Alzheimer's: French scientists focus on key target

Day by day, science is finding help for the aged; what will it be when come my time?
-----

Posted: 25 January 2012

PARIS: French scientists said on Tuesday that lack of a key brain protein was linked to Alzheimer's, a finding that threw up a tempting target for drugs to fight the disease.

"What we've found is a weapon for controlling and modifying tau," said Etienne-Emile Baulieu of France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), referring to a culprit involved in Alzheimer's.

Building on earlier work, researchers delved into a Paris "brain bank," of organs donated for medical science, to compare levels of a protein called FKBP52 among brains of people who had died of dementia and those who had died of other causes.

Tiny slivers of brain were extracted and their chemicals analysed.

In the frontal cortex, "levels of FKBP52 were 75 percent lower among people who had died of Alzheimer's and other tau diseases, a dramatic fall," Baulieu told a press conference.

Baulieu said FKBP52 was the best target that had surfaced so far in the fight against Alzheimer's, a disease that is as cruel as it is baffling.

A rogue protein that later became named tau was first spotted in 1912 by Alois Alzheimer, the German neuropathologist who gave his name to this relentless degenerative disease of the brain.

When normal tau undergoes a process called hyperphosphorylation, it starts to assemble in microscopic tangles inside brain cells, killing them.

But another telltale sign of Alzheimer's is the accumulation of so-called amyloid plaques outside neurons, and their connection with tau, if any, remains unclear.

Discovered in 1992, FKBP52 is a protein that is found abundantly in the brain, where it has a workhorse role in folding and unfolding other proteins.

But it has also been revealed to bind to tau, which gives rise to the theory that lack of the protein helps tau to clump together.

Baulieu sounded a word of caution, saying the molecular cascade of events that cause tau tangles was still not fully clear.

But levels of FKBP52 could be used as a marker of susceptibility to Alzheimer's, and boosting them could provide a means of stalling progression of the disease.

"I think that in three or four years, we will have results that are sufficiently broad and robust to be able to use candidate drugs that we will have found, or that pharmaceutical companies can use and modify," he said.

"It may go a lot faster than people say."

In 2010, Alzheimer's Disease International, the umbrella body of national associations for the disease, estimated that the number of Alzheimer's sufferers will mushroom from 35.6 million people worldwide to 65.7 million by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050.

The research appears in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

- AFP/al


Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Alzheimer's: French scientists focus on key target

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Fate of Jackson children unclear, say experts

Posted: 27 June 2009 0503 hrs

Michael Jackson with one of his children, with a cloth over draped his head, in Berlin in 2002

LOS ANGELES - The fate of Michael Jackson's three children remained unclear Friday as reports raised the possibility of a custody challenge from the biological mother of the late star's eldest offspring.

The three children -- Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and Prince Michael II, 7, -- were reported to be in the care of Jackson's mother Katherine at the family estate in Los Angeles as the musical clan mourned the star's death.

Jackson's former wife of three years Debbie Rowe is the mother of the two eldest children, while the third was born in 2002 to a surrogate whose identity has never been made public.

There were conflicting reports over whether Rowe, who separated from Jackson in October 1999, had already signed away her parental rights.

TMZ.com website cited a lawyer familiar with the case as saying that Rowe had never had her parental rights legally terminated, which could clear the way for her to gain custody and win a multi-million-dollar settlement.

However Jackson family lawyer Brian Oxman was quoted as saying that the children would likely be looked after by Katherine Jackson.

"Probably Mrs Jackson will take care of them, she loves them dearly," Oxman told the celebrity website Radaronline.

Gloria Allred, a celebrity lawyer told CNN she was "very concerned" about Jackson's children. "What will happen to them?" she said. "If the mother relinquished parental rights then who's to have custody?"

Scott Altman, a professor at the University of Southern California and an expert in family law, said Rowe's custody claim could hinge on what had been agreed with Jackson at an earlier hearing.

"She signed an agreement purporting to give up her parental rights but then more recently she went to court to seek custody and succeeded having that agreement declared invalid," Altman said.

"Ultimately they settled that legal disagreement, and she did not pursue a final custody decree. She could come forward and seek custody as a legal parent to the children."

If Rowe's custody claims were challenged by Jackson's family and the case went to trial, much would depend on details of the children's relationship with Rowe that remained opaque, Altman said.

"There are a lot of factual details we just don't know about -- how much contact has she (Rowe) actually had with these children over the years? What is the nature of their relationship at a social level? Are the children close to her on a psychological level?

"The answers to those questions may make it more or less difficult for her to get custody."

In the end, the children's own preferences could decide the issue, he said.

"My assumption is that if this gets to trial a great deal is going to turn on expert psychological testimony about the children's relationship with the various caretakers involved and the judge's impression of that and potentially the children's own preferences," Altman said.

Meanwhile, even less was known about the surrogate mother of Jackson's youngest child, Prince Michael II, or "Blanket," who was famously dangled from a fourth floor window in Berlin by his late father in 2002.

"I don't think they know much about who she is and whether she'll come forward," Altman said.

"I gather she was a surrogate but we don't know anything about the legal arrangements or whether she's had any contact with the child."

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Air France crash probe to release initial report on July 2

Posted: 26 June 2009 0357 hrs

Debris of the Air France aircraft lost in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean is seen on board a Brazilian Navy Corvette

PARIS - The French agency probing the mid-Atlantic crash of an Air France jet said Thursday it would release an initial report on its findings on July 2.

The Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) leading the technical inquiry into the June 1 crash said it would present the report at a press conference at its headquarters in the Paris suburbs.

Flight AF 447 went down around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board.

The cause of the disaster is not known. Speculation has swirled about whether the plane broke up in the air, perhaps from strong turbulence, or on hitting the water.

Air France said earlier that the plane's pilot and one of its stewards have been identified among the bodies pulled out of the sea.

Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau told the French Senate on Thursday that 51 bodies had been recovered so far.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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French sub chases Air France black box signal

Posted: 23 June 2009 1644 hrs

Debris of the Air France aircraft lost in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean is seen on board a Brazilian Navy Corvette

PARIS: A French mini-submarine has been launched after a "very weak" signal was detected from the flight recorders of the Air France jetliner that crashed in the Atlantic, Le Monde reported Tuesday.

But the French bureau investigating the crash said the black boxes of Flight 447 had not been found and that research teams "check out any sound" that might lead to them.

The Nautile submersible set out on Monday after French navy vessels detected a "very weak signal" several hundred kilometres off the coast of Brazil, Le Monde reported on its website. No source was quoted in the report.

Owned by Ifremer, the French oceans research institute, the Nautile is capable of operating at a depth of six kilometres (3.7 miles) and was used by research teams who explored the wreck of the Titanic.

"No flight recorders have been located to this day," said a spokeswoman for the BEA aviation investigating bureau.

"This is not the first time that we have heard noise. We check out all of these noises. The research effort continues," she said.

The homing beacons on the devices will only operate for around another week.

"I have no confirmation for the time being" that the flight-data recorders have been found, said Captain Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for the army general staff.

The Air France Airbus A330 carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris came down in the Atlantic on June 1. The cause of the disaster has not been established.

Fifty bodies have been recovered from the crash zone, along with hundreds of pieces of the plane.

The Nautile was taken to the debris zone on board the French maritime research vessel Pourquoi Pas and was to be deployed once the ping from the black boxes was detected.

Other than the Pourquoi Pas, the French nuclear submarine Emeraude and two high-sea vessels equipped with sonars are taking part in the deep-sea search for the vital data and voice recorders of Flight 447.

The boxes - in reality bright orange - would help investigators piece together the final minutes of the ill-fated flight that went down during a storm as it was flying through turbulence.

No distress call was received from the pilots, but there was a series of 24 automated messages sent by the plane in the final minutes of the doomed flight.

French investigators probing the crash have said that the airspeed sensors, or pitot probes, had been feeding inconsistent readings to the cockpit.

Conflicting airspeed data can cause the autopilot to shut down and in extreme cases the plane to stall or fly dangerously fast, possibly causing a high-altitude breakup.

But the BEA, along with Airbus and Air France, have said there is as yet no firm evidence linking the speed monitors and the crash of the jetliner.

Air France has upgraded all sensors on its long-haul fleet as precautionary measure after protests from pilots.

The crash was the worst in Air France's 75-year history.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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11 bodies from Air France disaster identified

Posted: 22 June 2009 0507 hrs

Crew members of a Brazilian Air Force Super Puma helicopter unload corpses of Air France airflight 447 passengers.

SAO PAULO: Eleven of the 50 bodies recovered from an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic three weeks ago have been identified by fingerprints and dental records, Brazilian officials said on Sunday.

The bodies were identified as "10 Brazilians and one foreigner," officials in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco said in a statement.

Five of the Brazilians were male, the other five were female and the foreigner was male, it added.

The officials, part of a task force that also includes Brazilian police and forensic specialists conducting autopsies in the city of Recife, did not give further details about those identified.

They said the families of the identified Brazilians had been visited personally on Friday and Saturday by police officers who broke the news.

The embassy of the foreigner who was identified was also notified.

A special morgue in Recife has received 49 of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash site 1,000 kilometres off Brazil's northeast coast. The 50th body was due to be delivered by ship on Monday.

There were 228 people from 32 countries onboard the airliner, which went down June 1 off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The cause of the disaster - the worst in Air France's history - was not known.

Seventy-two French citizens, 59 Brazilians, 26 Germans and passengers from 29 other countries were on the flight.

Identification was initially being attempted using fingerprints, scars, surgical or dental characteristics, and tattoos on the bodies.

If those failed, DNA tests were to be carried out in a Brazilian police laboratory in Brasilia based on samples taken from relatives.

After bodies were identified, they were to be released to the families for burial, the statement said.

The Brazilian officials said they were still waiting for records and other information to identify bodies of foreigners.

"The lack of pre-mortem data explains the small number foreigners identified," they said in the statement.

Brazilian authorities leading the search for bodies and debris have fading hopes of finding any more remains. On Saturday, a sophisticated plane with on-board radar that found the first traces of the downed plane was taken off the operation.

A separate French operation looking for the plane's black boxes was continuing, with a French military nuclear submarine scouring the crash zone.

It was trying to detect homing beacons that are expected to fade within a week. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Air France bodies had broken bones, official says

June 19, 2009 -- Updated 1619 GMT (0019 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Bodies had fractures to arms, legs, hips, and few had clothing, French official says
• Condition of bodies points to mid-air rupture of Air France flight, experts say
• Brazilian medical examiners gave information about bodies to French investigators

French Senator Gerard Larcher throws a tribute wreath into waters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Thursday.

PARIS, France (CNN) -- At least some of the bodies recovered from the Air France crash this month had broken bones, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, evidence that suggests the flight broke apart before hitting the ocean.

Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, the French accident investigation board, said Thursday that Brazilian medical examiners had given that information to his agency.

Asked whether the information included reports that the recovered bodies from Flight 447 had fractures to arms, legs and hips, and few had any clothing, Arslanian said yes.

All of that, aviation experts have said, points to a mid-air rupture of the plane at about 35,000 feet.

There is still no explanation of what brought down the Airbus A330, which was en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France when it crashed in the Atlantic on June 1.

Arslanian pleaded Thursday for the media and the public to stop speculation about the cause of the Air France crash.

A Brazilian diver floats on wreckage of Flight 447 spotted Wednesday.

A major Brazilian newspaper reported this week that 95 percent of the bodies so far had shown fractures in the legs, arms and hips similar to injuries found in people who fall from great heights. The newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo cited unnamed officials who are part of the investigation.

Another clue is the low incidence of cranial trauma, the newspaper reported. If the aircraft had nose-dived into the ocean, victims would have more head injuries, the paper said.

A large number of bodies also had red lesions in their mucous membranes, which the paper said is usually associated with asphyxia, or lack of oxygen.

Another major Brazilian newspaper, the Jornal do Brasil, cited information from an unnamed person from the Brazilian military who has access to the teams working in the recovery of the plane. This person told the paper that bodies were found "mutilated" with no clothing, a strong indication of violent depressurization caused by a structural rupture.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

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Air France probe 'a little bit closer' to answers, investigator says

June 17, 2009 -- Updated 1954 GMT (0354 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Investigators are analyzing evidence, seeking clues, chief of French agency BEA says
  
• Nature of damage to plane parts, injuries to victims may give clues, analyst says
  
• Sensitive listening devices used to search for Air France Flight 447 data recorders
  
• "It's as if it fell in the Andes," search mission leader says of jet that crashed in Atlantic
  

The tail fin of the Airbus A330 that crashed in the Atlantic is unloaded this week in Recife, Brazil.

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Investigators are "getting a little bit closer" to determining what caused an Air France airliner to disappear into the Atlantic Ocean, but there are no answers yet, a French investigator said Wednesday.

The Airbus A330 crashed June 1, killing all 228 people aboard. Fifty bodies and a few parts of the plane have been recovered. Searchers are especially interested in finding the aircraft's flight data recorder, assumed to be resting at the bottom of the ocean.

"I understand that the families [of the victims] want to know what happened," Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the BEA, the French accident investigation board, said at a news conference in Paris.

"The only message I can give them is that at the moment ... we are working as quickly and intensely as possible in order to one day find out what happened and what we may do in order to make aviation safer."

It is "virtually certain" that authorities will not be able to recover all the parts of the plane, Arslanian admitted.

Air France Flight 447 went down in stormy weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

The exact location of the crash is not known because the plane was not within any controller's radar when it disappeared, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have not been recovered, and ocean currents have moved the bodies and debris that have been found.

A large number of French, Brazilian and American ships are searching the waters, and the BEA has asked the European Space Agency to provide satellite imagery of the search area, said Olivier Ferrante, chief of the BEA search mission.

Investigators are looking at the possible role of airspeed sensors known as pitot tubes, among other factors, but Arslanian cautioned reporters not to speculate about what happened.

"It is far too early to imagine scenarios one way or another," he said.

Theories range from electrical failure caused by a lightning strike to terrorism.

"As an investigator, until you know exactly what caused it, you need to leave everything on the table," Capt. John Cox, a longtime pilot with expertise in global air safety, told CNN.

Foul play is possible, "but there's been nothing that shows me that it would be a prime suspect," he said.

Investigators on land have been studying the aircraft fragments that have been gathered, but Arslanian offered no information on their findings.

Investigators are likely to test for explosive residue, said CNN security analyst Mike Brooks, who as a member of an FBI response team has participated in air disaster investigations.

"If there was an explosion onboard, then super-heated gases would make little pinprick holes," and some of the bodies would have burns, Brooks said last week.

As for the bodies, Brazilian officials have conducted all the autopsies, and the French officials were not able to discuss the results.

"It's a very, very gruesome and arduous task, but they're going to have to look at mechanism of injuries," Brooks said. "How did these people die?"

The types of injuries the victims suffered will tell investigators a lot about what happened to the plane, he said.

But the focus for investigators and search teams in the Atlantic remains finding the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders, which send out an electronic signal for at least 30 days after a crash.

Searchers are using sensitive audio equipment to listen for the recorders' beacons, Ferrante said.

The mountainous ocean floor in the search area ranges from 3,280 to 15,091 feet, BEA officials said, making the search for the recorders -- and the rest of the plane's debris -- difficult.

"It is as if it fell in the Andes," the BEA's Ferrante said.

Even if the recorders are recovered, the mystery may not be solved, Arslanian cautioned.

"I cannot say to you that when we have them we will have everything, we will know everything," he said. "And I cannot say that if we don't have them, then the inquiry is stopped."

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

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Was it a rudder issue?

Divers from the Brazilian Navy recover a portion of the rudder of the missing Air France Flight 447.
AFP

RIO DE JANEIRO - A burst of automatic messages sent by Air France Flight 447 before it crashed includes one about a problem with a rudder safety device but lacks decisive clues as to what sent the jet plunging into the Atlantic Ocean two weeks ago, an aviation expert said on Saturday.

The industry official, who has knowledge of the Air France investigation, told AP that a transcript of the messages posted on the website EuroCockpit is authentic but inconclusive.

One of the 24 automatic messages sent from the plane minutes before it disappeared on May 31 with 228 on board points to a problem in the "rudder limiter", a mechanism that limits how far the plane's rudder can move. The flight was headed from Rio de Janeiro to Paris through an area of fierce thunderstorms.

The nearly intact vertical stabiliser - which includes the rudder - was fished out of the water earlier this week by Brazilian searchers.

"There is a lot of information, but not many clues," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to discuss the matter.

The official said jets like the Airbus A330 that crashed automatically send such maintenance messages about once a minute during a plane's flight. They are used by the ground crew to make repairs once a plane lands. If the rudder were to move too far while travelling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabiliser with it, which some experts theorise may have happened based on the relatively limited damage to the stabiliser.

The industry official, however, said the error message pertaining to the rudder limiter did not indicate it malfunctioned, but rather that it had locked itself in place because of conflicting speed readings.

Investigators have focused on the possibility that external speed monitors - called Pitot tubes - iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.

"The message tells us that the rudder limiter was inoperative," Mr Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant, said last week. "It does not give you any reason why it is not working or what caused it, or

what came afterward."

Unless the flight data and black boxes are found, the exact cause of the accident may never be known. AP

From TODAY, World –Monday, 15-Jun-2009

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Doomed Air France flight crashed suddenly, say experts

Posted: 14 June 2009 0420 hrs

A partition with crew seats recovered with other wreckage

RECIFE, Brazil: Debris recovered so far from Air France flight 447 seems to indicate the jet plunged suddenly into the Atlantic Ocean and did not explode in the sky, Brazilian experts said Saturday.

Almost two weeks after the Rio-Paris flight disappeared at sea, former pilot Ari Germano told O Globo newspaper that he was "struck" by at least one of the photographs released Friday by the Brazilian Air Force.

According to Germano, who has written a book about air crashes, the images suggested that the Airbus A330 passengers were caught by surprise and the tragedy unfolded so rapidly that the crew did not have the time to react.

In the photographs, the seats in the crew area were folded with the seatbelts hanging down, which "suggests that the crew was moving about the passenger cabin. If there had been an alert or a warning about a pending risk, the crew would have been seated," he said.

"They did not have the time to do anything," added the former pilot, who also recognized an orange first aid kit that was left intact.

Dozens of pieces of debris recovered by the Brazilian Navy have been brought to an airport hangar in the northeastern city of Recife.

A French navy ship on Friday recovered six more bodies, bringing to 50 the number of bodies found in the wake of the crash of the plane, which went down over the ocean on the night from May 31 to June 1 with 228 people on board.

Captain Ronaldo Jenkins, a security consultant with the National Union of Air Carriers (SNEA), told Globo that he had identified a safety vest and part of the plane's internal covering, which showed no trace of fire or smoke, suggesting no explosion.

"On the photographs published in recent days, where we can see debris from the plane floating in the water and a restroom door, there were also no signs of fire," he added.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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French crash probe sees "no link yet" to airspeed sensors

Posted: 12 June 2009 1140 hrs

Brazilian Navy divers recover a part of the rudder of an Air France jet lost in midflight over the Atlantic.

PARIS: The French agency probing the crash of Air France flight 447 said Thursday it had yet to find conclusive evidence pointing to faulty airspeed monitors as the cause of the disaster.

Speculation surrounding the doomed Rio to Paris flight, which crashed with the loss of 228 people on board, has focused on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, known as pitot probes, which may have malfunctioned.

"There is as yet no link between the pitot and the causes of the accident," said a spokeswoman for the Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) leading the technical inquiry into the June 1 crash.

Air France's chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters the devices would be replaced on all planes as a precaution, after the worst air disaster of the airline's 75-year history.

But he added: "I'm not convinced the probes were the cause of the accident."

Error messages emitted by flight 447 in the minutes before the disaster have suggested that the twin-engine airliner's computers were receiving contradictory airspeed readings.

Investigators say this has been a factor in other incidents in which pilots had to battle to control Airbus jets, and aircrews worldwide have been warned to review their procedures in case of false speed measurements.

And a company report seen by AFP Thursday, showed that Air France Airbus jets experienced at least five incidents last year in which airspeed probes malfunctioned.

"These are all serious incidents," said Guy Ferrer, an official from the Alter pilots union, which represents some Air France flight crews.

The BEA spokeswoman, however, said that agency director Paul-Louis Arslanian had said on Saturday that the team had yet to conclude that a malfunction of the probe led to the plane's demise.

"Problems, and incidents, have been identified. We are studying them," said Arslanian.

"But that's not to say that without replacements a plane is dangerous and with them it isn't," he said.

Gourgeon confirmed that Air France had stepped up a plan to replace and modernise the pitots in all its A330 and A340 long-haul jets.

"This programme has been accelerated because we know that during this accident there was a problem with measuring speed," he said.

"Airbus insists, and they're right, that the probes are safe. It's possible that icing incidents will be reduced with the new type of probes.

"Perhaps there won't be an improvement. We are talking with the crash investigators about this," he said.

Air France decided on April 27 to replace the pitot probes, but received delivery of the first improved models on May 27, less than a week before the crash. The doomed plane had not been updated.

"We began this programme because we thought it would diminish the number of non-catastrophic incidents," said Gourgeon.

The deep-sea hunt for the jet's black boxes intensified off Brazil, with a tugboat equipped with underwater listening devices joining a French nuclear submarine in the search.

If they find a signal, a mini-sub on board a French scientific ship will be deployed to recover the flight recorders, thought to be key to explaining why the jet went down.

The Air France chief however said the chances of finding the black boxes in waters thought to be as deep as 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) were slim.

The Brazilian navy said on Thursday the bodies of three more victims had been retrieved, bringing the total to 44.

Brazil said it was determined to bring back to shore as many bodies and pieces of debris as possible from the crash zone, some 1,100 kilometres (700 miles) from the coast.

In Paris, the family of a passenger signed up as a civil plaintiff in a manslaughter probe to gain access to files on the crash, a lawyer said.

"What the families want is just some legitimate answers to their legitimate questions, such as: the plane sent out its last message at 04:10 am and yet no one wondered until 06:30 am why there was no news of the crew. Why is that?" said lawyer Sophie Bottai.

Two other French families have separately filed suit for manslaughter.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Airbus denies plans to ground A330, A340

Posted: 11 June 2009 0836 hrs

An Airbus A330-200 jetliner

PARIS - Airbus on Thursday denied a press report that it was considering grounding all long-haul A330 and A340 jets to change airspeed sensors after an Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic.

The French newspaper Le Figaro said in its Thursday edition that the aircraft manufacturer "does not rule out grounding its fleet of 1,000 A330s and A340s to change the (speed) sensors."

An Airbus spokesman denied the report, telling AFP "This is wrong."

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) "has issued a press release that all A330s and other aircraft are safe to operate," he said, adding: "We will take legal action against such irresponsible reporting."

Airbus has written to clients to assure them its A330 planes were safe, including those with older speed sensors seen as a possible cause for last week's Air France crash, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris plunged into the Atlantic on June 1 with the loss of all 228 people on board.

Officials have not identified the cause of the crash, but so far the investigation appears to have focused on the stormy weather and a possible problem with the Airbus A330's airspeed monitors, known as "pitot probes."

An Airbus spokeswoman said earlier a joint memo with the French transport ministry bureau in charge of the investigation into the crash was sent Monday to its clients.

"The note says that at the current stage of the inquiry, we confirm that the fleet equipped with various pitot probes can be used in its current condition," she said.

Airbus and Air France say older pitot probes have been problematic on other Airbus A330s and A340s, and the airline has stepped up a programme to install a newer type after pilots' unions threatened to refuse to fly.

The European air safety agency said Tuesday that Airbus models were "safe to operate," but added that a bulletin had gone out to remind airlines of what to do "in the event of loss of, or unreliable, speed indication."

There has been speculation that the A330's speed probes could have iced up during a storm at high altitude and supplied false airspeed data to the cockpit.

This, in turn, could have caused the pilots to fly too slow and stall, or too fast and rip the airframe apart, aviation experts say.

The crash is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Total of 41 bodies recovered from Air France 447 crash

Image by Kevin Boydston via Flickr

June 9, 2009 -- Updated 1653 GMT (0053 HKT)

Story Highlights

• First bodies recovered from the crash of Air France 447 returned to land
  
• Air France agrees to replace within days speed sensors, pilots' union says
  
• Air France said it began replacing parts in April
  
• The location of the crash has not been determined
  

Brazilian military personnel on Tuesday carry the remains of one of the passengers of the Air France crash.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (CNN) -- Forty-one bodies have been recovered from the crash of Air France Flight 447, the Brazilian Navy Command and Aeronautical Command said Tuesday.

Sixteen bodies pulled from the Atlantic Ocean Tuesday were taken to Fernando de Noronha for transportation Wednesday afternoon by helicopter to the air base in Recife, Brazil.

The 25 bodies previously found were put aboard a Brazilian frigate.

Searches for the remaining bodies will continue overnight, the navy and aeronautical command said in a written statement.

The Airbus A330 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France, carrying 228 passengers and crew.

The first bodies were recovered about 320 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of the Brazilian archipelago of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; Tuesday's recoveries were 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. It was not clear whether the bodies had drifted in the 1-2 knot currents or whether their separation suggested that the jet may have broken apart in the air.

Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.

Meanwhile, the French, who are leading the investigation, were increasing their naval efforts. The nuclear submarine Emeraude was expected to reach the search area Wednesday to search for wreckage, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. And the French sent two tugs towing 40 tons of recovery equipment, a surveillance ship and a ship equipped for amphibious operations.

The United States is also sending equipment to help with the search.

Brazilian authorities said the plane debris will be taken to France for investigation but the bodies would undergo forensic tests in Recife.

The cause of the crash is not known, but investigators are looking at the possible role of airspeed sensors known as Pitot tubes, among other factors.

A boat from the Brazilian navy picks up debris Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean. Recovery efforts continued Monday.

Air France has agreed to replace the sensors on its Airbus A330 and A340 jets, a pilots' union said Tuesday.

The airline said Saturday that it began replacing its fleet's sensors last month.

Another Air France pilots' union, ALTER, has advised its pilots not to fly planes until their Pitot tubes are replaced. ALTER, the smallest of three Air France pilots' unions, would not say what percentage of the carrier's pilots it represents. Watch an explanation of what could have caused the crash »

The biggest union, SNPL, said Tuesday it has accepted Air France's assurances that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless at least two of its three Pitot tubes have been replaced.

Union spokesman Eric Derivry added that there is no indication that the Pitot tubes caused the accident.

Air France said over the weekend that it began to notice in May of last year that Pitot tubes sometimes briefly iced up at high altitude on A330s and A340s. That caused "a loss of airspeed data," according to the airline -- that is, the pilots didn't know the plane's speed.

Air France decided to replace all its probes starting April 27, following laboratory tests earlier in the year, the airline said. That is the program the pilots say the airline has promised to complete within days.

Wreckage hauled in from the Atlantic over the weekend includes pieces of the aircraft's wing section.

The location of the crash has not been determined, since ocean currents have moved the bodies and debris.

The ocean depth where the debris and bodies have been found varies, but averages about 3000 meters (nearly 9,900 feet) deep, according to the University of New Hampshire/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Joint Hydrographic Center. The search area covers 200,000 square km (77,220 square miles), nearly the size of Romania, Brazilian officials said.

Brazilian officials emphasized Monday that finding bodies was their main priority. The French are in charge of finding the voice and data recorders.

Fourteen aircraft -- 12 Brazilian and two French -- were participating, along with five Brazilian ships and one French frigate. The U.S. Navy will contribute two high-tech acoustic devices to listen underwater for the emergency beacons that are attached to the voice and data recorders.

The "towed pinger locators," which help search for emergency beacons on downed aircraft to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet -- will be placed aboard two French tugs that are part of the search efforts, the official said.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

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Bodies, debris from Air France plane recovered

Posted: 07 June 2009 0107 hrs

Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral speaks to the press

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil - Brazilian search teams on Saturday recovered two male bodies, a plane seat and other remains from an Air France jetliner that went down over the Atlantic nearly a week ago with 228 people on board, officials said.

The finds -- the first from the crash -- were to be taken to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the closest inhabited spot to the zone they were found, for initial inspection by five Brazilian forensic police.

From there, they were to be flown to the mainland city of Recife for further analysis by French officials leading the investigation into what brought down the Air France flight 447 on June 1.

Relatives of those aboard the Air France flight have already given DNA samples to help identify their loved ones.

Although the black boxes containing vital data on the flight's final minutes have not yet been located, early suspicions are focusing on a possible malfunction of the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors as it flew into a fierce storm.

Air France employees stand outside a cathedral in Paris during an ecumenical church service for relatives and families of the passengers of Air France's flight 447.

French investigators said Saturday the plane, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments and that speed monitors had failed on other Airbus planes.

Airbus on Friday issued a notice urging all pilots of its jets to review a 2001 warning on the procedures to follow if speed indicators give conflicting readings and force the autopilot to cut out.

French submarines were on their way to help with the hunt for the black boxes, as experts scrutinized the debris found so far searching for clues.

"We confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane," Colonel Jorge Amaral told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

He said the two bodies, the first recovered from the downed flight, were those of men.

A blue plane seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card, and a leather briefcase with an Air France ticket inside were the first objects plucked from the sea, according to Amaral and an official statement.

The discoveries took place 450 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands, themselves 370 kilometers from the mainland.

The precise spot was 70 kilometers northeast of the point of last communication with the plane, a series of automatically sent messages signaling multiple shutdowns of onboard systems.

Air France was trying to confirm that the recovered seat came from the flight by checking the serial number, which Amaral gave as 23701103B331-0.

French investigators said the Air France airliner sent 24 automatic error messages just before the crash, and its autopilot was disengaged immediately after ones showing conflicting speed readings given by sensors.

The head of France's BEA air investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, confirmed to reporters in Paris that the downed jet had a problem calculating its speed and that other Airbus jets have reported similar problems.

"There is a programme of replacement, of improvement," he said.

He added that planes that have not yet replaced speed monitors were not necessarily dangerous, and that in the other cases pilots had regained control.

Arslanian said it was impossible to tell from the signals whether the doomed crew had shut off the autopilot or whether it cut out.

He also said the storm the plane flew into was not exceptional.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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