More than 120 objects sighted in search for Flight 370 - New ocean images show 122 objects

 New satellite images provided by a French defense firm show 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, not far from other satellite sightings that could be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the Malaysian transport minister said Wednesday.

The objects were scattered over 154 square miles (400 square kilometers), acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Bin Hussein said.

Hishammuddin said he wasn't sure if Australian authorities coordinating the search for the plane had been able to follow up Wednesday on the new satellite images, which came from Airbus Defence and Space.

Searches resumed Wednesday after a one-day delay caused by poor weather. However, the last of 12 planes dispatched to the site returned to its base in Perth, Australia, late Wednesday without finding anything definitive, Australian officials said.

Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

 

'Eventually something will come to light'

 

How Inmarsat found MH370's path

 

Wife grieves for husband missing on MH370 

 

Search aircraft did spot three objects, but none were obvious plane parts, the Australian Maritime Safety Agency said.

The latest objects seen on satellite range from about 3 feet (1 meter) to about 75 feet (23 meters), Hishammuddin said. Some appear bright, indicating they may be solid, he said.

The latest images appear to be the most significant discovery yet in the hunt for the missing plane, which vanished March 8 with 239 people aboard, said CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien.

"There's a very good chance this could be the break we've been waiting for," he said.

Aviation safety analyst David Soucie agreed, saying he was particularly intrigued by the size of the 75-foot object.

"It has potential to be a wing that's floating," he said. "So I'm really encouraged by it, I really am."

But satellites have captured images of objects before during the current search, and crews have yet to spot anything definitively linked to the airplane, and ships haven't recovered anything of note.

Officials have warned that objects spotted in the water may turn out to be flotsam from cargo ships, and that finding anything from the plane could still take a long time.

"There's always a possibility we might not actually find something next week or the week after," Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Tuesday. "I think eventually, something will come to light, but it's going to take time."

Seven military reconnaissance planes -- from Australia, China, New Zealand, the United States, Japan and South Korea -- and five civil aircraft are combing the vast search area, which covers 469,407 square nautical miles.

Five ships, one from Australia and four from China, also are in the search zone, Australian authorities said.

Questions linger

The hardware

If search teams are able to find debris confirmed to be from the plane, it would help officials figure out roughly where the aircraft went down.

They would then be able to focus the search under the water to try to find larger pieces of wreckage and the all-important flight data recorder, which may hold vital clues about what happened on board the night the plane disappeared.

U.S. hardware designed to help with that task arrived Wednesday in Perth, the western Australian city that is the base for the search efforts.

The United States sent a Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle, which can search for submerged objects at depths as low as 14,700 feet (4,480 meters), and a TPL-25, a giant listening device that can help pinpoint the location of pings from the flight data recorder. Towed behind a ship, the TPL-25 can detect pings at a maximum depth of 20,000 feet (6,096 meters).

Time is against that part of the search though as the plane's pinger is expected to run out of power within the next two weeks. The Indian Ocean has an average depth of about 13,000 feet (3,962 meters),

 

Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped

 

Flight 370 relative: This is a cover-up

 

Families told all lives are lost

The families

The wait for answers about what happened to the plane and where it is now has taken a toll on the family members of those on board.

Chinese relatives have been particularly upset by Malaysian authorities' announcement Monday, based on analysis of satellite data, that the plane had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean with the loss of all lives aboard.

"My heart can't handle it. I don't want to hurt my children," Cheng Li Ping told CNN on Wednesday as she waited in Kuala Lumpur for evidence about what happened to her husband, who was aboard Flight 370.

The Chinese citizen says she cannot bring herself to accept that her husband is dead, even after authorities announced there were no survivors.

"I can't trust the Malaysian government. I can't work now because all I can think about is my husband and my children," she told CNN's Sara Sidner. "I don't have strength. ... My head is a mess."

On Wednesday, some families accused Malaysia Airlines of falling short on its promises to provide volunteer caregivers and accommodations for some family members. The airline couldn't immediately be reached for comment and did not send a representative to a press conference Wednesday.

The complaints came a day after hundreds of Flight 370 family members marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing to voice their anger and frustration.

Some argued the Malaysian government was covering up the truth and demanded tangible evidence the plane had ended up in the ocean.

The Chinese government, whose citizens made up two-thirds of the passengers on board the missing plane, also said it wanted more information from Malaysia. President Xi Jinping has sent a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to deal with the matter.

The Malaysian officials met with the Chinese envoy Wednesday, said Hishammuddin, the transport minister, and briefed them extensively on the analysis of the satellite data that led to the crash conclusion.

Did flammable cargo doom flight?

The backlash

The Malaysians' comments appeared to have done little to placate the anger among the families, however, and it appeared to be spreading more widely among the Chinese public.

Some Chinese celebrities used social media to urge people to boycott Malaysian products and visits to the country.

Chen Kun, one of China's most popular actors, accused the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines of "clownish prevarication and lies." His post Tuesday calling for a boycott was reposted more than 65,000 times on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging platform.

"I've never been to Malaysia, and I will no longer plan to go there anymore," Meng Fei, the host of one of China's most popular TV shows, wrote Wednesday on Weibo, calling for others to repost the comments if they felt the same. More than 120,000 users did.

Other social media users, albeit with smaller followings, argued against punishing Malaysia over the matter.

Chen Shu, a journalist, warned a boycott would "hurt the relationship of Chinese and Malaysians" and long-term regional ties.

Chinese authorities regularly censor Weibo posts. The fact the anti-Malaysian posts by high-profile users weren't deleted suggested either tacit approval or at least an unwillingness to wade into the debate by Chinese government censors.

How they're searching for debris

Hishammuddin, however, praised his country's performance, saying officials had overcome significant diplomatic challenges to bring together 26 countries, at one point, to participate in the search.

"History will judge us well," he said.

Legal action

In the United States, meanwhile, a Chicago-based attorney has taken the first formal legal steps related to the missing plane.

Monica Kelly, a lawyer at Ribbeck Law, asked an Illinois state judge Tuesday to order Malaysia Airlines and Boeing, which manufactured the missing airplane, to provide documents and other information.

Kelly is seeking specific information about the airline's batteries, details on the fire and oxygen systems, and records related to the fuselage.

The filing appears to be the first move toward U.S.-based litigation stemming from the plane's March 8 disappearance. The firm said it plans to build a multimillion-dollar suit against the airline and Boeing.

Boeing declined to comment on the matter late Tuesday, and Malaysia Airlines officials weren't immediately available.

Yet more objects sighted in search for Flight 370

Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency (MRSA) received new satellite images from France that were taken on March 23. The images showed 122 potential objects in one area of the ocean. Some of the objects were as much as 23 meters in length. Some appeared bright, possibly indicating solid material. They were located about 2,500 kilometers from Perth. "This is another new lead that will help direct the search operation," said Acting Minister of Transportation Hishammuddin Bin Hussein on Wednesday.

 Cheng Li Ping is afraid to tell her sons their father might never come home.

"My heart can't handle it. I don't want to hurt my children," the Chinese woman told CNN Wednesday as she waited in Kuala Lumpur for evidence about what happened to her husband and the 238 others who were aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Cheng says she cannot bring herself to accept that her husband is dead, even after authorities announced there were no survivors.

"I can't trust the Malaysian government. I can't work now because all I can think about is my husband and my children," she told CNN's Sara Sidner in Kuala Lumpur. "I don't have strength. ... My head is a mess."

Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Wife grieves for husband missing on MH370

Ships forced to leave search zone

'Eventually something will come to light'

Malaysian officials say they can tell you how Flight 370 ended. It crashed into the Indian Ocean, they'll say, citing complicated math as proof.

They can tell you when it probably happened -- on March 8, sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m. (7:11 to 8:15 p.m. ET March 7), handing you a sheet with extraordinarily technical details about satellite communications technology.

What they still can't tell you is why, or precisely where, or show you a piece of the wreckage.

Where's the proof?

The search

In a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean, where experts calculate the plane is likely to have ended up, search and recovery teams from six different countries are hunting for pieces of debris.

The search resumed Wednesday after stormy weather put it on hold for the whole of Tuesday.

Seven military reconnaissance planes -- from Australia, China, New Zealand, the United States, Japan and South Korea -- and five civil aircraft are making flights over the vast area over the course of the day.

And five ships, one from Australia and four from China, are in the search zone, Australian authorities said.

Satellites have detected objects afloat in the ocean over the past week and a half. And Australian and Chinese surveillance planes both reported seeing items of debris on the surface this week, but so far nothing has been recovered or definitively linked to the missing flight.

Officials have warned that objects spotted in the water may turn out to be flotsam from cargo ships, and that finding anything from the plane could still take a long time.

"There's always a possibility we might not actually find something next week or the week after," Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Tuesday. "I think eventually something will come to light, but it's going to take time."

The hardware

If search teams are able to find debris confirmed to be from the plane, that would help officials figure out roughly where the aircraft went down.

They would then be able to focus the search under the water to try to locate larger pieces of wreckage and the all-important flight data recorder, which may hold vital clues about what happened on board the night the plane disappeared.

How Inmarsat found MH370's path

Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped

Flight 370 relative: This is a cover-up

Families told all lives are lost

The deep sea robot search for 370

U.S. hardware designed to help with that task arrived Wednesday in Perth, the western Australian city that is serving as the base for the search efforts.

The United States sent a Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle, which can search for submerged objects at depths as low as 14,700 feet, and a TPL-25, a giant listening device that can help pinpoint the location of pings from the flight data recorder. Towed behind a ship, the TPL-25 can detect pings at a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.

Time is against that part of the search, though, as the plane's pinger is expected to run out of power within the next two weeks. The Indian Ocean has an average depth of about 13,000 feet.

How 'groundbreaking' number crunching found path of Flight 370

The families

The wait for answers about what happened to the plane and where it is now has taken a hard toll on the family members of those on board.

Many relatives of Chinese passengers, like Cheng, refuse to accept the Malaysian government's version of events.

In Beijing, hundreds of them marched to the Malaysian Embassy on Tuesday to voice their anger and frustration.

And on Wednesday, they accused Malaysia Airlines of falling short on its promises to provide volunteer caregivers and accommodations for some family members. The airline couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The Chinese relatives were particularly upset by Malaysian authorities' announcement Monday that they had concluded that the plane had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean with the loss of all lives aboard.

Some family members said they weren't satisfied by the Malaysian government's explanation, which was based on an expert analysis of satellite data. They said it was covering up the truth and demanded tangible evidence that the plane had ended up in the ocean.

The Chinese government, whose citizens made up two thirds of the passengers on board the missing plane, also said it wanted more information from the Malaysian side. President Xi Jinping has sent a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to deal with the matter.

Malaysian officials released more details on the satellite analysis Tuesday and said they understood the families' need to see physical evidence from the plane to get closure. They said they had made the announcement "out of a commitment to openness and respect for the relatives."

The backlash

The Malaysians' comments appeared to have done little to placate the anger among the families, though, and it appeared to be spreading more widely among the Chinese public.

Some Chinese celebrities used social media to urge people to boycott Malaysian products and visits to the country.

Chen Kun, one of China's most popular actors, accused the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines of "clownish prevarication and lies." His post Tuesday calling for a boycott was reposted more than 65,000 times on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging platform.

"I've never been to Malaysia, and I will no longer plan to go there anymore," Meng Fei, the host of one of China's most popular TV shows, wrote Wednesday on Weibo, calling for others to repost the comments if they felt the same. More than 120,000 users did.

Other social media users, albeit with smaller followings, argued against punishing Malaysia as a whole over the matter.

Chen Shu, a journalist, warned that a boycott would "hurt the relationship of Chinese and Malaysians" and long-term regional ties.

Chinese authorities regularly censor Weibo posts. The fact that the anti-Malaysian posts by high-profile users weren't deleted suggested either tacit approval or at least an unwillingness to wade into the debate by Chinese government censors.

How they're searching for debris

The legal action

In the United States, meanwhile, a Chicago-based attorney has taken the first formal legal steps related to the missing plane.

Monica Kelly, a lawyer at Ribbeck Law, asked an Illinois state judge on Tuesday to order Malaysia Airlines and Boeing, which manufactured the missing airplane, to provide documents and other information.

Kelly is seeking specific information about the airline's batteries, details on the fire and oxygen systems and records related to the fuselage.

The filing appears to be the first move toward U.S.-based litigation stemming from the March 8 incident. The firm said it plans to build a multi-million dollar suit against the airline and Boeing.

Boeing declined to comment on the matter late Tuesday, and Malaysia Airlines officials weren't immediately available.

Death toll climbs as protests still rage in Venezuela

 

At least 31 people have died in Venezuela and 461 have been injured in violent clashes between opposition demonstrators and government forces that began last month, an official said Thursday.

Another 1,854 people have been detained during the unrest, according to Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres.

The weeks of protests across Venezuela mark the biggest threat President Nicolas Maduro has faced since his election last year. Demonstrators say they have taken to the streets to protest shortages of goods, high inflation and high crime.

Protesters and government officials trade blame for the violence.

 

Venezuela blames one woman for protests

 

"Nicolas threw gas on the fire. He and he alone will be responsible for how the situation develops," opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski said in a Twitter post Thursday.

"It's clear you want more confrontation and to promote violence," he tweeted earlier.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour this month week, Maduro was unapologetic about his government's response to opposition protesters.

Think about what the U.S. government would do if a political group laid out a road map for overthrowing President Barack Obama, Maduro said.

"What would happen in the United States if a group said they were going to start something in the United States so that President Obama leaves, resigns, to change the constitutional government of the United States?" Maduro said. "Surely, the state would react, would use all the force that the law gives it to re-establish order and to put those who are against the Constitution where they belong."

Flight 370's resting place is best clue

Crew aboard an Australian P-3 Orion "sub hunter" scan the southern Indian Ocean as they search for the missing plane on March 23.  

 Flight MH-370 may go down in history as one of most incredible aviation mysteries. The cruel reality is that even though we have a fair amount of information now, we still know so little.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak informed the families of the victims that the plane had crashed into the remote south Indian Ocean, and all 239 people onboard are presumed dead.

That tragic but not unexpected conclusion was based on data analysis by satellite company Inmarsat, which Malaysia now says was able to track Flight 370 until the signal ended very near where searchers are now hunting for plane wreckage.

The location tells a lot about what might have happened to the doomed flight while telling us not a single detail about why it crashed.

The presumed location of the wreckage makes it all but impossible for certain scenarios to have played out as many observers insisted they must have.

The first thing to understand is altitude is everything. A turbofan powered jet like the Boeing 777-200ER relies on altitude to make good on its ultra long-range capabilities. At its normal cruising altitudes from around 35,000 to 40,000 feet, the 777 can fly very long distances, in excess of 11,000 miles. But it seldom flies long routes.

On its trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the plane would have had, according to investigators' projections, around seven hours of total endurance at a normal cruising speed of around 600 mph -- just enough to have flown its suspected flight path north for 40 minutes, west for around that much time again, and then south for many hours.

 

Listening for MH370 'pings' underwater

 

#Search area is a 'giant washing machine'

At lower altitudes, turbofan engines like the Rolls-Royce engines on the Malaysia Airlines airplane, burn substantially more fuel than they do at typical cruise altitudes -- as much as twice depending on the altitudes one uses for comparison.

The increase in fuel burn will greatly reduce range, making it impossible for Flight MH-370 to have reached the southern Indian Ocean at a low altitude. It would need to have flown at a much higher optimum altitude in order to make it that far.

Pilots can reduce the power to cut back on fuel flow, of course, but that also reduces airspeed, which again reduces range.

There's no winning when it comes to flying a turbofan-powered airplane: If you want to fly far, you need to fly high.

So the fuel required for MH-370 to have reached the presumed crash location around 1500 miles west of Perth, Australia, means that the airplane did not do a lot of climbing or descending after it deviated from its original planned route to Beijing while it was still an hour or so north of Kuala Lumpur.

So if there was a struggle for control of the flight -- whether it was mechanical issues or a hijacker -- it could not have lasted long or involved great altitude deviations.

This means it's hard, though not impossible, to explain the disappearance as being the result of a mechanical or electrical failure. Such a scenario, as I've been saying since the beginning of the mystery, would require a kind of mechanical magic bullet, an event that would have taken out the transponder and ACARS radio, as well as the voice communications radios. Why else would they not have communicated the emergency?

Then one must accept that such a failure chain could then allow the crew -- or skilled intruder-- to be able to drive the airplane around the sky for a protracted period of time, eventually pointing it south, in the opposite direction from where the airplane was originally headed.

Let's remember, too, that the airplane would have to maintain an altitude sufficient to allow it to reach the southern Indian Ocean. All this must also have left the 777 in good enough shape to fly for another six hours or so before crashing.

A failure of the pressurization system might account for the scenario, but only if the pilots completely mismanaged their response to the emergency. The 777's backup and emergency oxygen systems are just as intelligently designed as the rest of the jet's redundant systems.

It's also difficult, if not impossible, to explain how the jet could have made the turns it did if the crew were unconscious during that time. Were they desperately trying to find an airport before time ran out? If so, they would have done two things they didn't do: They would have communicated the emergency and they would have descended. Neither of those things happened.

While it's horrific to imagine, a botched hijacking or failed pilot commandeering of the airplane are still the most likely scenarios.

Only when searchers have located and recovered the wreckage, as we all desperately hope they do, will we have our first good clues to what have might have unfolded on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-370.

Malaysian airliner's flight ended over Indian Ocean, Lost Finally

 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down over the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday, citing a new analysis of satellite data by a British satellite company and accident investigators.

The announcement appeared to rule out the possibility that anyone could have survived whatever happened to the aircraft, which vanished more than two weeks ago with 239 people aboard.

As Razak spoke, airline representatives met with family members in Beijing. "They have told us all lives are lost," one relative of a missing passenger told CNN.

The developments happened the same day as Australian officials announced they had spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard.

One object is "a grey or green circular object," and the other is "an orange rectangular object," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

 

Are found objects part of MH370?

 

A look inside the search for MH370

 

Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped

 

Two objects located in ocean

 

The objects are the latest in a series of sightings, including "suspicious objects" reported earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was involved in search efforts in the same region, authorities said.

So far, nothing has been definitively linked to Flight 370.

Earlier, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister, said only that "at the moment, there are new leads but nothing conclusive."

A reporter on board the Chinese plane for China's official Xinhua news agency said the search team saw "two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers," the agency reported Monday.

The Chinese plane was flying at 33,000 feet on its way back to Australia's west coast when it made the sighting, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

But a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft, one of the military's most sophisticated reconnaissance planes, that was tasked to investigate the objects was unable to find them, the authority said.

With the search in its third week, authorities have so far been unable to establish where exactly the missing plane is or why it flew off course from its planned journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

China has a particularly large stake in the search: Its citizens made up about two-thirds of the 227 passengers on the missing Boeing 777. Beijing has repeatedly called on Malaysian authorities, who are in charge of the overall search, to step up efforts to find the plane.

Malaysian and Australian authorities appeared to be more interested Monday in the two objects spotted by a Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion aircraft.

The Australian's navy's HMAS Success "is on scene and is attempting to locate the objects," the Australian maritime authority said.

Hishammuddin said Australian authorities had said the objects could be retrieved "within the next few hours, or by tomorrow morning at the latest."

Satellites focus search

Recent information from satellites identifying objects in the water that could be related to the plane has focused search efforts on an area roughly 1,500 miles southwest of the Australian city of Perth.

A total of 10 aircraft -- from Australia, China the United States and Japan -- were tasked with combing the search area Monday.

The aerial searches have been trained on the isolated part of ocean since last week, when Australia first announced that satellite imagery had detected possible objects that could be connected to the search.

Since then, China and France have said they also have satellite information pointing to floating debris in a similar area. The Chinese information came from images, and the French data came from satellite radar.

But Australian officials have repeatedly warned that the objects detected in satellite images may not turn out to be from the missing plane -- they could be containers that have fallen off cargo ships, for example.

On Saturday, searchers found a wooden pallet as well as strapping belts, Australian authorities said. The use of wooden pallets is common in the airline industry, but also in the shipping industry.

Hishammuddin said Monday that Flight 370 was carrying wooden pallets, but that there was so far no evidence they are related to the ones sighted in the search area.

The investigation into the passenger jet's disappearance has already produced a wealth of false leads and speculative theories. Previously, when the hunt was focused on the South China Sea near where the plane dropped off civilian radar, a number of sightings of debris proved to be unrelated to the search.

Plane said to have flown low

The sighting of the objects of interest by the Chinese plane came after a weekend during which other nuggets of information emerged about the movements of the errant jetliner on the night it vanished.

Military radar tracking shows that after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea, the plane changed altitude as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, an official close to the investigation into the missing flight told CNN.

The plane flew as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar, according to the official. It had reportedly been flying at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when contact was lost with air traffic control.

The sharp turn seemed to be intentional, the official said, because executing it would have taken the Boeing 777 two minutes -- a time period during which the pilot or co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a fire or other emergency on board.

Authorities say the plane didn't send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it's still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren't able to communicate because of a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's systems.

The official, who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN that the area the plane flew in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that traffic.

Malaysia disputes reprogramming

Also over the weekend, Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing aircraft's reporting system showed it heading to Beijing -- a revelation that appears to undercut the theory that someone reprogrammed the plane's flight path before the co-pilot signed off with air traffic controllers for the last time.

That reduces, but doesn't rule out, suspicions about foul play in the cockpit.

Last week, CNN and other news organizations, citing unnamed sources, reported that authorities believed someone had reprogrammed the aircraft's flight computer before the sign-off.

CNN cited sources who believed the plane's flight computer must have been reprogrammed because it flew directly over navigational way points. A plane controlled by a human probably would not have been so precise, the sources said.

Malaysian authorities never confirmed that account, saying last week that the plane's "documented flight path" had not been altered.

On Sunday, they clarified that statement further, saying the plane's automated data reporting system included no route changes in its last burst, sent at 1:07 a.m. -- 12 minutes before the last voice communication with flight controllers.

Analysts are divided about what the latest information could mean. Some argue it's a sign that mechanical failure sent the plane suddenly off course. Others say there are still too many unknowns to eliminate any possibilities.

CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien called the fresh details about the flight a "game changer."

"Now we have no evidence the crew did anything wrong," he said. "And in fact, now, we should be operating with the primary assumption being that something bad happened to that plane shortly after they said good night."

If a crisis on board caused the plane to lose pressure, he said, pilots could have chosen to deliberately fly lower to save passengers.

"You want to get down to 10,000 feet, because that is when you don't have to worry about pressurization. You have enough air in the atmosphere naturally to keep everybody alive," he said. "So part of the procedure for a rapid decompression ... it's called a high dive, and you go as quickly as you can down that to that altitude."

Authorities have said pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was highly experienced. On Monday, Malaysian authorities said Flight 370 was co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's sixth flight in a Boeing 777, and the first time when he was not traveling with an instructor pilot shadowing him.

"We do not see any problem with him," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.

MH370 Malaysian plane: Indian Ocean searched for plane

Next

Tony Abbott: "If there is anything down there, we will find it"

An international search of the southern Indian Ocean is continuing for a second day as authorities try to locate a missing Malaysian airliner.

Five military and civilian aircraft are taking part in the search for debris from flight MH370, which disappeared on 8 March with 239 people on board.
Satellite images released on Thursday showed objects possibly related to the plane in waters far south-west of the Australian city of Perth.
Bad weather hampered Thursday's search.
"It's about the most inaccessible spot that you can imagine on the face of the earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it," said Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is currently visiting Papua New Guinea.
"We owe it to the families of those people (on board) to do no less."

Australian authorities said one of the objects was 24m in size

The objects were seen on satellite images and assessed by experts

The St Petersburg, a Norwegian merchant ship, was the first vessel to reach the area

Flight MH370 was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it lost contact with air traffic controllers and disappeared from radar.
Satellite data has led to a search in two corridors to the north and south of its last known location in the Malacca Straits - the opposite direction from its flight path.
Malaysian officials say they believe the plane was intentionally diverted. Authorities in many countries have scrutinised the backgrounds of both passengers and crew on board but say they have no substantive leads.
Other reports of debris to date have proved not to be linked to the missing plane.
Bad conditions

 

 For another day the search for flight MH370 is again focused on some of the most remote waters on Earth. The aerial operation is run from the Pearce airbase north of Perth, where three Australian P-3 Orion reconnaissance planes are scouring distant parts of the southern Indian Ocean.
Their sorties are staggered to make the best use of daylight hours, and they are joined by a civilian Bombardier Global Express and a sophisticated American surveillance aircraft.
The challenge they face is immense. The weather so far out into the ocean can be harsh and unpredictable, while churning seas make it hard to see any floating objects.
Yet there is a determination here to get the job done no matter how long it takes, although so far there has been no sign of the debris that could yield vital clues in the hunt for the missing Malaysia airlines jet.

The debris which is the current focus of the search was identified on satellite images by Australian experts.

Mr Abbott announced early on Thursday that vessels were being sent to investigate, but cautioned that the objects found could be unrelated to the plane.
Four military planes, including three Orions belonging to the Royal Australian Air Force, are taking part in the search, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) said in a statement.
A civilian Bombardier Global Express is also involved. Two Orions and the Bombardier Global Express were due in the search area on Friday morning, with another Orion and a US P8 Poseidon aircraft due there later in the day.
The aircraft are searching a 23,000 km area, about 2,500 km (1,550 miles) south-west of Perth, Amsa said.
Each aircraft is able to search for no more than two hours, due to the distance from land.
The first aircraft returned on Friday without finding any debris.
A Norwegian merchant ship is in the area and has been searching since Thursday. Another merchant ship is en route, as is an Australian navy vessel with recovery capacity.
John Young, manager of Amsa's emergency response division, said: "Although this search area is much smaller than we started with, it nonetheless is a big area when you're looking out the window and trying to see something by eye.
"So we may have to do this a few times to be confident about the coverage of that search area."

On Thursday military officials said weather had hampered the search.
The captain of the first Australian air force Orion to return from the search area described conditions as "extremely bad" with rough seas and high winds.
Warren Truss, Australia's deputy prime minister, emphasised the difficulty of the task.
"Clearly this is a very, very difficult and challenging search. Weather conditions are not particularly good and [the] risk [is] that they may deteriorate,'' he said.
China says it is sending three navy vessels to the search area. It also has an icebreaker in Perth that could join the search, its National Maritime Search and Rescue Centre said.
'False information' On Thursday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein described the debris sighting as a "credible lead".
The largest object appeared to be 24m (78ft) in size, the Australian authorities said.
Correspondents say many families are hoping the objects are not debris from the plane, as they are holding onto hope that their relatives could be alive somewhere.
Wen Wancheng, whose 33-year-old son Wen Yongsheng was on the plane, said: "What wreckage? In a few days they are going to say it's not true.
"[The Malaysian authorities] need to stop giving us false information. I simply don't believe them any more."
Malaysia says search efforts are continuing in both corridors, involving a total of 18 ships, 29 aircraft and six ship-borne helicopters.
"Until we are certain that we have located MH370, search and rescue operations will continue in both corridors," Mr Hishammuddin said.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Southern search area seen as most likely

 The missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is more likely to be in the southern search area identified by investigators, which stretches far into the Indian Ocean, a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation told CNN on Wednesday.

"This is an area out of normal shipping lanes, out of any commercial flight patterns, with few fishing boats and there are no islands," the official said, warning that the search could well last "weeks and not days."

The search for the passenger jet and the 239 people on board is now in its 12th day, covering a total area roughly the size of the continental United States.

Searchers from 26 countries are trying to pinpointing the plane's location somewhere along two vast arcs, one stretching deep into the Asian landmass, the other far out into the Indian Ocean.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference Wednesday that both search areas are of equal importance.

Here are other highlights from the news conference:

-- Some data had been deleted from the flight simulator found at the home of the pilot, Hishammuddin said. Forensic work is under way to try to recover it, he said.

-- Malaysian authorities have received background information from all countries with passengers on board the plane except Russia and Ukraine. So far, no information of significance has been found about any passengers, Hishammuddin said.

-- Malaysia has received some radar data from other countries, he said, but "we are not at liberty to release information from other countries."

-- Reports that the plane was sighted by people in the Maldives are "not true," Hishammuddin said, citing the Chief of the Malaysian Defense Force who contacted his counterpart in the Maldives.

Ticking clock

The latest news conference took place as the clock ticked on search efforts.

The box containing the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders of the missing plane has batteries designed to keep it sending out pings for 30 days. That leaves 18 days until the batteries are expected to run out.

Investigators hope the recorders may reveal vital information about why the passenger jet carrying 239 people veered dramatically off course and disappeared from radar screens. But they have to find them first.

 

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"The odds of finding the pinger are very slim," said Rob McCallum, an ocean search specialist. "Even when you know roughly where the target is, it can be very tricky to find the pinger. They have a very limited range."

Technology put to use

Some of the nations involved in the hunt are deploying an impressive array of technology, including satellites and high-tech submarine-hunting planes, as they try to narrow the search area.

They're also trawling through existing radar and satellite data for clues.

Australia said Wednesday that the area of the southern Indian Ocean where it is searching for the plane has been "significantly refined."

The new area is based on work done by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on "the fuel reserves of the aircraft and how far it could have flown," said John Young of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

But Australian ships and aircraft have so far seen nothing connected to the missing plane, Australian authorities said.

Small details emerge

Much of what has emerged in recent days has filled in a few more details about the early part of the missing Boeing 777-200's flight.

But clear information on what went on in the cockpit and where exactly the errant jet went after it vanished from Malaysian military radar remains frustratingly elusive.

On Tuesday, for example, a law enforcement official told CNN that the aircraft's first major change of course was almost certainly programmed by somebody in the cockpit. The change was entered into the plane's system at least 12 minutes before a person in the cockpit, believed to be the co-pilot, signed off to air traffic controllers.

But that disclosure only left more questions about the reason behind the reprogrammed flight path.

Some experts said the change in direction could have been part of an alternate flight plan programmed in advance in case of emergency; others suggested it could show something more nefarious was afoot.

And Hishammuddin said Wednesday that "there is no additional waypoint on MH370's documented flight plan, which depicts normal routing all the way to Beijing."

The Thai military, meanwhile, said it had spotted the plane turning west toward the Strait of Malacca early on March 8. That supports the analysis of Malaysian military radar that has the plane flying out over the Strait of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean.

But it didn't make it any clearer where the plane went next. Authorities say information from satellites suggests the plane kept flying for about six hours after it was last detected by Malaysian military radar.

Who was at the controls?

Malaysian authorities, who are coordinating the search, say the available evidence suggests the missing plane flew off course in a deliberate act by someone who knew what they were doing.

Figuring out who that might be has so far left investigators stumped.

Particular attention has focused on the pilot and first officer on Flight 370, but authorities are yet to come up with any evidence explaining why either of them would have taken the jetliner off course.

And some experts have warned against hastily jumping to conclusions about the role of the pilots.

"I've worked on many cases were the pilots were suspect, and it turned out to be a mechanical and horrible problem," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. "And I have a saying myself: Sometimes an erratic flight path is heroism, not terrorism

China says it has found nothing suspicious during background checks on its citizens on the flight -- a large majority of the plane's passengers.

Searchers face deep ocean

Hishammuddin, the country's public face of the search efforts, has repeatedly said at news conferences that little is likely to be established about the mysterious flight until the plane is found.

But in the Indian Ocean, where Australia and Indonesia have taken the lead in the hunt, some of the depths searchers are dealing with are significant.

The Bay of Bengal, for example, which lies between Myanmar and India, has depths of between about 4,000 and 7,000 meters (13,000 feet and 23,000 feet), according to McCallum.

Wreckage and bodies of passengers from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, were found at depths of around 12,000 feet by unmanned submarines.

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of the wreckage and the majority of the bodies of the 228 people on board Flight 447. It took even longer to establish the cause of the disaster.

Right now, authorities don't even know for sure if the missing Malaysian plane crashed or landed -- or where.

CNN has talked to more than half a dozen U.S. military and intelligence officials who emphasize that while no one knows what happened to the plane, it is more logical to conclude it crashed into the Indian Ocean.

Why annexing Crimea may prove costly for Russia

Crimeans voted to break off from Ukraine and join Russia. Their vote represents the re-establishment of a historic cultural relationship.

But take away the emotional side of the Crimean referendum and reality hits home -- the economic challenges that are yet to knock on their door.

Crimea is entirely integrated into Ukraine's mainland economy and infrastructure.

The peninsula only produces one-tenth of the energy it consumes. Ninety percent of its water, 80% of its electricity, and roughly 65% of its gas come from the rest of Ukraine.

 
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And while Russia has enough energy to supply power to Crimea, it's lacking the infrastructure -- there are not even any underwater cables though the Strait of Kerch, which separates Russia and Crimea.

Crimean authorities set out their plan to nationalize the oil and gas company Chernomorneftegaz, but according to Lilit Gevorgyan, Senior Economist at IHS, that may not be enough to "solve fully their energy problems and ... become independent of Ukraine."

And the costs don't end there.

Crimea depends heavily on the Ukrainian mainland to balance its books. Around 70% of Crimea's $1.2 billion budget comes directly from Kiev.

Annexation of Crimea would be costly for Russia too because Crimea will need similar support, if not more, from Moscow. And while Russia's economy is stable, it is not growing.

Moscow recently announced it will invest between $5 billion and $6 billion in Crimea, according to Helena Yakovlev Golani at the University of Toronto. The costs begin to add up -- and that's not including the challenges of integrating the banking system and currency and validating land titles.

For the Crimeans, the most noticeable change could be the lack of tourists this season, with many expecting visitors to cancel tours because of the crisis.

This will be damaging for Crimea, according to Ukraine's Tourism Board, given that Crimea attracted 6 million tourists last year. Seventy percent of holiday makers in the region are domestic visitors from mainland Ukraine.

The crisis has been portrayed as a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West, but it will also affect ordinary people; they still need to eat, pay bills and dress their children.

Some in Crimea have portrayed the situation as an economic crisis, but actions on the ground suggest this is less about the economy and more about Russia's desire to project power in a strategically important region.

Air Canada suspends flights to Venezuela

2014 -- Updated 0838 GMT (1638 HKT)

Prior to the suspension, Air Canada operated three return flights a week between Toronto and Caracas.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Citing safety concerns, Air Canada suspended all flights to Venezuela
• Violent clashes between opposition demonstrators and government forces ongoing for over a month
• IATA CEO says Venezuelan government blocking airlines from repatriating $3.7 billion

(CNN) -- Canada's largest airline announced Monday it has suspended flights to and from Venezuela capital Caracas as violent protests continue in the country.

"Due to ongoing civil unrest in Venezuela, Air Canada can no longer ensure the safety of its operation and has suspended flights to Caracas until further notice," said the airline in a statement.

Air Canada said its last flight departed Caracas on Sunday, March 16.

Prior to the suspension, Air Canada operated three return flights per week between Toronto and Caracas. The airline said customers holding tickets for later flights will receive a refund.

"Air Canada will continue to monitor the situation and will evaluate the re-introduction of flights with the objective of resuming operations on the route once Air Canada is satisfied that the situation in Venezuela has stabilized," said the statement.

Violent protests have continued in Caracas for weeks.

For more than a month demonstrators have been clashing with security forces in Venezuela, marking the biggest threat President Nicolas Maduro has faced since his election last year.

Students and other anti-government protestors are unhappy with Venezuela's economy and rising crime.

Despite being one of the world's top 10 oil-producing countries, more than 25% of Venezuelans live below the poverty line. More than 20 people have been killed during the demonstrations, according to government figures.

MORE: Protests rage in Venezuela, one month on

IATA: Venezuela not playing by the rules

Air Canada's cancellation of its Caracas services comes amid a financial dispute between airlines and Venezuela's government.

International Air Transport Association's CEO Tony Tyler said in a speech March 12 that the Venezuelan government is stopping airlines from repatriating around $3.7 billion in earnings.

For several months, airlines have reportedly been unable to access money earned in ticket sales in Venezuela due to the company's tight currency controls. Ecuadorean flag carrier Tame suspended flights to Venezuela for three days in January over blocked payments.

"It is unacceptable that the Venezuelan government is not playing by the rules to which it is treaty bound," said Tyler.

"The impact of this blocked cash is quite easily seen when you consider that airlines this year will only make $18.7 billion globally. Of course this is cash and not pure profit.

"Airlines certainly cannot sustain operations indefinitely if they can't get paid. I have written to President Maduro asking for his urgent attention to this issue."

According to a report by Venezuela's Spanish-language daily el Nacional, Maduro told reporters on March 14 that any airline that pulls its operations from the country will not be allowed to return while he's in power.

Could Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have slipped by radar?

Could a massive passenger jet slip past radar, cross international borders and land undetected?

That's a key question investigators are weighing as they continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bound for Beijing.

Radar does have some blind spots, and it's possible to avoid being spotted by flying at low altitude, analysts told CNN.

But experts are divided over whether that could be what happened to the missing Boeing 777-200ER.

Jeffrey Beatty, a security consultant and former FBI special agent, says someone could have planned a route that avoided radar detection.

 

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"It certainly is possible to fly through the mountains in that part of the world and not be visible on radar. Also, an experienced pilot, anyone who wanted to go in that direction, could certainly plot out all the known radar locations, and you can easily determine, where are the radar blind spots?" he said. "It's the type of things the Americans did when they went into Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden."

Information about the plane's path came into sharper focus on Tuesday, when the Thai government released data that bolsters the belief among investigators that the missing jet took a sharp westward turn after communication was lost.

The Thai military was receiving normal flight path and communication data from the jet on its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing until 1:22 a.m., when it disappeared from its radar.

Six minutes later, the Thai military detected an unknown signal, a Royal Thai Air Force spokesman told CNN. This unknown aircraft, possibly Flight 370, was heading in the opposite direction.

Malaysia says the evidence suggests the plane was deliberately flown off course, turning westward and traveling back over the Malay Peninsula and out into the Indian Ocean.

The Thai data corroborate what the Malaysian military had found earlier -- that the plane did indeed turn around toward the Strait of Malacca.

But the Thai contact was short-lived. "The unknown aircraft's signal was sending out intermittently, on and off, and on and off," the spokesman said. The Thai military lost the unknown aircraft's signal because of the limits of its military radar, he said.

On Monday, the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times reported that the plane may have evaded radar detection by flying at an altitude of 5,000 feet or less and through mountainous terrain. The newspaper cited unidentified sources for its reporting, which CNN could not confirm.

A senior Indian military official told CNN on Monday that military radar near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands isn't as closely watched as are other radar systems. That leaves open the possibility that Indian radar systems may not have picked up the airplane at the time of its last known Malaysian radar contact, near the tiny island of Palau Perak in the Strait of Malacca.

Malaysian officials said Monday that they were not aware of the Malaysian newspaper's report.

"It does not come from us," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.

U.S. officials have said they think it's unlikely the plane flew northward over land as it veered off course. If it had, they've said, radar somewhere would have detected it. It's also unlikely that the plane was landed at a remote airport, since remote airports aren't typically equipped with the long runways that the Boeing jetliner needs, the officials have said.

Analysts interviewed by CNN said that it would be extremely difficult to fly such a large aircraft so close to the ground over a long period of time, and that it's not even clear that doing so would keep the plane off radar scopes.

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"Five thousand (feet) isn't really low enough to evade the radar, and that's kind of where general aviation flies all the time anyway, and we're visible to radar," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"It just seems really highly improbable, unless we've been overestimating a lot of other countries' radar system capabilities," said Daniel Rose, an aviation and maritime attorney.

Buck Sexton, a former CIA officer who's now national security editor for TheBlaze.com, said radar would have detected the plane had it flown over land.

 

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"This is a bus in the sky. It's a lot harder to get under the radar with this kind of thing than I think most people realize," he said. "So really, while the search I know has extended to this vast area stretching up into (central or south Asia), clearly there really should be much more of a search over open water -- because this is not getting past people's radars."

It wouldn't be easy to avoid radar detection, but some experts say it could be done.

"Anything like this is possible," radar expert Greg Charvat told CNN's "Piers Morgan Live." "But to do it, you'd have to have very detailed information of the type of radars, their disposition, their heights and their waveforms to pull that off."

Different countries would likely be using different radar systems, he said, but it's unclear how advanced the technology is in many countries.

"It took a great deal of skill to do this," CNN aviation analyst Jim Tilmon said. "I think somebody was at the controls who understood the value of altitude control to eliminate the possibility of being spotted and tracked on radar."

Whoever was in control in the cockpit, he said, "really had the ability to map out a route that was given the very best chance of not being detected."

One other possibility, he said: The plane could have shadowed another plane so closely that it slipped by radar detection.

Other analysts say that would require so much skill that it would be nearly impossible to pull off without getting caught.

There's another possible wrinkle, experts say. Some countries may be hesitant to reveal what they've seen on radar.

"They want to protect their own capabilities," Beatty said. "Their intelligence services are not going to want to publicize exactly what their capabilities are."