Oil slicks found in hunt for missing Malaysia jet

Vietnamese air force planes have spotted two large oil slicks close to where a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 went missing on Saturday, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people had crashed. The Vietnamese air force planes were part of a multinational search operation launched after Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on Saturday morning. The oil slicks were spotted Saturday night off the southern tip of Vietnam and were each between 10 kilometers (6 miles) and 15 kilometers (9 miles) long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement. There was no confirmation that the slicks were related to the missing plane, but the statement said they were consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the two fuel tanks of a crashed jetliner. Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots had sent a distress signal, suggesting that whatever happened to the plane occurred quickly and possibly catastrophically, according to UNB.