The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Pilots in Asiana crash relied on automatic equipment for airspeed
- Remains of kidnapped journalist believed found in Honduras
- Fugitive Snowden likely Venezuela bound, says U.S. journalist
| Pilots in Asiana crash relied on automatic equipment for airspeed Posted: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The pilots aboard the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed in San Francisco relied on automatic equipment - an auto-throttle system - to maintain airspeed and did not realize the plane was flying too slowly until it was just 200 feet (60 meters) above the ground, the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday. In her third detailed briefing on Saturday's crash that killed two Chinese passengers and injured more than 180 other people, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman also said two flight attendants were ejected from the plane after its tail hit a seawall in front of the runway and was torn off. Both were found injured but alive on the side of the runway. Hersman said many questions remained about the incident. The South Korean airline's flight crew members were not tested for drugs or alcohol after the crash, a requirement for pilots of U.S.-based carriers involved in accidents, she said. The accounts given to investigators by the pilots, as relayed by Hersman, confirmed information from the plane's flight data recorder that showed the plane was traveling 25 percent below its target airspeed as it came in for landing. While she has declined to speculate on the cause of the crash, much of the information released by the NTSB suggests pilot error as a main focus of the investigation. The pilot in charge of landing the plane on Saturday was in training on the 777 and was roughly halfway through the process, while seated next to him was a co-pilot on his first flight as an instructor. Both were experienced pilots, although they had not flown together before, Hersman said. "At about 500 feet, he realized that they were low," Hersman told reporters, referring to the instructor pilot's account of the failed last-second attempts to avoid Saturday's disaster. "Between 500 and 200 feet (150 and 60 meters), they had a lateral deviation and they were low. They were trying to correct at that point." Referring to the instructor pilot, she said it was not until 200 feet that "he recognized the auto-throttles were not maintaining speed" and tried to abort the landing. Hersman had previously said that the plane had been at an altitude of 200 feet 16 seconds before crashing. Three of the four pilots on board were in the cabin during the landing, although only two could see the runway, Hersman said, citing the interviews by investigators with the crew. Hersman said an examination of the wreckage showed that the auto-throttle was "armed," but it was not clear if it had been properly engaged or had somehow failed before the plane slowed to a near-stall and hit the ground. "We need to understand a little better" how the auto-throttle is used, she said. "They had set speed at 137 knots (158 mph), and he assumed that the auto-throttles were maintaining speed," Hersman said of the instructor pilot. She noted that the pilots were responsible for maintaining airspeed. "We have a flying pilot and two other pilots in the cockpit and they have a monitoring function," she said. "One of the critical things that needs to be monitored on an approach to landing is speed. So we need to understand what was going on in the cockpit and also what was going on with the aircraft." 'RAMPANT SPECULATION' The world's largest pilots union rebuked the NTSB for its handling of the crash investigation, saying the agency had released too much information too quickly, which could lead to wrong conclusions and compromise safety. Releasing data from the flight's black boxes without full investigative information for context "has fueled rampant speculation" about the cause of the crash, the Air Line Pilots Association International said in a statement. Hersman rejected the criticism. "We work for the traveling public," she said. "We feel it is important to show our work." Aviation consultant Hans Weber, the president of TECOP International, Inc., said the accident may revive a long-running debate over whether pilots' increasing reliance on automated flight systems has taken a toll on their "hand-flying" skills. Maintaining proper airspeed and altitude is "the most basic responsibility of the pilot, like breathing in and out," Weber said. But it could be the case, he added, that "pilots are paying attention to the computer rather than paying attention to the fundamentals." Hersman did not comment on whether anyone in addition to the two flight attendants was ejected from the plane, though the two teenage Chinese students who died were found outside the aircraft. One of them may have been run over by an emergency vehicle, San Francisco fire department officials have said, but the local coroner has not yet released autopsy results showing the cause of death. Asiana Airlines Chief Executive Yoon Young-doo arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday to meet with U.S. investigators, Asiana staff and survivors of the crash. Hersman also confirmed witness accounts that at least one emergency escape chute had deployed inside the aircraft, trapping a flight attendant. The pilot who was sitting in the cabin worked to free her, Hersman said. "I saw a leg sticking out between the slide and the wall. It kept moving," passenger Eugene Rah said in an interview on Monday. He said he and a man he believed was a crew member struggled to free her, adding: "He was asking me if I had anything sharp, but these days nobody can be on board with anything sharp." She was eventually freed and hospitalized with serious injuries, Rah said. (Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke and Alwyn Scott; Writing by Jonathan Weber, Editing by Peter Henderson and Will Dunham) |
| Remains of kidnapped journalist believed found in Honduras Posted: TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran police said on Tuesday they believe a severed head and other body parts found in a region of the country ravaged by Mexican drug cartels belong to a popular television journalist kidnapped last month. Honduran police chief Juan Bonilla said officers found the clothing Anibal Barrow was last seen wearing and a savings account booklet in his name near a partially buried and decomposing headless torso in the northern city of Villanueva. The evidence suggested the body, which had also had its arms and legs removed, belonged to Barrow, Bonilla said. Later on Tuesday, police said they had also found the victim's head, arms, legs and feet. Four people have been arrested in connection with the killing, and police are looking for six other suspects, Bonilla said, adding that no motive for the murder has been established. Lying about 100 miles (165 km) north of Tegucigalpa, Villanueva is next to San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city. Violence linked to organized crime in Honduras has surged in recent years, partly due to the presence of Mexican drug gangs that use the country as a transit point for contraband. Barrow, 58, a popular morning news anchor on Globo TV, one of Honduras' largest broadcasters, was abducted by armed men on June 24 in downtown San Pedro Sula. His death would put the number of murdered Honduran journalists since 2010 at 28, according to the country's human rights commission. It would also be the first time a journalist had been decapitated and dismembered in Honduras. "This horrendous crime intimidates all Honduran journalists. We strongly urge authorities to clarify ... whether or not the motive (for the crime) was his profession," said Juan Mairena, president of the country's journalist association. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, with 87 killings per 100,000 in 2012, and San Pedro Sula is the world's most murderous city. (Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Xavier Briand and Mohammad Zargham) |
| Fugitive Snowden likely Venezuela bound, says U.S. journalist Posted: RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden will likely accept asylum in Venezuela to escape prosecution in the United States, said Glenn Greenwald, the U.S. journalist who first published the secret documents that Snowden leaked. In an interview immediately after speaking to Snowden by online chat on Tuesday, Greenwald said that Venezuela - one of three Latin American countries that have offered Snowden asylum - is the one most likely to guarantee his safety, especially as the United States pressures other nations not to take him if he is able to leave his current limbo at a Russian airport. Nicaragua and Bolivia have also said they would accept Snowden but Venezuela is better poised "to get him safely from Moscow to Latin America and to protect him once he's there," Greenwald said. "They're a bigger country, a stronger country and a richer country with more leverage in international affairs." WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that has been advising Snowden on his legal options in the search for asylum, suggested earlier on Tuesday that new developments in Snowden's search could unfold on Wednesday. Greenwald, though, said a resolution to the crisis is still unclear and could take "days or hours or weeks." Greenwald, a blogger and columnist for the London-based Guardian newspaper, said he based his opinion on an "informed guess" after recent contacts with Snowden. Those discussions, he said, also lead him to believe that the trove of documents that Snowden took from the U.S. National Security Agency, or NSA, remains safely out of the hands of any foreign governments. Greenwald returned to his home in Rio de Janeiro after a June meeting with Snowden in Hong Kong, from where Greenwald published the first of many reports that rattled the U.S. intelligence community by disclosing the breadth and depth of alleged surveillance by the NSA on telephone and internet usage of U.S. citizens. The reports also appear to shed light on efforts by U.S. intelligence to get similar data in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. At first, Greenwald lost contact with Snowden as the former contractor travelled from Hong Kong to Russia in search of a destination that would shield him from U.S. prosecutors. On Saturday, however, Snowden reached out to Greenwald via an encrypted internet chat service the two use to communicate. SNOWDEN'S CHALLENGE Since then, Greenwald said, Snowden has explained his options but given no clear sign of how soon he might travel. While Russia has denied him entry beyond the international area of a Moscow airport terminal, Snowden has had Internet access and been able to communicate with those seeking to help him. "He's not in anyone's custody or detention and never has been," Greenwald said. Snowden's challenge, he added, is "figuring out how to get to the country that has offered him asylum" despite the efforts of the United States, which Greenwald characterized as "the rogue, lawless empire that has proven itself willing to engage in rogue behaviour to prevent him physically from getting there." Greenwald dismissed suggestions that Snowden's passage through China and Russia had given authorities in either country the opportunity to seize the intelligence in his possession. "He gave no information of any kind to the Chinese government or the Russian government," Greenwald said. Media reports have said Snowden is travelling with numerous laptop computers but Greenwald said the former contractor is not foolish enough to store information where it could be easily seized. "There are all sorts of smarter and safer ways for someone who knows what they're doing - and he knows what he's doing - to store and carry large amounts of data." Greenwald is facing pressure of his own as he filters through the more than 5,000 documents, a sliver of the entire trove, that Snowden gave him. In addition to a media onslaught and criticism by opponents of the leaks back in the United States, Greenwald said he may have already been targeted by intelligence forces. While in Hong Kong, he said he told his long-time boyfriend, a Brazilian communications student, on an Internet call that he would send him some of the documents by email. Two days later, Greenwald said, his boyfriend's laptop went missing from their Rio home. Greenwald said he has no evidence of a break-in, but that "obviously it's a possibility." Now, Greenwald said, he is focused on digesting the rest of the documents and writing additional stories, a process he expects to last months. Future coverage, he said, would shed more light on how the NSA collects data and interacts with telecommunications, software companies and other intelligence agencies in the United States. Without giving further details, Greenwald said the bulk of his energy would go toward figuring out how to corroborate and explain what is often highly technical and arcane subject matter in the documents. "You can really alienate people with the technological and legal complexity of the stories." Despite Snowden's recent association with WikiLeaks, which in recent years upended intelligence circles with high-profile military leaks of its own, Greenwald said Snowden is unlikely to disclose the rest of his intelligence in the large, unprocessed quantities that WikiLeaks has used in the past. "If he had wanted a WikiLeaks-style document dump he could have gone to them in the first instance," Greenwald said. Greenwald said he has for years sought to scrutinize and draw attention to the scope of U.S. intelligence gathering. "I have been trying to do everything possible to expose the excesses of the NSA and the dangers of extreme secrecy behind which the U.S. government operates," he said. "So to be essentially given thousands of top secret documents that prove all the things I have been saying ... and much more ... is very invigorating." |
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