US Hijacker in Cuba Headed Home After 3 Decades

ABC News

By PETER ORSI Associated Press

www.dailymail.co.uk

An American fugitive hijacker said Tuesday he is going home to face justice nearly three decades after he commandeered a plane, flew to Cuba and was thrown behind bars rather than greeted as a fellow revolutionary.

William Potts [photo] said U.S. diplomats in Havana contacted him earlier in the day to report that his travel arrangements were made and he could leave on a charter flight to Miami on Wednesday morning, accompanied by American officials.

"As I understand it when I land in Miami the federal escorts will turn me over to U.S. marshals, and what happens after that I couldn't tell you," Potts told The Associated Press by phone from his home in Havana. "I hope to be arraigned soon."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Interests Section said the diplomatic mission did not have any immediate comment on Potts' case. Cuban officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Potts, now 56, was a young man in 1984 when he pulled a gun hidden in a plaster cast and hijacked a commercial flight headed from New Jersey to Florida. He ordered it to the Communist-run island, where he expected that Cuba would offer him guerrilla training.

Instead, authorities convicted him of air piracy and jailed him for more than 13 years.

On Tuesday, Potts said he seeks "closure" by facing U.S. legal authorities. He argued that the time he served in the Combinado del Este prison outside Havana should mitigate further punishment in the United States, but acknowledged there's no guarantee.

"I'm ready for whatever," Potts said. "My position is, of course, I did the crime and I did the time, and the United States has to recognize that."

U.S. authorities have aggressively prosecuted some returning fugitives, while others saw their sentences reduced significantly for time served elsewhere.

Potts said he looks forward to reuniting with family he hasn't seen in many years, but is also anxious about returning from exile.

"I've got kind of mixed emotions, let me say that at least, about touching American soil for the first time in nearly 30 years," he said. "So much has changed, and I'm just going to have to wait and see what it looks like when I get there."

For years Potts has made his livelihood as a farmer in an eastern suburb of the Cuban capital. He married a Cuban woman with whom he had two children. They have since divorced, but remain close and live together in a modest two-bedroom home in a Cold War-era apartment block. Last year their two daughters went to live with family in Atlanta.

In recent weeks Potts has been working with U.S. Interests Section officials to get a passport to travel back to the United States. Nevertheless, he said his future remains in Havana.

"I'm a permanent resident in Cuba, and just as soon as I finish taking care of this business in the United States, I certainly have every intention of returning to Cuba to live," he said. "I'm here. ... I've lived like half my life here in Cuba now, and my future interests and the things that I want to do are located here in Cuba."

Jump or die: Exclusive images show chaos as skydiving planes collide midair

usnews

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

The cameras strapped to the skydivers' helmets were supposed to memorialize their perfectly timed jumps and exhilarating descent from two small planes to the earth 12,000 feet below.

John Rodrigo via TODAY

Instead, the footage filmed by five daredevils shows the terrifying moment when the aircraft collided above Wisconsin, flinging parachuters into the air like plastic action figures and sending one plane into a fiery dive across a sunset-lit sky.

Nightly News will have the first look at the video at 6:30 p.m. Monday, followed by full exclusive coverage on TODAY on Tuesday morning.

Amy Olson via TODAY

The images are heart-stopping: One Cessna suddenly sandwiched atop another; the legs of a jumper dangling over the tail of a plane; a skydiver hanging onto a step like an acrobat before he lets go; a fireball roaring out of one plane as it plunges downward.

The thrill-seekers' helmets also filmed the miraculous aftermath of the crash: one by one, the jumpers landing on the ground, shaken but largely uninjured, and hopping into a truck to gather up the others.

All nine skydivers survived. The only person injured was the pilot of the Cessna that lost its wing. He had on an emergency parachute and escaped through an emergency chute and suffered cuts.

The pilot of the other plane was able to pull out of a dive and land at Richard I. Bong Airport in Douglas County.

Chad Ebling via TODAY

“The outcome for us was as good as it could be,” Mike Robinson, one of the passengers, told NBC News over the weekend.

Robinson, 64, said then that the two single-engine planes were in position for a maneuver called a tracking dive, with one closely following the other.

“The sun was just getting ready to set, it was our last load of the day,” he said Saturday. “It was just a perfect time to be up in the sky.”

There were several passengers in position to jump from an exterior step on each plane when the collision happened. Others were inside but quickly leaped out.

Patricia Roy via TODAY

The video shot by Amy Olson, apparently taken while she was still inside the plane, shows three fellow divers out on the step when the plane below them is suddenly right underneath. They leap as a fireball flashes.

Down below, John Rodrigo looks up to capture the planes pancaked on each other and then the tiny figures of his fellow passengers floating down.

Footage from Chad Ebling's helmet shows two people on the step when the planes hit each other, and then his own legs draped over the tail.

Robinson's camera filmed the crippled plane he left behind as it plunged to the ground — missing a wing.

The cause of the accident is unknown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The planes were owned by Skydive Superior.

John Rodrigo via TODAY

Robinson told NBC News after the crash that he was the oldest member of the group.

“This was my fourth jump of the day – I have over 900 skydives,” Robinson said.

"I'll remember this one more than most.”

NBC News' Elisha Fieldstadt contributed to this report.

Flights From Key West To Cuba Resume After A 51-Year Hiatus

Fox News Latino

Direct passenger flights between Key West and Cuba, suspended in 1962, will resume on Nov. 15, one of the charter companies flying the route confirmed to EFE news agency.
"We feel very emotional about being able to provide this service to the Cuban community with flights from Key West after 50 years and prevent travelers from having to travel to the Miami airport," Isaac Valdes, sales director for Mambi Travel, told EFE.
The service will provide three flights a week to Cuba, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and a round-trip ticket will cost $449 to $469, Valdes said.
The twin-engine aircraft will have the capacity for groups of up to 19 people and will take about 30 minutes to fly the route to the Havana international airport.
"We have all the permits in order and hope that the (Florida Keys) community flies with us and is satisfied, avoiding the inconvenience it would pose to go to Miami," said Valdes, who added that he was happy about the possibility of "uniting the Cuban family a little more."
In 2009, the director of the Key West international airport asked the U.S. Treasury Department, which enforces Washington's economic embargo against the Communist island, to permit the reestablishment of direct flights to Cuba, which is just 90 miles away.
Two charter companies, Mambi Travel and Air MarBrisa, which already fly to Havana from Miami, Tampa and New York, will provide the service.
Regular Key West-Havana flights were inaugurated in 1920.
This year, the United States celebrates the centennial of the first flight between Key West and Havana.
On May 17, 1913, Cuban Domingo Rosillo del Toro piloted his monoplane from Key West to Havana, thus winning a $10,000 prize for being the first to cross the Florida Strait by air.
There are more than 2 million Cubans and their relatives in the United States, most of them living in Florida. At present, only Cuban-Americans with relatives on the island and Americans who meet certain requirements, such as traveling for academic and/or religious reasons, may travel to Cuba.

FAA to allow tablets and e-readers during all phases of flights

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Along the Malecón: Ex-hijacker appeals to Barack Obama

William Potts in Cuba. Photo: Tracey Eaton

 Tracey Eaton

This is a letter from William Potts, who has been trying to return to the United States from Cuba.

Open Letter To The President From American Muslim Hijacker

Apparently High officials in the Obama administration have targeted me and have decided to make me into a modern day Black Nathan Hale by refusing to issue me a one way passport that would allow me to return home to the U.S. after having completed a 15 year prison sentence in Cuba for hijacking. On March 27th 1984 I hijacked a North American airliner from New York to Havana Cuba. There I was taken into custody, tried in a Cuban court of law and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, all in accordance with the strict and specific stipulations of The Hague Convention For The Prevention Of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft to which both the U.S. and Cuba are both signatories. Robert Patrick Richter, a white American, who also hijacked a plane to Cuba, in July 1983, was issued such a passport and a twin engine private plane was procured and the white American hijacker did in fact return to the United States in 1988 where he was sentenced to five additional years by U.S. District Judge William Zloch taking into consideration the time Richter had already spent in Cuban prison.

Two convicted American hijackers. One white, the other Black. Why the double standard?

I have been in contact, since September of 2012, with the Asst. U. S. District Attorney’s office of Mr. Todd Mestepey and have made clear my sincere desire to return to the United States and face the charges against me. A Mr. Brent Brown, a U.S. federal officer I met with at the U.S. Interest Section here in Havana to discuss my imminent return to the U.S. informed me that he was awaiting instructions from Mr. Mestepey’s office to issue me a document, a one way passport, which would allow me to return directly to the United States. At that meeting Mr. Brown, to my surprise, treated me quite decently. He explained to me how, due to the outstanding federal warrants against me, I would formally be taken into federal custody and how the return would play out. Everything Mr. Brown explained was perfectly reasonable and completely acceptable to me. Over a year has passed however and I have yet to be issued this one way passport to travel back home to begin the judicial process, the only process by which this pending case of nearly thirty years can finally be brought to a close.

Keep reading on Along the Malecón >>

Volando de Cuba a Madrid, ¿hibernado?

Tecnología Obsoleta

Veamos, esta historia me tiene intrigado desde hace tiempo. Lo tenía en la lista de asuntos pendientes, y posiblemente otro día haya que volver sobre ello con más calma, pero no me resisto a introducir hoy el tema, aunque sea de forma breve. El caso es que, revisando el viejo y gran volumen de Crónica de la aviación, de Plaza y Janés, he topado con este recorte mientras buscaba otro dato. He aquí lo allí referido:

Un viajero aéreo en hibernación.
Madrid-Barajas, 4 de junio de 1969.
Un DC-8 de Iberia llega de Cuba. De pronto, un hombre jóven cae del pozo derecho del aterrizador principal. Su rostro presenta síntomas de congelación. Permanece en estado de coma. Pasajero clandestino, ¡ha atravesado el Atlántico en hibernación! Recuperado el conocimiento, Armando Socarras, cuenta su aventura. Decidido a huir con un amigo, justo antes de que despegara el DC-8 de La Habana, trepó por el aterrizador hasta el pozo. Después perdió el conocimiento, y ha viajado a -35ºC durante 8 horas. Al llegar, la torre de control indica al DC-8 que realice un circuito de espera a baja altitud y Armando se deshiberna como en un quirófano. No ha vuelto a ver a su compañero. Escondido en el hueco del aterrizador principal derecho, probablemente cayó al vacío. [Su cuerpo nunca apareció].

Sorprendente, cuando menos. Lo que más me llama la atención es el asunto de la “hibernación”. En teoría el sufrido Armando debía haber fallecido por congelación e hipoxia, pero sobrevivió. El caso encontró bastante eco en la prensa de la época, como puede verse, por ejemplo, en esta edición del diario ABC del día 5 de junio de 1969.

__________
Imagen: Vista desde un Douglas DC-8 en vuelo.

Sources: Terrorists Making Practice Runs on US Flights

breitbart

By William Bigelow 

sparkoflife.wordpress.com

According to WTSP in Tampa, terrorists are making practice runs on U.S. flights in preparation for an airline terrorist attack. WTSP said a memo it found was from a union that is comprised of pilots working for major airlines, and the memo wrote that terrorist dry runs have already been attempted, notably one on a flight inbound to Orlando on September 2.

According to the memo, on September 2, U.S. Airways Flight 1880 left Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. to fly to Orlando International. Crew members stated that just after takeoff, a group of four "Middle Eastern" men acted in a suspicious manner. One bolted from his seat in coach toward the flight deck door, only to swerve to the forward bathroom "for a considerable length of time." While the first man was in the bathroom, the three other men started changing their seats, opening overhead bins, and "generally making a scene." Witnesses said they appeared to be intent on making a distraction.

WTSP investigators asked both US Airways and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) if the incident was true, and they both acknowledged that it was.

A current Federal Air Marshal who had to remain anonymous because he is prohibited from speaking to the media, said of the TSA, "They're liars. They're flat out liars." He added that the TSA doesn’t want to alarm the public, concluding, "We're waiting for the next 9/11 to happen, because it's not a question of if. It's a question of when."

Leader of Black Communist Terrorist Group Elected Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi

By Daniel Greenfield

Here’s where you might have last heard of the Republic of New Africa.

Two hijackers who have been living in exile in Cuba claim they shot and killed a New Mexico police officer in self-defense after he stopped them in a stolen car in 1971 near Albuquerque.
Hill and Finney were interviewed in Havana, where they have been living since the 1971 hijacking of TWA Flight 106 at Albuquerque International Airport. Rosenbloom was shot days earlier.
At the time, the two men were members of a group called the Republic of New Africa, a Black Panther splinter group. They were driving across country when Rosenbloom stopped them.
After the shooting, the men went into hiding for several days and then called for a tow truck. They hijacked the truck and drove onto the tarmac at the airport where they commandeered Flight 106, which had 49 people aboard, to Tampa, Fla. They released the passengers there, and then took off for Havana after refueling.

On July 1, Chokwe Lumumba, an attorney with a long record of black radical activism, took office as mayor of Jackson.
A crowd of 2,500 packed the hall. The city councilors and other dignitaries, most of them African-American — Jackson, a city of 177,000, is 80 percent black — sat on the dais.

Then Lumumba smiled and raised his right hand halfway, just a little above the podium, briefly showing the clenched fist of a Black Power salute.
“And I want to say, free the land!”
Applause rang out, bells chimed, wooden staffs rose up and people shouted back, “Free the land!” That’s the motto of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the movement formed in 1968 that sought to turn the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina into an independent black nation.
Jackson’s new mayor is a former vice president of the RNA and a co-founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a national group born in 1993 that seeks self-determination for African-Americans — whom it calls New Afrikans — “by any means necessary.”

Keep reading on  FrontPage Magazine >>

Grounded "Aero Martí" [TV Marti plane]

By David A. Fahrenthold

www.washingtonpost.com

CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — At an airfield in rural Georgia, the U.S. government pays a contractor $6,600 a month for a plane that doesn’t fly.
The plane is a 1960s turboprop with an odd array of antennas on its back end and the name of a Cuban national hero painted on its tail. It can fly, but it doesn’t. Government orders.
“The contract now is a ‘non-fly’ ” contract, said Steve Christopher of Phoenix Air Group, standing next to the plane. “That’s what the customer wants.”

The airplane is called “Aero Martí,” and it is stuck in a kind of federal limbo. After two years of haphazard spending cuts in Washington, it has too little funding to function but too much to die.
The plane was outfitted to fly over the ocean and broadcast an American-run TV station into Cuba. The effort was part of the long-running U.S. campaign to combat communism in Cuba by providing information to the Cuban people uncensored by their government.

But Cuban officials jammed the signal almost immediately, and surveys showed that less than 1 percent of Cubans watched. Still, when Congress started making budget cuts, lawmakers refused to kill the plane.
But then they allowed across-the-board “sequestration” cuts. And there was no more money for the fuel and pilots. So the plane sits in storage at taxpayer expense — a monument to the limits of American austerity. In this case, a push to eliminate long-troubled programs collided with old Washington forces: government inertia, intense lobbying and congressional pride.
The result was a stalemate. And a plane left with just enough money to do nothing.
“It’s hard to state how ridiculous it is” that the plane is still costing taxpayers money, said Philip Peters, an official in two Republican administrations and now the president of the Alexandria-based Cuba Research Center.
Peters said the plane’s broadcasts had “no audience. They’ve been effectively jammed, ever since their inception. And rather than spend the money on something that benefits the public . . . it’s turned into a test of manhood on Capitol Hill.”
This plane is a last remnant of a long, weird experiment in television broadcasting across the Straits of Florida. The plan was to broadcast uncensored news and commentary on a station named for Cuban patriot José Martí.

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The hope was that something boundless — American disdain for the communist regime of Fidel and Raúl Castro — could overcome something fixed. Which was the laws of physics.

Much of Cuba was simply too far over the horizon to get a strong-enough TV signal from aircraft flying in U.S. airspace. Still, the effort moved ahead.

“I am convinced that TV Martí will succeed,” then-Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D-S.C.), a major supporter, said in 1989. “Castro likes to tout his revolutionary credentials,” Hollings said. “But he cannot begin to match the revolutionary potential of television.”

As it turned out, he could.

The first broadcast of TV Martí was March 27, 1990. It came in clear in Havana for about 20 minutes. Then the American signal — weakened by distance — was jammed by Cuban broadcasts on the same channel.

“ ‘La TV que no se ve.’ The TV that can’t be seen,” was what Cubans called it, said Fulton Armstrong, a U.S. official in Havana at the time. Another problem: The early broadcasts happened very late at night, to minimize interference with other Cuban programming. What people saw, Armstrong said, was “a moving shadow of an image of . . . something. At something like 4 a.m.”

The TV signal was first broadcast from a blimp called “Fat Albert,” suspended 10,000 feet over the Florida Keys. But there is weather at 10,000 feet. “Fat Albert” blew off into the Everglades in 1991. It was pulled frequently out of action to dodge high winds.

In 2005, it was torn to bits by Hurricane Dennis, and the government gave up on blimps. Instead, it tried planes.

First, there was a military C-130. It cost too much. Then came “Aero Martí” and a sister aircraft (now retired), smaller planes fitted with broadcasting antennas and flown in a figure-eight pattern in U.S. airspace near Key West.

Since these planes first flew in October 2006, they have cost taxpayers at least $32 million. That’s more than $12,000 a day.

But on Cuban TV sets, they didn’t make much difference. 

In 2008, according to the Government Accountability Office, a telephone survey found about the same viewership as had been reported in 2006. And in 2003. And in 1990. Less than 1 percent (after that, the U.S. government stopped taking the survey, declaring it was impossible to get valid data on Cuban TV habits).

But the planes kept flying.

The program was repeatedly protected from Washington budget-cutters by a coalition of Cuban American lawmakers and non-Cuban legislators from Florida. To them, what looked like the program’s worst problems were actually proof that it had to be saved.

Video Here >>

Underpants-Clad Bodybuilder on Ecstasy Breaks into Angela Merkel's Jet

Associated Press

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
An intruder managed to break into German Chancellor Angela Merkel's jet at Cologne Airport for several hours last month, playing around with buttons in the cockpit, activating the escape slide and using fire extinguishers before police put an end to his escapades.

The incident took place the evening of July 25 and the case is still being investigated, a spokesman for Germany's air force said Tuesday. Merkel was not in Cologne during the incident, he said.

"The man probably got onto the airfield because there was construction and that's why the alarm system was turned off," said the air force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "He then pulled down the jet engine's cover, climbed up and entered the plane through its emergency exit."

The intruder, a 24-year-old bodybuilder whose name was only given as Volkan T., somehow pressed an alarm button in the cockpit, which is how police were alerted to the incident. When he refused to leave the plane, police entered with dogs and he was bitten twice in the leg before they could overpower him, the German news agency dpa reported.

German media, citing a leaked report from the Federal Police, said he had taken ecstasy pills.

"According to witnesses, he seemed to have been under the influence of drugs, but we are still waiting for a scientific evaluation to confirm this," Ulrich Bremer, Cologne's senior prosecutor, told The Associated Press.

The Airbus A319 is one of two VIP planes that are usually on call for Germany's top lawmakers at the military section of Cologne's airport. In contrast to President Barack Obama's Air Force No. One, the two Airbus planes are not only reserved for Merkel but can also be used be the country's president, Joachim Gauck, or high-ranking ministers.

Bremer would not comment on German media reports that Volkan T. was dancing around on the plane in his underpants when he was caught by police.

"It seems his behavior may have been related to a psychiatric illness and he has been put up in a mental institution while we're waiting for a psychological evaluation," Bremer said. "He may not fully be held responsible for his acts."

The intruder had no previous history with the police, he added.

The air force official said there was no way the intruder could have started the plane, since it "was on power-off mode." Air force personnel made a complete technical check of the plane, changed the emergency exit door and held a test flight before it was put back on active duty on Aug. 13.

"As a consequence, we have ordered an extra employee to guard the government planes at all times,'" the air force spokesman said. 

Cuban Airline Gets Russian Plane

The Moscow Times

The main Cuban airline has taken delivery of an Antonov-158 passenger jet, a Russian leasing company said Thursday.

It's the second of three Antonov-158 planes, which seat 97 people, that Cubana de Aviacion ordered from the state-controlled company, Ilyushin Finance said.

The plane has a list price of $25 million to $30 million, depending on furnishing. Ukrainian aircraft maker Antonov sources about 60 percent of its parts in Russia.

Some components come from France, Germany and the U.S. in a way that does not violate U.S. sanctions against Cuba, the Aviation Explorer industry website reported.

Antonov performs the final assembly of the machines from knockdown kits manufactured at a Russian plant in Voronezh.

The first Antonov-158 arrived in Cuba in April, while the third will enter into service later this year. Panama's South American Aircraft Leasing company is an intermediary in the plane deal.

Cubana wants to use the jets on its domestic flights and to ferry people to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Ilyushin Finance earlier supplied seven other aircraft to Cuba: four medium-range Russian-made Tupolev-204 planes and three long-range Ilyushin-96-300 planes.

The latest and previous deals took place with the support of the government, whose VEB bank lends money for buyers of Russian hi-tech products as part of a state program to boost their exports.

What a pilot sees while landing a 777

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Boeing 777 crashes while landing in San Francisco

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Destination Cuba: Alongside empty seat 17A

Photographers Blog

By Maxim Shemetov

I’ve never been to Cuba before. Frankly speaking, today is my first visit. It’s a very short one of only 24 hours, of which now I have only half left to walk around Old Havana and to swim in the ocean while the global hysteria over the uncatchable Edward Snowden carries on.

For me, this story started on Sunday when I woke up and slowly went to the office. It was supposed to be a usual working weekend when almost nothing happens. Almost… Incoming calls suddenly started to light up my cell phone. The big story with Snowden as the lead actor flying somewhere via Moscow began. It is hard to describe all of the next 24 hours spent in the airport, with expensive tickets booked to get inside the transit zone at Sheremetyevo and disappointment that a lot of energy was wasted on information that turned out to be wrong.

The next morning I headed to the airport again to take the same flight as Snowden. It looked suspicious that everyone knew when and how a top secret target was going to leave Russia. The flight number, even the fugitive’s seat on the plane, was known 24 hours ahead of departure! I met around 30 reporters flying to Cuba near gate 28. All were filming a newly arrived plane while arguing with airport security.

An hour and a half before the flight, security blocked the gate and the windows, brought in tables and metal detectors to check all passengers who wanted to get aboard. “The situation is extraordinary, stop shooting if you don’t want to be kicked off the plane,” a policeman said with anger. People were starting to get nervous and security blocked the way to the gate. I didn’t even try to get my professional camera out, shooting on an iPhone and feeling an angry look from a security guard pretending to be a regular passenger. I smiled stupidly and pretended nothing had happened.

Boarding was delayed for a while. Row 17, where Snowden was expected to be seated, was full with cameras and Aeroflot staff. Ordinary passengers asked flight attendants to be re-seated. All were closely watching everyone getting aboard. It was 2:10 pm and the flight was being delayed. A flight attendant ran past us murmuring “Only three left, there is no Snowden among them”. People were stuck in their nervousness and hysteria was at its peak. All ended within 15 minutes when the flight attendant closed the door and the plane started to move.

Seat 17A was empty. Someone started to applaud, someone was smiling. Half of business class, and a quarter of economy class, was taken up by reporters. I managed to take a couple of frames of the empty seat which became a story in itself with the lack of Snowden. I transmitted it just before the plane started to taxi. I see now that it became a key picture in the story and was widely published by many newspapers and online. Aeroflot received wonderful PR and a nice increase in sales. We opened a small bottle of whiskey and blessed Snowden who gifted us this trip to Cuba.

I only have eight hours left here and I need to get a taxi and have a swim in the ocean.

Photos could prove Amelia Earhart lived as castaway

Fox News

By Rossella Lorenzi

Discovery News

A contact sheet with aerial images of Nikumaroro, the island where Amelia Earhart and her navigator are believed to have survived for a time as castaways. (Tighar)

An array of detailed aerial photos of the remote island where Amelia Earhart may have survived for a time as a castaway, has resurfaced in a New Zealand museum archive, raising hopes for new photographic evidence about the fate of the legendary aviator.
Found by Matthew O'Sullivan, keeper of photographs at the New Zealand Air Force Museum in Christchurch, the images lay forgotten in an unlabeled tin box in the museum's archives.
The box contained five sheets of contact prints -- for a total of 45 photos, complete with negatives -- and a slip of paper with the words "Gardner Island."
PHOTOS: Sonar Possibly Reveals Earhart's Plane
Now called Nikumaroro, the uninhabited tropical atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati is believed to be Earhart final resting place by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).
The legendary aviator disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR during 10 expeditions have suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash in the Pacific Ocean, running out of fuel somewhere near their target destination Howland Island.
PHOTOS: Amelia Earhart's Fate Reconstructed
Instead, they made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef. The two became castaways and eventually died on the atoll, which is some 350 miles southeast of Howland Island.
"For 25 years we have struggled to tease details from a handful of printed photos. Now we have an amazing array of detailed aerial images of every part of the atoll taken before the first colonists, or even the New Zealand Survey party, set foot on the island," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.
The images represent a complete set of aerial obliques taken on Dec. 1, 1938 by a Supermarine Walrus launched from HMS Leander in support of the New Zealand Pacific Aviation Survey. They were taken just 15 months after the Earhart disappearance and just before the first official habitation of the island in late December 1938.
According to Gillespie, the pictures could provide excellent views of areas on the island that are of particular interest for the Amelia's search.
"What do you expect to find in an unopened treasure chest? We can only imagine. We could find photographic evidence of the aircraft debris on the reef or beach, or spot signs of human activity on the beach and in other parts of the island," Gillespie said.
Recently TIGHAR released sonar imagery captured off Nikumaroro showing an "anomaly" that might possibly be the wreckage of Amelia's aircraft. The straight, unbroken feature is uncannily consistent with the fuselage of a Lockheed Electra, TIGHAR said.
PHOTOS: Jars Hint at Amelia Earhart as Castaway
According to Gillespie, the aerial photos could also reveal evidence of the presence of the castaway whose partial skeleton was found in 1940.
Recovered by British Colonial Service Officer Gerald Gallagher, the human remains -- some 13 bones -- were described in a forensic report and attributed to an individual "more likely female than male," "more likely white than Polynesian or other Pacific Islander," "most likely between 5 feet 5 inches and 5 feet 9 inches in height." Unfortunately the human remains have been lost.
Gillespie believes that many of the bones might have been carried off by the island's numerous hermit and coconut crabs, suggesting an unmerciful end for Earhart.
"We're currently working out the logistics of a trip to Christchurch to examine the negatives with our forensic imaging specialist, Jeff Glickman," Gillespie said.
"We will be working not from a third generation print but from the original large-format, fine-grained negatives. In our fondest dreams we couldn't have wished for something like this," he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/06/27/photos-could-prove-amelia-earhart-lived-as-castaway/?intcmp=features#ixzz2XQsWGF00

Bucket lists gone bad: Skydive goes wrong 80 year old woman slips from harness

NBC News.com

YouTube

Laverne Everett's skydiving partner holds onto her after she fell out of her harness.

An 80-year-old woman on a tandem skydive slipped from her instructor’s harness then held on for life while rocketing toward Earth. An Alabama man busted his ankles trying to ride a bull. A Missouri man smashed his body – and his new motorcycle – minutes after buying the bike.

All were attempting items on their “bucket lists,” those rare experiences that people – particularly Baby Boomers (folks 49 years old and up) – ache to taste before kicking the bucket. But as injuries and close calls from these sacred agendas mount, some emergency workers want the bucket-listers to tone down their chosen adventures – or at least better prepare for such feats.

“If you’re going to build a bucket list don’t fill it with 18 different versions of Russian Roulette,” said Dr. Ryan Stanton, an emergency physician in Lexington, Ky. He treated the 60-something man who recently wrecked his new motorcycle in the store’s parking lot, breaking several bones in the crash.

“Fill your bucket list with things that are actually safe and enjoyable – or at least prepare for them sufficiently if you’re going to enjoy them,” Stanton said. “You don’t want your bucket to be full of the first bucket of dirt for your grave.”

Baby boomers have become the bucket-list generation, aiming to complete and cross off dozens of adrenaline-drenched exploits before their bodies fade or their time ends, says an official at the American Association of Retired Persons.

“Boomers are really known for this phenomenon called ‘Boomeritis,’ which is: We are weekend warriors and we go out and try to squeeze all our activities into the weekend,” said Gabrielle Redford, editorial projects manager for AARP the Magazine. She believes so many 50-plusers have inked bucket lists because they came of age amid the aerobics and jogging crazes, and because they’re more active than their parents’ generation.

Typical bucket lists may include marathons, triathlons and, lately, Tough Mudders and Spartan Races – along with pursuits like ziplining, rock climbing and scuba diving.

“We set our sites on a race and just go all out to get in shape for that race. But then we go out too fast and too long and we end up with the plantar fasciitis and the Achilles (tendon) pull,” Redford said. “We just end up with all these wear and tear injuries we might not have had if we weren’t quite so ambitious.”

Some bucket lists can lead to close calls with the hereafter.

TODAY

Laverne Everett, now 82, says despite her near-disastrous skydive, she's still seeking new adventures.

To celebrate her 80th birthday and notch her bucket list, Laverne Everett went tandem skydivingtwo years ago above Lodi, Calif. After she paused in fear while perched in the plane’s hatch, she went airborne but partially slipped out of her partner’s harness. A fellow jumper filmed the plunge and the video went viral.

“I had watched watched people jump, and it looked like such fun, just sailing in real smooth, you know? It didn’t work out that way,” Everett, 82, said in a phone interview Thursday. “[My partner] kept telling me: ‘Hold on! Hold on!’ That’s where my mind was, just holding on. He was just holding me. I was just barely holding on with my legs.

“I couldn’t see anything. My clothes were rolled up over my face. There was pinhole of light, that’s all I had. So I didn’t know what was what. I’m very thankful I didn’t know,” added Everett, who suffered some “doozy bruises” and a scraped knee when she landed otherwise intact after their chute opened.

Terry Hatfield's lifelong dream of riding a bull resulted in his breaking both ankles and an arm. In 2011, the 56-year-old Huntsville, Ala., man climbed on to a 1,000-pound animal that began bucking before they exited the starting pen, causing the injuries. Hatfield said later that moment had been “on my bucket list.”

Some emergency medical technicians believe a lot of bucket-listers could attack their ventures far more safely – though many EMTs are, similarly, adrenaline junkies and they grudgingly respect the daredevil efforts of the oldsters.

“We talk about it: They could stretch or hydrate or train properly – they could have done things to prevent blown-out knees and ripped hamstrings,” said Roy Poteete, vice president of the U.S. First Responders Association, and a retired firefighter and EMT who lives in Missouri.

But aren’t bungee jumping, parachuting and mountain scaling simply hobbies that exceed the technical knowhow and physical skills of some folks?

“You are correct, sir,” Poteete said.

In fact, there currently are no medical-practice guidelines as to which bucket-list items are considered safe or age appropriate, so advice often comes down to the intuition of individual physicians, said Carl Foster, director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse. He recently chaired an American College of Sports Medicine symposium of doctors discussing the perils of bucket lists.

“A lot of people identify with the concept of: Geez, I haven’t done this in my life and I’m willing to take the risk. That’s really the guts of this thing. If you look at the movie which the term came from, it gets at: I’m close enough to the end and I’m making the active choice,” Foster said.

“By the same token, the people who have to take care of them, who have to bail them out of bad situations, probably wish they prepared or had thought better of it.”

As for Everett, she’s still scratching lines off her bucket list. Last year, she rode shotgun in a NASCAR vehicle for several laps at a California racetrack.

“I figured we were doing 90 (mph), at least,” she said. “When we got out, I told the driver, I could have gone faster!’ ”

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Bolivia compra aviones con donación venezolana

ELTIEMPO.COM

Evo Morales y Nicolás Maduro, en un reciente 
encuentro en La Paz. Foto: Efe

Bolivia tiene una deuda comercial con Venezuela por un poco más de 145 millones de dólares.

El presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, reveló  que su país compró nueve aviones de entrenamiento militar con fondos del programa ‘Bolivia cambia, Evo cumple’, que en el período 2006-2011 recibió donaciones de dinero de Venezuela.

En su discurso, Morales se refirió al asunto en un acto del Colegio Militar de Aviación de la ciudad de Santa Cruz (este), en medio de una polémica entre su gobierno y la oposición sobre el uso dado a los fondos de ese programa gubernamental en Bolivia.

Relató que en 2006, cuando llegó a la presidencia, encontró una Fuerza Aérea Boliviana (FAB) con “oficiales desmoralizados” y a sus familiares solicitando a gritos en los actos públicos que se compren los aviones de entrenamiento. “Para información de nuestro comandante, de nuestro oficial de la Fuerza Aérea Venezolana, y (con) parte del programa ‘Bolivia cambia’, compramos nueve aviones de entrenamiento. Muchas gracias hermano general, muchas gracias al pueblo venezolano”, sostuvo Morales, sin detallar la identidad de ese oficial.

Morales pidió en el acto, al que asistió dicho militar venezolano, “un aplauso como justo homenaje a esta cooperación incondicional, que lamentablemente algunos opositores, algunos políticos empresarios cuestionan”.

El mandatario no precisó si hubo fondos venezolanos usados de forma directa en la compra de las naves, aunque el plan ‘Bolivia cambia, Evo cumple’ recibió donaciones de ese país hasta 2011.

Morales se refirió al tema en medio de una polémica que hay en Bolivia sobre el uso otorgado a ese programa, tras la publicación de un estudio hecho por el opositor y empresario Samuel Doria Medina, que habló de una supuesta falta de transparencia en el plan.

El Gobierno ha rechazado las denuncias de Doria Medina y ha defendido que el plan se enfocó en obras para combatir la pobreza. Según el estudio de Doria Medina, en ese programa se gastó en seis años una suma de 438,7 millones de dólares, mientras que el gobierno, según el matutino La Razón, ha emitido informes en el sentido de que en el período 2007-2012 se gastaron 402 millones de dólares.

El gobierno boliviano también ha insistido estos días en aclarar que se trataron de donaciones y no de créditos de Venezuela, por lo que no hay deuda acumulada por los fondos del citado programa.

El único contrato de préstamo contraído con Venezuela data de 2008 y fue de 300 millones de dólares para la construcción de una carretera, pero de los que el Gobierno venezolano solo desembolsó 20 millones invertidos en el comienzo de las obras.

Aparte, Bolivia tiene una deuda comercial con Venezuela por la compra de gasóleo por un poco más de 145 millones de dólares.

La Paz
Efe