Searchers pick up fresh signals in hunt for downed MH370

An Australian search ship sweeping a patch of the Indian Ocean re-gathered electronic signals first heard at the weekend that could come from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, official said on Wednesday.
Search Chief, Angus Houston, said that the first signal held for five minutes and 32 seconds and the second for about seven minutes.
The Boeing 777 went missing a month ago an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
“I believe we are searching in the right area,” Houston said.
According to the searchers, the Ocean Shield is towing a pinger locator along seven kilometres sweeps of a location where computer analysis suggests the plane may have gone down after running out of fuel.
Houston said: “The pings the ship picked up transmitted at one second intervals, consistent with those transmitted from flight data recorders.
“Up to 15 aircraft and 14 ships are scouring some of the world’s deepest waters about 2,250 kilometres off Australia’s west coast.
“Time is against the multinational effort because the batteries that power the airplane’s beacons are now beyond their regulation shelf-life.
“We are looking for transmissions that are probably weaker than they would be earlier on, ’’ Houston said in Perth, the headquarters for the search.”
dpa/NAN.