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Beautiful photos show what life is like in the world's most isolated settlement, which sits at the foot of an active volcano in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Kilda_20090611_Hirta_-_Village_overview.jpg">Otter/Wikimedia Commons</a>Hirta has had no permanent residents since 1930, according to The Times.</div></div></div>The Puff Inn, a bar on the island of Hirta, located 112 miles west of mainland Scotland, is looking to hire a new member of staff.The island, which is part of the St. Kilda archipelago, is home to the remotest bar in the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>. Hirta has had no permanent residents since 1930, <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/wanted-person-to-run-wildest-bar-in-the-west-7trnrp5wv" target="_blank">according to The Times</a>.The bar steward/cleaner who is hired will pull pints, clean, and regularly unload supplies from a visiting helicopter.The role offers a rare opportunity for someone looking to escape the trappings of modern life, by moving to the distant St. Kilda archipelago. Though the ad states that relevant experience is not essential, it stresses that the ideal candidate should have the "ability to work on [their] own initiative."The pub earned its names from the puffin colonies which can be found on the archipelago. The island and its surrounding seas earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2004, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4134938.stm" target="_blank">according to the BBC</a>.<h2>Hirta Island barely registers on a map of Europe:</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Google Maps</div></div></div>While the Puff Inn was once open to heavy drinking sailors and impromptu ceilidhs, it <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4134938.stm" target="_blank">closed to the public in 2005</a> - reportedly due to drunken fighting.As a result, the bar is largely populated by Ministry of Defence staff from the local missile monitoring station, as well as certain MoD approved researchers from Scottish heritage.Now there are no more than 20 visitors on the busiest nights at the Puff Inn, <a href="http://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-scottish-mail-on-sunday/20160717/282303909479480" target="_blank">according to the Scottish Mail on Sunday</a>.While <a href="http://www.hebrides-news.com/bar-steward-st-kilda-5716.html" target="_blank">the advert states that applications closed on July 15</a>, the deadline has been extended, according to The Times.<h2>See the job advert below:</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Screenshot/Hebrides News</div></div></div>

A bar on a tiny Scottish island that has no residents is advertising for a bartender

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-postpones-astronauts-spacewalk-due-to-possible-space-junk-danger-2021-11">Space junk</a>, apparently from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">China</a> and a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-debris-australia-farmland-likely-spacex-crew-1-astrophysicist-2022-8">SpaceX</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/images-show-james-webb-space-telescope-stronger-sharper-than-hubble-2022-7">NASA</a> mission, fell to Earth and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-satellite-russian-rocket-piece-may-have-crashed-in-space-2021-8">crashed</a> on land.</li><li>There's a 10% chance a person will be hit by falling <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/international-space-station-swerves-to-avoid-rocket-debris-2021-12">space debris</a> within a decade, researchers calculated.</li></ul>It's raining rocket parts, and space-junk experts fear that someday a chunk of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">debris falling</a> from Earth's orbit will strike a person.The booster of a 25-ton Long March 5B rocket, which pushed part of China's new space station into orbit in late July, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">crashed back to Earth</a> on Saturday.Though some of the booster probably burned up as it plummeted through Earth's atmosphere, <a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0Zk3ZGBFTEZ4DUdfcTsnTXtuSsPVBFDVdoKmX9GuMFKWxeTpbqut2E4VaAqatCuynl&amp;id=107175285204148">reports</a> indicate that parts of the rocket may have survived the fall and crashed near inhabited areas of Borneo, an island in Southeast Asia. Debris was found on both the Malaysian and Indonesian sides of the island, as well as in the ocean near the <a href="https://twitter.com/CNSAWatcher/status/1554514723843948544">Philippines</a>. The locations of the debris reports were along the path of the booster's reentry into the atmosphere, previously calculated by orbital-debris experts.<div type="image" title="large rounded metal sheet in a field surrounded by yellow tape and a handful of people" height="1344" width="2880" msid="93355966" hostid="261"></div>"They sure look like rocket parts to me," Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation's Chief Engineer's Office, told Insider, adding, "I've got no reason to dispute that it's pieces of this rocket."In July, a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-debris-australia-farmland-likely-spacex-crew-1-astrophysicist-2022-8">shepherd in Australia</a> discovered a mysterious piece of debris sticking out of the ground, standing nearly 10 feet tall. On Wednesday, the Australian Space Agency <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/03/spacex-capsule-confirmed-as-source-of-debris-that-landed-on-australian-farm">said</a> the giant piece of hardware came from the discarded trunk of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship, which carried astronauts for NASA last year.<div type="image" title="A piece of space junk is shown on a field in Australia in New South Wales, Australia." height="1700" width="2542" msid="93355967" hostid="261"></div>Only China and SpaceX can confirm that these pieces come from their spacecraft. But experts like Muelhaupt say they believe the reports."There's no doubt in my mind," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who meticulously tracks objects in Earth's orbit, told Insider.These are just a couple of striking examples of a widespread phenomenon. Every day, multiple man-made objects fall out of orbit and back to Earth, according to Muelhaupt, who works on the Aerospace Corporation's <a href="https://aerospace.org/reentries">reentry database</a>.Many space objects burn up in the atmosphere, but chunks of material regularly survive the fall. Experts at the Aerospace Corporation say that up to 40% of the mass of a large space object falling from orbit will reach the ground. About once a week, an object that weighs at least 1 ton falls from orbit and reenters the atmosphere, Muelhaupt said.In a <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41550-022-01718-8%23Sec5">study</a> published in the journal Nature in July, researchers calculated a roughly 10% chance that debris will strike one or more people within a 10-year period."If you roll the dice too many times, someone will get lucky," McDowell said.<h2>Crowded skies mean more falling space debris</h2><div type="image" title="Debris found in a field in new south Wales." height="1558" width="2078" msid="93355968" hostid="261"></div>Normally, after a launch, rocket boosters push themselves into the remotest part of the Pacific Ocean — a process called "controlled reentry." Smaller discarded objects, like the trunk of a Crew Dragon, are supposed to either burn up in the atmosphere or enter orbit around Earth and stay there.But in the case of the Long March 5B, China didn't design the rocket booster for controlled reentry. Instead, it fell back to Earth randomly each of the three times it launched. In May 2020, debris from one of those rockets was discovered near two villages in Ivory Coast, reportedly causing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-rocket-falling-earth-11-similar-space-station-2021-5">property damage</a>.<div type="image" title="Long March-5B Y2 rocket" height="1334" width="1778" msid="93355969" hostid="261"></div>The Long March 5B boosters are among the largest objects to fall back to Earth, but uncontrolled reentry isn't unique to China. In 1979, NASA's Skylab space station rapidly descended, scattering debris over Australia. Today, though, controlled reentry is standard practice.Despite the uptick in space activity in recent years, defunct space objects are increasingly being brought down to Earth under control. "Whereas 30 years ago, a rocket stage would have been left in orbit and done an uncontrolled reentry some years later," McDowell said. Still, Muelhaupt fears there will be more frequent falling-junk incidents — like the chunk of Crew Dragon that landed in Australia — in the future. In spaceflight, the standard acceptable level of risk to human life is one in 10,000. But when companies like SpaceX plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites into orbit, those odds mean a few of them will drop chunks of metal to Earth.<div type="image" title="Illustration of SpaceX's Starlink network of satellites." height="3588" width="4784" msid="93355971" hostid="261"></div>Between multiple companies launching satellite constellations and more space agencies flying spacecraft, there's an increasing chance that debris will land somewhere densely populated."You do it often enough, you do it long enough, you're going to get lucky and bring it down in the middle of a city park," Muelhaupt said. <h2>Taking out the space trash</h2>For now, the best way to prevent space-junk disaster is to convince all countries and companies to commit to practicing controlled reentry."The People's Republic of China did not share specific trajectory information as their Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth," Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, <a href="https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1553442428287328256">tweeted</a> Saturday, adding that all spacefaring nations should partake in responsible space behavior."Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth," Nelson added.<div type="image" title="Support teams work around the SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon Resilience spacecraft shortly after it splashed down with astronauts from the International Space Station in May, 2021." height="2088" width="2784" msid="93355972" hostid="261"></div>Companies and space agencies can also study space debris to figure out why it fell from orbit, and why certain parts of it didn't burn up along the way. For example, Muelhaupt said the largest piece of suspected SpaceX debris in Australia is a section where metal connects to carbon fiber. Why that attachment broke from the rest of the spacecraft and survived the fiery plummet to Earth, is a question Muelhaupt wants answered."I hope they do go collect it and then tell us," Muelhaupt said.A better understanding of debris falls could help inform real-time warning systems, both for people on the ground and for people flying planes. With passenger planes crisscrossing the planet at all times, there should be a space-debris notice for pilots, Muelhaupt said. A collision is unlikely, but if it did happen the damage would be catastrophic, especially for a commercial flight with passengers."The odds of hitting an unprotected individual standing in the open is one thing, but you get an aircraft in flight, now suddenly the consequences are a lot bigger," Muelhaupt said.He fears it will take a disaster to push regulators and companies to make real change, though."I hate to say it: When something bad happens to somebody, that's when we react," Muelhaupt said.

Photos suggest SpaceX, NASA, and China space junk struck land. There's a 10% chance a person will be hit this decade.

Travel means different things to different people. A short flight followed by a taxi transfer to a stylish resort with an inviting pool satisfies many people’s needs. But for those with time to spare and incurable wanderlust, there are plenty of exotic, hard-to-reach destinations that involve a lot more plan­ning than does a long weekend in Phuket. Mobile phone signals aren’t guaranteed in the following places but travel bragging rights definitely are. These destinations even come with their own superlatives. Even in a list of desolate destinations, Pitcairn Island wins by some distance. Best known as the 18th century hiding place of mutineers from the British ship HMS Bounty, no inhabited island is further from a mainland. The British Overseas Territory is barely more accessible today than it was in 1790. Anyone planning to visit from Hong Kong would need to fly to <keyword id="4741" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tokyo">Tokyo</keyword> for a connection to Papeete, in Tahiti, from where there are two four-hour flights a week to Mangareva, in the Gambier Islands. It’s then a 32-hour trip to Pitcairn aboard a supply boat that departs only every three months. A few years ago, officials launched a campaign to encourage people to join the isolated community. Only one person applied. The world’s coldest permanently settled area, Oymyakon shivers in the Siberian permafrost a two-day drive across the Russian <keyword id="101920" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tundra">tundra</keyword> from the nearest airport. Winter in the gold mining town is so frigid that drivers leave their car engines running all day to keep them from seizing up. Students are expected to attend classes unless the mercury falls below minus 52 degrees Celsius (-61.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and newly arrived visitors are reminded that saliva freezes in open mouths, glasses stick to faces and batteries last only a few minutes. Few crops survive in temperatures that can plummet to a bone-chilling minus 70 degrees and locals make do with reindeer meat, raw flesh shaved from frozen fish and ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni. Based on a year-round average temperature of 34.5 degrees Celsius (94.1 degrees Fahrenheit), the Danakil Depression is the hottest place on Earth. The inhospitable desert in northern <keyword id="61936" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ethiopia">Ethiopia</keyword> is also one of the lowest points on the planet, at 125 metres below sea level. Visitors need to tread carefully – the surreal landscape is littered with sulphur springs, geysers, acidic pools, huge salt pans, volcanoes and multicoloured mineral lakes. Amazingly, there is human activity at the “gateway to hell”. More than 700 officially registered salt miners toil in the furnace-like conditions for about US$7 per day. Located in the Bay of Bengal, more than 1,300km (807 miles) off the east coast of India, the Andaman Islands are the peaks of a submerged <keyword id="6439698" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="mountain">mountain</keyword> range. The tropical archipelago boasts pristine beaches, coral reefs and an abundance of wildlife. Of the 572 islands, only about 30 are inhabited, one of which is regarded as the most difficult place to set foot on as it’s home to the world’s most isolated tribe. North Sentinel Island gained notoriety last year when an American tourist was killed by bow and arrow-wielding Sentinelese warriors, having ignored warnings from fisherman not to go ashore. An out-of-the-way settlement in a hard-to-reach country, Ittoqqortoormiit is the remotest inhabited community in the western hemisphere. Weekly flights to this distant corner of Greenland require an onward helicopter transfer to the village, although for a month or two in summer, cruise ships are able to negotiate the ice­berg-infested waters. The 450 inhabitants rely on fishing and hunting (including an annual quota of 35 polar bears) for survival and let off steam by dog sledding and snowmobile camping trips along the banks of Scoresby Sund. The world’s longest fjord serves as a gateway to Northeast Greenland National Park, the world’s largest. The luxury resorts of the Maldives are easy enough to reach, usually with a sea­plane or speedboat transfer after a long-haul flight. For something more quirky, book a flight to Gan. From 1941 to 1976, the southernmost island in the archipelago served as a British Navy and <keyword id="113964" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Royal-Air-Force">Royal Air Force</keyword> base. Much of the military infrastructure remains, including the airfield, parade ground, a mildewing art deco cinema and rows of low-rise garrison buildings. The British also built a causeway linking Gan to three neighbouring islands – the resulting 18km (11-mile) road is the longest in the Maldives. The beguiling beauty of Wadi Rum feels older than time. For centuries only nomadic Bedouins were able to survive in the inhospitable desert, situated in the far south of Jordan, the safest country in the Middle East. Then along came charismatic British officer T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), who led an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire from Wadi Rum during the first world war. His description of the other­worldly desert formations and empty landscape as “vast, echoing and God-like” is as accurate today as it was a century ago. Gan, in the Maldives. Photo: Tim Pile The most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, volcanic <keyword id="1046045" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tristan-da-Cunha">Tristan da Cunha</keyword> lies 2,432km (1,511 miles) west of Cape Town. Another British Overseas Territory, the main island is home to 246 residents with nine different surnames. About 400km (249 miles) south and unin­habit­ed except for six weather station personnel, Gough Island is possib­ly the world’s least accessible world heritage site. Appropriately enough, it shares the Unesco designation with Inaccessible Island, 30km (19 miles) southwest of Tristan. The only way of reaching this far-flung South Atlantic bolt-hole is by ship from Cape Town – a seven-day sailing that operates nine times a year. More than six million tourists visited Grand Canyon National Park in 2018 but hidden away in the craggy sandstone formations lies the only village inside the canyon. Supai is the capital of the <keyword id="8232283" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Havasupai">Havasupai</keyword> Indian Reservation and the “people of the blue-green water” inhabit what has been described as the most remote community in the lower 48 states. Despite being just 13km (8 miles) from the nearest road, the only way to reach the settlement and stunning turquoise waterfalls is by helicopter, mule or on foot. Located 480km (298 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, Utqiagvik, <keyword id="20636" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Alaska">Alaska</keyword>, is the northernmost town in the United States. When the sun sets in mid-November, it doesn’t rise again for 65 days. There are no roads in or out, so the Iñupiaq Eskimo settlement is accessible only by plane from Anchorage, or barge during the brief summer months. Locals still hunt and fish, but that’s partly because supermarket prices are among the highest in the world.

12 of the most remote travel destinations on Earth, each with its own superlative

Since centuries, India has been building engineering marvels, leaving everyone in awe. Be it hanging pillar in a 16th century temple, or musical pillars, or largest monolith in the world, India has turned out stones and ideas into fascinating objects with chisel and hammer and engineering techniques. 
 
From building temples to services for the mankind, India has numerous engineering marvels to boast of. Indians have linked two lands separated by seas and have connected masses to remotest of the villages with bridges. 
 
You name it, we have already conquered it. Such engineering marvels can be seen in railways. For instance, the Pamban sea bridge, the second longest sea bridge, after Worli Sea Link in Mumbai that was opened to public in 2010. 
 
Pamban Sea Bridge was opened to public in 1914 and was India’s first sea bridge that connected southern Rameswaram town on Pamban Island to Palk Strait. The bridge spans a 2 km-strait between mainland and island and is the only surface transport link between the two. 
 
It is also India’s first Cantilever bridge and there were many challenges while constructing it, such as it was built in world’s second highly corrosive environment, first one being Mexico. 
 
Here are some other interesting details about the bridge:

Pamban Bridge in Rameswaram is an engineering marvel. Here are 5 quick facts about India’s first Cantilever bridge

In another move by the <keyword id="6387077" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi-government">Narendra Modi government</keyword>, now, two of India’s remotest islands <keyword id="369111" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Agatti">Agatti</keyword> and <keyword id="2911557" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Minicoy">Minicoy</keyword> have been designated as <keyword id="1522972" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="immigration-check-post">immigration check post</keyword> (ICP). The announcement made by the <keyword id="6359327" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Home-Ministry">Home Ministry</keyword> says, “From June 30, the Agatti and Minicoy islands in <keyword id="64287" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Lakshadweep">Lakshadweep</keyword> will offer direct entry into or exit from India for all classes of foreign passengers.” 
 
According to the order signed by Joint secretary GK Dwivedi, the move will attract more foreign luxury cruises. 
 
An Economic Times report revealed that the enviable location of the islands is the reason why the ministry has announced India’s smallest ICP in the twin islands which are separated by approximately 200 kilo meters. The tiny islands fall in route to more than two dozen foreign cruises heading towards India through Arabian Sea. 
 Agatti, the smaller among the two islands, has covered the area of just 3.84 sq km while Minicoy, which is just 130 km from the northernmost island of <keyword id="6354908" type="COUNTRY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Maldives">Maldives</keyword>, is slightly bigger with an area of 4.80 sq km. The islands lie on one of the busiest shipping routes. 
 
The current situation does not allows international cruises to approach the base, which have to travel 450 km extra to Kochi in the Indian mainland for immigration and custom clearance if it wishes to dock at Agatti. If these vessels have to sail through any foreign country after visiting Lakshadweep, then again they have to go back to Kochi if the vessel has to go back to any foreign country. 
 
Therefore, international cruises have to spend two-three more days travelling to and from Kochi at a higher cost. Unsurprisingly, these cruises have increasingly started given the exotic Lakshadweep islands a miss in their itineraries. 
 
"Every year, 15-20 foreign luxury cruises are crossing through the Lakshadweep territorial waters, and facilitation of at least 50 % of these vessels to visit Lakshadweep islands, will enable over 5,000 foreign tourists to visit Lakshadweep which will be almost equal to the total number of tourists (both domestic and foreign) who visited Lakshadweep during the last tourist season (2013-2014)," says the Lakshadweep Tourism Policy-2014.

Luxury cruises coming to Indian mainland, gets new immigration check posts

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Eric A. Pastor/HandoutCrew members on board a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon man their workstations while assisting in search operations for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean, in this handout photo taken March 16, 2014. </div></div>KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Investigators probing the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board believe it most likely flew into the southern Indian Ocean, a source close to the investigation said on Wednesday.
No wreckage has been found from Flight MH370, which vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast at 1:21 a.m. local time on March 8 (1721 GMT March 7), less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
An unprecedented search for the Boeing 777-200ER is under way involving 26 nations in two vast search "corridors": one arcing north overland from Laos towards the Caspian Sea, the other curving south across theIndian Ocean from west of Indonesia's Sumatra island to west of Australia.
"The working assumption is that it went south, and furthermore that it went to the southern end of that corridor," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The view is based on the lack of any evidence from countries along the northern corridor that the plane entered their airspace, and the failure to find any trace of wreckage in searches in the upper part of the southern corridor.
China, which is leading the northern corridor search with Kazakhstan, said it had not yet found any sign of the aircraft crossing into its territory.
Malaysian and U.S. officials believe the aircraft was deliberately diverted perhaps thousands of miles off course, but an exhaustive background search of the passengers and crew aboard has not yielded anything that might explain why.
<h3>SOPHISTICATED EQUIPMENT</h3>
The minister in charge of the operation said the multinational search team was deploying the most sophisticated equipment available to find the plane.
"It probably is the largest peacetime armada of assets and satellite information-sharing that we have ever seen for a rescue and search operation," Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.
Officials believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777 and commercial aviation navigation switched off two vital datalinks: the ACARS system, which relays maintenance data back to the ground, and the transponder, which enables the plane to be seen by civilian radar.
The source close to the investigation said that it was thought "highly probable that ACARS was switched off prior to the final verbal message" received for the cockpit.
That message, an informal "all right, good night" radioed to Malaysian air traffic controllers to acknowledge their handover of the plane to Vietnamese airspace, was believed to have been spoken by the co-pilot, the airline said earlier this week.
Investigators piecing together patchy data from military radar and satellites believe that minutes later the plane turned sharply west, re-crossing the Malay Peninsula and following an established commercial route towardsIndia.
After that, ephemeral pings picked up by one commercial satellite suggest the aircraft flew on for at least six hours. The data from the satellite placed the plane somewhere in one of the two corridors when the final signal was sent at 8:11 a.m.
The methodical shutdown of the communications systems, together with the fact that the plane appeared to be following a planned course after turning back, have been interpreted as suggesting strongly that foul play, rather than some kind of technical failure, was behind the disappearance.
NEVER FOUND?
Last week, a source familiar with official U.S. assessments said it was thought most likely the plane flew south, where it presumably would have run out of fuel and crashed into the sea.
If it did indeed end up in the southern Indian Ocean, one of the remotest places on Earth and also one of the deepest seas, it increases the chance it may never be found - and investigators may never know for sure what happened on board.
U.S. government sources said intelligence agencies had extensively analyzed people on the flight but came up with no connections to terrorism or possible criminal motives.
A senior U.S. official said he was "not aware of any stones left unturned". China has said there is no evidence that Chinese passengers, who made up over two-thirds of those on board, were involved in a hijack or act of sabotage.
Australia is leading the search of the southern part of the southern corridor, with assistance from the U.S. Navy.
It has shrunk its search field based on satellite tracking data and analysis of weather and currents, but it still covers an area of 600,000 sq km (230,000 sq miles), roughly the size of Spain and Portugal.
The U.S. Navy said it had switched mainly to using P-8A Poseidon and P-3 Orion aircraft to search for the missing plane instead of ships and helicopters.
"The maritime patrol aircraft are much more suited for this type of operation," said Navy Lieutenant David Levy, who is on board the USS Blue Ridge. "...It's just a much more efficient way to search." 
(Additional reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi, Siva Govindasamy, Michael Martina and Niluksi Koswanage in Kuala Lumpur, Andrea Shalal-Esa and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Jane Wardell in Sydney, Peter Apps in London, Daniel Bosley in Male and Shihar Aneez in Colombo; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Investigators Think The Missing Malaysia Jet Is Most Likely In Southern Indian Ocean

<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image">"Tiny Times"</div></div>
<h3 class="rubric">The market is growing furiously, but getting tougher for foreign firms</h3>
In the heart of old Shanghai is a magnificent villa that serves as the workplace of Guo Jingming, a provocative young film-maker. "Tiny Times", his recent blockbuster, follows the travails of some fashionable college girls (pictured, in the walk-in closet of one of them). Its depictions of the high life, rarely shown in Chinese films, have set social networks ablaze; they have also been attacked by the People's Daily for "unconditional hedonism". Mr Guo says: "So what? Materialism is neutral, neither positive nor negative." After all, he goes on, China's cosmopolitans know at any given moment what movies are playing in New York and what fashions are on the Paris runways.
China's once-drab and Mao-suited interior is not so far behind. In Mianyang, a middling city in the province of Sichuan, an enormous billboard featuring Miranda Kerr, an Australian supermodel, draped in Swarovski crystals welcomes shoppers to the Parkson shopping mall. It is one of half a dozen high-end malls in town. Luxury sales are exploding there. Local Audi and BMW dealers sell more than 100 cars each a month; Land Rover, Jaguar and Cadillac have just muscled in on the market.
Thirty kilometres (20 miles) away in Luxi, a town of 57,000 people, online shopping is hot. The first express-delivery office opened only three years ago, and handled perhaps ten packages a day; today, there are five, each handling 100 packages a day. Even 60km away, in rural Santai county where farm-workers are the customers, one modern shopping mall has sprung up and another is being built. "Customers are evolving very quickly from the low-end market to the middle and high-end," says Yang Shuiying, proud general manager of the Zizhou shopping centre.
In the 1950s and 1960s the world economy was transformed by the emergence of the American consumer. Now China seems poised to become the next consumption superpower. In all likelihood, it has just overtaken Japan to become the world's second-biggest consumer economy. Its roughly $3.3 trillion in private consumption is about 8% of the world total, and it has only just begun.
"The future of the world will be profoundly shaped by China's rush toward consumerism," says Karl Gerth, an expert on Chinese consumption at the University of California, San Diego. Although investment made the biggest contribution to China's growth last year, and although private consumption's share of output, now at 36%, fell between 2000 and 2010, that trend is unlikely to last, for several reasons.
First, boosting the people's desire to consume is a stated goal of China's leaders. Higher government spending on health care and pensions may encourage households to save less for such things. Higher interest rates may, paradoxically, discourage thrift if people reach their savings goals faster. Rising wages and an ageing population will also shift the balance towards consumption rather than saving. And although household debt is growing fast, China still has relatively little.
Besides, consumption has not fallen in absolute terms. It has, in fact, grown briskly--just not quite as quickly as the economy overall. In dollar terms, China contributed more than any other country to the growth in global consumption in 2011-13, according to Andy Rothman of CLSA, a broker. Moreover, China's official statistics understate some consumption--spending on housing, for example.
A massive push to urbanise is also under way, which should produce tens of millions of richer citizens seeking retail therapy. McKinsey, a consultancy, forecasts that consumption by urban Chinese households will increase from 10 trillion yuan in 2012 to nearly 27 trillion yuan in 2022 (see chart 1).
<h3>Fickle Sophisticates</h3>
How much China spends is striking. Even more so is the way it spends. This is now one of the world's most sophisticated consumer markets, heavily skewed towards expensive goods. Local property barons are now building half the world's new shopping malls in China, many of them in smaller cities, because even punters without big incomes are becoming big shoppers. Research by IDEO, a consultancy, has found that many young migrant workers earning less than 5,000 yuan ($830) a month will spend a month's wages on an Apple iPhone.
That points to another difference from previous consumption booms elsewhere: with the world's largest e-commerce market at their fingertips, Chinese shoppers are online from the start. As a result, what was once a foreign marketers' fantasyland is now the world's fiercest battleground for brands.
Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, calls the Chinese "increasingly aspirational and conspicuous consumers" who routinely trade up to fancier labels even on staples. Newly middle-class types in cities in the interior are keen to try out new products, especially the ones they have seen on foreign television shows. Jeff Walters of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) points out that even country bumpkins are consuming global media, thanks to the wild popularity of local online-video services. Chinese consumers, he says, were watching the latest season of "Downton Abbey" on Youku, a video-sharing website, well before it was released in America.
This passion for fashion is, in theory, good news for multinational marketers. Unlike, say, Japan, where consumers heavily favour local brands, Chinese consumers hold foreign brands in high esteem. Torsten Stocker of AT Kearney, a consultancy, observes that foreign brands are doing well in sectors they introduced to China (chewing gum, chocolate); those that have "heritage" appeal (premium cars, luxury goods) and those where local brands are not trusted, such as powdered baby milk. The world's fast-food and consumer-goods giants--Procter &amp; Gamble, Pepsi, General Mills and so on--are also big in China, but they are increasingly dogged by local rivals. A recent study by Bain, another consultancy, found that although foreign brands still lead in some areas (biscuits, fabric-softener, bottled water), local brands are surging in others (toothpaste, cosmetics, juice).
Brand-hopping, though, is rife. Having grown up with radical economic change, Chinese shoppers are "very fickle, and hard to pin down to a strong brand loyalty", says Mintel, a market-research firm. Yuval Atsmon of McKinsey reckons that brand-switching--between Pepsi and Coke, Colgate and Crest, KFC and McDonald's--is common, "much more so than in most markets". Swarovski, the crystal-maker, has discovered that over three-quarters of Chinese customers are eager to try new brands, a far higher figure than elsewhere. A recent study by Bain found that the top five brands in ten categories lost 30-60% of their customers between 2011 and 2012.
This creates several problems. With two or three times as many brands on shelves as found in other countries, competition is ferocious. This makes advertising and marketing vital--but the cost of publicity is soaring. Also, firms that thought they enjoyed a "first-mover advantage" have discovered that their brands are now seen as stodgy or old-fashioned. Olay, a cosmetics brand, defined skin care in China for a generation--but Carol Potter of BBDO, an advertising agency, reckons that "the new generation thinks it's a brand from yesterday." She adds that whereas Louis Vuitton once symbolised good and expensive taste in China, a new generation is seeking different, subtler luxuries.
<h3>The Empty Suitcase</h3>
Another complication for marketers is that many Chinese shoppers have a global outlook. When previous middle classes rose to prominence in America and Japan, the internet did not exist. People could not Google the latest European fashions or check discounts on Amazon. The arrival of cheap air travel has also made the Chinese more discerning shoppers. Mr Stocker argues that these factors have "compressed the discovery process", which in Japan took 30 years, to less than ten.
The Chinese are already the world's biggest shoppers abroad, but a report released on January 20th by CLSA forecasts that the number of outbound Chinese tourists will double to 200m a year by 2020 and that their spending will triple over that time. James Button of SmithStreet, a consultancy, reports a well established piece of etiquette: "You must let friends know when you are going overseas," and take along an empty suitcase.
Many Chinese also use online shopping agents, who aggregate requests and bring back foreign goods. Sales by overseas purchase agents came to nearly 50 billion yuan in 2012, a leap of more than 80% on the year earlier; they jumped by half again last year to 74.4. billion yuan. Foreign websites, including Amazon, now offer direct delivery to China for certain products, and local e-commerce giants such as Alibaba run cross-border services.
Buying overseas saves money, since mark-ups and hefty taxes are the rule in China. Many ordinary folk travel not just to Hong Kong, the most convenient spot, but to Jeju Island in South Korea (where they can visit without a visa and shop duty-free) to stock up on cosmetics that cost much more at home. Price, though, is not the only motivation. Another is to avoid the counterfeit goods so common on the mainland. Even more important, consumers say, are the variety and freshness of the products available overseas.
Nowhere is this wide-ranging urge to spend more obvious than in the market for luxury goods. Globally the Chinese are the biggest buyers of expensive items, accounting for some 29% of purchases last year (see chart 2). Some two-thirds of Chinese spending on luxury goods takes place outside the mainland; a fifth of it in Europe. (Harrods of London has seen sales to Chinese shoppers, its largest foreign contingent, increase by 50% a year since 2011.) Consistently favoured brands include Lancôme, Gucci, Audi, Rolex and Tiffany.
The Chinese are also the world's largest consumers of Bordeaux wine and cognac, though sales (like those of Moutai, a local grain alcohol) have fallen in the wake of official campaigns against gift-giving (see "Corruption: Less party time"). At Berry Bros &amp; Rudd's bonded wine warehouse in Basingstoke, in southern England, where 4.5m expensive bottles are stored, more than 1m of those are owned by oenophiles from greater China. No longer, says the firm's chairman, should the Chinese be pictured ruining fine wine by pouring Coca-Cola into it.
Although a government crackdown on corruption has crimped mainland sales, and some luxury firms slowed down the rollout of new boutiques there last year, Coach, Prada and Bottega Veneta continued to expand. Apple expanded too; it now has more stores in Shanghai than in San Francisco, and launches new iPhones in Beijing when it does in California. Mr Button of SmithStreet thinks brands offering affordable luxury--Michael Kors and Kate Spade, say--can capture both the upwardly mobile and the "post-luxury" elites in the cities, who want less flashy brands.
In the past, the Chinese showed little interest in Western art. That is starting to change, and may change quicker with the opening of a new museum of Western art in Shanghai. The richest man in China has just paid $28m for a Picasso, though he was condemned as "unpatriotic" on Sina Weibo. Ms Potter also observes that two-thirds of affluent consumers are keen to know the history and cultural background of foreign brands. So they love to buy Piaget watches in Geneva and Zegna suits in Milan, but reject unconventional offerings such as German watches or Japanese leather bags.
It is not only in luxury goods that Chinese shoppers are leading the way. China has become the world's biggest e-commerce market, with spending forecast to reach $540 billion next year. On Singles Day, an annual online-marketing extravaganza held on November 11th, 400m Chinese spent $5.7 billion just on Tmall, an e-commerce platform run by Alibaba; Americans, on their Cyber Monday a few weeks later, spent only about $2 billion. China is the world's biggest maker and consumer of smartphones, and will soon be the largest "mobile-commerce" market, too.
Perhaps because they distrust official information, the Chinese rely heavily on peer reviews. Research by BCG has shown that they write, and act on, online reviews of products and services far more than Westerners do. A recent study of purchases of moisturiser found that two-thirds of Chinese buyers relied on online recommendations by friends or family; the comparable figure in America was less than 40%. Millions of online shoppers follow the thoughts of Miumiu and Viviandan, leggy twins from industrial Chongqing, who started posting pictures of themselves in the latest fashions, with wry observations on trends and prices, a decade ago. Even now they post recommendations nearly every day on social-media sites such as Instagram, or on Weibo. Their likes and dislikes make or break products.
Online shoppers in the remotest parts of China often know a great deal about a global brand's attributes and pricing worldwide--which can put marketers on the back foot. Chinese consumers are no longer willing to pay a hefty premium for any old foreign brand. As they grow more discerning, multinationals are having to work harder to prove their worth--and are having to defend their brands on China's wild social media. But creative approaches can pay off.
When VF Corporation, a large American clothing firm, wanted to promote The North Face, a brand of outdoor clothing, in China, it struggled. Whereas climbers and hikers in the West relish the thought of conquering mountains alone, the Chinese generally think of outings in Nature as a spiritual escape, to be enjoyed with friends. So the firm created an online community linking amateurs to clubs devoted to outdoor pursuits. The website offers points for activity and loyalty that can be redeemed for products. Sales are soaring, and VF now has a detailed database of over half a million keen customers.
The online awareness of Chinese customers has big global implications. According to Andrew Keith, the president of Lane Crawford, cosmopolitan Chinese consumers are now setting the agenda: "We are not teaching them, they are teaching us." (He should know; his Hong Kong department store has half a dozen shops in greater China, 650,000 high-spending customers and, in the new Shanghai store, private suites for "Platinum VIPs" who spend 60,000 yuan or more a year.) Alexis Perakis-Valat, head of L'Oréal's China business, agrees. He believes that the Chinese market, unlike those in Western countries, is driven by young urban consumers who are demanding something new and have no taboos. He points to peculiar and distinctive products developed for this niche in China, such as a black-foam face-scrub for men, which are now being launched around the world.
<h3>We're All Chinese Now</h3>
Another sign of such innovation is the reinvention of Johnnie Walker, a mass-market whisky brand belonging to Diageo, the world's biggest spirits firm, as a luxury brand in China. Keen to win over sceptical consumers more accustomed to baijiu (a local firewater), the firm opened Johnnie Walker House in Shanghai almost three years ago. For around 800,000 yuan, or $132,000, the company's master blender (with the delicious surname of Beveridge) will fly in and brew a special batch of Johnnie Walker precisely matched to a customer's tastes. Certain rare blends, including some bearing the marks of the Chinese zodiac, are sold only at this venue.
This effort has helped Diageo introduce its whiskies to thousands of affluent customers, who in turn have pushed the firm towards new inventions--such as blends with a much higher alcohol content--which helped its whisky revenues grow twice as fast as the industry average. The concept has been such a success that the company has opened new Houses in Beijing and Seoul, and plans others. When Diageo unveiled Odyssey, a special-edition blend, in 2012, it kicked off the global launch not in London or New York but in Shanghai.
Life was simpler for foreign brands when they first came to China, reflects David Roth of The Store, an advertising agency: "It was a land grab…you just had to create awareness as quickly as possible." Now the Western invaders must not only cater to the world's most demanding shoppers, but also cope with increasing home-grown competition. Chinese firms are starting to catch up with their fancier foreign rivals. Some even aspire to become global brands.
Huawei, a telecoms-equipment giant, is making a big push into branded consumer electronics. "We have it easier than Samsung did," says Colin Giles, chief marketing officer for its consumer business, because Korean firms paved the way for global acceptance of Chinese brands. Xiaomi, a startup smartphone manufacturer in Beijing, has developed a hugely popular phone-and-app system inspired as much by Amazon as by Apple. It could become China's first global innovation powerhouse.
Leading the local pack is Lenovo, an electronics firm that previously bought IBM's personal-computer business (and on January 23rd agreed to buy its low-end server business, too). When it launched its latest Yoga tablet last year it chose Ashton Kutcher, a Hollywood star who had played Steve Jobs in a film, as its spokesman. David Roman, Lenovo's chief marketing officer, says that even a few years ago it would have been unthinkable to do a global product launch in China with a single tagline, unified advertising content and a Western spokesman. But now he thinks there is "a global consuming class", with more in common across borders than within.
That sums up the rise of China nicely. Future consumer markets everywhere are going to look more Chinese. They will increasingly be cosmopolitan, luxury-minded and online. Firms that can flourish in China are not only winning today's toughest market, but are also positioning themselves for tomorrow's.
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