For an update on the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370... that disappeared eleven days
ago now... we turn to the NewsCenter where our Eunice Kim is standing by.
EK: Hi Mark.
Malaysian authorities are still working with dozens of countries - 26 in all now - to find
*focus *points in this "unprecedented" search that essentially covers two vast air corridors.
One over Asia as far as Kazakhstan to the north... and another over a lot of ocean...
and part of Indonesia's Sumatra island to the south.
Meanwhile, we did hear from the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines Monday that *initial
*investigations have shown it was the co-pilot...
27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid... who had given the "all right, good night" sign-off, shortly
before the plane disappeared.
There are still no substantial leads, 11 days after the Boeing triple-7 went missing.
As Malaysian authorities line up the data they have so far to piece together a motive,
it appears the transponder - which identifies planes to controllers - was switched off at
a point when the plane was *between two airspace sectors...
when Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers could
assume the jet was each others' responsibility.
We turn to Washington now... where U.S. President Barack Obama called on Palestinian leader
Mahmud Abbas to take "risks" for peace... echoing a sentiment expressed to Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks earlier.
The comments come as a U.S. framework for peace talks appears to have hit a road block...
over the issue of Palestine's recognition of Israel as a "Jewish" state: Netanyahu has
required it; Abbas... has refused it.
During Monday's talks in the Oval Office...
Abbas indirectly addressed the sticking point, noting through a translator that Palestinians
"recognized the *state of Israel" in 1993.
He also said Israel needs to release a fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners by March 29th
under a previous
agreement to show its commitment to achieve peace.
The U.S. framework for peace faces an April deadline, and with little tangible progress
made, is up for an extension.
U.S. automaker General Motors has announced another massive recall... this time calling
back 1-and-a-half million vehicles linked to three new safety problems.
The latest recall comes out of an internal probe... triggered by its first recall last
month of 1-point-6 million older-model cars, linked to ignition problems that led to dozens
of deadly crashes dating back a decade.
For its slow reaction to the ignition defect, the leading American car company is under
investigation by U.S. authorities.
And in a rare video admission posted online, GM Chief Executive Mary Barra said quote-"terrible
things happened" when "something went wrong with our process."
She said the company is conducting an "intense review" of its internal processes and change
how it handles recalls in the future.
Staying in the U.S..., scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics say they have found
"echoes of the Big Bang 14 billion years ago".
The detection of these gravitational waves was discovered at the South Pole with a telescope,
they said... confirming a crucial connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
The experts called the discovery "one of the most important goals in cosmology today".
The gravitational waves were spotted by targeting the telescope to a specific area of the sky
outside the galaxy known as the "Southern Hole", where small fluctuations gave researchers
new clues about conditions in the early universe.