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We begin with breaking news. three u.s. marines were killed and 20 others injured after their aircraft crashed during military exercises in northern australia. >> yeah, officials in australia say that the marines were flying in a u.s. osprey helicopter when it crashed on an island 50 miles north of darwin. angus watson joins us live from sydney with the details. what more are we learning? >> reporter: amara, rahel, this incident happened some ten hours ago here in australia, but information has ...

Its a very difficult proposition. alex? >> yeah. and tom, these planes, they take off and they have about ten hours of flying time, right? its bottom to leave from perth for four hours of flying time. they really only have about two hours before they have to turn around. >> two hours. >> and weather conditions are complicating things as well. >> two hours in that zone. thats all they get. thats why theyre now trying to flood the zone with more aircraft coming in from the chinese and the japanese...

Coast. at the same time, search teams are trying to find a wooden pallet spotted from the air by a civilian aircraft yesterday. it was surrounded by several other objects, including what appeared to be strapping belts of different colors. also new today, tony abbott says hes encouraged by the latest developments. >> its still too early to be definite, but obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads, and there is increasing hope. no more than hope. no more than hope that we might be...

The other thing that theyre going to see is the possibility of some heavy rain coming in to the area. if there are any of those bands that start to break off. and i took a look at the extended forecast for next saturday. potential for 15 and possibly 16-foot waves as there could be another cyclone forming in the central portion of the indian ocean. >> oh, my goodness. that hampers search efforts. also potentially could break up any debris that might be there. things will sink. smaller pieces har...

Imagine what would be that big. yes, the wingspan is 200 feet, but keep in mind that theoretically, the winds would have already taken on water. heres why this is even more difficult. lets go down here and take a look at the size of the search zone. its easy to look at this and say oh, that doesnt look so bad, right? four hours flight from perth, australia. what is that? the smallest now reduce size -- when they zeroed in and theyve now gotten a better idea of where theyre trying to look based o...

Then back. another mission done. no debris seen. so the crews here are looking for large debris from three satellite images, but also those small objects. the problem with a wooden cargo pallet or with multi-colored strapping or belts is that they could just as easily have come from a passing cargo ship as from a crashing plane. but morale among the crews is high. they are optimistic. but this is not an easy job. alex? >> all right, nbcs bill neely. thanks, bill. the weather conditions in the in...

But it was located about 600 miles north of where the chinese sighting was. and that was the chinese sighting that was just three days earlier. so that seems an awful long way to drift in that short amount of time. but nevertheless, it gives them an extra piece of information to work with when this search resumes in just a few hours time, alex. >> it sure does, but again, theres an expanded area apparently. ian williams, thank you for that. lets go to nbcs tom costello in washington. whats the...

We owe it to their grieving families. we owe it to the governments of the countries concerned to do everything we can to discover as much as we can about the fate of mh-370. >> reporter: today, as it is now monday already in australia, the search will be enhanced by aircraft from china and japan. so a lot of aircraft going out there today, looking for this debris. they will have at their disposal now three sets of satellite images. the latest, of course, coming from the french. now, this image i...

Few hours ago and the marine authority thats overseeing this search in australia said they saw nothing of significance out there today. there were eight aircraft in total as well as a number of ships on location. scouring an area of about 30,000 square miles. interesting, they had onboard teams of spotters for all the advanced technology, these aircraft are carrying, they relying today on people looking through the window, eyeballs. because this is perhaps the best way of spotting some of these ...