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Search Continues for Malaysian Plane; New Satellite Images May Be of Debris from Malaysian Plane; Russian President Contacts President Obama; City in Washington Recovering from Mudslide; Los Angeles Hit by Earthquake

Aired March 29, 2014 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: All righty, grab your breakfast and just hunker down here. We've got an awful lot to talk to you about. So glad to have your company. I'm Christi Paul.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Victor Blackwell. It's 10:00 here on the east coast, 7:00 out west. You are in the CNN Newsroom.

We're starting this morning with breaking news in the search for that Malaysia airlines 370. Two ships pulled a number of options from the Indian Ocean today in the new search zone for this missing airliner and this is a first. Chinese and Australian aircraft also spotted multiple objects. The state media reporting three suspicious objects seen by Chinese were white, red, and orange. However, so far none of those objects, nor the ones taken up from the sea today, have been confirmed as having anything to do with the lost jet.

PAUL: We also know new this morning that searchers covered 97,000 square miles today. To give you some perspective, that's the land area of Oregon. They're concentrating on a new zone, almost 700 miles northeast of where authorities last focused their hunt. This shift was based on a new analysis of radar data. But Australian authorities say today's search has wrapped up at least for the day. We know there are four ships there right now, more ships due to arrive in the zone tomorrow.

BLACKWELL: Meantime, as families of missing passengers demand proof of official claims that all lives were lost, a top official inspired some hope, telling relatives in Kuala Lumpur, quote, "Miracles do happen."

Let's get more now on those objects that are being recovered from the search zone.

PAUL: CNN's Paula Newton joins us from Perth, Australia. Paula, that's where we believe the objects will be brought to be examined. Is that right?

PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. Some of it though is pretty obvious what they've been taking out of the water is what they describe as garbage and nothing significant so far. But as you point out, within hours we will have the full contingent of at least six ships in the area and they can begin that process of actually retrieving the objects out of the water, taking a good look at them, and really going back to those spots that were first spotted by the planes.

I don't know if you can hear behind me, the last of the P3 Orions just arrived here at base. That's after spending a lot more time on the scene because of those different locations, better weather. Before they were spending an hour and a half to two hours on the site, and now they're spending closer to three and four hours. We have no word yet if this last flight spotted anything up there that's worthy of going back and checking up on but we should expect more information in the coming hours from the Australian authorities.

BLACKWELL: Paula, I'm wondering, we've heard about the process of throwing down a flare and going back to positions once things are spotted from the air. Is it fair to assume that we're going back to wherever these items were chosen or selected out of the southern Indian Ocean tomorrow?

PAUL: Well, it certainly depends on the validity of a lot of the photographs they're seeing. Now, definitely when they're not Orions I was just talking about, sitting in their chairs, yell, "mark, mark, mark," they put down the smoke. They circle around again to get a better look to see if it's something worth sending a ship in for.

I have to be clear here. There hasn't been much that's been worth taking a look at so far. But now that those ships are in the air, you have to think, you've got the search happening on the ocean surface with the ships. You've got extra spotters in the air. It really is coming to a critical mass in this new zone that's identified. And we should point out the Malaysian and Australian officials tell us every hour that search area is being further refined by more date, more radar data, more information from satellites. And we're hope that that means that the more they can narrow the scope of the search the more success they'll have in actually finding something.

BLACKWELL: All right, Paula Newton live in Perth for us. Thank you.

PAUL: Let's talk more with two CNN aviation analysts, Jeff Wise and Peter Goelz. Peter is also the former NTSB managing director. And Robert Arnot is an award winning journalist and a pilot, a veteran aviation correspondent. Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us.

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: So, first, we want to say again that we don't know yet if these items pulled from the water are parts of or involved at all with flight 370. But does it sound like we're getting closer to finding something or is this just another week of I see something here and there? Let's start with you, Peter.

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, this new area of search was identified by a new team of fresh eyes looking at the data, extrapolating it out in a more detailed way. This is really the last best hope we've got prior to the batteries of the data recorders expiring. And so I think it is -- I think we've got to be optimistic. We've got to search. My contacts at the NTSB have told me this is their best shot. They think this is the spot from the data they've got, so I'm happy to see the resources being applied. PAUL: So, Jeff, let me ask you. How long do you think it could take for officials to either confirm or deny if these new objects have anything to do with flight 370? We know as Paula just said, you can tell and throw, you know, or get rid of some things because you know that it's trash. But to be really definitive how long do you think it will take?

WISE: Well, I think if the answer is no, if this stuff is not aircraft, that should be able to be determined pretty quickly. And likewise, if it's got a serial part number on it, it shouldn't take very long. There's only certain number of kinds of parts that are in an airplane like this. So it shouldn't be very hard. I would say in the next day or two.

But, I mean, we have to be patient. We have to bear in mind that the ocean is huge. There's -- if we've learned anything over the last week, there's a lot of stuff floating in the ocean. We should expect a lot of false positives.

BLACKWELL: So, Robert, I wonder, why is this -- we heard the optimism from peter and his NTSB contacts, his sources. Why is this area and why are officials more optimistic about this search area than the last four or five?

ROBERT ARNOT, PILOT AND AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: So what they've done is they've gone back and looked at the speed of the aircraft. The Boeing 777 basically has a long range cruise which is roughly Mach 0.84 and they have what we call high speed cruise, with is Mach 0.89, pretty fast aircraft there. So at this faster speed they believe they ran out of speed earlier and crashed earlier.

The major problem here though is what we call data connectivity. So we have the pings as they left Kuala Lumpur, we have the pings as they made that swooping turn out, and then the hourly pings and the final one. What we're not being given is what is the lat and long of those. Inmarsat took over a week to figure out where all these different points are. We've haven't heard anything from Boeing yet. And of course these governments have been very, very secretive about the quality of their data, that radar data. Did the plane go to 43,000 or 45,000 feet? How long was it there? And most importantly, did this airplane go to a series of waypoints? Waypoints are five letter identifiers. Was that all programmed into the computer which would have said that someone was at the controls and deliberately took that course?

So in any company there's a problem with data connectivity. Here you're looking at Thai radar, Malaysian radar, Chinese radar, then you're looking at the various pings of the companies or whatnot, I think the families are right. I think they have to be more forthright with coming out with this data.

As an example, if you take a circle route it's going to be basically a straight line. If it was on a magnetic heading it's going to be on more of a hunt and seek line, more of a curved line. That's going to tell us more about what went into the ocean. So I don't think we're being told enough and I certainly think the families are not being told enough to be able to figure out where this is.

Lastly, if this data had been made available weeks ago I think there are lots of smart people around the world, lots of big data analyst who could have looked at this and come up with fresh theories much, much earlier than this last ditch effort.

PAUL: It's a very good point, Robert. Peter, I want to know from you, though, I mean, we have to assume that they know a whole lot more than they're releasing publicly. How much do you think they're holding on to and are they doing that because they really don't want to compromise the situation in any way, or is it because maybe initially this search did not go as it should have gone, the investigation?

GOELZ: Robert's made a great point about transparency. That's one of the things about the U.S. system and the U.K. system of investigating accidents. The facts are on the table as they are discovered and confirmed.

In this case, there has been a great reluctance on the part of the Malaysians to release facts or to let even the group of investigators say, this happened. We don't know, as Robert mentioned, whether this plane did use waypoints as navigating instrument. That would have been important for us and we just don't know it yet. So you hope that the investigators have more information. But I'm not sure they do. I mean, this is a very, very exasperating investigation because of lack of facts and they're in new territory. No one has tried to analyze distance and direction from these pings. I mean, this is new territory.

PAUL: Good point.

ARNOT: I was going to say, too, you know that Boeing is always very, very quiet during these investigations. And clearly there's a lot they know. They talked about an aircraft fire. As a pilot, I go and train for this. They'll put in 30,000 feet and say there's a fire. It's not like Swiss Air anymore. You don't go and check switches and hunting for where that fire is. In my plane you take that master electronic switch, it is off. You cut everything. Then you're going to go and depressurize the cabin to try to kill the fire. Of course the 777 is more sophisticated so it would have fire extinguishing systems and suppression systems there. Then you're going to dive. Instead of descending at 1,500 feet a minute, I might go down at 4,000 or 5,000 or 6,000 feet a minute to get to the nearest airfield I possibly can. The rule is to put it on the ground.

We haven't had any of this. What are the procedures? Why do the ACARS system and the transponders go out? Is that the national sequence? So there's lots they know about the procedure and handling of this aircraft that Boeing is not telling us. I think at least it's -- this is information due to the families. I think they have a right to know. I think that Boeing has got to be a lot more forthcoming, as does the Malaysian government.

PAUL: CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz and Jeff Wise as well as pilot and veteran aviation correspondent Robert Arnot, thank all three of you for being with us.

WISE: Pleasure.

BLACKWELL: So this hunt continues for the black boxes. And the search for them, of course, could help solve the mystery of Malaysian airline flight 370. We're going to take you to the NTSB lab and give you a demonstration of how this works.

PAUL: Have you heard about the earthquake that rocked Los Angeles for the second time in two weeks overnight? We're going to show you the video that we're getting in this morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Let's talk about these all important flight data and voice recorders, because a lot of people are saying how much information do they really contain, what can we glean?

BLACKWELL: And as soon as searchers find those two black boxes they will get answers to the questions of when, how, where, and if anyone was involved. CNN's Athena Jones has more. Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christi and Victor. There are only a handful of laboratories in the world that are capable of retrieving data from a black box that's been damaged. Here's an inside look at one of those labs.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is one of the more advanced labs in the world. And for that reason that's why we tend to help other countries.

JONES: Here at the National Transportation Safety Board state-of-the- art laboratory, a demonstration of what it takes to get vital information from the all-important black boxes. This is what the pinging of one of the data recorders sounds like once it's made contact with water. Even after a prolonged period in saltwater, data from these devices is still retrievable.

ERIN GORMLEY, NTSB ENGINEER: We've had a good success rate with recovery. All of the recorders, you know, go through different stresses and -- but overall, we've had a very good success rate with water recovery.

JONES: Have you ever not gotten data in a water recovery?

GORMLEY: I can't think of one.

JONES: Recorders found in saltwater are first bathed in freshwater and later carefully dried and taken apart to reveal this, the device's memory card. Even a damaged card can be useful, says recorder engineer Erin Gormley.

GORMLEY: The data does jump from chip to chip. So even if you have one corrupt chip because it's cracked or go gotten corrosion on it, we should still be able to build the information back.

JONES: Information from the flight data recorder's memory card, which keeps track of data like the planes pitch, altitude, and speed, is downloaded onto a computer system where the team makes sense of the data. To us it just looks like zeroes and ones.

GORMLEY: We get information from the manufacturer of the aircraft that has a data map, and that data map translates all the zeros and ones into actual parameters.

JONES: For the cockpit voice recorder a team of six to eight people help transcribe the device's four channels which picks up not just voices but a door opening to a seat shifting. The work they do here is difficult but it's key to understanding what went wrong in airline disasters.

GORMLEY: We want to make sure this never happens again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: The director of this NTSB lab says it's incredibly rare for them to come across a black box too damaged for them to access the data. And it's not water but high intensity, high duration fire that's most likely to make that information irretrievable.

BLACKWELL: All right, Athena Jones for us, thank you very much.

And some breaking news just into CNN. We now have the video of three suspicious objects spotted by Chinese pilots, the breaking news overnight. We have that video of these orange, white, and red objects. We're going to have that for you coming up in just a moment.

PAUL: Also, live report coming to you from Washington state as there's still this frantic search for signs of life in the rubble after that landslide. Again, taking you live to Washington on the other side of the break. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Welcome back to our coverage of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in just a moment. But first, some of the other stories we're following this morning. Hear about this, the 5.1 magnitude quake that rattled southern California last night. OK, so there were no major reports of damage. However, there is damage to homes and knocked plenty of stuff of those shelves.

PAUL: As you can see there. This is the second quake, though, for L.A. in the past two weeks. They may be a little jittery out there. This latest was just southeast of a slightly smaller earthquake earlier this month. Thanks to all of you who have tweeted and Facebook posted us about what you're experiencing there.

Heavy rain, strong winds, they may be a real problem for rescue work today at the site of the Washington state landslide.

BLACKWELL: Hundreds of volunteers are still looking through this mess. Imagine all the work still ahead. They're searching for any signs of life, but officials are worried the bad weather may cause another landslide. Paul Vercammen is live from Arlington, Washington. Paul, how badly is the rain impacting the efforts there?

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, it just compounds things. We've had these reports from first responders and firefighters and volunteers that they're often wading through waist deep mud. One firefighter earlier in the week saying it took him about five minutes just to walk 50 feet. So this is just going to get more soupy as the recovery effort goes on. It's a vast, vast area, about a square mile. This is just going to make these even more difficult today, Victor and Christi.

PAUL: Paul, if they fear it could cause another landslide, what precautions are they taking in their efforts now?

VERCAMMEN: Well, they suspended the recovery effort at one point when they thought it was getting too dangerous. So if for some reason they think this is problematic they will just stop. You can also imagine though you've got on the other side grieving family members who have this sense of I've lost one of my loved ones, I want some sort of closure, can you please help me find this person? And perhaps nobody suffering more on two different levels than a young woman who lost her mother and then just recently saw the firefighters recover her four- month-old baby. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NATASHA HUESTIS, LOST DAUGHTER AND MOTHER IN LANDSLIDE: And I got to hold her, and I may be dropped a couple tears because I was so excited that we found her and all I could do is grin because we found my baby.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VERCAMMEN: It's just an unimaginable what these people are going through. There's an official death toll of 17 but another least eight other bodies have been located. They will be back out there in this soggy mess again today trying to recover more bodies from this slide.

BLACKWELL: Paul Vercammen for us there in Arlington, Washington. Paul, thank you.

PAUL: Thank you, Paul.

We're going to get back to the search for Malaysia airlines flight 370. We have new pictures to show you that have just come in to us of objects spotted by Chinese aircraft in the Indian Ocean today.

But first, a promising young hockey player overcomes a broken back and becomes a world champion figure skater. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the compelling story of Max Aaron in today's "Human Factor."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Looking at the Grace of these jumps and turns you probably never guess that 22-year- old figure skater Max Aaron started skating on a different kind of ice. He started as a toddler and he fell in love with ice hockey the first time he picked up a stick. He started figure skating with his sisters during the off season to help his game. Soon he was starting his days in figure skates and ending them in hockey skates. By 2007 he was well on his way to fulfilling his dreams. He was on the elite USA hockey development team. But in 2008 he had a major setback.

MAX AARON, FIGURE SKATER: My back was constantly bothering me. We were lifting weight. I remember doing a dead lift. My back all of a sudden seized up.

GUPTA: His back was broken. He had to come back slowly and wearing just one pair of skates.

AARON: I decided I will figure skate.

GUPTA: The medals started adding up, including a bronze in the 2010 junior nationals, a gold in the 2011 junior nationals and a gold in the 2013 nationals. He was the U.S. men's first alternate for the Sochi Olympics and now skate for a world tight until Japan.

AARON: I was talking to doctors and they say, you know, glad you caught it earlier when you did. You know, you could have been paralyzed. I don't take that for granted.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: We have some new video we want to share with you regarding the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 now. This is just in to the CNN Newsroom. What you're looking at there is debris that was spotted today by a Chinese plane in that new search zone for the missing airliner. We do know, as we look at this, also, that two ships pulled several other ones from the Indian Ocean today. That's pretty crucial because now we're understanding they're actually getting their hands on some tangible pieces of material out there. Australian aircraft also spotted multiple objects as well.

BLACKWELL: Chinese state media is reporting the three suspicious objects seen by the plane were red, white, and orange. You saw the video there. We'll have it again for you in a moment. However, so far none of the objects you see here nor the ones taken up from the sea has been confirmed as having anything to do with the lost jet.

PAUL: So let's talk to CNN analyst Tom Fuentes, Professor Bill Waldock of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr about the new findings and what's next in the search.

BLACKWELL: If you could put that video back up. Tom, look at this debris. Is this anything that you would be suspected would be involved with this plane? They took pictures of these orange, white, and red. What do you think?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Victor, I have no way to really tell that for sure. They just need to pick up the debris and have people actually closely look at it and try to make a determination if it's just trash or it could be related to the flight and then start the analysis from there about verifying it as a piece of the airplane or luggage or some other material.

PAUL: OK. Professor, again, nothing has been identified as being from this plane. We just want to make that very clear, so far this morning. But if debris is eventually connected to it, how soon might it be and how would you go about trying to pinpoint where the rest of the plane and remnants are?

BILL WALDOCK, PROFESSOR, EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY: Once we find a piece that's verified as from the aircraft, then we get the oceanographers involved. What they have to try to do is backtrack how the debris got to where it was, move it day by day based on the current activity, prevailing winds, all the other data they have to crunch to literally put it back in time as to where the aircraft might landed the water. And that gives us a much tighter area to then go down and start dragging sonar slabs and devices that we have to start trying to find the aircraft.

BLACKWELL: And Barbara, what will be the U.S.' role when debris from 370 is confirmed, collected there, or in any other area?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Victor, when they work it backwards, as Bill was just saying, what they're going to try and do is establish essentially a new very tight search box. Work it backwards, calculate where the additional debris may be, where the data recorders may be.

Once they do that, they will then very likely quickly begin to use the U.S. Navy technology that is going to the scene. And that is first that pinger locator, if you will, the device that will be put in the water and towed around, and it will listen for the pings from the data recorders. There is also a Navy unmanned remote piloted vehicle, essentially a mini sub, if you will, very small underwater drone. It will have the capability to map the ocean floor and begin to calculate where there may be objects there that may be part of the debris.

But again, working backwards to establish that new tight search box once they determine that this debris we're seeing on the air or debris in the wider area is from the jet, use the oceanographer's calculations, work their way backwards, and then hone in on there.

PAUL: Tom, there's been criticism from the experts saying they don't have enough resources out there. If they find that some of the debris is from the plane, do you expand your resources or, because we're working internationally with multiple agencies here, is that a time when maybe you condense things a bit?

FUENTES: No. I think, Christi, if they had a good lead that they've got actual debris, you would think that they would be able to intensify and maybe apply more resources. But, you know, that's a decision, a policy decision by every country that's involved in this, including the United States, and particularly Australia that's running the search effort. That will be up to each country to we decide if they have more resources they can devote to this from other normal duties that those resources would be performing.

BLACKWELL: Professor, the Australians, Malaysians seem to have an increased level of optimism and confidence in this new search area based on the new analysis. What's your level of confidence that they're searching in right area and that in two days we will be draw another screen on for you a new search area?

WALDOCK: Well, to one extent this is how the longer term searches evolve. You constantly refining the information you already have, occasionally you learn new information, but you're still looking at everything you know at that time. And that gives you the ability to get closer to where the airplane might have gone under the water and move the search box in that area. I'm reasonably confident the Australians would not have moved the entire search box all 700 miles northeast if they weren't confident in the analysis of the data.

PAUL: Tom, we know that this new search area is closer to Australia, so it gives them more time to search because they don't have so far to travel. The water isn't as deep. The weather isn't as extreme. But the floor of the ocean there is a lot more rugged. What do you -- how do we tackle that to make sure we don't lose any more time?

FUENTES: I don't think there's anything they can do differently. They're searching as many hours on station as the planes can stay up. They've been able to get more ships closer to where debris fields have been seen by the airplanes. And I think that's the improvement in the situation is that before we were chasing satellite data that was four or five days old and not really easily seen, and then the ships were nowhere near it. The airplanes went out looking for it, couldn't find it in the rough seas. So at least now it's the aircraft that are seeing it. And it appears that the ships are now closer by. And that's a big improve 789 over what we had the first couple of weeks.

BLACKWELL: All right, Tom Fuentes, Bill Waldock, and Barbara Starr, thank you all so much for joining us this morning.

FUENTES: Thank you.

WALDOCK: Glad to.

PAUL: We appreciate it.

BLACKWELL: Coming up on Newsroom, the crisis in Ukraine takes center stage as President Obama travels overseas. But his trip ended without a dip diplomat trick breakthrough. So up next, why Vladimir Putin decided to call the president and what he said about the escalating crisis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: It seemed to be a surprise to most everybody. Vladimir Putin reached out to President Obama to talk about the crisis in Ukraine. Yesterday the Russian leader phoned his U.S. counterpart and the two leaders agreed to have their top diplomats discuss proposals to resolve the situation peacefully and discuss next steps. According to U.S. officials there are 40,000 Russian troops along Ukraine's border right now. The White House has urged Russia to decrease its military presence. In the meantime, the U.N. secretary general says Putin told him no military moves were coming.

BLACKWELL: Now, the crisis in Ukraine was unavoidable during the president's last trip to Europe. While reaching a diplomatic solution is still one of the top priorities abroad for the White House, there are other challenges that await the president back here at home.

PAUL: CNN's Jim Acosta has the latest for us. Good morning, Jim.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christi and Victor, the president's trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia ended with an unexpected phone call from Vladimir Putin. What was not a surprise is the White House and the Kremlin had different takes on the call, another reminder of just who was on the president's mind all week long.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: Traveling across Europe and Saudi Arabia, it was the foreign policy baggage President Obama just couldn't unload.

BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Russian troops that are along the border of Ukraine at the moment. Russia's violation of international law, it's assault on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, must be met with condemnation.

We are going to do everything we can to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

ACOSTA: Just how to convince Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin to stand down in Ukraine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By taking the military option off the table are you sending a signal to Vladimir Putin that other parts of Ukraine are his for the taking? And why not send multinational peacekeepers to the Ukrainian border as a deterrent?

OBAMA: I think that I've been very clear in saying that we are going to do everything we can to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. But I think that it's also important for us not to promise and then not be able to deliver.

ACOSTA: Trying to rally nervous European leaders to action, the president made a clear distinction. If Russia threatens any NATO nation it will be met with military force. But for now, the U.S. and its allies would rely on sanctions and international isolation, like Russia's suspension from the G8, to force Putin's hand.

OBAMA: The sanctions the United States and the European Union have imposed will continue to grow. We are continually hopeful that Russia walks through the door of diplomacy and works with all of us to try to resolve this issue in a peaceful way.

ACOSTA: Because of Russia, Mr. Obama had little time to tackle the issues on his original agenda, from nuclear security to trade with Europe. But in Rome, the president spent nearly an hour in his first meeting with Pope Francis, exchanging gifts, discussing immigration in the U.S., and their shared concerns about income and equality. Vatican officials did raise concerns about contraception coverage and health care reform, but that didn't stop the president from inviting the Pope to the White House.

Then it was on to Mr. Obama's final stop, a meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. The visit at Abdullah's lavish desert retreat was aiming at calming Saudi fears over diplomatic talks to curb Iran's nuclear program and whether to arm Syrian rebels in that country's brutal civil war. While they did not discuss global concerns about Saudi human rights abuses, the president honored a Saudi woman with a state department award for combating domestic violence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: President Obama has another policy challenge waiting for him when he returns to Washington -- Monday's enrollment deadline for Obamacare. The White House has touted the fact that 6 million people have signed up so far with another crush of consumers heading to the government's health care website in the last couple of days. Christi and Victor?

BLACKWELL: Jim Acosta for us. Jim, thank you.

We've just gotten word that there was a conversation today by phone between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. We have not yet received in readout of that call, but we do know that Secretary Kerry initiated the call. Of course, this comes right after President Putin called President Obama and they agreed that their top diplomats, of course, Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry, would have a conversation and find a way to resolve this crisis peacefully. We will get more on that as we get more information and bring it to you.

PAUL: We do want to get back to Malaysia flight 370 because the question is, did the passengers leave a digital footprint behind, and is it retrievable? I know it's hard to think that no one tried to use their cellphone if there was an emergency on board. But up next, one expert says it is possible to retrieve cellphone data once search teams locate that debris.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: We have some brand new video we want to share with you in the search for Malaysia airlines flight 370. This is just in to the CNN Newsroom.

BLACKWELL: Take a look. It's of the debris spotted today by a Chinese plane in the new search zone for this missing airliner. It's described as red, white, and orange. Now, we do not know if this -- these objects we're describing them, are part of 370, involved with the passengers or crew at all. But we do know that these pictures are being analyzed, and we'll get you more as soon as we get more information about what the analysts determine about these items. PAUL: And remember, there are ships out there right now, and they will most likely be getting this information and be on the lookout as well as they are in the search area currently, and have pulled up some pieces of objects that were there. So far, none of them have been connected, but this is the first day that we are hearing they're actually able to get out there and physically get their hands on some sort of tangible items in the ocean.

BLACKWELL: And without confirmation that those are part of 370 or the black boxes, you know, there are all kinds of theories that are out there when it comes to the vanished flight -- pilot suicide, mechanical failure, zombie flight. But if there was some kind of emergency on board, why didn't any of the passengers try to communicate with their family?

PAUL: Or maybe they did. Some experts say that they could have tried and there is a chance, believe it or not, that those final messages could be retrieved from the ocean floor if they can get to it. CNN's Ted Rowlands has more for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paul Weeks left his wife and two sons at home in Australia to start a new job and boarded Malaysia airlines flight 370. Now his family and others are left wondering if their loved ones tried to use their cellphones to send a message before the plane went missing. With so many questions still unanswered, texts and e-mails could provide crucial details about what happened to flight 370, and all of that information could possibly still be retrieved.

CHAD GOUGH, FORD DISCOVERY: Absolutely. I'm sure there are text messages, I'm sure there's drafts of e-mails, there's video, testimonials that people made.

ROWLANDS: Chad Gough is a partner at Ford Discovery, a computer forensics company in Chicago. He says even after several weeks or even months in the ocean, unsent texts, e-mails, and videos can still be retrieved from electronic devices.

GOUGH: It's a matter of finding the devices to determine what kind of damage was associated with them and handling them properly.

ROWLANDS: Handling them properly is the key. Just like retrieving a flight data recorder, a cellphone or computer would have to be kept in water until it's ready to be analyzed. Even if a device has been smashed, as long as the data cards are intact, the information is still there.

GOUGH: It's getting them out of the saltwater but actually keeping them wet and putting them in special solution that would dissolve the minerals that are in there, dissolve the salts, and clean off the components.

ROWLANDS: Finding the devices will likely be the most difficult part of the equation. It took two years to locate the flight recorders off the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean from Air France flight 447 which crashed in 2009. No cellphones were recovered. But if flight 370 wreckage is found over the next few months, passenger texts, e-mails, and videos could possibly help solve the mystery of what happened on board while also providing some grieving families a final message from a loved one.

Ted Rowlands, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Still to come in the Newsroom, a Chinese warship brings back several objects from the Indian Ocean. This is a first. Could they be pieces of flight 370? We've got live reports from Australia straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: They are young mothers battling cancer while trying to find proper care for their children.

PAUL: That's where this week's CNN hero comes in. She understands their struggle and she's offering a little hope. I want to introduce you to Audrey Guth.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come 7:00, let's go, brush your teeth. I'm a pretty independent, strong woman. It's very cold outside. But being a single mom is a full-time job. You're tired. When I was diagnosed with cancer, the first thing that came to my mind was my son. Thinking about one day he gets up and I'm not there, it's the saddest thing for me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mothers who are diagnosed with cancer who are caregivers find themselves in need of care. In 2008 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As I was undergoing treatment I saw so many mothers with really young children sitting on their laps. These mothers couldn't dream of having nannies, and yet they were the ones who needed them the most. We provide free relief child care to moms undergoing cancer treatment. Some of our volunteers are even cancer survivors themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do you rest with a two-year-old running around?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our program allows mothers the freedom to take a rest because that's what they need the most to get better.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What Audrey has done for moms with cancer is to give us hope.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much do you love mommy?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 100.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going to win this battle. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What we do won't take away their illness but it will certainly make their journey a lot easier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Amazing work. Now, each week we'll honor a new CNN hero. And if you know of someone who is making a difference go to CNNheroes.com to nominate them.

PAUL: Well, they're kicking us out.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Time for us to go.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: No. We're not kicking you out. We're just here to share space with you.

BLACKWELL: Oh, OK. I'll take that.

PAUL: Thank you. We'll take it. You make some great memories today.

WHITFIELD: That's right. All right, Christi and Victor, thank you so much.