Missing Malaysia Airline flight latest: Chinese ship 'picks up signal'

Relatives of passengers onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 light candles for a prayer ahead of a briefing to be given by Malaysian representatives at Lido Hotel in Beijing March 29, 2014. Chinese ships trawled a new area in the Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysian passenger jet on Saturday, as the search for Flight MH370 entered its fourth week amid a series of false dawns over sightings of debris. 

Latest update: The BBC and Xinhua have reported that a Chinese ship searching for the plane has picked up a signal, but there is no confirmation yet if it is from MH370.
Four weeks after the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner, searchers on Saturday launched the most intensive hunt yet in the southern Indian Ocean, trying to find the plane's black box recorders before their batteries run out.
Up to 10 military planes, three civilian jets and 11 ships will scour a 217,000-sq-km (88,000-sq-mile) patch of desolate ocean some 1,700 km (1,060 miles) northwest of Perth near where investigators believe the plane went down on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people on board.
"If we haven't found anything in six weeks we will continue because there are a lot of things in the aircraft that will float," Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, told reporters.
"Eventually I think something will be found that will help us narrow the search area."
Authorities have not ruled out mechanical problem as a cause but say the evidence, including the loss of communications, suggests Flight MH370 was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Dozens of flights  by a multinational taskforce have so far failed to turn up any trace of the plane, and investigators concede the task has been made more difficult by the lack of data.