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(CNN) -- The four acoustic pings at the center of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes, a U.S. Navy official told CNN. The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of their effort, having scanned 329 square miles of southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the Boeing 777-200.

Japan and China on Sunday accused each other's air forces of dangerous behavior over the East China Sea, with Japan saying Chinese aircraft had come within a few dozen meters of its warplanes. Japan's defense minister accused Beijing of going "over the top" in its approach to disputed territory. China's defense ministry said Japanese planes had carried out "dangerous" actions during its joint maritime exercises with Russia. Tensions have been running high between China and its neighbors over Beijing's assertive stance on claiming land and sea territory. Japan's defense ministry said Chinese SU-27 fighters came as close as 50 meters...

A Vietnamese woman belonging to an outlawed Buddhist movement died Friday after setting herself on fire in protest against China's actions in a territorial dispute with Vietnam, according to activists and local media. The woman, 67-year-old Le Thi Tuyet Mai, surrounded herself with seven banners denouncing Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea before dousing herself in gasoline and setting it alight early Friday morning in front of the Reunification Palace in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. [....] “I offer my body as a torch to light the path of all patriots,” one of the banners displayed by Mai read,...

WASHINGTON — The United States' top naval officer said the Navy’s growing presence in the Asia-Pacific region is beginning to show results and shape events, but acknowledges it will be ‘a long-term effort.’ Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, said he hopes the U.S. Navy will be able to expand cooperation with India once its new government takes its place. Speaking Monday at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Greenert said the growing military-to-military dialogue with China is beginning to show results, especially in the South China Sea, where maritime tensions between China and its...

A large number of People’s Liberation Army troops have reportedly been spotted heading towards the China-Vietnam border as tensions between the two countries continue to escalate, reports Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily. Sing Tao Daily is generally considered to be aligned to Chinese state media. Thousands of Chinese nationals living or on business in Vietnam have already fled the country amid anti-China riots, which were sparked by a tense standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese naval ships near a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on May 4. The Chinese foreign ministry...

China began evacuating hundreds of its nationals from Vietnam (via at least 2 planes and 5 ships) as the anti-China protests have become increasingly deadly following Beijing's attempt to deploy an oil drill in Vietnamese dispuited waters (detailed here, here, here, and here)... *CHINA SENDING 5 SHIPS TO VIETNAM TO EVACUATE CHINESE: XINHUA*HUNDREDS OF VIETNAMESE SECURITY IN CENTRAL HO CHI MINH CITY*VIETNAM PRIME MINISTER ISSUES DIRECTIVE TO PREVENT PROTESTS*VIETNAM GOVT TAKES ACTION TO PREVENT RIOTS: BINH Hundreds of police and security forces are in central Ho Chi Minh city and the Chinese consulate is under heavy guard. Tensions across...

More than 20 people were killed in Vietnam and a huge foreign steel project set ablaze as anti-China riots spread to the centre of the country a day after arson and looting in the south, a doctor and company officials said on Thursday. A doctor at a hospital in central Ha Tinh province said five Vietnamese workers and 16 other people described as Chinese were killed on Wednesday night in rioting, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbours fought a brief border war in 1979. "There were about a hundred people sent to the hospital last...

HANOI - Rioting broke out at industrial zones in southern Vietnam during protests by thousands of workers angered by Chinese oil drilling in a contested area of the South China Sea, officials said on Wednesday. Workers smashed gates in the rioting on Tuesday and entered industrial parks housing factories in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces, which are central to Vietnam's sizable manufacturing interests.... Vietnam's state-run newspapers and its television channels reported the rioting on Wednesday, but did not show photographs or any video footage. "About 19,000 workers were demonstrating against China's violation of Vietnam's territorial waters," Tran Van Nam,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Well, well, well, looky here. Koko Jr. at RushLimbaugh.com just sent me a quick note. "Documents released Friday..." This is from July of 2010, folks, so it's from the archives at RushLimbaugh.com. "Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago. "Advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the [Nixon] administration, urged the [Nixon] administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the...

Vietnam said on Wednesday a Chinese vessel intentionally rammed two of its ships in a part of the disputed South China Sea where Beijing has deployed a giant oil rig, sending tensions spiraling in the region. The foreign ministry in Hanoi said the collisions took place on Sunday and caused considerable damage to the Vietnamese ships. Six people sustained minor injuries, it said. "On May 4, Chinese ships intentionally rammed two Vietnamese Sea Guard vessels," said Tran Duy Hai, a foreign ministry official and deputy head of Vietnam's national border committee. "Chinese ships, with air support, sought to intimidate Vietnamese...

A private company said it had found what it believes is wreckage of a plane in the Bay of Bengal that should be investigated as potential debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, but the possibility was dismissed by search coordinators. The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) managing the multinational search for the missing plane said it continued to believe that the plane came down in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia. The Bay of Bengal is located between India and Myanmar, thousands of miles from the current search area. The wreckage was reported by Australian geophysical survey company GeoResonance.......

KUALA LUMPUR: The probe into the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysian jet is now looking at the possibility that the plane may have landed somewhere as no debris has been found so far, a media report has said. A report in the New Strait Times quoting sources within the international team probing the disappearance said that among the areas it was revisiting was the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had landed elsewhere, instead of ending up in the southern Indian Ocean. "We may have to regroup soon to look into this possibility if no positive results come back...

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Unidentified material that washed ashore in southwestern Australia and is being examined for any link to the lost Malaysian plane is unlikely to have come from the jet, an official said Wednesday. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was scrutinizing photos of the object, which washed ashore 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of Augusta in Western Australia state. But Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the safety bureau, said an initial analysis of the material — which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets — suggested it was not from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. "We do not consider...

The eighth underwater drone mission to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has failed to find any evidence of plane wreckage on the sea bed. The Bluefin-21 submarine employed for the task has so far screened over two-thirds of the narrowed search area. The underwater hunt is expected to finish within this week, Since its fourth mission, the submarine was reprogrammed to scour the seas 604 feet below its permissible limit of 14,800 feet. The part of the Indian Ocean narrowed down for the search is deeper than the previously estimated range at some places, "The [underwater drone]...

The captain of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 received a two-minute call shortly before take-off from a mystery woman using a mobile phone number obtained under a false identity, as investigators question the pilot's estranged wife, a British newspaper reported. It was one of the last calls made to or from the mobile phone of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah in the hours before his Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur on March 8, reported The Mail on Sunday. Investigators are treating it as potentially significant because anyone buying a pay-as-you-go SIM card in Malaysia has to fill out a form giving...

The phone of the co-pilot of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was on and made contact with a cell tower in Malaysia about the time the plane disappeared from radar, a U.S. official told CNN on Monday. However, the U.S. official — who cited information shared by Malaysian investigators — said there was no evidence the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had tried to make a call. The official told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Monday that a cell-phone tower in Penang, Malaysia — about 250 miles from where the flight’s transponder last sent a signal — detected the co-pilot’s phone searching for...

UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island. When contacted, Malaysia Airlines declined to confirm or deny the reports, saying that the Malaysian authorities are working together with the Vietnamese government on the matter. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that China has dispatched two maritime rescue ships to help locate the missing plane.

but he 'was abruptly cut off'The co-pilot of missing flight MH370 made a call from his mobile phone as the aircraft flew low over the west coast of Malaysia. Investigators have learned that the call was made from Fariq Abdul Hamid's mobile phone as the Boeing 777 flew low near the island of Penang, on the north of Malaysia's west coast. The New Straits Times reported today that it was understood the aircraft, with 239 people on board, was flying low enough for the nearest telecommunications tower to pick up Fariq's signal. The call ended abrupty, however it has been...

Malaysia flight's co-pilot tried to make cellphone call-report Reuters 57 minutes ago KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Investigators probing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 suspect that the co-pilot of the jetliner tried to make a call with his cellphone after the plane was diverted from its scheduled route, Malaysia's New Straits Times reported sources as saying on Saturday. The newspaper cited unidentified investigative sources as saying the attempted call from co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's phone was picked up by a cellphone tower as the plane was about 200 nautical miles northwest of the west coast state of Penang. That...

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 flew around Indonesian airspace apparently to avoid detection after vanishing from radar screens on March 8, a media report said today, suggesting the possibility of a more sinister reason behind the jet's disappearance..... After reviewing radar data provided by neighbouring countries, investigators have now found that the jetliner curved north of Indonesia before turning south toward the southern Indian Ocean, CNN quoted a Malaysian official as saying. The official also suggested the possibility of a more sinister reason behind MH370's disappearance a month ago. The plane's flight path clearly showed that someone on the plane was...