（每日一读）2014年7月高考英语考前突破 阅读理解能力 国际时事要闻 MH370坠落前乘客可能已死于窒息VIP专享

MH370 坠落前乘客可能已死于窒息The passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 most likely died from suffocation and coasted lifelessly into the ocean on autopilot, a new report released by Australian officials on Thursday said.澳大利亚官方发布最新报告称，马航失踪航班 MH370 搭载的乘客和机组人员极有可能在飞机坠落前就已死于窒息，而飞机随后在自动驾驶模式下坠入印度洋。 In a 55-page report, the Australian Transport Safety Board outlined how investigators had arrived at this conclusion after comparing the conditions on the flight with previous disasters, although it contained no new evidence from within the jetliner. The report narrowed down the possible final resting place from thousands of possible routes, while noting the absence of communications and the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight. "Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit t he available evidence for the final period of MH370's flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction," the ATSB report said. All of that suggested that the plane most likely crashed farther south into the Indian Ocean than previously thought, Australian officials also said, leading them to announce a shift farther south within the prior search area. The new analysis comes more than 100 days after the Boeing 777, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometers from its scheduled route before eventually plunging into the Indian Ocean. The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard along a final arc where analysis of satellite data put its last location. But a month later, officials conceded the wreckage was not in that concentrated area, some 1,600 km off the northwest coast of Australia, and the search area would have to be expanded. "The new priority area is still focused on the seventh arc, where the aircra ft last communicated with satellite. We are now shifting our attention to an area further south along the arc," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters in Canberra. Truss said the area was determined after a review of satellite data, early radar information and aircraft performance limits after the plane diverted across the Malaysian peninsula and headed south into one of the remotest areas of the planet. "It is highly, highly likely that the aircraft was on autopilot otherwise it could not have followed the orderly path that has been identified through the satellite sightings," Truss said.