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If running away to a desert island and spending your days surrounded by books sounds like a dream, we may have found the job for you. Philip Blackwell, founder of Ultimate Library, is sending one lucky bookworm to the Maldives to manage a pop-up bookstore inside luxury resort Soneva Fushi....

BEIJING — China has waded into a growing political crisis involving the small island nation of Maldives, urging the international community to play what it calls a "constructive role" in the ongoing dispute, putting itself at odds with the United Nations on the issue. The Maldives, which is known more for its luxury resorts, has become an increasingly important part of China's global trade and infrastructure project, the "Belt and Road" initiative. It is also seen by analysts as a key strategic outpost in the Indian Ocean, despite its close proximity to India. Earlier this month, Maldives President Abdulla Yameen...

The government of President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has arrested an opposition leader and two Supreme Court judges hours after declaring a 15-day state of emergency in the Indian Ocean country best known for its luxury tourist resorts. The action escalates tensions after the nation's Supreme Court ordered the government to release nine jailed opposition leaders. Opposition leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who also served as president between 1978 to 2008, has been charged with bribery and attempting to overthrow the government. As the Associated Press reports: "The 15-day emergency decree issued late Monday gives the government sweeping powers to make arrests,...

<p>MH370? The satellite image of a plane flying over the Andaman Island uncovered by an Indian IT expert who claims it is of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. Asia US sanctions 11 in Putin's inner circle Missing plane: when something went wrong Pilot suicide - it's happened before 'Terror groups don't always own up' Malaysia Airlines co-pilot spoke last words Malaysia&ap...</p>

Due to a plethora of reasons, there are at least ten countries which may not survive the next 20 years. Although the list concocted by Top Lists remains highly speculative, it is worth knowing which nations may become extinct.

International researchers not directly affiliated with the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the underwater search, believe MH370 rests at the northern tip of the ATSB’s defined area rather than the south, which is the current focus. A new likely splash zone was identified by internationally respected physicist, mathematician and algorithm modeller, Dr Henrik Rydberg in a report released on Monday. ... That conclusion matches the results of analysis undertaken by specialists from all over the world, working independently of each other, in the wake of the flaperon find. The momentum has finally reached the ATSB, which released...

Initial models of where potential debris from a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet might first wash up had incorrectly identified Indonesia as the most likely location, the Australian body leading the search said on Wednesday. Flight MH370 disappeared without a trace in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board and search efforts have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia. A piece of aircraft debris that washed up on the French island of Reunion last week roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from the expected crash zone was consistent with where the plane...

Fishermen from this village believe they may have seen the missing Malaysia Airlines flight on the night it disappeared flying low over the Gulf of Thailand. It's not clear whether what they saw was flight MH370 or whether it is the latest in a string of false leads in the search for the missing plane, but if true it would suggest that the plane may have flown low to avoid radar, what is known as "terrain masking." On March 8 flight MH370 disappeared from radar as it flew north over the Gulf of Thailand towards Vietnam en route to Beijing....

It’s slowly becoming clear that Malaysia 370 was a tragic accident, and not one of the numerous terrorist or crime scenarios doing the rounds. As a retired international airline captain, I have felt for some time that the known flight profile showed an aircraft that was not hijacked, but out of control. However, the sharp left turn off course that it performed remained an issue. Why would the pilot do that? Bear in mind a couple of things. Firstly, this was a crew operating out of their home base, which they knew intimately. Pilots call it "local knowledge" – a...

Malaysia's military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometers to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday. --SNIP-- Malaysian authorities have previously said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing. "It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the senior military officer, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.

A new theory claims that a fire broke out aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the crew was doing what it could to save passengers and themselves As the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 enters its twelfth day, conspiracy theories and suggestions of foul play are giving way to the idea that a fire broke out onboard and the crew were simply doing everything they could to save the passengers and themselves. That theory, first floated by Chris Goodfellow, a pilot with 20 years of experience, holds that a fire on board the aircraft caused the pilots to...

Thailand's military said Tuesday that its radar detected a plane that may have been Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 just minutes after the jetliner's communications went down, and that it didn't share the information with Malaysia earlier because it wasn't specifically asked for it. A twisting flight path described Tuesday by Thai air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn took the plane to the Strait of Malacca, which is where Malaysian radar tracked Flight 370 early March 8. But Montol said the Thai military doesn't know whether it detected the same plane.

My feeling is that the Boeing 777 then meandered out aimlessly over the ocean with its dead pilots till its fuel was exhausted.  It was a tragic accident, not a conspiracy or crime.  They turned left to come home, not to flee, steal, or murder.  It just went badly wrong.  The plane is in the ocean.  Floating debris will turn up sooner or later, and the black boxes will tell the final story. This is the last paragraph in my American Thinker article “Malaysia370. A tragic accident and nothing more,” published in March 2014, shortly after MH370 went missing...

A year after Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 vanished, aviation expert Jeff Wise spells out his theory of what happened. Is he crazy? You decideThe unsettling oddness was there from the first moment, on March 8 last year, when Malaysia Airlines announced that a plane from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, Flight 370, had disappeared over the South China Sea in the middle of the night. There had been no bad weather, no distress call, no wreckage, no eyewitness accounts of a fireball in the sky - just a plane that said goodbye to one air traffic controller and, two minutes...

Search teams are scouring waters off both sides of the Malaysian peninsula, amid confusion over a missing Malaysia Airlines plane's last known location. Malaysia's air force chief has denied reports that the plane was tracked to the Malacca Strait in the west. Vietnam has despatched a plane to investigate an eyewitness report of a possible object burning in the sky east of Vietnam. --SNIP-- On Wednesday, Malaysia's air force chief Rodzali Daud denied remarks attributed to him in local media that a missing Malaysia Airlines plane was tracked by military radar to the Malacca Strait, far west of its planned...

In yet another sign we're getting closer to figuring out what happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, battered luggage has washed up on an island near where plane debris was found this week. Malaysian and Australian officials have said that it's "almost certain" the plane debris came from a Boeing 777. Flight MH370 is currently the only missing Boeing 777 in the world. It's unclear whether the suitcase that was found on Reunion Island near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean is from the missing plane, but it's a possibility considering where the suitcase washed up.

Malaysian authorities have issued a new version of the last communication between air traffic control and the cockpit of the missing flight MH370. The last words spoken were "Good night Malaysian three seven zero" - and not "all right, good night" as reported. The transport ministry said forensic investigations would determine whether the pilot or co-pilot spoke the words. The plane, carrying 239 people, was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared on 8 March. The plane's last contact took place at 01:19 Malaysian time. The BBC's transport correspondent Richard Westcott says the new version of the last...

Australian authorities coordinating the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 said Thursday that lab tests have shown an oil slick found in the search area last Sunday is not aircraft engine fuel or hydraulic fluid. Searchers are now using a robotic submarine, the Bluefin-21, to look for wreckage on the floor of the Indian Ocean more than 1,000 miles northwest of Perth, Australia. The Bluefin-21 has a rated depth of 4,500 meters, or 2.8 miles, and shortly after it was deployed on its first run this week, it returned to the surface several hours later because it reached that depth...

Malaysia's prime minister has confirmed that the piece of an airplane wing found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean last week is in fact from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. "Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," Najib Razak wrote on his Facebook page. "We now have physical evidence that, as I announced on 24th March last year, flight MH370 tragically ended in the southern Indian...