By ALAN CLENDENNING
Associated Presds Writer

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) — Rescue crews pulled dozens of bodies Wednesday from a Brazilian airliner that crashed and burst into flames at Brazil’s busiest airport, as the number of people feared dead rose to 195.

The TAM airlines Airbus-320 was en route to Sao Paulo from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil on Tuesday when it skidded on the rain’slicked runway in Sao Paulo, barreled across a busy road and slammed into a gas station and TAM building.

On Wednesday, the airline raised the number of people aboard the plane by four to 180 and officials said the chance of anyone surviving was near zero. A Sao Paulo public safety official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy said 15 bodies had been recovered from the ground.

More at the AP

If Dick had his way they’d be bound for Iran…….

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It’s outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there’s no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The arrival of these outsized U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected “soon,” says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? “We’re still working that,” Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.

The Reaper’s first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.

“With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home,” North said.

More at YahooNews

NEW YORK: Undeterred by skeptics and hoping modern technology can help solve a 70-year-old mystery, a group of investigators embarks this week on a new attempt to discover whether famed aviator Amelia Earhart may have crash-landed and died as a castaway on a remote South Pacific island.

The expedition by 15 members of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, known as TIGHAR, will be the group’s ninth visit to the atoll known as Nikumaroro, located about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) south of Hawaii.

They were to fly from Los Angeles to Fiji on Thursday and board a chartered motor sailer for a 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer), five-day trip to the uninhabited, 2 1/2-mile (4-kilometer) -long island near the intersection of the equator and the international dateline.

Once there, the group was to spend 17 days searching for human bones, aircraft parts and any other evidence to show that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, reached the island on July 2, 1937, crashed on a reef at low tide and made it to shore, where they possibly lived for months as castaways, written off by the world as having been lost at sea.

The conditions during the search will be punishing, with the explorers forced to contend with dense jungle vegetation, 100-degree (40 Celsius) heat, sharks that reside in a lagoon in the middle of the island and voracious crabs that make it necessary to wear shoes at all times.

More at the International Herald Tribune

A 23-year-old pilot took off Wednesday in a single-engine plane on the last leg of a trip to become what he says is the youngest person to fly around the world alone.

Barrington Irving left Orlando early Wednesday for the short flight to Opa-locka, the Miami area city he left March 23 in a Columbia 400 built of donated parts. He was optimistic his 27,000-mile, continent-hopping trip aboard the “Inspiration” would live up to the plane’s name and motivate young people.

He claims to be the youngest pilot and first black person to complete the journey alone, though it was unclear how those potential records would be validated.

The National Aeronautic Association, the aviation record-keeping authority in the U.S., does not track pilots’ age, sex or ethnicity, said Nathan Rohrbaugh, who helps coordinate records at the organization.

Continue reading at the Sun Sentinel