The Untold Truth Of Palm Oil

Palm oil plantation in Malaysia. Image: Carol Nora/Getty

BY ANITA SUREWICZ

From baked goods to toothpaste, palm oil is an ingredient in a huge number of everyday staples. In fact, each of us consumes around eight kilograms of palm oil a year (via Guardian). Grown on oil palm trees, palm oil comes in two varieties. The first one is extracted from the mesocarp or pulp that sits between the seed or kernel and the outer skin of the fruit. And the second is from the fruit's kernel. While the former is commonly used in edibles, the latter makes frequent appearances in products such as cosmetics, soaps, and candles. Palm oil is also often used to make biofuels (via Report Linker).

There's a good reason why palm oil is such a popular commodity. The crop is cheap and efficient to grow — the tall, leafy plants need around one-ninth of the land required by some other oil-producing crops to cultivate the same amount of vegetable oil (via Mongabay News). The news isn't all good, however. Despite its effectiveness, palm oil has attracted its fair share of controversy, with the contentious plant blamed for deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and increased CO2 emissions. Keep reading to find out more about this ubiquitous ingredient.

Palm oil originated in West Africa

Palm fruit, kernels, and oil were already a part of the West African diet around 5,000 years ago. Indigenous to the area, the crop became popular in Western and Central Africa after a prolonged dry period some 2,500 years ago when it was grown in semi-wild groves. Today, palm oil is still used in West African cuisine and is a key element of Nigeria's Yoruba culture. "When a couple is about to get married, [their loved ones] bless them with palm oil and they say, may their life be as sweet as the palm oil is," Simi Adebajo, the head chef and owner of San Francisco catering business Eko Kitchen told Eater.

The palm oil boom in Europe started with the slave trade in the 16th century when the crop was used to feed enslaved African people while in transit on ships. Later, palm oil started being used to lubricate machinery and make soap. After the African slave trade was made illegal in 1807, Europeans continued to transport palm oil as a product. In fact, when European countries divided Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884, England ended up with colonial powers over Nigeria, partly due to the influence of a British palm oil estate owner George Goldie who had been transporting the commodity from West Africa.

Most of the world's palm oil is harvested in Indonesia and Malaysia

While Nigeria remains a substantial producer of palm oil, today most of the crop is harvested in Indonesia and Malaysia. In fact, the two Southeast Asian countries make up 84% of the world's palm oil production (via Green Palm). This isn't surprising since the optimal growing conditions for palm oil are the tropical climates within 10 degrees of the equator. And West Africa stopped being an appealing producer option in the 1960s due to the region's deteriorating political situation.

Palm oil is not indigenous to Southeast Asia. Rather, it was first brought to the region as an ornamental plant in the 19th century. The story is that Dutch botanists planted some of the first palm oil seedlings at the botanical gardens in Bogor just outside Indonesia's capital Jakarta. Impressed with how well the plants adapted to the Southeast Asian climate, Belgian entrepreneur Adrien Hallet founded Indonesia's first palm oil plantation at Poeloe Radja in Sumatra in 1911. He then helped to establish Malaysia's first commercial plantation in Selangor in 1917. In 1936, Sumatra alone had eclipsed Nigeria in palm oil exports. By 1939, there were more than 100,000 hectares of estates in Malaysia and Indonesia (via China Dialogue).

Palm oil is an extremely efficient crop

Out of the world's four main oil crops — the other three include sunflower oil, canola oil, and soybean oil — palm oil is by far the most efficient. Around 40% of the world's palm oil is grown on just 6% of the land used to cultivate all other vegetable oils (via CSPO). According to The Conversation, over 50 million additional hectares of land would be required if other oil crops were to replace the edible oil produced by palm trees.

More specifically, a single palm tree can produce approximately 40 kilograms of palm oil annually, with one hectare of the crop producing around 3.8 tons of palm oil every year — this is seven times more than canola oil plants, 10 times more than sunflower oil plants, and 11 times more than soybean oil plants (via Palm Oil Alliance). In addition, palm oil trees have a 25-year life cycle and are a perennial crop that produces fruit all year long.

Palm oil is popular for cooking

Not all oils — or cooking fats — are created equal. Some fats, such as olive oil, are great when consumed cold as a part of salad dressings while others perform better as cooking oils. Palm oil has a rich and creamy texture and no smell, which makes it a favorite ingredient in grilling, frying, sautéing, and baking. Palm oil is also rich in vitamin E tocotrienols, an antioxidant credited with delaying the aging process. Plus, red palm oil retains its vitamin E content even after it's been used for frying three times when other oils lose their vitamin content after a single use. On the downside, palm oil is relatively high in saturated fats, a substance that has been linked with heart disease (via WebMD).

Some oils release toxic chemicals when heated above a certain temperature. Since saturated fats are more stable when heated and palm oil is composed of around 50% saturated fat, it's extremely heat resistant, which makes it great for cooking. Palm oil has a smoke point of 450 degrees Fahrenheit compared to 380 degrees Fahrenheit for olive oil and 400 degrees Fahrenheit for canola oil (via Palm Oil Health). In addition, palm oil acts as a natural preservative for both edibles and other products, allowing food products to retain both their flavor and texture for longer.

Around half of the goods purchased in the U.S. contain palm oil

From ready-to-eat foods to cosmetics or even glue, around 50% of the goods sold in the U.S. contain palm oil. The ingredient is commonly used in lipsticks since it's tasteless and has a high melting point and smooth application. It's also often used to pre-cook instant noodles, and to give a creamy texture to both ice cream and cookies. Margarine is also packed with palm oil due to the fact that the ingredient solidifies at room temperature and contains no trans fats. Away from edibles, palm oil can be found in shampoos, detergents, soaps, and washing powders (via World Wildlife Fund).

Telling whether a product contains palm oil can be a tall order since its derivatives are often listed under a plethora of names, such as glyceryl stearate, Elaeis guineensis, or stearic acid (via Friends of the Earth). And while palm oil is ubiquitous on supermarket shelves, only around 10% of products that contain it feature the words "palm oil" clearly marked on the label (via Guardian).

Palm oil is used in the biofuel industry

Biofuels, or fuels made from plant products, were once considered an eco-friendly alternative to diesel and petrol. In 2003, the E.U. mandated that biofuels would have to make up 10% of all fuel used for transport by 2020. However, things didn't work out according to plan. A 2015 report found that greenhouse emissions caused by palm oil-related deforestation were three times higher than the CO2 emissions they replaced. Not surprisingly, the E.U. has now taken steps to reduce imports of palm oil used to make biofuels. (via China Dialogue).

Today, only a tiny percentage of palm oil is used for biofuel production in Western countries, with most of it added to food products and cosmetics. More specifically, only around 5% of the palm oil imported into the E.U. was utilized as an energy source for electricity, heat, and biodiesel in 2016. The U.S. uses corn and soybeans, rather than palm oil, to produce biodiesel (via BMC). Unfortunately, while the E.U is working to reduce palm oil biofuels, some Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia are actually moving to increase their use of biodiesel.

Palm oil is one of the leading causes of deforestation and biodiversity loss

According to Rainforest Rescue, palm oil plantations cover over 27 million hectares of land across the globe. And each year, more and more tropical rainforests are being decimated to make room for palm oil plantations. It's been estimated that an area the size of 300 football fields is cleared each hour to make way for palm oil estates. According to satellite data released by Global Forest Watch, the size of humid primary forest decreased by 10% in Indonesia and 17% in Malaysia between 2002 and 2020 due to forest clearing (via Bloomberg).

The relentless deforestation has had a devastating effect on wildlife, destroying the habitat of endangered species such as Sumatran rhinos and orangutans. A 2020 study found that Bornean Orangutans lost over one-third of their habitat due to land clearing from 1973 to 2015. In addition, palm oil-related deforestation is currently a threat to around 200 at-risk animal species (via Union for the Conservation of Nature).

Palm oil also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming through the processing and transportation of the product. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, palm oil plantations contribute to the release of around 500 million tons of carbon dioxide each year — this is 1.4% of the world's net CO2 emissions (via Bloomberg). This is partly because peatlands, which contain 10 times the carbon of mineral soil, are burned to make way for plantations, releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere (via The Great Projects).

Demand for palm oil is on the rise

Palm oil is widely used in edibles, cosmetics, and other products, and the demand for the crop is not showing any signs of slowing down. In 2020, more than 73 million tons of palm oil were consumed worldwide. And the demand for the crop is projected to quadruple by 2050 reaching around 250 to 300 million tons (via Eater). Likewise, the global palm oil market is expected to grow from $42.8 billion in 2020 to $57.2 billion by 2026.

The global need for palm oil has been growing steadily along with globalization. In the U.S. and Europe, palm oil imports started increasing dramatically after the regulators began banning unhealthy trans fats from edible goods. Between 1995 and 2015 alone, the yearly production of palm oil increased four-fold from 15.2 million tons to 62.6 million tons (via Guardian). In the U.S., palm oil imports increased almost tenfold from 2000 to 2020, with the country making up 26.98% of the world's palm oil market share in 2021.

Certified sustainable palm oil products are better for the planet

While palm oil is blamed for deforestation and loss of biodiversity in Southeast Asia, boycotting the product is unlikely to be an answer to the problem. In Malaysia and Indonesia, around 4.5 million people make a living from palm oil. And since palm oil is such an effective crop, replacing it with another product would require even more land, which would mean even more logging and burning of peatland.

Luckily, the rise of sustainable palm oil production in the past 15 years is leading to a shift in the production methods within the industry. The movement has been spurred by governments and organizations such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which has set standards to improve sustainability across the industry. Companies within the palm oil production chain that adhere to these standards receive the Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) accreditation. Set up in 2004, today RSPO has over 4,000 members, with 20% of the palm oil cultivated in 2020 classified as CSPO (via The Conversation).

Malaysian Financier Charged In Multibillion-Dollar Scheme

In this April 23, 2015 file photo, Jho Low, Director of the Jynwel Foundation, poses at the launch of the Global Daily website in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018, charged the fugitive Malaysian financier in a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund created to promote economic development projects in that country. The three-count indictment charges Low Taek Jho, who is also known as Jho Low, with misappropriating money from the state-owned fund and using it for bribes and kickbacks to foreign officials, to pay for luxury real estate, art and jewelry in the United States and to fund Hollywood movies, including "The Wolf of Wall Street." (Photo by Stuart Ramson/Invision for the United Nations Foundation/AP Images)

BY ERIC TUCKER & JIM MUSTIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department announced charges Thursday against a fugitive Malaysian financier and two former Goldman Sachs bankers accused in a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund created to spur economic development projects in that country.

A three-count indictment charges Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, with misappropriating money from the state-owned fund and using it for bribes and kickbacks to foreign officials, to pay for luxury real estate, art and jewelry in the United States and to help finance Hollywood movies, including “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Also charged was a former Goldman Sachs banker, Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy and to conspiring to violate foreign bribery laws. Another former bank official, Ng Chong Hwa, 51, also known as Roger Ng, was arrested earlier Thursday in Malaysia and accused of circumventing internal accounting controls, prosecutors said.

Leissner’s attorney did not return messages seeking comment. It was not clear if Ng had a lawyer.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs, which the indictment says raised about $6.5 billion through bond offerings for the fund, said the firm “continues to cooperate with all authorities investigating this matter.”

Police in Malaysia said in July that Low had fled Macau to an unknown destination. Before facing criminal charges, Low became well known in the New York City and Los Angeles club scenes. In 2012, he threw a lavish 31st birthday bash attended by Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian and other celebrities that The Wall Street Journal called the “wildest party (Las) Vegas ever saw.”

Low, who remains at large, issued a statement through a spokesman maintaining his innocence.

“Mr. Low simply asks that the public keep an open mind regarding this case until all of the evidence comes to light, which he believes will vindicate him,” the statement said.

Leissner acknowledged paying millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to government officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi, according to court records. He was ordered to forfeit $43.7 million as part of his guilty plea.

The set of charges represent the first criminal prosecutions in the U.S. arising from the epic corruption scandal at the state investment fund known as 1MDB. The Justice Department in 2016 moved to recover more than $1 billion that it said had been stolen, filing a civil complaint that sought the forfeiture of property, including a Manhattan penthouse, a Beverly Hills mansion, a luxury jet and paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.

In a speech last year in Washington, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions denounced the scandal as “kleptocracy at its worst.” The pilfered funds were used on a “lavish spending spree,” the attorney general said, including a $265 million yacht and a $100 million investment in the music label EMI.

“In total, 1MDB officials allegedly laundered more than $4.5 billion in funds through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts in countries ranging from Switzerland and Singapore to Luxembourg and the United States,” Sessions said.

The fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, was set up in 2009 by then-Prime Minister Najib Razak to promote economic development. It relied primarily on debt to fund investment and economic development projects and was overseen by senior Malaysian government officials, according to court records.

Najib chaired its advisory board and as finance minister held veto power over its activities. Low, a friend of Najib’s stepson Riza Aziz, had no official role at 1MDB but had considerable influence over its dealings and was in frequent contact with Najib, U.S. authorities have said.

“As noted in the indictment today, Mr. Low held no formal position at 1MDB, nor was he ever employed by Goldman Sachs, or the Governments of Malaysia or Abu Dhabi,” Low’s spokesman said.

The scandal has already had major political ramifications in Malaysia, where Najib in 2015 sacked his attorney general and a deputy prime minister for demanding answers about 1MDB. A parliamentary inquiry found many irregularities but had no mandate to prosecute.

Former leader Mahathir Mohammad, outraged over the scandal, came out of retirement and the opposition united behind him in the national elections, leading to Najib’s ouster in May.

Najib and his former treasury chief were charged last week with criminal breach of trust involving 6.64 billion ringgit ($1.6 billion), charges that came on top of 32 earlier counts of corruption, breach of trust and money laundering that Najib faces in connection with the 1MDB scandal.

Najib and Mohamad Irwan Serigar Abdullah, the former treasury secretary-general, pleaded not guilty to misappropriating government funds between December 2016 and December 2017. Police have also seized hundreds of luxury handbags, jewelry and cash — worth more than $266 million — during raids on apartments linked to Najib’s family.

An attorney for Najib, Shafee Abdullah, dismissed the latest charges as “foolish.”

Mustian reported from New York.

Malaysia To Pay Firm Up To $70M If It Finds Missing Plane

Director General of Civil Aviation Malaysia, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, left, shakes hand and exchanges the Memorandum of Understanding documents with CEO of Ocean Infinity Limited, Oliver Plunkett, right, during the signing ceremony of the MH370 missing plane search operations between Malaysian government and Ocean Infinity Limited in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018.


PUTRAJAYA, MALAYSIA (AP) — Malaysia's government said Wednesday it will pay U.S. company Ocean Infinity up to $70 million if it can find the wreckage or black boxes of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 within three months, in a renewed bid to solve the plane's disappearance nearly four years ago.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said there was an 85 percent chance of finding the debris in a new 25,000 square kilometers (9,653 square miles) area — roughly the size of Vermont — identified by experts.

The government signed a "no cure, no fee" deal with the Houston, Texas-based company to resume the hunt for the plane, a year after the official search by Malaysia, Australia and China in the southern Indian Ocean was called off. The plane vanished on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

"The primary mission by Ocean Infinity is to identify the location of the wreckage and/or both of the flight recorders ... and present a considerable and credible evidence to confirm the exact location of the two main items," he told a news conference.

If the mission is successful within three months, payment will be made based on the size of the area searched. Liow said the government will pay Ocean Infinity $20 million for 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square mile) of a successful search, $30 million for 15,000 square kilometers (5,790 sq. miles), $50 million for 25,000 square kilometers (9653 sq. miles) and $70 million if the plane or recorders are found beyond the identified area.


Ocean Infinity Chief Executive Oliver Plunkett said the search vessel Seabed Constuctor, which left the South African port of Durban last week, is expected to reach the southern Indian Ocean by Jan. 17 to begin the hunt.

He said eight autonomous underwater vehicles, which are drones fitted with high-tech cameras, sonars and sensors, will be dispatched to map the seabed at a faster pace. Plunkett said the underwater drones can cover 1,200 square kilometers (463 sq. miles) a day and complete the 25,000 square kilometers within a month.

"We have a realistic prospect of finding it," he said. "While there can be no guarantees of locating the aircraft, we believe our system of multiple autonomous vehicles working simultaneously is well suited to the task at hand."

The official search was extremely difficult because no transmissions were received from the aircraft after its first 38 minutes of flight. Systems designed to automatically transmit the flight's position failed to work after this point, said a final report from Australian Transport Safety Board last January.

"I feel very happy but at the same time very panicky whether it can be found or not. Now it's back to four years ago where we have to wait everyday (to find out) whether debris can be found," said Shin Kok Chau, whose wife Tan Ser Kuin was a flight attendant on MH370.

Underwater wreck hunter David Mearns said the new search takes into account oceanographic models used to drastically narrow the possible locations of the crash and deploys state-of-the art underwater vehicles that will allow the company to cover far more seabed at a faster pace.

"There are no guarantees in a search of this type. However, notwithstanding that uncertainty, this upcoming search is the best chance yet that the aircraft wreckage will be found," said Mearns, director of Blue Water Recoveries Ltd.

Malaysia Official: N.Korea Leader's Brother Slain At Airport

The Associated Press

February 14, 2017

A TV screen shows a picture of Kim Jong Nam, the older brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017. Malaysian officials say a North Korean man has died after suddenly becoming ill at Kuala Lumpur's airport. The district police chief said Tuesday Feb. 14, 2017 he could not confirm South Korean media reports that the man was Kim Jong Nam, the older brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. .


KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (AP) — The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was assassinated at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, telling medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray, a Malaysian official said Tuesday.

Kim Jong Nam, 46, was targeted Monday in the shopping concourse at the airport and had not gone through immigration yet for his flight to Macau, said the senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves sensitive diplomacy.

He was taken to the airport clinic and then died on the way to the hospital, the official said. Kim Jong Nam was estranged from his younger brother, the North Korean leader. He had been tipped by outsiders to succeed their dictator father, but reportedly fell out of favor when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He was believed to have been living recently in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia.

Multiple South Korean media reports, citing unidentified sources, said Kim Jong Nam was killed at the airport by two women believed to be North Korean agents. They fled in a taxi and were being sought by Malaysian police, the reports said.

A Malaysian police statement confirmed the death of a 46-year-old North Korean man whom it identified from his travel document as Kim Chol, born in Pyongyang on June 10, 1970. "Investigation is in progress and a post mortem examination request has been made to ascertain the cause of death," the statement said.

Ken Gause, at the CNA think tank in Washington who has studied North Korea's leadership for 30 years, said Kim Chol was a name that Kim Jong Nam has traveled under. He is believed to have been born May 10, 1971, although birthdays are always unclear for senior North Koreans, Gause said.

Mark Tokola, vice president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington and a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, said it would be surprising if Kim Jong Nam was not killed on the orders of his brother, given that North Korean agents have reportedly tried to assassinate Kim Jong Nam in the past.

"It seems probable that the motivation for the murder was a continuing sense of paranoia on the part of Kim Jong Un," Tokola wrote in a commentary Tuesday. Although there was scant evidence that Kim Jong Nam was plotting against the North Korean leader, he provided an alternative for North Koreans who would want to depose his brother.

In Washington, the State Department said it was aware of reports of Kim Jong Nam's death but declined to comment, referring questions to Malaysian authorities. The reported killing came as North Korea celebrated its latest missile launch, which foreign experts were analyzing for evidence of advancement in the country's missile capabilities. For the next several days, North Korea will be marking the birthday of its late leader Kim Jong Il, the brothers' father, though they have different mothers. The major holiday this Thursday is called the "Day of the Shining Star" and will be feted with figure skating and synchronized swimming exhibitions, fireworks and mass rallies.

Since taking power in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a slew of high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a "reign of terror." The most spectacular was the 2013 execution by anti-aircraft fire of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once considered the country's second-most-powerful man, for what the North alleged was treason.

Gause said Kim Jong Nam had been forthright that he did not have political ambitions, although he was publicly critical of the North Korean regime and his brother's legitimacy in the past. Kim Jong Nam had been less outspoken since 2011, when North Korean assassins reportedly tried to shoot him in Macau, Gause said, though the details of the attempted killing are murky. South Korea also reportedly jailed a North Korean spy in 2012 who admitted to trying to organize a hit-and-run accident targeting Kim Jong Nam in China in 2010.

Despite the attempts on his life, Kim Jong Nam had reportedly traveled to North Korea since then, so it was assumed he was no longer under threat. Kim Jong Nam may have become more vulnerable as his defender in the North Korean hierarchy, Kim Kyong Hui — Kim Jong Un's aunt and the husband of his executed uncle, Jang Song Thaek — appears to have fallen from favor or died. She has not been seen in public for more than three years, Gause said.

Kim Jong Il had at least three sons with two women, as well as a daughter by a third. Kim Jong Nam was the eldest, followed by Kim Jong Chul, who is a few years older than Kim Jong Un and is known as a playboy who reportedly attended Eric Clapton concerts in London in 2015. It's unclear what positon he has in the North Korean government. A younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was named a member of the Workers' Party of Korea's Central Committee during a North Korean party congress last May. She has a position in a propaganda and agitation department and is known as Kim Jong Un's gatekeeper, Gause said.

While the most likely explanation for the killing was that Kim Jong Un was removing a potential challenger to North Korean leadership within his own family, he could also be sending a warning to North Korean officials to demonstrate the reach of the regime. It follows the defection last year of a senior diplomat from the North Korean Embassy in London who has spoken of his despair at Kim's purges.

Evans Revere, a former U.S. diplomat and specialist on East Asia, said the killing did not mean the North Korean regime was unstable. He said it showed Kim Jong Un's brutal control and ability to eliminate opponents or perceived opponents.

Victor Cha, a former White House director for Asian affairs, disagreed. "He sacks the minister of state security last month and now kills the elder brother. Doesn't look so stable to me," Cha said.

Pennington reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Malaysia: 2 More Pieces 'Almost Certainly' From Flight 370

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Well wishes are written on a wall of hope during a remembrance event for the ill fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysia's government said Thursday, May 12, 2016, that two more pieces of debris, discovered in South Africa and Rodrigues Island off Mauritius, were "almost certainly" from Flight 370, which mysteriously disappeared more than two years ago with 239 people on board.


KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (AP) — Malaysia's government said Thursday that two more pieces of debris, discovered in South Africa and Rodrigues Island off Mauritius, were "almost certainly" from Flight 370, bringing the total number of pieces believed to have come from the missing Malaysian jet to five.

The aircraft mysteriously disappeared more than two years ago with 239 people on board, and so far an extensive underwater search of a vast area of the Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast has turned up empty.

Though the discovery of the debris has bolstered authorities' assertion that the plane went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean, none of the parts have thus far yielded any clues into exactly where and why the aircraft crashed. Those elusive answers lie with the flight data recorders, or black boxes, which may never be found, said Geoff Dell, a specialist in accident investigation at Central Queensland University in Australia.

"It shows they're looking in the right ocean — that's about it," Dell said. Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the two new parts were an engine cowling piece with a partial Rolls-Royce logo and an interior panel piece from an aircraft cabin — the first interior part found from the missing plane.

An international team of experts in Australia who examined the debris concluded that both pieces were consistent with panels found on a Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 777 aircraft, Liow said. "As such, the team has confirmed that both pieces of debris from South Africa and Rodrigues Island are almost certainly from MH370," he said in a statement.

All five pieces have been found in various spots around the Indian Ocean. Last year, a wing part from the plane washed ashore on France's Reunion Island. Then in March, investigators confirmed two pieces of debris found along Mozambique's coast were almost certainly from the aircraft.

The jet, which vanished on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is believed to have crashed somewhere in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) off Australia's west coast. Authorities had predicted that any debris from the plane that isn't on the ocean floor would eventually be carried by currents to the east coast of Africa.

Investigators are examining marine life attached to the debris to see if it could somehow help them narrow down where it entered the ocean, but haven't discovered anything useful yet. The interior part, identified by its decorative laminate, is a panel from the main cabin and believed to be part of a door closet, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a technical report.

But even this interior piece is also unlikely to prove very helpful to investigators, said Dell, the accident investigation expert. It won't, for example, answer the question that some have raised about whether anyone was still at the controls of the plane at the end of its flight, or whether the plane spiraled uncontrollably into the water after running out of fuel.

"I wouldn't hang your hat too much on what it says, other than it's got to come out of the airplane somehow and that suggests there was a structural failure in the fuselage that allowed it to get out," he said. "But how, exactly — who knows?"

That part was found by tourists on Rodrigues Island, while the piece with part of a Rolls-Royce logo was found by an archaeologist while walking along South Africa's southern coast. So far, crews have combed more than 105,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of an underwater search zone to no avail. They expect to complete their sweep of the area by the end of June.

__ Associated Press writer Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.

Air Asia Plane With 162 On Board Missing In Indonesia

A relative of AirAsia flight QZ8501 passengers weeps as she waits for the latest news on the missing jetliner at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014. The AirAsia plane with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control on Sunday while flying over the Java Sea after taking off from the provincial city in Indonesia for Singapore.

JAKARTA, INDONESIA (AP) — A massive sea search was underway for an AirAsia plane that disappeared Sunday while flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board through airspace possibly thick with dense storm clouds, strong winds and lightning, officials said.

More than 12 hours later, shocked family members huddled at the Surabaya airport from where the Airbus A320 had taken off, awaiting any news of the jetliner operated by an airline whose parent company is based in Malaysia. It is the third incident involving Malaysia this year following two of the worst aviation tragedies that hit Malaysia Airlines -- in March Flight 370 disappeared with 239 people and in July Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on it.

Indonesia and Singapore launched a search and rescue operation for Flight 8501 near Belitung island in Java Sea over which the jetliner lost contact with ground traffic control, about 42 minutes after taking off from Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. The flight had completed a little less than half of its journey time to Singapore.

"We hope we can find the location of the plane as soon as possible, and we hope that God will give us guidance to find it," Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation, told reporters. "We don't dare to presume what has happened except that it has lost contact,"

He said the last communication between the pilot and air traffic control was at 6:13 a.m. (2313 GMT Saturday) when the pilot "asked to avoid clouds by turning left and going higher to 34,000 feet (10,360 meters)." It was last seen on radar at 6:16 a.m., and a minute later was no longer there, he said.

He said there was no distress signal from the cockpit of the twin-engine, single-aisle plane. AirAsia, a regional low-cost carrier founded in 2001 by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes, said in a statement that the plane was on the submitted flight plan route. However, it had requested deviation due to weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of Indonesian Air Traffic Control.

AirAsia, which has a presence in most of Southeast Asia and recently in India, has never lost a plane before and has a good safety track record. Sunardi, a weather forecaster at the Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency who uses only one name, said dense storm clouds were detected up to 44,000 feet in the same area at the time the plane was reported to have lost contact.

"There could have been turbulence, lightning and vertical as well as horizontal strong winds within such clouds," he said. The plane had an Indonesian captain and a French co-pilot, five cabin crew and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, AirAsia Indonesia said in a statement. Among the passengers were three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia. The rest were Indonesians.

It said the captain had a total of 6,100 flying hours, a substantial number, and the first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours. At Surabaya airport, dozens of relatives sat in a room, many of them talking on mobile phones and crying. Some looked dazed. As word spread, more and more family members were arriving at the crisis center to await word.

Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan told reporters in Surabaya that search and rescue efforts now involved the Indonesian army, the national Search and Rescue Agency as well as Singapore and Malaysia. The Search and Rescue Agency's operation chief, Maj. Gen. Tatang Zaenudin, said 200 rescuers had been deployed to the east side of Belitung island.

Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto said three aircraft, including a surveillance plane, had been dispatched to the area. The Singapore air force and the navy also were searching with two C-130 planes.

Airbus said in a statement that the aircraft was delivered to AirAsia in October 2008, which would make it six years old. It said the plane had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours in some 13,600 flights. AirAsia said the aircraft had last undergone scheduled maintenance on Nov. 16.

Malaysia-based AirAsia, which has dominated cheap travel in the region for years, flies short routes of just a few hours, connecting large cities of Southeast Asia. However, recently it has tried to expand into long-distance flying through its sister airline AirAsia X. AirAsia Malaysia owns 49 percent of its subsidiary, AirAsia Indonesia.

Fernandes, who is the face of AirAsia and an active Twitter user, sent out a tweet saying: "Thank you for all your thoughts and prays. We must stay strong." He tweeted later that he was heading to Surabaya.

Fernandes stirred controversy earlier this year after incorrectly tweeting that Malaysia Airlines flight 370, now synonymous with one of aviation's enduring mysteries, had landed safely. The wide-bodied Boeing 777 disappeared soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8. It remains missing until this day with 239 people.

Another Malaysia Airlines flight, also a Boeing 777, was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine while on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17. A total of 298 people on board were killed.

William Waldock, an expert on air crash search and rescue with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, cautioned against drawing comparisons to the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370.

"I think we have to let this play out," he said. "Hopefully, the airplane will get found, and if that happens, it will probably be in the next few hours. Until then, we have to reserve judgment." The circumstances bode well for finding the plane since the intended flight time was less than two hours and there is a known position at which the plane disappeared, he said.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, expressed solidarity with AirAsia. In a tweet he said: "Very sad to hear that AirAsia Indonesia QZ8501 is missing. My thoughts are with the families. Malaysia stands ready to help."

President Barack Obama, who was vacationing in Hawaii, was briefed Sunday evening on the plane's disappearance, and officials were tracking the situation, the White House said. The Airbus A320 is a workhorse of modern aviation. Similar to the Boeing 737, it is used to connect cities anywhere from one to five hours apart. There are currently 3,606 A320s in operation worldwide, according to Airbus. The A320 family of jets, which includes A319 and A321, has a very good safety record, with just 0.14 fatal accidents per million takeoffs, according to a safety study published by Boeing in August.

It's too early to say what might have caused a crash, but the safest part of a trip is when a plane is flying at its cruising elevation. Just 10 percent of fatal crashes from 2004 through 2013 occurred while a plane was in that stage of flight, according to the August Boeing safety report.

However, in 2007, an Indonesia-owned Adam Air flight carrying 102 people vanished during a domestic flight. Debris was found a few days later, but much of the fuselage remains on the ocean floor. In 1995, another Indonesian plane, Merpati Nusantara Airlines, also disappeared over open water while flying between islands in the archipelago nation. The 14 crew and passengers were never found.

Passing through bad weather, such as severe thunderstorms, could have been a factor. Airbus jets are very sophisticated and are able to automatically adjust to wind shears or other weather disruptions. However, weather has played a role in past air disasters that occurred at cruise elevation, including the 2009 Air France Flight 447 crash over the Atlantic Ocean.

Another possibility is some type of catastrophic metal fatigue caused by the cycle of pressurization and depressurization associated with each takeoff and landing cycle - something that flight 8501 would have done a lot. Still, metal fatigue is unlikely because this plane is only six years old.

__ Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Austin, TX, Scott Mayerowitz in New York and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.

MH17 Remains Return Home As Govt. Battles Fallout

Family members of Nur Shazana, a Malaysia Airlines crew member who was among the victims onboard Flight MH17, cry during a burial ceremony at Taman Selatan Muslim cemetery in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Friday, Aug. 22, 2014. Carried by soldiers and draped in the national flag, coffins carrying Malaysian victims of Flight MH17 returned home Friday to a country still searching for those onboard another doomed jet and a government battling the political fallout of the twin tragedies.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (AP) — Carried by soldiers and draped in the national flag, coffins carrying Malaysian victims of Flight MH17 returned home Friday to a country still searching for those onboard another doomed jet and a government battling the political fallout of the twin tragedies.

The bodies and ashes of 20 victims from the Malaysia Airlines jet that was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July were given full military honors and a day of national mourning was declared, the first in the country's history.

Many people in offices in the nation of 30 million observed a minute's silence as the hearses were driven from the tarmac of Kuala Lumpur International Airport to private funerals. Some public trains in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, stopped operating.

All 298 people onboard died when the jet was shot down over an area of Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatists on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The victims included 43 Malaysians and 195 Dutch nationals. An international investigation is ongoing, but no one has been arrested.

The return of the bodies also represented a political triumph for Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose already shaky popularity ratings were hit by his handling of the still unsolved disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew in March.

"Today we mourn the loss of our people. Today, we begin to bring them home," Najib said in a statement. "Our thoughts and our prayers are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives. Today we stand with you, united as one."

Najib claimed personal credit for negotiating a deal with pro-Russian separatists for the return of all the bodies of the 298 people on board. Few details have been released over what the separatists were given in return, and some critics have said that the negotiations with people many regard as terrorists set a dangerous precedent.

"Everyone wants closure for the families, there is no question," said Bridget Welsh, a research associate at the National Taiwan University. "But on the other hand, they (Najib's advisers) saw this as an opportunity for him to look good. It was critical for the government to be seen as responsive and differentiate itself from the handling of MH370."

The victims were carried aboard a specially chartered Malaysia Airlines jet from Amsterdam, where they were taken from the crash site. Three had already been cremated. The coffins were individually lowered from the plane and slowly carried by teams of eight soldiers to waiting hearses.

"They were casualties of war, unfortunately, and the world community needs to work toward a solution to these conflicts," said Abdul Mueiem, a Malaysia Airlines pilot who attended the ceremony. "Everyone is feeling sad and depressed, but the important thing is that Malaysia Airlines is one big family, and we are together with the nation."

The repatriation was the first of the Malaysian passengers and crew on the flight. The government has said that the bodies of the remaining Malaysians would follow soon. The country may never witness a similar homecoming for the victims on board Flight 370. The plane went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and is believed to have crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

After several surface and underwater searches have turned up nothing, a new underwater search is expected to begin in September and take up to a year to search 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) of the Indian Ocean seabed.

Assuming the plane is found, the depth of the ocean will make recovery of any bodies difficult. Relatives might also prefer the bodies to stay where they are.

Associated Press videojournalist Syawalludin Zain contributed to this report. Brummitt reported from Singapore.

Follow Chris Brummitt at www.twitter.com/cjbrummitt

Observers Turned Back From Ukraine Crash Site

Paul Picard, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Russia's southern Rostov-on-Don region, center, meets with local administration in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Wednesday, July 30, 2014. The first members of the team of civilian monitors arrived in Russia's southern Rostov-on-Don region where they were expected to hold meetings with officials from the regional administration, border guards and customs service, said OSCE spokeswoman Tatyana Baeva.

DONETSK, UKRAINE (AP) — International observers have turned back from another attempt to reach the site where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down in eastern Ukraine.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set out in two vehicles without crash investigators from the Netherlands who have been trying to reach the site for several days.

The OSCE observers turned back to the city of Donetsk after discussions with rebels. Safety concerns and hindrance from the separatists who control the area have kept the investigation team away. Foreign governments whose citizens died have complained the site is not secured and some human remains have not been recovered.

Local officials said fighting over the past 24 hours killed 19 people in the region.

Russia Fed Conspiracy Theories On Ukraine Crash

A combination of images of Russian nationwide weekend dailies' front pages on downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Moscow Russia, some of them reading "298 Victims of Someone Else's War," and "Kick From Behind." An assassination attempt against Russian President Vladimir Putin. A desperate ploy to draw the West into the battle for Ukraine’s east. A botched mission to commit mass-murder against Russian citizens. Russian news consumers are getting plenty of explanations for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 people. While they vary wildly in content, they share one thing in common: All point the finger at Ukraine. None admits the possibility that Russia may bear responsibility.

MOSCOW (AP) — An assassination attempt against Russian President Vladimir Putin. A desperate ploy to draw the West into the battle for Ukraine's east. A botched mission to commit mass murder against Russian citizens.

Russian news consumers are getting plenty of explanations for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 people. While they vary wildly in content, all point the finger at Ukraine. None admits the possibility that Russia may bear responsibility.

The story of the airline tragedy that is unfolding for Russians differs starkly from the one that people are following in the West. As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told American TV viewers that rebels shot down the plane with Russian weaponry, Russians were being fed a diet of scenarios about forces in Ukraine conspiring to commit an atrocity in the skies.

Yekaterina Andreyeva, one of Russia's most famous TV anchors, delved into one theory hours after news of the crash broke: Putin, traveling home from Brazil, passed along the same flight path as the Malaysian passenger jet less than one hour before it was hit — suggesting an assassination attempt.

"The presidential plane and the Malaysian Boeing crossed paths at the exact point and at the same flight level," said Andreyeva. "The shape of the plane and the length are absolutely similar, and their color would appear almost identical at such a distance."

By Friday morning, the assassination theory was replaced by other scenarios. One focused on the Buk missile launcher that Ukraine says brought down the plane. State-owned Rossiya TV pinned blame on Kiev by saying the rebels did not own one, while Ukraine recently deployed a Buk launcher to the area. An Associated Press journalist saw a Buk launcher — which rebels have bragged about owning in social media — in rebel-held territory near the crash site hours before the plane was brought down.

Rossiya further said that the red, white, and blue of the Malaysia Airlines logo "resembles the Russian tricolor" — hinting at a Ukrainian attempt to blow up a Russian passenger jet. Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia's most-read tabloid, took another tack. It claimed that Ukrainian air traffic controllers redirected the Malaysia Airlines plane to fly directly over the conflict zone, publishing pictures from flight-tracking websites that appeared to show fluctuations in the plane's route.

On Tuesday, the paper appeared to suggest that the jetliner was shot down by a Ukrainian military plane with American help: "A Ukrainian attack plane and an American spy satellite were following the fallen Boeing," a report claimed.

Russia media have suggested that Ukrainian authorities orchestrated the downing to make it look like a rebel attack, in hopes it would be the catalyst for luring Western powers into military intervention.

Nationalist politicians are also heating up the tone in Russian media — and fueling conspiracy theories. "The fact that the plane fell is an American provocation," firebrand member of Parliament Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Vesti FM radio station. "They always do everything possible to blame Russia. It's possible that there were corpses that were placed ahead of time in the seats of the plane."

Russian state-controlled television, which is where a majority of Russians get their news, tends to toe the official line and abrupt changes in language on the air can reflect changes in Kremlin strategy. In June, Putin began soft-pedaling his rhetoric on Ukraine after recognizing May 25 presidential elections, in an apparent attempt to stave off Western sanctions.

After the airline tragedy, Putin led the shift to a more aggressive tone. "This tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the military actions had not been renewed in southeast Ukraine," Putin said. "And, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy."

Outrage has grown in the West over what appears to be a bungled start to the investigation. Rebels allowed a group of monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe only a superficial inspection of the crash site on Saturday before firing warning shots when two Ukrainian members of the group attempted to study wreckage.

In Russia, meanwhile, news reports repeat that the rebels have been cooperating with the observers — and blame Kiev for stalling the arrival of international investigators. "Yesterday the OSCE group worked in the field all day at the scene of the plane crash," First Channel's Sunday broadcast began. "So far the Ukrainian authorities do not want to send a group of international specialists to Donetsk."

Flight 17 Tragic End For Family Of 6 Coming Home

Mohammad Afif. Afif, 19, was killed along with his parents and three siblings when Flight 17 was shot down on July 17. Afif's friends described him as someone who was always able to lift people's spirits.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Mohammad Afif and his family were about to start a new chapter in their lives. Afif was getting set to begin his university studies in architecture, and his father was preparing to move back to Malaysia with his wife and three of their children after working overseas for several years.

But what was supposed to be a joyous return home turned into a tragedy when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down over Ukraine last week en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people onboard, including 19-year-old Afif and his entire family.

Afif had left Kuala Lumpur in late June to meet with his parents and three siblings, who had been living in Kazakhstan for the past three years. Afif spent the last year on his own back home in Malaysia, completing his foundation year at Taylor's University.

"The way Afif was packing up his things, it felt like he was going away forever," Afif's friend and housemate Khairil Azwan said Monday, describing Afif's packing for his trip to meet with his family.

Khairil was among 70 Taylor's students and faculty members who gathered at the university's mosque for a special prayer session organized by the school. "He was packing like everything, and I think it was a sign because in our religion we believe that 100 days before one dies, there will be a sign to indicate death, but you can only realize what the sign was after the person is gone," Khairil said.

Afif's father, Tambi Jiee, 49, was working in the oil and gas industry in Kazakhstan for the past three years, living with his wife, Ariza Ghazalee, 47, and their two sons, 13 and 17, and 15-year-old daughter. The family, originally from Kuching, the capital of Sarawak state on Borneo island, was reportedly very excited about their move to Kuala Lumpur, where Tambi had been transferred by his company.

After being met by Afif last month, the family of six vacationed for a while before boarding Flight 17 in Amsterdam on Thursday to head to Kuala Lumpur. When the Boeing 777 was shot down, allegedly by pro-Russia rebels, the news that Afif and his family had been killed stunned Taylor's University students and faculty members.

"He is very bubbly and he's like the joker of the group," one of Afif's close friends, 19-year-old Nadine Saedah, said, trying to control her tears. "He will bring you up when you feel down. Whenever I was down, he would encourage me."

"I lost a friend, and even though I only knew him for a year in school, it felt like 10 or 20 years. I don't know how to explain it," she said. Others described Afif as being religious and a popular student who made an impact on others, even though he had been at Taylor's for only his foundation year, in preparation for his formal university studies.

"We were actually joking when he was leaving the house to go to the airport a few weeks ago and Afif said, 'Don't worry ... if I don't see you next semester, I'll see you in the afterlife," Khairil said.

UKRAINE: Rebels Take Full Control Of Plane Crash Bodies

A woman looks at a refrigerated train loaded with the bodies of victims, in Torez, eastern Ukraine, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Sunday, July 20, 2014. Armed rebels forced emergency workers to hand over all 196 bodies recovered from the Malaysia Airlines crash site and had them loaded Sunday onto refrigerated train cars bound for a rebel-held city, Ukrainian officials and monitors said.

TOREZ, UKRAINE (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Rebels in eastern Ukraine took control Sunday of the bodies recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and the U.S. and European leaders demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin make sure rebels give international investigators full access to the crash site.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Ukraine's separatists were to blame for the downing of the aircraft, adding there was "extraordinary circumstantial evidence" that showed Russia was almost certainly complicit in arming the rebels.

"There's a stacking up of evidence here, which Russia needs to help account for. We are not drawing the final conclusion here. But there is a lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press" television show.

The key question of who controlled the collection of evidence at the sprawling crash site in rebel-held territory dominated the day's rapid-fire developments. International monitors say armed rebels have limited their access to the crash site and Ukrainian officials said armed rebels took the bodies away from their workers by force.

Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile Thursday at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Both deny shooting down the plane. All those onboard the flight — 283 passengers and 15 crew — were killed.

A wave of international outrage over how the bodies of the plane crash victims were being handled came amid fears that the armed rebels who control the crash site could be tampering with the evidence there.

Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Borodai said the bodies recovered from the crash site would remain in four refrigerated train cars in the rebel-held town of Torez, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the crash site, until the arrival of an international aviation delegation.

"The bodies will go nowhere until experts arrive," Borodai said, speaking in the rebel-held city of Donetsk. He also said the plane's black boxes have been recovered and will be handed over to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Borodai said he was expecting a team of 12 Malaysian experts and that he was disappointed at how long they had taken to arrive. He insisted that rebels had not interfered with the crash investigation, despite reports to the contrary by international monitors and journalists at the crash site.

Ukrainian government officials, meanwhile, prepared a disaster crisis center in the government-held city of Kharkiv, expecting to receive the bodies, but those hopes appeared delayed or even dashed Sunday.

Deputy prime minister Volodymyr Groysman said 192 bodies and eight body parts were loaded onto the railway cars. The leaders of France, Germany and Britain issued a statement demanding that Putin make sure that pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine give full access to investigators at the Malaysian plane crash site or risk the ire of Europe.

French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron agreed Sunday to demand that Putin force separatists controlling the site to "finally allow rescuers and investigators to have free and total access to the zone."

A statement from Hollande's office said if Russia fails "to immediately take the needed measures, consequence will be drawn" at an EU foreign ministers meeting Tuesday. Ukraine says Russia has been sending sophisticated arms to the rebels, a charge that Moscow denies.

The U.S. embassy in Kiev issued a strong statement Sunday saying it has concluded "that Flight MH17 was likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine." It said over the weekend of July 12-13, "Russia sent a convoy of military equipment with up to 150 vehicles, including tanks armored personnel carriers artillery, and multiple rockets launchers" to the separatists. The statement also said Russia was training separatist fighters in southwest Russia, including on air defense systems.

The rebels have been strictly limiting the movements of international monitors and journalists at the crash site, which is near the Russian border. Associated Press journalists saw reeking bodies baking in the summer heat Saturday, piled into body bags by the side of the road or still sprawled where they landed in the verdant farmland in eastern Ukraine after their plane was shot out of the sky.

By Sunday morning, AP journalists saw no bodies and no armed rebels at the crash site. Emergency workers were searching the sprawling fields only for body parts. Heavy machinery was seen moving plane debris around.

There was no immediate word on the bodies of the 102 other plane victims, but Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said some bodies have likely been incinerated without a trace.

"We're looking at the field where the engines have come down. This was the area which was exposed to the most intense heat. We do not see any bodies here. It appears that some have been vaporized," he told reporters in Kiev on Sunday, speaking via phone from the crash site.

Alexander Pilyushny, an emergency worker combing the crash site for body parts Sunday, told the AP it took the rebels several hours Saturday to cart away the bodies. He said he and other workers had no choice but to hand them over.

"They are armed and we are not," Pilyushny said. Nataliya Khuruzhaya, a duty officer at the train station in Torez, said emergency workers loaded plane victims' bodies Sunday into four sealed, refrigerated train cars.

Adding to growing claims that pro-Russian rebels have attempted to interfere with evidence, Ukraine's security services released on Sunday purported intercepts of phone conversations between rebel militants discussing the location of the plane's black boxes.

In one exchange, a man identified as the leader of the rebel Vostok Battalion Alexander Khodakovsky states that two recording devices are being held by the head of intelligence of the insurgency's military commander. The commander is then heard to order the militiaman to ensure no outsiders, including an international observation team near the crash site at the reported time of the call, get hold of any material.

The man identified as Khodakovsky says he is pursuing enquiries about the black boxes under instructions from "our high-placed friends ... in Moscow." The security service says all the recordings were made on Friday.

Vasily Khoma, deputy of governor of the Kharkiv region where Ukraine has set up a crisis center to handle the disaster, said the Ukrainian state railway company had provided the refrigerated train cars. Kharkiv is 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the crash site.

He said no information was available on when airplane parts would be brought to the city and that the priority now was on recovering bodies. He said a mobile lab to handle DNA analysis was being delivered from Dnipropetrovsk.

In a blistering article for the Sunday Times, Cameron called the attack a "direct result of Russia destabilizing a sovereign state, violating its territorial integrity, backing thuggish militias and training and arming them."

"We must turn this moment of outrage into a moment of action," the British leader wrote. In a coded rebuke of Merkel and other European leaders who have blocked efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Putin for Russia's actions in Ukraine, Cameron said Europe must now "respond robustly."

In the Netherlands, worshippers at church services across the country prayed Sunday for the victims of the Ukraine air disaster and their next of kin, as anger built over the rebels' hindering of the investigation.

At the St. Vitus church in the central city of Hilversum, Father Julius Dresme summed up the nation's pain. "It's terrible, and everybody's hearts are bleeding and crying," he said.

Peter Leonard in Kiev; Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow; Nicholas Garriga in Hrabove, Ukraine; Lucian Kim in Kharkiv; Michael Corder in the Hague; Danica Kirka in London and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.