China finds no terrorist link to nationals on missing jet

[KUALA LUMPUR] Intelligence checks on 153 Chinese nationals on a missing Malaysia Airlines plane produced no red flags, China said yesterday, as Malaysia marshalled ships and planes from 26 countries to search an area the size of Australia.

Eleven days after contact was lost with MH370 and its 239 passengers and crew, there has been minimal progress in determining precisely what happened or where the plane ended up.

Lending fresh weight to the belief that the plane was deliberately diverted, The New York Times reported that the first turn that it made off its flight path was programmed into the Boeing 777's computer navigation system, probably by someone in the cockpit.