Indonesia search and rescue says all 189 aboard crashed jet 'likely' dead.

ll 189 passengers and crew aboard a crashed Indonesian Lion Air jet were "likely" killed in the accident, the search and rescue agency said on Monday, as it announced it had found human remains.

The Boeing-737 MAX, which went into service just months ago, vanished from radar 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta, plunging into the Java Sea moments after it had asked to be allowed to return to the Indonesian capital.

Websites that display flight data showed the plane speeding up as it suddenly lost altitude in the minutes before it disappeared.

"My prediction is that nobody survived because the victims that we found, their bodies were no longer intact and it's been hours so it is likely 189 people have died," search and rescue agency operational director Bambang Suryo Aji told reporters.

Indonesia plane crash: India's Bhavye Suneja was captain of Lion Air plane that crashed with 189 on board A Delhi boy, Bhavye Suneja, was captain of the ill-fated Indonesian carrier Lion Air’s Boeing 737 Max that crashed into the sea while operating a domestic flight from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang on Monday with 189 people on board. Suneja was a resident of Mayur Vihar and got his pilot licence from Bel Air International in 2009.

Some 40 divers are part of about 150 personnel at the scene, authorities said, with the plane in water about 30 to 40 metres deep.

Earlier, video footage apparently filmed at the scene of the crash showed a slick of fuel on the surface of the water and pictures showed what appeared to be an emergency slide and bits of wreckage bearing Lion Air's logo.

The carrier acknowledged that the jet had previously been grounded for unspecified repairs.

The plane had been en route to Pangkal Pinang city, a jumping off point for beach-and-sun seeking tourists on nearby Belitung island, when it dropped out of contact around 6.30am (2330 GMT).

It was not yet known if there were any foreigners on board.

Images filmed at Pangkal Pinang's main airport showed families of passengers crying and hugging each other, with some yelling "Oh God".

"This morning he called asking about our youngest son," said a sobbing Ermayati, referring to her 45-year-old husband Muhammed Syafii, who was on board.

Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) said there were 178 adult passengers, one child, two infants, two pilots and six cabin crew on board flight JT 610.

The transport ministry had initially said there was a total of 188 people on board.

The finance ministry said around 20 of its employees were on the plane.

Among them were half a dozen colleagues of Sony Setiawan, who was supposed to be on the flight but missed check in due to bad traffic.

"I know my friends were on that flight," he told AFP.

Setiawan said he was only informed about his lucky escape after he arrived in Pangkal Pinang on another flight at 9.40am.

"My family was in shock and my mother cried, but I told them I was safe, so I just have to be grateful."

Lion Air said the plane had only gone into service in August.

The pilot and co-pilot had more than 11,000 hours of flying time between them and had recent medical checkups and drug testing, it added.

Lion Air CEO Edward Sirait said the plane had an unspecified technical issue fixed in Bali before it was flown back to Jakarta.

"Engineers in Jakarta received notes and did another repair before it took off" on Monday, Edward Sirait told AFP, calling it "normal procedure".

US-based Boeing said it was "deeply saddened" by news of the crash.

Boeing, just days out from its first commercial delivery of the 737 MAX in May last year, reportedly suspended its release due to an engine issue, according to airline safety and product review site airlineratings.com.

It said the engines were a product of a joint venture between US-based General Electric and France's Safran Aircraft Engines.

Earlier this year, Lion Air announced it was buying 50 Boeing 737 MAX 10 jets for $6.24 billion.

Indonesia's air travel industry is booming, with the number of domestic passengers growing significantly over the past decade, but it has acquired a reputation for poor regulation and its airlines had once been banned from US and European airspace.

In August 2015, a commercial passenger aircraft operated by Indonesian carrier Trigana crashed in Papua due to bad weather, killing all 54 people on board. In 2014, poor maintenance and the pilots' inadequate response was blamed for the crash of an AirAsia plane crashed with the loss of 162 lives.

Lion, a low-cost airline which has engaged in a huge expansion in recent years, has been involved in a number of incidents including a fatal 2004 crash and a collision between two Lion Air planes at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport.

Tapachula (Mexico) :
President Donald Trump said Monday the US will start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolled on regardless toward the US border.

Trump kept up his almost-daily Twitter attacks on the approaching caravan, calling it a national emergency and said he had alerted the US border patrol and military. “We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid” that the US provides to the three Central American countries, he said. 

Mexican authorities had managed to block the “caravan” of migrants on a border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also warned that the migrants “may be victimised by human smugglers or others who would exploit them.”

Taipei :
A 5.7-magnitude earthquake jolted Taiwan on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, and was felt strongly in the capital Taipei.

The quake struck around 104 kilometres (66 miles) off the coast of the port city of Hualien, in the east of the island, at a depth of 34 km at 12.34 pm (0434 GMT).

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Taiwan’s central weather bureau measured the quake at 6.0.

Local media said the quake had been felt all over the island.

 Hualien was hit by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in February this year which killed 17 people.

Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes.

The island’s worst tremor in recent decades was a 7.6 magnitude quake in September 1999 that killed around 2,400 people.

Moscow :
White House national security adviser John Bolton on Monday began two days of meetings with senior Russian officials following Washington’s weekend announcement of its withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty.

The Moscow visit by Bolton was planned before the Saturday announcement by President Donald Trump that the US was ditching the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF, a move Moscow has already denounced as “dangerous.”       

Bolton arrived in Russia Sunday and is set to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.  On Monday morning he met his Russian counterpart, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. On Tuesday he may also speak about the treaty with President Vladimir Putin.

Beijing :
China on Tuesday officially opened the 55-km-long sea bridge, said to be the world’s longest, connecting Hong Kong to Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai.

President Xi Jinping inaugurated the USD 20 billion bridge at a special ceremony held in Zhuhai, in southern China’s Guangdong Province, attended by about 700 guests, including the leaders of Hong Kong and Macau.

It was opened with a one-sentence speech by Xi, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
The construction of the bridge started in December 2009 and was to be completed in 2016.

Situated in the Lingdingyang waters of the Pearl River estuary, it will be the world’s longest sea bridge, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

China claims credit for building the world’s longest bridge, the 164.8-km-long Danyang–Kunshan Grand viaduct on the Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway.

The bridge, which will be opened for regular traffic from Wednesday, will slash the travel time between Hong Kong and Zhuhai from three hours to just 30 minutes, it said, adding it would further integrate the cities in the Pearl River Delta.

Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng said the bridge would bring Hong Kong and mainland China closer in terms of economic and trade activities.

Describing the bridge as a sign of successful cooperation between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macau, he said it is a demonstration of China’s engineering capabilities.

Han, Beijing’s man in-charge of regional economic integration, said the 55-km-long bridge could facilitate the development of “one country, two systems”, a framework that allowed Hong Kong and Macau a certain degree of autonomy.

He said it was the first time the three sides had worked together on a major infrastructure project.

“It opens up all three places for greater exchange in trade and economics. It also enhances the competitiveness of the Pearl River Delta,” the Post quoted him as saying.

The bridge would help Hong Kong and Macau to be integrated to mainland China, he added.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor highlighted the three cross-border infrastructure projects–the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong express rail link, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge and the Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai boundary control point which will open early next year.

But, the critics have called the bridge a “white elephant” and a “blood and sweat project”, noting that 10 workers have died and more than 600 were injured during its construction, the Post reported.

Additional concerns surfaced earlier this year when officials revealed that estimates for the amount of traffic expected for the bridge had been cut.

A 2008 consultancy study had predicted that 33,100 vehicles and 1,71,800 passengers would cross the bridge daily by 2030.

But the estimate was lowered to 29,100 vehicles and 1,26,000 passenger trips in a 2016 study, down 12 per cent and 26 per cent respectively, the report said.