desmembraron el cadáver y "cocinaron" los restos en una empresa de concreto

Acusan a 2 hombres de asesinar y "cocinar" a guatemalteco

08 de Junio de 2009, 10:16pm ET

BOSTON (AP) - Un entrenador de fútbol estadounidense y otro hombre presuntamente asesinaron a un traficante de cocaína guatemalteco para no pagarle un adeudo, desmembraron el cadáver y "cocinaron" los restos en una empresa de concreto, dijo el lunes la fiscalía.

Los hombres, identificados como Daniel Bradley, de 47 años, y Paul Moccia, de 48, se declararon el lunes inocentes de las acusaciones de asesinato que pesan en su contra por la desaparición del guatemalteco Angel Antonio Ramírez, un empleado de la construcción.

Moccia conoció a Ramírez cerca de la empresa de concreto, que es copropiedad de Bradley, y le disparó por la espalda con una pistola calibre .357, indicó el fiscal adjunto del Distrito de Norfolk, Robert Nelson.

Moccia le adeudaba a Ramírez unos 70.000 dólares derivados de drogas que le había comprado y decidió matarlo en vez de pagarle, dijeron las autoridades. Bradley desmembró los restos del guatemalteco e intentó deshacerse de ellos de una vez por todas, denunció Nelson.

"Fue cocinado", agregó.

Los fiscales no dijeron por qué llegaron a esa teoría o cómo el cadáver fue "cocinado" o desaparecido.

Los abogados defensores indicaron que sus clientes son inocentes y destacaron que la fiscalía no ha logrado presentar el cadáver.

La fiscalía considera que las pruebas forenses que se obtengan de la fábrica de concreto fortalecerán su caso en contra de los acusados, dijo Nelson. Los detectives hallaron manchas de sangre al interior de la fábrica de concreto RJ Bradley Co. Inc., agregó, así como en un par de botas de Bradley en casa de éste.

Bradley es un entrenador asistente de fútbol estadounidense en la Secundaria Xaverian Brothers. La escuela no respondió a los mensajes dejados en su buzón de voz después de la hora del cierre.

Moccia se dedica a cobrar cuotas de peaje en una carretera. Ambos permanecerán detenidos sin derecho a fianza.

La audiencia previa al juicio fue programada para el 7 de julio.

6 de Junio 2009

RAYO MATÓ 32 VACAS

Treinta y dos vacas quedaron infladas y tiesas al pie de un árbol, en una finca ganadera de San Vito, Coto Brus. Su dueño Rubén Naranjo, de 76 años, indicó que el hato costaba ¢20 millones, los ahorros de toda su vida. (Foto: Roberto Fernández, corresponsal)

Corresponsal

El finquero observaba alrededor de un árbol el esfuerzo de toda su vida.

Rubén Naranjo, de 76 años, encontró todo su ganado muerto, la mañana de ayer.

El finquero llegó para arrear las vacas a otro potrero donde pudieran alimentarse mejor, pero un rayo que cayó la noche del jueves fulminó las 32, valoradas en más de ¢20 millones. Esa era la inversión de toda su vida.

Su arduo trabajo cotidiano se vio truncado al encontrar las reses alrededor de un árbol, infladas como sapos gigantes y tiesas.

Era muy peligroso dejar estos animales descomponerse a la intemperie y en ese estado, por eso personeros de la Municipalidad de Coto Brus, encabezados por el propio alcalde Rafael Navarro, con maquinaria del ayuntamiento hicieron un hueco para enterrarlas.

Ahora don Rubén Naranjo deberá empezar de nuevo y desde cero.

David Carradine, the star of the 1970s television series “Kung Fu” and the title villain of the “Kill Bill” movies, has died in Thailand

David Carradine

June 4, 2009, 10:29 am

David Carradine Dies

By Dave Itzkoff

Mark Mainz/Getty Images David Carradine More Photos »

David Carradine, the star of the 1970s television series “Kung Fu” and the title villain of the “Kill Bill” movies, has died in Thailand, The Associated Press reported. The United States Embassy in Bangkok told The A.P. that Mr. Carradine had been found dead in his hotel suite in Bangkok, where he was working on a movie. He was 72.

Mr. Carradine was part of an acting family that included his father, John; his brother, Bruce, and half-brothers Keith and Robert; and his nieces Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton.

After a short run as the title character in the 1966 television adaptation of the Western “Shane,” he found fame in the 1972 series “Kung Fu” as Kwai Chang Caine, a wanderer raised by Shaolin monks to be a martial arts master. He enjoyed a career resurgence in recent years when he was cast by Quentin Tarantino in the action movies “Kill Bill: Vol. 1″ and “Vol. 2.”

Updated | 10:58 a.m. Thai police have told BBC News that Mr. Carradine was found on Thursday morning by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a rope around his neck.
June 4, 2009, 1:41 pm

Our Favorite David Carradine Moment

By Dave Itzkoff

The Superman monologue from “Kill Bill, Vol. 2″:

Related: David Carradine Dies

AN APPRECIATION

The yin-yang of David Carradine

He seemed at once calm and explosive. See: 'Kung Fu' and 'Kill Bill.'

By Reed Johnson
June 5, 2009

As an actor, and possibly as a human being, David Carradine was a walking yin-yang symbol, a bundle of opposites tightly stitched together.

As a younger man, his lean, taut frame suggested both graceful self-possession and a capacity for explosive violence. Several of his best roles, both in film and television, cast him as a thinking-person's action hero, poised in perpetual tension between contemplative inner peace and outward aggression and hostility.

In his most iconic role, Kwai Chang Caine, the philosophy-spouting, butt-kicking hero of ABC's drama "Kung Fu" (1972-75), he played a half-Chinese man who was raised by Shaolin monks. On the lam in the American Old West, in search of his half-brother, Caine (like his biblical namesake) was a man divided against himself: a soft-spoken, flute-playing martial arts demon; a wandering loner who reached deep into prairie folks' souls by uttering Zen-like paradoxes.

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  David Carradine Life in Pictures

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  David Carradine dies at 72; star of 'Kung Fu'

The show caught the tenor of its times. It arrived toward the tail-end of the hippie counterculture movement, when Americans were questioning "Establishment" authority and dabbling in Eastern mysticism, reading books such as Robert Pirsig's novel, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." A year earlier, the cult film "Billy Jack" had fused karate-macho antics with the figure of a rebellious antihero.

Caine, a kind of bareheaded, bare-footed, 19th century beatnik poet, reflected a national mood of vague spiritual yearning, mixed with unease over the durability of Western values, and partially prompted by the United States' dispiriting experience with the Vietnam War.

Three decades later, Quentin Tarantino would seize on Carradine's dualistic (and dueling) star persona when he cast him as the title character in "Kill Bill." The sprawling, two-part epic drew on Hong Kong martial arts movies and Italian spaghetti westerns, and was shaped by contrasting Eastern and Western notions of the aesthetics and metaphysics of violence.

The actor, who made more than 100 films over a more than 40-year career, was found dead on June 3 in his hotel room in Bangkok, where he had been on location shooting a movie. Details remain murky. Police reported that the actor had been found by a hotel maid, dead in a wardrobe with a rope around his neck and body. But Carradine's manager said the actor had died of natural causes.

A member of the dynastic Carradine acting clan, which also includes family patriarch John Carradine and half-siblings Keith and Robert, David Carradine studied music and served in the Army before taking up stage acting. He landed his first bit-part film role in an adaptation of Louis L'Amour's western novel "Taggart."

Carradine's rugged, hard-to-place features and his terse, sometimes laconic manner gave him the ability to be cast in roles as varied as Caine, folk troubadour Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby's "Bound for Glory" (1976), and as a renegade driver in Paul Bartel's 1975 apocalyptic thriller “Death Race 2000,” which prefigured George Miller's "Mad Max" films.

Destructive impulses, and the individual's struggle to master them and bend them toward good, was a recurring motif in Carradine's film and TV roles. Good men, in Carradine's acting universe, may harbor brutal instincts and yield to primitive reflexes. Bad men, despite their flaws, may adhere to their own rigid, if twisted, codes of honor.

In Walter Hill's 1980 western “The Long Riders,”, Carradine was cast with his brothers Keith and Robert as members of the outlaw Younger gang. The movie included a memorable scene in which Carradine squares off in a saloon knife fight, a riveting piece of cinematic choreography that invited viewers simply to enjoy the actor's physicality and calculated stoicism.

Carradine could evince a very convincing, sinewy toughness, one that he used in other roles to memorable effect. Caine's gently quizzical manner had been replaced by an insinuating, softly menacing voice and a hard stare. You wouldn't want to mess with this guy.

Carradine's martial arts proficiency was largely faked in "Kung Fu." But the actor later took up these skills and even turned out a video series in martial arts training that he produced and starred in. In fact, Carradine dined out on this martial-arts-guru image for years, even deploying it for tongue-in-cheek television commercials. And while his résumé kept growing, many of his late-career roles were forgettable lower-end features.

Married five times, Carradine had a personal life as volatile as any of his film roles. One reviewer described Carradine's autobiography, "Endless Highway," as a "dreary catalog of human disaster," i.e. the actor's own life. Characteristically candid in public -- sometimes disarmingly, sometimes abrasively -- he acknowledged struggling with both drug and alcohol abuse.

His complex nature flared up in public this spring during an American Cinematheque screening and discussion of "Bound for Glory," at which Carradine got into an extended shouting match with audience members and Haskell Wexler, the esteemed cinematographer who won an Oscar for "Bound for Glory." According to a lengthy account of the evening by entertainment writer Chris Willman, Carradine lashed out against labor unions and publicly berated Wexler for making "Bound for Glory" look too beautiful.

"I would have said, turn up the contrast, show the grit under the fingernails, don't make any beauty about it, make it [expletive] ugly," Willman quotes Carradine declaring to the stunned audience and the visibly (and understandably) infuriated Wexler.

Carradine will be remembered for his grittiness, to be sure, but also for imparting a certain strange beauty to ugly acts and dark arts.

reed.johnson@latimes.com

"Kung Fu" actor David Carradine found hanged in Thai hotel
BANGKOK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s U.S. television show "Kung Fu," was found naked and hanging dead from a rope in the closet of his luxury Bangkok hotel room on Thursday, Thai police said. No signs were found of other people in the room and the body of the 72-year-old actor was sent to a hospital for an autopsy, police said. David Carradine, the lean, laconic star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" and the arch villain of Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill," was found dead June 4 in a Bangkok hotel room.

A Thailand newspaper, the Nation, reported that a hotel maid found the actor's body. Thai police said he apparently had hanged himself with a curtain cord.

Mr. Carradine, 72, was in Bangkok to shoot his latest film, "Stretch," his manager, Chuck Binder, told the Associated Press.

Although his best-known roles celebrated his martial-arts prowess and his coiled-snake cool, he was a serious actor who appeared in more than 140 movies and worked with directors as varied as Martin Scorsese and Ingmar Bergman. He also was a member of a distinguished acting family, which included his father, John Carradine, who appeared in such movies as "Stagecoach" (1939), "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) and "The Ten Commandments" (1956). Mr. Carradine's four brothers and two daughters also are actors.

Tarantino once described Mr. Carradine as "one of the great mad geniuses of the acting community," linking him to other "mad genius" actors Jack Nicholson and Christopher Walken. "Mad" was, at times, as apt as "genius," as in 1975 when a nude Carradine ended up in jail after vandalizing a neighbor's house while tripping on peyote.

He played his first leading role, as a Depression-era union organizer, in a 1972 feature film, "Boxcar Bertha," where his director was Scorsese, making his own Hollywood debut. "Boxcar Bertha" co-starred Barbara Hershey, Mr. Carradine's partner at the time and the mother of his son Free (who later changed his name to Tom).

Soon afterward, he was cast in the role that made him a star, playing Kwai Chang Caine in the ABC-TV series "Kung Fu." From 1972 to 1975, Mr. Carradine as Caine, a Chinese American Shaolin monk, wandered barefoot through the American West righting wrongs and quietly dispensing koans of faux-Zen wisdom. He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine's grandson in the 1990s syndicated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues."

"I am Kung Fu," he told The Washington Post years later. "I mean I'm not [messing] around you know. . . . "I'm really into revolution, but it's the revolution of the body and spirit -- seeking illumination is what I'm doing."

For his role as folk singer and union organizer Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby's "Bound for Glory" (1976), he was named Best Actor by the National Board of Review and nominated for a Golden Globe. In "The Serpent's Egg" (1977), he played a Jewish alcoholic circus performer opposite Liv Ullmann in 1920s Germany. Although the movie is widely considered the low point in Bergman's directing career, Mr. Carradine received respectable notices.

He also won acclaim for his role in "The Long Riders" (1980), directed by Walter Hill. Mr. Carradine and his brothers Keith and Robert played the Younger brothers, members of the notorious James gang.

He also appeared in the occasional bomb, particularly in the 1980s when his reputation as a messy, temperamental drunk made him almost unemployable. He said he stopped drinking in 1996.

Alcohol did not always account for the low-quality of Mr. Carradine's projects. A 2008 TV mini-series called "Kung Fu Killer" also was forgettably bad. "Carradine, playing a character alternately called White Crane and the White Crane, brings new meaning to the word 'disheveled,' " Washington Post television critic Tom Shales wrote. "He looks like the bed got up on the wrong side of him."

He was born John Arthur Carradine in Hollywood on Dec. 8, 1936, the eldest son of John Carradine and Ardanelle Abigail McCool. He studied music theory and composition at what is now San Francisco State University but gravitated toward acting. He made his professional debut with the Theatre of the Golden Hind in Berkeley, dropped out of college and found the occasional role with the Shakespeare Repertory Theatre in San Francisco. He also sold encyclopedias.

Drafted into the Army, he formed an entertainment troupe and produced and starred in musicals, before being court-martialed for shoplifting from a base grocery store. Living in New York after being discharged, he played Laertes to his father's Hamlet at a theater on Long Island. He then signed a contract with Universal Studios and began appearing in small guest roles on television and supporting roles in movies.

He introduced himself to a new generation of movie-goers as the title character in Tarantino's over-the-top revenge epic, "Kill Bill," Volumes 1 and 2. In Vol. 1, released in 2003, he is a menacing voice on the phone; in Vol. 2, released the next year, he is revealed as a ruthless assassin and a doting father. For his performance in Vol. 2, he received a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe.

Mr. Carradine also composed and recorded more than 60 songs and was a painter, sculptor and the author of three books, including his autobiography, "Endless Highway" (1995)

In addition to his six-year relationship with Hershey (also known as Barbara Seagull), he was married to Donna Lee Brecht, Linda Gilbert, Gail Jensen and Coco d'Este. The marriages ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of four years, Annie Bierman; four children; and four stepchildren.

Brazilian air force reported spotting debris, including floating metallic pieces, a seat and oil slicks

Brazil: Air Force Finds Signs of Plane Wreckage

By Edward Cody and Sholnn Freeman

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 2, 2009; 1:43 PM

PARIS, June 2 -- Brazilian air force planes on Tuesday reported spotting debris, including floating metallic pieces, a seat and oil slicks, that authorities said could be from the Air France flight carrying 228 people that disappeared over the South Atlantic a day earlier during a nasty lightning storm.

The French government has vowed to keep searching for the missing jetliner as long as necessary, and ships and planes from a range of countries have converged on the vast expanse of ocean that constitutes the presumed crash zone.

In a statement posted on its Web site, the Brazilian air force said search planes sighted small pieces of aircraft debris in the ocean, although it was not immediately possible to identify them positively as belonging to the Air France plane. It said "metallic and nonmetallic" debris was found floating in two places about 36 miles apart along the missing plane's flight path, including an airplane seat, an orange buoy, a barrel, "small white pieces" and slicks of oil or kerosene.

A spokesman for the Brazilian air force, Col. Jorge Amaral, said in a televised statement that the debris was found about 390 miles (650 kilometers) northeast of the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha. Some of it was white in color, as was the missing plane, Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

However, Amaral said authorities will need to find a serial number or other identifying information in order to link the debris conclusively to the missing plane.

Before the discovery of the debris was reported, French Defense Ministry officials said a Breguet-Atlantic maritime surveillance plane had left France on Tuesday, along with a Falcon 50 surveillance craft, to join a fleet of Brazilian air force aircraft and a Senegal-based Breguet-Atlantic that have been crisscrossing a vast area between Brazil and West Africa to search for the plane. Two French navy ships, a landing vessel that steamed out of Portugal and a frigate that had been patrolling in the Caribbean, also headed for the zone, the ministry said.

The Brazilian navy said its ships are not expected to arrive on the scene until Wednesday. But it said three cargo ships in the area -- two Dutch-flagged and one French -- had been asked to make detours from their normal routes to assist with the search.

President Obama told French television stations that the United States is prepared to do everything it can to find out what happened to the plane.

Among the passengers on the flight were two Americans: Michael Harris, 60, a geologist for a U.S. energy company, and his wife, Anne Harris, news services reported. The couple, originally from Lafayette, La., had moved to Rio de Janeiro from Houston last year.

The Airbus 330-200 was last heard from early Monday.

France's junior minister for transportation, Dominique Bussereau, warned that the search for the remains of the plane and its passengers could continue for a long time. Wreckage from the twin-engine plane could be deep under the sea, he said, neutralizing any automatically generated emergency signals.

French Prime Minister François Fillon told lawmakers Tuesday that the Atlantic waters in the search zone are up to 23,000 feet deep.

That Atlantic zone falls between normal radar coverage from either Brazil or West Africa, although contact remains via radio, authorities here said. Although the plane's position was known as of the final satellite messages, French officials and airline pilots noted that the plane could have plummeted directly into the water or flown on for hundreds of miles, making the search zone a long, broad path across the ocean between northeastern Brazil and far western Africa.

"This will be a long investigation," Bussereau said in a separate radio interview. "It could be several days, several weeks or several months."

Given the vastness of the ocean and the uncertainty about where the plane went down, the crash site might never be pinpointed, some experts said before the debris was sighted. The Pentagon dispatched a surveillance aircraft and an Air Force search-and-rescue team from a U.S. Southern Command air base in El Salvador.

French officials reportedly asked the Obama administration whether U.S. spy satellites or listening posts might provide clues to the fate of the jetliner.

"If an airplane went down in the mid-Atlantic, it could be very difficult to find any physical wreckage," said John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The mid-oceans are one of the remotest parts of the world. It's like going to the North Pole."

French officials emphasized that they had no clear explanation for what happened to the plane. Bussereau said lightning alone was unlikely to cause such a sudden crash and suggested "a succession of extraordinary events" must have been responsible. "But we can't exclude anything, as we don't have any element at all," he added.

The plane had taken off Sunday night from Rio de Janeiro, bound for Paris. It carried 12 crew members and 216 passengers, a mix of nationalities reflecting the democratization of air travel: 61 French citizens and 58 Brazilians, but also nine Chinese, nine Italians, six Swiss, five British, five Lebanese, four Hungarians, two Americans and others from a total of 32 countries, from Estonia to Gambia to Morocco to the Philippines.

Air France said the plane was commanded by a veteran pilot with 11,000 hours in the air, including 1,700 at the controls of an Airbus A330. The aircraft used for Flight 447, the company said, was put into service in 2005 and had been inspected April 16 without any anomalies.

The A330-200 is a common jet on international routes, particularly transatlantic flights, and analysts said it has an enviable safety record with many of the world's major carriers. Northwest, which recently merged with Delta Air Lines, has 11 A330-200 planes and 21 of the larger A330-300 models. US Airways has nine A330-300s, according to Airbus.

Experts said the best clues to the cause of Flight 447's disappearance undoubtedly would come from the plane's "black box" data and voice recorders -- if they can be recovered.

Typically, the black boxes have tracking beacons that activate when the boxes get wet, and the radio signal works for about 30 days. But search teams have to be within 4,000 to 5,000 feet of the recorders to pick up the signals, so among the key questions are how long the plane kept flying after its last automatic satellite transmission and why no mayday call was received from the pilots.

Hans Weber, an aviation technology consultant, said airplane satellite systems have their limits. "Just like your car, you may have all this information, but if you had a catastrophic accident, the GPS system will not survive," he said.

The most deadly previous incident involving an Air France plane occurred in 2000, when a Concorde slammed into the ground shortly after takeoff in Paris, killing 109 people aboard the supersonic aircraft along with four others in a hotel that was demolished by the crash.

The world's deadliest crash was a 1977 collision between two Boeing 747s at Tenerife in the Canary Islands that killed 583 people.

Freeman reported from Washington. Staff writer William Branigin contributed to this report.

The disappearance of an Air France jet en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday evening left seasoned crash investigators with a mystery to plu

Search Is On for Wreckage of Missing Air France Jet

Ricardo Moraes/Associated Press

Brazil's Vice President Jose Alencar spoke with the media after visiting relatives of missing passengers.

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. and CHRISTINE NEGRONI

Published: June 1, 2009

The disappearance of an Air France jet en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday evening left seasoned crash investigators with a mystery to plumb and very little data to work with.

The Airbus A330-200, carrying 228 passengers and crew members, is believed to have vanished in a towering thunderstorm with no word from its pilots that they were in crisis.

The plane had beamed out several signals that its electrical systems had malfunctioned and, according to one report, that it had lost cabin pressure. The signals were sent not as distress calls, however, but as automated reports to Air France’s maintenance system, and were not read for hours, until air traffic controllers realized that the plane’s crew had not radioed in on schedule.

As a search for wreckage began over a vast swath of ocean between Brazil and the African coast, experts struggled to offer plausible theories as to how a well-maintained modern jetliner, built to withstand electrical and physical buffeting far greater than nature usually offers, could have gone down so silently and mysteriously.

There were no suggestions on Monday that a bomb, a hijacking or sabotage was to blame. Whatever of the plane’s final minutes was recorded in its black box may never be known, because it is presumably at the bottom of the Atlantic. As is common with trans-ocean flights, it was too far out over the sea to be tracked on land-based radar from Brazil or Senegal. Whether its location was captured by satellite or other planes’ radar is not known yet.

The plane, Flight AF 447, was scheduled to arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport at 11:10 a.m. local time. Stricken relatives descended on Terminal 2D, where the airline established a crisis center. A black-robed priest was making his way past hordes of police officers and journalists to comfort relatives of those on the flight.

“Air France is extremely distraught, and the whole team of Air France is suffering,” Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the chief executive of Air France-KLM, told reporters in Paris. “We would like to say to the relatives of the victims that we are totally with them and will make every effort to help them.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said: “It’s a tragic accident. The chances of finding survivors are tiny.”

There were people of 32 nationalities aboard, including 58 Brazilians, 61 French and 2 Americans, Air France said in a statement based on information from Brazilian authorities.

The flight took off from Rio de Janeiro at 7:30 p.m. local time (6:30 p.m. Eastern time), and its last verbal communication with air traffic control was three hours later, at 10:33, according to a statement from Brazil’s civil aviation agency. At that time, the flight was at 35,000 feet and traveling at 520 miles per hour.

About a half-hour later, it apparently encountered an electrical storm with “very heavy turbulence,” Air France said. The last communication from it came at 11:14 — a series of automatic messages indicating it had suffered an electrical-system malfunction. The Associated Press reported that it also suffered a loss of cabin pressure.

Brazilian officials said the plane disappeared over the Atlantic somewhere between a point 186 miles northeast of their coastal city Natal and the Cape Verde islands off Africa. The area is known as the “horse latitudes,” where the tropics of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres mix, sometimes creating violent and unpredictable thunderstorms that can rise to 55,000 feet, higher than commercial jetliners can go.

Experts were at a loss to explain fatal damage from lightning or a tropical storm, both of which jetliners face routinely, despite efforts to avoid them — as much out of concern for passengers’ nerves as for the planes’ safety.

Pilots are trained to go over or around thunderstorms rather than through them. Brigitte Barrand, an Air France spokeswoman, said the highly experienced pilot had clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours on Airbus 330 jets.

“A completely unexpected situation occurred on board the aircraft,” Mr. Gourgeon told France’s LCI television.
“Lightning alone is not enough to explain the loss of this plane, and turbulence alone is not enough,” he said. “It is always a combination of factors.” By some estimates, jetliners are typically hit by lightning at least once a year. But the strike normally travels across the plane’s aluminum skin and out the tail or awingtip. Passengers are insulated in the nonconductive, largely plastic interior, and vital equipment is shielded.

A loss of cabin pressure could suggest a break in the fuselage, but planes are built to withstand buffeting from a storm’s updrafts and downdrafts. It could also be a consequence of an electrical failure, if the plane’s air compressors stop working.

Large hailstones created by some thunderstorms have been known to break windshields or turbine blades, though pilots would be likely to rapidly report something like that.

The missing aircraft was relatively new, having gone into service in April 2005. Its last hangar maintenance check was on April 16, Air France said. No Airbus A330-200 passenger flight ever had a fatal crash, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

Hans Weber, head of the Tecop aviation consulting firm in San Diego, offered a hypothesis about the episode, based on his knowledge of severe losses of altitude by two Qantas jets last year.

The new Airbus 330 was a “fly-by-wire” plane, in which signals to move the flaps are sent through electric wires to small motors in the wings rather than through cables or hydraulic tubing. Fly-by-wire systems can automatically conduct maneuvers to prevent an impending crash, but some Airbus jets will not allow a pilot to override the self-protection mechanism.

On both Qantas flights, the planes’ inertia sensors sent faulty information into the flight computers, making them take emergency measures to correct problems that did not exist, sending the planes into sudden dives.

If the inertia sensor told a computer that a plane was stalling, forcing it to drop the nose and dive to pick up airspeed, and there was simultaneously a severe downdraft in the storm turbulence, “that would be hard to recover from,” Mr. Weber said.

The Qantas flight QF72 which plunged over Western Australia was also an Airbus A330, an incident regarding irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system.

— scarlett.88, Melbourne, Australia

Recommend Recommended by 28 Readers

4.

June 01, 2009 8:29 am

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I was on this same exact flight a week ago. Also encountered bad turbulence an hour into it. Very sad news - will be praying for the passengers' families.

— Crystal, Paris

Recommend Recommended by 70 Readers

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June 01, 2009 8:29 am

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Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago of 21 islands, not just one island. I would like to express my sympathies for the families of the passengers and crew.

— slo, Italy

Recommend Recommended by 20 Readers

6.

June 01, 2009 8:29 am

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Condolences to family and friends of those on flight 447.

— Drew, Los Angeles, CA

Recommend Recommended by 10 Readers

7.

June 01, 2009 8:29 am

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I believe this may be the first incidence of passenger fatalities, if confirmed, of a A 330. The plane has been in service for several years (there was an incidence of sudden drop in altitude on a Qantas flight and injuries sustained.

Thoughts and prayers with the families that the A 330 was able to survive.

— RS, NC

Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers

8.

June 01, 2009 8:29 am

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I arrived on a COPA flight at 6:00 AM in Rio de Janeiro and saw from the window the fated Air Chance plane. What struck me was its size. These huge planes mean huge tragedies. Although less profitable, wouldn´t it make more sense to fly smaller jets (as does COPA) and have them re-fuel en route (say, Paris-Guadeloupe-Rio de Janeiro)?
Joseph Henry Vogel

— Anon, PR

Recommend Recommended by 25 Readers

9.

June 01, 2009 8:29 am

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So very tragic...and so many lives. I can only hope and pray that it's a communications problem rather than an accident.

— Donna A., Delmar, NY

Recommend Recommended by 18 Readers

10.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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air bus has a history of the tails snapping off during turbulence. pray for thier souls.

— kearnyshea, kearny nj

Recommend Recommended by 10 Readers

11.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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How could it take off at 7:00AM and lose contact at 8:10PM (both local time)?

— Cal, Weaverville, NC

Recommend Recommended by 3 Readers

12.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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This is very sad news, I really hope they may yet arrive safely.

— Drew, Shanghai, China

Recommend Recommended by 10 Readers

13.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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Per the suggestion that using smaller aircraft on the Rio-Paris route, requiring a fuel stop, is safer than using an Airbus A-330, shows a lack of understanding of the inherent costs of landings and take-offs - along with the safety factor itself.

In addition, whenever a flight of that type is overdue 3 hours, there is not a positive ending and I am so sorry about that. If the aircraft had made an emergency landing or a ditching, Air France would know about it. No communication from an aircraft is very bad news.

— JanetteR, Roanoke, VA

Recommend Recommended by 104 Readers

14.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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I spend a huge amount of time on airplanes. During the past 30 years domestic carriers have become increasingly careful about avoiding turbulence and weather disturbances whenever possible. While this results in flight delays, the accident rate from weather-related causes on domestic carriers has declined significantly over the past three decades.

I'm not sure that all the European carriers have the same philosophy. I have taken four Air France flights over the past three weeks, and even to my casual eye, it seemed that weather issues were not taken as seriously as they are by American carriers.

— calyban, fairfax, california

Recommend Recommended by 182 Readers

15.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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from the airbus website:
The A330/A340 Family concept is unique: one basic airframe is available in six different configurations, powered by two or four engines. The twin-engine A330 is optimised for highest revenue generation and the lowest operating costs from regional segments to extended range routes, while the four-engine A340 provides versatility on the most demanding long-range and ultra-long-range flights.

— J. Smith, Fla.

Recommend Recommended by 12 Readers

16.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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This is very sad...I think that someone should be looking into the way Airbus planes drop out of the sky in any extreme. I fully do not believe that Airbus planes are safe when it comes to any extreme weather or atmospheric condition. If we look back at accidents where it was not pilot error, but something beyond control, we see that Airbus tends to drop out of the sky.
At least we still make quality airliners in the USA!
My deepest sympathies for those families who are affected.

— Vinmega, North Jerz

Recommend Recommended by 11 Readers

17.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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How do you lose a plane of that size? Wouldn't there be wreckage somewhere on land or floating debris in the water?

— Nhboat70, Concord, NH

Recommend Recommended by 11 Readers

18.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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It is certainly humbling to know that when you get on a plane, you are risking your very life every time. You have no idea what has happened prior to your getting onboard. You have no idea when the airline foolishly cut costs and did not perform a formerly routine maintenance check or laid off someone experienced who could see errors before they became problems.

These aircraft are ceertainly marvels of our time but with as many souls as they carry, certainly, much can be done to make them safer and less risky to the public.

— jachamp, San Antonio

Recommend Recommended by 87 Readers

19.

June 01, 2009 9:08 am

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The NYT story states that the plane was lost from radar 1 hour after departure. This is incorrect. It was 4 hours after departure. Had it been 1 hr after, the plane would have gone down in Bahia, not the Atlantic.

— J.Bleil, Valrico, FL

Recommend Recommended by 54 Readers

20.

June 01, 2009 9:30 am

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All we can do now is pray, hope, and wait for more information. Aviation is still the safest way, but one accident is too many.

— Jason Wolffe, Massachusetts

Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers

21.

June 01, 2009 9:30 am

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Oh no... oh no... I can only imagine the excruciating grief and pain the families must feel right now.
To Anon, above, large planes are huge tragedies, yes, but they are also much safer than smaller jets. That doesn't make this feel any better, though...

— LH, Washington, DC

Recommend Recommended by 23 Readers

22.

June 01, 2009 9:30 am

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It's amazing to me that I can go to an electronics store and buy a $150 GPS device that shows my exact location anywhere in the world. Here we have hundreds of innocent people flying through the air at 400 miles per hour and the only means we have to keep track of them is a blip on a 50 year radar machine.

— Emilio, Miami

Recommend Recommended by 273 Readers

23.

June 01, 2009 9:30 am

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At this point ,how may one comment?
We all hope not to have a part in such
a possible disaster.

— Carlyle Trevellian, NYC

Recommend Recommended by 29 Readers

24.

June 01, 2009 9:30 am

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I fly frequently and often take flights throughout Asia and the US. There are NEVER any crashes on Chinese airlines. Why is this?

— Pelham, Asia

Recommend Recommended by 11 Readers

25.

June 01, 2009 9:30 am

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Anon - I don't think you saw this same jet, particularly because the one that crashed was an Airbus 330 - it's a relatively small plane compared to the huge Boeing 747 that they fly from Paris to Rio. For my trip, we took the 747 to Rio and the Airbus back. And as far as I know, the larger 747 is actually safer.

— Crystal, Paris

"I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences.......P. O

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George Tiller Killed: Abortion Doctor Shot At Church

President Obama issued the following statement about Dr. George Tiller's murder:

"I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

***UPDATE*** At an afternoon news conference, Wichita Police confirmed that a suspect, a 51-year-old man, had been arrested for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, reports KSN-3 News:

The suspect is currently facing one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault for threatening onlookers who tried to intervene.
Several witnesses to the shooting attempted to intervene and chase down Tiller's killer, but he was able to flee in his blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB. Several hours later, the suspect was arrested near Gardner, Kansas on Interstate 35, reports the Kansas City Star.
A Wichita city official says a suspect is in custody in the shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller.

The city official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The official did not provide additional details.

An attorney for Tiller, Dan Monnat, says the doctor was shot Sunday as he served as an usher during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church. Monnat said Tiller's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time of the shooting.

WICHITA, Kansas -- Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas doctor whose clinic received national attention for performing late-term abortions, was shot to death as he entered his Wichita church on Sunday.

"Members of the congregation who were inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting were being kept inside the church by police," the Wichita Eagle reported, "and those arriving were being ushered into the parking lot."

Media reports said the suspected killer fled the scene in a blue Taurus. Police described him as a white male in his 50s or 60s.

Tiller has been among the few U.S. physicians performing late-term abortion, making him a favored target of anti-abortion protesters. He testified that he and his family have suffered years of harassment and threats. His clinic was the site of the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" protests marked by mass demonstrations and arrests. His clinic was bombed in 1985, and an abortion opponent shot him in both arms in 1993.

Tiller's clinic also provided group and individual counseling, as well as chaplain and funeral services for people who were grieving.

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which runs a "Tiller Watch" feature on its website, released a statement condemning the shooting. "We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller's family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

Tiller remained prominent in the news in recent years, in part because of an investigation begun by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, an abortion opponent.

Prosecutors had alleged that Tiller had gotten second opinions from a doctor who was essentially an employee of his, not independent as state law requires, but a jury in March acquitted him of all 19 misdemeanor counts against him.

Abortion opponents also questioned then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' ties to Tiller before the Senate confirmed her this year as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. Tiller donated thousands of dollars to Sebelius over the years.

From the Kansas City Star:

Wichita abortion provider George Tiller shot to death at Wichita church

BY STAN FINGER AND JOE RODRIGUEZ

The Wichita Eagle

President Obama said this afternoon that he was "shocked and outraged" by the killing of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was shot while attending church in east Wichita.

Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said at a news conference late this afternoon that a suspect in the shooting was in custody and on his way back to Wichita.

"However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence," the president said in a statement issued by the White House.

The suspect, a 51-year-old male, was arrested without incident on I-35 in Johnson County about three hours after the shooting, Stolz said.

Police did not release the suspect's name.

The investigation is in its "infancy stages," Stolz said. He said the shooting appeared to be an isolated act.

Tiller, 67, was shot once just after 10 a.m. in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th St., where he was a member of the congregation.

Stolz said Tiller was shot in the foyer of the church. There were three or four eyewitnesses, he said. Six to 12 people were in the foyer at the time of the shooting.

Two men attempted to apprehend the suspect, but he pointed a gun at them and threatened them before fleeing, Stolz said.

The suspect's car -- a powder blue Ford Taurus registered to an owner in Merriam -- was spotted just south of Gardner by two Johnson County Sheriff's deputies. The Sheriff's Office had suspected that the man would be coming back to his home on I-35, and the deputies waited for him.

As the car was spotted going north on the highway, the deputies followed and were quickly joined by three other sheriff's patrol cars.

Lt. Mike Pfannenstiel of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office said officers pulled the car over just south of the main Gardner exit and got out with guns drawn. The man then got out of his car with his hands up.

"We took him down without incident," Pfannenstiel said, adding that the man appeared to be driving the speed limit and made no attempt to elude the deputies.

Stolz said police anticipate the suspect will be charged with murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Investigators will present the case to the Sedgwick County District Attorney's Office on Monday.

The District Attorney's Office will determine what charges will be filed, Stolz said. Federal charges are also a possibility, he said.

Tiller was serving as an usher at the church, one of six ushers listed in the church bulletin. He was handing out bulletins to people going into the sanctuary minutes before being shot.

Tiller's family issued a statement through Wichita attorneys Dan Monnat and Lee Thompson:

"Today we mourn the loss of our husband, father and grandfather. Today's event is an unspeakable tragedy for all of us and for George's friends and patients.

"This is particularly heart wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace."

Wichita police Capt. Brent Allred said that several law enforcement agencies -- including the FBI and the KBI -- have been called in to help with the case.

Allred said the 10 a.m. church service had already begun at the time of the shooting.

Homicide detectives and Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston arrived at the church after the shooting.

Members of the congregation who were inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting were kept inside by police, and those arriving were ushered into the parking lot immediately after the shooting.

Witnesses later were transported downtown for interviews and other members of the congregation were slowly released from inside the sanctuary.

By 12:30 p.m., what appeared to be a body was taken away in an SUV with a patrol car behind it.

At about 12:40, a police dog was taken to check out a black SUV. An investigator wrote down the tag number on the vehicle.

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5107 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

"It's a terrible loss. I'm just really sad about the whole thing," said a former employee of the clinic who asked not to be identified. "He was a great guy. I understand people were against a lot of what he did, but for those who he helped, they'll never forget the kind of person he was."

Mark Mitchell, who lives near where the shooting occurred, said he knew Tiller attended Reformation Lutheran Church because of the periodic protests there and media coverage.

He said the protests would sometimes be as large as two dozen people. The last protest he can remember there was in the fall.

"We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down," anti-abortion group Operation Rescue said in a statement on its Web site. "Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller's family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986, and was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

No arrests were made in the 1986 bombing.

Sgt. Bart Brunscheen of the Wichita Police Department said earlier today that there has been no activity today at Tiller's clinic, although security crews were being brought in to make sure the building was secure. Officials also were going to check the clinic's security cameras to see if there was any activity over night.

Tiller and his clinic have faced continuous threats and lawsuits. A Wichita jury ruled in March that he was not guilty on 19 criminal charges he faced for allegedly violating a state law requiring an independent second physician's concurring opinion before performing later term abortions. Immediately following the ruling in this criminal case, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts made public a similar complaint against Tiller that was originally filed in December 2008.

Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who conducted an investigation into Tiller, said in a statement he was "stunned by this lawless and violent act, which must be condemned and should be met with the full force of law. We join in lifting prayer that God's grace and presence rest with Dr. Tiller's family and friends."

Check Kansas.com for updates.

Karine Ruby, a former Olympic snowboarding champion died Friday in a climbing accident

ESPN

Champion snowboarder falls to death

CHAMONIX, France -- Karine Ruby, a former Olympic snowboarding champion who had been training to become a mountain guide, died Friday in a climbing accident on Mont Blanc. She was 31.

[+] Enlarge

Boris Horvat/Getty ImagesKarine Ruby, a gold medalist at the 1998 Nagano Games, had been training to become a mountain guide. She was 31.

Ruby was roped to other climbers when she and some members of the group fell into a deep crack in the glacier on the way down the mountain, Chamonix police official Laurent Sayssac said.

A 38-year-old man from the Paris region also died in the fall, and a 27-year-old man was evacuated by helicopter with serious injuries and hospitalized, Sayssac added.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon called Ruby an "exceptional sportswoman."

"Karine incarnated the emergence of snowboarding in France," Fillon said in a statement. "The people of France will hold on to the memory of her talent and her joie de vivre."

Ruby won a gold medal in the giant slalom at the 1998 Nagano Olympics and a silver in the parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

She was a six-time world champion with 65 snowboard World Cup victories.

She retired after the 2006 Turin Olympics, where she was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the snowboardcross event.

Ruby had since been working toward becoming a mountain guide and was expected to finish her training in the coming weeks.

Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press