Brazilian military officials say debris thought to be from the wreckage of an Air France jet crash is instead trash.
Brazilian Air Force Brigadier Ramon Cardoso told reporters a cargo pallet and two buoys pulled from the ocean early Thursday were not from Flight 447, which went down in the Atlantic Ocean Monday with 228 people on board.
Cardoso said so far nothing from the plane has been recovered, but search teams are continuing to scour the waters off the northeast coast of Brazil, where other debris has been spotted.
Investigators still do not know what caused the plane, en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro, to crash. Officials are reportedly looking into whether the jetliner was flying either too fast or too slowly, while navigating fierce tropical storms.
News media reported Thursday that Airbus, the manufacturer of the doomed plane, was preparing to send a warning to operators of hundreds of its A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms.
Officials say there are no survivors from the crash. In Rio de Janeiro Thursday, the foreign ministers of France and Brazil joined dozens of mourning relatives of the passengers and crew at a memorial service.
French ships, including one carrying two unmanned submarines, are due in the area early next week. The submarines are widely seen as the best hope for retrieving Flight 447's all important flight recorders, which are believed to be sitting on the ocean floor at depths of at least 3,000 meters. If found intact, the recorders could help explain how the giant aircraft fell out of the sky from an altitude of about 9,000 meters without any distress calls from pilots.
Officials have said they see no signs of terrorism in the crash. But chief French investigator Paul-Louis Arslanian says the exact cause of the disaster may never be known.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
