i'm christi paul. we want to welcome you to the newsroom here on cnn not only the those of you in the states but also to those of you around the globe watching right now. we're grateful for your company. >> i'm victor blackwell. 10:00 on the east coast of the u.s. 7:00 out west. again, to our viewers here in the u.s. and around the world, you are in the "cnn newsroom." >> this is cnn breaking news. >> a breaking news this morning, a huge very possibly for search teams hunting for flight 370. >> chinese ship has detected what's called a pulse signal. that's how they're characterizing it. a pulse signal in the indian ocean. this could be the flight locator beacon pinging that could lead searchers to those black boxes, possibly to the wreckage of the malaysia airlines plane but we

do not have any confirmation on that. >> we've got a map to show you. about 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude. this is all according to chinese state media. >> we haven't independently confirmed this, again, just want to reiterate that. neither has the joint agency coordination center in charge of this search in perth. the pulse signal has a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz per second which is said to be the standard beacon frequency for the flight data recorders and why it's getting attention right now. >> here's one more reason why this is incredible. the batteries for those pingers may have only hours of power left before they run out. >> so with time running out, this may be the best hope of finding flight 370. i want to bring in our panel here. thank all of you for being with us as we have got this covered from experts with the ocean to the air to the investigation. and thank you all so much for being with us.

jeff weise, as you're hearing this information i'm wondering, from you, what was your first reaction when you heard that a pulse signal had been detected? >> my first reaction was, wow. because if this does pan out it is huge, it is a game changer. we've been looking for it. if we can locate this beacon we can find the black box and start to hope to solve this incredible riddle. then i thought, you know, this is like winning powerball. we've been spending the last few days saying how likely it is we will be able to to find an acoustic signal. this is a one sentence press release and then another, modified with another one sentence press release. it's not a lot to go on. we hope to find more about this very soon. >> david, of all the analysts and reporters and experts we've had, we don't have david? >> no problem. >> okay. we've got david here. david, of all the experts and analysts we've had on air you have been the most optimistic. when i came to you you said this

is a pinger. do you still have that level of opt him? >> well, yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that's a pinger, frequency and pulse. i can't imagine anything el out there unless they're picking up their own signals from a test or something like that. yeah, i'm convinced that it is a pinger. there are some confusion on the reporting and who it came from and where it came from. i'm optimistic that it is that pinger that we're looking for. again, too, they said they saw it, only heard it for a minute and a half and they haven't been able to relocate it from what i understand, which makes me very concerned about typically if you do have that pinger signal you should be able to come back over that same spot knowing where you were and pick it up again. i'm -- my optimism is weaning a little bit until we hear that they picked it up again. >> miles o'brien is with us now, as well. and, miles, i know you've been

skeptical of a lot of things, of inmars inmarsat's findings, of how many resources were or were not admitted to this entire search, especially in terms of how many resources the u.s. was able to se send. what is your level of optimism or pessimism about this new information, i should say? >> well, you know, my first reaction is exactly jeff's, wow. but then you have to step back and consider what david just brought out, which is very important that this would be a steady, consistent pinging noise that wouldn't go away necessarily in that short period of time unless by some strange that moment, which i don't know what the odds would be on that. we should take this with a bit of a grain of salt and consider the possibility that at least they now have a place where they can do a very concentrated search on the surface and

continue listening. you know, you have to wonder -- it's interesting a chinese ship that is usually not ideally suited for doing this found or heard this pinging noise. did they have satellite information they weren't necessarily sharing with everybody else or some sort of data that came through military means that put them on this site? otherwise it's incredible shot in the dark and, you know, could be potentially the break everybody has been waiting for here. i will put myself in the cautiously optimistic mode because you've got to have some home here. >> mike williamson, my question to you of just the odds of finding this black box, if this pinger, if this is from a ping first and the pinger is connected to the black box, the odds of finding this considering the -- the scape here, the depth of water and the terrain in this

area. >> well, actually if this was the pinger signal, it's very low power and so it doesn't have much range. so if they picked it up, particularly if it's near the surface they have to be almost directly above it or very close. so if this is true we have a very accurate position to begin a search and if it was, in fact, a pinger, this is great news because it's going to be very close to a pinpoint to start the location for searching. >> okay. we want to go to will ripley right now. he's with the joint collaboration center there in perth. will, i have to believe that, you know, some of these ships or some of these planes at least are coming in today after their searches. what have you heard there? you've got some new information? >> yeah. we do have some new information. our source at the australian defense force tells us that they

got word of this through some channel. we don't know which channel. the authorities here got word of this around lunchtime today. the xinhua news agency put it out around dinner time. they have been trying to establish a connection, a communication line with the ship that is equipped with this pinger locator that supposedly detected this pulse. they have not been able to establish a connection with this ship. you node the know how the chinese ships communicate with the joint coordination center. it's different than the way other countries are working here because other countries actually communicate directly with the command center in australia. they use a text messages realtime information sharing system. the way it works with the chinese ships, their information first goes to beijing and then beijing communicates that information to the malaysians and the australians. as of now as far as we know there has been no official communication to malaysia or australia from beijing. we're working to get comment from beijing. we've been asking them about

this. basically unable to establish a connection with the ship. but obviously this is a piece of information. everybody here would like to learn more about. we have to be very cautious because there have been false leads in this investigation and this is a time when we certainly don't want to give these families false hope. >> will ripley there in perth for us. i want to take that straight to mary schiavo. hear that most countries go strathd to australia but the chinese send that information back to beijing. beiji beijing, i guess, done their own analysis. and then decides what they want to pass on to the malaysians who then give it on to -- it's a game of telephone. it seems as if by this point in this search this would be a little more -- should be simplified, don't you think? >> it is. and it's supposed to be simplified. when you set up a joint task force you're supposed to transfer command of control of the operation to the task force head, that would be angus

houston down in australia. again, china being china, they still have to answer to their government supervisors or bosses so it doesn't surprise me that it did this but the expected out come is what happened. now that you don't report it directly to the command of the investigation, you've got this game of telephone, you've got the we the theys and you have people, one, doubting your data. this could be the best break in the whole case but now people doubt it because they didn't follow through the joint task force command structure and time is being lost, time is being wasted. if they had put it through the command structure, the ships would be on the way, additional pinger locations and change the location of others and get there. so hopefully it's all right. hopefully going forward they can work a little better with the joint task force. unfortunately it does sound like business as usual with reporting to beijing first. >> michael kay, retired lieutenant colonel. two things. first of all, will ripley just

aid that australia has known about this for several hours since it was lunchtime their time. you wonder why they didn't release anything. does that show that they themselves are skeptical about this? secondly, if it's not a pinger based on the fact that it is the exact frequency, the 3.75 that it needs to be -- or 37.5, rather that it needs to be. what else could it be? >> the process of cooperation takes time and it takes a lot of time to make sure that the information that they're disseminating is unequivocal and accurate. so what i do is i want to go back to this situation. i want to look at what we do know, which is that you rightry leaded to, 37.5. that is a unique signal and it appears to be in right part of the world. but let's interrogate the data to see why it necessarily couldn't be. and for me you don't get smoke without fire in these situations. so where is the debris field,

for example? the maritime surveillance aircraft, they will be looking on top of the surface. why can't they see anything that we can associate with two black b box sn boxes? let's get the submersibles down there to look at the debris floor as well. until we have that cooperated evidence, then we need to be extremely cautious ant where we take this information from china. >> richard quest, australian prime minister tony throughout this search has been amongst the most optimistic by saying that you know, on one given day the most credible leads yet. on another given day, that this is a positive day of searching. what we have from an australian defense force spokesperson who told cnn that this is a anomaly of interest and is cautioning people about the possibility of a false positive. so i would imagine from those statements very little optimism from the australians.

what's your level of optimism and skepticism as this report comes in? >> i am skeptically optimistic. it is a mess will let's call it what it is. it is a mess because all the mechanisms designed to prevent exactly the speculation and rampant what is, what if, what happens have now gone right out of the window because of the way the chinese have announced this, through xinhua. all the command and control structures -- whether by beijing to malaysia to perth, it doesn't matter. this is being set up in a particular way, specifically to avoid this sort of crucial information or misinformation from being leaked at exactly the wrong moment giving painfully false information and false hope to families and setting everybody off in the wrong direction. so, what has to happen now? that's what has happened so far. what has to happen now?

the australians basically get their hands around this and start pulling all the information together. they find out which the chinese exactly what it is they have found, what it is they have discovered and more assets get moved in the general direction. 10:00 at night there of course so it will be somewhat difficult. they will be searching at night which they can do. until the australians via the malaysians or however, manage to get their hands around this information, corroborate, confirm, and announce, it must be treat with skepticism, albeit skeptical optimism. >> i want to ask the panel to stick around here, because not only is this happening right now but in kuala lumpur, remember, the authorities denied the victims families earlier this week the families request to release the audio recordings of the final recordings from the air traffic control center with the cockpit in this case. it turns out now that apparently

some friends, not family members, but friends of the pilots have actually heard that audio. we're going to take you live to kuala lumpur with jim clancy who is research that. stay close. it's red lobster's lobsterfest! all promotions! the year's largest selection of lobster entrees, like lobster lover's dream. hurry in and sea food differently. go to red lobster.com for ten dollars off with purchase of two lobsterfest entrees.

breaking news this morning, chinese state news agency xinhua reporting a haixun 01 the

chinese patrol ship searching this effort to find flight 370 has detected a pulse signal at 37 1/2 kilohertz per second which is the exact frequency a pinger on a black box sends out that ping. we've got our panel here covering this search and this investigation from many different angles all around the world. i want to go straight to pilot dave funk. the discussion up to this point has been searching for debris and hopefully that debris field would lead searchers to the black boxes. it has to be incredibly rare to find the black box before the debris. >> well, exactly. in this case we just hear a signal from the black box. i'm no submarine hunting expert. i'm sure we could find somebody. but sound under t water doesn't travel in a straight line like it does through the air, like you and i perceive it. they could get this signal but it's going to be somewhere in a

relatively close circle to hear it. if we can now -- we know where to start looking, you can expand the search for the debris field and see what's on the surface. but my big question is where does this data point lay in relation to things that we think we know already, the suspected track of the airplane, any radar skin paints the australian had with the over the horizon radar. if it's on that line, i would be optimistic. if it's way out of position and i haven't had a chance to look at a map yet this morning, a long/lat map of the area. if it's out of position, i would be suspicious. if it's close to what we think we already know, i would be pretty optistic we are looking in the right spot. it's time to get the submersib e submersibles in the water. remember, we've been looking for the debris field to work our way back. sometimes you just get lucky and that might be the case here. we heard the pinger. >> jeff wise -- these things don't occur in nature. >> the pinging sound at this frequency we need to point out and it has been said all morning, it does not occur in nature. jeff wise, aviation analyst,

what else could it be? if not from nature, if it's not from a black box, at 37.5 kilohertz, what else could this be? >> you did hear reports of a false positive -- false ping report. so it seems that this has happened before. we've had a false positive from paing pi pinger. i'd like to put a hat on what richard was saying that this is not how information should be released. when you're search for something, especially with a huge multi-national task force, you're going to have false positives. the key thing of the search authorities is to suppress false positives until they can be checked out in is a sketchy report at this point. we have to really be cautious and i think as richard said, this really shines a light on, you know, the flaws and how the organization is set up. and i don't blame the malaysians or the australians. i think the chinese are sort of

doing their own thing under this broader umbrella. >> i want to go to ocean search specialist mike williamson. we understand from the australians that they were notified of this report by xinhua. it has not yet been confirmed but they were notified around lunchtime, which would be maybe 8 to 12 hours ago, just an estimate there. at what point in this confirmation process should the searchers be now? >> well, actually what i'd like to insert here before i answer your question is 37.5 kilohertz is the unique frequency for these pingers. for the same reason that that frequency was chosen for the pingers, the 30 kilohertz area is low noise in the ocean spectrum. so it's favored by a lot of different kinds of equipment, a lot of the echo sounders used on

ships, high powered echo sounders operate at 30, 33 kilohertz. there are some mind hunting sonars that operate at 37 kilohertz. and, you know, we've got a lot of ships in the area. we've got some submarines. and there could be some other signal that may not be precisely 37.5 kilohertz but could be very close. and it might be confusing. so there are a lot of things that we have to think about, you know, that there are a lot of ships and airplanes in the area. you know, this may be the pinger but it might be something close to that frequency. i just wanted to add that. >> okay. let me ask you, michael kay, our retired lieutenant colonel. we don't have michael kay. mike williamson, let me go to you. if they are releasing this, we've had a lot of talk about --

we've had a lot of talk about the chain of command here, so to speak. so if australia found out about it, say, six hours ago, lunchtime their time, six or seven hours ago. if this were a false positive, would we not at least know that by now? because we are just learning about it this morning but they've known about it for six or seven hours. and china still felt compelled to release the information. have they not been able to wipe out whether a false positive is indeed the case? >> well, because there are some other possibilities, i would expect that maybe the australians were trying to figure out if they could get confirmation. it would be wonderful if this is a pinger signal. it would be fabulous. i hope it is. but there are some other possibilities. >> i want everyone to stick around. this could be a potentially a

big break in the search for 370. but there is also a development in the investigation. we've got our jim clancy there in kuala lumpur as it relates to the families who have asked to hear the air traffic control recordings. well, we know that some people have heard them. we'll tell you who and why. jim is up in a moment. ♪ ♪ ♪ ben! ♪ [ train whistle blows ] oh, that was close. you ain't lying. let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. 100% greek. 100% mmm... so mmm, you might not believe it's 100 calories.

yoplait greek 100. there are hundreds of reasons to love it.

brabing news for you this morning is that the state news agency in china, xinhua, is saying that chinese patrol ship hours ago detected a pulse signal coming from the southern indian ocean. we're waiting to find out whether we can -- or anybody can confirm that, what it means, did they find the black box, didn't they from malaysia 370?

but also this morning we're learning more about this audio recordings from inside the cockpit. >> let's bring in jim clancy in kuala lumpur. jim, what have you learned about those? >> well, you know, we take a look at these cockpit voice recordings that were made between the aircraft, flight 370, and air traffic control on the very early morning of march 8th. its final transmission. why does that matter? it matters because whoever made that transmission was in control of the aircraft or thought to be at the time that it suddenly disappear fred raed from radar. they were confirmed to be inside the cockpit. both pilots might have been there but at least that one was there. families wanted to know, well, whose voice is on this, they wanted to listen to these recordings. they were refused. the news media has asked to hear those recordings. they have been refused. but some people have heard them. friends of both pilots have been able to listen to it. they've been asked by

investigators, this is according to a source here in kuala lumpur close to the investigation, he said, they listened to it and they could not be sure whose voice that was. we don't get any further along i don't think in the investigation but at the same time, it's another area that shows you how far the investigation is going. christi, victor? >> so, if the friends could not come to any conclusion, any decision about who was speaking those final words, after the refusal, is there any indication the malaysian government will change their decision and maybe let some of the people who were very close to the captain and copilot listen to the recordings? >> you mean, family members? >> yes. >> i don't think it's likely. here's the problem with that. if i were the pilot, we all know suspicion is going to go to the person, the last one in the cockpit. people say, well, we know for sure that person was in the cockpit. you know, if i were the pilot i would hope my family members would say, oh, no, that's not his voice. that's the problem. you would have somebody there with an interest.

and i think that's good investigation. but you know, as we're talking about the pinger tonight, we had a little bit of a wake-up call with that as well. a lot of discussion, how long will it last, as you've been reporting. we know we're very close to the end. what kind of shape are the batteries in. the crowe eo of malaysia airlin addressed that. regular schedule of maintenance. listen to what he had to say. >> and as far as the battery, what is reported, we have -- we confirmed there's a maintenance program whereby the batteries were placed prior to expiring. we do know that the batteries are due for replacement only in june 2014. >> that's good news. hopefully that would add days to the window that they would continue to ping and everybody here, you know, we've tried to pull the families, government officials, either the families

nor government officials want to make any comment about this xinhua news report until and unless they see a solid confirmation. victor, christi? >> all righty. appreciate it. jim clancy, thank you so much. richard quest, i understand you've been listening here and there's something you want to add? >> what jim said is interesting and important. what jim says is exactly what you would have expected both of a criminal and of an aviation investigation at this stage. those people who need to hear the audiotapes of the air traffic control have heard them. the friends or the family or the colleagues, anybody who could identify who was speaking those words, malaysia 370 from the cockpit. that is significant. it shows us that the authorities are letting those people hear the tapes who need to hear the tapes to help with the investigation. it's not a blanket ban, as some

would suggest, if jim's source is correct. what they will not do and they never do is give a general release of cockpit audiotapes. the prejudicial effect, the fire storm of hearing the people's voices at the moment the plane is doing whatever it's doing is simply too great. it will be the cockpit voice recorder that will have it on it. >> and the findings are inconclusive on who spoke those final words. frank graham's firm specializes in cockpit voice recorder analys analysis. frank, good to have you, especially at this point in this mystery over last 30 days. investigators are combing through the audio from air traffic control beyond trying to identify those voices. what are they listening for? >> well, right now all we have

is a copy of the air traffic control recording. that is quite different from the cvr cockpit voice recorder. that is presumptively still at the bottom of the ocean. we have the transcript of the atc, or air traffic control, recording. one would hope that it is accurate and complete, although they are frequently not. i see nothing unusual in that transcript. so at this point all looks normal from that transcript and those air traffic control recordings. the cockpit voice recorder, if it has anything on it, because, remember, records two hours, the aircraft could have flown for over seven, in which case there will be nothing on the cockpit voice order. >> if indeed they were incapacitated for the last two hours. >> right.

right. so let me ask you this. because we do -- they have released transcripts. what would you learn from the audio as opposed to learning from the transcripts? >> well, it may well be possible once the proper team of experts is assembled to discern who is speaking at each turn. typically in the u.s. and many other countries the pilot flying the aircraft is not the one talking on the radio. that could help. and we can also get a baseline from prior recordings whether they be home videos or other types of recordings, voice mails, voice mail greetings, and compare those voices, certain parameters, so what we hear on the atc recording. and if there is anything on the cvr, cockpit voice recorder,

compare it again to that. >> all right. frank, i just need you to hold on for just a second. we've got breaking news just in to cnn. i'm going to read it. it just came to me. a chinese air force plane involved in the search for missing malaysian airline spoted a number of floating objects in the search area. a chinese state news agency xinhua is the source for that, the same source that says that this pulse was detected, photographs of the objects were taken after they were spotted from the plane, 11:05 local time according to xinhua. that gives us almost 12 hours ago these pictures were taken. i would imagine the protocol is these would then be given to malaysia and then also shared with the australians as we learned as the information came out about those pulses that were detected. but here again, is a map of where this pulse signal was detected and now we've got news from xinhua, the chinese state

news agency, it lthat almost obs have been seen in this search area. >> frank, i do want to get back to you quickly before we let you go as we talk about these audiotapes. are you listening to or is there ever any indication when you listen to these tapes that maybe there's some noise in the background that you, you know, have technology to extrapolate from that and glean any information from that as opposed to just the voice on the recorder? >> absolutely. not only do we generate a full complete accurate transcript of what was said, we look at how it was said, the pitch of the voice, the loudness of the voice, how fast they spoke. these things can tell us about stress the pilots may have been under. and as far as background sounds go, there are warnings in the cockpit, engine noise, some sort of failure may be heard. there are a number of parameters

that we can use and apply to an audio recording to determine exactly what was going on in that cockpit. and sometimes further back in the airplane. >> frank graham, president of investigations and research. thank you for speaking with us this morning. >> you're welcome. thank you for having me. >> thank you, frank. of course, we will continue the breaking news. we just got in from xinhua the news agency that earlier this morning reported that a chinese patrol ship had picked up this pulse signal. almost now reporting just in the last few minutes that these chinese air force planes have spotted objects, a number of floating objects in the search area and took photographs. that was at 11:05 local time, bha meaning it was about 11 1/2

hours ago in the south indian ocean. >> we'll keep you up on this. we'll take a quick break here. at od, whatever business you're in, that's the business we're in. with premium service like one of the best on-time delivery records and a low claims ratio, we do whatever it takes to make your business our business. od. helping the world keep promises.

♪ ♪ ♪ abe! get in! punch it! [ male announcer ] let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. thanks, "g." woman: everyone in the nicu -- all the nurses wanted to watch him when he was there 118 days. everything that you thought was important to you

changes in light of having a child that needs you every moment. i wouldn't trade him for the world. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we're owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. if you're caring for a child with special needs, our innovative special care program offers strategies that can help.

is that the chinese news agency xinhua not only reporting now that they -- one of the chinese patrol ships detected a pulse signal which some say could be from the black box, malaysia 370, but now also reporting they have seen some objects floating in the water in that general area. that's from chinese air force plane that supposedly spotted that. we're just waiting for all of that information to make it down the chain of command and get a more definitive sighting of some of these things. >> confirmation even, a confirmation from the australian authorities who are leading this effort. it seems as if the chinese are

releasing their information as they get it. again, there's a healthy level of skepticism. let's bring in our panel. we've got no fewer than eight experts and reporters joining us in front of cameraing and over the phone following this mystery from march 8th when it began. i want to go to professor first about not only the report from xinhua that this pulse signal has been detected but now that these photographs have been taken of objects floating in the water. we are almost 12 hours from the time according to xinhua that those items were spotted. what is your reaction to the reporting and where in the investigation should we be? >> the reaction to the pinger would be that this is a huge break in the case. if it is indeed validated that it is a pinger, we've nearly done the impossible. and finding the debris in the

area recognize it's been float for four weeks. it should have drifted considerably downcurrent. so we wouldn't expect to find it over the site of the pinger. the pinger itself would be more where search would be concentrating. but the underwater swimmers in the water, the autonomous vehicles. you're dealing with an area now that's probably about five miles across. >> all right. tom fuentes, i want to get your take on this. and also the fact, because this is something that's just sticking with me. that australia is trying to establish as will ripley just told us a short while ago from perth, australia is trying to establish a communication line. the information we're getting is several hours old. we know that australia knew about some of this several hours ago. how long will it take to connect those lines?

>> yeah, i heard the feedback. the problem i have with this is we criticize the malaysian government from losing control of the message in their command post running this investigation. now it's been -- the search part has been in the hands of the australians and they've lost control of it. the fact that we're getting reporting by way of xinhua, a chinese-owned newspaper, government-owned newspaper, i should add, cctv china, which is also government-owned the network, based on reports from aircraft and ships belonging to the chinese government, if that information was, in fact, relayed to the malaysian -- i mean, to the australians 12 hours ago approximately, why didn't they have some type of just, okay, we've heard these reports, we're responding. don't get your hopes up. don't get too excited but we're going to dispatch the appropriate resources to those locations and look for the debris and look with the autonomous vehicle and the side scan, radar vehicles -- sonar

vehicles. we're going to search that site and try to find it. they've said really nothing officially. so everything is coming through china media rather than the command post in australia. i realize it's almost 11:00 at night in australia and in beijing, for that matter. but something something out, a press release, something that you're on this, you're working on it. you've deployed appropriate resources. we're hearing nothing in an official capacity to really know what's going on. and, also, in terms of expectations, say, you know, the ocean shield with the appropriate gear won't -- it will take two days to get there or four days to get there, whatever it will be. give a more realistic timeline of how long it will take to verify what's been reported. >> mary schiavo, without that information from the australians who are leading this multi-national search and we know that this is nearly 12 h r hours old, 12 hours ago since these pictures were taken

according to xinhua. do you glean anything from the silence? if you didn't believe this, if you had no confidence you could have said that very early on. >> well, i think that's probably it though. they pass the information on to the australians. and the team there had no way to confirm it. it's not their assets there that got the pings or not the wreckage. they probably receive the information and were waiting to be able to confirm or to get additional assets in the area to confirm it. you know, they're probably not too happy that the news is coming out over chinese news agency. but it's a chinese ship. lots of chinese passengers on the -- on the plane that went down. and so there's a reporter on that ship. i think the reporter is doing what reporters do, which is report news that's pretty darn significant if it's accurate. so i guess at this point the important thing is to get the asset there's and find out if this is true or not because if it's true, this is hugely important and i guess we need to stop quibbling over who broke the news and get the ships there to confirm it.

but i think the australians were just being cautious and wanted to have confirmation. >> will ripley is live for us there in australia. will, good morning to you and what have you learned this hour? >> good morning. the bottom line, no, we don't have official confirmation. as we mentioned earlier, the australians first got word of this through some channel, we don't know which channel, they first got word around lunchtime. they've been trying to establish communication with haixun ever since. have not been able to get any information out of beijing which has been disseminated all the facts to the australians and the malaysians. our source within the australian defense force is telling us they really hoped when they got word of this this afternoon or yesterday afternoon now, in perth, they hoped that this would speed up the process. they hoped that, you know, hours into this we would be able to speed up the line of communication. that simply hasn't happened yet. that's the reason we're not seeing confirmation. because the authorities here can't confirm it.

they can't get ahold of the ship to give them more detailed information a this. >> all right. will ripley there for us. appears air base in perth as we wait for some confirmation whether this is the pinger that has been detected by this chinese patrol ship as reported by chinese state news agency or not. i want our panel to stick around. we will continue with the breaking news as reported by chinese state news agency that not only a pulse signal has been detected by chinese ship but chinese air force pilots have seen and taken pictures of floating objects in the search area there in the south indian ocean. stay with us. we'll continue to coverage in a moment. what does everything mean to you? with the quicksilver cash back card from capital one, it means unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase, every day. it doesn't mean, "everything... as long as you buy it at the gas station." it doesn't mean, "everything... until you hit your cash back limit."

it means earn 1.5% cash back on every purchase, every place, every occasion, all over creation. that's what everything should mean. so consider... what's in your wallet? that's what everything gunderman group is growing. getting in a groove. growth is gratifying. goal is to grow. gotta get greater growth. growth? growth. i just talked to ups. they've got a lot of great ideas. like smart pick ups. they'll only show up when you print a label and it's automatic. we save time and money. time? money? time and money. awesome. awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! (all) awesome! i love logistics.

because you can't beat zero heartburn. woo hoo! [ male announcer ] prilosec otc is the number one doctor recommended frequent heartburn medicine for 8 straight years. one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn.

frequent heartburn medicine for 8 straight years. these days, everything is done on the internet. and tomorrow you'll do even more. that's what comcast business was built for.

slow dsl from the phone company was built for stuff like this. switch to comcast business internet. then add voice and tv for just $34.90 more per month. and you'll be ready for tomorrow today. comcast business. built for business. breaking news this morning. two big pieces of information. both of them coming from state news agency xinhua out of china. first of all they say a chinese patrol ship detected a pulse signal at 37.5 kilohertz which is the frequency standard beacon frequency of a black box. so we don't know, no confirmation from any other source other than this is what xinhua has heard. chinese air force planes spotted and photographed objects that they saw floating in the water. about 12 hows ago local time for

them. but this certainly brings into play the communication of where this information is going because even though it's coming from china, australia some 12 hours later has not given any formal confirmation of this. >> chain of kusz to difficult, chain of command, protocol, and tom fuentes, i got a great question that just came in via twitter from claudia. she says, if the black box is found, and maybe this is it, maybe not, who gets it, the malaysian government because it was a malaysian plane, the chinese because they found it, the australians because they lead the search. >> victor, it's not finders keepers. the box goes to the malaysian government and it's up to their decision making to give it to to analyze whether they think they have the people who can study it or give it to the ntsb or the british or some other authority. but it belongs to malaysia. >> mary schiavo, your assumption they will give it up to anyone else to analyze considering all

the intelligence and information that other countries have asked for, that they have not given up? >> well, i think that they will and they'll have to. first of all, they have to be extremely careful and i'm sure the experts are there on-site as to how to actually take i from the water. they don't actually take it from the water. they'll transport it in saltwater and take it to hopefully the ntsb lab where's they will then put it in a bath of freshwater and eventually then be able to get it out and dry it out. they have to be very careful with how they handle it. because it's a boeing aircraft and it's the best lab in the world is the ntsb, i'm hopeful that the malaysians will decide that the ntsb should do the analysis because they have to be careful how they remove it, how they take it from the water, how it's eventually removed from both saltwater, than freshwater, then dried out. so it's not an easy process, but it's a process the ntsb has done, sadly und lly hundreds of

because they've dealt with so many plane crashes. it belongs to the malaysians. >> jeff wise, because we're talking about how many hours have passed since this was discovered and since this was -- this information was released. is releasing it hours later by, you know, the chinese news agency, does that give them more credence because they've had this for hours and may be able to do some of their own confirmation or does it show even some desperation considering the fact that most of the people on that plane were chinese and they're looking for answers? >> it's very strange the way this information has been release bd by the chinese is no according to protocol. i have to add this new bit of breaking news about the debris being spotted from the air, it's like the chinese are really doubling down on this idea they've located the plane. as we've already heard, finding debris on the water from the air is a completely different kind of search. based on the amount of time

since this incident occurred you would expect the debris in the water to be on the order of hundreds of miles away from where the debris would be located under the surface. it's almost like they won powerball twice, if true. >> jeff wise, mary schiavo, tom fuentes, all of the analysts on the camera and on the phone, we have more. stay where you are. we've got a little more that's coming in from not just kuala lumpur but also from some of the families of those who are on flight 370. we're going to get to that in a moment. stay with us as we continue the coverage of this morning's breaking news. ♪

♪ ♪ ben! ♪ [ train whistle blows ] oh, that was close. you ain't lying. let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. [ two greek blueberry yogurts, the yoplone winner.aste-off. let quicken loans help you save your money i love this one. yoplait!

it's so much better than chobani. i really have to say yoplait. a winner, winner! [ female announcer ] let your tastebuds decide. take the yoplait greek taste-off! xinhua chinese news agency telling us or releasing some information today that their patrol ships spotted or heard a

pulse signal in the ocean. so a lot of people wondering if that is the black box from malaysia flight 370. also that objects were spotted by chinese air force planes. however, enfamily members of the victims apparently are skeptical about this news today. >> cnn's pauline chu is in beijing with the families and we just got this in from jack song whose sister was on board flight 370. he said, there's no piece of debris so how can you find the black box? he does not believe that indeed this frequency that was picked up was, indeed, the ping. i think we've got the map showing where this was detected near the search areas today but not only the sound or the ping is also the photographs that were taken, we're told, according to xinhua, the chinese state news agencies, about the floating objects 12 hours ago. >> the news about the objects

just came down to us within the last 10 or 20 minutes yes. >> we'll see how this continues to develop. you'll see it as well with fred as she's here with you now to walk you through the afternoon. hi, fred. >> hello to you. good to see you. lots of developments to follow up on. that's what we're going to do beginning right now. hello, everyone. the "newsroom" begins right now. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> all right. we begin with this breaking news. what could be, could be a major break in the search for flight 370. china's state news agency reports that a chinese patrol ship detected a pulse signal as the same frequency as a black box. this is the spot where the signal was picked up according to the chinese report. but there is no confirmation as yet that this is connected to the missing plane. if this signal did come from the black box, it could be just in time, the batteries for the box's pingers typically last

about 30 days and it has been almost now 30 days since the plane vanished. china's state news agency says a chinese air force plane spotted several floating objects earlier today. it's not clear yet if those are connected to the plane either. also today, malaysian officials announce they are forming three committees to handle all the aspects of the plane's disappearance now. the committees will work with families, the investigation, and the deployment of assets. we also learned today officials played a recording of the last words from the cockpit to friends of the pilots. families have not been allowed to hear it. a source close to the investigation says officials are trying to determine who was speaking. we have reporters and experts around the world to bring you every i thiangle of t story. first, an update of the search from perth, australia, will ripley is there live for us. will, what are officials in australia saying about this chinese report as it pertains to

the pulse as well as a chinese airplane saying they spotted debris? >> yeah, we haven't gotten any comment about these latest sightings of objects, fred. although i do need to point out we have had so many sightings of objects over the past few weeks. we need to have a healthy dose of skepticism here. we were reporting satellite images of what we thought were debris fields but turned out in an area completely unrelated now, not even being searched anymore. as far as the objects go, it's something that obviously is going to be looked at. but we don't have any official word on that. we do though have official word on these -- the possible ping dete detected. we know the australian defense force from our source in the defense force, they tell us they got word around lunchtime on saturday that the chinese ship had detected something and at that moment and now for the past, you know, 10 to 12 hours or so, they have been trying to establish communication with the chinese ship that reported this, the haixun.

they haven't been able to establish a line of communication. unlike the other countries involved in this search that communicate with the command center here in australia. the chinese ships and planes send their information to beijing and beijing communicate wsz wh s with malaysia and australia. whether there's something happening on the diplomatic channels we don't know. but what we do know is that at least militarily they haven't been able to establish a direct connection with this ship to get more information about this. so there's, you know, cautious optimism but also a lot of skepticism as well. >> all right. will ripley, thanks so much. let's talk more about this. let's bring in richard quest, aviati aviation correspondent for cnn. richard, let's look at the map where the chinese patrol ship discovered this pulse signal and now we understand as well chinese air assets may have also spotted debris in that same general vicinity. we understand that australian authorities leading this investigation nearby have not heard or at least have not

confirmed with us what chinese news agency material is. where does this investigation go from here? what do you need to hear that the next order of business is? >> very simple, we need to hear from the jacc, the australian joint coordinating center, that they have now received actually a report about this, a credible report, and that they are sending further assets to investigate it. even the chinese television reporter who broke this story with xinhua news agency says that on board the haixun they warned this might not be anything because of other ships in the area. look at the map. let's go back to the map, if we can, fred, because i think the first most important thing, the circle where you're seeing the pulse detected by the haixun is not in the search areas that

were undergone on the 5th of april. so the first question has to be what were they doing searching in that area anyway. it wasn't t in the designated search zone. it looks small on the map, a small distance, but we're talking hundreds of miles are involved here. so why were they there. what did they see? all these sort of questions. and now we know some ten hours, according to will ripley's reporting, eight to ten hours later, the australians still haven't received confirmation. an hour or two ago i said this looks a bit of a mess the way the command and control structures on something so important seems to have frayed at the edges. i'm being charitable. but if beijing is now saying the families don't believe it to be true, this is exactly, exactly why you can't just have these everybody announcing things at the drop of a hat to the races, because it gives unfair, un --

it gives cruel false hope to families. >> okay. couple of things that you said there. first, let's talk about whether this haixun was in an area that is not the concentrated search area. might it be that this ship was just kind of doing its own thing, deciding to go off course from the search area of april 5th as it continues to kind of mow the area with its apparatus or are you saying that it would have to be in concert with this joint multi-national effort, that they wouldn't go off course, they would have to stay in the areas designated by australian authorities? >> well, if you don't want to get a circus, then you've got to follow the rules. in this case the rules are that malaysia is the investigating country, australia has primacy in search and recovery. and it's australia that each day sends out the various blocks where they're going to search

and designated the assets that are to go and search in that area. that's the way it's being set up. now, i'm sure there may be some very strong reasons why this ship was not searching where it had been authorized to search. it may be that it was on its way and picked up the ping. it may be that it had received per other authorization to search in this area. but the way this is being announced the way this pinging information has got in the public domain is exactly the way you don't want it to happen. >> all right, richard quest, we'll check back with you. right now we're joined on the phone by cnn analyst david in boston, director of special projects at the oceanographic institution. david, you know, it is easy to be skeptical about these reports, especially since we have not heard any confirmation coming from other entitiesbeijie

news agency. what sounds credible about this potential picking up of a pulse in this area to you? >> right, fred. any lead at this point is worthy of further investigation. and i agree completely with everything richard said about the haphazard nature of this because that's the last thing you need as a circus. the frequency is right. there's something. it's apparently something that can be verified. so the next steps will be to do just that, how do we verify this location and that is a credible sound coming from somewhere beneath the waves. >> how do you do that? how do you verify? is this an issue of getting either the australian ship nearby with the british ship to bring in its assets to see if it detects this kind of pinging or pulse? >> that's a great question. does everyone collect now in this area, all the other assets? it will be interesting to see exactly what they do.

you know, if it were -- i have to say that in the aircraft search, in mid search while the team was in the water there was an announcement in the french media the plane had been located. we had our own version of a false alarm during the search and it was completely disruptive. so you know, i guess what will happen is that there will be a certain time where the chinese will be allowed to verify and then probably some other assets going to move into the area and see if they -- if they hear anything. you know, it's not the prime search area but it's not out of question that this could possibly be from the black box. >> we're taught the urgency of time because we're talking about the life expectancy of the battery on this pinger, on this flight and voice recorders. and if today may be one of the last days of the life expectanye of that battery it would seem those other ships would have to get to that chineses vessel or

at least that location in a matter of hours and what we're talking about hundreds of miles, these ships can't move that quickly. what are the other ways or could they? are you about to correct me? >> no, no, that's part of the problem. and maybe submarines can get there. they can move fairly quickly underwater. we don't know what technology is onboard that chinese patrol boat. they are very capable, oceanographers. they are moving quickly in lead in terms of the globe, in terms of studying the deep ocean. it wouldn't surprise me if they got very sophisticated equipment. you're right. one of the worst things that could happen is that we never hear that sound again from that area because that means that you've got to devote something else like autonomous vehicle to go down and start looking in that area, seafloor. the next steps are critical about what happens in that search for those boxes. >> okay.

david g oorallo, appreciate tha. tom fuentes is a cnn law enforcement analyst and retired navy captain in seattle. so, art, let me go with you first. you just heard from david gallo who says the next step is critical. are you in agreement with that and, if that's the case, what are the next steps to try and verify what this chinese ship says it has deteged? >> certainly. i am in agreement with david. number one, the signal is not the signal that the pinger on the aircraft would put out would be a signal every second, there abouts. this is a single pulse as i understand it, which is the wrong signal. number two, we have seen pictures of this -- of chinese crewmen from a small boat putting a hydrophone in the water at the surface. this pinger on the airplane

can't reach the surface. it's 4400 meters at that point. depth of water. so they can't physically hear that signal from the surface. number three, we don't know what equipment the chinese is using. they say 37.5 kilohertz. but that's -- it could be a wide band frequency, it could be anywhere between 40 and 70 frequency kilohertz. so there are a lot of questions that have to be answered. i would discount that. >> so, art, let's play some sound now of what this pulse or the pinger would sound like. you were tacki intalking about single pulse is unusual, sounds like the wrong signal. here's an example of, i guess, what the correct signal would be, what the sound would be from that pinger. >> it's just a click. yeah. you got it. >> all right. so that's what it should sound like. we don't know if that's what the

chinese vessel says it has heard. but apparently this chinese vessel, art, has the kind of sonar equipment that would be able to detect this kind of pulse. and this was unbenownst to many. many thought that only this australian vessel, as well as a british vessel, had this kind of equipment. but come to find out this vessel, this chinese vessel might have the right apparatus. what do you need to hear from them to verify whether the signal we just heard matches the signal that they picked up? >> they could play that signal on the area. we could listen to it. >> how do we know they're not doing that perhaps with australian authorities. >> quite possible. >> how would they do that while at sea? >> well, you can talk on the radio, so you can send a signal, too. >> tom, do you think it's as simple as that or do you have a

level of skepticism? >> i have a huge level of skepticism, fredericka. as far as radio transmit that signal to show, i'll leave that to the other experts. but in terms of the way this has been handled and both by the chinese and the australians for that matter, i mean, if they were given this information 12 hours ago, that would have been midday lunchtime in australia. and they certainly could have made some announcement that we've received -- don't get all excited and raise false hopes but say here are the facts. we received this information. we're responding to this information. and it will take so long to get the equipment there that we need. and when we find out what we have, we'll get back to you. you know, basically sit tight until we get that. but they say nothing which is the same mistake the malaysians made and we crucified them the first couple of days of the incident when the malaysians said we're t not going to say anything until we can confirm it. well, in this situation, the

australians rpt goi s aren't go able to confirm this for who knows how long 5and they should say long. if you don't put something out about your process, not your result, you don't have results yet. but what your process is to respond to the lead, then you create this media vacuum and everybody, including the families, including us, get excited and maybe for nothing. >> so, david, especially since we're talking about time being so critical, this battery life may only have a matter of hours to go, would it be your view that you could kind of empathize with the chinese as to why they would feel this urgency to publicize this information without confirmation that its chinese nationals have a larger interest in the outcome of this investigation? david? >> david? >> that's fine. >> okay. thank you. >> yeah, i actually think that

the report wanted to clear fi. someone said that was a single pulse. that's not what was reported. what was reported was a 37.5 kilohertz signal at one second intervals. there are other machines that operate in the area other machines that use that specific frequen frequency. however, it's important of say this is denoted by one-second interval. there's nothing else that i'm aware of or maybe david gallo can address this, nothing else that comes with this signature fall. 1 1/2 minutes with one-second pulse intervals from what i understand. that is very specific to me as to what this thing is. now, what i don't understand is how the people that reported this can then go off line for eight hours, the australians have been trying to reach them for eight hours saying is this verifiable, and then they just go off line and not be able to communicate with them is reprehensible. >> we're going to continue this conversation. when we come back we're going to talk more about this black boxes, how it works.

i'm going to talk with one of the people responsible for helping to build, engineer these boxes and actually provide them to 777s just like this one that continues to go missing. we'll have that conversation right after this. i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i'm still working. he's retired. i hope he's saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we're owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. whether you're just starting your 401(k) or you are ready for retirement, we'll help you get there. it's red lobster's lobsterfest! all promotions! the year's largest selection of lobster entrees, like lobster lover's dream. hurry in and sea food differently. go to red lobster.com for ten dollars off with purchase of two lobsterfest entrees.

♪ ♪ ♪ abe! get in! punch it! [ male announcer ] let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. thanks, "g."

we're continuing to discuss what a chinese ship it's now saying

it detected in the southern indian ocean, that perhaps its device was able to pick up a ping, a pulse that may be that of the voice or flight data recorders there in the indian ocean as it pertains to flight 370. my next guest believespingers that went into flight 370 and he's kept siskeptic about this d ping. so, why is it that you are skeptic skeptical? >> well, it's not that we're skeptical. it's the right number, 37.5 kilohertz. but let's get multiple sources to validate. let's get additional assets on-site, some sonabouyies to validate before we conclude or jump to the conclusion we identified where the devices, debris field may or may not be.

just get validation. >> anish, we have an actual -- a device here on the table which is a flight data recorder, a replica of it. on it your company doesn't necessarily make the flight data recorder or voice order but instead you make the beacon which is here on the end of this flight data recorder. it also kind of has a double purpose, it serves as a handle. when we talk about black boxes they're actually orange with this reflective tape. usually the flight data and voice recorders are at the rear, the tail of the plane because it's believed upon impact it's the tail that would then go at a slower speed and have a greater likelihood of survival and that's why you have these usually embedded in the tail. talk to me about the beacon your company helps manufacture and then is it the case that once this beacon hits water, that's when it's activated, that's when sonar equipment would be able to detect or hear the pinging of this device. do i have that part right?

>> yes. the company manufacturers these beacons for the global market or voice and data recorders for aviation as well as submarine application. you're exactly right in terms of installation. the way these devices operate, they are designed to automatically begin emmii'm emi ping at 37.5 kilohertz, one ping per second, when they are immersed in water. that ping will continue until the device is recovered for a period of 30 days. possibly a bit more depending on the condition and age of the battery. and that is what authorities are hopefully listening and hearing in this situation. >> so it's fascinating about what we're hearing from the chinese news agency is that this chinese vessel, unbeknownst to anyone else had this equipment on its ship and it just happened

to be potentially in the right location which is a few hundred miles from that central april 5th latest search location, northwest of perth. and that it was able to detect this beacon which what might be on the 30th day, which will be the life expectancy of that battery. that's what's so remarkable here. and that ship is saying that that signal is 37.5 kilohertz per second which is in concert with what you're saying. but what more would you need to hear from this chinese vessel or anyone else leading this investigation to help verify whether what they're hearing is, indeed, potentially the pulse from a flight or voice recorder? >> sure. first thing we would want is multiple sources they can pick up this signal. also, keep in mind, there should be two beacons in that general debris field. the cockpit voice recorder and

the flight data recorder both have our -- these beacons installed on them. so ideally you should be receiving a signal from both devices at the same frequency at the same period of one pulse per second, so when we get that validation that they're, a, h r hearing a single beacon and multiple sources can hear it or they've identified two signals, then you know, hey, we might have found the proverbial noodle or at least we know where the haystack is. >> if i can interrupt you there because we're talking about a matter of hours perhaps because of the life expectancy of this battery, it's going to take many hours for another vessel to get into that area. so is there any verification you would be able to get from this chinese vessel because it may be on the of this location that it says is confident is a pulse. what would you need from that chinese vessel? >> just a validation that it is a continuous pulse, it wasn't just for a minute or just for a

few seconds. if they continue to hear it, then that's a good sign that there at least is a signal being emitted at the right frequency. then we need to go down and detect and study the specific location. but if they have an intermittent or a brief signal, that to me, you know, says let's be skeptical until we validate. >> all right. anish patel, appreciate that and your explanation. welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world right now. i'm fredericka whitfield. a chinese state news agency says a chinese ship detected a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box. but there is no confirmation that this is con necked indeed to the missing plane. families of the passengers have been clinging to every piece of news hoping that it's good but there's also been a lot of skepticism as well. pauline chu is in beijing.

what have you been able to tell us about what the families are saying and thinking as it relates to now a chinese vessel saying it believes it has picked up a pulse that may be connected to these black boxes? >> well, fredericka, they are cautious and their expectations are quite low. as soon as these reports came out about this possible ping we reached out to many of the relatives and one man whose sister was on the plane said to me, i don't believe this. listen, no debris has been found so how can you actually find the black box. he said, let's wait until tomorrow. get more information and maybe we'll find out this is a mistake again. also, a relative who is in kuala lumpur told cnn we're waiting patiently. there is no confirmation yet. fredericka, we have been tracking social media. there's a big group chat among the family members here in beijing as well as in kuala lumpur and they've been talking

to each other over the past 29 days. on this particular report about this ping we noticed there was a lot of chatter but mostly between journalist, local journalists about this. and we noticed that not much reaction from family members. they were really keeping a low profile on this particular issue. i think that gives you a sense that there's a tentativeness because there have been so many false leads over the past 29 days and it's just created so many emotional ups and downs. relatives just want more information and we may get more of that at daybreak when we see more analysis, more searching, more data. >> thank you so much, pauline choiu. appreciate that. it's clear why there's so much trepidation from those family members. they've been through so much. this search area is one that officials have been zeroing in on since april 5th but now this chinese vessel saying that it is detecting this ping or pulse in an area just a few hundred miles outside of that search area.

so what are the weather conditions for that area as other assets try to make it to that location to see if indeed they can verify the pulse of the chinese vessel? we'll have more on the forecast for that area right after this. inspired by the freshness of the season, our chefs have created a new spring seasonal menu at olive garden. dive into our pappardelle pescatore with the best of the bay. salmon bruschetta grilled to perfection, or fall in yum with our chicken primavera made from scratch by our chefs every day and always served with unlimited salad and breadsticks. the all new spring seasonal menu now for a limited time at olive garden, we're all family here. discover our entirely new pronto lunch menu starting at $6.99.

how did i know? well, i didn't really. see, i figured low testosterone would decrease my sex drive... but when i started losing energy and became moody... that's when i had an honest conversation with my doctor. we discussed all the symptoms... then he gave me some blood tests. showed it was low t. that's it. it was a number -- not just me. [ male announcer ] today, men with low t have androgel 1.62% testosterone gel. the #1 prescribed topical testosterone replacement therapy,

increases testosterone when used daily. women and children should avoid contact with application sites. discontinue androgel and call your doctor if you see unexpected signs of early puberty in a child, or signs in a woman, which may include changes in body hair or a large increase in acne, possibly due to accidental exposure. men with breast cancer or who have or might have prostate cancer, and women who are or may become pregnant or are breastfeeding, should not use androgel. serious side effects include worsening of an enlarged prostate, possible increased risk of prostate cancer, lower sperm count, swelling of ankles, feet, or body, enlarged or painful breasts, problems breathing during sleep, and blood clots in the legs. tell your doctor about your medical conditions and medications, especially insulin, corticosteroids, or medicines to decrease blood clotting. so...what do men do when a number's too low? turn it up! [ male announcer ] in a clinical study, over 80% of treated men had their t levels restored to normal. talk to your doctor about all your symptoms. get the blood tests. change your number. turn it up. androgel 1.62%.

because you can't beat zero heartburn. woo hoo! [ male announcer ] prilosec otc is the number one doctor recommended frequent heartburn medicine for 8 straight years. one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn. know, and sometimes i catch myself seeing the excitement from him coming home and i have to -- i have to ge rid of that out of my brain quickly because i can't let myself go to that level of excitement because it would only -- it's only going to make me crash when i find out the real truth, which we're all expecting will be that the plane has crashed. >> that's danica weeks keeping

hope alive as she waits for information about her husband who was on flight 370. welcome to our viewers in the united states and from around the world. you'll hear more from families of that missing plane later on this hour. now to the search for flight 370. a tropical cyclone is actually forming near that search area. so will it disrupt the ef efforts? >> i don't think it's going to have a direct affect. tropical cyclone is in the area. it's packing winds of about 50 miles per hour. but look, it's to the west of this search area. we're really seeing pretty decent conditions within this red box. so this is going to slide down to the south. eventually curve over to the east. a lot of times in these tropical systems they suck a lot of the energy right around the center of them so areas outside of that are actually pretty decent. that's what we're going to see. doesn't mean we won't see cloud cover, because we will over the next several days. old search area down to the

south, the storm is going to plow right through the middle of that one. but this new area looking like it's going to be in pretty good shape. as far as winds go, we could see a slight uptick in winds. we could see winds anywhere from 20, maybe 35 miles per hour. of course, we've been dealing with winds like this the entire time but it looks like as we get into wednesday or so we will see those winds drop. we'll see winds ten miles per hour. maybe even lower. fred, it looks like the clouds will start to clear out of the way by the end of the weekend as well. so all in all, the weather looks to be okay. >> all right. very good. thanks so much. hopeful information. meantime, let's go to our will ripley there in perth, us a stra australia, will, we've been reporting all morning a chinese patrol ship saying that it has equipment that detected a pulse that they believe might be connected to the beacon on a black box. what are you hearing?

>> hey, fred, yeah. just moments ago we now have our first official communication from angus houston. i just going to read this quote to you as it's just coming in to us now. quote, i've been advised that a series of sounds that have been detected by a chinese ship in the search area, the characteristics report red consistent with the aircraft black box. he also points out a number of white objects were sighted on the surface 90 kilometers from the detection area. however, there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft. so as of right now, australian authorities, angus houston, this is a quote from him, they cannot verify any connection to mh-370. they have australian authorities have spoken with chinese authorities asking for more information, more specific details. angus houston saying, a quote again, the deployment of raaf, the royal australian air force,

the deployment of assets to the area where the chinese ship detected the sounds is being considered. we have now heard it from angus houston heading up the operation here. they're very interested in this data. they want to get more specifics from china. they're considering deploying resources to this area but they still need to work to get more information. so we need to be cautious here. we owe that to the families of these 23 people. we don't want to give them false hope but there this is a lead they are looking in to seriously at this late hour here in perth. fred? >> and so you said there's consideration being made to get any kind of air assets, australian or otherwise, up in the air. we're talking about many hours from now if you're near midnight there, let five to six hours before they can start to take off though, right? >> yeah, absolutely. because you have to give times for the flight crews to mobilize. you have to get specific data about where they need to fly, what they need to look for. because we're talking about two different things here.

we're talking about underwater, the detection of possible pings, and then on the surface, the sighting of possible ones. as we've seen repeatedly over the several weeks, fred, you know, objects that have been sighted by satellite or aircraft have turned out not to have any connection to flight 370. so we just need to point out that that we obviously are hopeful for any clues but we need to be careful as well. >> yeah, it would also be extraordinary because we've been talking about drift patterns and if this ping sound would be in close proximity to where chinese air assets believe they actually spotted debris, that would be just so remarkable given the amount of time that has elapsed. will, thank you for that information. we're going to talk about our -- to our panel about all of these latest developments and how australian authorities are preceding from this point forward. more after this. i'm beth... and i'm michelle. and we own the paper cottage. it's a stationery and gifts store.

anything we purchase for the paper cottage goes on our ink card. so you can manage your business expenses and access them online instantly with the game changing app from ink. we didn't get into business to spend time managing receipts, that's why we have ink. we like being in business because we like being creative, we like interacting with people. so you have time to focus on the things you love. ink from chase. so you can.

hello, everyone. welcome to the "newsroom." we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. we're following breaking news right now. we just heard from the head of the australia search effort saying there is no confirmation that pulse sounds that were detected from a chinese ship are that of the plane's. but white objects have also been seen according to a chinese plane flying over the search area, but again, the australian authorities are saying they are preceding with caution. they are considering deploying some assets. of course, by daybreak. the royal australian air force is also being considered to do flyovers to see if any more can be seen of this reported debris that chinese authorities are reporting by way of the chinese news agency. and, also, some verification, australian authorities are expressing they want to do as it pertains to the pulse that a chinese ship also says that it

was able to detect from its sonar equipment. now, apparently this pulse is the same frequency of the pingers on flight data recorders, but there's no confirmation, again, that this discovery is related to the missing plane. and there has been a lot of skepticism about this report, mostly by way of a lack of confirmation from what is being reported. the chinese news agency is, again, sticking by its reporting that a chinese plane spotted debris as well as a chinese ship detecting the pulse. let's bring back our panel right now. richard quest, tom fuentes, david soucie, wright with me again. art, let me go with you because you expressed the most skepticism about the pulse but hearing from australian authorities while they acknowledge they've been in

contact with chinese authorities about the pulse and perhaps even debris, they are now considering putting assets in the air and on the water to see if they can get any verification from these reports. what more do you need to hear about the cooperation between these countries and what evidence is needed to try to confirm these reports, art? >> well, for the debris, yes, i would certainly like them to continue to determine what that debris is. that's in the area. that can be very important. as far as the pulse goes, one, we need to know the characteristics of the chinese hydrofoam. we need to confirm how far the pinger can actually reach and we didn't know what that signal is actually like. we need to talk to chinese a lot more. >> and, richard, australian authorities now saying and you had mentioned them earlier, wanted to hear from them. now we have heard from angus houston saying there's an acknowledgement that communications with under way between australia and the chinese but they have yet to get

assets on the air or on the water. there's a lot of caution, but we're still talking about five or six hours away before daybreak and before they can assemble all the assets and the personnel to go along with it. >> right. so what the australians reading air chief marshalled houston's statement. firstly he's confirmed he knows about it. he's been informed about it. secondly, he does agree that that which he's been told is consistent with a black box. in other words, if it's true, it sounds like a black box. so they're not ruling it out. but then he goes on to say, they cannot confirm it. and so they're going to put more assets into the area or they're considering moving further assets. also interestingly, he talks a it being in the search area, which suggests that phrase has a fairly wide definition from what we were talking about earlier in this hour.

pulling the strands together he hasn't used words like credible. he hasn't used authoritative, he hasn't done anything that raises more hope other than saying if what they say is true it is c consistent with being a black box. that is just about as far as the australians or at least the coordinator is prepared to go tonight. >> but, david, i think that sounds pretty far, don't you, that the australian authorities are willing to at least say at this juncture and, david, i think you're still on the phone with us, that the series of sounds are consistent with sounds from the black boxes. >> yes, just being able to say that confirms what we've been saying earlier this morning a it. you have people diskourpting it saying there are other things that operate at those frequencies and indeed there are but the fact that they're operating at those frequencies and sending out a one-second pulse is unique to this box. it's the reason it was done this way so it can be unique. so the fact that now what we're focusing on is, is it credible. as richard pointed out, he

didn't say this is credible. but the fact that they've been in communication with them. i was very disappointed that they would have made this report and then waited eight hours and gone off line and not be able to confirm or discuss or anything else with this information is incredibly irresponsible of those reporting it. >> and so, tom, it's clear why there's so much skepticism, simply because there have been so many false hopes already, whether it be sightings of debris by a matter of 70 feet or, you know, something that was a foot long and then much of it has turned out to be trash in the indian ocean and now you have a chinese vessel as well as a chinese plane, both saying that they are spotting things that are consistent with debris or some evidence of the plane. it's understandable why there's so much caution but at the same time all of these things had to be taken so seriously, everything does, so assets have to be devoted to investigate to further investigate these

things, right? >> that's right, fredericka. when you're running a major crisis, you can set up tfansies grid, search, maps devised by investigators but if you receive new information that has a remote possibility of being credible or possible, you change, you make a change, you do something. the problem i'm having with this flow of information is, you know, right now it's almost midnight in australia. if in fact they got this information in the middle of the day 12 hours ago, lunchtime, they had planes up in the air doing their regular search pattern. they had ships nearby. they certainly it looks like from the map they could have gotten a plane or two diverted from that other grid search area and been on-site of the debris within an hour, i would think, given the place they were already airborne and already at the nearby search area. you divert somebody over there. you don't wait and contemplate. this last statement makes no sense, we're thinking about it, we're contemplating, we're studying? 12 hours after you receive the

information, we might send a ship and the ship might take three days to get there. something is amiss here. i mean, with know that already with the flow of information from the ship to beijing and beijing back to kuala lumpur and down to australia. but if, in fact, the australians have this new information in the middle of the day 12 hours ago, why are they still thinking about what they might do 12 hours later? >> i guess we're not sure if they did get that information 12 hours ago, and, richard, i see you shaking your head. we're going to take a short break. we'll get back to david, tom, art, richard right after this.

information and being able to read the flight data recorder may be the key to what may have happened to flight 370. how is the information stored and recovered. and cnn's zayne asher is here. you have the inside workings of

the black boxes and we're talking about that particularly today because a chinese ship believes it heard the pulse of what could be connected to a black box to flight 370 and perhaps even a chinese plane says it may have seen debris. all of that is being investigated, but for now. >> right. >> help us understand how this works and how it can be deteched and what's the future of it? >> black boxes are absolutely crucial because every time a pilot flips a switch or turns a knob in an aircraft that information is recorded by the flight data recorder and we're talking everything from speed, altitude, acceleration, where that plane may have gone down and that is recorded in the flight data recorder and i spent the day who walked me through the process of how the flight data recorder could be downloaded and read on a computer to find out what happened to a flight like 370. take a listen. >> crash protected in shock-mounted -- >> reporter: this is what investigators will see once the

black boxes of mh-370 are found and downloaded for analysis. >> we'll pull the data up on the screen and we'll see the data in's tabular format and graphical format. >> we connected the record tore a power supply. >> reporter: they contain parameters about the flight movement, pilot maneuvers, speed and altitude all displayed with a series of graphs. >> every flight data recorder records the data in binary values. it's a series of ones and zeros. in order for humans to understand that we need to convert it into engineering units and engineering unit it is simply mean feet for altitude and airspeed is recorded in knots. >> okay, so this right here is airspeed, correct? >> that's correct. >> reporter: so here as you see getting faster that represents takeoff. >> yes. >> reporter: it's through graphs like these. if someone deliberately nosedived the aircraft, if there was a pilot error or a mechanical problem. >> in an engine or mechanical

failure, it would be because of fuel starvation or intentionally cutoff. this reasons the plane's altitude if flight mh-370 dropped to a lower altitude here's where we would see a change and if someone onboard deliberately altered the flight path, we will see this line start to dip or rise depending on the direction. >> i think one of the important things that people will be looking at is who was in control of the aircraft. so when we look thea t a so when we look thea tt the datm the flight data recorders you can see if it was coming from the autopilot or the left seat or the right seat, the pilot or co-pilot. >> it can use latitude or longitude position to pinpoint where the plane was located at any point during flight. >> what you see in the front of this recorder is in case of the memory module. even though the memory chips are rarely ever damaged, airlines still need to perform flight data recorder maintenance to

ensure the black boxes are up to par. the biggest challenge now is to locate them before the batterieses die. >> to find that pinger in those trenches or to find it after the pinger is stopped in those trenches it will be extremely difficult. >> the flight data recorder is crucial in terms of figuring out the pilot's maneuver. >> right. >> in this particular case with the missing malaysia mh-370, you would need the flight data recorder and there is anticipation given the pulse signals. >> right. those pulse signals come from this device that is attached to the flight data or voice recorder and there is a sensor on here so as soon as it hits water, that's when the pulse signal goes off and at least right now, chinese authorities believe that they have sonar equipment that may have detected the pulse signal and of course, the australians are saying we're thinking of devoting assets to try and verify, but for now, this is the best that any commercial airline has, but the

future might involve a flight data reshcorder, a voice record that might not just be embedded in the tail of the plane, but it would have a deployable devise or an apparatus to break free from the plane? >> they're called deploy black boxes and used by the military. u.s. navy jets use them. basically, when a plane impacts the ocean, the flight data recorder, the deployable flight data recorder would break off and float making it a lot easier to find and this when you find them you can figure out where the plane may have gone down. the flight data recorder was about $20,000. the deployable black boxes used by the military is roughly $60,000, which is three times that amount. my argument is the cost of finding these planes, you take air france flight 447, the cost of that flight was roughly $40 million. you've basically spent the money of 600 deployable black boxes.

>> it's an incredible investment and nobody wishes it would be put to use, but things happen and the best they can improve technology, of course, that would improve investigations. zain, thank you so much. we'll have much more on the investigation of mh-370 and right now the chinese authorities standing by their story, at least by way of the news agency that they believe they have found a pulse and perhaps even debris in an area that australia are considering assets to investigate and verify. much more after this. ♪ ♪ ♪ ben! ♪ [ train whistle blows ] oh, that was close. you ain't lying. let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze.

afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. [ male announcer ] once it's earned, usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation. because it offers a superior level of protection. and because usaa's commitment to serve current and former military members and their families is without equal. begin your legacy. get an auto insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve.

i'm fredericka whitfield. we want to welcome viewers in the united states and around the world. we are following breaking news right now. what could be a major break in the search for flight 370. china's state news agency reports a chinese patrol ship detected a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box. this is the spot where the signal was picked up according to the chinese report and the signal reportedly lasted for a minute and 30 seconds, but the joint agency coordination center says that signal has not yet been verified and there's no confirmation as of yet that this is connected to the missing plane. china's state news agency also says a chinese air force plane

spotted several floating white objects earlier today. it is not clear yet if those are connected to the plane either. also today malaysian officials announced they're forming three commites to handle all of the aspects of the plane, and they have the deployment of assets and we also learned today that officials played a recording of the last words from the cockpit to friends of the pilots and families have not, however, been allowed to hear it. a source close to the investigation says officials are trying to determine who was speaking. so we have reporters and experts around the world trying to bring you every angle of this story. first, let's get an update on the search from perring, australia. will ripley is live there for us. so, will, explain to us how australian authorities want to move forward on trying to verify this information coming from the chinese news agency? >> reporter: tonight they are definitely moving forward in

trying to verify this information, but proceed with caution are probably the three key words because as we've seen over the past several weeks there have been many false leads in this case and the last thing we want to do right now is be irresponsible and give the families of those 239 people missing false hope. nonetheless, within the last 30 minutes we are hearing from the joint agency coordination center angus houston. one thing he's telling us, they are now considering sending australian air force assets to this area where, one, objects were spotted and also to the area where, you know, perhaps the chinese ship potentially detected pings under water, but all of this information unconfirmed. let me read you the quote from angus, houston. he says, quote, i've been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a chinese ship in the search area and the characteristics reported are consistent with the black box. a number of white objects were sighted on the surface about 90 kilometers from the detection area and this is key here, there

is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft. we know that australian officials have had this information to some extent for the past ten to 12 hours or so and they've been trying to establish communication with the chinese ship that supposedly detected these underwater pings, the hixuean, and that's the center disseminating to australia. a lot of questions than answers and they're moving forward with this information and trying to find out what the next step would be. >> and perhaps why at day break they might be able to get some of the air assets in the air and then at what point will the determination be made that some of the ships already in the region might be redirected if not already? >> reporter: yeah. we don't have those specific answers yet.

that is going to be up to the folks who are in the command center, but we do know that they are awake even at this late hour. they are monitoring these reports and they're trying to get more information, and trying to establish a more direct line of communication with china. one thing, fred, that i think people don't understand is that unlike the other countries involved this this search, the chinese search and airplanes don't directly communicate with the command center in australia. their information goes to beijing first and then beijing decides what information is released. so to see all of this come out earlier this evening around dinner time saturday in australia, from a chinese news agency. it took a lot of people by surprise, especially considering there was a press conference a couple of hours earlier and no mention of any of this. >> that's what brings such puzzling questions to the surface here. thanks so much, will. appreciate that. let's continue our conversation with aviation correspondent richard quest. tom fuentes was make the point that he thought it was troublesome that australian

authorities may have known this some 10 to 12 hours ago, but are just now saying that it is considering redirecting assets. your point to what was being said? >> well, first of all, we don't know what australia knew or what they actually knew, but i can think of nothing more damaging for the australians to have sort of willingly sent off assets because they -- the chinese with an unconfirmed report say that they have heard a pinger which may or may not be consistent with a black box. this would be exactly the situation that we had early in the investigation when you'll remember the chinese satellite pictures came out. excuse me, and on that occasion, the chinese satellite pictures came out and the malaysians didn't -- or they hadn't sent immediately assets out there because they needed to verify. within 24 hours, the verification proved that the chinese pictures were wrong and

had been released in error. i understand the urgency of the pinger which is deteriorating in strength, but just because the chinese have said we think we found a pinger, australia, as being the responsible agency for the whole search and recovery has to verify and confirm before it decides to shift vast amounts of assets in the search. >> okay. all right. well let's continue this dialogue and broaden it out some more. tom fuentes is back. and art wright is operations manager at williamson and associates and a retired navy captain and he's in seattle and we have les aband, contributing editor to "flying" magazine, a 777 captain and a cnn aviation analyst. thanks to all of you. tom, how about if i get you to respond on that because it is clear, there's a lot of

frustration about how this investigation is moving forward. we just heard from will who verified that the chinese ships are not reporting to australian authorities. so that might explain why australiana authorities didn't hear about it directly from the chinese, but from the news agency,but this also means this method is providing confusion and frustration. so, tom, when you have a multi-national force involved here, some who are cooperating by command post and others who have the assets, but are are doing their own thing, it is difficult to co-exist and it seeps as if this is what is likely to happen when you've got kind of, i guess, different captains at the ship, so to speak. >> it's one thing for the ship to be out there and not have communication with people onshore in australia, but i thought that those aircraft, the chinese planes included, were taking off tfrom the same base

and i'm curious why they're doing their own search patterns in a completely different area and are they part of the multinational task force or not, and if they're not, okay? but when this gets reported back to china, when did china then, send the information. they have telephones between beijing and perth, australia, somebody should be calling somebody else to say here's what we're hearing. check it out. what will said is true. >> yeah. >> if the australians heard this by reading it in the xinhua newspaper hours after it was obtained, that's horrible if that's how they were informed, but they were still informed, as he said, at dinner time australia. this is many hours past that and there should be a decision that's already being made or had been made that says we're going to check this out or we're with not. it's kind of a chicken or the egg. you can't confirm something if you don't check it out and you can't wait to check it out until you confirm it.

they're mutually exclusive in a way. >> mary, what's worrisome about the sequence events for you or do you prefer to be hopeful about these latest bits of information that are being reported even if it has not beener habeen verified as yet. >> i'm looking at it as a that's how things happen point of view or a practical point of view. the chinese ship has a reporter onboard and doing his or her job as they do, they'll get the news as quickly as possible and they'll pass the news back to beijing and i'm not surprised at the way this has come down and i'm disappointed because i would want this information to go first to the joint tank force because those are the folks that will get out there and they'll get the record and the plane and those are the folks who have a need to know, but the snafu and the backwards release of information doesn't really surprise me other than obviously getting people riled up, it will

probably not hurt things in the long run and i am surprised that the australians didn't respond by quickly sending assets to the area. >> les aband with us now. clearly, this is messy and everyone wants a positive outcome and they want to find the wreckage and the answer as to what happened to this plane. how do all these assets, how do all of these countries involved kind of redirect now and try to salvage anything in these critical hours to come? >> look, i'm hopeful like the rest of the world, but my exposure to accident investigation is that nothing is ever released to the press, media at all of this magnitude. we shouldn't be talking about it right now. i'm very, very disappointed that the joint task force wasn't the immediate go-to people because this is -- this is something the chinese people and the rest of the families on this airplane

really want to know about. >> okay. tom, yeah, i'm sure they're frustrated as well, but at this point how do you fix it? how do you clean it up? >> fredericka, this is not the press. this is not like the reporters in the u.s. that send it back to their editors in the u.s. and it gets in the newspaper here. xinhua is owned and operated and controlled by the the chinese govern government. that reporter on the ship is an employee of the chinese govern am. what gets put in the newspaper is determined by the chinese government and it's their ship and plane in that area, so this isn't just a leak to a newspaper like we've had earlier in this investigation from many different newspapers with information from kuala lumpur. this is a government agency putting this out essentially. >> yeah. and richard, you know, i would think the australians would know about this potential, given the way the chinese government operates and culturally how it operates and at the same time perhaps there was a feeling of a

common goal that everyone wants to get to the bottom of this and there may be this sense of cooperation and maybe australian authorities still feel blind sided even though they may recognize there is this potential? >> i'm going to read between the lines of all of the events of the last few hours. i'm guessing that the australians were told about this in some shape or more description from the chinese. it might have been so-called, second, third or fourth hand, but i'm probably guessing that china did, by beijing, let australia know about it and roughly at the same time perth released it, the reporter released it. what i -- seeing these things before and with a certain amount of touch and feel of the whole thing it's messy. the chinese should have told perth officially and perth should have been the only people to have made any announcements upon it and any reporter on it

it -- and tom's right. xinhua may be an agency of the government in that sense or a news agency disseminating information in that way, but what have we got now? it's 12:14, 12:15 on the east coast, 12:15 in the middle of the night in perth and you have a circus. you have a complete and utter confusion over what has been found, where it is, whether it's credible, whether it's relevant, who's going out to find? and you have families saying they don't believe it anyway even though if the story is as it is and that's exactly the treaty and the annex 13 and it's what every structure is designed to prevent. >> all right. and now what? that's the question. we'll have more on this conversation right after this. my name is jenny, and i quit smoking with chantix. before chantix, i tried to quit probably about five times.

it was different than the other times i tried to quit. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix varenicline is proven to help people quit smoking. it's a non-nicotine pill. chantix reduced my urge to smoke. that helped me quit smoking. [ male announcer ] some people had changes in behavior, thinking, or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. if you notice any of these, stop chantix, and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of mental-health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. don't take chantix if you've had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these, stop chantix and see your doctor right away, as some can be life-threatening. tell your doctor if you have a history of heart or blood-vessel problems or if you develop new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke. use caution when driving or operating machinery. common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping, and unusual dreams. my quit date was my son's birthday, and that was my gift for him and me. [ male announcer ] ask your doctor if chantix is right for you.

and that was my gift for him and me. when folks in the lower 48 think athey think salmon and energy.a, but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. thousands of people here in alaska are working to safely produce more energy. but that's just the start. to produce more from existing wells, we need advanced technology. that means hi-tech jobs in california and colorado. the oil moves through one of the world's largest pipelines. maintaining it means manufacturing jobs in the midwest. then we transport it with 4 state-of-the-art, double-hull tankers. some of the safest, most advanced ships in the world:

built in san diego with a $1 billion investment. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. and no energy company invests more in the u.s. than bp. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america.

add vanishing deductible from nationwide insurance and get $100 off for every year of safe driving. we put members first. join the nation. ♪ nationwide is on your side viewers in the united states and around the world. hello, everyone. i'm fredericka whitfield. a chinese patrol ship deteched a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box, but australian officials say they can't confirm that. in fact, australian authorities say they need to be cautious while they're considering deploying assets. to the chinese news report some families in china are very

skeptical. pauline chu is in beijing. pauline, what are they saying about what's being reported? >> reporter: fred, they are very skeptical of their taken the tiff and cautious and that's because they've been through so much and so many emotional ups and downs in the past few days and we reached out to several relatives about this possible ping. one man whose sister is on the plane said i don't believe it. there's no debris yet so how can you actually find a black box? he said let's wait until tomorrow when we get more information and maybe it will just be another mistake again. and a relative in kuala lumpur said there's no confirmation yet. we are waiting patiently and this relative is right because the chinese ministry of transport said on its microblog site be careful. this is not confirmed yet. so we do see the government also being cautious about these reports as well. now, we've also been tracking social media. there is a big group chat among

family members on a social messaging app and we were tracking some of the activity. most of this was from journalists asking each other what they thought and asking relatives, but we didn't see a lot of answers from relatives. fredericka, this goes on show you there is that tentativeness and these relatives have been under so much stress. they're exhausted and frustrated and so much so that the government has actually offered to bring them to a sanitorium on saturday so the relatives can get fresh air and go through health checks and that gives you a sense of their state of mind at the moment. >> pauline, you being in beijing you can help us understand and many viewers who may not understand the dynamics of how the news agencies are working in china, but as we understand it, a reporter with this chinese news agency was actually on this chinese patrol vessel and was able to help report this reported finding of this ping, rather, immediately and instead

of that reporter or even that chinese vessel reporting to australian authorities which are heading up this multinational force, they instead feel more compelled and by duty, have to report this to the chinese government and that is how the information is disseminated. so can you help some folks understand the dynamics of this reporting and the chinese government's involvement as it it pertains to its assets involved and even its news agency. >> reporter: sure. that reporter is someone from cctv which is a government-backed television news station here. there is also another reporter from a shanghai newspaper onboard, as well. that's also a jiashanghai, communist-backed newspaper. these are reporters from agencies backed from the government and all of the domestic news agencies are backed by the government and the way information is disseminate side this goes back to beijing.

beijing is supposed to give this information to malaysia. malaysia is then supposed to give it to australia, and it is curious, fredericka, that xinhua is saying that those floating objects were detected at around 11:00 a.m. whether or not australia knew about it or not is still unclear, but there was that news conference in malaysia in kuala lumpur at 5:30 local time. none of this was mentioned during that news conference, so you also have to wonder was malaysia informed about this possible ping as well as those floating objects? so there is that disconnect in terms of the information flow. i can put this interest context, though, fredericka because early in this search there was a little bit of a fumble from china's part when you remember those satellite photos of the debris in the south china sea. the satellite research center put those photos on their government website. well, the ministry of foreign affairs the next day said they

had no idea these images existed. malaysia said they had no idea these images existed so the chinese govern am as a result called that whole episode a big mistake so you can understand why they want to have a tight grip on the flow of information even coming from that ship, even coming from a reporter. >> all right. pauline chiou, thank you very much for that clarification on that. it is a messy situation and has been from the start and continues to be so, and clearly, many interests involved here and it's difficult for all of them to work together clearly. all right. i am joined now on the phone by cnn analyst david gallo who is in boston and at the oceanographic institution. also on the phone is aneesh patel, the president of duquesne ccon and his company is believed to have developed the beacon that you see on these black boxes. the beacon is the device in which once it hits under water that's how sonar equipment is

able to detect and locate the beacon which is attached to this flight and data and voice recorders e recorders. let me go to you, aneesh, because this signal according to chinese authorities, they believe this signal will is consistent with the beacons on the boxes. even australians are acknowledging while the reporting is showing the characteristics are consistent with these devices, they are unable to verify. so in your view, could it be anything else in that general search area that could e emit same kind of signal as the beacon? >> the kilohertz pulse per second is very unique. it's a unique signature for these devices. it's designed to be separated from the background noise in the ocean. so it's highly unlikely that

unless there happens to be other devices in that area that exmitt this that we have an anomaly. it should be related to these type of devices. >> so that kind of frequency would not come from, you know, a pod of dolphins or whales. it wouldn't come from a submarine that may be in the area. it would be very distinctive and very different. >> best knowledge we have that is the reason it was chosen because of its unique characteristics. >> okay. i'm actually talking to aneesh patel and now i'll go to david gallo, and i say that because we have david's picture on the screen now. you agree that the signal has to be verified and perhaps some kind of autonomous vehicle has to be brought in, but since time is of the essence, are any of the ships among the dozens or so ships in the area equipped with this vehicle that you speak of? >> fredericka, i don't know

what's in the immediate area, but this is an issue about how this has been released because -- you know, the saying the suspense is killing me. well to a survey like this where we've got so many assets and the multinational efforts and these are going full speed to the point of exhaustion to have to break away from what they're doing and get over there and have a look at this and i'm not sure what the australians have decided to do or if it's going to be left entirely in the hands of the chinese to verify the signal, but it does create a problem with the pace and the tempo of the expedition. >> okay. >> and you understand the sounds of the ocean. in your view, is there anything else that would be in this portion of the southern indian ocean that could mimic the sound that could throw off any of these devices to make it appear as though or sound as though it is a pulse from a beacon? >> you have the biologicals, the

whales, dolphins and that kind of sound and it's not just the frequency that is the issue because a lot of it has to do with the instrument itself and also the operator. >> and so, if you've got having a bad day or something not tuned right and maybe it's an operator error type of thing and it's not an infallible system so it doesn't have to be another way of making the sound. it may be just a misinterpretation of the sound you're hearing and not knowing exactly what you're looking at it's hard to understand how sure they are that this is the right frequency. >> david gallo and aneesh patel, thank you to both of you, gentlemen, we appreciate it. we'll get the latest on the reaction from perth, australia and kuala lumpur, malaysia on that the chinese vessel may have detected a pulse that may be that from a black box and also chinese air assets claiming that

they see white debris not far from the location of that pulse. reaction from perth and kuala lumpur after this. it's red lobster's lobsterfest! all promotions! the year's largest selection of lobster entrees, like lobster lover's dream. hurry in and sea food differently. go to red lobster.com for ten dollars off with purchase of two lobsterfest entrees. ...and let in the dog that woke the man who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged.

find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here. they're about 10 times softer and may have surface pores where bacteria can multiply. polident kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria and helps dissolve stains. that's why i recommend polident. [ male announcer ] cleaner, fresher, brighter every day. [ male announcer ] cleaner,

geico motorcycle. see how much you could save.

welcome back. we're following breaking news right now. china's state news agency is reporting that a chinese ship detected a pulse signal in the southern indian be ocean.

it's the same frequency as the pingers on flight data recorders, but the joint agency coordination center in australia says that signal could not be verified and there is no confirmation that it is related to the missing plane. officials in australia say they have been trying to get more information, but they haven't been able to open a line of communication as yet with that chinese ship. chinese state news agency also said today an air force plane of theirs spotted white, floating objects in the search area earlier today. let's get an update now from perth, australia. will ripley, give us an idea about the communication breakdown or what is the obstacle as to why australian authorities are not getting enough information from the chinese ship? >> reporter: one question we can't answer right now is who exactly told the australians at the command certain, who told them about this? we know they first got word

around lunchtime. lunchtime, they've known for about 12 hours or so and yet at this late hour in perth, there is still no official confirmation from china as to the specifics about this. they haven't been able to establish a line of communication with the haixun, the ship that supposedly detected these pings and they did know this hours before the xinhua news report came out around dinner time. what happened at lunchtime? who told them? what did they tell them? what do they know? those are things we don't really have the answer to right now. >> and now we're about five or six hours away from daybreak and as australian authorities try to ascertain what information they have or that they're lacking, how will they make a determination as to when to get crews ready for flight, if they'll take flight to try to do any kind of flyovers of these areas that the chinese airplanes say they saw debris as well as try to direct, redirect some of the dozen or so ships, multinational ships that are in the area to see if they can get

their sonar equipment in the water to see if they also detect pulses. >> reporter: you know, the latest word from angus houston came down within the last hour and he said they are considering deploying the australian air force to the area where this supposed ping was detected by the chinese ship. as for the report of objects, you know, there's a lot of cautious -- caution, skepticism. we've seen reports of objects report and we've seen satellite images and we've heard talk of that their is the object that's the the size of a wing of a plane and it's turned out to be nothing. i think the australian authorities until they get information. there is a reason why we're not being told, here's our plan and here's what we're sending because frankly the information that they have is limited right now and i know they've asked beijing for more. i don't think they have it yet. >> will ripley, thank you so much. let's check in with will clancy who is in kuala lumpur.

jim, as we understand, from pauline, she was explaining the sequence that takes place. chinese authorities would get their information, preseoulably this pulse or information from this flyover and debris reportedly in the water. that information would then go to malaysian authorities and it will trickle over to australian authorities and it is unclear in that sequence of events has taken place. what is your understanding of what the information the australians have as it pertains to the news agency and what is their duty to be part of the multinational force so australian authorities feel like they're in concert with the information? >> reporter: i'm not exactly sure how it works in practice, but i think we can look at the case that's developing right now. you have a ship set for a few minutes or moments it was able

to hear a ping at the right frequency and it could be significant and it would alert the ma legg malaysians who woul letter the australians. you had a xinhua news reporter onboard that ship and at some point he reported into his news agency about the findings. that's outside this entire realm of the way that things should have been done because he's not reporting something officially to the search coordinating unit in perth, australia. you have two things happening and that might explain some of it. the reaction has only been one, they sen on the a tweet saying it was another night of hope and praying. that was his reaction, but largely, malaysian officials don't want to go on the record until this is confirmed. nobody wants to raise false hopes here, and i think that's

the way people feel around here. we have to deal with it. fredericka? >> it's a messy situation and has been from the beginning. it's a colossal event, but from a reporter's perspective, clearly in reporting any story you always have lots of different directions and, you know, that is how you -- that's part of the task is trying to discern what is most credible? what can you check out? where are the sources? how do you funnel all of this information into one streamlined kind of straight line so people can can understand it, but give me an idea how difficult this story has been from the very start whether you were reporting it as an anchor back on set and now being in kuala lumpur, trying to streamline this information, trying to discern what is the most credible. give me an idea how frustrating and how difficult, what a task it has been? >> reporter: you know, it's not like any other story that i've covered like panam 103 where i can stand in the debris field in

lockerbie, scotland, or outside that town and see that they have a mountain of evidence that will will will be sifted and there will be a reckoning of what happened here. in this case, we have nothing. we have nothing to see. we have radar records that aren't made public. we have sources that are saying one thing one day, another thing the next. the news media and malaysian officials have, as i like to put it, just danced down the road of confusion and contradiction together. news reporters have gotten the stories wrong. they misheard things over the course of this whole thing. everybody is desperate for information and that's the one thing that we don't have in this story, tread ricka. we don't have the solid, hard evidence to examine and it's made it very difficult for everyone here, and i think, you know, for the public at large and especially for the families, it's really made it a roller coaster ride.

hopes are up one day and we're close to understanding what happened, but we never seem to be getting closer. >> so close yet so tar. it seems as though just when we're getting closer to some kind of discovery and some kind of kernel, it's replaced by another notion and another theory is we're back at square one. thank you so much. jim clancy, i appreciate that. we'll have much more of our coverage right after this short break. [ male announcer ] ortho crime files. reckless seeding... ...failure to disappear. a backyard invasion. homeowner takes matters into his own hands. ♪ ortho weed b gon max. with the one-touch, continuous spray wand... kills weeds without harming innocent lawns. guaranteed. weeds killed. lawn restored. justice served. weed b gon max with the one-touch wand. get order. get ortho®. weed b gon max with the one-touch wand. it's red lobster's lobsterfest! all promotions!

the year's largest selection of lobster entrees, like lobster lover's dream. hurry in and sea food differently. go to red lobster.com for ten dollars off with purchase of two lobsterfest entrees. ...and let in the dog that woke the man who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged. find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here. they're about 10 times softer and may have surface pores where bacteria can multiply. polident kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria and helps dissolve stains. that's why i recommend polident. [ male announcer ] cleaner, fresher, brighter every day.

[ male announcer ] cleaner, do you have a minute to think ok, how about thirty seconds? at comcast business our internet is fast. up to 5x faster than dsl from the phone company. and our phone's better too. switch to comcast business internet. then add voice and tv for just $34.90 more per month. time to make the call. 800-501-6000 comcast business. built for business.

>> today's unconfirmed news that a chinese patrol ship may have detected a pulse signal in the search area for flight 370 raises all kinds of questions. our renee marsh joins us now from washington. we know the sound picked up by the chinese ship is the standard frequency from the pingers at least from what's being reported and this doesn't necessarily mean it's a slam dunk and there's a lot of skepticism. why? >> there is a lot of skepticism. this report has really peaked our interest simply because of that key information coming from chinese tv in that the sound was that standard frequency of the pinger 37.5 kilohertz. you have the manufacturer on our air saying this tre quency is unique to these pingers and there's not a lot in nature that

mimics this sort of frequency so there aren't many things that this could be. that said, we do know chinese television is reporting that signal was detected every second for only about a minute and a half. so here's what's leading us to scratch our heads just a little bit here. according to the manufacturer, those pingers, if it's working, it's constantly pinging. it doesn't ping for just a short period of time. it continues to ping, so now the question is why did they only detect it for about a minute and a half? we could possibly explain that by looking at the possibility that the ship was moving away and perhaps it was losing the signal or there could have been a shift in the water. we do know that the signal can can be disrupted by debris or silt, and then there's the other possibility, fred, possibly a false positive. so many questions raised by this tidbit of information that we have right now and all of it needs to be verified and it is unclear how they'll go with about verifying it at this point, fred.

>> okay. thanks so much, rene marsh, that's eliciting a whole lot of other questions and we'll talk about that coming up and many family members, while they want to be hopeful, this latest report still means that a lot of them are very skeptical. they're know sure what to believe anymore. we'll talk to some of the family members after this. gunderman group is a go. yes! not just a start up. an upstart. gotta get going. gotta be good. good? good. growth is the goal. how do we do that? i talked to ups. they'll help us out. new technology. smart advice. we focus on the business and they take care of the logistics. ups? good going. we get good. that's great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. (all) great! i love logistics. until you're sure you do.

bartender: thanks, captain obvious. co: which is what makes using the hotels.com mobile app so useful. i can book a nearby hotel room from wherever i am. or, i could not book a hotel room and put my cellphone back into my pocket as if nothing happened. hotels.com. i don't need it right now. oh! the name your price tool! you tell them how much you want to pay, and they help you find a policy that fits your budget. i told you to wear something comfortable! this is a polyester blend! whoa! uh...little help? i got you! unh! it's so beautiful! man: should we call security? no, this is just getting good. the name your price tool, still only from progressive. hi dad. she's a dietitian. and back when i wasn't eating right, she got me drinking boost. it's got a great taste, and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing.

helping me stay more like me. [ female announcer ] boost complete nutritional drink has 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d to support strong bones and 10 grams of protein to help maintain muscle. all with a delicious taste. grandpa! [ female announcer ] look for valuable savings on boost in your sunday paper.

it is hard to imagine the anguish of the flight 370 families and know knowing the fate of their loved ones it may be the hardest part of all. husbands, wives, mothers, are all talking about their loved ones and here they are in their own words. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> she has been flying malaysia air for the past 18 years.

she's a lovely lady. a lovely wife, a very caring mom for my two kids. yeah. ♪ ♪ >> she's the glue that holds things together, my sister. it's a roller coaster ride. it's difficult for the family members. we are hoping there will be survivors, if it indeed ended somewhere in the indian ocean, we hope that there will be survivors. we hope so suhaili is among the survivors. we hope there is a light at the end of this tunnel. ♪ ♪ >> i definitely miss him.

he is a very professional, committed pilot. if something happened to this flight i would think -- in fact, i would believe that he would have made sure of safety and welfare of everyone else before he would think about himself. that's the kind of person that he is. that's why i would choose him as my pilot. i just cannot imagine what the family might be going through, not just the captain's family, but the rest of the passengers and crew. ♪ ♪ ♪

you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast, long lasting relief, use doctor recommended gaviscon®. only gaviscon® forms a protective barrier that helps block stomach acid from splashing up- relieving the pain quickly. try fast, long lasting gaviscon®. and a life of purpose and meaning was infused into a corporate culture. there was a commitment to creating new jobs out of recycled metals, right here in america. and a bank that helped carolyn rafaelian's business grow from a rhode island storefront into a global sensation. that's the beauty of connecting a vision to an enterprise. that's bank of america. grossemisconduct... ortho crime files. ...disturbing the pantry. a house, under siege. homeowner calls in the big guns. say helto home defense max.

with the one-touch continuous-spray wand. kills bugs inside... ...and prevents new ones for up to a year. guaranteed. nothing to see here people. ortho home defense max. get order. get ortho®.

welcome back with the mustry surrounding flight 370. now a tropical cyclone may be forming near the search area. will it disrupt the search effort? cnn's jennifer gray joins me now with more on this. jennifer, what's the potential here? >> it looks like it's going to stay away. it's actually forming to the

west of the search area which is really good news. it is coming together, and it's not packing much strength. it's packing winds of 50 miles per hour and it will travel to the south and eventually curve to the east, really bypassing the search area so that is good news and a lot of the energy is holding very tight to this tropical cyclone. that's also good news and so it's actually going to give the searchers better weather than they could be dealing with. it is traveling right through the old search area. sos good news that we are here now. it could increase a little bit of that cloud cover. we may see an uptick in winds and maybe seas, but it's really not going to have a direct effect at all. in fact, the weather over the next couple of days is going to be pretty good compared to what we've seen over the past couple of weeks. here are your winds as we go through the next couple of days, peaking out today, say today through tomorrow possibly at 30 miles per hour and that's just the extreme southwest corner. the rest of the search area looking at really good conditions. we'll see winds maybe 10 miles

per hour, 20 at the most. so the only problems i really see is an uptick in cloud cover and the airplanes may have a hard time seeing down through those clouds and as far as the ships are concerned, folks actually are on the water ask it looks like the seas will be down for the most part and maybe swell, but nothing major out there for the next 48 hours. >> so particularly good conditions for the underwater search to resume or pick up intensity. >> exactly. >> thanks so much. jennifer gray. we appreciate and we'll have much more on the latest search efforts involving malaysia air flight 370.

geico motorcycle. see how much you could save. you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast, long lasting relief, use doctor recommended gaviscon®. only gaviscon® forms a protective barrier that helps block stomach acid from splashing up- relieving the pain quickly. try fast, long lasting gaviscon®.

-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com relieving the pain quickly. hello, everyone. i'm fredericka whitfield. welcome to the cnn newsroom. we are tracking missing plane flight 370.

let's get you up to speed on what happened today. chinese state agency reports a chinese patrol ship deteched a news signal with the same signal as a black box. it it reportedly lasted for a minute, 30 second, but the joint agency coordination center in australia says that signal has not been verified and there's been no confirmation yet that this is connected to the missing plane and china's news plane spotted white floating objects near the search area today. it's not clear yet if those objects are connected to the plane either. so we have reporters around the world covering this story. will winly is li ripley is live perth, australia and richard quest in new york. let me begin with you, will and what australian authorities are saying about how they'll go about trying to verify what the chinese news agency is saying. >> reporter: well, it's 1:00 a.m. here in perth, but at this hour there are attempts being made to try to get more

information from china. let me just read you this quote from angus houston who is overseeing this joint effort with the coordination center. i've been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a chinese ship in the search area and the characteristics reported are consistent with a black box. a number of objects were sighted on the surface about 90 kilometers from the detection area however, there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft. essentially what this says is that the people who are overseeing this search effort essentially have the same information that's being reported to the rest of the world by the chinese state-run media. nothing more. they haven't been able to establish a direct link with the ship that made this sighting as far as we know and so, you know, before they even make a decision about deploying aircraft in this area, they need more specifics. specifics that they're not getting from beijing right now. >> so, will, what's the

explanation that australian authorities acknowledge that just now this kind of statement is being released. >> yeah. you know, the information came in around lunchtime and at that point they were trying to establish a connection with the haixun, the ship that suppose lead detected the underwater pings consistent with what would be coming from an aircraft data recorder, but they haven't been able to establish a direct connection with the ship. chinese ships do not communicate directly with the command center in australia unlike all of the other countries involved in this search effort and they communicate with beijing and beijing decides what is released to malaysia and australia. the fact that there was a news conference earlier on saturday, no mention at all of any detection of any sort of ping, then we hear about it because of a news report and then we're hearing from australia, okay, we heard something around lunchtime and certainly not enough to put out to the world, it raises a lot of questions and a lot of skepticism about the validity of this information, how reliable

it is and more importantly, what are the specifics? what do we need to know to make a decision for the aircraft and it's worth moving ships in that direction and i don't think the command center here has those answers yet. >> rene marsh, i want to bring you into the equation and we talked about according to the chinese news agency and this ping may have been detected for a minute and a half and that raised a red flag right there, does it not? that this ping, this pulse should last much longer than that and is it true that military ships might share that same frequency and perhaps that could help promote this kind of confusion? >> right. so, fred, it is curious. it does make you ask some questions as to why is it that they were able to pick up this pinging sound for about a minute and a half as they've reported on chinese tv. you know, you've had the manufacturer of the pingers on our air. i spoke with him at length today and he says if they are working, they are continuously pinging.

even if we're past the 30-day mark, it may not be at full strength. it may be -- think of it as a knob on your radio and you slowly as the battery dies, it just gets lower and lower. it's still working, but it's lower and more faint. that being said, he says it should be a continuous pinging sound. so it does raise the question why is it that they were only able to hear it within that minute and a half? some possible explanations, perhaps the ship was moving away and out of the range of the pinger at that point. that could be an explanation. we also know that silt and debris has the ability to disrupt that signal. so that could be an explanation, as well, but again, though doubt, it raises a lot of questions and also why is it that they only heard one ping? we do know both the cockpit voice recorder as well as the data recorder both have their own beacons and they do not ping at the same time.

they ping independently so that's a question, as well. that too could be explained if the two recorders were separated or perhaps if one was damaged, fred. >> the chinese know more than anyone what's at stake and talking about raising more hopes for people is just, you know, seemingly cruel and painful. the majority of the people on that plane were chinese nationals. is there a feeling that the chinese are operating independently, not necessarily wanting to report all of their information to malaysian authorities or australian authorities because the chinese feel it has a greater obligation on which to report what it believes it finds directly to the people and that may explain what's happening here? >> it certainly would be justifiable in the sense that the chinese did have the largest number of nationals and citizens onboard the aircraft so they have a huge interest, responsibility, duty, to their own people in this regard, but they are also part of the international search group.

they are a part of the jacc and they have a duty to make sure everything is reported properly through the correct channels. now, what is -- this whole story of the pingers is starting to look a little bit troubling on a variety of grounds. firstly, where the chinese were searching -- excuse me, where they were searching, not in the immediate search area, but in the general locality of which had been designated by the jac. it wasn't in the shaded boxes. it was just to the south of it. secondly, the way they found this, or the way they said to have found it using the hydrophone, the way it was deployed and the boat it was deployed from, we don't know too many details about it, but early suggestions suggest why were they there and why were they looking for this in that particular place since it wasn't in the designated area? finally, the mechanism by which

it has been reported. yes, by beijing, we know the the australians were told about it. we don't know how and it's released in the xinhua news agency. so put those pieces together and at best, you have to be skeptical and at worst, there has to be disbelief. >> all right, richard and rene. thank you so much and let's open it up to our panel now and i'm joined by cnn aviation analyst and 777 captain les aban and tom fuentes and former assistant director and mary schiavo who represents families suing airlines in crashes and of the sdaers. there are a number of things that richard pointed out that are troubling about the sequence of event as it it pertains to this ping that has been detected or perhaps even a chinese air flight which believes it saw some debris. what is most troubling to you?

is it the way in which this information has been disseminated by way of the news agency? is it that australian authorities haven't been able to make direct contact with the chinese ship or is it the fact that it's a minute and a half of hearing this pulse as opposed to a continuum? what is it that is most troublesome to you? >> right. i can put up with all of the other stuff. i understand a chinese reporter wanting to get the jump on things and the chinese wanting to find the black box and the aircraft first. i get all that. what troubles me are the cold, hard facts that we've only got a minute and a half. i don't want a minute and a half. i want this thing to keep going, and i want us to find it. the minute and a half suggested two things to me. one, maybe this isn't it, but obviously like all others, i hope that this is it, or it would be an unbelievable coincidence that the ship didn't stop or it faded away or something like that. i can't imagine if you're on

this ship and you get this ping, you don't put the ship immediately, engines even reversed and stopped and make sure you've got the sound. so the troubling thing to me is just that it's a short burst. hopefully they can replicate it and go back and find it again. >> and so, les, do -- does that kind of mimic your thinking, as well, or do you feel like perhaps this ship was in transit and as it was make its way to the primary search area it came across this sound and it just wasn't able to anchor or reverse or do any further investigations? >> well, this, of course, is my area of expertise, but my understanding is that there are various things that can block that sig that winal. there could be ridges down below the ocean floor. where i go, all of this information where it came from and i think it's water under the bridge. i think it was irresponsible of

the chinese government to release it publicly, but let's move on. let's verify this information and let's find out exactly what occurred and what we've got and the fact that it doesn't disturb me so much if this was indeed true, that there was a short burst of signal. it might be because the batteries are slowly dwindling in their supply and it might also be with only one ping, it might only mean that one of the recorders is sending the signal where the battery may have totally diminished on the other recorder. >> i'm wondering, what can be done at this juncture with four or five hours close to day break in that region, what can be done in this time period to try and verify that sound without actually moving other assets to the area. what can be asked of that chinese ship to help better disseminate information or better help other authorities

verify the information. les? >> i mean, you know, the best thing is to work with the joint task force, to use all of their expertise to try to verify this information. it's extremely important to these families and to the rest of the world at this point. >> tom, in your view, is this investigation -- is it making ground or is this yet another setback or is it at a standstill? >> well, frankly, we don't know, fredericka. my area of expertise is rounding a critical incident and setting up crisis management command post and the manner of information that was disseminated. what's troubling to me is we have the chinese apparently on that part of the task force. if that ship is not in communication with the task force leaders in perth, and if their airplanes are not in communication and if they're searching in areas that aren't part of the designated pattern

just searching areas that they decided to search for whatever reason, we don't know, but it's their decision, that's troubling to me so you don't have every country operating as a task force under coordinated manner. you have one that's doing what they please. >> i guess it's of no surprise, though, that perhaps the chinese government would want to remain secretive, but voluntary services say that it wants to be involved, but be less collaborative. wouldn't that be your expectation, mary? >> it would, and also because they have so much at stake. we've seen the pictures for a month of these families in anguish in china and the chinese authorities trying to keep them from protesting before the malaysia embassy and they are dealing with an awful lot at home so i can also understand, while i don't agree that it should have been done, i can understand why it was done. maybe they had a hunch in this

area and they raced out if they could confirm it and then they released the information to show their citizens that they are on top of it and out front rather than saying, well, we're just deferring to the joint task force. i understand it, and i don't agree with it, but i can see how that would happen. >> mary, les, tom, thank you very much for to all of you and i appreciate that. let's talk about what searchers are up against. this is a region where the weather can be rather unpredictable and we understand right now that a tropical cyclone is forming near that area and will it disrupt in any way the continuing search efforts and jennifer gray is joining me now with more on this. any new activity on the map that shows that it would be a threat? >> not really. this is still well away from the search area and it's actually good news. you have this tropical cyclone that's a couple hundred miles away from the search area and it's just pulling a lot of the energy around it toward its center and it's actually getting better weather for the search area than we could be dealing

with. you're right. this area is unpredictable and we've had rocky weather in this par are the indian ocean and this storm will slide to the south and off to the east and basically just curve around that search area. it will plow right through the old search area. it is going to increase the cloud cover just a tad. we may see a slight increase in winds especially in the southern section of that box, but the weather for the next couple of days all in all will be pretty decent. we're not going have huge swells and we'll have a slight swell increase because of that storm and we'll see it slide down to the south and the winds will stay right around that center, so we can see anywhere from 10 to 20 mile per hour, winds and maybe peaking later today or tomorrow at maybe 25-mile-per-hour winds and we've been seeing winds right at 40, 45 miles per hour over the last couple of weeks and seeing winds down a little bit is actually great news. >> that is good. very encouraging. thanks so much, jennifer. we appreciate that. we've been talking about the

chinese ship that believes it detected a pulse that might be connected to the black boxes somewhere in the southern indian ocean. coming up next, i'll talk to a man who helped engineer the beacons on those black boxes and the questions that he has about the chinese news agency's report today.

we're following major developments today in the hunt for flight 370. a chinese state news agency says a chinese patrol ship detected a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box, but the joint agency coordination center says that signal has not been verified. i want to bring in aneesh patel, president at duquesne ccom. he believes his company actually manufactured the pingers on the black box that went into flight 370. aneesh, we actually have a flight data recorder here on the set and we have also -- we can

kind of point out this beacon which is in the front of this recorder here, that is the actual device that your company manufacturers and on the end of this beacon is kind of this little -- this little indicator here. when this black box were to hit the water, this beacon would have -- this sensor would go off, correct? this sensor would go off in the water and the beacon would continue with this, you know, continuous kind of pulsing noise that is unlike any kind of human sound, but it would be an underwater detector that could actually pick up this sound and the chinese news agency is reporting today that one of its chinese patrol ships actually has that kind of device and was able to pick up a pulse. they say they were able to hear this pulse for about a minute and a half. so, aneesh, based on that kind of information does that tell

you anything about what they may have heard and that indeed -- that frequency is that of a pulse of a black box? >> well, the 37.5 kilohertz with a one-second pulse train is the correct duration. we need verification, continuous listening to hear a longer pulse strain. the fact that it was only a minute and a half leads to some doubt and that's why i think everyone's been stressing let's get additional equipment and verify. how you hear these things you're exactly right, it's a hydrophone in the water. once the water switch you were pointed to is activated by immersion in water the device should be emitting a continuous signal until the battery is depleted which is going to be in a little excess of 30 days and then it depletes slowly. it's not going to be an immediate cutoff. it gradually tapers off. >> so would the intensity of the

sound be any different if the battery life were at its end? because we've been reporting it is common knowledge now that the battery life is something like 30 days and, you know, today or tomorrow might be the last day if it were an exact 30-day life expectancy of this battery. so would the intensity of that sound change in any way toward the end of the battery life? [ indiscernible ] >> okay. aneesh, we're unable to hear you clearly. if you can hear me, if you can move your cell phone to a different physical location so that perhaps we can pick up a better signal, but we weren't able to understand anything. let's try that again. [ indiscernible ] >> we'll try to reconnect. once we get a better signal with aneesh patel who can give us a better explanation of the life expectancy on the beacons on

these flight data and news recorders. the chinese news agency reporting today that the chineses have willel was able to pick up a pulse that matches the same frequency that is usually detected on these beacons on these flight data recorders and that frequency as you heard from aneesh patel which as you said was very distinctive. it is something that being not be detected from human ear, but instead you need to have special sonar and acoustic equipment and that chinese vessel claims it had that kind of equipment in which to detect that frequency, 37.5 kilohertz per second from somewhere in the southern indian ocean there. we'll have much more on this chinese news agency report and we'll try to reconnect with aneesh patel to give us a better explanation. you're looking at a flight data recorder and that beacon. that very important beacon with the battery life, the life expectancy of some 30 days and that would be this weekend. we'll be right back.

grossemisconduct... ortho crime files. ...disturbing the pantry. a house, under siege. homeowner calls in the big guns. say helto home defense max. with the one-touch continuous-spray wand. kills bugs inside... ...and prevents new ones for up to a year. guaranteed. nothing to see here people. ortho home defense max. get order. get ortho®.

welcome back. here is the latest on the search for flight 370. time is running out to identify a pulse signal reportedly picked up by a chinese patrol ship in the indian ocean. the pinger batteries on the black boxes are designed to last 30 days and we are entering day 30 of the search.

so far, according to australian authorities, no confirmation that the pulse that the chinese news agency is reporting that the chinese ship detected is in any way related to the missing airliner. cnn analyst david gallo joins me by phone from boston and he's the director of special projects at the oceanographic institution. all right. so, david, what are your thoughts? you have said that you know, we're in a critical phase right now and to hear this report from the chinese news agency that they believe they picked up the pulse signals from what could be the pinger of any data recorders, what are your thoughts on that? >> well, fredericka, in one sense this could be the break everyone's been hoping for that we finally have a chance to get some idea of what happened to that aircraft and the other -- on the other hand, it it can be very disruptive the way this has been put out there to the rest

of the investigators to the teams in the air and on the water that have been working day and night because now the focus, whether you like it or not will go to this spot and trying to find out is that really the ping from the aircraft or not? >> david, right now, if you're looking at a screen, what we're showing on the screen now is a flight data recorder, and you can see, you know, this is the sensor and this is actually the beacon that would be. >> sure. >> that would be emitting the sound and the chinese news agency claiming that its sonar equipment did pick up this 37.5 kilohertz frequency which would be karici icharacteristic of the on the recorder or the flight data recorder. >> yeah. >> is there anything else in the ocean that would mimic or that would emit that kind of frequency, in your view? >> yeah. i believe you could get some biological noise. it's designed, in fact, the frequency was picked and it was

once a second or something like that, it's really designed so you can pick it out from the background noise. the oceans can play all sors of games with sound, thermal layers, density, salty layers, less salty layers, mountains, valleys and rivers and storms that blow through the ocean and all of these things that can play games with sound and you could easily get a false alarm and that's happened in the past more than once it's happened in the past and it's just hard to know. my understanding is they picked up a signal and they listened to it for a short while and then they lost it which is problematic because you still have to get out there and find out, is it still there or what made that noise? >> for a minute and a half, reportedly it was able to detect that sound. in fact, we have some sound of what that pulse would sound like if heard correctly and this is it.

[ pinger sound ] >> yeah. >> david, it is very simple and very distinctive it's continuous and we've heard every expert say it is continuous sound. >> it is, distinctive, fredericka and it sounds very different under water than that and some people with an ipad and iphone, there are apps that can produce the tone generator and you can do this on your own and make that tone and hear what it sounds like, but you know, once that gets in the war, like i said, distance plays games. remember in the olden days when before there was digital radio you have to tune in a radio station and sometimes there is a station and next thing you know the car moves and something happens and you lose it and that's kind of what i think happened here. they had something tuned in and now they're got to find it again. just to be clear. is there any family of wild life whose sound would mimic that

beacon sound which this ship may have misconstrued? >> not typically, but people have told me that in the past there have been sperm whales and other kinds of whales because they make a range of sounds that could hit that frequency, but then you've got to worry about the rep rate. my understanding is they not only had the frequency, but they had the click, click, click, click, and now you're asking a lot from an animal to mimic that. and it sounds like the right kind of thing. you can have an instrument that's not tuned properly and you can have an operator that's tired. you never know. so it takes some detective work in getting in there and finding out was it the right equipment and the right team in is this from the aircraft or not? and the detective work is certainly under way. they're continuing to try to verify what the chinese vessel believes it heard, but unclear how they're going about that kind of verification.

david gallo. thank you so much. appreciate that. we'll have much more on the mystery surrounding this flight 370 right after this. [ male announcer ] right now princess cruises is offering a seven day cruise to alaska or the caribbean from just $549. that's seven days to either marvel at mayan ruins... savor the very best local flavors... or sail in glistening glacier bay. with a cruise line voted best in alaska. a seven day cruise to alaska or the caribbean from just $549. call your travel agent or 1.888.book.now for this limited time offer. princess cruises, come back new.

now for an update on mortgages, a 30-year fixed rose slightly while others are slightly down. take a look. [ ambient street noise ] ♪ ♪ ♪ abe! get in! punch it! [ male announcer ] let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. thanks, "g." with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. gundyes!n group is a go.

not just a start up. an upstart. gotta get going. gotta be good. good? good. growth is the goal. how do we do that? i talked to ups. they'll help us out. new technology. smart advice. we focus on the business and they take care of the logistics. ups? good going. we get good. that's great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. (all) great! i love logistics. ...and let in the dog that woke the man who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged. find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here.

we're following breaking news right now as we enter day 30 in the search for flight 370. a chinese ship detected a pulse signal in the indian ocean today and it's the same as the pingers in the flight data recorder. the ship first detected a signal on friday, but it couldn't record it because it stopped right away.

today the signal reportedly lasted for a minute and a half, but the joint agency coordination center says that signal could not be verified and there's no confirmation that it's related to the missing plane. officials in australia saw they have been trying to get more information, but they haven't been able to open a line of communication with the chinese ship. china's state news agency also said today an air force plane of theirs spotted white, floating objects in the search area earlier today all right. so let's get our panel back here now and i'm joined by les abend, tom fuentes and mary schiavo. a sequence of events here, perhaps it's less person than the actual event, but it kind of adds to the mess here, doesn't it, in terms of whether it was 10 or 12 hours ago that the chinese vessel may have heard this -- this pulse, and may have informed its government which

then disseminated it by way of its news reporting, but not insly immediately telling australian authorities. australian authorities say they learned of it just like everyone else did by way of the news reports, but it still has yet to verify it. what do you do with this kind of information? it certainly does raise the hopes, does it not? of some of the survivors and the victim's family members, but at the same time it seems like we're kind of chasing our tails one more time. >> right. it's a very messy chain of events and the problem with the chain of events like this is it makes the world think that the chinese participants s chinese participantss and the task force aren't really onboard with the tank force and they're running their own show and being secretive. it makes the families have less trust in the investigation and it doesn't seem to be coordinated and all of that sort of thing. all of that aside, that's kind

of a sideshow. the most important thing is did they or did they not get these pings? they're pretty sure they did and if they did what are they coming from and to me all of the circus around it kind of melts away and i just want to hone in on those pings and go get it. that's what i think is the most important thing right now. >> it seems very difficult to duplicate that location where this vessel believes it heard this pulse for a minute and a half. we talked to a variety of experts who say it's a continuation. it shouldn't be just a minute and a half or a minute, but it's something that continues and it does lose intensity as it starts to lose battery life. does that raise a red flag for you right then and there? >> we don't know what speed the ship was moving at and it's only able to receive the ping signal if it's directly over it, so we don't know all of that, pardon me, but the point i'm trying to get at is what are the australians going to do now?

they've got this information. do they ignore it? >> they're debating on whether they'll send resources to that location to check out not only the ping that was cited by the chinese aircraft. from my perspective, i don't know how they ignore that. i don't know how they dismissed that information and don't go check it out. so, les, what can australian author is do because we talk about a dozen ships in the area and you have air assets as well and they may have to be discriminating about which assets to move and relocate because you don't want to lose an opportunity, but at the same time you want to seize on an opportunity. >> i echo mary and tom with their thoughts, but i think i'm just hoping that the individual that heard this ping and used that particular machine, if indeed it can do this with their technology because we apparently have no knowledge of this particular technology that's onboard. i'm just hoping they did something as simple as marking

the way point so we have a latitude and longitude that can pinpoint it and send an asset there that we really know a good resource that we know that can pick up these signals. >> all right. >> mary, any final thoughts on this? >> i think the australians have to go. they might be weighing their options and think it came in an inopportune time and i think they will go check it out. if it's not anything then everyone has to get back on the same page because they will have wasted time off of the other search grid to go check it out, but it ought to be easy to rule it in and rule it out and they've got to go do it. >> mary, les, tom, thank you so much. appreciate it. >> all right. so how do experts retrieve information from black boxes? of course, they've got to find these black boxes, but once they do, if there really is credence to the pulse and it may direct them to the black boxes, then what? more on that next. [ male announcer ] legalzoom has helped start over 1 million businesses.

if you have a business idea, we have a personalized legal solution that's right for you. with easy step-by-step guidance, we're here to help you turn your dream into a reality. start your business today with legalzoom. we're here to help you turn your dream into a reality. and we'll be here at lifelock doing our thing: you do your shop from anywhere thing, offering protection that simple credit score monitoring can't. get lifelock protection and live life free. how did edward jones get so big? let me just put this away. ♪ could you teach our kids that trick? [ male announcer ] by not acting that way. it's how edward jones makes sense of investing.

the search for flight 370 may have new clues today. china's state news agency says a chinese ship detected a pulse signal on the same frequency used by the so-called black boxes and a chinese plane reportedly spotted white, floating objects. experts disagree what this could mean and there is no confirmation that any of this is related to the missing plane. so right now the key is, of

course, finding the wreckage and the black boxes. i am joined now by correspondent zain asher who went inside a lab that actually examines black bockes and what was learned. >> looking forward is the flight data recorder and they're much more durable and they contain roughly 25 hours of information about the flight. so hundreds of parameters. by parameters we mean a unit of information about the plane. so everything from speed, altitude, roll and pitch. pitch being the tilt this way and roll being the tilt that way, and i actually spent the day with an engineer who walked me through how an information about how flight data recorders are actually read. take a listen. >> crash protected in shock mounted -- >> reporter: this is what investigators will see once the black boxes for flight mh-370 are found and downloaded for analysis. >> we'll see the data in a tabular format, and graphical

format. >> we connected a recorder to a power supply. >> black boxes contain hundreds of data points or parameters about the flight's movement, pilot maneuvers, speed and altitude all displayed with a series of graphs. >> every flight data recorder ridiculous records the data. in order for humans to understand that, we need to convert it into engineering units and engineering units simply mean feet for altitude, airspeed is recorded at knots. >> so this right here, that's airspeed, correct? >> that's correct. so here, as you see, getting faster. that represents takeoff. it's through graphs like these that would learn if someone onboard deliberately nosedived the aircraft if there was a pilot error or a mechanical problem. >> there would be all kind of indications and they'd be able to determine which engine turned off first and if it was because of fuel starvation they would know that, versus if it would be intentionally cut off.

>> this line represents the plane's altitude if 370 dropped to a lower altitude mi-flight, here's where we would see a change and if someone onboard deliberately altered the flight path, we would see this dip or rise depending on the direction. >> i think one of the important things that people would be looking at is who was in control of the aircraft. so when we look at the data from the flight data recorder you can see if the inputs were coming from the autopilot or the left seat or the right seat. in other words, the pilot or the co-pilot. >> technicians can also lose latitude or longitude positions here to pinpoint where the plane was located at any point during flight. >> what you see on the front of this recorder is a solid state memory module. >> although the memory chips are rarely ever damaged airlines still need to ensure pre-flight testing to ensure the black boxes are up to par. the biggest challenge now is to locate them before the batteries die. >> to find that pinger in those

trenches and to find it after the pinger has stopped in those trenches will be extremely difficult. >> right. if we don't get to the black boxes before the batteries die we have to rely on visuals. given how vast the ocean is and given the the fact that it's choppy, the wreckage is constantly moving and making it that tough for people to spot. >> they call it the black box and even though it's an orange box with this reflective tape on it and these boxes are generally in the rear of the plane in the tail and that's in large part because after impact the tail will slow speed on the impact and it it stands a better chance of survival. >> a few posed this question to me. they said if the pinger is emitting a pulse signal every second, and surely if it emitted every two seconds would the batteries last longer? my response is it would be that much harder to detect if it

didn't emit every second. >> that day 30 is this weekend. time is of the essence, but still unclear whether the chinese vessel and its detection of that pulse a minute and a half long of that pulse sound is that of the black boxes is attached to this plane and we're awaiting confirmation on that. and of course, we will continue to talk more about what the chinese news agency has been reporting today as it pertains to that pulse that may have been detected by a chinese plane and also debris that may have been spotted by a chinese aircraft. all that straight ahead right after this. (dad) just feather it out. that's right. (son) ok. feather it out. (dad) all right. that's ok. (dad) put it in second, put it in second. (dad) slow it down. put the clutch in, break it, break it. (dad) just like i showed you. dad, you didn't show me, you showed him. dad, he's gonna wreck the car! (dad) he's not gonna wreck the car. (dad) no fighting in the road, please. (dad) put your blinker on.

(son) you didn't even give me a chance! (dad) ok. (mom vo) we got the new subaru because nothing could break our old one. (dad) ok. (son) what the heck? let go of my seat! (mom vo) i hope the same goes for my husband. (dad) you guys are doing a great job. seriously. (announcer) love a car that lasts. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru.

all right. still awaiting confirmation, verification of what the chinese news agency has been reporting that a chinese if a tropatrol v actually detected a pulse that may be from the black box and australian authorities are waiting confirmation. let's bring back our panel, back with me right now, les, terry and mary. okay. so mary, you first.

is this it? is this the best hope for finding the black boxes, or any wreckage? >> well, it seems like the best hope, but there's just, it's troubling in the way the news was released, and now the reporter onboard the ship is reporting it was heard thursday, friday and today for a minute and a half. when the australian join task force was notified is unclear. it's shrouded in a bit of hugger-mugger, if you will, which decreases credibility, but a 15 mind segment of pings and a minute and a half in two different days looks like it might be it, but it's all shrouded in confusion, as i say. >> les? >> fredricka, i've been looking at this, as most people know, through rose colored glasses and i'm hopeful and trying to be optimistic. i share mary's feelings. so much misinformation and information that's come out that

has not been credible, that it's really hard, and i'm gratified that the families indicate that they're very skeptical, too. this has to be tough for them. >> and tom? >> i think there needs to be a huge diplomatic effort to get china, malaysia and australia back on the same page. this is an enormous disconnect. it doesn't bode well for the current situation and it won't for the long run, recovery and salvage when it gets to that point. >> thank you all. we'll be talking with you again momentarily. thank you so much. to recap, for those who just might be joining us right now, this is what we know. a chinese ship detected a signal with the same frequency as a black box but it has not been verified and everyone is saying there's no confirmation it has anything to do with the plane, but australian officials are considering sending a search team to that area by daybreak.

and a chinese air force search plane also reportedly spotted white objects floating today. again, no verification of that. more on this continuing mystery and story. i'm fredricka whitfield. coming up next, much more on the mystery of flight 370, including how much this investigation and the search is costing everyone. "your money" with christine romans is next. [ male announcer ] ortho crime files. reckless seeding... ...failure to disappear. a backyard invasion.

homeowner takes matters into his own hands. ♪ ortho weed b gon max. with the one-touch, continuous spray wand... kills weeds without harming innocent lawns. guaranteed. weeds killed. lawn restored. justice served. weed b gon max with the one-touch wand. get order. get ortho®.

jobs. where they are, and how to create them. i'm christine romans. this is "your money," and in a few minutes, my conversations with chicago's mayor rahm emanuel and former treasury secretary larry summers. first, a different question -- what is a life worth? it's a dark and uncomfortable thing to ask, but it's a question that companies and courts sometimes have to answer. grieving families who blame

a gm defect for the death of their loved ones demanding justice. >> i closed my eyes and think about how many died and that's not fair. >> another tragedy. half a world away. tales of malaysia airlines passengers, desperate for news of what happened. and soon both companies could be forced to pay up. general motors admits ten years ago it knew something was wrong with a faulty ignition switch tied to 13 deaths. >> i am deeply sorry. >> terms of its bankruptcy could shield them from civil liability, kenneth feinberg on the payroll, handling compensation for the terrorist attacks and the bp oil spill. >> come clean and sade we're going to do justice, and do the right thing. >> our first step, hin