Fourth ship to join search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet

(ATimes) - A fourth search vessel equipped with a sophisticated underwater drone is set to join the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the Australian search coordinator said on Wednesday.

Months of searches have failed to turn up any trace of the Boeing 777 aircraft, which disappeared on March 8, carrying 239 passengers and crew shortly after taking off from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing.

The current phase of the search is focusing on a rugged and previously unmapped 60,000-sq-km (23,000- sq-mile) patch of sea floor some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of the Australian city of Perth.

Dutch engineering firm Fugro has deployed three vessels to map and then search the sea floor in the area.

The new search vessel, Fugro Supporter, is equipped with a Kongsberg HUGIN 4500 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which is pre-programmed with an area to search and then released, rather than tethered to a ship via a cable.

"The AUV will be used to scan those portions of the search area that cannot be searched effectively by the equipment on the other search vessels," Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said in a statement.

More than 14,000 sq km of sea floor has been searched, JACC said, and the search of the current area could be completed as early as May, provided there are no delays.

Fugro Supporter is expected to arrive in the search area in late January.

On July 17, the same airline's Flight MH17, also a Boeing 777, was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

Another Malaysian-affiliated aircraft, an Indonesia AirAsia Airbus A320-200, crashed on a flight from Indonesia to Singapore on Dec. 28 with the loss of all 162 people on board. Its wreckage has been found and its flight recorders are being examined.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)(GA, Reuters, Asia Times)

Dollar stabilizes after Malaysian plane crash jitters

(#GNN) - NEW YORK: The #dollar stabilized against the #euro Thursday, trimming earlier gains #spurred by the crash of a #Malaysian jetliner in war-torn Ukraine.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in pro-Russia rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border.

The Boeing 777, with 298 people aboard, was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the disaster a "terrorist act." US officials said it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile but it was unclear who fired the weapon.

The crash news further heightened geopolitical concerns of an escalation in the months-long conflict in Ukraine, a day after the United States imposed tough new sanctions on Russia over its alleged support of separatist rebels in Ukraine.

In the oil-rich Middle East, meanwhile, Israel launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, saying the decision came following 10 days of Hamas attacks and after "repeated rejections of offers to de-escalate the situation.

"The uncertainty sent US and European stocks tumbling as investors sought safer havens in bonds and gold.

The dollar was pushed up to a one-month high against the euro as the shared currency fell to $1.3517, but the greenback later slipped back to within a hair of Thursday´s level.

Kathy Lien of BK Asset Management said the dollar suffered in part from the decline in the yields for US Treasury bonds, which move inversely to prices.

"US Treasury yields are at their lowest levels in more than six weeks, and that stripped some of the safe-haven status out of the US dollar," she said.