Come travel with us on a wonderful trip through the region of Andalusea in southern Spain. You’ll find Zurich Mike’s complete travel itinerary below the fold.  The music accompanying Mike’s photos is called “Fantasia para un Gentilhombre” ( Fantasia for a Gentleman), by Joaquín Rodrigo,  and played by Andres Segovia.  I couldn’t think of a more appropriate theme for ZM.

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The U.S. Military and Australian Search Authority in charge of looking for missing Malaysian Airline MH-370 have now admitted what independent researchers announced a few weeks ago.   They have no idea where to look, and admit the initial ping signals were mistakenly interpreted.  The search is suspended.

VIA CNN – The four acoustic pings at the center of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane’s black boxes, a U.S. Navy official told CNN.

The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of their effort, having scanned 329 square miles of southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the Boeing 777-200. (more…)

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The CNN article does not contain a link to the actual 47 page document, nor does it state how the Inmarsat position changed from “the data was irretrievably lost” to now “the data is being released”.  Go Figure…   If you find it can you drop a link in the comment section.    Never mind, I found it here:  https://www.dca.gov.my/mainpage.html

I uploaded the Malaysian Press Release and Data to the SCRIBD account, and will embed the data in a separate post (the next post).   Thanks… /SD

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) — Data from communications between satellites and missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was released Tuesday.

For weeks, the satellite company Inmarsat said it didn’t have the authority to release the data, deferring to Malaysian authorities, which are in charge of the search for the plane that disappeared more than two months ago over Southeast Asia. (more…)

Another week, another series of embarrassing setbacks, and nothingness.

Last week the company responsible for outlining the search area for the missing Malaysian airline MH-370, Inmarsat, claimed the satellite data which they used to construct the flight path was lost.   Consequently, no peer review or outside independent analysis could be afforded.   Incredulous as this sounds the only motivation for such a lost data claim can only be to avoid embarrassment and limit the Inmarsat exposure in that regard.

This week, experts deconstructed the frequency of the “ping signals” reported to be from the missing black boxes and detected by search efforts off the coast of Australia.   In essence the frequency of the signals could just as easily have been from electronic net locators often used by commercial fishing enterprises and factory ships at sea.

Outside independent scientists again stymied in their requests to review the underwater ping data which is responsible for 17 ships and 23 aircraft from eight countries deploying 1416 sonobuoys costing $1018 each and totaling $1.4 million, ultimately to no avail.

What is now known are the frequencies detected by the Towed Ping Locator could have been from a myriad of possibilities, and the absence of locating the wreckage in the area of detection targets the highest likelihood the signals were never from the “black boxes”. (more…)

Like us, if you had concerns the entire MH-370 missing plane search was fraught with undisclosed assumptions this recent revelation will bring even more validity to your concerns.

From the outset, we have held the position the Inmarsat Data just never made sense.  Too many assumptions, and far too much reliance, on a singular uncommon denominator fraught with intellectual implausibility, the “Inmarsat satellite data”.  For whatever reason the public was never allowed to actually analyze.

It was always presented as “take our word for it”;  and none of it ever made sense.    The geometry, the telemetry, and the global positionings inherent from the math, well, actually inherent from the assumptions within the math, just never made sense from the outset.

Now, as time has passed, and more people demand to know exactly what the specifics behind the assumptions were, the Inmarsat people who analyzed the data sets -and targeted the search area-  claim to have lost the data.     Well, actually, they claim to have given it all to the Malaysian/Australian authority… and the authorities claim they never received it…. and supposedly there was only one copy…..  Yeah, go figure – you getting this?…. (more…)

An Illinois man has become the third person in the United States infected with the virus that causes a deadly disease and has killed dozens of people around the world, federal officials said Saturday.

The unidentified man is a work associate of the first U.S. patient to have been diagnosed with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. The first patient lives in Indiana. [The second in Florida]

While a blood test showed the Illinois patient was infected with the virus, he has not shown any symptoms and has not needed any medical care.  (read more)

Hat Tip Moishe Pipik:  San Francisco – Two airport employees who used the confusion of the Asiana Airlines crash last summer as an opportunity to steal luggage from airline passengers are now headed to jail.

Sean Sharif Crudup, 44, and his fiancée Raychas Elizabeth Thomas, 32, were both working for United at the San Francisco International Airport when the Asiana Flight 214 crashed on the runway, leaving three dead and 180 injured. (more…)

Slightly less than two weeks from the first known U.S. case (Indiana) comes the second case; this time in Orlando Florida.

ASSOCIATED PRESS – Health officials have confirmed a second U.S. case of a mysterious virus that has sickened hundreds in the Middle East.

The latest case is not an American – he is a resident of Saudi Arabia, visiting Florida, who is now in an Orlando hospital.

He was diagnosed with MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Sunday night. It is a respiratory illness that begins with flu-like fever and cough but can lead to shortness of breath, pneumonia and death. (more…)