Air France crash: 'black box signals located'
Signals from the flight data recorders, or "black boxes", of the Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located.
French naval vessels detected a weak signal from the flight data recorders, according to French newspaper Le Monde.
They said that a mini submarine has been dispatched on Monday to try and find the black boxes on the bottom of the ocean floor.
The "black boxes" may contain vital information that could help explain what happened when the Airbus A330 aircraft crashed into the sea en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1.
Locator beacons, known as "pingers", on the flight recorders send an electronic impulse every second for at least 30 days. The signal can be heard up to 2 km (1.2 miles) away.
French vessels involved in the search operation include a nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment and a research ship equipped with mini submarines.
The remote location in the Atlantic as well as the depth and surface of the ocean floor have made the search especially difficult and the wreckage could lie anywhere between a depth of 1 km (0.6 miles) and 4 km (2.5 miles).
An Air France spokeswoman said she could not confirm the report. The Transport Ministry and the air accident investigation office could not be reached immediately for comment.
Without the black boxes to help explain what went wrong, the investigation has focused on a flurry of automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact. One of the messages suggests external speed sensors had iced over, destabilising the plane's control systems.
On Monday, 10 of the 50 bodies recovered from the flight were identified as Brazilian nationals.
Dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples were used to identify the bodies but investigators were also reviewing all remains, debris and baggage at a base set up in the town of Recife, the capital of Pernambuco.
June 22, 2009
Eleven Air France Victims Identified
(CNN) -- Eleven of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash of Air France Flight 447 this month over the Atlantic Ocean have been identified, Brazilian authorities said.
French Senator Gerard Larcher throws a tribute wreath into waters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Thursday.
They were five Brazilian men, five Brazilian women and a foreigner, according to a statement Sunday from the federal police and secretary of defense of Pernambuco. They did not release the foreigner's nationality.
The June 1 crash killed 228 people. At the request of family members, none of the names of the bodies recovered have been released.
On Friday Air France said it would pay families about €17,500 ($24,500) in initial compensation for each victim of the crash, the company's chief executive said.
So far, Air France has been in touch with about 1,800 relatives of the people who died when the Airbus A330 crashed, chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told France's RTL radio.
The company is also providing families with counseling, he said.
"Of course, this is not always easy, (but) we make up for it," he said. "We have psychologists in each country, in each stop. You know that the passengers were of 32 different nationalities, so all that is of great complexity, but we have the ability to manage this complexity. It's just a question of means and no limits on the means that we put in place."
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Gourgeon said it has been difficult tracing the relatives of all 228 victims.
"The modern world is different and we often have only a cell phone, and as you can imagine, this cell phone is unfortunately in the aircraft," he said. "So we probably put more hours to access all the relatives."
The aircraft has not been found, though search teams have found dozens of pieces of debris in the water and think they know the general location of the wreck. The head of the French accident investigation board, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said this week that there is a chance the entire aircraft may never be found. 
With no wreckage and few clues about what caused the plane to go down, searchers are focused on finding the plane's data recorders, the so-called black boxes. Data from the recorders may be crucial in pinning down a cause.
Autopsies conducted on some of the 50 bodies found so far show they suffered broken bones, including arms, legs and hips, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, Arslanian said.
Experts have said such injuries indicate the flight broke apart before hitting the ocean.
Asked about that theory, Gourgeon said he would not go that far.
"What I know is that the investigators would like to know the causes of death," Gourgeon said. "That knowledge of causes of death will better clarify what exactly happened. Were the victims killed before the impact, or during impact?"
There has been difficulty in exchanging information between French investigators and Brazilian coroners, but that is being resolved, he said.
Brazilian officials say they will suspend the search for victims of Air France flight 447 late next week. Meanwhile, a French nuclear submarine continues to look for the plane's black boxes.
