Australian Prime Minister says he is 'very confident' black box from missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 has been found

Black box from missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 has been found

* Unconfirmed reports have surfaced that MH370's black box has been found
* Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he is 'very confident' the signals are from MH370
* Latest signal picked up in area where other pings have been heard
* It was detected by an Australian P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft
* Shows potential of being from man-made source' - Australian official

* Possible black box signals heard for several minutes earlier this week

Australian Prime Minister says he is 'very confident' black box from missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 has been found.
Search crews have reportedly located the black box from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Perth radio station 6PR tweeted the discovery, citing aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas had revealed the flight recorder had finally been found after more than a month of being missing.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is in China, said he is 'very confident' the signals detected were from the black box from MH370.
'We have very much narrowed down the search area...and we are very confident the signals are from the black box from MH370,' he said.

'We have a series of detections, some lasting for quite a long period of time.
'We're now getting to the stage from where the black box is starting to fade. We're hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires.
'I really don't want to give any more information than that at this stage...as a sign of respect to the Chinese people and their families.'
Speaking from Shanghai, China, Mr Abbott said today's discovery was a huge step in solving the mystery.
'This is probably the most difficult search in human history,' he said.
'Among tragedy, however, there is hope.
'We are confident we know the position of the black box to the nearest kilometre.
'But confidence in the position is not the same as recovering the wreckage from more than 4.5km beneath the sea and finally determining all that happened on that flight.'
The fact that Mr Abbott has reportedly used the word 'confident' suggests that searchers are finally convinced that weeks of scouring the Indian Ocean might now have resulted in the discovery of the missing Boeing 777.
Mr Abbott has indicated he will first need to brief the Chinese because most of the 239 passengers were from that country.
Relatives have complained in the past of not being kept informed of progress in the search.
A fifth 'ping' from the black box of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was detected by a surveillance plane conducting an acoustic search yesterday, Australian officials said.
The latest signal was picked up by an Australian P-3 Orion aircraft, with on-board instruments tracing it to the same area where two pings were heard this week by Australian ship Ocean Shield.
Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is co-ordinating the search in Perth, said on Thursday: 'The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight but shows potential of being from a man-made source.'
Earlier he said the discovery by Ocean Shield was 'further encouraging' news in the search for MH370.
He said the detection, on Tuesday afternoon, was held for about five minutes and 32 seconds, while the second was held for about seven minutes.