Obama: US dedicated to missing plane search

Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com

President Obama said Wednesday the United States was dedicating “every resource we have available” to help search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane that went missing earlier this month.

In his first public remarks on the disappearance, Obama told KDFW, a Dallas-Fort Worth Fox affiliate that the National Transportation Safety Board and FBI were doing “absolutely” all they could to help in the search.

{mosads}“We want to send out our thoughts and prayers to all of the families that have been affected, but particularly our American families, who I can only imagine what they’re going through with all of the uncertainty that’s taken place,” Obama said.

Australia’s prime minister said Thursday that two objects identified by satellite technology might be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.

An Orion aircraft was sent to try and locate the objects and is expected to arrive Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Parliament in Canberra. Three additional aircraft are expected to follow for a more intensive search, he said.

Abbott cautioned, however, that the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult, and “it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight MH370.”

Earlier Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the president had been updated “regularly” about the search for the flight, which had 239 people on board.

“We have contributed a significant number of resources and assets to the search for the plane and to the investigation into what happened,” Carney said. “And, you know, we’re going to continue that effort.”

Carney said cooperation between U.S. authorities and the Malaysian government was “solid,” despite the effort so far being unable to identify where the flight, which went missing March 8 while traveling from Kuala Lumpur, ended up.

“We are finding that the level of cooperation with the Malaysian government is solid, and we are working closely with the Malaysians as well as our other international partners in this effort to find out what happened to the plane and why it happened,” Carney said.