The tragic story of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 that went missing earlier this month continues as major updates & news broke out this evening. Several objects floating in an area of the Indian ocean—about 1,224 miles southwest of Perth, Australia—have been spotted by planes searching for possible debris from the missing Flight 370, which vanished from radar screens on March 8. “At present, we cannot yet confirm that the floating objects are connected with the missing plane,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei cautioned a news briefing in Beijing.

The coordinates were sent to the Australian command center, which is coordinating the latest phase of the multinational search, as well as to the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon, which is due to arrive in the vicinity on Tuesday. The sighting is just the latest unconfirmed report to emerge from the area in the last few days. Possible wreckage, measuring 22 meters (74 ft) by 13 meters (43 ft), was initially sighted on satellite imagery on March 20 but has still not been tracked down.

And just45 minutes ago the prime minister of Malaysia announced in Kuala Lumpur that there was no longer any doubt that the missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner, Flight 370, crashed in the Indian Ocean. Prime Minister Najib Razak said the conclusion was based on new analysis of data from an automated satellite system on the plane, performed by Inmarsat and the British national aviation safety agency. The analysis narrowed down the possible paths the Boeing 777 aircraft could have taken as it kept flying for hours after contact with ground controllers was lost on March 8, and it ruled out that the plane could have gone anywhere but the remote waters southwest of Australia, where there is no place the plane could have landed safely. Just before the prime minister spoke, Malaysia Airlines officials informed relatives of the missing passengers and crew gathered at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur, and sent text messages to those elsewhere.