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“At one time the pilot asserted that the aircraft could not quit on them,” says the inquiry into the 3 June 2012 crash. “At another time, the captain said declaring an emergency would make [the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority] come after them.
Both Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines failed to deliver commanded thrust during final approach to Lagos and the aircraft crashed with the loss of all 153 occupants as well as six people on the ground.
No flight-data recorder information was available to the Nigerian Accident Investigation Bureau and the inquiry has had to rely heavily on the cockpit-voice recorder.
The final inquiry report contains a confusing record of the accident sequence, particularly regarding the timing of events.
But it states that the cockpit-voice recorder captured some 30min of the flight and, at the point the recording started, some 16min after the jet was airborne, the pilots were already discussing an abnormal condition regarding the correlation between thrust setting and the engine power indication.
Audio spectrum analysis by US investigators and Pratt & Whitney has proven “inconclusive”, says the inquiry. “No definitive outcome was established.” It states that, while the problem started with the left-hand engine, no flame-out was established.
While the crew initially did not express concern about the condition in the engine, they became “increasingly” worried as the flight progressed, says the inquiry. But the crew neither declared an emergency nor called for the abnormal checklist to diagnose the problem.
During preparations for the approach, the crew confirmed there was no throttle response from the left engine, and the captain took over the controls. The crew opted for an approach to Lagos’ runway 18R but still did not transmit any distress call.
With confirmation of throttle response from the right engine, the anti-ice, ignition and bleed air were switched off. The crew received vectors from the radar controller and started configuring the MD-83 for landing, by deploying the flaps.
“Subsequently the problem became compounded as thrust was required to continue the final approach,” says the inquiry, pointing out that there was no evidence of an attempt to follow an engine-out descent profile. The landing-gear, it adds, was deployed after an audio alert from the ground-proximity warning system.
“Though there was loss in engine power, there was no evidence of engine flame-out since the crew were able to select flaps, lower and retract the landing-gear as evident on the [cockpit-voice recorder transcript,” says the inquiry.
The radar controller instructed the flight to contact Lagos tower, but the crew was unable to select the tower frequency.
Investigators state that the crew discussed switching to runway 18L, offset further to the north, and the captain instructed a retraction of flaps and landing-gear. But the captain, having expressed concern about a possible stall, reiterated that he had “lost everything” and “lost both engines”, and called for various ...
Attempts to maintain altitude with manual control were unsuccessful, and automated warnings about the aircraft and the retracted landing-gear continued until impact in a densely-populated area some 8km north of the airport, on the approach centreline for runway 18R.
Investigators state that, while the engine power loss directly led to the crash, the crew’s “inappropriate omission” of checklist use and “inability to appreciate the severity” of the problem contributed to the failure to divert to an alternate airport.
Dale Hadden checks his planter in preparation for the season.
Farmers could see a delayed planting season for corn and soybeans after late winter and early spring weather left the ground wet and cold.
For Jacksonville farmer Dale Hadden, the planting season is likely not going to begin until mid-April. He has to wait for his fields to dry to put down anhydrous ammonia to restore nitrogen levels in the soil.
The delay would push planting into mid-April.
Duane Friend, University of Illinois Extension Service educator, said recent rains and lower temperatures could cause the potential for a late seeding season.
Friend said that usually by the end of March, temperatures usually rise enough that the soil is the right temperature for the seeds. The ideal soil temperatures are 50-degrees to 55-degrees.
The normal time frame for corn, usually includes planting around April 20, but Friend said many try to plant earlier in the month, while soybeans are usually planted end of April through early-May.
While Hadden is preparing his equipment so it is ready to go as soon as the fields are ready, he said the real work will begin after the fields dry.
“We’ll have some 18 to 24 hour work days,” Hadden said.
Hadden said he’ll be watching the fields closely to make sure conditions are right to prevent any damage to the crop.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav hints at mid-term Lok Sabha elections and asks his son and Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav to fulfil all promises made in the party’s assembly poll manifesto within a year. HT reports.
Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Friday hinted at mid-term Lok Sabha elections and asked his son and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to fulfil all promises made in the party’s assembly poll manifesto within a year.
“There is no guarantee when the Lok Sabha elections may take place,” Mulayam said at a party function on the birth anniversary of Ram Manohar Lohia.
After getting 224 seats in Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam raised the bar for the Lok Sabha polls, asking his party to target all 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
The Congress brushed aside Mulayam’s statement on early polls. “There is obviously no guarantee that the sky may not fall on our heads or that (BJP leader) BS Yeddyurappa will stop demanding the (Karnataka) CM’s chair. But the possibility of mid-term polls is as remote as that,” said party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Si...
The Trinamool Congress, a key and troublesome ally of the UPA, refused to comment on Mulayam’s remark. Mulayam asked Akhilesh to show “at least one miraculous act of governance in the next six months” and cautioned that the best of policies fail if the intent isn’t clean.
“We have to see that power doesn’t turn the state government arrogant the way it did the last regime,” he said.
Photo Zoom for Facebook is a Chrome extension that lets you enlarge Facebook photos simply by mousing over them.
As far as social networks go, I prefer Facebook to Twitter because I like seeing photos from my friends' daily lives. I don't like having to exit and then return to my News Feed, though, in order to view a larger image. With Photo Zoom for Facebook, I no longer have to.
Photo Zoom for Facebook is a Chrome extension that lets you view a larger version of images just by mousing over them. Hover over a zoomable image, which includes profile pictures and photos in photo albums but not thumbnails from shared news stories, and a pop-up window appears to the left or right of your cursor with...
If you come to find these pop-up images distracting, you can toggle the extension on and off using the button next to the chat bar along the bottom edge of Chrome. There is also a setting where you can have the extension turned off but zoom a photo when you hold down Shift or another key of your choosing as you mouse o...
Violinist Andrew Sords, one of the preeminent faces of classical violin and pianist Anita Pontremoli will perform together at 8 p.m. at the Flagler College Auditorium located at 14 Granada Street in St. Augustine. Tickets are $30 per person. For more information, call 904.797.2800 or visit www.emmaconcerts.com.
Enjoy the sunset and moonrise and the last chance to view St. Augustine's Nights of Lights from the most unique perspective in all of St. Augustine - the top of the Lighthouse! This special event includes a champagne toast, provided by San Sebastian Winery atop the tower and an informative overview of the history of th...
Take the lead, just keep pace, or cheer from the sidelines at one of St. Augustine's most popular races. This 5K run begins from Swing Park at Francis Field, located on Castillo Drive in St. Augustine, and continues downtown along the bay front. The race begins at 9 a.m. with an awards ceremony after the race. Registra...
Celebrate a vibrant moment in St. Augustine's history when German saboteurs and submarines were at our beaches and the Coast Guard replaced our town's tourist economy. This big band concert and swing dance will be headlined by the acclaimed 18 piece Florida Swing Orchestra, with highlights such as a stirring "Tribute t...
Enjoy Pucinni's classic opera Tosca. This opera is sung in Italian with supertitles in English. The performances take place at Flagler College Auditorium, 14 Granada Street in St. Augustine. Show times are 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door. For tickets or more in...
These threebrilliant musicians - violinist Maria Bachmann, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach and pianist Jon Klibonoff - have earned a reputation for soulful and passionate performances marked by virtuosity, high energy, seamless ensemble playing and thrilling abandon. The performance begins at 8 p.m. at the Flagler College A...
Angling quarry here: Kokanee, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, yellow perch, crappie and burbot (freshwater lings).
Stocking for 2008: 159,917 kokanee fry.
Special rules: None, statewide size and bag limits apply. No set lines for burbot.
Boat launches: A BLM (federal) access with a concrete ramp at the north end and a DNR (state) gravel ramp at the south end.
Getting there: Take Highway 20 to the Okanogan River valley. At Tonasket drive north on the west valley highway, turn left on the Loomis-Oroville Road drive to Loomis and turn right on Sinlahekin Road and drive north about five miles.
Throughout the past season of "The Last Man on Earth," you saw Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis duet … and duet ... and duet on "Falling Slowly," the deeply emotional, Oscar-winning ballad from the 2007 film "Once." It was their slow jam, about the only thing their characters – brothers with a serious sibling rivalry – co...
The actors' harmonizing sounded practiced – and for good reason. It turns out the former "Saturday Night Live" cast mates have sung "Falling Slowly" more than once at karaoke nights around Los Angeles and New York.
"We do a lot of karaoke together," Forte told us in a video interview when he stopped by The Envelope studio at The Times. "We go and sing songs for hours and hours, getting into some deep cuts, but 'Falling Slowly' is one we do every single time."
Forte continues to be grateful (and a little amazed) that the quirky show found a home on a broadcast network like Fox.
"This is how the show would be if it was on a cable channel -- with probably less F-words," Forte says. "But I love saying 'friggin.' Now in real life I say 'friggin' instead of the other one, the legitimate F-word."
To understand why that may be a relief for Forte's mom, watch the full interview here.
Will Forte talks about his TV show "The Last Man on Earth."
It seems the commercial space industry in the U.S. is suddenly ablaze with activity. SpaceX has just announced a $492 million deal with Iridium to launch numerous satellites into orbit, and it’s all thanks to the Falcon 9 rocket success.
Iridium is the owner-operator of what it calls “the only truly global satellite communications” system for the public. It’s the tech behind those satellite phones that news reporters sometimes use in particularly far-flung parts of the world. The company is busily setting up its next generation system, Iridium Next, wh...
We don’t know how many satellites SpaceX has been contracted to fly. But because of the flawless Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX is even trying to drop one of the required three launches required by NASA before being eligible to transport cargo (and, eventually, people) to the International Space Station. Iridium seems confide...
(JTA) — If the French right-wing politician Francois Fillon is elected president next year, it won’t be for his skills at promoting interfaith dialogue.
The secularist candidate widely favored to win the election in May managed to enrage many Jews, Muslims and even Catholics with a single explosive statement he made last week during a radio interview shortly after winning the Republican Party primaries in France.
His remark unleashed a furious reaction by Muslim community activists like Yasser Louati, a former spokesman of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, who called Fillon a xenophobe. And it certainly offended some members of the Jewish community, where congregants regularly recite a special prayer in their synag...
UEJF, the left-leaning Jewish student group, criticized Fillon. But mainstream representatives of French Jewry remained unusually silent on the statement, giving observers the impression that Fillon is getting a free pass on expressing anti-Jewish bias because many Jews support his anti-Muslim stance and view him as th...
“I was amazed by the silence of community representatives who are usually never shy in condemning any shred of anti-Jewish bias on what is clearly a very problematic statement by Fillon,” said Michel Zerbib, news director at Radio J, the French Jewish station.
Bruno Benjamin, president of the Marseilles branch of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, called Fillon’s statement “clumsy” but “not unusual during campaigns.” He added: “I’m not about to polemicize what Fillon said.” His forgiving attitude was unusual for his organization, which is usually quick to ...
Fillon’s statement, however, did alarm some French Jews. Following his landslide victory in the primaries with 65 percent of the vote, Fillon is poised to become president. In May he will be running against a yet-undeclared candidate from the ruling party of President Francois Hollande, an uncharismatic candidate with ...
Fillon, with his charged statements on Islam — he has said that French Muslims who engage in “Islamic totalitarianism” cannot be considered truly French – will also be running against Le Pen, who is projected to win 25 percent of the vote.
“But his firm stance is likely to be very bad news for her,” said Zerbib, joining other commentators who expect that Fillon will steal many of her would-be voters.
The remark on Jewish sectarianism — a reference, apparently, to the Napoleonic-era bargain in which Jews accepted emancipation in exchange for declaring themselves first and foremost French citizens — is not the first time that Fillon, a hard-liner and ex-prime minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 ...
Fillon’s spokesman said this week that his boss was “misunderstood” and had wished to express his opposition to “all forms of religious fundamentalism,” especially by Muslims.
“The Jews of France are French like the Christians of France are French and the Muslims of France are French, except for those who partake in Islamic sectarianism, in Islamic totalitarianism, which needs to be fought against,” said the spokesman, Jerome Chartier.
Fillon’s apparent suspicion or disdain for religious customs fits into the French concept of laïcité, a strict form of secularism. In recent decades it has gained traction among French politicians and thought leaders, who regard it as a tool to check what they regard as the spread of Islam and its effects on French soc...
Amid pressure, Sebbag later retracted his words. But it was nonetheless a demonstration of a willingness by a growing number of French Jews and non-Jews to accept theoretical limitations on their own freedoms in the hope of addressing the Muslim radicalization that is behind hundreds of anti-Semitic attacks annually, i...
Hundreds have died in France and Belgium in jihadist attacks, including in the Bataclan concert hall in November 2015 and more recently in Nice, where 84 people were murdered in July.
Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls are widely credited by French Jews for extraordinary efforts to protect them from this threat, Zerbib said, including by posting 12,000 soldiers at Jewish areas following the murder of four people last year at a Paris kosher shop.
“But Hollande is an unpopular leader also among Jews,” Zerbib noted.
Valls, however, “may command considerable support by Jews if he becomes the Socialist candidate,” Zerbib said.
Faced with this feeling of threat, a growing number of French Jews have been tempted to support the National Front, a party shunned by the Jewish establishment because of the anti-Semitism of some of its founders. The party, which once had nearly no Jewish supporters, now attracts 12 percent of the Jewish vote, polls f...
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front’s founder and honorary president — and Marine Le Pen’s father — was finally booted from the party this year for minimizing the Holocaust. A French court determined earlier this month that he may keep the title of honorary president.
In addition to kicking out her father and several other members who made anti-Semitic statements, Le Pen has courted French Jews by expressing support for Israel and promising Jews her party will be “their shield” against Muslim radicalism.
But last month, Le Pen reiterated her support for a ban on wearing religious garb, including by Jews, to curb what she calls the spread of Islam.
“Jews can understand that if we ask for this sacrifice from them,” she told BFMTV.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Financial struggles led Leon Statz to sell his 50 dairy cows, causing the third-generation farmer to become depressed.
Then land next to his 200-acre farm near Loganville went up for sale — land his late father had said he should buy. Statz, who didn’t have the money, became hopeless.
On Oct. 8, the day the adjacent property hit the market; Statz killed himself on his farm. He was 57.
Wisconsin, which had a record 915 suicides in 2017, may be seeing a surge in suicides and suicidal thoughts among farmers, who are facing some of the worst economic challenges in years, experts say.
Exact numbers of suicides among farmers aren’t available, and authorities say some deaths reported as farm accidents are actually suicides.
But calls to the Wisconsin Farm Center, which helps distressed farmers, were up last year, including a 33 percent increase in November and December compared to the same two months the previous year.
The anguish is approaching that of the 1980s farm crisis, though interest rates today aren’t as high, said Frank Friar, an economic specialist at the farm center who has done similar work for decades.
“There’s so much volatility out there and so much unknown, it makes people think negative,” Friar said.
John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders, an advocacy group in Madison, said he believes farmer suicides are up in Wisconsin from what he’s heard.
Several years of low milk prices, the high cost of farm equipment, trade wars and other pressures contributed to the closure of 691 dairy farms in the state last year, the highest number of closures since 2011.
About 8,100 dairy farms remain, down from about 15,900 in 2004. The number of cows milked has remained steady at nearly 1.3 million, as many surviving farms have expanded.
In 2017, the Western District of Wisconsin had the highest number of Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in the country, according to federal court data. The district that year had 28 bankruptcies, which represent only a fraction of total liquidations. Similar figures for 2018 are not yet available.
Though the forces working against farmers can seem insurmountable, a growing effort based in Dodgeville aims to help farmers cope with stress and avoid suicide.
Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program started a farmer suicide prevention project recently. The effort, funded by a $50,000 grant from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Wisconsin Partnership Program, was prompted by an increase in stories about suicides or suicidal thoughts among farmers, said Wal...
The project, which also involves the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Iowa County, plans to develop a mobile crisis service, conduct suicide prevention training sessions and establish networks to address suicide in a region stretching from Eau Claire to the state border with Dubuque, Iowa.
“The biggest part is to spread awareness, to say, ‘It is OK to talk about it,’ “ said Sue Springer Judd, who runs the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Iowa County, which also serves six nearby counties.
Judd spoke to a group of farmers recently in Loganville, about 50 miles northwest of Madison. Her brother, Donald Springer, killed himself in 2012 at age 41, leaving behind three children ages 10 to 15. He owned a plumbing business and had a hobby farm next to his father’s beef farm near Mineral Point.
Randy Roecker, 54, a dairy farmer in Loganville, said he became suicidal a decade ago when the Great Recession hit shortly after he invested millions to expand the farm started by his grandfather.
Medications and hospitalizations didn’t help much, but counseling brought some relief, he said.
Roecker — who attends St. Peter’s, as does Brenda Statz — helped organize the church gathering. He wanted to do something to help after he couldn’t bring himself to attend Leon Statz’s funeral because the suicide brought back his feelings of despair.

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