Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board speaks at a news conference Monday in South San Francisco. An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crashed upon landing Saturday at San Francisco International Airport, and two of the 307 passengers aboard were killed. (George Nikitin/AP)
Asiana crash investigation criticized for giving too much information (+video)
From Twitter pictures of the burned cabin to a second-by-second account of the aircraft’s flight speed, investigators are being unusually forthcoming with details about the Asiana Airlines crash at the San Francisco airport, leading some to champion a new era of transparency while others warn it does more harm than good.
In the days since the July 6 crash, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released detailed information about its investigation including timelines, pictures, and information about the pilot’s background that some transportation analysts say is unprecedented.
“The NTSB has always been available to answer journalists’ questions after aviation accidents, but it often took a degree in aeronautics or long years on the airline beat to understand what was being said. This crash, however, is being explained in real time and in much simpler terms than in the past,” former transportation journalist Micheline Maynard wrote in a Forbes column this week.
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In the past five days the agency has tweeted and posted multiple pictures of the aircraft on its website, uploaded videos of its daily briefings, and provided thorough accounts of the plane speed, hours of experience of the pilots, and cockpit conversations.
In comparison, information about the last fatal accident in the United States involving a commercial flight was slower and more traditional. When a Continental Express flight crashed while approaching the Buffalo airport in February 2009, there was no social media stream with photo and video footage.
The new transparency is particularly worrisome to the Air Line Pilots Association, which released a statement this week saying that it is “stunned by the amount of detailed operational data from on-board recorders released by the [NTSB] this soon into the investigation.”
The union, which represents only American pilots, has particular reason to be concerned with much of the preliminary media reports focusing on what role pilot error played in the crash. But it contends that the level of information released could adversely affect the investigation:
“It is imperative that safety investigators refrain from prematurely releasing the information from on-board recording devices,” the organization wrote. “We have seen in the past that publicizing this data before all of it can be collected and analyzed leads to erroneous conclusions that can actually interfere with the investigative process.”
Deborah Hersman, chairman of the NTSB, responded to the criticism by telling the press her organization is responsible to the public.
“We are the advocate for the traveling public,” Ms. Hersman said Tuesday.
Hersman, who at age 39 became the youngest chairman of the NTSB when she was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2009, has become the face of the new transparency push as she holds daily press conferences in San Francisco and multiple interviews with cable news outlets.
“Since she's taken over, it seems like information has been much more accessible to the public," Frank Pitre, a lawyer who closely follows the agency and is representing two passengers who were on the Asiana flight, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Hersman also faces a public with more tools at its disposal for doing its own investigative work. Websites like Flight Aware provide radar data for the Asiana Flight, and anonymous users quickly posted what they claim as the tape of the conversation between air-traffic controllers and the Asiana pilots
“What we know is that if you don’t put the facts out there, in a vacuum other people will create them,” Hersman said in an interview with CBS News. Her organization’s use of social media channels is “about having a conversation with the people who care about the work you do.”
According to Bloomberg, which pulled user comments from the forums at Flyertalk.com, Hersman's approach is earning mixed reviews. Among the postings:
astroflyer: “In the age of twitter, I don’t think it makes sense to withhold any findings at all until 9 months down the road. A large plane crashed at a major American airport. People want to know why and whether the cause might be relevant to their own future flying.”
Milepost: “I expect tomorrow D. Hersman will be detailing the pilots meals and calorie counts, their favorite colors, and answering the eternal question: boxers or briefs. I still think too much raw data is being disclosed in isolated bits and pieces that allow for too much amateur conjecturing, without having gone through the critical review and piece-it-all together analysis.”
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Former New England Patriots football tight end Aaron Hernandez stands during a bail hearing in Fall River Superior Court, June 27, in Fall River, Mass. An associate the former tight end said he was told Hernandez fired the shots that resulted in the death of semi-pro football player, Odin Lloyd, according to documents filed in Florida. (Ted Fitzgerald/Boston Herald/AP/File)
Aaron Hernandez murder case: what court documents reveal about that night
A fuller picture of the case against former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez is emerging after the release of two sets of court documents Tuesday.
An associate of Mr. Hernandez who was with him the night that Odin Lloyd, a semiprofessional football player, was shot and killed in an industrial park near Hernandez’s house told investigators it was Hernandez who fired the shots that killed Mr. Lloyd, according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press.
Prosecutors have said publicly that Hernandez was with two other men, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace, in the early hours of June 17, the day Lloyd is believed to have been killed. Surveillance videos show them picking up Lloyd and driving to an industrial park where Lloyd’s body was later found. But investigators have not publicly said who they think fired the shots that killed Lloyd, saying only that Hernandez “orchestrated” the slaying.
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"All we've done is charge is Aaron Hernandez with murder," Samuel Sutter, district attorney for Bristol County, Mass., said Monday. "As far as the specifics about who was the shooter and who might have been a joint venturer, it's too early to say. The investigation is ongoing."
According to court documents, Mr. Ortiz told investigators that Hernandez said to Lloyd during the drive to the industrial park that Lloyd had been "chilling" with people Hernandez had problems with. Ortiz told police the two men shook hands and the problem seemed smoothed over. But the car soon stopped, and everyone but Ortiz got out to urinate, according to Ortiz's account.
Somebody who happened to be in the area told police he then heard gunshots before Hernandez and Mr. Wallace got back in the car without Lloyd and the car sped away, according to the documents.
Ortiz said he couldn't see who fired the shots because it was dark. But he told investigators that Wallace said it was Hernandez who fired the shots.
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in Lloyd's killing. Wallace faces an accessory to murder charge in the case and has pleaded not guilty. Ortiz is charged with illegal possession of a firearm and is being held in jail without bail.
The court documents also show that a vehicle wanted in a 2012 double killing in Boston was rented in Hernandez’s name. Last month, The Boston Globe reported that unnamed law enforcement officials said they believe Lloyd may have known about the earlier shooting, giving Hernandez motive to want him silenced.
The documents that contain the above information and that were obtained by the Associated Press were filed by the Miramar (Fla.) Police Department to gain a search warrant for a house in that city where Wallace’s mother lives.
Separately, the Attleboro District Court in Massachusetts unsealed 156 pages of court records Tuesday, revealing more details about investigators' interactions with Hernandez before he was arrested and charged with murder on June 26.
Hernandez was “argumentative” and unresponsive when police told him they were investigating, according to the documents.
“Mr. Hernandez did not ask officers whose death was being investigated,” state police wrote in their report. “Mr. Hernandez’s demeanor did not indicate any concern for the death of any person.”
“What’s with all the questions?” Hernandez asked, before slamming the door to his house and locking it behind him, the documents state.
Hernandez then opened the door and gave police his lawyer’s business card, police reported in the documents.
Hernandez came out later and agreed to be questioned at a police station.
According to the documents, Hernandez also called his girlfriend's cellphone and stopped her from speaking with police after they pulled her over and told her Lloyd was dead.
Among the items police said they seized from Hernandez were .22 caliber ammunition, a BlackBerry phone, three Apple iPads, and an Apple iPhone. They also seized clothes similar to those shown in the surveillance video inside Hernandez’s home.
Hernandez came to the New England Patriots from the University of Florida as a fourth-round draft pick in 2010, and in 2012 he signed a five-year, $40 million contract with the team. The Patriots announced that he had been cut 90 minutes after his arrest.
“No one in our organization was aware of any of these kind of connections. If it’s true, I’m just shocked,” owner Robert Kraft said earlier this week. “Our whole organization has been duped.”
• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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This aerial photo of the wreckage of Asiana Flight 214 lies on the ground after it crashed at the San Francisco International Airport, in San Francisco, July 6. Investigators are interviewing the flight's pilots and crew this week to help determine what caused the plane crash. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
Asiana crash: five clues to help understand what happened
Investigators expect to spend weeks or months determining what caused Asiana Airlines Flight 214 to crash-land at the San Francisco airport Saturday, killing two of the 307 passengers and crew members aboard.
The National Transportation Safety Board and South Korean investigators are interviewing the flight’s pilots and crew this week. Two South Korean investigators are also scheduled to arrive in Washington Tuesday to examine the plane's black box.
As the probe continues, here are five key factors known so far that may have contributed to the crash landing:
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1. The plane was approaching the landing too low and too slowly.
Flight 214 was on a straight, 17-mile approach to the San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, according to NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, when it quickly lost too much speed and height to make a safe landing.
Data show that the plane’s autopilot was turned off 82 seconds before the crash, when the plane was about 1,600 feet in the air, Ms. Hersman said Monday. At 34 seconds before the crash, the plane was at 500 feet and its speed dropped below the level required for a safe landing.
Seven seconds before collision, the cockpit recorder captured a call from somebody in the cockpit to increase the plane’s speed, Hersman said, and three seconds later, the control yoke started vibrating to warn of the potential to stall. At 1.5 seconds before the impact, a crew member issued a call to abort the landing, but it was too late to regain speed and height. The tail of the plane appears to have clipped the sea wall there, sending the plane slamming into the runway, where it skidded about 2,000 feet before catching fire.
In the last three seconds, the plane was traveling at least 37 miles per hour below the minimum recommended approach speed of 137 knots (about 158 miles per hour).
2. The control pilot and supervising pilot were new to their positions.
The pilot at the controls during the attempted landing, Lee Gang-guk, had logged only 43 hours at the controls of a Boeing 777, the aircraft he was flying Saturday. Mr. Lee had more than 10,000 hours of experience on other planes, including the Boeing 747, according to an Asiana Airlines spokeswoman, but was making his first landing at San Francisco with the larger 777 model.
The pilot serving as a training supervisor for Lee was also in a new position. Although the supervisor, Lee Jeong-min, had landed 33 times at the San Francisco airport in a Boeing 777, he had become a training supervisor in June, and Saturday’s flight was his maiden flight as a Boeing 777 supervisor, an Asiana official told The Wall Street Journal Saturday.
Asiana president Yoon Young-doo defended the experience of the supervising pilot at a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday.
“Lee Jeong-min has experience landing at San Francisco airport 33 times in a 777," Mr. Yoon said. "And as a trainer, while 500 hours of experience is required, he has more than 3,200 hours of experience."
Multiple questions have been raised about the actions of the pilots, including why cockpit voice recordings show the two didn’t communicate until less than two seconds before the plane struck the sea wall and why the supervising pilot didn’t call for an aborted landing sooner.
Investigators are on their second day of interviewing the four pilots aboard the flight. Whether all four pilots were in the cockpit during the landing, as is normal procedure, or just the two known pilots has not yet been publicly released.
3. An automated landing system was out of use due to airport construction.
An automated navigation system, known as Glide Path, was turned off at the San Francisco airport Saturday because of airport construction.
The landing system is meant to help planes land in bad weather, but pilots have grown increasingly reliant on it, according to Cass Howell, a former military pilot and now a human factors expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.
"If your last dozen landings were autopilot landings and here you are faced with nothing but visual (cues) to deal with, your rust factor would be greater," Dr. Howell told the Associated Press. "Too much automation can undermine your flying skills."
Oscar S. Garcia, CEO of InterFlight Global, a consulting firm in Miami, and a former 777 pilot with a major Asian carrier, told the The New York Times that in Asia, “there is high reluctance to hand-fly the airplane.”
But aircraft safety experts told Reuters that Glide Path is “far from essential for routine landings,” because of other systems and visual clues, and that it was common to turn off the system in good weather or during airport construction. According to a notice from the airport on the Federal Aviation Administration's website, San Francisco International Airport has turned off the system for nearly the entire summer because of construction. The notice showed the system out of service June 1-Aug. 22, Reuters reports.
4. San Francisco can be a tricky airport to navigate.
“Many pilots and safety experts consider San Francisco International Airport a particularly tricky place to land and takeoff, due to nearby peaks, closely spaced parallel runways and the area’s frequent thick fog,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
Fog was not a factor in the Asiana crash. Rather, it was an unusually clear day.
5. Engine or system failure isn’t thought to be a factor, for now.
Both engines on the Asiana Boeing 777 were operating normally when the plane crash-landed on Runway 28 Left at the San Francisco airport, the NTSB said Monday.
That statement came a day after Yoon, the Asiana president, said preliminary reports indicated there were no mechanical failures.
"For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or (its) engines," he told a media conference Sunday at the company headquarters in Seoul.
But Hersman, the NTSB chair, refused to rule anything out on Monday.
“We are certainly looking at pilot performance, and we’re looking at communication between the two crew members,” she said. “But everything is still on the table.”
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Sondra Osterman, a friend of George Zimmerman, listens to the 911 tape while on the witness stand at Seminole Circuit Court, in Sanford, Fla., on Monday. Mr. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen, in 2012. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Pool/AP)
Zimmerman trial: Close friends say it was Zimmerman who was screaming
Close friends, the lead police investigator, and the victim’s father took the stand for the defense Monday to start the third week of testimony in the trial of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Without exception, the friends called as defense witnesses in the morning said it was Mr. Zimmerman who could be heard screaming for help on a 911 call the night Trayvon was shot in the townhouse complex where Zimmerman lived and the unarmed Trayvon was visiting. The issue of who is crying for help is a crucial one, since it could provide a sense of who was the aggressor in the deadly confrontation. Zimmerman is pleading not guilty, saying he acted in self defense.
In the afternoon, the defense called officer Chris Serlo, the lead investigator in the case. He testified that several days after the shooting, he played the 911 tape for Trayvon's father. Mr. Serlo said that when he asked Tracy Martin whether it was his son’s voice calling for help, “he looked away and under his breath he said, ‘no.”
Later, under cross examination by prosecutor Bernie da la Rionda, officer Serino said the father could have been in denial about his son’s death and said “no” for that reason. “It could be perceived as denial,” Serino said. He also noted that at one point in the investigation Zimmerman told police that the screams did not sound like him, although he later said they were.
Then the defense called Tracy Martin to the stand. Asked about hearing the 911 tape at the police station, Mr. Martin testified that he never denied it was his son calling out for help, rather that he could not tell if it was his son after the tape was first played. “I didn’t tell him, 'No that wasn’t Trayvon.' I think I kind of pushed away from the table and kind of shook my head and said, 'I can’t tell," according to the Headline News live blog of the proceedings.
The victim’s father told of listening to the 911 tape later at the mayor’s office. “After listening to the tape maybe 20 times, I said I knew it was Trayvon's voice,” Martin told defense attorney Mark O’Mara.
There was no ambiguity in the testimony from Zimmerman’s friends. “Definitely, it’s Georgie,” testified Sondra Osterman, who is married to Zimmerman’s best friend, Mark Osterman. Mr. Osterman, an air marshall, has written a book about the case called “Defending Our Friend: The Most Hated Man In America.”
Another defense witness, Geri Russo, was quoted by Fox News as saying, “I have no doubt in my mind that’s his voice.” Ms. Russo worked with Zimmerman at a mortgage company and considers herself the defendant’s friend.
Monday's action in the Sanford, Fla., courtroom was less intense than on Friday, when the prosecution rested after hearing from Trayvon’s mother and the defense opened with testimony by Zimmerman’s mother. The mothers disagreed sharply, with Trayvon's mother, Sybrina Fulton, saying it was her son screaming for help, while Glady Zimmerman said she heard her son on the recording.
In Monday morning's court action, the defense sought to defuse the expletive-laden language that Zimmerman used to describe Trayvon in a nonemergency call to police to report that Trayvon was walking through the neighborhood. The issue is of extra importance given the racial overtones in the case since Zimmerman is accused of profiling the African American teenager. The AP transcription of the phone call played in court has Zimmerman saying, “F---- punks. These a---. They always get away.”
When defense attorney Martin O’Mara asked Ms. Osterman if she heard ill will or spite in his Zimmerman’s voice, she replied, “I don’t think he was angry.” A showing that Zimmerman acted with ill will, spite, or a depraved mind is a requirement for conviction on a second-degree murder charge.
Another defense witness, Lee Ann Benjamin, said Zimmerman did not seem to be in an “excited state” when he said “(expletive) punks," according to Headline News live blog.
Ms. Benjamin said she and her husband have contributed about $2,500 to Zimmerman’s defense fund. John Donnelly, Benjamin’s husband, testified that, in addition to the cash they contributed, the couple also brought Zimmerman about $1,700 worth of suits and that Zimmerman is like a son to him.
In a prosecution motion made public Monday, the state asked the judge to prevent Zimmernan’s attorneys from showing jurors a computer animation of the confrontation between him and Trayvon. The prosecution noted that the animation did not show the murder weapon and that it is based on approximate information from witness accounts. The defense has not filed an immediate response.
NOTE: Material from the Associated Press was used in preparing this report.
A United Airlines plane readies for take off next to the wreckage of Asiana Flight 214 at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Sunday, July 7. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
Asiana crash: Improved technology, standards, and training likely saved lives
Seconds before Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hit the sea wall at San Francisco Airport Saturday, flight attendant Lee Yoon-hye said she felt something was wrong. But after the crash, her training instincts kicked in as she searched the cabin and helped passengers exit – a reaction that, coupled with advances in technology and improved safety standards, likely contributed to the fact that there were far fewer fatalities than would have most likely occurred in the past, analysts say.
“Crashes are definitely more survivable today than they were a few decades ago,” Kevin Hiatt, president and chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group in Alexandria, Va. aimed at improving air safety, told The Washington Post. “We’ve learned from the past incidents about what can be improved.”
Nearly all passengers and crew survived the Asiana crash – 305 of the 307 people onboard – and more than a third were able to leave without hospitalization. The San Francisco coroner is investigating whether one of the two Chinese teenagers who died Saturday was run over by an emergency response vehicle.
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The statistics aren’t a rarity in the world of recent plane crashes. As The Wall Street Journal notes, “Everyone survived a 2008 Continental Airlines flight that veered off a Denver runway in high winds, splitting the body of the jet in two. Two passengers died in August 2010 when an Aires Boeing 737 landed short in bad weather at a Caribbean island, also splitting the passenger cabin into pieces. In April, a newly delivered Lion Air Boeing 737 crashed in poor visibility short of a runway in Bali, Indonesia; all 108 people aboard survived.”
Analysts say the result is due to, in part, better technology and safety standards, as well as improved crew training.
In the late 1980s, regulators required that all new passenger planes have seats able to withstand impacts that thrust them forward at 16 times the force of gravity. In 2005 the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the standard be applied to almost all passenger planes by October 2009. A Boeing spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the company has been delivering all its jets with 16-G-rated seats since 2009.
“Before the advent of such stronger seats,” Mr. Hiatt told The Wall Street Journal, the intense vertical and horizontal force generated by a crash like Saturday's "would have caused many more seats to break free and pancake into each other, probably blocking exit paths."
Other technological advances included better materials for the fuselage, Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer with Boeing and now a director of the Airsafe.com Foundation, told The Washington Post. "It may have been worse if that fuselage had been designed with practices that were common 20 or 30 years prior."
Another key factor is better crew training to get passengers off a plane before it burns, said John Hansman, an aerospace professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the International Center for Air Transportation.
Mr. Hansman told USA Today that a crucial safety requirement is that airlines must certify they can get passengers off a plane within 90 seconds in an emergency, even if half the doors and escape slides are blocked. But getting people to leave their luggage and laptops can be a problem, Hansman said.
"If people had dawdled getting off this airplane, that would have put them at increased risk," Hansman said.
The use of better fire-resistant materials on seats and other parts of the cabin also contribute to fires burning with less intensity at first, allowing crucial time for evacuation, according to Hiatt of the Flight Safety Foundation.
Two fatal aircraft fires in the 1980s spurred the aviation industry to set stricter standards, Bill Waldock, a professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Ariz. campus, told The Washington Post.
In 1983, an Air Canada flight made a safe emergency landing at the Cincinnati airport, but half of the 46 passengers and crew members died when they couldn’t escape the smoke and fire quickly. In 1985, a similar incident occurred after a British Airtours aborted takeoff in Manchester, England.
“Those two accidents together were the two-by-four to the head” that led the US and British governments to impose new fire-safety standards, said Mr. Waldock.
Ms. Lee, the flight attendant on Saturday’s flight, said at a press conference at the San Francisco airport that once the crash ended, “I wasn’t really thinking, but my body started carrying out the steps needed for an evacuation.”
“I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger,” she said.
Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the Boeing 777 to crash on the runway after a last-second attempt to abort the landing, and what role the pilot’s inexperience with the type of aircraft may have played.
The two fatalities from Saturday’s crash were both Chinese teenage girls. Of the 182 injured people taken to hospitals, six remained in critical condition late Sunday, according to CBS. The remaining 133 had minor to moderate injuries, while many of the other passengers or crew members had more minor injuries that didn't require extra treatment.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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Joey Chestnut (c.) wins the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating contest with a total of 69 hot dogs and buns, alongside Tim Janus (l.) and Matt Stonie (r.) on Thursday at Coney Island, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (John Minchillo/AP)
Joey Chestnut triumphs, again, at Nathan's annual hot dog pig-out
You don’t want to mess with Joey “Jaws” Chestnut or Sonya "the Black Widow” Thomas.
Mr. Chestnut, of San Jose, Calif., devoured 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes to break two records at the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest Thursday.
His bested his previous record of 68 hot dogs in 2009 and won the contest for the unprecedented seventh time in a row.
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Sonya Thomas, a slim, 100-pound manager of a fast-food restaurant in Alexandria, Va., battled frank-for-frank with Juliet Lee in the women’s competition. Ms. Thomas, known as "the Black Widow” of competitive eating, downed 36-3/4 hot dogs to her competitor’s 36 hot dogs. (Read more about Sonya, "the Black Widow," in a Monitor feature article here.)
Second-place finisher in the men’s competition was Matt Stonie, who ate 51 hot dogs.
Chestnut said after the competition that he’s motivated by the prestige, not the $10,000 prize money.
‘‘I'd do this for nothing,’’ he said.
Chestnut may have received a boost from his girlfriend, too, who stood in front of him and yelled at him to eat more, according to USA Today.
Thomas won $5,000 for the women’s competition and defended her titles from 2012 and '11. Last year, she set the women’s record by gobbling 45 hot dogs.
“It’s more mental than physical,” Thomas said, before the event this year. ‘‘I have to fight with myself, so I'm going to try to really focus.”
Chestnut’s goal for the day was to “eat a little more gracefully, conserve my energy.’’
The competition, hosted by Nathan’s Hot Dogs in Coney Island, N.Y., every Fourth of July since 1916, attracted a crowd of about 40,000 spectators. It’s broadcast live on ESPN and open to anyone at least 18 years old who wins a qualifying competition held in 12 cities across the country between March and June.
Ginger Perry of Obion County, Tenn., said she and her family planned their New York City vacation around the contest, after watching it on TV in past years and were impressed that Coney Island has recovered so well from being slammed by superstorm Sandy last October. ‘‘It’s amazing to be here and that they rebuilt so quickly,’’ she said.
The hot dog contest took place despite concerns about a swaying, shuttered observation tower that spurred the closure of parts of the nearby amusement park. The shutdown didn’t affect Nathan's, but Coney Island’s famous Cyclone roller coaster and other rides were closed, and workers were using a crane to dismantle the tower.
Nathan’s Famous notes on the competition’s website that the event is overseen by “Major League Eating, the governing body of all stomach-centric sports […] and ensures the contests are judged professionally and that safety standards are in place at each event.”
On its website, Major League Eating issues a warning that it “strongly opposes and discourages home training of any kind. MLE also strongly discourages younger individuals from eating for speed or quantity under any circumstances. MLE urges all interested parties to become involved in sanctioned events – do not try speed eating [at] home.”
The next Major League Eating contest is the World Slugburger Eating Championship in Corinth, Miss., on July 13. There, contestants will eat chow down on the hometown famous “slugburgers”: burgers made of beef and breading deep-fried to a golden brown. The winner will claim a $3,000 prize.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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An aerial photo of a home spared in Yarnell, Ariz., on Wednesday, July 3, 2013, in the aftermath of the Yarnell Hill Fire that claimed the lives of 19 members of an elite firefighting crew on Sunday. (AP Photo/Tom Tingle)
Arizona wildfire prompts Congressional hearing on logging.The right focus?
Congress is going to take a hard look at wildfires next week.
Two days after the planned memorial service for the 19 firefighters killed while battling the Yarnell Hill wildfire in Arizona, on July 11 the US House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation has scheduled a hearing on how to reduce the risk of wildfires with better forest management.
“This week, Arizona experienced the most tragic wildfire in state history when we lost 19 brave firefighters to the Yarnell Fire,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, (R) of Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic. "We owe these men our everlasting thanks and we owe their families a commitment to pursue pro-active forest management policies, which will minimize catastrophic wildfires in the future, while protecting our communities and restoring the environment. This hearing helps the committee’s efforts to achieve these goals.”
While these are worthy goals, some see this as political opportunism aimed at helping the American logging industry. In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Karin Klein criticizes the motives of the hearings:
"As yet, there is no evidence that the ferocity of the blaze that killed 19 highly trained and dedicated firefighters in Arizona was the result of a failure to thin forests by cutting down trees to create more space between those that remain, and yet already Republican congressmen are calling for hearings on “unhealthy forests" and what they see as the value of thinning...
Generally speaking, the best way to reduce damage is by thinning not in the heart of forests but along the edges closest to urban and suburban areas -- the urban interface, as it’s called -- creating what’s known as “defensible space” where firefighters can more safely and effectively carry out their heroic acts."
It is also noted that Congress has jurisdiction only over forest management on federal lands, whereas the deadly Arizona wildfire was on state and private land.
To date, the Yarnell Hill Fire, which was sparked by lightning, has burned an estimated 8,400 acres, but the total acreage has not grown for days. A spokeswoman told the Arizona Republic that 675 firefighters were still working on the blaze. As of Wednesday, the fire was 45 percent contained, up from just 8 percent on Tuesday. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office says that 114 of the area’s 500 homes were damaged or destroyed by the fire. Evacuated residents are expected to be able to return to the area on Saturday.
As the investigation into the deaths of the 19 firefighters gets under way, some have raised questions about whether the elite hotshots crew should have even been in the location where it was caught on Sunday.
"A team of forest managers and safety experts is charged with finding out what went wrong. In addition to examining radio logs, the fire site and weather reports, they'll also talk to the crew's sole survivor, a 21-year-old lookout who warned his fellow firefighters and friends that the wildfire was switching directions," according to the Associated Press.
One of the challenges, as The Christian Science Monitor reported, is the lack of micro-weather forecasting for fighting these kinds of fires.
"Scientists are working to turn a decade's worth of research into the interplay between fire, terrain, fuel, and weather into tools that fire managers might be able to use to try to reduce the risk firefighters face of being caught off-guard by sudden shifts in fire behavior.
Indeed, while terrain and fuel abundance play crucial roles in fire behavior, weather – including weather conditions that fires themselves foster – often is the wildcard in combating fires. It's a card that, without warning, can send thin tongues of flame lancing ahead of the main fire at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour, covering 100 yards in two seconds, only to vanish."
For some observers, the deaths of the Granite Mountain Hotshots raise a more fundamental question: Are lives being put unnecessarily in harm's way? Tim Wendel, a one-time Western firefighter, takes this position in an opinion piece in USA Today:
"If anything fighting fire has become more difficult thanks to global warming and people building trophy homes closer to the woods, sometimes right in the wilderness. These folks often have money and when their homes are threatened, the call goes out to people in Congress and others on high. The ones often told to do the dirty work (and that's what fighting fire is) are crews like one from Prescott."
Different academic goals for different races? Alabama plan takes flak.
Alabama’s newly approved education plan, which will replace No Child Left Behind in the state, is under fire for setting different goals for students in math and reading tests based in part on the students' race and economic status, in an attempt to close achievement gaps.
Alabama’s Plan 2020, approved in June by the US Department of Education, follows the Bush-era precedent to divide students by subgroups on the basis of race or ethnicity to assess achievement, but goes further in setting different goals for the groups, the Tuscaloosa News first reported Sunday.
For instance, while 95 percent of third-graders, regardless of subgroup, need to pass math in 2013 under No Child Left Behind, the Alabama plan expects 91.5 percent of white students and 79 percent of black students to pass math tests in 2013.
“Isn't this discrimination? Doesn't this imply that some students are not as smart as others depending on their genetic and economic backgrounds?" asked Elois Zeanah, president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, in a written statement.
The state has the highest math goals for Asian/Pacific Islander students, expecting 93.6 percent will pass the test this year, and lower goals for Hispanic students and students in poverty.
The goals aren’t supposed to stay stagnant. Instead, Plan 2020 requires that students in lower-performing subgroups improve the most until rates reach relative parity in 2018.
“We're not just grabbing the numbers out of the air,” Shanthia Washington, education administrator for the Alabama Department of Education, told the Tuscaloosa News. “This is real-life, true data. These are your goals every year. The goal is to reduce the students who aren't proficient over the period of the next six years.”
Some critics are concerned the state’s approach to closing the achievement gap will help to entrench gaps instead.
“You know what this will do. Teachers will stop teaching those kids with the lower cut scores. They will, out of necessity, teach to the top cut scores,” said Sharon Sewell, director of Alabamians United for Excellence in Education, in a statement.
The US Department of Education granted Alabama a waiver from No Child Left behind on June 21 and approved Plan 2020 as its replacement.
“The waiver [from No Child Left Behind] is just one part of the overall Plan 2020 approach,” said Tommy Bice, Alabama superintendent of education, at the time. “Ultimately, what will result is a system that uses the college and career readiness of its graduates as its capstone measure of success.”
Melinda Maddox, assistant superintendent for research, information, and data services for the Alabama Department of Education, "said assessments under Plan 2020 will better identify weaknesses in education progress than No Child Left Behind's Adequate Yearly Progress measure,” wrote the Birmingham News in June.
"We are focused on closing achievement gaps, increasing graduation rates, moving students to proficiency and making sure our graduates are prepared for college and/or a career without remediation," Ms. Maddox said, according the Birmingham newspaper.
Tuscaloosa board of education member Marvin Lucas told the Tuscaloosa News he believes Plan 2020's accountability standards are unfair.
“If I give a lower expectation for any child, that's not pushing that kid to his highest potential,” Mr. Lucas said. “All kids, no matter what their race is, can achieve if you push them and give them real ways to make it."
The US Department of Education has now approved requests for waivers from No Child Left Behind requirements from 36 states and the District of Columbia.
States have been able to apply for waivers since September 2011, when the Obama administration announced it would consider waivers because Congress had not reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Jacksonville medical examiner Valerie Rao is questioned by defense attorney Mark O'Mara in George Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial in Seminole circuit court in Sanford, Florida, July 2, 2013. Zimmerman is accused in the 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. (Joe Burbank/Pool/Reuters)
Trayvon Martin case: Doctor waves off Zimmerman injuries as 'so minor'
Do the injuries George Zimmerman sustained on the night he fatally shot teenager Trayvon Martin support his statement that he acted in self-defense?
On Tuesday, a medical examiner called by prosecutors testified that Mr. Zimmerman's injuries not only were not life-threatening, but also were "very insignificant." Her assessment addresses a key aspect of the trial, in which Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain of his gated community in Sanford, Fla., faces second-degree murder charges in the shooting death of the unarmed teen on Feb. 26, 2012.
Dr. Valerie Rao, the medical examiner for Duval, Clay, and Nassau Counties in northern Florida, said Zimmerman’s injuries could have been the result of a single blow during a confrontation between the two. [Editor's note: The original version of this paragraph misspelled Dr. Rao's first name.]
She also took issue with Zimmerman's own characterization of events, which the defendant had relayed to Fox News' Sean Hannity in an interview that aired July 18. In it, he said that Trayvon Martin "started slamming my head into the concrete." Prosecutors played the interview for jurors on Tuesday.
But the injuries Zimmerman sustained didn't mesh with that recounting, Dr. Rao testified. “If you look at the injuries, they’re so minor,” she said during questioning by prosecutors. “The word 'slam' conveys great force, and there was no great force used here.”
Rao did not perform the autopsy for Trayvon and did not examine George Zimmerman in person. Rather, the prosecution hired her as an expert witness, and she formed her judgments from photographs of Zimmerman taken that night.
Defense attorney Mark O’Mara, in a bid to cast doubt on Rao’s neutrality, suggested that she may be indebted to State Attorney Angela Corey, the special prosecutor in the Zimmerman case. Ms. Corey appointed Rao to the interim position she held before the governor named her to her current position.
Rao replied that Corey “sent my name up to governor,” but testified under further questioning by prosecutors that she did not slant her testimony because Corey wrote a letter of support for her.
The medical judgment is important to prosecutors, who are trying to prove that "George Zimmerman did not shoot Trayvon Martin because he had to [but] he shot him for the worst of all reasons – because he wanted to,” as prosecutor John Guy said in the state's opening statement.
The extent of Zimmerman’s injuries also raised questions with Sanford police investigator Chris Serino, who completed five hours of testimony Tuesday morning.
Detective Serino told the court he questioned whether Zimmerman’s injuries matched Zimmerman's statements that Trayvon was slamming his head on the concrete, but that overall he found Zimmerman’s account “consistent.”
Prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda, who called Serino to the stand, asked the judge Monday to strike from the record a statement Serino made in which he said he found credible Zimmerman's account of how he came to be in a fight with Trayvon Martin.
Mr. De la Rionda argued that the statement was improper because one witness isn't allowed to give an opinion on the credibility of another witness. Defense attorney Mark O'Mara argued it was proper because it was Serino's job to decide whether Zimmerman was telling the truth.
Judge Debra Nelson told jurors to disregard the statement. "This is an improper comment," the judge said.
The prosecutor then questioned Serino about his opinion that Zimmerman did not show ill will or spite toward Trayvon. A second-degree murder conviction requires prosecutors to prove that the defendant acted out of ill will, spite, or a depraved mind.
The prosecutor played back Zimmerman's nonemergency call to police to report the teen walking through his community. Zimmerman uses an expletive, refers to "punks" and then says, "These a-------. They always get away."
The detective conceded that Zimmerman's choice of words could be interpreted as being spiteful.
Zimmerman has said he fatally shot Trayvon in February 2012 in self-defense in the midst of a fight in which the teenager was banging his head into a concrete sidewalk. The volunteer watchman has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charges. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
The state argued in its opening statement that Zimmerman had profiled Trayvon, who is African-American, and followed the teenager in a truck, phoning a police dispatch number before he and the teen got into a fight behind townhomes where he was patrolling.
Zimmerman has denied that the confrontation had anything to do with race, as Trayvon's family and their supporters have claimed.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Sanford police officer Doris Singleton holds up a copy of George Zimmerman's written statement from the night of the shooting, while testifying in Seminole circuit court, in Sanford, Fla., Monday, July 1. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/AP)
Zimmerman appeared 'shocked' Trayvon Martin was dead, prosecution witness says
The first police officer to interview George Zimmerman the night he shot Trayvon Martin testified Monday that Mr. Zimmerman appeared “shocked” when she told him Trayvon was dead.
“He’s dead?” Detective Doris Singleton, the Sanford police investigator, recalled Mr. Zimmerman saying in an interview at the Sanford police station the night of Feb. 26, 2012.
“I thought you knew that,” Detective Singleton told the court she said in reply. “He kind of slung his head and just shook it,” she testified.
Singleton, a prosecution witness, also said during cross-examination by defense attorney Mark O’Mara that Zimmerman did not show any anger or ill will when talking about Trayvon that night. In order to convict Zimmerman, who is facing second-degree murder chargers, prosecutors must show that he acted with ill will or a depraved mind.
Prosecutors, led by assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda, sought to cast doubt on Zimmerman’s statements to police.
“Mr. Zimmerman, wouldn’t you agree, was trying to convince you that he hadn’t done anything wrong?” Mr. de la Rionda asked Singleton.
Prosecutors also tried to point to discrepancies in Zimmerman’s oral testimony to Singleton and the written statement he made just after the interview.
In particular, de la Rionda focused on Zimmerman’s repeated reference to Trayvon as “the suspect” in his written statement, but not in verbal testimony. Singleton testified that she didn’t ask Zimmerman to use that language and that it is the term officers use to refer to suspected criminals.
That testimony may be important for prosecutors since they are tying to portray Zimmerman as a “vigilante” who wanted to be a police office and profiled the unarmed black teenager the night of Feb. 26, 2012.
Also Monday, prosecutors called to the witness stand an FBI voice analyst who testified that a 911 call that captured shouts for help was too short and too far away to be used for evaluation.
"That type of sample is not fit for voice comparison," the analyst, Hirotaka Nakasone, said.
Mr. Nakasone was one of the audio experts whose testimony at a pretrial hearing discredited state voice experts who said Trayvon was the one screaming. The state experts were prohibited from testifying in the trial because the judge said there was not enough evidence to prove their techniques are tested or reliable.
Nakasone testified Monday that people familiar with the voices of Trayvon and Zimmerman would be the best people to identify the voices, but that there is a risk of increased listener bias. Trayvon’s parents and Zimmerman’s father both say it’s their son screaming in the tape.
The potential witness list for Zimmerman's trial includes about 200 people, including family members of both Zimmerman and Trayvon, according to USA Today. More than 20 witnesses testified last week in the opening week of the much-anticipated trial. Trayvon’s death and the initial decision of the Sanford Police Department not to arrest Zimmerman sparked hundreds of protests across the country and a national debate about race, equal justice, self defense, and gun control. Zimmerman was arrested 44 days after the shooting following the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Zimmerman has said he fatally shot Trayvon in February 2012 in self-defense in the midst of a fight in which the teenager was banging his head into a concrete sidewalk. The volunteer watchman has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charges, for which he could get life in prison if convicted.
The state argued in its opening statement that Zimmerman profiled and followed Trayvon in his truck and called a police dispatch number before he and the teen got into a fight behind townhomes in the gated community he was patrolling.
Zimmerman has denied that the confrontation had anything to do with race, as Martin's family and their supporters have claimed.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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