Divers recover Air France jet tail - Malaysiakini

Divers found a large section of the plane's tail, but no more bodies were recovered on Monday [AFP] Brazilian divers have found a large section of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic last week, as France said it was sending a nuclear submarine to search for the aircraft's black boxes. Both countries' armed forces are continuing to search for the remains of more than 200 people on board the craft when it disappeared amid heavy storms on its way from Rio to Paris. Sixteen bodies were recovered from the Atlantic over the weekend and have been taken for identification by the Brazilian authorities. The Brazilian military revised the number of bodies down from the 17 previously announced, due to a miscommunication between authorities. The remains, along with parts of flight AF447, are expected to arrive on Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian archipelago, on Tuesday. Brazilian police forensic teams have been set up to identify the bodies using dental records and DNA from relatives. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, said on Monday that "everything was being done...so that we can find, if possible, all the bodies, because we know how much it means for a family to receive their lost loved one." A French military spokesman said a nuclear attack submarine will arrive at the scene later this week and "will try to find the acoustic pings'' emitted by the black boxes. A US Navy team is also flying to Brazil in an attempt to recover boxes using underwater listening devices. Earlier, Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, quoting the Brazilian navy, said that search teams had found as many as 100 pieces of various types of debris. "They seem to be making some serious progress in finding an area and starting to recover some bodies and debris," he said. Forensic teams Remains from wreckage, once inspected on Fernando de Noronha, will be flown to the mainland city of Recife for further analysis by French officials. Investigators need the debris and the 'black box' to determine the cause of the crash [AFP] The bodies will also be flown to Recife, where a mortuary has been set up to work on identifying the victims. Relatives of those on board the airliner have already given DNA samples to help identify their loved ones. The search for the Airbus A330-200's "black box" - the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - is becoming more urgent as it will continue emitting a radio signal for only another three weeks. After this period, the instruments will be almost impossible to locate in the deep ocean. It has been confirmed that the aircraft broadcast a series of 24 automatic error messages as its systems shut down one-by-one in its final minutes on Monday. French accident investigators said the cockpit instruments were receiving conflicting speed data at the time of the incident. Air France said on Saturday that it had accelerated existing plans to replace airspeed-monitoring units in its jets.