Yet More Objects Sighted in Search for Flight 370

Some of the objects were as much as 23 meters in length. Some appeared bright, possibly indicating solid material. They were located about 2,500 kilometers from Perth. "This is another new lead that will help direct the search operation," said Acting Minister of Transportation Hishammuddin Bin Hussein on Wednesday.

Flight 370 search resumes; families remain in limbo

Cheng Li Ping is afraid to tell her sons their father might never come home.

"My heart can't handle it. I don't want to hurt my children," the Chinese woman told CNN Wednesday as she waited in Kuala Lumpur for evidence about what happened to her husband and the 238 others who were aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Cheng says she cannot bring herself to accept that her husband is dead, even after authorities announced there were no survivors.

"I can't trust the Malaysian government. I can't work now because all I can think about is my husband and my children," she told CNN's Sara Sidner in Kuala Lumpur. "I don't have strength. ... My head is a mess."

Malaysian officials say they can tell you how Flight 370 ended. It crashed into the Indian Ocean, they'll say, citing complicated math as proof.

They can tell you when it probably happened -- on March 8, sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m. (7:11 to 8:15 p.m. ET March 7), handing you a sheet with extraordinarily technical details about satellite communications technology.

What they still can't tell you is why, or precisely where, or show you a piece of the wreckage.

The search

In a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean, where experts calculate the plane is likely to have ended up, search and recovery teams from six different countries are hunting for pieces of debris.

The search resumed Wednesday after stormy weather put it on hold for the whole of Tuesday.

Seven military reconnaissance planes -- from Australia, China, New Zealand, the United States, Japan and South Korea -- and five civil aircraft are making flights over the vast area over the course of the day.

And five ships, one from Australia and four from China, are in the search zone, Australian authorities said.

Satellites have detected objects afloat in the ocean over the past week and a half. And Australian and Chinese surveillance planes both reported seeing items of debris on the surface this week, but so far nothing has been recovered or definitively linked to the missing flight.

Officials have warned that objects spotted in the water may turn out to be flotsam from cargo ships, and that finding anything from the plane could still take a long time.

"There's always a possibility we might not actually find something next week or the week after," Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Tuesday. "I think eventually something will come to light, but it's going to take time."

The hardware

If search teams are able to find debris confirmed to be from the plane, that would help officials figure out roughly where the aircraft went down.

They would then be able to focus the search under the water to try to locate larger pieces of wreckage and the all-important flight data recorder, which may hold vital clues about what happened on board the night the plane disappeared.

U.S. hardware designed to help with that task arrived Wednesday in Perth, the western Australian city that is serving as the base for the search efforts.

The United States sent a Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle, which can search for submerged objects at depths as low as 14,700 feet, and a TPL-25, a giant listening device that can help pinpoint the location of pings from the flight data recorder. Towed behind a ship, the TPL-25 can detect pings at a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.

Time is against that part of the search, though, as the plane's pinger is expected to run out of power within the next two weeks. The Indian Ocean has an average depth of about 13,000 feet.

The families

The wait for answers about what happened to the plane and where it is now has taken a hard toll on the family members of those on board.

Many relatives of Chinese passengers, like Cheng, refuse to accept the Malaysian government's version of events.

In Beijing, hundreds of them marched to the Malaysian Embassy on Tuesday to voice their anger and frustration.

And on Wednesday, they accused Malaysia Airlines of falling short on its promises to provide volunteer caregivers and accommodations for some family members. The airline couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The Chinese relatives were particularly upset by Malaysian authorities' announcement Monday that they had concluded that the plane had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean with the loss of all lives aboard.

Some family members said they weren't satisfied by the Malaysian government's explanation, which was based on an expert analysis of satellite data. They said it was covering up the truth and demanded tangible evidence that the plane had ended up in the ocean.

The Chinese government, whose citizens made up two thirds of the passengers on board the missing plane, also said it wanted more information from the Malaysian side. President Xi Jinping has sent a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to deal with the matter.

Malaysian officials released more details on the satellite analysis Tuesday and said they understood the families' need to see physical evidence from the plane to get closure. They said they had made the announcement "out of a commitment to openness and respect for the relatives."

The backlash

The Malaysians' comments appeared to have done little to placate the anger among the families, though, and it appeared to be spreading more widely among the Chinese public.

Some Chinese celebrities used social media to urge people to boycott Malaysian products and visits to the country.

Chen Kun, one of China's most popular actors, accused the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines of "clownish prevarication and lies." His post Tuesday calling for a boycott was reposted more than 65,000 times on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging platform.

"I've never been to Malaysia, and I will no longer plan to go there anymore," Meng Fei, the host of one of China's most popular TV shows, wrote Wednesday on Weibo, calling for others to repost the comments if they felt the same. More than 120,000 users did.

Other social media users, albeit with smaller followings, argued against punishing Malaysia as a whole over the matter.

Chen Shu, a journalist, warned that a boycott would "hurt the relationship of Chinese and Malaysians" and long-term regional ties.

Chinese authorities regularly censor Weibo posts. The fact that the anti-Malaysian posts by high-profile users weren't deleted suggested either tacit approval or at least an unwillingness to wade into the debate by Chinese government censors.

The legal action

In the United States, meanwhile, a Chicago-based attorney has taken the first formal legal steps related to the missing plane.

Monica Kelly, a lawyer at Ribbeck Law, asked an Illinois state judge on Tuesday to order Malaysia Airlines and Boeing, which manufactured the missing airplane, to provide documents and other information.

Kelly is seeking specific information about the airline's batteries, details on the fire and oxygen systems and records related to the fuselage.

The filing appears to be the first move toward U.S.-based litigation stemming from the March 8 incident. The firm said it plans to build a multi-million dollar suit against the airline and Boeing.

Boeing declined to comment on the matter late Tuesday, and Malaysia Airlines officials weren't immediately available.