-- Authorities have spotted two objects in the Indian Ocean that are possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday.
"New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean," Abbott said in the the Australian House of Representatives in Canberra. "The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search.
"Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified," he said. "I can inform the House that a Royal Australian Air Force Orion has been diverted to attempt to locate the objects."
Three other planes will carry out a "more intensive follow-up search," he said.
Australian search teams have been at the forefront of the hunt for the missing plane in the remote southern Indian Ocean.
The announcement from Abbott raises hopes of finding parts of the plane after a huge search that is now in its 13th day. Previous reports of debris found in the sea have not turned out to be related to the passenger jet, which vanished over Southeast Asia earlier this month.
But those reports came before the search area was massively expanded into two large arcs, one that heads northwest into Asia, the other southwest into the Indian Ocean.
The Malaysian military is checking the new information from Australian authorities, a source close to the investigation told CNN.
"Verification might take some time. It is very far and it will take some time to locate and verify the objects," the source said.
Malaysia's Acting Transportation Secretary Hishammuddin Hussein said Abbott had informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak of the development Thursday.
"At this stage, Australian officials have yet to establish whether these objects are indeed related to the search for MH370," Hishammuddin said.
Other pieces of information related to the investigation into the plane's disappearance had emerged Wednesday.
Flight simulator probed
Investigators looking at the flight simulator taken from the home of Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of the plane, have discovered that some data had been deleted from it, Hishammuddin said at a news conference.
What the revelation means is unclear. It could be another dead end in an investigation that has been full of them so far, or it could provide further evidence for the theory that one or more of the flight crew may have been involved in the plane's disappearance 12 days ago.
"It may not tell us anything. It's a step in the process," one U.S. law enforcement source told CNN. "It could be a very insignificant detail in the process."
Investigators have been looking into the background of all 239 passengers and crew members aboard the plane that vanished in the early morning hours of March 8 while en route from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Particular attention has focused on the pilot and first officer on Flight 370, but authorities have yet to come up with any evidence explaining why either of them would have taken the jetliner off course.
Hishammuddin didn't say what had been deleted, but simulation programs can store data from previous sessions for later playback. He also did not say who might have deleted the data.
Specialists are examining the simulator in hopes of recovering the data that was deleted, Hishammuddin said.
Among them are experts at the FBI's forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia, who are examining a copy of the simulator's hard drive, as well as a copy of the hard drive from the computer of co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid, law enforcement sources told CNN.
The FBI examination of the computer drives involves sorting through a large volume of data, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation.
"It is going to take some period of time, but we are analyzing it with a great degree of urgency. It is prioritized right at the top because the world is trying to figure this out," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Deleted files from Shah's simulator could reveal it had been used to practice diverting the plane and flying it to an unfamiliar airport, experts said. But even if investigators retrieve past simulations showing that Zaharie practiced flying to seemingly odd locations, that doesn't necessarily indicate evidence of anything nefarious, said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
"You put in strange airports and try to land there, just to see if you can do it," said Schiavo, adding that she sometimes does just that on the flight simulation program on her home computer.
'Grasping at straws'
President Barack Obama called the search for Flight 370 "a top priority," telling KDFW of Dallas on Wednesday that the United States will keep working on it.
"We have put every resource that we have available at the disposal of the search process," he said.
But beyond help with the computer drives, the Malaysian government has not put in a formal request for additional FBI help overseas, according to the senior U.S. official.
"We have made it clear we are ready to provide help whenever they need it," the official said. "We are grasping at straws. No one is running on anything white hot."
More than 60 ships and 50 aircraft are participating in the search. But at least two aircraft, a Japanese search plane and a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion, sat on a runway at a Subang air base this week after Indonesia refused to allow the planes to fly through its airspace.
"From what I understand, this is an international operation," Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, told CNN by telephone. "...I'm confident we're going to be flying today or very soon."
Later, Indonesia's military spokesman told CNN clearance was given to all search planes.
Although the search area spans nearly 3 million square miles, a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation said the missing plane is most likely somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.
"This is an area out of normal shipping lanes, out of any commercial flight patterns, with few fishing boats, and there are no islands," the official said, warning that the search could well last "weeks and not days."
