June 5, 2009
AIR FRANCE CRASH - Crash mystery deepensFERNANDO DE NORONHA (Brazil) - THE mystery surrounding the crash of an Air France plane off the coast of Brazil deepened on Friday after Brazilian officials said items they had pulled from the sea were not in fact debris from the downed Airbus.
The search by ships for wreckage from Air France flight AF 477, which came down early Monday as it was flying from Rio to Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board, continued in a zone where confirmed items from the plane had been spotted earlier in the week.
'Up to now, no material from the plane has been recovered,' Brigadier Ramon Cardoso, director of Brazilian air traffic control, told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife late on Thursday.
That contradicted a statement Cardoso made earlier Thursday when he said a palette and two buoys plucked from the Atlantic by navy crews were the first pieces of the Air France crash.
In fact, Cardoso admitted later, they were nothing more than sea 'trash,' probably from a ship, as was a big oil patch originally described as a fuel slick from the French jet.
Several Brazilian navy vessels are looking for debris from the plane, including a seat and a big chunk of what appeared to be fuselage, sighted by air force aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Defense Minister Nelson Jobim has said there was 'no doubt' that the debris spotted from the air came from flight AF 477, and that they marked the area close to where the plane hit the ocean.
The French government, which is in charge of the probe into the crash, has sent investigators to Brazil to inspect any debris that could be recovered from the zone, around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) off-shore, and take them back to France.
Speculation over what caused the accident has ranged from a massive, lightning-packed storm in the area at the time, to turbulence, to pilot error or a combination of factors.
I feel SO sorry for the people on the plane. Innocoent lives are always killed... Is it because they are unlucky, or is it that God is unfair? Even if the plane is found, the passengers might have died already as it has been many days since they had food to eat.Friday, June 05, 2009
June 5, 2009
11 bodies found in carMEXICO CITY - MEXICAN police found 11 bodies inside an abandoned car in the border state of Sonora on Thursday, and prosecutors attributed the killings to drug traffickers battling for control of the region.
Sonora's state prosecutors said in a statement that the men had been shot to death and nine of them had their legs and arms cut off.
They were found inside a sport utility vehicle, which had been stolen in neighbouring Arizona, on a road between the towns of Caborca and Sonoyta.
A threatening message was left with the bodies but prosecutors didn't say what the message said.
Prosecutors said the bodies have not been identified and the killings are linked to a fight between local drug traffickers and another group trying to move in.
Police are investigating whether the killings are tied to an attack on the village of Plutarco Elias Calles where four people were abducted and assailants opened fire on the police station Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, federal police said Thursday they have captured two of 53 inmates who escaped from a prison in northern Mexico last month as its guards apparently stood by.
Marcos Espinoza and Osvaldo Garcia were detained Wednesday in Mexico's central state of Hidalgo along with six alleged members of the Zetas, a gang of hit men tied to the Gulf cartel, federal police intelligence coordinator Luis Cardenas told reporters.
Security camera footage shows that guards at the Cieneguillas prison in Zacatecas state stood by as an armed gang walked out with the 53 inmates on May 16. About a dozen of the fugitives are drug cartel suspects.
The prison director and all 44 guards on duty have been jailed pending an investigation into their possible complicity. Mexican drug gangs often buy off or blackmail guards and police.
Some people are unbelivable, especially prisoners. They could escape from a prison just like Mas Selamat. I wonder if there were guards when the prisoners escaped as there should be. Mas Selamat has been caught and i hope the other 53 prisoners who escaped would be caught soon.
Friday, June 05, 2009
June 5, 2009
Man killed wife on honeymoon SYDNEY - AN AMERICAN salesman pleaded guilty Friday to the manslaughter of his bride while scuba diving on their honeymoon on Australia's Great Barrier Reef more than five years ago.
Bubble wrap salesman David Gabriel Watson, known as Gabe, admitted to the charge during a court hearing in the eastern city of Brisbane in connection with the October 2003 death of his new wife Christina, 26.
Ms Watson, 32, was on honeymoon with his new wife when she drowned during their diving trip at a shipwreck off the city of Townsville 11 days after their wedding in the United States.
A dive instructor found novice scuba diver Ms Tina Watson lying on the bottom of the ocean after Gabe, an experienced diver trained in rescuing panicked divers, had surfaced.
An inquest into her death heard earlier that a fellow diver saw Gabe Watson bear-hugging his wife underwater before he re-surfaced while she sank to the ocean floor.
In mid-2008 a coroner found it was likely Watson killed his wife by holding her underwater and turning off her air supply.
He was later charged with murder but told the court he would plead guilty to manslaughter. Prosecutor Brendan Campbell accepted the plea.
Mr Campbell told the court the manslaughter plea had been accepted on the basis that Watson had failed in his duty as her dive buddy by failing to give her emergency oxygen when she needed it.
Watson allowed Ms Tina to sink to the ocean floor without making any serious attempt to rescue her and also failed to inflate her buoyancy vest or remove weights from her belt to allow her to surface, Mr Campbell said.
Watson told police his new wife had knocked his mask off and then sank too quickly for him to save her. Prosecutors rejected that argument saying it would not have been possible for her to have sunk so rapidly.
Prosecutors sought a five-year jail term for Watson, with the possibility of parole after 18 months. He was due to be sentenced later Friday.
I feel that Mr Watson is unreasonable because if he just married Ms Tina, why would he kill her?At first, when i read this article, i could not accept that Mr Watson killed Ms Tina on their honeymoon but then, i thought of some possible reasons:1) They just fought over something2) Ms Tina did something and hurt Mr Watson3)Mr Watson hates Ms Tina for some unknown reasons
