WORLD
LONDON — A British Airways jet from Beijing carrying 152 people crash-landed Thursday, injuring 19 people and causing more than 200 flights to be canceled at Europe's busiest airport.
Investigators will speak to the pilots and study the plane's flight data recorder and maintenance records to determine what caused the crash-landing at Heathrow Airport, tearing the plane's underbelly and damaging its wings.
Nothing suggested it was terror-related, Scotland Yard said.
Timothy Crowch, an aviation analyst with 35 years of experience as a commercial pilot, said the landing gear punched through both wings, indicating a "massive vertical impact." That suggests a total loss of engine power may have been the cause, he said.
Robert Cullemore of Aviation Economics, a London-based aviation consultancy, said the pilot kept the plane in the air long enough to prevent a disaster.
BRISBANE, Australia — Boomerangs really do come back — even after 25 years.Officials in an Australian Outback town were surprised when a boomerang arrived in the post. Along with it was a note from a guilt-ridden American who said he stole it years earlier from a museum in the mining town of Mount Isa, and now felt rotten about it."I removed this back in 1983 when I was younger and dumber," said the note, according to Mount Isa Mayor Ron McCullough. "It was the wrong thing to do, I'm sorry, and I'm going to send it back," said the note.McCullough gave the contrite thief's first name as Peter but said it would be unfair to release his full identity.McCullough said the parcel was sent to the location of the old museum, now a paper manufacturing plant and community center, and was then handed to the Mount Isa council. He declined to reveal the value of the donation. McCullough said the boomerang would be returned to its rightful owner, if he could be found.Boomerangs were used by Aborigines as hunting weapons.
