NTSB scrutinizing pilot actions in Asiana crash
SAN FRANCISCO – Investigators have found no evidence of mechanical problems with Asiana Flight 214, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday, putting the focus of the safety probe into the crash landing at the San Francisco airport squarely on the pilots.
In her final briefing before the agency concludes its on-site detective work, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said the airplane itself showed no signs of a breakdown, and on voice recorders, the pilots of the Boeing 777 fail to notice that their approach is dangerously low and slow until it’s too late.
Investigators have stressed that nothing has been definitively ruled out and no firm conclusions reached. The agency’s final evaluation is expected to take more than a year.
Zimmerman jurors get manslaughter option
SANFORD, Fla. – In an unmistakable setback for George Zimmerman, the jury at the neighborhood watch captain’s second-degree murder trial was given the option Thursday of convicting him on the lesser charge of manslaughter in the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Judge Debra Nelson issued her ruling over the objections of Zimmerman’s lawyers shortly before a prosecutor delivered a closing argument in which he portrayed the defendant as an aspiring police officer who assumed Martin was up to no good and took the law into his own hands.
The six jurors now will have three options when they start deliberations as early as Friday: guilty of second-degree murder, guilty of manslaughter and not guilty.
Zimmerman attorney Don West had argued an all-or-nothing strategy, saying the only charge that should be put before the jury is second-degree murder.
Former U.S. official gets 19 years for bribery
WASHINGTON – A former manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison Thursday for orchestrating a $30 million bribery and kickback scheme that authorities called historic in scope.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan called Kerry F. Khan’s conduct, which included wiretapped conversations describing an assault on his mistress and a planned sexual encounter with a teenage girl, “shocking, vicious and cruel.” The judge imposed a sentence four years longer than what prosecutors had recommended.
Khan, 55, a resident of the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va., pleaded guilty last year to orchestrating the fraud, which prosecutors call the largest domestic bribery and bid-rigging scheme in the history of federal contracting cases.
Youth homicide rate drops to 30-year low
ATLANTA – The homicide rate for older children and young adults has hit its lowest point in at least three decades, but the decline has been slowing, according to a new government report.
In 2010, the homicide rate for victims ages 10 to 24 was less than half the rate seen in 1993, when there was an explosion in crime tied to crack cocaine.
The report released Thursday echoes earlier findings about a national decline in killings and other crimes but offers a more focused look at what is one of the most affected groups. Ages 10 to 24 account for about a third of slaying victims. The highest homicide rates are consistently seen in people in their late teens and 20s.
Associated Press
