A mystery that began with the disappearance of a Malaysian plane en route to China that detoured to the waters off Australia's coast has now spread across the Indian Ocean close to Africa. Next stop: France.
Reunion, an island east of Madagascar where an aircraft part washed up on shore and has been taken into police custody, is a territory of France that sends eight legislators to France's National Assembly. The piece will be dispatched from Reunion Friday and arrive on the French mainland Saturday to be examined near Toulouse, France's Europe1 radio reported on its website.
"It's a bit difficult when something lands in the great white oceans, because you don't own the ocean more than 12 miles off your coastline," Brian O'Keefe, a former vice president of the International Civil Aviation Organization's general assembly, said by phone from Canberra. "It's an unusual case where the wreckage is found in a different jurisdiction to the place where the accident is thought to have happened."