anti-media Post-its are pasted on a van of a pro-government TV stationGetty

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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Angry Chinese Families Demand Answers

Chinese relatives of passengers who were onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing, where they threw plastic water bottles, tried to rush the gate and chanted: "Liars!"

Malaysia Airlines said it was doing everything possible to help the families, and defended itself against criticism over how it informed them about the conclusion that no one aboard the aircraft is still alive. Some relatives were informed by text message.

The announcement that there was no hope for the passengers sparked mournful, angry and chaotic scenes at the Beijing hotel where many relatives had gathered. A group of family members read out a statement accusing Malaysia Airlines, the Malaysian government and military of procrastination and cover-up.

A relative of a passenger on board Malaysia Airlines MH370 cries during a protest in front of the Malaysian embassy in BeijingReuters

Angry Chinese relatives gesture as they sit on a bus waiting to go to the Malaysian embassy in BeijingGetty

Family members of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines MH370 shout slogans during a protest in front of the Malaysian embassy in BeijingReuters

Family members of passengers on the missing plane hold signs reading: "We need our relatives, we need truth"Reuters

Medical staff attend to someone outside the Malaysia as embassy paramilitary police stand guardReuters

Police attempt to prevent relatives from marching towards the Malaysian Embassy in BeijingReuters

A relative collapses on an escalator at a hotel in Beijing after being told that there was no hope for passengers on the missing Malaysian airlinerReuters

A relative of a passenger is cared for after fainting at a hotel in BeijingGetty

A family member of a passenger aboard the missing plane cries after watching Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's news conferenceReuters

Relatives of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines MH370 cry after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that the plane ended its journey in the Southern Indian OceanReuters

An angry relative shouts at a hotel in Beijing after watching a television broadcast of a news conference in which the Malaysian prime minister announced the jet ended its journey in the remote Southern Indian OceanReuters

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Malaysia Airlines MH370: How Did 19th Century Physics Help Find 'Crash Site'?

Inmarsat, a satellite telecommunications company, used a wave phenomenon developed in the 19th century to track the missing aircraftWiki Commons

British satellite telecommunications firm Inmarsat used a wave phenomenon discovered in the 19th century to analyse pings its satellite picked up from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and determine its final destination.

The technology led Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, to conclude on Monday that the missing Boeing 777 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.

The pings are automatically transmitted every hour from an aircraft, after the rest of its communications systems have stopped. These pings suggested the plane continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

As reported by Reuters, Inmarset was able to provide two arcs - one north and one south - that the aircraft could have taken, by the time the signals took to reach the satellite and the angle of elevation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said it was likely the Boeing 777 had crashed into the Indian OceanReuters

The Inmarsat scientists then investigated the pings using a technique similar to the Doppler effect, which denotes the change in frequency of a wave relative to its proximity to an observer.

The effect was first postulated by Christian Doppler, an Austrian physicist and mathematician, in a lecture at the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences in 1842. It explains, for example, why the sound of a police car siren changes as it approaches and overtakes an onlooker.

Harnessing the power of Doppler's theory, Inmarsat used the ping data to roughly plot two areas where the plane likely flew after it lost contact with ground control and vanished from radar. The two potential paths took MH370 over central Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Inmarsat corporate communications chief Jonathan Sinnatt says: "We then took the data we had from the aircraft and plotted it against the two tracks, and it came out as following the southern track."

According to Sinnatt, the company then compared its theoretical flight path with data received from Boeing 777s it knew had flown the same route. Another satellite company then checked the results, before releasing them to investigators.

As the pings were only received by a single satellite every hour or so, techniques such as triangulation using a number of satellites or GPS could not have been used to determine the flight plath of MH370.

Stephen Wood, the chief executive of All Source Analysis, a satellite analytics firm, said investigators had reduced the search area, although it is still expansive.

He stated it was probable that the demise of the Malaysia plane is likely to prompt a review of aviation rules, in relation to communication equipment and the ability to turn off a plane's transponder.

Wood added: "This type of incident will cause everyone who flies airplanes commercially with passengers to be really pressed for a whole new line of ways to keep track of their precious cargo."

FLIGHT MH370 FACTBOX

Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing at 00:41 on Saturday 8 March (16:41 GMT Friday).

About 50 minutes later, the aircraft lost contact with air traffic control.

No distress call was made.

On board, there were 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 countries. That included 153 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.

Two Iranian male passengers, Pouria Nour Mohammad Mahread and Delavar Syed Mohammad Reza, were travelling on fake passports. Neither had any apparent links to terrorist groups.

No debris from the plane has been found in the international search.

Last confirmed communication with Indian Ocean satellite occurred at 08:11am, meaning plane continued to fly for seven hours after radar signal was lost.

At least 25 countries, including China, the US and Singapore, have now joined in the search for the missing plane.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Airline Bound to Pay Over $40m in Damages

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missingReuters

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and its reported crashing in the Indian Ocean without any survivors has raised the question of who will bear the full liability of the mishap.

Total compensation payments to the victims or to their families by the airline and possible third parties would depend on solving the mystery behind the disappearance of the plane and locating it.

Even if the plane is not found, the operator of the airline, Malaysian Airline System, is liable to provide the families of the 227 passengers on board with some compensation. Under international treaty, the airline is bound to pay as much as $175,000 (£106,000, €127,000) per passenger and possibly more, according to Bloomberg.

If the airline can prove that it was not negligent or that a third party, such as terrorists or a manufacturer, was the sole reason for the accident, its payments will be capped at about $175,000. In the absence of such a defence, its liability would be much higher.

Under the Montreal Convention of 1999, an international treaty that covers air travel, the airline's liability could stand at more than $40m.

China and Malaysia, the home countries of most of the passengers on the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route, are both signatories to the pact. Claims against the airline are expected to be litigated in China and Malaysia.

Evidence for the flight's disappearance due to reasons including hijacking, intentional downing or an on-board fire would enable the family members to go for lawsuits and claim larger amounts, the news agency added.

"The disappearance of Flight 370 remains a mystery. The legal claims against Malaysia Airlines -- those are not a mystery," Robert Hedrick, a pilot and air-disaster lawyer in Seattle, told Bloomberg.

"If the wreckage is located, the evidence may establish liability of other parties."

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak earlier ruled out the possibility of hijacking, saying that based on satellite data, the plane ended up in the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia.

Meanwhile, relatives of the victims accused the carrier, Malaysian government and Malaysian military of delays and cover-ups ever since the flight disappeared.

Delhi Police Arrest Leader of Indian Mujahideen Tehsin Akhtar

Police escort Yasin Bhatkal (head covered), the key operative of the Indian Mujahideen militant group.Reuters

Police in New Delhi have arrested the leader of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), the Islamic terror group and a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has attacked civilian targets in the past.

Tehsin Akhtar alias Monu was apprehended by the special cell of the Delhi police, and is accused of plotting terror attacks in many cities in India in the run-up to the general election in April.

Akhtar was heading IM after its former chief Ahmed Siddibappa alias Yasin Bhatkal was arrested by Indian Intelligence Bureau officials in Nepal in last year.

Intelligence agencies in India had tried to make him surrender through his parents who live in a small town in the state of Bihar, but Akhtar rejected the move and sent a message to his pursuers: "I am not a misguided youth. I know what I am doing," the Times News Network reported.

Tehsin Akhtar, Indian Mujahideennia.gov.in

Akhtar is reportedly an expert in making bombs and is wanted for blasts in four cities across India.

Recently, his counterpart, a Pakistani national and bomb-maker Zia-ur-Rehman alias Waqas, was arrested, leaving the IM virtually without a leader in India.

Four IM operatives have been arrested in the last few days in a joint operation involving several police teams.

However, the real reins of IM are in the hands of Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed, who lives a free man in Pakistan despite a $10m bounty on him declared by the US.

The Delhi police claim they had averted a "major terror attack" by arresting the alleged terrorists working for the Indian wing of Mujahideen, according to the Indian Express.

Einstein's 'Spooky' Theory Could Bring Snowden's Encrypted Internet Dream to Life

Einstein (middle) visiting Amsterdam's experimental physicist Pieter Zeeman (left), with his friend Paul Ehrenfest in 1920Wikimedia Commons

Albert Einstein's "spooky" quantum mechanics theory about entangled particles that can stay connected even when separated by large distances could be applied to encrypt communications and improve security over the internet.

Edward Snowden recently said in live video interview with SXSW that citizens need to encrypt their data so that governments cannot spy on them. He suggested that people use the TOR anonymity network, but there could be another way.

According to Associate Professor Margaret Reid from Swinburne University of Technology's Centre for Quantum and Optical Science, Einstein had reservations about quantum mechanics and together with other researchers, highlighted a phenomenon known as "spooky action at a distance" in 1935.

The phenomenon is known as the N-partite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering and over half a century later in the 1990s, scientists finally succeeded in using it to securely transmit a message from one person to another.

They created a shared quantum key that decoded the message only for the sender and receiver – meaning that the message would be completely secure from interception until it was received.

Secure messages between many parties

However, until now, the quantum key has only worked for sharing messages between two parties.

Together with researchers from Peking University, Reid has published a paper entitled, "Genuine Multipartite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Steering" in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"Until now the real application of this has been for messages being shared between two people securely without interception, regardless of the spatial separation between them," Reid said.

"In this paper, we give theoretical proof that such messages can be shared between more than two people and may provide unprecedented security for a future quantum Internet."

In order to send messages to more than two parties, the quantum key will have to be distributed among all the receiving parties, and all the parties would have to work together to decipher the message, otherwise it would stay encoded.

"The message will also remain secure if the devices receiving the message have been tampered with, like if an iPhone were hacked, because of the nature of Einstein's spooky entanglement," explains Reid.

"Discovering that it can be applied to a situation with more parties has the potential to create a more secure Internet – with less messages being intercepted from external parties."

Hot Shots Photos of the Day: Nazi Art, Crossrail Tunnel, Malaysia Submarine

People visit the art exhibition 'A Dream I Dreamed' by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at the Museum of Contemporary Art of ShanghaiReuters

A woman takes pictures at an exhibition of works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at Museum of Contemporary Art of ShanghaiReuters

Valerie Vinvant and Todd Palmer perform in a boat at the Welles Park swimming pool during a rehearsal of Chicago Opera Theatre's production of "Orpheus & Euridice"Reuters

People lie down in a pedestrian zone in Frankfurt, as part of an art project in remembrance of 528 victims of the Katzbach Nazi concentration camp. The inmates of the Katzbach concentration camp, a part of the former Adler industrial factory, were forced into a death march to the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau on March 24th 1945. Some 528 victims of Katzbach are buried at Frankfurt's central cemeteryReuters

Fans of Metallica flash signs during the band's concert at the Jockey Club in Asuncion, ParaguayReuters

One of Michelle Obama's security guards stands beside a man wearing a Chinese ancient warrior costume during her visit to the City Wall in Xi'an, Shaanxi provinceReuters

US first lady Michelle Obama practises tai chi with students at Chengdu No 7 High School in Chengdu, Sichuan province, ChinaReuters

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama point at each other as they participate in a G7 leaders' meeting during the Nuclear Security Summit in The HagueReuters

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands points to paintings on the ceiling of the Royal Palace Huis ten Bosch in the Hague during the official dinner for members of the Nuclear Security SummitReuters

Two US helicopters land at The Hague airport during the Nuclear Security SummitReuters

Lars Triebe inspects the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle 'Abyss' at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. The 'Abyss', one of only three unmanned deep sea search submarines in the world, may join the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370. The submarine is designed to perform in depths up to 6,000 metres and can stay submerged for up to 22 hoursReuters

Schoolgirls pray next to a sand sculpture created by sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik to pay tribute to passengers and crew onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, on a beach in Puri, in the eastern Indian state of OdishaReuters

A relative of a passenger on board Malaysia Airlines MH370 cries during a protest in front of the Malaysian embassy in BeijingReuters

Children attend a prayer ceremony for the passengers and crew of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, at a school in Jammu, IndiaReuters

A ground controller guides a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion on the tarmac on its return to RAAF Base Pearce, north of Perth, after a search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 over the Indian OceanGetty

A worker walks out of the Connaught Tunnels section of the Crossrail construction project in East London. Crossrail are nearing completion of the deepening of a disused Victorian era railway tunnel to allow modern electric trains to travel through them. Europe's largest civil engineering project is due for completion in 2018Reuters

Well-wishers, mourners and many affiliated to trades unions, prepare to greet the horse-drawn funeral cortege of RMT General Secretary Bob Crow outside the City of London CrematoriumGetty

Relatives of Spain's former Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez walk behind his coffin at the Spanish parliament in MadridReuters

A smokescreen created by crew members partially obscures the blockaded Ukrainian naval landing vessel Konstantin Olshansky in Donuzlav bay in CrimeaReuters