Free Republic

Three people who died when a jet crashed off California’s San Clemente Island this week were taking part in a U.S. Navy training exercise, their employer confirmed Friday. The victims, Eric Tatman, Spencer Geerlings and Shane Garner worked for Georgia-based Phoenix Air, a company with clients in the private sector and government, according to its website. The three men perished when the Phoenix Air Learjet 36 went down roughly one-mile southwest of San Clemente Island, which is the southernmost of California’s Channel Islands, around 7:40 a.m. Wednesday morning, officials said. San Clemente Island is owned and managed by the Navy,...

The air ambulance operation tasked with rescuing U.S. Ebola victims from West Africa was initially slowed by bureaucratic bungling and is now at risk of being overburdened as thousands of American troops deploy to fight the deadly disease. Yahoo News has learned the U.S. government spent millions last decade to develop and build two of the world’s only isolation chambers for flying contagious patients — but as the epidemic raged in West Africa this summer and American aid workers there needed evacuating, the medical inventions were packed away in a small-town Georgia warehouse. The troubling lack of preparedness by federal...