More info on the missing Malaysian 777

First on the minor issue the family reporting that they can call their missing relative's cell phones and get an unanswered ring, a commenter over at PPrune.org notes the following:
Please can we put this recurrent theory to bed.

Short version - the ringing tone returned to the caller is bogus.

Why it happens -
Cellular phone systems first try to route a call to the last cell which was in contact with the phone. If this fails the system tries to locate the phone to other cells and then tries to divert to voicemail.
All of this searching takes time, during which a caller hearing silence would probably hang up before the call can be connected so the system returns a ringing tone to the caller. In most cases this is a successful strategy but it does mean that if the phone is not eventually found the caller is misled into believing that it is working OK but not being answered.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Malaysian military is now reporting that they think they tracked the missing plane by radar back over the Malay Peninsula and out over the Straits of Malacca, directly opposite of the path that it was expected to follow:

   "Malaysia's military believes it tracked a missing jetliner by radar over the Strait of Malacca, far from where it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a military source told Reuters.

In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, now in its fourth day, has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew.

"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the military official, who has been briefed on investigations, said.

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The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast. The airline said on Saturday that radio and radar contact with Flight MH370 was lost off the east coast Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.

The development injects more mystery into the investigation of the disappearance of Saturday's flight, and raises questions about why the aircraft was not transmitting signals detectable by civilian radar."

Let the theories on why that could have happened begin!