if the ping is detected again crews will launch this underwater drone. at the same time 375 miles away, chinese ships and the british hms echo are trying to confirm pings the chinese briefly detected friday and saturday. australian officials say it's unlikely to be from the same source. >> quite possible for sound to travel great distances laterally but be very difficult to hear. >> reporter: all the activity is happening right along this arc where a partial satellite connection places the plane at 8:19 a.m. the day it disappeared. the australians believe it's the most likely place the plane went down. also emerging new details about the plane's flight path and an official tells cnn after the plane makes its initial left turn it skirts indonesia. was the person in the cockpit trying to avoid radar? maybe one step closer to fining out if the new signals detected are truly from the black box. but crews have not been able to recapture those signals. jake? >> thanks. tonight you can expect to hear two updates on these search for flight 370. the first will com

but the towed pinger locator has detected signals in the indian ocean consistent with pings from black this would be called miraculous. this has come down from hundreds and thousands of square kilometers. >> two separate signals have been detected. what happens next? officials say they have to reacquire those signals. that means the pinger locator has to make other passes, first at least three runs parallel to those it made when it first detected the signal. then, perpendicular runs so they can isolate the source and triangulate its position. experts caution it's full of sonar sounds and there could be false positives. they say objects from fishing equipment to whales can emit sew n sonar signals. but the operators of the pinger locator are trained to listen and watch closely. >> with this graphic representation, the operate are tos will be so focused on this just listening and watching for this signal. >> if the pinger locator can zero in on a specific area, this underwater drone is deployed. it's called a blue fin 21. >> it's got the main electronic section, the battery section, the

the larger map showing the search area, on the surface, the debris as it relates to where the pings were detected. on the close-up map, although it shows where the four pings were located and where they faded there is something missing from that map. what is missing from what the australian authorities are telling us? >> yeah, the thing about that map that is a little confusing is the distance that separates them. how could that possibly be? but what we really don't know is the strength or relative weakness of each of those detections. and that would have a lot to do with the relative distance between the detector and the pinging device. now, if there was one thing pinging, why would it be all over the map? it is the strangeness of the aco acoustics, you want to have all the detection pings. you will have a cluster. >> but miles, if they only have one beacon sending signals, if they don't receive another one what can they do with the four signals as far as triangulating these? >> this is pretty good, even if they didn't hear another ping, they are still in pretty good shape to start deploying the

>> wolf, another day, another potential ping in the same area as the others, but this time it was detected with a totally different piece of equipment the search for flight 370's black boxes intensifies and the ping count may have gone up again. an australian orion aircraft flying over ocean shield dropping uoys in the water below and at least one got a hit. a possible fifth ping detected where ocean shield already picked up four. that could be a confidence builder. >> the fact that it's picked up by a sonabuoy which is probably less well equipped to detect that signal than the pinger locator, that would indicate that, perhaps, it is still a pretty strong signal. >> reporter: the acoustic data is being analyzed, but the search coordinator says it's potentially from a manmade source. like a flight data recorder. an underwater listening device is attached to the buoy. an antenna relays what it's hearing to the aircraft. the sensors are deployed at least 1,000 feet under water but only work for eight hours. sonabuoys usually used to detect submarines were not designed for this kind of mission

american naval commander william marks tells me he is confident the pings detected in the indian oceanof the missing malaysia airliner. he also says he has ruled out many other sources for the pings, including any possible commercial shipping. this comes as another day of searching is getting under way at the hour. it's been 36 days since the malaysian airliner vanished. anger and frustration, it's hard to describe how horrible it must be for the families, but also for everyone trying to get answers given the mixed messages cominging from officials investigating this story. david mattingly is out front. >> reporter: with the world hanging on every word, leaders in charge of finding the missing 239 people aboard flight 370 continue to have problems staying on the same page. in china, australian prime minister tony abbott makes the most encouraging statement yet. >> we have very much narrowed down the search area, and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box. >> reporter: but just a few hours later, the australian chief's search coordinator roll

we know ping detection coming around 14,700 feet deep. you think to yourself what could be living down here. officials say electronic signals is pretty much all that could be associated with what they're picking up here. you see there are sea ur chchin sea cucumbers, squid. but once you get down to the surface, a lot of silt beginning to take shape. 10 meters or 30 feet of it down on the sea floor. a lot of the areas making it very treacherous. if you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving and you're told not to get too close to the silt below. you kick it up and visibility is reduced, that's what the folks have to deal with. right in this general area of the wallaby plateau and canyon, you see upwards of 30 feet of silt. that not only reduces visibility when you have an unman the machine going down there and trying to move around and look for equipment, it's pitch black. the pressure equal to something like 11000 psi. the animals that live down there are mostly invertbrates. it puts in perspective what we're dealing with. very isolated

detected pings as opposed to what the chinese detected about 300 miles away. >> well, all of those leadsh still being followed, so yesterday, for example, a new zealand aircraft was searching in an area based off those chinese detections, so those signals can carry so far under water, literally we're talking hundreds of kilometers basically, that we still need to go and explore every avenue. so, yeah, as i said yesterday, new zealand was going looking in the area of the chinese detections. >> wing commander royal new zealand air force. commander, thanks very much for joining us. >> you're welcome. >>> still ahead, flight 370 families mark one month since their loved ones vanished along with the plane. they'll wonder if they'll ever have closure. we're going to show you the kinds of equipment now being used to find those two black boxes. are some more reliable than others? ahhh. beautiful day in baltimore where most people probably know that geico could save them money on car insurance, right? you see the thing is geico, well, could help them save on boat insurance too. hey! okay...i'm re

searchers managed to detect two more pings deep underwater. they're more optimistic they can locate the airliner. signals are weakening, suggesting dying black box batteries, adding new urgency to efforts. full coverage coming up this hour. >>> let's begin now with the horror at a pennsylvania high school. police in pittsburgh, in a suburb there, say a teenager went on a stabbing and slashing rampage wounding at least 20 people, most of them fellow students. we'll bring you a live news conference any moment now. for the very latest, let's get the background, go to the town of murrysville, right outside of pittsburgh. that town in shock. justice correspondent pamela brown is on the scene for us with new information. pamela? >> reporter: that's right, wolf. according to a source with firsthand knowledge of the investigation, we have learned that the suspect in this stabbing spree, a 16-year-old, male sophomore at the high school, has been charged as an adult with attempted homicide. we know that he appeared before magistrate earlier this morning

ping detection depth 15,000 feet. it could be deeper could be not quite as deep.'t know because we don't know exactly where it is. where that broken ridge is could be up to 20,000 feet deep and then where the plateau is could be anywhere from say, 5 to 10,000 feet. let me try to put this in perspective for you, if i can. we have some of the world's tallest or not known buildings sitting right on the ocean floor. you can see this one right here. this little speck right here it's the eiffel tower. it's 1,000 feet. when you put that on the bottom of the indian ocean, look at that you would have to stack 20 of these on top of each other to get to the top of the indian ocean. the empire state building it would take 17 or 18 of these. you have the plateaus the depth alone is extremely intimidating. the average depth we're talking about is 700,000 feet. the current search area could be as much as 20,000 feet. this is mind boggling. you see these little buildings sitting on the bottom it's hard to wrap your mind around what we're dealing with. >> it helps us understand th

pings? >> well, currently we only have detection of the pings on two lines of position. and we really critically need to detect those pings on a third line of positioning, to really narrow down the search area. >> what do you mean by that? i'm going to stop you there. what do you mean by third line of position? >> okay. well, basically we're trying to triangulate where the pings are coming from. the detections are just -- the detector is not directional. it's getting a signal from something in a range of six miles. in a circle, if you will. and it detected on another track, the same pings, and yet we have another circle of six-mile diameter. if we could get a different, a third line of position, a direction that the ship is steaming, with yet a third circle, we overlap those circles, and at the point they overlap is the most likely location for the wreckage. >> i get it. the ballpark, the neighborhood is still way too big for them, even though they have this ping. so depending on the triangulation, they're hoping to find the position and drop the blue fin in and find the

but that doesn't apply to every device used to detect pings.f search equipment are these ships using? >> well, that really is the key here as to one set of ping is being taken seriously and one is not. if you look at the acoustic events, as they are called, this is the chinese one from april 5th down here. here is the april 6th one, 370 miles away. first question, can this be the same thing? not likely unless something really strange is happening with sound underneath the water there. but when you talk about the things that they were using for the chinese search they were using this, which is sort of a handheld device that you stick into the water and it's not really made for this kind of listening in these conditions. the "ocean shield" towed locator, this one is made for this kind of search and that's what was used in the other location. this is how it operates. you've seen this graphic before. they drag it along very slowly and it can listen at a much higher quality level than the other one does. although again, jake, you've got to be close

tell us about this ping detection they think they have detected? >> reporter: more than two weeks they've been searching off the coast of western australia. these are the first leads. that's why there was a lot of momentum this morning and confidence if these were the black boxes they'll find them. talking about two acoustic events. also the australian ship, the ocean shield, with the u.s. navy towed ping locater on board. we expect information about that whether they can discount it or verify in the next few hours. you add to that refinement of the search zone. what they're talking about is the southern sector. it is encouraging the chinese ship was wearing acoustic signals from the southern sector. having said this, i know family members are in contact with chief houston leading this effort here in australia. of course you hear the news and think did you find the plane? these are from family members that thought they weren't even looking in the right place. i want you to listen. he says what we're doing is for the families and we always have them

let's focus on the "ocean shield" and the pings detected. e first ping they detected whats for 2 hours and 20 minutes. then they turned the ship around to get back around. and they detected it for 13 minutes. does that indicate anything to you that we should take from it? >> well, the beauty of this, and the good news in this, is fact they've had such a long period of time. the two hours on the first occasion. and immediately reacquiring it for another 13-minute period. that's very encouraging and leads me to believe, you know, we're on to the right location. again, nothing for sure until we actually can see wreckage on the ocean bottom. but again, these pingers are very short-range. you'd expect as the ship slowly moves into the area it would come into the zone, pick it up. move into the zone where it hears it and lose the signal as the range gets too great, and that appears to be what had happened. what i'd expect today, they'll continue to make additional passes to refine the area of where they're hearing it, where they're not hearing it.

that concludes this session -- >> the malaysian defense minister on the detection of pings by an australianf perth. he says he is cautiously hopeful that there will be positive developments in days, if not hours. and he calls the detection of these pings the most promising lead we've had yet. >> and he says how reliable are those signals? he was asked, he said this has been a roller coaster ride, no question, each detail, but this, this is something that they are the most pleased about trying to get in terms of solving this mystery. let's bring in senior international correspondent nic robertson. he's in kuala lumpur for us this morning. this is, you know, this is an investigation team that has really been following loose ends for more than three weeks now. this seems to be the most, the most solid lead they've had. >> reporter: and the fact that he says that he's hopeful even within hours gives an indication, perhaps he's getting more from the lead of the australian investigation and angus houston of what he's discovering. he had said in the press conference in australia, the air commodore

they are going to be trying to see when the signal -- >> i want to clarify, on the chinese pings that were detectedn up on those, those clearly were not pings coming from the black boxes, right? >> yeah. >> all right. commander eddie scott from the royal new zealand air force, you've been a lot of help. are you still cautiously optimistic, before i let you go? >> at the end of the day, there's highs and lows and we obviously had the high over the weekend. it may be a low until we get another detection but we always stay optimistic in this sort of an operation. >> good luck to you and the men and women involved in the search. thanks very much. >>> coming up, we're learning more about the critical device at the center of the search. you'll hear from the team who heard the signals from the possible missing plane. >>> and with some estimates this search is approaching $20 million a month. we're going to have the surprising details of that and a lot more coming up right here in "the situation room." ♪ [ male announcer ] how could switchgrass in argentina, change engineering in dubai, aluminum production

the ping detections. one at 300 meters. about 1,000 feet beneath the surface. this recording was once every second. they drop theed the signal to 1400 meters. they measured a signal across this region. that was lasting about two hours. they brought it back down to 3,000 meters and the signal lasted 15 minutes. a lot of questions why the signals are intermil mitt tent and not consistent. you have to keep in mind the acoustics in the ocean work differently compared to over land. in fact, over the water, the sound travel is faster. 1500 meters a second which is four times faster than the way sound carries over the air. the sound bends in the water, dependent on the temperatures at the sea surface temperatures, at the levels where they are searching the temperatures are two to three degrees celsius or 35, 6 degrees fahrenheit. there are thermal vents across the sea floor that send temperatures shooting through the roof and depth and pressure can go to play on why this is happening here where the sounds are not consistent. also be difficult to locate again. >> you g

saying earlier to our producers, that you think there's only a 50/50 chance that these pings that have been detected and are narrowing the search zone to drop the submersible eventually, what else could these pings have been? >> well, there's a couple of -- well, i don't want to come off as a huge cynic, but the media that i've been seeing is produced by a number of the news media. if they're seeing the pings that are 16 miles apart, and we know, for instance, that the operational range of the sonar is on the order of a couple of miles, then i can't resolve why they're hearing those pings so far apart. i don't think there's a lot of other stuff that would have that frequency. some of the marine mammals, it could be other man-made devices around that we just don't know about. but i would agree with you there's a small uncertainty in the actual recognition, but this disparity between their operating range and the ranges at which we're hearing them, seems to be uninterpretable for me. unless, the possibility, we know there are two boxes and the other possibility is that maybe it's not sitting on the se

the ping detected two hours and then 15 minutes and five and six minute, four separate pings coming in a little less at 32 megahertz. what does that mean? >> i read a number of comments on that. in one case raised flags it might not have been the black box. the australians said that's understandable, we still think it's legitimate. there certainly is concern about that fact. >> you've seen those reports? >> right. i've seen them. i think it goes back to and what the australians are what else could it be they heard that often in that spot in the general frequency range? they can't determine it is from any other company or, you know, group of people trying to do something on the bottom of the ocean where they would put a pinger down there. you know, i think that's why they are going with that spot. >> we are just going to have to wait and see. i assume the next few hours, we will get word from australia when that blue fin 21 goes down for a fourth mission. more importantly we will get word in the next few hours if it detected anything now that they downloaded all the position from the bl

in the air france search, we didn't detect the pings. here we have pings. ir france search started looking elsewhere assuming that we weren't in the right place to detect the pings. they went through two phases of unmanned underwater vehicle searches. and then the third phase is when they actually found it. here, we're just starting the unmanned phase. so we may, you know, be in for the long haul there. for the air france search, the underwater vehicles were deployed in two to three-week intervals and in between, they waited maybe a couple months before they decided where to go back next. here, we just have one area and we're just going to troll the heck out of that area. so, it's a little bit different in that sense. >> colleen keller, thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you, wolf. >>> all right. this just coming in from the white house. president obama has spoken with the russian president vladimir putin this afternoon on the crisis in ukraine. our white house correspondent is joining us now with details. what are you learning over there, michelle? t

ping locator. you tow it on the back of a ship. it detectedngs and today search efforts of the biggest deployment of ships and planes yet, the multinational search team, 11 planes, three civil planes, and 14 ships. the black box pingers will soon fall silent, if they haven't already. we're at 32 days now and maybe the problem with reacquiring the signal could be a battery problem. we just heard from the commander of the u.s. navy. out front with more on what crews are listening for right now. >> reporter: this is what a ping sounds like. >> very high frequency. >> reporter: the critical sound searchers are hoping to hear in the deep and rough waters of the indian ocean. >> it's deep and it's dark, it's salty, it's high pressure. it's hard to work. >> reporter: here in rhode island's narragansett bay, research shows the challenges search crews face as they try to hear the ping from flight 370's data recorder. >> so this is a hydrophone. >> reporter: we drop an underwater microphone, a hydrophone, off the back of the boat as it moves farther awa

british shield has pulled out of its position to the southwest and is now focusing on where the ping has been detected. but crews listen for more pings to shrink the search zone. a smaller zone is necessary. the underwater vehicle can only search 43 square miles a day. that means the roughly 100-square mile area where the pings were detected would take nearly two weeks for the bluefin to search. the u.s. navy ship caesar chavez is on its way to participate in the five-week long search. renee marsh, cnn, washington. >> the ship that renee mentioned is part of the navy's seventh fleet. that is also the fleet that is operating the pinger locater, the one that detected possible signal locations in the ocean four times already. so let's go to commander william marks who joins us on the phone. the spokesperson for the seventh fleet. commander marks, i have to ask you have any new signals been discovered in the last few hours? >> not in the last few hours, it is 10:00 in the morning here, i got the information on the potential hit for the australian p-3. i'll let them announce that, i don't want to steal the

pings. >> we detected about 50 more minutes or so of this pinging. >> consistent with the plane's black box. >> it will sweep over that area, take a series of still pictures, transmit it to the vessel on the surface. >> are we closer to finding missing flight 370. >> there will be a positive development in the next few days if not hours. >> new information coming in every hour. and breaking right now -- >> i would like to take this opportunity to apologize. >> blade runner oscar pistorius taking the stand. >> i can promise that when she went to bed that night she felt loved. >> reporter: a special edition of "newsroom" starts now. >>> good morning. i'm carol costello. thanks for joining me. breaking overnight, what's being described as the most promising lead yet in the search for malaysian airlines flight 370. the australian naval ship "ocean shield" picked up signals from what could be the dieing batteries of the so-called black boxes. the ship is outfitted with high-tech equipment on loan from the u.s. navy and considered extremely reliable. >> i've heard the -- what we've got is we've g

when you heard the news breaking overnight that they detected these pings, did it make you think thate information that they're not telling us? because that's what i thought. i thought for them to get a detection the first time they put that thing in the water, it would take more than a miracle. >> right. this has been one of the burning questions of this whole investigation. they seem very confident about the steps they've taken. there's very little we know as the public that would lead us to share that kind of confidence. the assumption has always been, well, they must know something else. when they ran into that first search area they demar dated very early, it seemed like the malaysian prime minister went on air, actually was in front of parliament and said this is a very promising lead, we found this debris, and it seemed like they had a lot of confidence in what they were talking about, and then a few days later, boom, they were off looking somewhere else. so you do really have to wonder, do they know something or do they not know something additional? yes, it would be 1 in a mi

blue fin 21 down the water, you want a very good understanding of where that ping would be. >> let's just go on the second detectionnly 13 or so minutes. then there was this double ping going on, which many people say is terrific, because there's two, two boxes that we're looking for, flight data and cockpit voice recorder. is there something different about the way they ping? are they identical? >> actually, they're not. i'm holding a pinger now. we've been saying it's 37 1/2 kilohertz but in reality it's around 37 1/2 kilohertz it it's not exactly. each pinger's a little different. what you would expect is the voice recorder and the flight data recorder should have slightly different frequencies. they should come in a little differently and they should have different times. if you think about it, they're talking that they're hearing an echo or a ping and a ping. they're hearing a ping at one frequency and a ping at another frequency. >> which would be entirely different. >> which would say it's from two different devices compared to an echo or something bouncing off the bottom or something in the water. >> that's

because it's not just that searchers have been unable to detect any additional pings.obvious problem to all of us, which is that there has not been a single debris, a single life jacket, anything. and it's made it incredibly difficult for crews to determine where they should be looking and what they should be looking for. tom foreman is out front. >> reporter: malaysia air 370 crashed into the sea. authorities are not waivering on that but how it hit could make a big difference in the debris field they are seeking. if the plane cartwheeled in like this hijacked ethiopian jet in 1996, the destruction would be tremendous. how does that happen? one wing dips lower than the other and catches the water first. still, that does not necessarily create a wide debris field. for that, a midair explosion is a more likely cause. investigators say when a fuel tank erupted on twa 800 as it climbed to 14,000 feet leaving new york, the result was three separate debris fields and a tireless search to find all the parts. the same thing could be true in malaysia air exploded or caught on

detected the pulses. here is cnn's report. >> reporter: we now know more about the equipment used when the pinging sound wastedly detected. we spoke to the company that makes it. they tell us divers can use it or it can be used hand-held from the surface like the chinese are doing in this video. clearly this hydrophone does not go as deep as the tow pinger. remember, the tow pinger is what crews are using on board australia ship "ocean shield." it can go 20,000 feet deep, far from any noise on the surface. from this video you can see hydrophone got nowhere near that. the reason depth is so important, you have to be in a one to two mile radius to reliably detect pings from the black boxes. one concern is about false positives. maker of the hydrophone they are using says interference from another device in the ocean is a possibility. fred. >> all right. renee march, thank you. right now british ship with sophisticated equipment is on the scene, the same location where chinese say they detected pulse activity. so how does technology on those ships compare? we explore with our panel after this. across america,

two more pings detected under water. 33 days now after the malaysian airliner vanished. the australian official in charge of the search is optimistic the plane's wreckage will soon be found. >> i believe we are searching in the right area, but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of mh-370. >> let get right to nbc's ian williams live in perth, australia. ian, good morning. how cautious is this sense of optimism? >> reporter: good morning to you, frances. they do seem optimistic now that they are looking in the right area, but also cautiously saying there may be some way to go before they can physically locate the black boxes or any plane wreckage which may be sitting on what they call a silty seabed some three miles below where they're searching. now, those two detections of sound yesterday which were consistent with what they've heard at the week end, they're pretty clear they are what they call manmade. but they do need more information. they need more detections to be able to better pi

the man at the helm of the search for malaysia flight mh370, saying crews can't confirm whether pings detected on sonar are from the missing plane's black box. >> a chinese ship picked up two pulses from the indian ocean on saturday. they were detected in the search area. the teams are focussed on the area where the sound was picked up. it's encouraging but warns against creating false hope for families of missing passengers. >> we need to keep at the forefront of our minds families and friends of 239 passengers aboard the flight. speculation and unconfirmed reports can see the loved ones of passengers put through terrible stress, and i don't want to put any further - put them under any further emotional distress at this very difficult time. >> now, that airplane's black box has a battery life of about 30 days, with malaysia airlines's flight 370 disappearing more than four weeks ago, it's been a race against time to find it. if the battery runs out the flight data recorder will retain vital information into what happened. flight 370 was on route from quantum pur to -- kuala lumpur to bjing. h

men spear heading the search announced there were no major breakthroughs and that an under water ping detected yesterday probably did not come from the missing aircraft. today is day 35 of the search. the batteries that sent out the signals from the black boxes last about 30 days. >>> bay area engineer could play a pivotal role in helping recover the black boxes. graham hawk built this machine which may look like a small submarine but it's actually an under water plane. when the malaysian airline jet went down he was there to help in the search. once crews pinpoint the location of the black boxes, hawks under water technology could help in retrieving those boxes. >>> the coast guard has suspended its search for teenager who was swept out to sea at san francisco's ocean beach. rescue teams searched from the air, on the water, and from the land in a desperate effort to find mark. so far no signs of him but on wednesday a surfers pulled the missing teenagers father and cousin from the water. the father remains in critical condition. >>> former secretary of state hillary clinton made an appearance

. >>> the australian prime minister are standing by his comments saying that pings detected in the indian ocean are connect to the malaysian missing jetliner. but it's batteries are fading, and warranted that it may take a while to find. >> we have narrowed down very considerably narrowed down the search area, but trying to locate anything four and a half kilometers beneath the surface of the ocean is a massive task, and it is likely to continue a long time to come. >> the batteries and the flight data and voice recorders are supposed to last a month, but the plane now has been missing for 36 days. >>> today the u.s. navy is welcoming the latest edition to its feet. this photo shows the warship just last year and now is being christened today at its dock in maine. it's the navy's largest destroyer, but it requires half the crew of an existing destroyer. >>> risking it all for a chance of a new life. we'll look at people who risk crossing the border into the united states. that's coming up on al jazeera america. >> australians breathing a sigh of relief after the cyclone that they thought

they were in the same section of the ocean as pings detected on saturday. they were weaker and shorter. crews are racing to find the devices before the batteries run out. >> in syria at least 25 were killed after two car bombs exploded in the government-held district of homs. they were set off half hour apart, in a busy part of the day. they have a large population of allo whites. state tv -- alawites. state tv said 100 were injured. >> a war of words between palestine and israel leaders are not helping the peace talks. >> secretary of state john kerry and the foreign minister of israel were expected to discuss iran, syria, but the middle east peace talks on the agenda, the stalled middle east peace talks, both men indicating they want to find a way to move forward, echoed by jan sachy. >> we believe cooperation between israel and palestine would be good to both sides. we note that the contact in meetings between the negotiators are continuing, and note that they are engaging in serious efforts to find their way out of the impasse. >> they said to john kerr

as i just mentioned, in fact, it's been four days now since they recorded and detected any pings from the emergency beacons on those black box flight recorders. so i think there's a sense in which, you know, hope is diminishi diminishi diminishing somewhat, fredricka. >> what about the planes up in the air? how are they assists in the search? >> reporter: it's a kind of separate search, although there are some planes involved in the acoustic search as well dropping sonar buoys into the water to try to detect pings as well. the majority of the aircraft involved in the multi-national search are engaged in a slightly different area to where the sonic search is underway. that's because they're using current modeling to see where if the plane had crashed into that patch of the ocean, where the debris from it would end up, taken away by current, winds, things like that. they're in a slightly different area. more to the west of the sonic search zone. sonar search zone. and so far, you know, they're flying a lot. they're flying 11-hour shifts. basically it takes three or four hours to get the

pings that count have come from this. there are many other tools considered as well. for example, sonabuoys are being dropped out there, meant for detectingp a ping but discounted that as in the one that matters right now. beyond that, we talk an the bluefin-21, robotic device for mapping the bottom. it won't be listening for anything. it will simply map the bottom so they can get a picture once they narrowed in on a close enough ar area. then if we get to this point, you might see other things, for example, the alvin, which could take a human being down there to take eyes on target and look at it or yoond that to the remora 6,000, the type of robot they used with air france to retrieve things from the bottom. right now, wolf, right now all of this technology is poised but only parts of it has been deployed at this moment. and as they move forward, they'll see how they can add more and more to this armada and hopefully, hopefully leads to the actual wreckage. wolf? >> all right. tom, thank you. >>> let's dig deeper right now with colleen keller, senior analyst with the scientific consulting firm metron and worked on the search for air fra

significantly, though there was one set back overnight our time when it was reveal that a possible fifth ping detected by an under water buoy was not from those same black boxes. now, the news that was just breaking as we came on the air here last night, the resignation of the president's point person on health care. secretary of health and human services, kathleen sebelius. she's been under fire and not just from republicans for a long time. it got fierce when the obamacare rollout was an unmitigated disaster on the web. our political chief white house correspondent chuck todd has the story from the north lawn. chuck, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. kathleen sebelius tenure as secretary of health and human services was rocky at best and even her exit speech didn't go as planned. it was an appropriate metaphor, a good-bye glitches. >> knowing they can take care of themselves and their families. unfortunately, a page is missing. [ laughter ] >> reporter: which is a sign the president praised sebelius for steering the sweeping health reform into practice and enduring lots of heat. >> she

men spearheading the search announced there were no major breakthroughs and that an underwater ping detected yesterday probably didn't come from the missing aircraft. >>> california's record- breaking dry spell may be coming to an end. federal scientists say the weather phenomenon known as el nino could develop in the pacific by the end of the year. that could end the drought with a series of soaking storms next winter. this new prediction comes after scientists reviewed updated weather models and satellite. california did get some rain in february and march bup the state is still under an -- but the state is still under an official drought emergency. >>> no rain in the forecast for today, although outside our doors we're joined by plenty of gray. mostly cloudy skies giving you a live look there over the east bay. temperatures in the east bay, ranging from the mid-60s to mid- 70s. some of those areas, whammer spots. 74 reported in -- warm spots. 74 in antioch. mid-70s in walnut creek. 66 in livermore. 66 in fairfield. to the north bay where temperatures are struggling still in the upper 50s

. >> we will inform about the ping detected by a chinese ship and the australian ship. they are there now, at the area now. we have to verify the ping, the detection. >> reporter: what do you know about the frequency? >> they say it's 37.5. that is the frequency. we have to verify, we are not sure yet. there's one or two ships to verify. we do not have any information. >> verifying the frequency is a next step. chinese ships listened for the signal at depths of up to 20,000 feet. >> on wednesday, president obama will be at fort hood for a memorial to honour those killed. two attacks at that post in five years have many asking how it could happen again. heidi zhou-castro has more. >> this is not the first time flags and crosses have adorned the lawn of the church here. 13 crosses in 2009 marked the lives tape by major nidal hasan. now three are here for the soldiers killed by specialist ivan lopez. unfortunately we had another tragedy, so we set it up again. >> church elder dave yonki said the people had just found closure from the earlier incident, nidal hasan sentenced

pings were detected on saturday. those are your headlines. i'm morgan radford. >> on "america tonight," stabbings on campus. >> i was walk towards the exit and there was blood on the floor. >> a 16-year-old suspect, a bloody rampage. this time the attacker's armed with knives. >>> also seeds of doubt, is it a rare childhood illness or signs of something more disturbing? >> parents actually indues illness, they inject them with things, suffocate and

. >> schff: he is referring to a set of electronic pings detected in the search area in the indian ocean. we will have the latest on that. on the fort hood story we will talk to the head of the homeland security michael mccaul. has the white house overcome the problems with obamacare? we will check in with dan pfeiffer. and what about this wacky weather? we'll preview our partner showtime's new series "years of living dangerously" with the best selling author thomas friedman and climate central's heidi cullen. plus, a look at todd purdum's new book, "an idea whose time has come" as we approach the 50th anniversary of the civil rights act. 60 years of news because this is "face the nation". captioning sponsored by cbs >> schieffer: well, good morning, again, all sides are urging caution but finally there may be a break in the case of missing malaysian airliner 370. the first reports of pings heard in the search area came from the chinese so we are starting there this morning with seth in beijing. seth? >> good morning. officially they are calling it an acoustic event but today for the thi

detected are, indeed, from the plane's two black boxes. he says the challenge is to get as much information as possible before the signals end. investigators say a fifth pingplane. it was picked up thursday by a device dropped in the ocean from an airline before earlier signals were detected by a u.s. pinger locator towed by an australian ship. there's been no letup in the search for debris from the plane. looking at the surface, 13 ships, 15 aircraft, they're assigned to today's search. more now on what australia's prime minister is saying about the search. he spoke earlier today in shanghai. >> we have very much narrowed down the search area. we're very confident that the signals we're detecting are from the black box on 370. i really don't want to say anymore than that because i want to get the most up to date briefing between now and my meeting with president xi later today and as a sign of respect to china and its people and in particular the 154 chinese victims and their families, i would like to save any more detail for the briefing with president xi later today. i want to say how honored i am -- we're now getting to the stage where the signal from

two more pings detected underwater 33 days after the airline vanished. they're optimistic the plane's wreckage will soon be found. >> i believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of mh 370. let's get right to nbc's ian williams live in perth, australia. how cautious is this sense of optimism. >> good morning to you, betty. they are increasingly confident that they're looking in the right area but there are enormous challenges still to trying to find and recover any black box and aircraft wreckage that might be lying on the ocean floor which is almost three miles deep at that point. now, detecting these two bursts of sounds tuesday which they're convinced are man made is giving them this confidence but they're trying to detect more sound and the sound is also described as getting weaker which would suggest the battery life is going in the black box if it is the black box. but if they can find more sound bursts they can pinpoint wher

optimism of the last few days is being tempered by the reality that today there have been no pings detected in the ocean. they still, some of them are holding out hope that their loved ones are just missing and simply lost, but it's been more than a month now. our pauline chiou has been covering every angle of the families for that entire month. and pauline, i understand you've detected something of a change amongst some of the family members over the last few days. >> reporter: yeah, i have. i sense a change of tone in terms of their anger and their criticism towards the malaysian government and the searches, the search, at least from early on. because you might remember, early on there was a lot of anger about the delays and contradictions, and we saw that big protest by the families here in front of the malaysian embassy here in beijing, which was highly unusual. you don't usually see that kind of protest here in the capital city. but over the past week or so, i've seen a little bit of a change, and part of it is that the relatives are exhausted, they're tired and they're frustrated, and

detection the. also, new developments in the search area. pinging sounds have been detected by two ships in the southern indian ocean. those sounds could be from the missing flight data recorder's, but it could be days before that is confirmed. those developments were discussed earlier by angus houston, the head of the australian agency coordinating search operations, cnn aviation analyst michael kay, a retired royal air force pilot, former adviser to the uk defense ministry was listen to go this news conference that happened a few hours ago and he broke down some of the key points of what houston had to say. >> i think this was a calm, measured, and supremely effective response by air chief marshall houston. what he did in this press conference, he hit a number of critical points and i'm looking towards the family and loved ones at this point. number one, he confirmed that the ping from chinese news agency wasn't verified. i think that's very important just to reduce everyone's expectations. he then said that he was actually talking to the rcc in c

the decision to launch the bluefin-21 because no pings have been detected for six days. what is the plan for this under water sub? >> reporter: it's going to be gone down on these 24-hour missions. it takes two hours just to get to the bottom. it's almost three miles down. it's going to be hovering about 100 feet above the ocean's surface using that side scan sonar technology to map out the bottom of the ocean floor. then it takes another two hours to get back up after spending 16 hours below. all that time what they're doing on the ocean shield is just sitting and waiting because this

the pings detected last week helped narrow the search area.ane disappeared. >>> adding to the mystery tonight we've learned the co- pilot's cell phone stayed on after the plane disappeared. sources tell cnn the first officer's phone was searching for service roughly half an hour after all of the flight 370's communications mysteriously shut down. >> it would be very rare in my opinion to have someone with a cell phone on in the cockpit. it's never supposed to be on at all. it's part of every checklist of every airline i'm familiar with. >> sources say malaysian authorities told the u.s. that a cell tower roughly 250 miles from where the plane turned around picked up a roaming signal. that suggests the first officer's phone was the only one turned on after the flight's transponder turned off. so did he try to make a call? tonight u.s. and malaysian officials say there's no evidence that he did, but they just don't know. >>> a student who died on the freeway disaster near orland is being called a hero for what he did in his last moments alive. e

a search plane has recorded a possible ping from the airliner's black boxes. the signal was detected by sonobuoys that were dropped by the plane. analysts are studying the acoustic da acoustic data. sources say that flight 370 disappeared from military data after it shade the sharp turn back over the malay peninsula. they say this plane must have dropped in altitude between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. and as aircraft continues to go on another search for debris, our analysts and reporters are standing by here in the united states as well as around the world with the kind of special coverage that only cnn can deliver. michael holmes is in perth, australia. let's go there first for the very latest. michael? >> reporter: wolf, a dozen of these sonobuoys have been spread around the search area, sort of an added tool, more electronic ears, if you like, listening for something, anything from malaysia flight 370. this time it was a search plane that picked up a possible signal from flight 370's black boxes. it happened near the same area where the "ocean shield" detected four electronic pings sin

. >> at about the same time those pings were detected, a search crew in the air says they flew over some white objects floating in the water. this is a picture of one of them. the reporting pings and this newfound debris are adding some cautious new energy to a frustrating search that has lasted nearly a month. live right now to perth, australia. cnn's matthew chance. the chinese released new details through state-run media. all the other countries involved in the search are reporting directly to the coordination center. is that a problem there? >> reporter: i think it's a source of friction. it's also a source of confusion. you're right. there are eight countries involved in this international search, don. all of them apart from china are directing they flow of information through the australian organization that's coordinating this search. and so, yes, it's been somewhat confusing. it seems the chinese directing their information, their findings, through their chain of command in beijing, then beijing decides what to pass on. all sorts of problems. one of thes we th s wquestions raises

they've now detected four separate pings from what they believe to be the black boxes. they've got the "hms echo," a second ship coming up to this region to help. what do you think the next key step is? >> well, i think these are significant developments in this story, of course. and i think that the next step is to further narrow down the search area. the search area, even though it is smaller than it was a few weeks ago, it is still pretty big, and it is so big that you can't just get a submarine down there and scour the entire area. it will take years to do that at the size the area is now, so they will need to try and get as much out of these pings as possible, actually narrow down further and further. >> so, ironically, almost -- and you made this point yesterday, john -- almost taking your time doing the work now, as much work as you can now to narrow that range, that area, so that it's not so labor-intensive on the other side. >> absolutely. absolutely. if you invest a little bit more time now on the surface listening for these pings, and you have to be very quie

but they did describe these two separate acoustic events, the detection of these pings, under the surface of the indian ocean, as, you know, the best evidence they have, the best clue they had, the best lead they had, i think was the word they used, going forward. much more optimistic yesterday than they were a week ago, with the words of angus houston, the official who's heading up the multi-national search teams. but there's going to be a news conference here over the course of the next hour with the australian defense minister. he'll be giving a statement as well, after meeting with base officials and meeting with the search teams as well, getting a briefing from them. he'll be answering questions from the media. an gust houston will be next in and potentially give us some detail as well. so we're hoping to get some more clarity in the coming hour or so about what exactly has been found, have they managed to verify it, at the moment, we understand from the u.s. seventh fleet, which is, of course, the part of the u.s. navy that lent the very sophisticated monitoring quimonitor ing equip

roger, you have gotten any sort of indication how far away that these ships receiving these pings, detecting these pings might be? i realize the depth of the water has bearing on this. i assume we are closing in on the search field even though it's large one? >> this is the biggest challenge at all, greta, is to locate those signals which need to be fixed. once that happens, the ocean shield will possibly lower the blue fin under water to try to locate any wreckage on the sea floor. as you rightly say, we are talking about a huge depth of water. well more than 10,000 feet deep. we are still a long way off from actually locating any wreckage, it all depends on whether those signals can be detected or rather traced back to where they are originating. >> roger, thank you. >> thank you, greta. >> you have to love our navy. work around the clock along with the australians, detected yesterday. william marks from the seventh fleet joins us. good evening, sir hello, good evening to you and go morning to those off the coast of australia. >> i should have said good morning. i recognize the time. what

four pings detected this week have allowed crews to narrow the search zone. to find the black boxes before the batteries run out. more information as it becomes available. >>> big news in the chris christie investigation, right after this. not sure. (agent) i understand. (dad) we've never sold a house before. (agent) i'll walk you guys through every step. (dad) so if we sell, do you think we can swing it? (agent) i have the numbers right here and based on the comps that i've found, the timing is perfect. ...there's a lot of buyers for a house like yours. (dad) that's good to know. (mom) i'm so excited. try new olay fresh effects everything off wipes to remove makeup. and bright on schedule eye roller to instantly depuff. for instant beauty sleep, no sleep required. >>> we have some breaking news in the investigation surrounding new jersey governor chris christie's administration and his top political appointees. this morning's "wall street journal" reports that manhattan district attorney has issued a subpoena last month for records from the port authority of