Business
Malaysia Airlines is to cut 6,000 staff as part of recovery plan after being hit by two disasters this year. Reuters writes:
The reduction in staff numbers represents around 30% of its workforce of 20,000. The airline will become completely state owned, and a new chief executive will eventually be put in place.
Investigators continue to hunt for flight MH370, the Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight which went missing in March.
The MH17 air crash in eastern Ukraine is also under investigation. The plane was shot down on 17 July, with the loss of all 298 people on board.
The recovery plan will cost about 6 billion Malaysian ringgit (£1.1bn, $1.9bn). Khazanah Nasional, the state investment company that owns a 69% stake in the troubled firm, will take 100% ownership.
"The combination of measures announced today will enable our national airline to be revived," said Khazanah's managing director Azman Mokhtar.
Meanwhile, the hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will start within a month and take up to a year, focusing on the southern part of the existing search zone after a new clue to the plane's possible location emerged, Australia has said. The Telegraph writes:
Fresh information suggested the jet "may have turned south" earlier than thought, Warren Truss, Australian deputy prime minister, said on Thursday.
The detail came to light following "further refinement" of satellite data and as investigators attempted to map the plane's position during a failed attempt to contact it earlier in its flight path.
"The search area remains the same, but some of the information that we now have suggests to us that areas a little further to the south - within the search area, but a little further to the south - are of particular interest and priority in the search area," he said.
The latest phase of the search is expected to concentrate on a 23,000-sq-mile patch of sea floor some 1,000 miles west of Perth.
