The Latest on MH370: Chinese Kin Protest at Airline Office

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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Mexicans Seek Help From Saint of Lost Causes

For the faithful, he is the saint of the hopeless, patron of lost causes, the deliverer of the impossible. Each month at a chapel near the heart ofMexico City, San Judas Tadeo's status as a performer of miracles draws believers from among the most desperate corners of society.

Bearing statues of the green-cloaked saint, some even dressed in his image, old and young alike gather on the 28th of every month — a remembrance of his Oct. 28 feast day — to stream through the San Hipolito Church in an unending procession of requests for intercession and appreciation of miracles received.

Ramon Perez Oseguera carried a 4-foot-tall statue of the bearded saint, known as St. Jude Thaddeus in English, as a gesture of his devotion. When he first visited the chapel to seek financial help, he said, he had only 50 pesos in his pocket but somehow found 250 pesos when he returned home.

Juan Maldonado bore red and white roses to thank the saint for helping him find work just as he was about to lose his home.

Expecting parents ask for blessings for their unborn children. Relatives of the sick ask that their loved ones be cured. Once desperate believers thank him for ending their addiction to drugs.

The saint has attracted a large following among the pierced and tattooed young people in the urban core, who gather at a nearby park to drink and dance to the syncopated rhythm of reggaeton music. Some clench their fists to inhale solvents, a cheap way to get high.

Monica Jessica, a slim, young woman in a white San Judas T-shirt and carrying an image of the martyr with child-like features, says the saint has saved her from darkness.

"San Judas Tadeo helped me improve my health and happiness," she said. "I prayed to him and found the strength to stop cutting myself."

Lucero Lima said she and her partner, Julio Apaseo, have been devoted to the saint of lost causes for 20 years. The woman bears on her right cheek a tattoo of the saint in child-like form under the words "San Juditas,"

Outside the church, faithful cram together in a line snaking around the building. Vendors sell icons, religious medallions, costumes, key chains and candles. Those arriving to give thanks for miracles hand out "mandas," tokens of appreciation such as flowers or treats, to anyone near.

Reina Castro fulfills her promise to San Judas every month by bringing cookies to give away at the procession.

The chaos gives way to calm inside the sanctuary, where the faithful pray and celebrate Mass. The woodsy scent of incense fills the air.

Diana Garcia has followed San Judas for five years. "Ever since my father's cancer became terminal," she said. "Although he died, San Judas has given me many miracles."

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News Guide: Malaysia Links Debris to MH370; Others Cautious

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that a wing piece that washed up on Reunion Island last week is from the missing MalaysiaAirlines Flight 370. However, French, U.S. and Australian authorities stopped short of full confirmation, frustrating relatives with mixed messages.

A guide to the biggest aviation mystery's latest twists.

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NAJIB'S STATEMENT

Past midnight in Kuala Lumpur, Najib appeared at a news conference announcing that the metal wing piece known as the flaperon that washed ashore on the French island of Reunion in the western Indian Ocean has been confirmed to belong to Flight 370 — making it the first part of the aircraft that has been found since the plane vanished on March 8, 2014, with 239 people aboard while on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"We now have physical evidence that, as I announced on 24th March last year, flight MH370 tragically ended in the southern Indian Ocean," Najib said.

He said he hoped that this confirmation, "however tragic and painful, will at least bring certainty to the families and loved ones of the 239 people onboard MH370."

In a separate statement, Malaysia Airlines said the conclusion was reached in Toulouse, France, by the French agency that investigates air crashes, known as the BEA, the Malaysian investigation team, a technical representative from China — where most of the passengers are from — and the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau.

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OTHERS MORE CAUTIOUS

At a news conference in Paris, Deputy Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak didn't outright confirm that the debris belonged to Flight 370, but said there were strong indications that it was the case.

"The very strong conjectures are to be confirmed by complementary analysis that will begin tomorrow morning," Mackowiak said. "The experts are conducting their work as fast as they can in order to give complete and reliable information as quickly as possible."

The Australian government, which leads the seabed search for wreckage west of Australia, said that "based on high probability, it is MH370."

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.

A U.S. official familiar with the investigation said the flaperon clearly is from a Boeing 777. However, a team of experts in France examining the part hadn't yet been able to find anything linking it specifically to the missing plane, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to talk publicly about the case.

With no other 777s or flaperons known to be missing, it makes sense that the part comes from Flight 370, but the U.S. and Boeing team members are merely trying "to be precise," the official said.

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RELATIVES' ANGUISH

The mixed messages only added to the relatives' frustrations.

"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.

"Why not wait and get everybody on the same page so the families don't need to go through this turmoil?" she said.

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Former Argentine President on Trial for Bombing Cover-Up

On the home page of Argentina's largest Jewish community center is a counter that keeps track of the "days of impunity" since a bomb ripped through the organization's central building, causing it to collapse and leaving 85 dead amid the rubble.

On Thursday, 7,689 days since the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, former President Carlos Menem, a former top judge and several others will go on trial for allegedly derailing the investigation.

Prosecutors have accused Iranian officials of being behind the bombing. But no one has been convicted in this South American country's worst terrorist attack, which many Argentines believe has come to symbolize an inept and corrupt justice system that operates at the whims of politicians and can be bought off.

"After 21 years of no justice, deception and defrauding the families (of victims), we hope that the truth will emerge about everyone who plotted to cover up and derail the investigation," said Olga Degtiar, whose son was killed in the blast.

The 13 facing charges include two former prosecutors, a former top intelligence official, former police officers, a Jewish community leader and a mechanic who owned the truck carrying the explosives. The charges carry between three and 15 years.

The trial, expected to go on for months, will focus on how and why Menem and the others might have wanted to bury the initial investigation. Testimony will likely delve into geopolitics of the 1990s, and even into Menem's Syrian ancestry and how that might have influenced him.

Menem, whose parents immigrated to Argentina from Syria, was president between 1989 and 1999. Since 2005, the now 85-year-old has been a senator representing La Rioja province, where he was born.

Argentine authorities have long accused Iran and the militant group Hezbollah of being behind the attack. To this day, several Iranian officials are on Interpol's red alert list, though the Middle Eastern country has always denied involvement.

Prosecutor Sabrina Namer is expected to argue that former Judge Juan Jose Galeano, on orders from Menem, stopped investigating a "Syrian trail" that involved Syrian-born Alberto Kanoore Edul. Edul was detained when authorities discovered he had telephoned Carlos Telledin, a mechanic who owned the truck that carried the explosives, days before the attack.

Edul, whose parents had a personal relationship with the Menem family, was also suspected because he had a planner that included the phone number of Moshen Rabbani, at the time the cultural attache at the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires.

Prosecutors have accused Rabbani of masterminding the attack and continue to seek his extradition. Edul, who died in 2010, denied involvement.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Galeano denied that he received any orders from Menem. He said Edul wasn't investigated further because there was no hard evidence against him.

Calls to Menem's lawyers seeking comment were not returned.

Another central part of the cover-up charges involve the 1996 payment of $400,000 to Telleldin, at the time the only person detained in connection with the bombing. Galeano negotiated the payment, which came from funds from the now defunct Secretary of State Intelligence spy agency.

The stated reason behind the money was to persuade Telleldin to tell authorities to whom he had given the truck. Telleldin implicated several police officers of the Buenos Aires province, a force that at the time was largely discredited in the midst of several corruption scandals.

A dozen officers were detained and went on trial in 2001. The case dragged on, then after three years a mistrial was declared on the grounds that the payment to Telleldin had influenced his testimony. The 19 people on trial, including Telleldin and the officers, were absolved. Telleldin and some of the officers have been charged in the cover-up trial.

Galeano told the AP the payment was a bad decision, but said that at the time authorities were desperate to solve the case.

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Frustrated MH370 Kin: 'We Need Definite Answers'

Families aching for closure after their relatives disappeared aboardMalaysia Airlines Flight 370 last year vented their deep frustration Thursday 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 that disappeared March 8, 2014 with 239 people aboard 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?" she said.

Malaysia's prime minister announced overnight that a plane wing section found on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean was "conclusively confirmed" to be from Flight 370, saying he hoped the news would end "unspeakable" uncertainty. The announcement was in line with the Malaysian conclusion that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, killing all aboard.

But French officials with custody of the wing part said only that there were strong indications the barnacle-encrusted part — known as a "flaperon" — was from the flight and that they would work further to try to confirm the finding Thursday.

"After 17 months, we need definite answers," Weeks said. "We need to progress, get answers, move toward further answers, and get some closure along the line."

About two-thirds of the passengers were from China, and in the Chinese capital, Xu Jinghong said she could not understand why Malaysian and French authorities did not make their announcement together.

"I am very angry — so angry that my hands and feet are cold," Xu, 41, said in an interview during the early hours of Thursday outside her home in downtown Beijing. "The announcement was made without experts from France present. I don't understand how the procedure can be like this."

The announcement overnight by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak would appear to give the first strong physical evidence of a crash, which could put to rest several theories that many relatives have refused to rule out, including that the plane and its passengers were hijacked and intact in some still-secret location.

Irene Burrows, the 85-year-old mother of missing Australian passenger Rod Burrows, who was lost with his wife Mary, said in interview last year that she didn't expect the mystery of MH370's disappearance to be solved in her lifetime. She said at the time: "All I just want is a bit of the plane. It's all I want to know — where they are."

For her, Thursday's confirmation was a simple wish come true.

"We're quite pleased that it's been found," she said from her home in Biloela in Australia's northeast.

However, for many relatives, any potential certainty was diluted by the word from Paris, where Deputy Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said the "very strong conjectures" that the wing part was from Flight 370 still needed to be "confirmed by complementary analysis" that would begin later Thursday.

It was unclear whether the mix-up was a result of miscommunication between the two countries, differing notions of the burden of proof or whether Malaysian officials were overeager to send out some definitive signal for relatives of the missing.

In any case, a full confirmation of the wing part wasn't likely to bring total closure for relatives, with the rest of the plane and the bodies still missing.

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Ex-President Carter Shuts Down Electoral Office in Venezuela

A pro-democracy foundation run by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has shut down its 13-year-old electoral observation office in Venezuela as the South American country gears up for closely watched legislative elections.

In a monthly report on Venezuela's political outlook published Wednesday, the Carter Center said it closed its Caracas office May 31 to concentrate its limited resources in other countries that have solicited its help. It said it would continue to monitor events from the center's headquarters in Atlanta.

The Carter Center has been a frequent observer of elections in Venezuela and it mediated talks between the socialist government and opposition following a 2002 coup that briefly unseated then President Hugo Chavez.

But members of the Venezuelan opposition have long viewed its activities and access to the government with mistrust, a sentiment reflected in hard-liners' celebration of its departure on social media. Particularly irksome was the center's validation of a 2004 recall referendum won by Chavez amid complaints that the process leading up to the vote heavily favored the government and his 2012 declaration that Venezuela's election process was the "best in the world."

The Carter Center's departure comes as pressure is building on President Nicolas Maduro to invite outside observers for the important December legislative election that already has some on both sides talking of fraud by their opponents.

For the first time in years, the opposition is heavily favored to win control of the National Assembly as voters fed up with triple-digit inflation, widespread food shortages and spiraling crime seek to punish the government. An opposition victory would likely set the stage for a recall vote against Maduro before his six-year-term ends in 2019.

The opposition accuses the government of trying to gain unfair advantage and abusing its authority by disqualifying the candidacies of several prominent critics and removing the leadership of a major party in its Democratic Unity alliance.

In turn Maduro charges that the opposition is hiding behind the cloak of democracy all the while preparing to disavow any unfavorable outcome and conspiring with the U.S. to oust him from power. The president has said repeatedly he will respect any ballot result but doesn't fear defeat since his side has won all but a single national election since Chavez kicked off the revolution 16 years ago.

"Venezuela isn't monitored and won't be monitored by anyone," Maduro snapped at journalists during a visit to the United Nations in New York last week when asked whether he would allow international observers.

The Organization of American States and European Union have both expressed interest in sending missions for the December vote and U.S. officials are also pushing for outside scrutiny to bolster acceptance of the results as a step in resolving the country's economic and political crisis. So far, Venezuelan authorities have only invited the less-experienced Union of South America Nations to observe the vote.

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Autopsy: NY Prison Escapee Was Drunk When Killed in Forest

Toxicology tests show a convicted killer who escaped from prison and was on the loose for three weeks was drunk when he was fatally shot by border patrol agents who tracked him down in a forest, authorities said Wednesday.

The additional autopsy results indicated Richard Matt had a blood alcohol level of 0.18 percent, more than twice the level of intoxication for drunken driving under New York law, when he died from skull fractures and brain damage on June 27, state police said.

The prison escape by Matt and fellow inmate David Sweat launched a massive 23-day manhunt amid rugged terrain involving more than 1,100 law enforcement officers in far northern New York. Matt and Sweat escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora after cutting through cell walls and a steam pipe. Matt was found about 30 miles west of the prison, and Sweat was shot and captured nearby two days later.

A U.S. border patrol sector chief, John Pfeifer, in describing Matt's killing a week later, said that a member of the patrol's tactical team opened fire after Matt aimed a 20-gauge shotgun, which he had taken from a hunting camp, at the officer. Pfeifer also said that the tactical team found Matt lying down behind a fallen tree and that one of the escapees had stolen alcohol from a camp.

Someone with a blood alcohol content between 0.16 percent and 0.30 percent is considered severely impaired and is likely to suffer loss of balance and muscle control, vomiting, dangerously impaired judgment and decision-making and possible loss of consciousness, according to theNational Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Sweat is now housed at the Special Housing Unit at Five Points Correctional Facility in central New York.

Police have said they now know most of the winding route the two escapees took while on the run though the heavily wooded area west of the prison, having identified a half-dozen hunting camps they broke into.

A former prison tailor shop worker, Joyce Mitchell, has pleaded guilty to charges of aiding the pair by smuggling hacksaw blades and other tools.

Authorities said she smuggled the tools into the prison by hiding them in frozen meat she placed in a refrigerator in the tailor shop. They said a prison guard, Gene Palmer, unwittingly helped by taking the meat to Sweat and Matt, who were housed in a section where inmates are allowed to cook.

Authorities have said they don't believe Palmer knew of the escape plan. He was arrested on charges including promoting prison contraband, insisted he didn't know the inmates were trying to escape and was released on bail.

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