SYDNEY — Australia said on Wednesday it was not ruling out a future underwater search for a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet as families of those on board criticized the decision to suspend the hunt after three fruitless years.

The location of Flight MH370 has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries since the plane, a Boeing 777, disappeared in 2014 en route to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board.

“I don’t rule out a future underwater search by any stretch,” Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester told reporters in Melbourne, a day after Australia, Malaysia and China called off the search in the southern Indian Ocean.

The search cost about A$200 million ($150 million), mostly paid by Malaysia, and had already been extended twice. But the three countries involved have been reluctant to keep looking without new evidence about the plane’s final resting place.

A recommendation from investigators last month to look to the north of the 120,000 sq. km. (46,000 sq. mile) area that has been the focus of search efforts was rejected by Australia and Malaysia as too imprecise.

Mr. Chester said cost had not been the determining factor to halt the search, but he said restarting it would require “credible new information which leads to a specific location.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Wednesday expressed “deep regret” that the plane had not been found, but reaffirmed the agreement between Malaysia, Australia and China to stop looking.

Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

NO CLUES
Flight MH370 lost contact over the Gulf of Thailand in the early hours of March 8, 2014. Subsequent analysis of radar and satellite contacts suggested someone on board may have deliberately switched off the plane’s transponder before diverting it thousands of kilometers out over the Indian Ocean.

Since the crash, there have been competing theories over whether the plane was hijacked and whether it was under the control of anyone when it finally ran out of fuel.

The head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which led the hunt, said authorities were confident it was not in the area that has been searched.

ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood said “residual search activity,” including satellite and drift analysis would continue until the end of February.

But quitting the underwater search drew a swift and angry reaction from relatives of those on board, who had called for the hunt to be expanded.

Most of the passengers were from China.

About 30 relatives of victims gathered at a monthly meeting with Malaysian Airlines officials in Beijing on Wednesday to protest against the end of the search.

Relatives told Reuters the airline invited four representatives to go to Malaysia and discuss the decision but they had rejected the offer.

Dan Shuqin, 63, whose sister was on the flight, said authorities had been “playing tricks” for three years.

“Can four family members speak for all 140 family members?” she asked.

Instead, the relatives called for Malaysian authorities to hold a meeting with the families in China.

An airline spokeswoman said its Post Accident Office was in constant contact with family members, but did not give any further details.

On Tuesday, Jiang Hui, whose mother was on board the flight, told Reuters he felt “disappointed, helpless and angry” because the search had been ended.

There was also anger on social media at the news.

“Didn’t they say they would never end the search? What the hell happened?” wrote one user on China’s Weibo service.

The only confirmed traces of the plane have been three pieces of debris found washed up on the island country Mauritius, the French island Reunion and an island off Tanzania.

As many as 30 other pieces of wreckage found there and on beaches in Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa are suspected to have come from the plane. — Reuters

BEIJING — China’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it hoped Britain and the European Union could reach a ‘win-win’ agreement on Britain’s departure from the bloc, after Prime Minister Theresa May said it would quit the EU single market when it left.

Ms. May promised to seek the greatest possible access to European markets but said Britain would aim to establish its own free trade deals with countries far beyond Europe, and rein in immigration from the continent.

Prior to last year’s “Brexit” vote, China had not directly stated an opinion, viewing it as an internal matter and saying only that it wanted to see a strong and stable Europe.

Diplomatic sources, however, said that was coded support for the defeated “remain” camp, as the bloc, now China’s largest trading partner, will lose around a sixth of its economic output and an important supporter of free trade in the EU.

China, like everyone else, is paying close attention to future negotiations on Britain leaving the EU, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

“We hope that Britain and the EU can reach a win-win agreement via negotiations,” she told a daily news briefing.

Ms. Hua reiterated that China has consistently supported the European integration process, and believes a prosperous, stable and open EU is in everyone’s interests.

“At the same time, we also attach great importance to relations with Britain, we set store on Britain’s position and role, and are willing to continue strengthening mutually beneficial, win-win cooperation in all areas with Britain.”

In August, the Commerce Ministry said China had an open attitude towards a free trade deal with Britain once it left the EU and was willing to study it, though Ms. Hua made no mention of this.

China and Britain have a history of disputes over human rights and the future of Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, export-reliant China values Britain as a strong advocate for free trade within the EU.

Ties have warmed in the past few years and economic links have multiplied, in what both countries refer to as a “golden age”, though Britain upset China last year by putting on hold a nuclear project that it later approved. — Reuters

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May arrives to deliver a speech on leaving the European Union at Lancaster House in London, Jan. 17. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is putting its clandestine history out in the open with a declassified trove of 12 million pages that’s available online.

Documents covering the agency’s work from the 1940s through 1990s were previously accessible — but only by visiting the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The CIA is required to declassify most records that are 25 years or older.

“This is one of the things that we think improves transparency for us, and it’s a simple thing” to make information “more widely available,” Joseph Lambert, the CIA’s director of information management, said in a phone interview.

Known as the CIA Records Search Tool, or CREST, the collection includes reports on policy and intelligence operations, with topics from the Cold War and Vietnam to terrorism and global economics. The agency continues to review documents for declassification, but the number of records to be assessed is growing rapidly, beyond the realm of humans “being able to scale to that kind of volume,” Mr. Lambert said.

Mr. Lambert said the agency is looking at emerging technology, including artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools, to help process the staggering amount of documents officials must pore through. That requires judging whether releasing the content would harm national security and redacting certain sensitive names and details.

“Human beings can only do so many pages,” Mr. Lambert said. “It’s a difficult endeavor to make sure that you can put together the right technologies to assist a human being going forward to scale to hundreds of millions of pages.” — Bloomberg

TOKYO — Caroline Kennedy on Wednesday stepped down as US ambassador to Japan, the embassy said, ending a three-year tenure for the rookie envoy who was welcomed into the job with movie-star fanfare.

The sole surviving child of assassinated US President John F. Kennedy took up the post in November 2013 as her boss, Barack Obama, focused on Asia in the face of a rising China and unpredictable North Korea.

Despite being wartime enemies, the US and Japan are close allies and thousands lined the streets of Tokyo to catch a glimpse of Ms. Kennedy when she arrived to start the job. The event was broadcast live on television.

Ms. Kennedy’s replacement has not yet been appointed by incoming US leader Donald Trump.

A first-time envoy, Ms. Kennedy, 59, had a high profile in Japan and regularly visited the northeast, which was devastated by the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster.

She also participated in memorial ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the targets of the US atomic bombing in the final days of World War II.

Last year, Ms. Kennedy joined President Obama on an historic visit to Hiroshima, the first serving US President to do so.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, accompanied by Mr. Obama, visited Pearl Harbor in December, opening a new diplomatic chapter for the two former enemies — 75 years after Japan’s surprise attack that led to America’s entrance into the war.

“I think that both the President’s visit to Hiroshima and the Prime Minister’s visit to Pearl Harbor really show how far our two countries have come together,” she said in an interview with the top-selling Yomiuri newspaper published Wednesday.

“To be able to be at both of those events during my ambassadorship, I feel so incredibly fortunate and privileged.”

Ms. Kennedy also witnessed tense negotiations over moving a major US military base in Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the approximately 47,000 American military personnel stationed in Japan.

Despite the two countries’ close relationship, the presence of US troops has led to diplomatic flare-ups.

The popular diplomat raised eyebrows in 2014 when she expressed concerns on social media about what she called the “inhumaneness” of a Japanese village’s traditional dolphin hunt.

Japan’s whaling and dolphin hunting is a sore point in relations with many Western nations including the United States. — AFP