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US investigators are working to determine the causes of the helicopter crash that killed basketball star Kobe Bryant in California on Sunday.

All nine people on board the helicopter died, including Bryant's 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.

Investigators are expected to focus on the weather conditions, which were foggy, and on any mechanical failures that may have occurred.

Bryant was considered to be one of the greatest players in the game's history.

He was a five-time NBA champion for his only team, the Los Angeles Lakers, and a double Olympic gold medallist. He retired in April 2016.

Tributes from fans, fellow basketball players and other public figures have been pouring in from around the world while fans congregate at a makeshift memorial for the player in front of the Lakers' Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The NBA cancelled a game between the Lakers and the Clippers scheduled for the stadium on Tuesday.

What will investigators focus on?

Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are gathering in the area to launch separate crash investigations.

The federal agency has a team of about 20 people in LA and will work with the FAA, the helicopters' manufacturer and the company that made its engine, the Washington Post reports.

Investigators began searching through the wreckage on Monday. The FBI is helping the NTSB's staff document the scene, which is standard procedure.

The aircraft - a Sikorsky S-76B - went down into a hillside outside the city of Calabasas, west of Los Angeles, on Sunday at 09:45 local time (17:45 GMT).

Conditions were foggy when the flight took off, and local police had grounded their helicopters due to the poor weather.

The pilot asked air traffic controllers a special clearance, known as Special Visual Flight Rules, to fly in less than optimal weather, said NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy, who went to the crash scene to collect evidence.

The helicopter, she added, circled in the air for 12 minutes before being given the clearance. The pilot then asked controllers for "flight following", an assistance given to helicopters to avoid collisions, but was told the craft was too low to be picked up by radar.

Minutes later, the pilot said he was "climbing to avoid a cloud layer", she added. The helicopter climbed and began a left descending turn, according to radar data, before communication was lost "consistent with the accident location".

Pilots can experience "spatial disorientation" when they fly in cloudy conditions, due to the lack of visual input, Thomas Anthony, director of the USC Aviation Safety and Security Programme, told the BBC.

"That's why it's necessary to use the [flight] instruments, which give you an artificial horizon."

However, he added that it was "never one thing that causes an aircraft accident", and investigators would need to look into "what things came together to result in this tragic mishap".

The S-76 is a "well evolved, sophisticated aircraft that is used widely around the world", he said, adding that it had two jet engines, which gave it capability even if one stopped working.

Ms Homendy said debris was spread out over about 500ft (150m) with the tail and the main rotor having separated from the fuselage, calling it a "devastating accident scene". She added there was no cockpit voice recorder, known as a black box, as there was no requirement for it.

Why was Kobe Bryant travelling by helicopter?

Bryant had been on his way to coach his daughter's basketball team in a local youth tournament.

He was known for taking his helicopter to beat traffic in Los Angeles.

"Los Angeles is notorious" for traffic jams, says Professor Michael Manville, traffic lead at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.

He says this is due to the lack of road pricing- as well as the fact that LA has "the urbanisation and economy of a city, but the zoning and layout of a suburb" - which means residents cannot avoid driving, but the volume of traffic on roads is high.

According to research firm Inrix, drivers in Los Angeles lost an average of 128 hours to congestion in 2018.

The journey, from Bryant's home near Newport Beach to Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, would take just over an hour without traffic - but can take more than three hours when congestion is bad.

Who else was in the helicopter?

Coroners have recovered three bodies so far, but the victims have not been officially identified.

Family members and colleagues however said John Altobelli, coach of the Orange Coast College baseball team, was among the passengers, along with his wife Keri and their 13-year-old daughter Alyssa - who played with Bryant's daughter, Gianna.

Christina Mauser, a basketball coach at Gianna's school, was also on board, her husband wrote on Facebook.

US media have cited family tributes being paid to another victim, Sarah Chester, and her daughter Payton, who are said to have also been on board the helicopter; and Ara Zobayan has also been named as the pilot.

Why was Kobe Bryant so famous?

A five-time NBA champion, Bryant played his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers before his retirement in 2016.

His achievements include being the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) and two-time NBA Finals MVP. He was also NBA scoring champion twice and a two-time Olympic champion.

He famously scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors in 2006, the second-highest single-game total in NBA history.

He also won an Oscar for best short animated film in 2018 for Dear Basketball, a five-minute film based on a love letter to the sport he had written in 2015.

Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, have three other daughters, Natalia, Bianca and Capri.

Italy has said a minute's silence would be observed at all basketball games "in every category for the entire week". Bryant spent part of his childhood in the country as his father played in the Italian basketball league.

Bryant was accused of sexual assault in 2003 by a 19-year-old woman working at a Colorado resort. He denied the allegation, saying the two had consensual sex. The case was dropped after the accuser refused to testify in court.

He later apologised, saying he recognised that "she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did". A subsequent civil suit was settled out of court.

The Indonesian Embassy in Beijing confirms having continually monitored the living conditions of 93 Indonesians stranded in China’s Wuhan City, the epicenter of the deadly new coronavirus outbreak, and supplied staple food stocks to them.

"We are not leaving them behind. We continue to maintain regular contacts with them. If something very urgent arises, we have provided four hotline numbers to them," Indonesian Ambassador to China Djauhari Oratmangun informed ANTARA in Beijing on Monday.

The embassy’s hotline numbers are +861065325489, +8613811284505, +8613146453974, and +8613552235327, he revealed, adding that the stocks of staple foods for the Indonesians in Wuhan might run out within the next five or six days.

However, before the stocks of basic necessities run dry, the embassy staffers would replenish them. The staple foods were bought online, and couriers would deliver them to coordinators of the Indonesian communities at universities and apartments, he noted.

Most of the 93 Indonesians currently stranded in Wuhan are students, but one or two of them are expatriates staying in apartments. The Indonesian Embassy supplies staple foods fairly to all of them without exception, he revealed.

In ensuring the safety and security of all Indonesians in the disaster zone, Ambassador Djauhari Oratmangun affirmed that the embassy authority has continued to intensively communicate with the authorities in the Chinese Government, Hubei provincial administration, and Wuhan city government.

"We also coordinate with our colleagues at the Indonesian Consulate General offices in Ghuangzhou and Shanghai," he stated.

The Indonesian Embassy in Beijing noted that at least 200 Indonesians reside in Wuhan. Most of them might have returned to Indonesia for holidaying, while 93 others got stranded owing to the Chinese government’s decision to put the city on lockdown to stop the spread of this deadly virus.

This novel coronavirus has, so far, claimed at least 80 lives in China, while several other countries, including the United States and Canada, have announced their confirmed cases.

However, none of the confirmed cases were found in Indonesia. Apart from this reality, since the issuance of an official statement by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the coronavirus outbreak in China, the Indonesian government has remained on alert.

As part of its precautionary measures, thermal scanners have been installed at various airports around the archipelago for screening international passengers. The thermal scanners are aimed at detecting any foreign tourists symptomatic with this novel coronavirus.

Several hospitals in Indonesia's big cities have also made necessary preparations to handle those with suspected coronavirus symptoms.

In Jakarta, the Sulianti Saroso Hospital for Infectious Diseases in North Jakarta had received a patient, with symptoms suspected to be of coronavirus.

Chinese authorities declared the first case of coronavirus after a person with pneumonia was hospitalized in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, according to an official statement of the WHO.

Over the past week, people, with symptoms of pneumonia and reported travel history to Wuhan, had been identified at international airports. (ANTARA)

Due to the spread of the coronavirus or 2019-nCoV, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry has issued a travel advisory for its nationals who intend to visit China. "Indonesian citizens who are still at home should reconsider their plan to visit China and have the wisdom to select and respond to the circulating information related to the outbreak of 2019-nCoV," acting spokesman of the ministry Teuku Faizasyah said during a press briefing in Jakarta, Monday.

In response to the spread of coronavirus in China, Faizasyah said the Foreign Ministry has not yet issued a travel ban for China.

"We only advise citizens who wish to or have plans to travel to China, to exercise caution and avoid areas which based on open information have been affected or have the potential to be affected by coronavirus," he said.

He also advised Indonesian citizens planning to visit China to access information on the location of destination through SafeTravel application provided by the Foreign Ministry.

"Through the application, anybody can understand the extent to which the Foreign Ministry recommends those wishing to travel," he said.

The information in the application is provided based on clear criteria and open information so that it can be accounted for, he added.

In the application, Hubei Province in China where Wuhan City is located is in red, which means Indonesian citizens 'cannot' visit it due to a health threat.

The areas marked in yellow mean that Indonesians are 'advised' not to visit there.

Based on information from the Chinese National Health Commission as of Sunday afternoon, January 26, the number of infected patients reached 2,762, and the number of suspected patients stood at 5,794.

Meanwhile, the number of patients who died of coronavirus in China reached 80 with 29 out of 31 provinces/cities having been affected. (ANTARA)

Flash floods that inundated more than 11 thousand houses in the subdistricts of Baleendah, Bojongsoang, Dayeuhkolot, and Rancaekek, Bandung District, West Java Province, over the past five days, had not receded until Monday morning.

As a result, some 40,844 residents are still affected by the flooding, Head of Bandung District’s Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) for Emergency Logistics Affairs Enjang Wahyudin told journalists in Bandung, Monday.

The flood waters still reached 180 centimeters in depth in certain areas, he said, adding that some roads were also inundated disrupting the mobility of residents.

The Banjaran-Bandung road section, for instance, could not be accessed by cars and motorcycles, he said.

The flash floods have forced 2,364 residents to take refuge. Among them are 146 infants, 160 aging people, 18 pregnant women, and eight disabled. They are taking refuge in mosques and local government offices.

To assist the affected residents, the BPBD-Bandung District Office has provided equipment for rescuing and evacuating those in need to higher grounds, including five rubber boats, three aluminum boats, and seven fiber boats, Wahyudin said.

Many parts of Indonesia remain vulnerable to flooding and landslides partly due to environmental damage and degradation.

In early January, due to downpours, certain areas in Jakarta and its neighboring cities, including Bekasi in West Java, and Tangerang in Banten Province, were submerged. (INE/ANTARA)