Rescuers were still searching Saturday for nine people missing in the Pacific off the southern California coast after a Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter collided Thursday night.

“The search effort has saturated an area totaling 644 square miles and includes surface and air assets from the Coast Guard, Navy, Marine Corps and Customs Border Protection Air/Marine Branch,” the Coast Guard said Saturday in a statement.

“The search has been continuous since the collision occurred at approximately 7 p.m. Thursday.”

Marine Corps Air Station Miramar identified the Marine pilots of the AH-1W Super Cobra as Maj. Samuel Leigh and 1st Lt. Thomas Claiborne, both with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 469.

They were conducting routine training about 15 miles off San Clemente Island when they collided with the U.S. Coast Guard C-130.

The Coast Guard identified its seven missing personnel as Lt. Cmdr. Che J. Barnes of Capay, California, aircraft commander; Lt. Adam W. Bryant of Crewe, Virginia, co-pilot; Chief Petty Officer John F. Seidman of Stockton, California, flight engineer; Petty Officer 2nd Class Carl P. Grigonis of Mayfield Heights, Ohio, navigator; Petty Officer 2nd Class Monica L. Beacham of Decaturville, Tennessee, radio operator; Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason S. Moletzsky of Norristown, Pennsylvania, air crew; Petty Officer 3rd Class Danny R. Kreder II of Elm Mott, Texas, drop master.

They are stationed at Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento, California, where their aircraft is based.

A pilot reported seeing a fireball about 7:10 p.m. Thursday near the crash site.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Joseph Castillo said Friday that an investigation with the Marine Corps to determine what happened was beginning.

A large debris field has been located, and debris has been collected, he said. The two Marines on the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton chopper were one of four helicopter crews involved in the training exercise.

The Coast Guard plane had been on a search mission for a couple of days before Thursday’s crash.

“They were searching for a possible person in the water who was reported to have gotten in a dinghy and attempted to row to Catalina [Island],” Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Farris told reporters Friday. “We were searching in that area because of the drift that would have naturally occurred after that event.”

With water temperatures in the 60s, Farris estimated that survivability could be up to 20 hours.

The missing person the Coast Guard members were searching for is still missing, Farris said.

Turkish State Minister for Foreign Trade Zafer Caglayan said Friday that two more border passes would be opened with Iraq by the end of 2010, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

The move came in accordance with a memorandum of understanding for the opening of the two more border crossings, Caglayan was quoted as saying.

Caglayan said busy traffic in Turkish-Iraqi border passes caused delays, noting that Turkey and Iraq signed the memorandum of understanding to overcome the delays and contribute to trade.

The Turkish minister also said establishment of a common logistic center was also on the agenda, adding, “Turkey will extend support to establishment of a free zone in Iraq.”

President Barack Obama landed at a U.S. military base early on Thursday to meet the plane bringing home the bodies of 18 American soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Afghanistan this week.

The previously unannounced late-night trip comes as Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency that has reached its fiercest level in eight years. This month has been the deadliest for U.S. forces since the start of the war eight years ago.

Obama, flying in his Marine One presidential helicopter, landed shortly after midnight in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home of the United States’ largest military mortuary and main point of entry for U.S. service members killed abroad.

Minutes earlier, an Air Force C-17 transport aircraft landed in the base, carrying the bodies of eight Army soldiers killed by a roadside bomb and seven soldiers and three DEA agents killed in a helicopter crash, according to the military.

It was the first time Obama has made the trip as president to Dover, where as the caskets are unloaded from the transport plane, he will see first hand the human cost of the unpopular war he inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and which analysts say will likely help define his presidency.

Obama traveled with only a small media pool to Dover, and journalists accompanying him were restricted from reporting on the trip until his helicopter had taken off from the White House.

Polls show Americans increasingly weary of the war and there is skepticism, including among Obama’s fellow Democrats who control the U.S. Congress, over sending more troops.

Obama has held a series of meetings with his war Cabinet to review the new Afghan strategy he put in place in March and to consider a request by his top military commander in the field, General Stanley McChrystal, for 40,000 more troops to combat a resurgent Taliban.

He is set to meet again on Friday with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the military services, the White House said.

Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday the decision-making process was “probably getting to the end” and a final decision could be expected in the coming weeks.

MEDIA BAN RELAXED

Critics, particularly among opposition Republicans, accuse Obama of being overly cautious and indecisive, but the White House has said a decision of such magnitude requires careful consideration.

The process has been complicated by an Afghan presidential election in August marred by widespread fraud in favor of incumbent president Hamid Karzai. A second round is due to be held on November 7.

Underlining the fragility of the security situation even in the capital, Kabul, Taliban militants stormed a guest-house in Kabul on Wednesday and killed five U.N. foreign staff.

About two-thirds of the 100,000 NATO-led forces are U.S. troops. More than 900 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon relaxed its ban on media coverage of returning U.S. war dead by allowing families to decide whether to allow photos and television footage of the flag-draped coffins of their loved ones.

The ban had been imposed since the days of the 1991 Gulf War with some exceptions, including the return of Navy seamen killed during the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.

Bush imposed a stricter ban during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking criticism the federal government was hiding the human cost of its military operations.

In 2005, Myanmar allowed for the first time overseas job seekers to work in Qatar in the Middle East, a region once the country considered too dangerous and too susceptible to unrest for Myanmar workers.

More than 500 Myanmar workers arrived Qatar annually since then where demand for labor is high, overseas employment agencies said.

The government’s opening up of the overseas job opportunity to work in Qatar came after the launching in January 2005 of a direct flight to Yangon by the Qatar Airways, which stands the region’s airline.

In the past few decades, Myanmar has been encouraging its people to work overseas as part of its bid to ease domestic employment problem, and thousands of Myanmar job seekers worked in Asian countries with the majority in Malaysia, followed by in South Korea, Singapore and Japan.

The Myanmar labor authorities urged the country’s migrant workers to go through formal procedures to get jobs in Thailand to prevent from being deceived by such traffickers.

Overseas employment statistics show that Myanmar migratory workers mostly sought overseas jobs in Singapore during the period between 1996 and 2001 and the number working in the country reduced starting 2001 with Malaysia becoming the market for overseas employment.

According to earlier local report which quoted Malaysian official sources, Myanmar migratory workers accounted for the majority out of 1.84 million overseas workers working in Malaysia.

Along with the two southeast Asian countries, Qatar and Dubai also stand destinations for the agents to send Myanmar migratory workers. Over the past two years, the government issued temporary passports for Myanmar workers to work in neighboring Thailand and more such workers were encouraged to do so under bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

According to earlier report, of about 300,000 Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand, only 80,000 hold official labor cards issued by the Thai Labor Ministry, while about 120,000 have only stay visas and the rest or 100,000 are living in that country without having any legal documents.

It was warned that some illegal Myanmar workers in Thailand are facing labor exploitation by human traffickers who gave false promise of finding lucrative jobs in other countries.

He also denied economic effect on the country as the government is building infrastructures on self-reliant basis with its own technology and money.

He welcomes those out of 2 million Myanmar workers working abroad illegally to return home for employment.

In most recent years, the Myanmar government worked to seek about 50,000 jobs abroad for its country people annually.

Through 70 local overseas employment agencies making contacts foreign nations, the 50,000 overseas jobs opportunities were created, local reports said.

The Ministry of Labor set each of the overseas employment agencies to generate 100 jobs annually, it said, adding that the majority of Myanmar migrant workers got employed in Malaysia’s factories, workshops, restaurants and hotels, and construction projects while higher-educated workers won jobs in Singapore.

He assured that the government’s three ministries of foreign affairs, labor and agriculture and irrigation are ready to help those who come back home on account of losing their jobs abroad.

He also said the global financial crisis does not affect the demand and products that can be exported as much as it can produce, saying that the main export markets of the country are neighboring ones in Asia and the main export items are foodstuff — rice, beans and pulses, and meat and fish.

Pointing out that Myanmar has no contact with West bloc banks and monetary organizations, he held that there will be no loss in the monetary sector as the foreign loans are few compared with other countries.