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The captain of a commuter plane that crashed Feb. 12 near Buffalo, N.Y., had flunked numerous flight tests during his career and was never adequately taught how to respond to the emergency that led to the airplane's fatal descent, according to people close to the investigation. [...] Capt. Marvin Renslow had never been properly trained by the company to respond to a warning system designed to prevent the plane from going into a stall, according to people familiar with the investigation. As the speed slowed to a dangerous level, setting off the stall-prevention system, he did the opposite of the...

We've had actors-turned-mayors, and actors-turned-governors. . . but actors-turned-White House staffers? That's a new one! "House" star Kal Penn -- whose character was killed off on Monday's episode -- is taking a sabbatical from acting to work for President Obama. The 31-year-old actor, first launched to fame as a stoner student in the "Harold and Kumar" movies, is coming to Washington to be associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison, Entertainment Weekly first reported yesterday.

It’s alive! We thought it might be over but some of us never dared fully believe it. Last week was like one of those moments in a horror movie when the worst terror recedes, the screen goes blank and then reopens on green fields or a lover’s tender embrace. Drained but still naive audiences breathe a collective sigh of relief. The plot twists have all been resolved; the threat is gone; the quiet spreads. And then . . . Put your own movie analogy in here. Glenn Close in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction – whoosh! she’s back at your...

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running neck-and-neck in California, New Jersey and Missouri two days before the sprawling "Super Tuesday" presidential showdown, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday. Obama has a slight lead in California and is virtually tied with Clinton in New Jersey and Missouri heading into the biggest day of voting in a U.S. presidential nominating campaign, with contests in 24 states from coast to coast. ... In the Republican race, Arizona Sen. John McCain has double-digit leads on Mitt Romney in New York, New Jersey and Missouri but narrowly trails the former Massachusetts...

New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 murders in 2007, by far the lowest amount in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963. But within the city’s official crime statistics is a perhaps even more striking figure: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of 8.5 million. If that trend holds up, fewer than 100 murder victims in New York City this year would not have known the assailants who took their lives. The vast...

We have been here before, in fiction at least. Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth. One of his assignments is to invent a hero whose bravery will reflect well on Big Brother. Step forward "Comrade Ogilvy". At the age of three, Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun and a model helicopter. At nine, he had been a troop leader in the Spies. At 23 he had perished heroically in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had weighted his body with a machine gun...

Children who are cooped up indoors and prevented from playing freely suffer from "cabin fever" and are more likely to go off the rails, according to a Government adviser on children's play. Parents and officials who believe their job is to eliminate risk from children's lives rob youngsters of the chance to develop vital skills and resilience, Tim Gill, the former director of Play England, will say this week at a seminar at the Royal Society for the Arts. His comments come days after Bracebridge Heath Primary School, near Lincoln, was criticised for banning the game of tag at playtime...

MIAMI, Feb. 3 — In some parts of the world, the Seattle Seahawks are the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Buffalo Bills are the last great football dynasty and Tom Brady is some frustrated quarterback from New England who can never win it all. So say the T-shirts and the caps worn in Niger, Uganda and Sierra Leone. The Super Bowl will end about 10 p.m. Sunday, and by 10:01 every player on the winning team — along with coaches, executives, family members and ball boys — could be outfitted in colorful T-shirts and caps proclaiming them champions. The other...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - James Kim walked more than 16 miles before he died trying to save his stranded family in Southern Oregon's rugged Rogue River Canyon - six miles more than was originally thought, a search official said Saturday. Phil Turnbull, chief of the Rural/Metro Fire Department in Josephine County, also said that as Kim's wife and two children waited in their car to be rescued, they weren't as close to a fishing lodge as authorities had initially thought. A field report that had incorrect coordinates for the location of the family car led officials to calculate initially that...

In an age when children appear to be anchored to TV and computer screens and kept indoors against a harsh and threatening world, the youngsters of Farley nursery are being set free. Most of their day is spent outside, even when the rain is falling. The 20 pupils come inside only for breaks and the rest of the time are allowed to roam, to make dens, mud pies and explore. Sue Palmer, the head, believes "outdoor learning" is a better way of teaching very young children than enclosing them in classrooms. She is preparing to enrol babies in the New...

The notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors. Inside the 100-yard long cell block the smell of excrement was overpowering. Four to six prisoners shared each of the 12ft by 15ft cells along either side and the walls were smeared with filth. The cell block was patrolled by guards who carried long batons and shouted angrily at the prisoners to stand up. Access to the part of the prison containing terrorism...

Sir Peter Tapsell is, if the phrase is not a contradiction in terms nowadays, a distinguished backbencher. He first entered the House of Commons in 1959. Noted for his grand manner, he is the longest-serving Tory MP. At foreign affairs questions in Parliament on Tuesday, Sir Peter rose. He wanted Margaret Beckett to tell him whether the Prime Minister had colluded with President Bush in allowing Israel to "wage unlimited war" in Lebanon, including attacks on civilian residential areas of Beirut. These attacks, he added, were "a war crime grimly reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter in...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 17 — American soldiers began an intensive search on Saturday for two of their comrades who apparently were captured by masked insurgents after an ambush in the chaotic area south of the capital. [...] According to local Iraqis in the area, who were interviewed by telephone from Baghdad, the two American soldiers who survived the gun battle were led away by the insurgents to a pair of waiting cars. Hassan Abdul Hadi was tending to his date and apple trees near the village of Qaraghul when he heard gunfire and explosions. When he walked to the road,...

A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his lawyer said. Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. [...] A corporal with the unit leaned over to Wuterich and said he saw the shots coming from a specific house, and...

Modern methods of teaching maths which have mystified parents and confused many pupils are to be abandoned six years after the Government forced them on primary schools. The same unit at the Department for Education which devised the strategy now wants teachers to go back to the "standard written method" it abolished. The decision has prompted a backlash from some primary teachers and maths advisers who say children are better able to understand the concept of arithmetic when they break sums down into a series of units. They say the "back to basics" approach heralds a return to the "dark...

(A disabled five-year-old famous for her courage is critically ill after being hit by another car) IN 2003 the smiles and courage of Sophie Delezio, then aged 2, won the admiration of people across Australia after she was gravely injured by an elderly driver whose car crashed into her childcare centre in Sydney. Yesterday Sophie, now aged 5, was back on life support in a Sydney hospital after being hit by another elderly driver on a pedestrian crossing. Once again Australians were praying for the little girl’s recovery; and again her parents were keeping a vigil at her bedside. “I...

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Those sleep-deprived, multitasking drivers - clutching cell phones, fiddling with their radios or applying lipstick - apparently are involved in an awful lot of crashes. Distracted drivers were involved in nearly eight out of 10 collisions or near-crashes, says a study released Thursday by the government. Researchers reviewed thousands of hours of video and data from sensor monitors linked to more than 200 drivers, and pinpointed examples of what keeps drivers from paying close attention to the road. "We see people on the roadways talking on the phone, checking their stocks, checking scores, fussing with their MP3...

The Japanese have a reputation for inventing new technology and exporting it to the rest of the world. But as Christopher Hogg discovers at a Tokyo beauty salon, there are some things in Japan which may not be to everyone's tastes. I was always taught not to put anything in my ear smaller than my little finger. Twizzling cotton buds around the inside of my ear canal could cause damage. So I just did not bother to use them or in fact to pay much attention to what kind of condition my ears were in. That might be the reason...

AL ASAD, Iraq(April 15, 2006) -- Iraqi soldiers joined dozens of U.S. troops in the search for a sailor who has been missing since last week due to a vehicle rollover accident near the Marines’ base here April 2. More than 25 Iraqi soldiers from the Al Asad-based 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division, joined dozens of U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers in daily search operations to recover several missing U.S. servicemembers from the accident. The accident occurred when a seven-ton truck, part of a Marine combat logistics resupply in Al Anbar Province, rolled over during a flash-flood, according to...

A baby boy died after an untrained doctor pressed the wrong button on his bypass machine because it was a less "horrid" colour than the other, an inquest heard yesterday. Four-month-old Thomas Smith was on a heart and lung bypass machine when Simon McGuirk, a cardiac surgical registrar, accidentally turned it off. Mr McGuirk said that he did not know whether to press the orange or blue buttons to restart the machine, so opted for the blue. It sent the machine into reverse, sucking blood from Thomas's body. He died a short time later. The inquest heard that Thomas had...