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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — More than a decade ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished without a trace, sparking one of aviation’s most baffling mysteries.Despite years of multinational searches, investigators still do not know exactly what happened to the plane or its 239 passengers and crew.On Wednesday, Malaysia’s government said American marine robotics company Ocean Infinity would resume a seabed hunt for the missing plane on Dec. 30, reigniting hopes that the plane might finally be found.A massive search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the jet is believed to have gone down, turned up almost nothing. Apart from a few small fragments that washed ashore, no bodies or large wreckage have ever been recovered.Here’s what we know about the deadly aviation tragedy.‘Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero’The Boeing 777 disappeared from air-traffic radar 39 minutes after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014.The pilot’s last radio call to Kuala Lumpur — “Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero”— was the final communication before the plane crossed into Vietnamese airspace and failed to check in with controllers there.Minutes later, the plane’s transponder, which broadcasts its location, shut down. Military radar showed the jet turn back over the Andaman Sea, and satellite data suggested it continued flying for hours, possibly until fuel exhaustion, before crashing into a remote section of the southern Indian Ocean.Theories about what happened range from hijacking to cabin depressurization or power failure. There was no distress call, ransom demand, evidence of technical failure or severe weather.Malaysian investigators in 2018 cleared the passengers and crew but did not rule out “unlawful interference.” Authorities have said someone deliberately severed communications and diverted the plane.Passengers came from many countriesMH370 carried 227 passengers, including five young children, and 12 crew members. Most passengers were Chinese, but there were also citizens from the United States, Indonesia, France, Russia and elsewhere.Among those aboard were two young Iranians traveling on stolen passports, a group of Chinese calligraphy artists, 20 employees of U.S. tech firm Freescale Semiconductor, a stunt double for actor Jet Li and several families with young children. Many families lost multiple members.Largest underwater search in historySearch operations began in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, then expanded to the Andaman Sea and the southern Indian Ocean.Australia, Malaysia and China coordinated the largest underwater search in history, covering roughly 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of seabed off western Australia. Aircraft, vessels equipped with sonar and robotic submarines scoured the ocean for signs of the plane.Signals thought to be from the plane’s black box turned out to be from other sources, and no wreckage was found. The first confirmed debris was a flaperon discovered on Réunion Island in July 2015, with additional fragments later found along the east coast of Africa. The search was suspended in January 2017.In 2018, U.S. marine robotics company Ocean Infinity resumed the hunt under a “no find, no fee” agreement, focusing on areas identified through debris drift studies, but it ended without success.The challenge of locating remainsOne reason why such an extensive search failed to turn up clues is that no one knows exactly where to look. The Indian Ocean is the world’s third largest, and the search was conducted in a difficult area, where searchers encountered bad weather and average depths of around 4 kilometers (2.5 miles).It’s not common for planes to disappear in the deep sea, but when they do remains can be very hard to locate. Over the past 50 years, dozens of planes have vanished, according to the Aviation Safety Network.U.S. company resumes searchMalaysia’s government gave the green light in March for another “no-find, no-fee” contract with Ocean Infinity to resume the seabed search operation at a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) site in the ocean. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered.However, the search was suspended in April due to bad weather. The government said Wednesday that Ocean Infinity will resume search intermittently from Dec. 30 for a total of 55 days, in targeted areas believed to have the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft.It is unclear if the company has new evidence of the plane’s location. It has said it would utilize new technology and has worked with many experts to analyze data and narrow the search area to the most likely site.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the United States, a move that comes as President Donald Trump has escalated rhetoric about the state’s Somali community, according to a person familiar with the planning.The operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to zero in on people in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area who have final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain fluid and subject to change.The prospect of an immigration operation centered on Somali migrants is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota as Trump has become increasingly focused on people of Somalian descent living in the U.S., saying recently that they “have caused a lot of trouble,” rhetoric that community leaders say has inflamed tensions and revived fears of profiling.Minnesota has the nation’s largest Somali community. Many fled the long civil war in their east African country and were drawn to the state’s welcoming social programs.Hundreds of people are expected to be targeted in the operation, the person said. As with previous immigration operations, so-called incidental arrests are possible, meaning people who aren’t targeted but lack legal status could also be detained if encountered during the sweep, the person said.The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations that have not been publicly disclosed. The operation was first reported by The New York Times.Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the agency would not discuss “future or potential operations.”“Every day, ICE enforces the laws of the nation across the country. What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally,” McLaughlin said.Trump and other officials in his administration have used increasingly harsh language in recent days against Somalis living in the U.S., after a conservative news outlet, City Journal, claimed that taxpayer dollars from defrauded government programs have flowed to the Somali group al-Shabab.Last month, Trump said he was terminating Temporary Protected Status for Somali migrants living in Minnesota, a legal safeguard against deportation for immigrants from certain countries. A report produced for Congress in August put the number of Somalis covered by the program at just 705 nationwide.Responding to news reports about the potential enforcement activities, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in a post on X, “We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime. But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”Trump has claimed immigrants from Somalia were “completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota” and has demeaned Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee last year.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post Monday that his agency was “investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.”Jaylani Hussein, a Somali American who is executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said his group has heard of “less than a dozen” immigration arrests within the local Somali community in recent days.But Hussein said around 95% of Somalis in Minnesota are U.S. citizens, so the numbers of those at earlier stages of the immigration process are a “pretty small” proportion of the community. He said they estimate that 50% of the community was born in the U.S.“We believe this is political rhetoric and an attack against our community,” Hussein said. “But additional ICE agents means additional pressure on the wider immigrant community,” he said, referring to Hispanics and other Africans.Hussein said the reported crackdown plan is yet another example of the Trump administration “demonizing the Muslim community.” And he said it’s not new that when somebody in the community commits a crime, the entire community will get accused. He said that’s been true of other ethnic groups through American history.__Associated Press journalist Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump called his Cabinet to meet Tuesday morning as the administration insists that it was lawful for the U.S. military to kill survivors of its air strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea in September. Experts in the military code say this was clearly illegal, but The White House said Monday that Navy Vice Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley ordered the second strike and was “within his authority and the law.”The military operation has come under bipartisan scrutiny, with lawmakers citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for a second strike that killed survivors on the boat.Trump vigorously defended Hegseth on Sunday. “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” Trump said. “And I believe him.” Bradley is expected to provide a classified briefing Thursday to lawmakers overseeing the military.The Latest:Former Honduras president released from US prison after Trump pardonJuan Orlando Hernández was serving a 45 year sentence for helping drug traffickers move some 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed Tuesday that he was released from a prison in Hazelton, West Virginia following a pardon from Trump.“After almost four years of pain, of waiting and difficult challenges, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” his wife Ana García posted Tuesday.Asked why he did it, Trump said Sunday that people in Honduras told him Hernández had been falsely accused in “a Biden administration set-up.”The pardon injected a new element into Honduras’ presidential election, possibly helping the candidate from Hernández’ right-wing National Party as the vote count proceeded Tuesday.War College professor emeritus says killing airstrike survivors is ‘clearly unlawful’Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College, said it doesn’t matter whether the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, as the Trump administration asserts — he says such a fatal second strike would have violated both peacetime laws and those governing armed conflict.“I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water,” said Schmitt.“It has been clear for well over a century that you may not declare what’s called ‘no quarter’ — take no survivors, kill everyone,” he said.US envoy will meet Putin in MoscowU.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss an embryonic peace plan that Washington hopes can bring about an end to the nearly four-year war in Ukraine. Coinciding with Witkoff’s trip, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Ireland, continuing his visits to European countries that have helped sustain his country’s fight against Russia’s invasion.Doctor says Trump’s MRI scan had ‘perfectly normal’ resultsTrump’s doctor, Sean Barbabella, said the president had MRI imaging on his heart and abdomen in October as part of a preventative screening for men his age, according to a memo released by the White House on Monday. Barbabella said Trump’s physical exam included “advanced imaging” that is “standard for an executive physical” in Trump’s age group.