indicate they did come from an electronic device, and are consistent with the ping of a flight data recorder. the location of the pings has officials tightening the focus of the search under water and on the surface. >> but they're still throwing many assets at this today as we speak. 14 aircraft and ships are working in about a thousand square kilometers. >> but authorities say it is still too soon to deploy the navy bluefin robotic vehicle. they wanted to find the search area with as many pings as possible before the batteries in the beacon die out. >> that is correct, let's get more information from perth, australia, where we find erin mclaughlin. truly, erin, an incredible turn of events. we are right at the edge of battery life for the black boxes. just walk us through what mr. houston announced moments ago. >> that is right, errol, very encouraging news announced this morning. they are now confident houston says that they are searching in the correct place. they detected not one, but two signals as he mentioned there. the first lasting a total of five minutes, 32 seconds. that detected yesterday aft

the ocean shield still towing that ping locator on loan from the u.s. navy. hat little tighter area, where they did get those pings, there's the british ship, the hms echo, which is an oceanographic ship, it has a two-mile wide beam, if you like that it can put down and try to get back information from the ground floor, and see if it can locate any wreckage. no luck so far. don, this is a very long and involved process, and isn't by far over. >> joe johns in kuala lumpur. if and when these black boxes are found, who will take custody of them and the get the information from them? >> reporter: well, it's pretty clear the malaysia government has the authority to at least lead the investigation, but they've already said they are going to need help. they are going to need expertise from other countries. the three we know that can handle the job, the united states, the uk, and australia. malaysia has also shown a real tendency here for collaboration, to get a lot of other countries involved. as we've seen in the search, and we do know that they've been reaching out

the australian navy vessel that has been towing that ping locator all this time. apparently according to mr. houston, it saw an oil slick in the general search area. a sample is being taken and then analysis will be done. here's what he said. >> the ocean shield detected an oil slick yesterday evening in her current search area. a sample of about two liters has been collected and it will be a number of days before it can be landed ashore and conclusively tested. i stress the source of the oil is yet to be determined but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 meters downwind and down sea from the vicinity of the detections picked up by the ping locator on the ocean shield. >> yeah. he is a man who deals in the facts only and does urge caution as we said. he is informing us this oil slick was seen. a sample has been taken. analysis will be done but say we don't know what that is. the other headline i suppose is that the air and surface search for floating debris will end in the next two or three days according to mr. houston. he said that the chances of any being foun

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 in mind. >> we need to keep at the forefront of their minds families and friends of 239 passengers on board the flight. speculation and unconfirmed reports can see a the loved ones of the passengers put through terrible stress. i don't want to put them under any furtherer emotional disstress at this very difficult time. >> reporter: you can hear in his voice

reason why houston was being cautious is that this is very deep water, and for the moment the ping locater has lost that signal. it is busy there, trying, working around the clock, trying to reacquire it. if it can reacquire it and this is the signal that is being described as the most promising yet, it will help them further pinpoint where it is coming from. then they'll be able to send down an underwater vehicle to take a closer look to see whether there is a black box, whether there is wreckage down there. but another reason for caution is the depth there is 2.8 miles. that vehicle that is being carried on board the australian ship will be working at its limits. also today, the search coordinator pointing out that there has still been after four months of fruitless searching, sorry, one month of fruitless searching, there still has been no sightings of any wreckage. and he said, you know, if we could find some wreckage clearly that would help us to confirm that the aircraft went down there. and, of course, at the same time, undermining the urgency here is the fact that the batteries in

through a ping locator. that's important. in angus houston's mind he's got to be 100% confident that he's done everything to locate the pirng before he goes on to the next phase. >> dadevid gallo, what say you? >> quitting is not an option. it's the family and loved ones of passengers. it's the flying public. it's the aeronautical industry. so quitting is not an option. and again, we're not intimidated by the depth, we're not intimidate bid the terrains. it's a matter of having the right team. it's a matter of having the right technologies, the right operational plan. and then we've got to let them do what i do best and in this case we've got a good team out there, they're great. they need to start making a systematic map of the seafloor and little by little paint that area in until you find the bits of that aircraft or the aircraft in one piece if it's there. >> david, you mentioned just in the previous show that you said you're not -- in this show you just said you're not intimidate bid the depths. but the

. >> jonah, by my reckoning and you're on the harborside there in free mantle, the ping locater shoulde on station in the next 24 hours or so, that little device which is being towed behind an australian naval ship. >> reporter: yes. but, nik, the point with that locater is it's only going to be useful if they have some idea where mh370 crashed into the water. it's only got a range of about one or two kilometers each side of it. so it can't be used to troll through a large area. they need to have narrowed down a possible crash site. that's why it's really up to the planes and the ships and possibly now the submarines as well to try to find some sort of indication that they're in the right place, then track back where the crash site might have been based on what we know about the currents in that area. and then these ping locaters can get to work. the chances of them finding it out of the blue with the ping locater are very, very remote. >> jonah fisher there in perth. >>> spanish champions barcelona in football have been given a year-long transfer ban by fifa. the punishment is for bre

what we're doing is we're vesting all of our egg sboos this silver bullet, the ocean shield, the ping locatorking for those gps pings off the black boxes. the reality is and we have to be open about this, is that we're going to find likely going to find, the aircraft through some sort of debris trail. and we can't keep investing our hopes and our dreams in finding this through the gps pings. the gps pings will run out in ten days or around ten days. >> no, sooner. i think we have until sunday. >> but they've got up to about 40 days best case scenario. >> if they were stored well, and by the way they'll be pinging quieter and quieter. >> best case scenario we will have that. but once that goes then all the ping locator and the hms echo -- >> but michael the positive side is they are moving closer in towards the coast of australia. they're at 900 miles, i believe, out. so i think the water is shallower, the ocean currents are also different. they're going north at this point. so they could be following a debris field. they could have more luck, if you will, in that they're narrowing the search

that ping locater, it is not directional, so when they get a ping, they can't say, oh, there it is.elps them narrow down the search area. what they're trying to do while they can still get the pings is try to narrow it down so they can send down the underwater submersible, the bluefin, which then maps the bottom of the ocean floor and really is looking for wreckage. but that really moves at a walking pace and is a tedious situation. you really have to go down and get whatever it is they could see. this could take weeks even if they are in the right spot. anderson. >> yeah, michael holmes, i appreciate the update. the new pings and all they imply about locating the wreckage, a call to what comes next when a debris field is actually located. now, in a moment we'll show you just how truly deep the ocean is and the challenges conducting the recovery operations. first, i want to focus on the latest news about the pings and the scramble to hear more. joining us again, cnn analyst david soucie, arthur of "why planes crash," and david gallow, director of special projects of the woods instit

we had two last week and two pings on tuesday and looking for more before they run out. this is day 34 for the batteries on the locaters. they are meant to last 30 days or so. so they are running down. the more pings they can narrow the search down. they have the ship out there towing it around. interestingly we were on a website that tracks ships a few moments ago and saw a british ship the "hms echo," it is a ocean ship that can map the bottom if you like. it is headed in that direction which is interesting. we havent heard anything official on that. they might be looking at the ocean floor. that part of the indian ocean we know more about the moon's surface than we do about that floor bed, that seabed there. one of the big concerns is there is said to be meters of silt on the bottom there. if something like a flight data recorder broke free from the plane and headed in to that silt it is going to be hard to find ping or no ping. you are sort of in the dark literally looking for it. those pings all important as they try to pinpoint where those boxes might be. don? >> michael, when we last spoke you said the planes ha

navy towed ping locator. well, they haven't had any pings since tuesday of last week, and it seems they just decided that they're not going to get any more. those batteries have gone down. so, they move on to this new phase, and they're going to put the submersible, the bluefin, down into the water this hour. we were told it would go in at the top of the hour, so it's probably happening as we speak. and that starts this new phase. it's going to go down, we're talking 450,000 meters down, over 14,000 feet down below the surface, and it will go at walking pace, mapping the surface, the ground of the ocean, the ocean floor, using side sonar. it's a real 3d image of what's down there. they're hoping, of course, to find any sign of the malaysian jet down there. it's going to take them perhaps weeks or even a couple of months to cover the entire search area, so this is a laborious process. you mentioned the oil slick? that was found in the general search area where that australian ship, the "ocean shield" has been t

that ping locater, it is not directional, so when they get a ping, they can say oh, there it is.ey're trying to do while they can still get the pings is try to narrow it down so they can send down the underwater submersible, the bluefin, which then maps the bottom of the ocean floor and really is looking for wreckage. but that really moves at a walking pace and is a tedious situation. you really have to go down and get whatever it is they could see. this could take weeks even if they are in the right spot. anderson. >> yeah, michael holmes, i appreciate the update. and all the pings, and the wreckage cell, the call to what comes next when a debris field is actually located. now, in a moment we'll show you just how truly deep the ocean is and the challenges conducting the recovery operations. first, i want to focus on the latest news about the pings and the scramble to hear more. cnn analyst, david souci, author of why planes crash, and david gallo, director of special projects of the woods institution. also, richard quest, richard, just big picture, in terms of the optimism that

very much on the australian vessel, the "ocean shield" equipped with the american-operated towed ping locatorwhich is still out there scouring the waters trying to reacquire those signals. and that's really key to this effort right now. the more detections they have, the more information they have about the source, the location of the signal source. and that allowed them to narrow down a potential search field. and deploy the bluefin 21 which is the u.s.-provided underwater autonomous vehicle which is able to search the ocean seafloor for any signs of wreckage. and only then will they know for sure if this has anything to do with the missing plane, john. >> they need that for pure confirmation, erin. of course, all the body language in this news conference of angus houston seems to indicate they think they have it. they think they now know the general area where it is. and they're just trying to narrow it down to the most specific location, so that when they do deploy the bluefin, it has the greatest chance of finding it quickly. any sense when that bluefin might get in the water? >> reporter

if the ping locator is within two or three miles, how difficult should it be to find that, if it's 2 or 3 -- because that's the range of what the beeping would be detectible. >> the device being towed by the ship, it may be a long way behind the ship, and it doesn't have an exact way to mark that spot. they have to come back around several times and reacquire the signal. >> just because you're hearing a signal, if it is a signal, doesn't mean it's going to be within the next day or so. >> right, they can't say drop the submarine on that spot. they're kind of guesstimating by the depth. they can tell how far under the surface that device is but not the exact latitudlatitude, long. >> if this is the real deal, that would be amazing they locate it because they weren't sure they were looking in the right haystack looking for that needle. >> they finally found the needle hopefully rather than just the haystack, incredible. >> a a mazing development if pans out. >> the fuel consumption of the plane, the speed, it really is extraordinary if this works out, they've done a tremendous job. >>

navy's ping locator is scouring a narrowed section of the indian ocean. the past week four possible black box pings have allowed investigators to narrow the search area somewhat, but so far they've been unable to relocate those sounds. and one of the reasons is because the ocean is just such a noisy place. other sounds under the surface could be drowning out any signals coming from those data recorders. cnn's rosa flores took a pinger out on the water to let us hear some of the obstacles they may be encountering. >> 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 narrangansett bay, researchers show us the challenges search crews face as they try to hear the ping from flight 370's data recorder. >> so, this is a hydro-phone. >> reporter: we drop an underwater microphone off the back of the boat as it moves farther a

if they stop pinging, these ping locaters are effectively useless. cautiously optimistic, but there are still big facts at play. we should be also focusing on the air search. in my view, the most likelihood of finding anything to do with flight 370 in that area would be from the aircraft in the air and not ping locaters. >> mary, this stood out to me. he said the data we have is the data -- or the data we've got is the data we've got. usually most times you have a really good starting point. but this one is different. what stuck out to you with that statement? >> well, that's the statement of the whole press conference that stuck out to me, because he was very -- i thought very honest and straightforward that they're doing the best they can. but it was clear that they didn't expect to get additional refinement in the data. the cautious optimism part came in that they're dealing with what they have and throwing all that they have at the data but that's all they have. >> steven marks, you have a couple of legal questions after this press conference? >>

when you talk about the towed ping locater, the device over here, is being being hauled along and listening over a range of 1 to one to two miles depending on the thermal clims, and listens for the pings coming off the box. this is a very slow process. this thing is traveling along at a rate of probably two to four miles per hour in an operational sense. it can go up to around five or six, if you are really cranking along. but it has to go very slowly. and it's at a depth of one and a quarter to two-and-a-half miles in the search area. it has to get fairly close to its target to find it, ashleigh. it's not a very fast way of moving about. and on top of which, you mentioned the robotic device, can dive down just as deep, and basically can go down and search around around. it will cast out a signal and try to see anything like this that would be in the zone. it has to get fairly close to make it work. so the real equation here, again, ashleigh, how close can you get. if it you're close enough, it works. if not close enough, it's great technology dragging through the ocean. >> and it's that zo

have therefore determined that the estranged vessel ocean shield will cease searching with the ping locater later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle bluefin-21 as soon as possible. >> the deep sea sub, bluefin-21 is replacing the ping locater, a sophisticated listening device that detected four signals consist end with an aircraft's black box. it's been six days since the last of the acoustic pulses were recorded. the sea has fallen silent. the mission is now heading deeper into the indian ocean. this is day 38 of the exhaustive search for the plane that simply vanished. further possible clues have been found. the australian navy is investigating a slick of oil detected in the target zone. >> i stress the source of the oil is yet to be determined. the oil slick is a approximately 5,500 meters downwind and down sea from the vicinity of the detections picked up by the towed pinger locater on ocean shield. >> a week ago, australian officials suggested that the final resting place of flight mh 370 might soon be revealed. the language now is far more measured and cautious. there'

location of the pings is consistent with where the airliner would have run out of fuel. they say that the pinpoints the underwater search area. the sea floor is some three miles deep. if they're able to find anything abnormal, investigators say they will send down a camera. the black box is running on borrowed time. a baby girl. gravely ill and in the middle of the ocean more than a thousand miles from home.one year old lyra koffman is in stable condition thanks to an elite military team from san francisco. kron four's dan rubin spoke with some of the brave men and women who are answering the distress call of baby lyra's parents. and explains what's next. one-year-old baby lyra is in good hands with the 129th rescue wing of the air national guard. now, she?s counting on those hands to carry her to safety. and and and a morning in u.s. coast guard received a distress calla team of four paratroopers was sent from moffett field to san diego. it takes a team of highly- skilled professionals. much like the four medically trained personnel who parachuted down to the open pacif

nav navy heg a ping for two hours from one location, another 15 minutes from another location. navy saying publicly they're cautiously optimistic. these two sets of pings were coming from these two boxes. i assume this is a lot more credible to you. >> night and day, wolf. the way in which ocean shield has not only detected these for a sustained period of time, but also managed to record them. excuse me. peg my pardon. managed to record them and sent the recordings to perth where the wave form has been viewed and has been heard and managed to replicate it. it shows a very great difference. now, this isn't chinese bashing. this is science. this is basically saying in this scenario, the assets and the belief has do go at the moment to the ocean shield, whether it's australian, whether it's american, whether it's british, whether it's chinese, it doesn't matter. the fact it has the more sophisticated equipment and has the more reliable data tonight. >> the fact they haven't found any debris before hearing what they suspect are pings from the two black boxes, that's highly unusual,

it was a 160-mile-per-hour storm, only 350 miles from the current ping location.t started off the north coast there of australia. it moved there into very warm water south of jakarta and became a very big storm. this is a picture of that. this is a monster hurricane cyclone. as big as we see in america. biggest cyclone in this water in four years. and the waves were 12 to 14 feet right over where, now, the pings are. we were looking down here. we weren't worried about this. we talked about it, said it will make some waves. we were looking way down here at the time. we're talking about four footers off of this. we weren't worried about it. you talk about this thing being a washing machine, this ocean being a washing machine anyway. with that, over where we believe there could have been surface debris, anything that could have been a boat is at the bottom of that ocean. >> it almost sounds like the typical watching machine would have turned into a blender with this. chad myers, thank you. so far, the search for the missing plane has been described as trying to find

they're using this instrument called a ping locater.rs looking for signals from the black box recorders. officials say the detections were consistent with those they expect from a black box data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. >> there's been a significant lead in the search for the aircraft. according to the administration today, the ocean shield has detect ted signal as consistent with those of aircraft black boxes. may this may be a step closer to finding mh 370, there's still many steps to be taken before we can positively identify these are from 370. >> up to a dozen aircraft and 14 ships are searching the area the size of the uk, 1,500 kilometers west of australia. a chinese ship have also dete detected signals. authorities are cautious rushing to conclusions as the search intensifies. bbc news. >>> coming up the next half hour on gmt, it's been 20 years since the rwanda genocide when hundreds of thousands were killed. we're live where a ceremony is underway to mark that anniversary. events also covered by a diplomatic with f

the "ocean shield," the vessel that has been towing the ping locator has been joined by a british naval ship in the area where the pings were heard. it's called the "hms echo" and is trying to find signs of wreckage below. there are other ships, of course, a few hundred miles west where experts have been thinking any debris from the suspected crash site could have drifted over the weeks since the plane disappeared. wolf? >> still, they have not found any debris from that plane, have they, right? >> reporter: that's absolutely right. they did find some suspicious objects that were spotted from the air as ships went over, picked it up but not related to the crash at all. there were a number of storms in recent weeks over that area where the plane is thought to have gone down and they have done all of these drift patterns and worked out the movement of the ocean and that's why those ships are all concentrated about 3 or 400 miles to the west of where they are looking for the wreckage because that's where they think ne debris may have ended up. wolf? >> very intriguing that they haven't fou

navy ping locator is still trolling through the indian ocean, listening for any faint signal from the plane's locator beacon. if the pinger locator finds something, a small bluefin submarine can then conduct a slower, more thorough search. the faculty at u-i-c has voted to strike again. they plan to start picketing april 23rd, unless an agreement can be reached with the administration before then. two more bargaining sessions are scheduled for next week. both sides are at odds over pay and promotion opportunities for full-time faculty who are non-tenured. the faculty went on strike for two days in february. no end date has been set, if they strike again. faculty members have not had a contract since unionizing in 2012. a chicago eye doctor is charged with secretly video taping female patients. tonya francisco is live outside one of two offices where prosecutors say cameras were hidden. his career hangs in the balance this morning. he is free after posting 10% of his $75,000 bail. the prosecutors say the prominent eye surgeons secretly videotaped the least four female employees in the

they're very, very confident because where the ocean shield is l has located the pings is where inmarsat telecommunications company said they received the last handshake from this 777 in this very location. also ocean shield is looking on the flight path that the international team of experts had worked out that the plane had traveled. now, the other thing about this is ocean shield is searching in one very small area. the rest of the search fleet is about 500 nautical miles approximately to the west. that's because they're searching for debris on the surface. now, about two weeks ago approximately, a tropical cyclone, a hurricane if you like, jillian, traveled south and then right through this area and then turned west. and they believe that the debris has been dragged to the west of the actual crash site and that's where they're looking at the moment for some surface debris that would absolutely give them confirmation. >> if the black boxes, though, jeffrey, were in that other location within a 17 miles, let's say, of each other, wouldn't -- i assume they're under the belief that there

that particular ping that comes from an emergency locater, transmitter or black box is a continuous pingand it doesn't stop. unless if you go far away from the source. and there are times that most of us, we always monitor the emergency frequency as we fly along over water, occasionally we do hear some ping. and sometimes it's another aircraft testing their device or another -- maybe a small airplane being down. so i approach that with a lot of caution. >> all right. captain aimer, thanks so much for being with us. >> my pleasure. >>> coming up, much more on the search for missing malaysian flight 370. ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] the nissan altima with nasa inspired zero gravity seats. ♪ let it take the weight off your drive. ♪ nissan. innovation that excites. test test test. for over a decade millions have raised their hand for the proven relief of the purple pill. and that relief could be in your hand. for many, nexium helps relieve heartburn symptoms from acid reflux disease. find out how you can save at purplepill.com. there is risk of bone fracture and low magnesium levels. side effect

all of a sudden, they dropped the ping locator in the water and find pings. at would place a location to search and the search goes on, there is no hindrance. whether we know why they search there or not. >> david, a question from twitter from jim tallton. he asks, help us understand what happened to a plane out of fuel at 35,000 feet. does it glide? does it coast? what happens? >> it can glide for many miles. what happens when it runs out of fuel is two different options. one is if auto pilot is engaged and one is not and then the third is in control by the pilot. if the pilots are incapacitated, it will find a center. the aircraft has dyhedral wings. it tilts to one direction, the lift on the top wing decreases. it naturally finds its center if it has been trimmed properly if it is traveling that far. the airplane could have a glide slope in. the auto pilot will try to hold altitude. the aircraft would go into almost a 40-degree pitch before finally stalling. once it releases, the auto pilot would release because of the pressure on the control. it would dive

it will search the seabed for wreckage if the ping locator picks up any signals. the crews can only guess where the plane might have hit the water. the equipment could be going in the wrong direction for all we know. searchers taking a shot in the dark and in the deep. >> the best area of highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water is the area where the underwater search will commence. it is on the basis of data that only arrived recently. >> above the is yours fa, 14 aircraft and nine ships have been patrolling the search zone. let's bring in paula newton in perth, australia. we now know the pinger locators are listening under water. i suppose this is giving search searchers a little bit of hope. >> reporter: hope. they are hoping for luck. they say it will take a lot of it to find them. they have a lot of confidence in that equipment. it is very sensitive. the weather is good. it does make a difference. the terrain, not that difficult. it is not steep. they say it should. if the pingers are there, if the black boxes are there, they

so this means that the ping locators, they have a 240 box to go to with a line in it to tow the ping locator down. guarded, because again, coming from the air is the most likely scenario where you're going to pick up anything that willing it to mh370, but 240 kilometers is new data. >> jim tillman, you have been pessimistic. you said, hey, listen -- you've been leery. i'm not sure if they're even searching in the right place. did that help you at all, to think they're searching the right area? >> the thing i got out of the press conference was the impressive array of talent that had been lined up to work on this. it's a world-class approach and a team that i'm getting more confidence in every time i hear about it. i'm impressed with that. however, i'm with jeff. i didn't get the feeling. this thing has been teased all day as a big announcement. well, we knew they were going to do under-water searching and we knew they were going to do this, and move this. it wasn't brand new, fascinating information so far as i'm concerned. i'm just hoping that it does mean more than it appears to be.

navy ping locator is going to keep trying for the next several days. but now that we are past the 30-day mark, time is running out for the batteries inside the flight data recorders if time hasn't run out already. >> reporter: australia's ocean shield equipped with a high-tech u.s. listening device is searching deep in the southern indian ocean, trying to relocate pings that could be from flight 370's data recorders. >> the towed locator pinger work continues. there have been no further contacts with any transmission, and we need to continue that for several days. >> reporter: the signals, one lasting more than two hours, the other, 13 minutes, were first picked up over the weekend off the coast of australia. if crews can narrow the search zone, an unmanned underwater vehicle is ready to map the ocean floor for debris. >> we will not deploy it unless we get another transmission. >> reporter: batteries in the data recorders have likely reached the end of their 30-day expected life. but investigators remain hopeful, calling the pings their most promising

. >> reporter: search teams must use the data from the known ping locations to hone in on the wreckage below, but with just a few sets of pings, the underwater search zone is 500 square miles. roughly the size of phoenix. it would take weeks for an unmanned submarine using sonar to scan that area of the ocean floor. the more pings now, the smaller the search zone. >> that was nbc's tom costello reporting for us. >>> the grilling of oscar pistorius continues. the aggressive prosecutor relentlessly attack s pistorius description of what happened. during the cross examination, the athlete's account of events was called an outright lie by prosecutor gerrie nel. nel's nickname among other lawyers in the city happens to be the rottweiler. pistorius continues to say the shooting itself was an accident, but he did concede that some of what he claimed as his memory were actually facts provided to him. >>> a surprising resignation announcement from health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius. the former kansas governor oversaw the bug plagued rollout of president obama's signature heal

very much rests with the ocean shield, the australian vessel equipped with the american operate d ping locator. still scouring the waters trying to pick up any more detections. the more detections they make, the more they are able to narrow down a potential search field to try and find the source of that signal. and once they do that, they will then deploy the bluefin 21 which is an american provided autonomous underwater vehicle capable of searching the ocean floor for actual wreckage. and that's really what they say they need at this point to confirm that this is, in fact, from the missing plane, john. >> they'll keep listening until they are 100% convinced those batteries are dead. erin mclaughlin for us in perth with this new development. >> what they are looking for is any evidence, any evidence of what led flight 370 to make its dramatic turn away from its route to beijing. investigators in malaysia expressing optimism. nic robertson has the latest for us from kuala lumpur. >> well, we have heard from the acting transport minister on his twitter account since the third and fourth pings h

pings. so maybe the locations of the boxes are close together. that's where the tpl was when they heard the pings or the sonobuoy was. they may be closer together. ideally the pings would take them right to the location of the black box. anything close. compared to what we had to work with in the beginning, this is fantastic. >> you have this new today, mary. what do you do now? do they move more bouys around or drop more in or does this assist in their triagulation as we heard about? >> they will use the assets they have there to listen and narrow it down. if they are still getting pings and they still haven't been able to narrow it down then maybe more resources. for now they're going to let those resources work. >> and they're going to have to work quite hard. as we know, david, they've got these batteries are running out. but this is promising, right? >> very promising. again, think of where we were a week ago when we had no idea where in the indian ocean the plane was likely to be. now every single time they get another ping it's adding more

australian vessel, the ocean shield, to continue combing those waters, with the american towed ping locator to try and get more information to narrow down that potential search field so they then can deploy the bluefin 21, the u.s.-provided autonomous underwater vehicle that will be able to go down and try and find the actual wreckage. only then will we know for sure that these signals are in fact from the missing plane, christine. >> so if they think they can pinpoint where this is, how long might this search take? days, weeks? what are the investigators saying? >> reporter: well, right now, they want to be certain that the batteries of that black box pinger have died. they want to be absolute certain. and until they are certain, they're going to continue to comb the waters trying to detect that signal again. only then, will they deploy this under water autonomous vehicle, as i mentioned, the bluefin 21. just to give you a sense of that process, it takes the bluefin 21 about two hours to get to the ocean floor. and it can search around 16. and then another two hours to come up to the surfa

. >> reporter: search teams must use the data from the known ping locations to hone in on the wreckage below but with just a few sets of pings, the bottom is 500 square miles. it would take weeks for an unmanned submarine to scan the ocean floor. the more pings now, the smaller the search zone. of course, finding the black boxes will be critical to solving the mystery of why this plane lost contact with controllers and fly so far off course taking the lives of 239 people, brian. >> tom costello tonight, tom, thanks. >>> today, president obama paid tribute to the legacy of one of his predecessors saying he himself lived out the promise of the civil rights act passed by lyndon johnson half a century ago. our chief white house correspondent chuck todd was there at the lbj presidential library in texas. >> reporter: he came to power in the wake of a tragedy, and three days after becoming president, lyndon johnson made a promise about civil rights in a phone call to martin luther king. >> i think one of the great tributes that we can pay in memory of president kennedy is to try to enact som

the plane's data recorders emit a ping that searchers are hoping a u-s navy ping locator will pick up. in just a few days, the battery-operated data recorders are expected to stop transmitting those pings. the head of the u-s government agency that secretly created a "cuban twitter" communications network is expected to testify before congress next week. perthe congressional hearing could resolve key questions around the program, including whether the obama administration adequately informed lawmakers about it. the program aimed first to build a cuban audience, mostly young people, before pushing them toward dissent. we are waiting for the monthly jobs report this experts predict that employers added 195- thousand jobs for the month of march. that would mean, the jobless rate dropped one percentage point, from six- point-seven to six-point-six percent. we'll bring you the numbers when the are released at 5:30. another key figure in the federal corruption investigation. has made bail. political consultant - keith jackson is out on bond. prosecutors argued against the judge's decision.

that helps those who are dragging the ping locator on loan from the u.s. navy, trying to get more pings today. what that will do is help them triangulate, if you like, think of it like looking for a cell phone using cell phone towers and the pings of the towers. it helps you work out where the best spot to search for those flight data recorders are. of course it's a very difficult task. it's still a vast area, and on the bottom of that ocean floor, by all accounts, there's perhaps meters of silt. so it depends how these things, if they are there, hit the ground, hit the ocean floor, and maybe they're buried in silt, which is going to make finding them even more difficult. but that's the aim today. what we heard from the man who is heading up the search effort here, he said he was optimistic they would find the wreckage because of what data they have received so far. and that coming from a man not prone to exaggeration or raising false hopes. he's a very mild mannered gentlemen. if he says he's optimistic, then that really is a good sign, don? >> yeah, we've

>> because the more pings you get the better the location you can acquire to wear the box is. d the first ping. 2:30. this is 13 minutes. this one last about 7 minutes. this one 5 1/2. >> let me stop you there. does the duration matter to you? >> no -- yes and no. it's not so much that -- the fact is they got the pings. the second thing that's important is that the strength of the signal is getting weaker. what that tells angus houston is some people suggest it's because they're further away but houston says, no, he believes it's because the batteries are now starting to get weaker. the batteries are dying. >> here are four of the pings that we have in their relative location. this ranges some 15 to 17 miles from these two. >> 24 miles top to bottom, about 5 to 7 miles, 13 miles, 14 miles between them all. what's really interesting about it is that if you were to draw the arc of the various satellite handshakes, particularly that seventh satellite handshake, that's the little one, that they now believe is when the engines flamed out, the engines -- the plane ran out of fuel. it

ping signal in the indian ocean. an australia ship heard a separate acoustic sound from a different location. the race is on to find if either are the black boxes. >> reporter: a chinese vessel reported to have twice detected a pulse-like signal with the same frequency as the ping from the missing aircraft's black boxes. >> this is an important and encouraging lead, but one which i urge you to continue to treat carefully. >> reporter: angus houston, a retired achieve marshall said the u.s. navy's ping locator being towed by an australian ship picked up sounds in another area. this was 300 miles from the china, and this, too, is being checked out. the chinese patrol ship reported detecting its pulses in an area 1,000 miles northwest of perth which has a depth of up to 15,000 feet. it said the last sound detected on saturday lasted for 90 seconds. china's state-owned xinhua news agency said a chinese aircraft spotted numerous floating objects 50 miles from the detection site. it was also warned this morning that while each lead is taken seriously there is a lot of noise in the ocean and there ma

search for malaysian airlines flight 370 continues with the united states this week contributing a ping locatingce and an underwater vehicle. the pentagon nearly doubled the budget allowance to 3.3 million already spent and 3.6 allocated. >>> and a date has been set for the vote that may change college athletics forever. on april 25th, northwestern football players will vote on authorizing a union representing them at school. >>> bill clinton weighs in on alien life and the democrats are setting their sight on a specific voter block. ...return on investment wall isn't a street... isn't the only return i'm looking forward to... for some, every dollar is earned with sweat, sacrifice, courage. which is why usaa is honored to help our members with everything from investing for retirement to saving for college. our commitment to current and former military members and their families is without equal. everything looking good. ♪ velocity 1,200 feet per second. [ man #2 ] you're looking great to us, eagle. ♪ 2,000 feet. ♪ still looking very good. 1,400 feet. [ male announcer ] a funny thing happens when

the vessel dragging a ping locator trying to find the plane's black box. ships, planes, even a british nuclear submarine are in the waters trying to confirm the signal is from that plane. over in afghanistan, the polls closing in the latest preside s presidential election. voters waited in line to cast their ballots despite threats from the taliban. hamid karzai leaves office without signing a u.s./afghan security pact. keep it here for all the coverage on the missing plane. see you back at 1:00 p.m. eastern. >>> is obamacare a fundamental right that our founding fathers would have envisioned for all americans? house minority leader nancy pelosi apparently thinks so. >> our founders wanted life, healthier life, liberty, the freedom to pursue their happiness not job locked, but having benefits, health care policies that are affordable. >> i don't think that the founding fathers ever intended for the government to be so controlling over our lives. >> we can't live with the same rules they had back then. they didn't have soap. >> the founding fathers were emp

ping locater has twice picked up signals consistent with the sounds sent out by the plane's black box recorders. they say although this is encouraging news, it may take days to confirm whether these are from flight 370. time is running out. the batteries usually last just 30 days. >> already one day past the advertised shelf life. we hope that it keeps going for a little bit longer. >> there are new reports that the plane might have taken a route around indonesian airspace. experts say that would indicate whoever was piloting the plane was trying to avoid radar detection. >>> police in santa rosa investigating the death of a man who died in their custody. 48-year-old wayne hoffman was riding a bike on nordike avenue when police tried to stop him for a traffic violation. they say he refused to stop. after a brief chase and shugle, he was taken -- struggle, he was taken into custody. that's when police say he suffered a medical emergency. he was rushed to the hospital but later died. the coroner is conducting an autopsy to determine the exact cause of his death. >>> it will cost now to

it's called a towed ping locator. you tow it on the back of a ship.ected two pings 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

>> well, the towed ping locator is very much more sensitive than this bouoy. oy contains a hydrophone. that is not to say that it hasn't picked up a ping from the locator. >> and david, the big question now, investigators have said these signals have the potential of being from a manmade source. >> uh-huh. >> i think we agreed last night that it's hard to imagine what they could be other than the black boxes. but what could it be? >> well, the only thing that i looked -- i did research to try and find out. the only thing i found out was commercial fishing vessels that use this as a fish finder. they use that frequency in the 30 to 40 kilohertz range but the most disstitinctive about this this is every second reliable. it would be several times per second in a fishing vessel. >> interesting. professor stupples, if this is the real deal, what kind of timeline are we looking at when crews may find something substantial? >> well, i think the search area is still, from my estimation, about 140 miles by 140 miles, which is around about -- well, turning into kilometer

the focus of the operation continues to be on that american-operated towed ping locator on board the australian vessel, the "ocean shield." angus houston, the man responsible for this multinational search effort, giving a press conference alongside the australian defense minister earlier today, in which he delivered the news that they had failed to detect a third acoustic event. take a listen to what he had to say. >> the towed locator pinger work continues. there have been no further contacts with any transmission, and we need to continue that for several days right up to when the point at which there's absolutely no doubt that the pinger batteries will have expired. >> reporter: right now, the "ocean shield" is still out there combing the waters in a ladder-like formation, trying to detect any other potential signals from a black box pinger. but again, no luck so far, and this is really critical to their efforts. what they're trying to do here is narrow down this search field. at the moment, based on the information they have from those two earlier acoustic events, the search area

navy ping locator. this other thought to be ping or possible ping came from sonobuoys dropped from aircraft, dropped down about 1,000 feet, and listen in as well. they got that data back to a research area in addlaid, in south australia. they decided that is not a ping from a black box. these other four pings they're very confident are. they're the ones they're working on. wolf. >> michael holmes in perth, thank you. malaysia airlines has put some new security procedures in place since the disappearance of flight 370. some key members are deeply upset over these new rules. what are their concerns? let's bring in nic robertson. he's joining us from kuala lump lumpur. what are you hearing? >> well, wolf, we're talking to crew members here, and what they are telling us is they've been asked by the airlines to provide additional security on board the aircraft. they've been told to provide additional security around the cockpit. that is, if any -- in either of the pilots come out to go to the bathroom or for

the "ocean shield" will continue to use that american-provided towed ping locator in an effort to pick up a signal until they are certain there is no possibility that that black box pinger is still working. john? >> erin, i understand they want other vessels to steer clear right now of the "ocean shield" to give this ship some space. why is that? >> reporter: that's right. those 14 other vessels that they have out there, they're searching the waters for debris, chasing up leads that may be called in by the 14 aircraft overhead, but they want them to stay away from the "ocean shield." they want quiet waters. they don't want anything to interfere, to possibly give them false signals. and this is a very delicate operation, some 2.8 miles deep, the waters that the "ocean shield" is combing through right now, and they want absolute silence to be able to reacquire this signal. >> there are reports that some of the other ships were hearing each other and that's what they want to avoid. erin mclaughlin in perth. thanks so much. >>> now to kuala lumpur, where malaysia airlines is stepping up se

we've been talking about the devices that have been put into the water there to try to locate where these pingsing from. the towed pinger locator, that's produced four solid hits so far. there've also been attempts to put in things like sonobuoys to listen to see if they can pick up anything. any listening device in the water here will face one real challenge out there, at least. they have to get around it somehow. the challenge is what's called the sound fixing and ranging layer. this is about a half mile down. it's a naturally occurring phenomenon, and it's a layer where the sound moves less quickly than it does in the ocean below or above it. a lot for different reasons. salinity, temperature, and if sound is coming up here, and it hits this layer. because this is slower, it could essentially bend that sound and make it go to a different angle than it was a moment ago, and then it may come out where you don't expect it at all. also, in some cases, it may come up, hit the layer and start ping-ponging between the top and the bottom of it. and by some theories, particularly with lower sounds, i

they dragged a ping locator behind it deep in the sea.een sent to australia from the u.s. the first detected lasted for over 2 hours the second lasting 13 minutes. the missing plane has two black boxes on board. one a cockpit reporter the other a flight data recorder. a chinese vessel recorded over the weekend showing pulses in the ocean floor in a different area 300 nautical miles away. the australian forces said those detected are consistent with those sent on the plane's black box. >> clearly this is the most promising lead and probably in the search by far it is the -- it is probably the best information that we have had. >> australia investigated the warning that it could be several days before they can confirm if they have found the black boxes. >> david piper, thank you so much. >> we need to get to this ficly an extreme weather alert out of mississippi. moments ago it was confirmed that the tornado touched down in the town of collins. >> that twister tore down trees damaged houses there and there are several reports of injuries. t

tom, we used the term towed ping locator a lot. 't apply to every device used to detect pings. what pieces of 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 o