for them or saw them off in jayapura. that s where your mind goes first, of course, that these people were expecting their loved ones to land in ten minutes and then they learned that the plane has lost contact. and now it has been about five and a half hours since they would have had any news. among them two children and three infants. so you can imagine the family members, the loved ones would be very distressed. and that country, as we ve been discussing, unfortunately has a very patchy aviation record. kathy novak getting us the very latest. the search which has been suspended will be resumed tomorrow. david malko joining us from singapore.
protect the legitimate rights of the families. errol, there s still a lot of mistrust wen those 239 families and specifically the malaysian authorities. this potentially could have been an opportunity to begin to work past that for whatever reason the announcement did not play out that way. the question families continue to ask is does this announcement get us any closer to finding the plane, the passengers and ultimately errol, the truth? it really is your heart goes out to all the relatives of the victims. david molko in hong kong with that new information there from the chinese foreign ministry. david, thanks. now to some other big stories we re following for you. in the u.s. state of tennessee authorities say a man who attacked moviegoers had a history of mental illness. he was also reported missing two days before the incident where police shot and killed him. cnn s mary maloney has the details of what was a terrifying situation. reporter: sounds of a
barnacles. they re over 100 or over 1,000 species of barnacles. so unless these are particularly unusual they might not yield too much other than their indian ocean barnacles. but it miebtd interesting if they were all dead or alive on the flaperon because that might tell us how long it s been on the beach. also patterns on which they were on the flaperon any kind of water marks on the inside would tell us how it floated. for example, the chewed-up area what s called the trailing edge might have been because that was the bottom of the part that was in the water and scraped against the shoreline for who knows how long before it finally made it ashore. well at least we re one small step closer to answers. our senior aviation analyst mary schiavo, thanks for your time today from charleston. thank you. now, most of the 239 people on board mh370 were chinese citizens. cnn s david malko joins us from hong kong with reaction of some
of the passengers relatives. and david, we re really in a bit of an awkward moment for these relatives of the victims. you ve got confirmation from the malaysian pm the flaperon is from mh370 but caution from french officials saying more testing must be done. what is this moment like for those emotionally exhausted relatives? errol, these families have been carrying an enormous burden for 550 days. for that time they have had nothing. this is the first time they have heard anything there s been anything definitive. and it s not even that. in the past week we ve heard them say we want 100% proof this is from mh370, 99% isn t good enough. so it s not just feelings of sadness now but also confusion, frustration, anger, and despair. errol, it s a very difficult situation. some of the families yes, they were notified by malaysia airlines via e-mail a few minutes before the prime
once they actually go into the lab and begin to take a look at this george looking for two things one, can they tie it definitively to a 777. we know there a couple of numbers on this that officials believe, yes, that they can tie to a 777, the malaysians said we re sure it is from a 777 as well. more significantly is there anything unique about it that can tie it to mh-370 a number on the inside a part a marking on it that might be found, maintenance record. all of this critical work george they have to get it right because as you said this is the only thing in 500 days the only potential piece of physical evidence they have to go on. david, as the world waits for this as we mentioned, the source close to the investigation says that a preliminary report could be released as early as next week. what more can you tell us about that? george it all depends on the timing of what they are able to find out, when they when