About a dozen Chinese passenger relatives protested outside Malaysia Airlines offices in Beijing the way Malaysian authorities handled the announcement linking the plane debris to MH370.
They held signs, including one saying "Malaysia hides the truth," and another expressing confidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping will help the relatives.
After several hours on Thursday morning, the group was invited into a closed-door talk with airline officials.
— Aritz Parra, Beijing
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12:15 p.m.
Publicly, Australian officials are withholding criticism of Najib's announcement, with Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss saying Malaysia, as the government in charge of the investigation, had the right to make that call.
"We respect the view that they believe they have sufficient evidence to make a categorical statement of that nature," Truss told reporters. "The French inquiry, of course, has not been quite so conclusive."
Privately, however, there were questions about why Najib had moved forward with the statement before all officials had agreed. An Australian government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said Malaysia wasn't supposed to make the announcement, and had gone out on its own making a conclusive statement before getting the evidence to back it up.
— Rod McGuirk, Canberra, Australia
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9 a.m.
Families looking for closure after their relatives disappeared aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last year vent frustration at conflicting signals from Malaysia and France over whether the finding of a plane part had been confirmed.
"Why the hell do you have one confirm and one not?" asked Christchurch, New Zealand, resident Sara Weeks, whose brother Paul Weeks was aboard the flight, which disappeared March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. "Why not wait and get everybody on the same page so the families don't need to go through this turmoil."
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6 a.m.
The Australian government, which leads the seabed search for wreckage west of Australia, is also less certain than Malaysia, saying in a statement that "based on high probability, it is MH370."
Australia, which has sent an official to France to help examine the flaperon, says the finding will not affect its sonar search of a 120,000-square-kilometer (46,000-square-mile) expanse of seabed more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) east of Reunion Island. That search, which began in October, has covered almost half that area without finding any clues.
"The fact that this wreckage does now look very much like it is from MH370 does seem to confirm that it went down in the Indian Ocean, it does seem very consistent with the search pattern that we've been using for the last few months," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Melbourne Radio 3AW.
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4 a.m.
In a statement, Malaysia Airlines says the part of the plane's wing, known as a "flaperon," which was found on Reunion Island on July 29, has been confirmed to be of Flight 370.
"Family members of passengers and crew have already been informed and we extend our deepest sympathies to those affected," it said.
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