UPDATED: NZ expert says two passengers traveling on stolen passports were more likely criminal than terrorist | Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes emergency landing.
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March 10: Vietnam's navy has spotted a floating object about 80 kilometers southwest of Vietnam's Tho Chu Island, which is suspected to be debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The object was spotted by a Vietnamese navy rescue aircraft at about 6:30 pm local time.. Due to the dark, the navy aircraft could not get close enough to identify the floating object, and was recalled to base. Three search and rescue boats have since been deployed to that location.
It has been revealed that two passengers were travelling on stolen passports. Auckland-based international security expert Dr Paul Buchanan says the pair were more likely to have been involved in a criminal enterprise, such as drug smuggling, than having any terror link.
Investigation has revealed two passengers were travelling on passports that were stolen from Austrian and Italian citizens while they were visiting Thailand in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
This has thrown doubts on Malaysian preflight checks as the missing passports were logged in an Interpol database.
The two passengers, who have not been identified, purchased tickets together for connecting flights to Amsterdam from Beijing.
Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes emergency landing
Meanwhile, a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner made an emergency landing in Honolulu on a flight from Tokyo to San Francisco after an engine malfunction.
The alert came after cockpit indicators showed oil volume and pressure for one of the plane's two engines were down about six hours after the plane took off from Tokyo's Haneda Airport.
None of the 160 passengers and 11 crew members was injured.
On Friday, Boeing said it had discovered hairline cracks in the wings of some yet-to-be-delivered Dreamliners.
New Zealanders on missing Malaysia Airlines flight named
March 9: The two New Zealanders on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight have been named.
They were engineer Paul Weeks (38), a father of two young sons and Ximin Wang (50).
Mr Weeks, who trained as a vehicle mechanic with the NZ Army has been based in Perth, earlier this month took a job at Rio Tinto's Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia. He was on route to Mongolia at the time of the crash.
Ximin Wang lives in the central Auckland suburb of Morningside.
The two men are feared dead after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing lost contact with air traffic control two hours after take off at 7.40am NZ time yesterday.
Although no wreckage had been spotted by early Sunday morning NZ time, Vietnamese air force planes have spotted two large oil slicks close to where the jet went missing, the first sign that the aircraft had crashed.
The oil slicks were spotted late Saturday off the southern tip of Vietnam and were each between 10 and 15 kilometres long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement.
Radar evidence shows pilots turned the plane turned around and attempted to return to Kuala Lumpur, but it is no known how far they got.
The aircraft was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Chinese authorities said the Boeing 777-200 never made it into Chinese airspace.
Two passengers have been identified as traveling on stolen passports, although there is so far no evidence to link their actions with terrorism. Malaysian authorities and the FBI are investigating.
