NEW satellite images have found about 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, raising hopes that the search for MH370 may be narrowing in on the plane’s resting place.

The objects, measuring from one metre to 23 metres long, were picked up on a French satellite four days ago and sent to the Australian search co-ordinators today.

Some of the objects appeared to be bright in colour and possibly of solid material.

It is the biggest field of possible debris spotted so far in the multinational search for the Boeing 777-200 and is the “most credible lead” so far.

And late in the day the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said three objects had been sighted — two of them were spotted from a civilian aircraft in the search and were likely to be rope and the third, seen from a NZ P3 Orion, was a blue object.

Further passes over the area could not locate them, AMSA said.

Details of the French satellite images were revealed last night by Malaysia’s Defence and acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

He said the images were taken by Airbus Defence and Space, in France, on March 23.

Mr Hussein said the images were analysed by the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency on Tuesday. They found that in an area of ocean about 400 square kilometres there were 122 potential objects, about 2557km from Perth.

News_Image_File: Could they be a part of MH370? the area where the 122 debris have been spotted.

It is the fourth set of satellite images showing potential debris since March 16 but so far none has been physically located or picked up from the ocean.

The latest images are not far from the objects seen on Australian and Chinese satellites on March 16 and 18.

Mr Hussein said it was now “imperative that we link the debris to MH370.”

“This will enable us to further reduce the search area and locate more debris from the plane,” he said, adding this would enable the search to move into the next phase of deep sea surveillance and salvage.

Mr Hussein also paid special tribute to Australia for its role in leading the difficult search.

“I would like to convey our appreciate to the Australian authorities and in particular to Prime Minister Tony Abbott for making such an extraordinary contribution to the search operation,” Mr Hussein said.

Twelve planes and two ships searched on Wednesday.

Final aircraft has left the #MH370 search area. Nothing further identified after initial sighting of three objects. 1/2 — AMSA News (@AMSA_News) March 26, 2014

Positions in the Malaysia Remote Sensing Agency satellite information tweeted on 26 March were within today's #MH370 search area. 2/2 — AMSA News (@AMSA_News) March 26, 2014

Mr Hussein also defended his Government over growing Chinese criticism about the handling of the disaster.

He said until the debris is found the one question Chinese relatives are asking cannot be answered.

And in a veiled reference to the Chinese reaction, where there have been angry scenes and water bottles hurled at Malaysian officials and protest marches, Mr Hussein said many nations had lost loved ones.

“Time will heal emotions that are running high. We fully understand but for the Chinese families they must also understand that we in Malaysia also lost loved ones. There are so many nations that lost loved ones.

“I have seen some images coming from Australia, very rational, understanding that this is a global effort, not blaming directly ... because we are co-ordinating something that is unprecedented,” Mr Hussein said.

He was referring to the Australian families of passengers meeting yesterday with Prime Minister Abbott.

Mr Hussein denied suggestions his country had taken a “bruising” over handling of the matter.

He said in a world full of divides, hate and death and in South-East Asia, where countries fight over rocks in the sea, the search for MH370 was a great achievement not a bruising.

“Speculation will go on and people will look to Malaysia but I think history will judge us well,” he said.

LEGAL ACTION LAUNCHED OVER MH370

A US law firm says it has started “multi-million dollar’’ proceedings against Malaysia Airlines and Boeing over flight MH370, in what could mark the start of an expensive legal battle over the lost plane.

Chicago-based Ribbeck Law Chartered International said today it filed a court petition in the US state of Illinois on Tuesday, seeking documents pertaining to possible design or mechanical defects or conduct by the airline that may have led to the disaster.

“We believe that both defendants named are responsible for the disaster of flight MH370,” the firm said in a statement released in Kuala Lumpur.

“It is extremely important for the victims we represent that all responsible parties are brought to justice without exceptions,’’ the statement said, quoting its head of aviation litigation Monica Kelly.

The “petition for discovery’’ filed on Tuesday seeks potential evidence from the opposing party in any lawsuit.

The law firm said families “have initiated a multi-million dollar litigation process’’, but did not specify how much in damages may be sought in the future.

The legal action was filed on behalf of Januari Siregar, “a lawyer who lost his son in the terrible crash’’, the firm said. It gave no further details on the plaintiff.

“We must find what caused the aircraft to crash and demand that the problems with the airline and the aircraft’s design and manufacturing are immediately resolved to avoid future tragedies,” Kelly said.News_Image_File: Grief stricken ... a relative of passengers on the missing flight cries as she participates in a protest outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing.

Chinese families holed up in a Kuala Lumpur hotel have demanded that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak meet them personally as Chinese anger of the handling of the case boils over.

The 18 family members who are staying in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, were flown to Malaysia shortly after the plane went missing and say they want Mr Najib to explain what is going on and what evidence exists to show the plane actually crashed.

High-level talks are now underway in Kuala Lumpur in a bid to resolve the quickly escalating tensions and to decide if the Prime Minister doesn’t meet the families, who should.

A special high-level envoy has flown from China to meet the Malaysian Government today as a looming diplomatic crisis gains pace.

It comes after Monday night’s announcement, by the Prime Minister, that MH370 had ended in the Indian Ocean.

Angry and distraught Chinese families at the Everly Hotel shouted and demanded answers from the officials about what evidence existed that the plane had crashed and all on board were lost.

The wording of Mr Najib’s statement that “flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean” was done delicately but in translation to Mandarin, which was more blunt about it having crashed with no survivors, the families became infuriated.

One official says that water bottles were thrown at officials before they managed to calm the situation.

The next day the Chinese relatives resolved to march on Prime Minister Najib’s office on Tuesday to protest but were eventually talked out of it.

But they remain angry and are now demanding that Mr Najib meet them personally.

FRIEND HAS QUESTIONS ABOUT PILOT’S SANITY

As the search for MH370 intensifies, a disturbing new report has suggested the pilot was not in a fit state to fly as his marriage was crumbling.

The New Zealand Herald quotes an unnamed pilot and longtime associate of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who claimed the pilot was separating from his wife and had been seeing another woman.

The source — who spoke to the paper on the condition of anonymity — said the pilot had been “terribly upset” about the breakdown of his relationship and may have taken the plane on a “last joy ride”.

Further information on this development is being sought. It comes just a day after UK media cited official sources suggesting suicide was increasingly being seen as the likely motive behind the disaster of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

CAPTAIN ZAHARIE AHMAD SHAH CALLED ‘MYSTERY WOMAN’

CAPTAIN ZAHARIE AHMAD SHAH’S DAUGHTER WAS IN AUSTRALIA

It also emerged that Shah’s estranged wife Faizah Khan will be interrogated by Malaysian officials after increasing demands by the FBI.

Faizah Khan has not been questioned as Malaysian officials deemed it inappropriate for people in situations of “terrible bereavement (to face) the stress of intensive questioning”.

”The whole world is looking for this missing plane and the person who arguably knows most about the state of mind of the man who captained the plane is being left alone,” a source told the Malaysia Chronicle.

News_Rich_Media: Pilot's political views eyed in jet probe

The New Zealand report came as the search for the missing flight reaches a new level of intensity, with 12 aircraft, two ships and two NASA satellites scouring the southern Indian Ocean.

MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT’S FINAL UNEXPLAINED ‘SQUAWK’

The latest search area, which has been narrowed to about 870,000 square kilometres, is set to be hampered by the weather again, with predictions of gales and thunderstorms in the search zone tomorrow.

Today’s search is split into three areas within the same proximity covering a cumulative 80,000 square kilometres.

A total of six countries are now assisting in the search and recovery operation — Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, China and the Republic of Korea.

News_Image_File: Marriage breakdown ... Malaysian Airlines pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shahwith his family.

One Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft from China departed Perth around 8am (AEDT) for the search area, followed by a New Zealand P3 Orion around 9.10am.

A RAAF P3 Orion was due to depart Perth at 11am, followed by a US Navy P8 Poseidon at 2pm, a Japanese P3 Orion at 3pm, a second RAAF P3 Orion at 4pm, and a Korean P3 Orion at 5pm.

Five civil aircraft are also participating in the search.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said 34 SES volunteers from WA will be observing on board.

Chinese polar supply ship Xue Long has also joined HMAS Success in the search area.

The search has been further bolstered by NASA deploying two of its satellites to monitor the search area.

“Obviously NASA isn’t a lead agency in this effort. But we’re trying to support the search, if possible,” NASA communications director Allard Beutel told the website Universe Today.

News_Image_File: Biggest day of search ever ... a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion takes off from RAAF Base Pearce. Picture: Rob Griffith

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said 12 aircraft will be in the area today and more resources are on the way.

“Obviously we’re throwing everything we have at this search,” he told Channel Nine.

Mr Abbott said there will soon be Chinese naval and civilian ships joining the RAN Oiler HMAS Success in the search area, as well as black box recovery equipment from the United States.

But its deployment may have to be delayed, with warnings of potentially damaging weather conditions in the southern Indian Ocean tomorrow.

”We’ve mentioned the possibility of gale force winds and thunderstorms. These conditions are markedly worse than those of today,’’ a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman told AAP.

”At the moment, the forecast is suggesting poor conditions tomorrow.’’

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) will make a determination on the search activity later today.

Mr Abbott was asked how long Australia will search for the missing plane.

“We keep searching until there is absolutely no hope of finding anything,” he said.

“It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon.’’

“Plainly there is quite a bit of debris in this part of the southern Indian Ocean. We’ve photographed it on a number of occasions now.

“We have not yet recovered any because of the difficulty of locating bits of debris in a vast ocean but we are just going to keep on looking.

“We owe it to the families.”

ANALYSIS: How Malaysia fumbled communication at a time of crisis

News_Image_File: Anger and disbelief ... Chinese relatives of flight MH370 passengers sit on a bus waiting to go to Malaysia embassy in protest. Picture: Lintao Zhang

MH370 FLIGHT RELATIVES IN PARLIAMENT

Family members of two Queensland couples who were on board the missing plane have listened in federal Parliament as Mr Abbott moved a condolence motion for the passengers on the ill fated flight.

Some of Rodney and Mary Burrows and Cathy and Bob Lawton’s loved ones travelled to Canberra to meet with the Prime Minister.

“I want to assure them that Australia will do all it can to recover what we can from the southern Indian Ocean so that they can have the closure and eventually the peace that comes with understanding what happened,” Mr Abbott told them at the start of Question Time.

“Madam Speaker, we mourn all those 239 passengers and crew. We especially mourn the six Australian citizens and the one Australian resident who must be presumed dead,” he said.

The PM hoped the condolence motion would be of some comfort for those grieving.

“Four Australian families have an ache in their heart. Nothing we say or do can take that ache away,” he conceded.

Mr Abbott said bad weather has prevented search teams from recovering any debris, but he was confident it could be found.

“The crash zone is about as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be, but it’s closer to Australia than anywhere else,” he added.

HUNDREDS OF FAMILY MEMBERS EXPECTED IN PERTH

Several hundred family members of passengers and crew from flight MH370 are expected to travel to Perth in coming weeks, Premier Colin Barnett said.

The Chinese government and WA’s Department of Premier and Cabinet was involved in the Commonwealth process to receive the families, he said.

“It’s a little unclear yet exactly how this will pan out, but my understanding is that particularly the relatives of the Chinese passengers who have presumably lost their life will want to come to Perth to be as close as possible to, I guess, the final place,’’ Mr Barnett said.

News_Image_File: Part of the Aussie search effort ... flight engineer Warrant Officer Michael Makin on an AP-3C Orion.

“We as a state government will certainly do all that we can to make their visit as pleasant it can be, given the circumstances. We’ll host them, look after them.

“The West Australian people will do all they can to make sure they are as comfortable, as welcome as possible in what is a very sad event.’’

Mr Barnett said a memorial service would be held if the relatives wanted it.

“We would certainly help with that,’’ he said.

Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi said the relatives who came to pay last respects would receive the utmost understanding and a warm welcome.

“We can all imagine the situation, their shock, worry and heartache,’’ Ms Scaffidi said.

“We all hope and pray the plane and the black boxes will be found soon to enable the full story to be known.’’

News_Image_File: As the pilot sees it ... an RAAF AP-3C Orion crosses the coast over Perth. Picture: Richard Wainwright

SHOW US THE PROOF, CHINA TELLS MALAYSIA

Overnight, Chinese authorities challenged Malaysia to explain their findings that the MH370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to secure first-hand analysis while the deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangshend ordered Malaysia’s ambassador to China to establish what it was that led the Malaysian Prime Minister to declare the plane had crashed in the Indian Ocean.

The airline’s boss Mohammed Nor Mohammed Yusof said it was a “rational deduction” based on information from Inmarsat — short for the International Maritime Satellite Organisation — based in East London.

“The investigation still underway may yet prove to be even longer and more complex than it has been since March 8,’’ he said.

CONTROVERSY: China demands evidence

News_Rich_Media: The US and China are sending more resources to the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

THE LAST MOMENTS OF MH370

Malaysian authorities say MH370 probably plunged into the ocean sometime between 8.11am and 9.15am on Saturday March 8.

MH370 was last captured by satellite at 8.11am in a wide arc covering two massive northern and southern corridors. This was its last complete “handshake” with the Inmarsat satellite.

After that, at 8.19am there was evidence of the jetliner making a partial handshake with the ground station.

Then, sometime between 8.19am and 9.15am, it was no longer communicating with the ground station.

Investigators have therefore concluded that MH370 disappeared and crashed into a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean during that time.

News_Image_File: Day of frustration ... little headway was made in the search yesterday as bad weather made detection impossible. Ground staff walk past a stationary RAAF Orion aircraft at Pearce Airbase in Bullsbrook. Picture: Greg Wood

THE CHALLENGE OF THE SEARCH

Gale force winds and heavy swells disrupted search and recovery efforts yesterday, but weather conditions are much better today.

The job of gathering this wreckage, and especially the black boxes, is an unprecedented challenge.

The crews who needed two years to find a black box from the Air France flight lost in the Atlantic in 2009 had much more information to go on.

News_Rich_Media: Inmarsat's Senior Vice-President Chris McLaughlin says the southern flight path of MH370 is 'inescapable' according to their data.

“Even though that was the biggest and most complicated search for an aircraft in the ocean ever conducted, it was a relatively refined area compared with what we’re talking about here,” said US underwater wreck hunter David Mearns, who advised both British and French investigators in the Air France case.

David Ferreira, an oceanographer at the University of Reading in Britain, said little is known about the detailed topography of the seabed where Malaysia Flight 370 is believed to have crashed.

“We know much more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean floor in that part of the Indian Ocean,’’ Ferreira said.

News_Image_File: ‘A big area to trawl’ ... a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion takes off from RAAF Base Pearce on Wednesday. Picture: Rob Griffith

FINDING THE BLACK BOXES

University of Sydney associate professor Peter Gibbens said it was a “race against time’’ to detect and recover the black boxes, which may have sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

“(Recovery teams) are going to be pushing it with time,’’ Professor Gibbens told AAP.

“The chances are stacked against them.’’

“They’re only going to have a few days at best, the transmitter is supposed to last for 30 days but it could be 28 or it could be 35, it depends on the specifics of the battery.

“They’ve got a big area to trawl.’’

Professor Gibbens, from the university’s School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, said another challenge was the depth of the ocean in the area, said to be more than 4,000 metres in some parts.

“That’s a long way down,’’ he said.

“They’re going to need some fairly good sonar equipment to find the wreckage.’’

Another hurdle was that it could take up to a day for an unmanned vehicle to reach the underwater wreckage.

“Then they have to isolate where it (the black box) is on the fuselage,’’ Professor Gibbens added.

News_Image_File: Demanding answers ... grieving relatives of passengers on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 protest with placards outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing.

SIGHTINGS BUT NOTHING RETRIEVED

Satellites and planes have seen objects in the water, large and small, but nothing has been retrieved or positively identified as coming from the Boeing 777-200.

Geoff Dell, discipline leader of accident investigation at Central Queensland University, said that if the black boxes are found, it would be the most difficult search for a lost plane ever to succeed.

“We’re not searching for a needle in a haystack,” said Air Marshal Mark Binskin, Australia’s deputy defence chief.

“We’re still trying to define where the haystack is.”

News_Image_File: The search continues ... personnel from 11 Squadron on board an AP-3C Orion over the southern Indian Ocean.

The job gets harder as every day the current carries wreckage away, said Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales. He said the swirling and unpredictable nature of currents can spread items that begin in the same place hundreds of kilometres apart within weeks.

“It’s like one giant pinball machine out there,” he said.

News_Image_File: Search areas ... a map prepared by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on March 26.

FLIGHTS TAKE OFF

One Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft from China departed Perth around 8am (AEDT) for the search area, followed by a New Zealand P3 Orion around 9.10am.

A RAAF P3 Orion is scheduled to depart Perth at 11am, followed by a US Navy P8 Poseidon at 2pm, a Japanese P3 Orion at 3pm, a second RAAF P3 Orion at 4pm, and a Korean P3 Orion at 5pm.

Of the five civil aircraft participating in the search, two have already departed, with the remaining three all due to take off before midday (AEDT).

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said 34 SES volunteers from WA will be observing on board.

News_Rich_Media: Tony Abbott says the families of those on flight MH370 will be welcomed to Australia if they wish to visit.

EARLIER: How close HMAS Success came to a discovery

BREAKTHROUGH: Tracing the pings of MH370

BLACK BOXES: The race against time

Authorities are now treating the information as definitive and the search effort in the northern corridor, has been called off. So too has the search in the northern part of the southern corridor, close to Indonesia.

Special sonar equipment from America — known as towed pinger locator — is due to arrive in Perth today and will be transferred to the Australian ship, Ocean Shield, which is expected to dock in Perth on March 28.

The ship and the locator are due to arrive at the search area on April 5.

News_Image_File: The world awaits news ... high school students hold candles during a vigil for passengers of the missing Malaysia Airline flight MH370 in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu province.

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