Midday Roundup: Fresh hope in Flight MH370 search

Pings. Searchers combing the Indian Ocean for the Malaysian Airlines jet missing for more than a month, say they have once again picked up pings from what could be the plane’s black box and cockpit voice recorder. The Australian ship towing a ping-detecting device picked up promising sounds on Saturday, but hope started to fade after the equipment detected no other sounds during the next three days. But today’s discovery has given searchers fresh hope that they might have found the site where Flight MH370 crashed with 239 aboard. Once investigators can narrow down the search area, they plan to deploy an unmanned underwater vehicle that can use sonar to map the ocean floor and send back photographs of whatever it finds.

Bad idea. The lawyer for a Long Island nursing home defending itself over family complaints about a male strip show at the facility is blaming the residents for the risqué entertainment. “The home has an activities panel of 16 people—residents—who actually voted to have this event,” Howard Fensterman, the attorney representing the East Neck Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Babylon, N.Y., told the New York Post. “They welcomed it, and it looks like they had a good time.” The residents allegedly contributed $250 of their own money to hire the strippers. The man who sued the nursing home said his mother’s money was supposed to be under lock and key and accused nursing home staff of organizing the event for their “perverse pleasure and enjoyment.”

Accidental shooting. Marine investigators say yesterday’s shooting at a guard shack at the entrance to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina might have been accidental. One of the Marines standing guard at the gate yesterday evening discharged his M4 service rifle, hitting another guard in the chest. The injured Marine later died.

Diplomatic failure? Secretary of State John Kerry faced some sharp criticism on Tuesday from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the panel he chaired until he took the top State Department job 14 months ago. Senators lambasted Kerry’s leadership on foreign policy responses to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, negotiations on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the ongoing conflict in Syria. In response to assertions from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that Kerry’s Middle East diplomacy would fail, the nation’s top diplomat said he didn’t care. “It’s worth doing,”he said. “It’s worth the effort, and the United States has a responsibility to lead, not always to find the pessimism and negativity that’s so easily prevalent in the world today.”

Advanced firepower. The U.S. Navy unveiled its newest weapon earlier this week. The electromagnetic railgun launcher uses a form of electromagnetic energy known as the Lorentz force and can fire a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7. After testing the weapon successfully on land, the Navy plans to begin sea trials in 2016. The railgun has a range of 100 miles and is safer to mount on ships because it doesn’t require explosive warheads. It’s also cheaper to operate: Each projectile (think giant bullet) costs $25,000, compared to between $500,000 and $1.5 million for a conventional missile. “[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’” Rear Adm. Matt Klunder told reporters. “Because you are going to lose.”