Criminal Defense

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says there was no action in the cockpit, neither he nor the captain had fallen comatose and the passengers were never in any danger.

But in an interview with The Associated Press two days after he and a colleague blew past their destination as air cartage controlled approved aimlessly to ability them, pilot Richard Cole would not say just what it was that led to them to forget to land Flight 188.

"It was not a austere event, from a assurance issue," Cole said in advanced of his Salem, Ore., home. "I would acquaint you more, but I've already told you way too much."

Air cartage controllers and pilots approved for added than an hour Wednesday night to acquaintance Cole and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., using radio, cell phone and data messages. On the ground, concerned officials alerted National Guard jets to prepare to hunt the aeroplane from two locations, though none of the aggressive planes larboard the runway.

Cole would not discuss why it took so continued for the pilots to respond to radio calls, "but I can acquaint you that airplanes lose acquaintance with the arena people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together appropriate away; sometimes it takes awhile afore one or the added notices that they are not in contact."

A badge address appear Friday said the pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were atoning after the flight. The address additionally said that the crew indicated they had been having a heated altercation about airline policy.

But aerodynamics assurance experts and added pilots were acutely skeptical they could accept become so distracted by shop talk that they forgot to land an airplane a! ccustome d 144 passengers. The best likely possibility, they said, is that the pilots simply fell comatose somewhere along their avenue from San Diego.

"It certainly is a believable explanation," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

Unfortunately, the cockpit articulation recorder may not acquaint the tale.

New recorders retain as abundant as two hours of cockpit chat and added noise, but the earlier archetypal aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes - alone the actual end of Wednesday night's flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin and were heading back to Minneapolis.

Cheney and Cole accept been abeyant and are to be interviewed by National Transportation Safety Board investigators next week. The airline, acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is additionally investigating. Messages larboard at Cheney's home were not returned.

FAA agent Tony Molinaro said in general, an unsafe action created by a pilot could lead to the suspension of the person's pilot authorization and possibly a civilian penalty.

With worries about terrorists still high, even after acquaintance was re-established, air cartage controllers asked the crew to prove who they were by executing turns.

"Controllers accept a acute faculty of vigilance back we're not able to talk to an aircraft. That's the reality post-9/11," said Doug Church, a agent for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

NTSB agent Keith Holloway said fatigue and cockpit distraction will be looked into. The plane's flight recorders were brought to the board's Washington headquarters.

The pilots were finally alerted to their situation back a flight attendant called on an intercom from the cabin.

Voss said a appropriate concern was t! hat the many assurance checks built into the aerodynamics system to anticipate incidents like this one - or to actual them quickly - allegedly were ineffective until the actual end. Not alone couldn't air cartage controllers and added pilots raise the Northwest pilots for an hour, but the airline's dispatcher should accept been trying to ability them as well. The three flight attendants onboard should accept questioned why there were no affairs for landing being made. Brightly lit cockpit displays should accept warned the pilots it was time to land.

"It's apparently article you would say never would happen if this hadn't just happened," Voss said.

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AP Airlines Writers Joshua Freed in Minneapolis and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and AP Writers Joan Lowy in Washington, Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Dave Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report. Cain reported from Salem, Ore.

Boeing's ambitions seem to have outflown its abilities, as the company's plans to reinvent the way jetliners are built keep faltering, forcing it to post a big loss in the third quarter.

The airplane maker has struggled to get its 787 passenger plane and a revamped version of the 747 jumbo jet off the ground. Delays, parts shortages and last-minute fixes have cost it billions in extra expenses and lost years. That's on top of weak demand for aircraft as air travel and freight shipments take a hit during the economic downturn.

But Boeing's troubles have arisen partly from a new approach to plane building. In recent years, the company has outsourced manufacturing and engineering work to suppliers around the world. It's also started using carbon composite parts to reduce weight and improve fuel efficiency.

Those technological leaps have proved popular in the marketplace - the 787 has more orders than any other new plane - but troublesome for the Chicago-based company.

"We experienced a bridge too far, leading-edge kind of development, which is what we are trying to recover from right now," Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney said in a conference call following the company's earnings announcement.

During the quarter, Boeing's sales edged up 9 percent, but charges of more than $3.6 billion for the 787 and 747-8 programs resulted in a loss of $1.56 billion, or $2.23 per share. It was a disappointing shift from a year earlier when the company earned $695 million, or 96 cents per share.

The charges also led Boeing to cut its 2009 profit forecast to $1.35 to $1.55 per share from $4.70 to $5 per share.

Matt Collins, an analyst Edward Jones, said he wasn't surprised by Boeing's results.

"Right now, there's not much they can s! ay to re gain investor confidence," he said. "They just need to execute. The third quarter is almost a non-issue. It's what's going to happe

Image by gTarded via Flickr

Both the new 747 and 787 have had their original test flights and deliveries to customers pushed back by years. That's partly because suppliers have botched certain work, such as the installation of fasteners that hold the plane together.

The revamped 747 was unveiled in 2005 and is designed to be larger and more fuel-efficient. The passenger version of the 250-foot plane seats 467 passengers.

Boeing's other big worry has been the 787, a mid-size aircraft built for fuel efficiency with carbon composite parts. While popular, with 840 orders, the plane was delayed for the fifth time in June. Boeing said parts of the aircraft needed to be reinforced. The aircraft - designed to carry up to 330 passengers in wider seats and aisles - is more than two years behind schedule.

The company must improve the two plane programs by setting more realistic goals and tightening oversight by technicians and engineers, McNerney said. Problems surfaced when Boeing started shipping work from its longtime manufacturing base in Washington state to suppliers worldwide, from South Carolina to Italy to Japan.

"We need to bring some more of the engineering ... back into Boeing," McNerney said.

On Wednesday, the company seemed to move in that direction. It announced it will choose a second assembly line for the 787 in "the next couple of weeks," having narrowed the choices to Charleston, S.C. - where Boeing is buying a plant once owned by a supplier - and Everett, Wash., where its commercial aircraft business is based.

The problems with the 787 and new 747 appear to have cost some executives their jobs. In August, Boeing said the chief of its commercial aircraft division was leaving. And last week, ! Boeing a nnounced the president of its finance business planned to retire at the end of the year.

Airline customers and Wall Street have grown skeptical of the company's timetable for the aircraft's delivery.

Shares of Boeing fell $1.26, or 2.4 percent, to close at $50.63 on Wednesday. After hours, they gained 7 cents to $50.70.

Quarterly revenue rose to $16.69 billion from $15.29 billion a year earlier. But the comparison was relatively easy. Last year's revenue was knocked down by $2.1 billion because of a labor strike and supplier problems.

In the latest quarter, sales from Boeing's defense business, which makes fighter jets, satellites and security systems, rose 3 percent. Commercial aircraft revenue rose 13 percent.

SEATTLE (AP) -- A second trial began Wednesday to determine whether a mentally ill man who stormed a Jewish center in 2006, killing one woman and wounding five others as he railed against Israel and U.S. foreign policy, was legally insane at the time.

Naveed Haq's first trial ended last year with jurors deadlocked on that question.

On July 28, 2006, Haq drove from his eastern Washington home to Seattle and forced a teenage girl at gunpoint to let him into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Once in the second-floor office, he opened fire, shooting some people in their cubicles, some in the hall and one, Pamela Waechter, fatally as she fled down a stairwell.

Before surrendering, he told a 911 operator he wanted to get on CNN. Deputy King County prosecutor Don Raz told 16 jurors in his opening statement Wednesday that the shooting spree was "Naveed Haq's press release."

"He was tired that no one was listening to the Muslim point of view. He wanted that point of view heard," Raz said. "Naveed Haq's mental illness did not cause him to attack the Jewish Federation. His anger did."

Raz focused his opening statement on Haq's preparations in an effort to show that his mind was clear at the time.

Haq made several trips to gun stores in the prior weeks, wrote two documents on his father's computer criticizing Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East and used MapQuest to find directions to the center from his family's home in Pasco, 180 miles east of Seattle.

On his way to the Jewish center, he pulled off Interstate 5 and test-fired his gun, Raz said, and when pulled over for driving down a bus-only street in rush hour, he seemed normal to a police officer.

In a recorded phone conversation after the shooting, ! Raz said , Haq told his mother, "I did a very good thing. I did it for a good reason."

She said, "I know you're not well," to which Haq replied: "Whatever, Mom."

One of Haq's lawyers, John Carpenter, argued that Haq could not perceive the quality of his actions, and that he honestly believed he could change the course of wars by attacking the Jewish Federation.

"There could be no defense for this act if it was borne by an undiseased mind," Carpenter said. "But it wasn't."

Carpenter said Haq was an excellent student in high school - he was admitted to a dual-degree program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Pennsylvania - but his time at college was darkened by worsening depression.

He heard voices that called him a "loser" and a "homo," Carpenter said.

Haq's mental problems were well documented for more than a decade, including auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. He described Haq's condition as psychizoaffective disorder with bipolar tendencies, and said medication changes caused a serious deterioration of his mental state before the shooting.

The shooting left one victim, Layla Bush, unable to walk. Another, Cheryl Stumbo, said it made her more active in pushing for mental health care for Washington residents, and Carol Goldman has said she now volunteers at Harborview Medical Center, where the critically injured women were treated.

Stumbo was expected to testify Wednesday, as was her niece, who was 14 at the time. Haq ambushed the girl in the lobby and forced her to let him into the charity's office.

Richard Fruchter, the Jewish Federation's president, attended the trial Wednesday and said he wanted to "ensure that Mr. Haq never again has the opportunity to cause such devastation in people's lives and send a clear message that such acts of hate ar! e not to lerated in our greater Seattle community."

"Having to endure a second trial is an unfortunate reality, but we are committed to seeing this through," he said.

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- About $2 million in federal and state money is being made available for new road construction and flood control after portions of a highway were wiped out by a landslide in central Washington.

The federal government is releasing $1 million in emergency relief to accelerate construction of a new section of road that likely will be the permanent route for State Route 410 around the massive Oct. 11 slide that blocked the road and dammed the Naches River.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Doc Hastings announced the federal funding Monday.

The landslide demolished a half-mile of the highway about 15 miles west of Naches. It also destroyed at least two homes and changed the course of the Naches River, causing flooding.

Yakima County engineer Gary Ekstedt tells the Yakima Herald-Republic that the county also will receive $1 million in low-interest loans from the state Public Works Trust Fund.

Yakima County is trying to create a new channel for the river that will contain expected high flows this winter.

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Information from: Yakima Herald-Republic, http://www.yakima-herald.com

SEATTLE (AP) -- More money might result in more projects to replace culverts that block migrating salmon in Washington state but would not cut the time it takes to make each fix, a transportation official testified Monday.

Paul J. Wagner, environmental services biology branch manager in the state Transportation Department, testified Monday in U.S. District Court that the estimated number of state highway-related problem culverts has grown from 350 in 1994, when the first survey was completed, to 1,800 when the latest estimate was completed in 2007.

The difference reflects the addition of rivers, creeks and streams with steeper slopes to the estimates, Wagner told Judge Ricardo S. Martinez. The first survey covered only those with gradients up to 7 degrees while the latest goes up to 20 degrees.

Subtracting about 200 fixes that have been made since the state's culvert program began in 1991 and culverts that would be of little benefit to repair or replace, about 800 remain on the to-do list, he said.

In a trial that began last Tuesday, 19 Native American tribes are asking Martinez to order a drastic speedup in replacing culverts that block salmon from potential spawning grounds and their offspring from the ocean.

The case is a spinoff of 29 years of litigation over tribal fishing rights based on mid-19th century treaties. State lawyers argue that a culvert speedup would give short shrift to other vital efforts, including habitat restoration, hatcheries, harvest controls and changes in hydroelectric dam operations.

Regardless of funding, it takes at least four years from scoping - determining which actions, impacts and concerns will be addressed in a project - to improve or replace a culvert to meet fish passage requirements, Wagner said.

Mor e money won't speed up that process, he added, "We'll just be able to do more projects at the same time."

John C. Sledd, a lawyer for nine of the tribes, suggested that fixing culverts would benefit salmon more than other efforts.

"Our goal is to correct priority salmon barriers," Wagner replied. "We hope that would increase salmon production. We don't have a way to determine" how that work compares in effectiveness with other approaches.