KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s transport minister said Sunday that the government is open to new proposals from US technology firm Ocean Infinity or any other companies to resume the hunt for Flight 370, as families of passengers marked the fifth anniversary of the jet’s mysterious disappearance.
Ocean Infinity mounted a “no cure, no fee” search for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean in January 2018 that ended in May without any clue on where it could have crashed. But the company’s CEO, Oliver Plunkett, said in a video shown at the public remembrance event at a mall near Kuala Lumpur that the company hopes to resume the hunt with better technology it obtained in the past year.
The Ocean Infinity mission came a year after an official search by Malaysia, Australia and China ended in futility.
Plunkett said his company has better technology now after successfully locating an Argentinian submarine in November, a year after it went missing. He said the firm is still reviewing all possible data on Flight 370 and thinking about how it can revive its failed mission.
“We haven’t given up hope ... We hope we can continue the search in due course,” Plunkett said.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said it’s been frustrating that the two searches failed to produce any clues and that he “welcomes credible leads and also concrete proposals to resume the search.”
He told reporters later Sunday that the government is “waiting for specific proposals, in particular from Ocean Infinity.” He brushed off suggestions of offering rewards to find the plane, but said the government is willing to discuss proposals from any companies prepared to resume the search.
“There must be a proposal from a specific company ... we cannot just be out there without credible leads. That’s the most practical thing to do,” Loke said.
The plane vanished with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Confirmed debris that washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean helped narrow the search area where Ocean Infinity focused, but it failed to uncover any evidence.
A Malaysian-led independent investigation report released last July showed lapses in the government’s response and raised the possibility of “intervention by a third party.”
Investigators, however, said the cause of the disappearance cannot be determined until the wreckage and the plane’s black boxes are found. The report reiterated Malaysia’s assertion that the plane was deliberately diverted and flown for over seven hours after severing communications.
But it said there was no evidence of abnormal behavior or stress in the two pilots that could lead them to hijack the plane. All the other passengers were also cleared by police and had no pilot training.
Voice 370, a support group for next-of-kin, expressed hope that the new government that won a general election in May last year will do more to encourage search missions and seek new clues.
The group’s spokeswoman, Grace Nathan, urged the government to set aside up to $70 million — the amount it agreed to pay Ocean Infinity had it found the plane — to encourage exploration companies to take on “no cure, no fee” missions so that Flight 370’s passengers will not have died in vain.
“It is a wound that cannot heal” if there is no closure, Nathan said.
Another family member, K.S. Narendran from India, said the burden is on the government to be proactive and not wait for credible evidence to fall on its lap. He said there has been no government effort to find more debris on African beaches and Indian Ocean islands, where scattered pieces of the Boeing 777 have been found.
During the remembrance event, family members lit candles and sang songs in tribute to their loved ones. Relatives and supporters wore light blue T-shirts that read, “It’s not history, it’s the future. Fly safely,” as they reminded the government that the mystery must be solved to ensure aviation safety.
Malaysia to resume MH370 hunt five years on
Malaysia to resume MH370 hunt five years on
- Ocean Infinity mounted a “no cure, no fee” search for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean in January 2018
- But search ended in May without any clue on where it could have crashed
Italian fashion designer Valentino dead at 93
ROME: Valentino Garavani, the jet-set Italian designer whose high-glamor gowns — often in his trademark shade of “Valentino red” — were fashion show staples for nearly half a century, has died at home in Rome, his foundation announced Monday. He was 93.
“Valentino Garavani was not only a constant guide and inspiration for all of us, but a true source of light, creativity and vision,″ the foundation said in a statement posted on social media.
His body will repose at the foundation’s headquarters in Rome on Wednesday and Thursday. The funeral will be held Friday at the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome’s Piazza della Repubblica.
Universally known by his first name, Valentino was adored by generations of royals, first ladies and movie stars, from Jackie Kennedy Onassis to Julia Roberts and Queen Rania of Jordan, who swore the designer always made them look and feel their best.
“I know what women want,” he once remarked. “They want to be beautiful.”
Never one for edginess or statement dressing, Valentino made precious few fashion faux-pas throughout his nearly half-century-long career, which stretched from his early days in Rome in the 1960s through to his retirement in 2008.
His fail-safe designs made Valentino the king of the red carpet, the go-to man for A-listers’ awards ceremony needs. His sumptuous gowns have graced countless Academy Awards, notably in 2001, when Roberts wore a vintage black and white column to accept her best actress statue. Cate Blanchett also wore Valentino — a one-shouldered number in butter-yellow silk — when she won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2004.
Valentino was also behind the long-sleeved lace dress Jacqueline Kennedy wore for her wedding to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. Kennedy and Valentino were close friends for decades, and for a spell the one-time US first lady wore almost exclusively Valentino.
He was also close to Diana, Princess of Wales, who often donned his sumptuous gowns.
Beyond his signature orange-tinged shade of red, other Valentino trademarks included bows, ruffles, lace and embroidery; in short, feminine, flirty embellishments that added to the dresses’ beauty and hence to that of the wearers.
Perpetually tanned and always impeccably dressed, Valentino shared the lifestyle of his jet-set patrons. In addition to his 152-foot (46-meter) yacht and an art collection including works by Picasso and Miro, the couturier owned a 17th-century chateau near Paris with a garden said to boast more than a million roses.
Valentino and his longtime partner Giancarlo Giammetti flitted among their homes — which also included places in New York, London, Rome, Capri and Gstaad, Switzerland — traveling with their pack of pugs. The pair regularly received A-list friends and patrons, including Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow.
“When I see somebody and unfortunately she’s relaxed and running around in jogging trousers and without any makeup ... I feel very sorry,” the designer told RTL television in a 2007 interview. “For me, woman is like a beautiful, beautiful flower bouquet. She has always to be sensational, always to please, always to be perfect, always to please the husband, the lover, everybody. Because we are born to show ourselves always at our best.”
Valentino was born into a well-off family in the northern Italian town of Voghera on May 11, 1932. He said it was his childhood love of cinema that set him down the fashion path.
“I was crazy for silver screen, I was crazy for beauty, to see all those movie stars being sensation, well dressed, being always perfect,” he explained in the 2007 television interview.
After studying fashion in Milan and Paris, he spent much of the 1950s working for established Paris-based designer Jean Desses and later Guy Laroche before striking out on his own. He founded the house of Valentino on Rome’s Via Condotti in 1959.
From the beginning, Giammetti was by his side, handling the business aspect while Valentino used his natural charm to build a client base among the world’s rich and fabulous.
After some early financial setbacks — Valentino’s tastes were always lavish, and the company spent with abandon — the brand took off.
Early fans included Italian screen sirens Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, as well as Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. Legendary American Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland also took the young designer under her wing.
Over the years, Valentino’s empire expanded as the designer added ready-to-wear, menswear and accessories lines to his stable. Valentino and Giammetti sold the label to an Italian holding company for an estimated $300 million in 1998. Valentino would remain in a design role for another decade.
In 2007, the couturier feted his 45th anniversary in fashion with a 3-day-long blowout in Rome, capped with a grand ball in the Villa Borghese gallery.
Valentino retired in 2008 and was briefly replaced by fellow Italian Alessandra Facchinetti, who had stepped into Tom Ford’s shoes at Gucci before being sacked after two seasons.
Facchinetti’s tenure at Valentino proved equally short. As early as her first show for the label, rumors swirled that she was already on her way out, and just about one year after she was hired, Facchinetti was indeed replaced by two longtime accessories designers at the brand, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli.
Chiuri left to helm Dior in 2016, and Piccioli continued to lead the house through a golden period that drew on the launch of the Rockstud pump with Chiuri and his own signature color, a shade of fuchsia called Pink PP. He left the house in 2024, later joining Balenciaga, and has been replaced by Alessandro Michele, who revived Gucci’s stars with romantic, genderless styles.
Valentino is owned by Qatar’s Mayhoola, which controls a 70 percent stake, and the French luxury conglomerate Kering, which owns 30 percent with an option to take full control in 2028 or 2029. Richard Bellini was named CEO last September.
Valentino has been the subject of several retrospectives, including one at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, which is housed in a wing of Paris’ Louvre Museum. He was also the subject of a hit 2008 documentary, “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” that chronicled the end of his career in fashion.
In 2011, Valentino and Giammetti launched what they called a “virtual museum,” a free desktop application that allows viewers to feast their eyes on about 300 of the designer’s iconic pieces.
