Black box of crashed Philippine jet reportedly is blank
     MANILA - Feb 20, 1998 09:54 a.m. EST - The probe into the cause
 of a DC-9 crash that killed 104 people in the southern Philippines
 has stalled because one of the passenger jet's "black boxes" turned
 up blank, the country's top aviation official said Friday.
     The "initial feedback" of Canadian experts was that "they were
 unable to obtain any relevant data or information" from the flight
 data recorder of Cebu Pacific Air Flight 387, Air Transportation
 Office chief Carlos Tanega said.
     The data recorder was sent to Canada for analysis soon after it
 was found among the wreckage near the summit of the Sumagaya
 mountain.
     The Feb. 2 crash of the domestic flight was the country's worst
 airline disaster.
     Philippine authorities are still awaiting the transcripts from
 the 31-year-old plane's cockpit voice recorder, which is being
 analyzed by the U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board in
 Washington.
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             3 die in Japan coast guard copter crash
     TOKYO -- Feb 20, 1998 9:30 p.m. EST -- A Maritime Safety Agency
 helicopter plunged into the sea off northern Japan, killing three
 people and injuring four, an agency official said on Saturday.
     An agency patrol boat pulled all seven crew members of the MSA
 Sikorsky S-76C helicopter from the icy waters shortly after it
 crashed on Friday, but three of them were unconscious, the
 official said.
     The agency initially said the three coast guard servicemen had
 regained consciousness, but later reported they died in a hospital.
 Two of them had drowned and the other died from exposure to the
 cold water, he said.
     The agency was investigating the cause of the crash, which
 occurred in waters south of Japan's main northern island of
 Hokkaido.
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