Co-pilot researched suicide methods
BERLIN – Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz spent time online researching suicide methods and cockpit door security in the week before crashing Flight 9525, prosecutors said Thursday – the first evidence that the fatal descent may have been a premeditated act.
As the browsing history on a tablet computer found at Lubitz’s apartment added a disturbing new piece to the puzzle of the March 24 crash, French investigators said they had recovered the Airbus A320’s flight data recorder – another step toward completing the picture.
Attention has focused on Lubitz since investigators evaluated the plane’s cockpit voice recorder last week. They believe the 27-year-old locked his captain out of the cockpit during the flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf and deliberately plunged the plane into a French mountainside.
The co-pilot researched “on one hand medical treatment methods, and on the other hand informed himself about types and ways of going about a suicide,” prosecutors’ Duesseldorf prosecutor’s office spokesman Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement.
Boy Scout chapter hires gay camp leader
NEW YORK – The Boy Scouts’ New York chapter said Thursday that it has hired the nation’s first openly gay Eagle Scout as a summer camp leader, a direct and public challenge to the national scouting organization’s ban on openly gay adult members.
The Boy Scouts’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, said there was no change in that policy, which has been highly divisive.
The challenge to the national headquarters was laid down by the Boy Scouts’ Greater New York Councils, which announced the hiring of Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout. Tessier has been a vocal advocate of opening the 105-year-old organization to gay scouts and leaders.
Associated Press
