Developing: Air France Plane Disappears from Radar

This story is currently breaking. From Yahoo! News:

PARIS (Reuters) – An Air France plane on its way from Brazil to Paris has disappeared from radar screens, the Paris airports authority said on Monday.

Flight AF 447 had 228 people on board, Air France said.

It left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. and was expected in Paris on Monday at 11:15 a.m. (0915 GMT), a spokesman for the airports authority said.

Its last known location was unclear.

An Air France-KLM spokeswoman in Amsterdam said there had been no radio contact with the missing plane "for a while".

The people on board are 216 passengers and 12 crew.

The plane was an Airbus 330-200, airport authorities said.

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Chavez Wins Bid to Get Rid of Term Limits

That's right, ladies and gents, the world is coming to freedom and seeing the light, just like President Obama said would happen. Oh, wait, the opposite is happening... hmm, I wonder who's going to break the news to him.

From Yahoo News:

"CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez won a referendum to eliminate term limits

Sunday, enabling him to run again in 2012 and beyond in what critics fear is an attempt to become president-for-life.

Fireworks exploded in the sky and caravans of supporters celebrated in the streets, waving red flags and honking horns. Thousands of people gathered outside Miraflores Palace, where the former paratroop commander appeared on a balcony to sing the national anthem and address the crowd.

"Today we opened wide the gates of the future," proclaimed Chavez, who has governed for a decade and vowed to rule for at least a decade more. "In 2012 there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate."

Chavez called the victory — which allows all public officials to run for re-election as many times as they want — a mandate to speed his transformation of Venezuela into a socialist state.

"Those who voted 'yes' today voted for socialism, for revolution," he said.

With 94 percent of the vote counted, 54 percent had voted for the constitutional amendment, National Electoral Council chief Tibisay Lucena said. Forty-six percent had voted against it, a trend she called irreversible. She said turnout was 67 percent.

At their campaign headquarters, Chavez opponents who say the amendment pushes Venezuela closer to dictatorship hugged one another, and some cried. Several opposition leaders left without speaking, but several who remained said they wouldn't contest the vote.

"We accept this result," said student leader David Smolansky, 23. "We're still standing. We're committed to Venezuela."

Voters on both sides said the referendum was crucial to the future of Venezuela, a deeply polarized country where Chavez has spent a tumultuous decade in power channeling tremendous oil wealth into combating gaping social inequality.

Venezuela's leftist allies in Latin America have followed the model. Ecuador pushed through a new constitution in September and Bolivia did so in January. Both loosened rules on presidential re-election. Nicaragua's ruling Sandinistas also plan to propose an amendment that would let Daniel Ortega run for another consecutive term.

Opponents say Chavez already has far too much power, with the courts, the legislature and the election council all under his influence. Removing the current 12-year presidential term limit, they say, makes him unstoppable.

"Effectively this will become a dictatorship," opposition leader Omar Barboza told The Associated Press. "It's control of all the powers, lack of separation of powers, unscrupulous use of state resources, persecution of adversaries."

Chavez supporters say their president has given poor Venezuelans cheap food, free education and quality health care, and empowered them with a discourse of class struggle after decades of U.S.-backed governments that favored the rich.

"This victory saved the revolution," said Gonzalo Mosqueda, a 60-year-old shopkeeper, sipping rum from a plastic cup outside the palace. "Without it everything would be at risk — all the social programs, and everything he has done for the poor."

Chavez took office in 1999 and won support for a new constitution the same year that allowed the president to serve two six-year terms, barring him from the 2012 elections. Sunday's vote was his second attempt to change that; voters rejected a broader referendum in December 2007."

Plane that Crashed Near Buffalo was on Autopilot

From Yahoo News:

"BUFFALO, N.Y. – The commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo was on autopilot until just before it went down in icy weather, indicating that the pilot may have violated federal safety recommendations and the airline's own policy for flying in such conditions, an investigator said Sunday.

Federal guidelines and the airline's own instructions suggest a pilot should not engage the autopilot when flying through ice. If the ice is severe, the company that operated Continental Flight 3407 requires pilots to shut off the autopilot.

"You may be able in a manual mode to sense something sooner than the autopilot can sense it," said Steve Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board, which also recommends that pilots disengage the autopilot in icy conditions.

Automatic safety devices returned the aircraft to manual control just before it fell from the sky, Chealander said.

During a Sunday briefing, Chealander described the flight's frantic last moments, which included a steep drop and rollercoaster-like pitching and rolling.

Chealander said information from the plane's flight data recorder indicates that the plane pitched up at an angle of 31 degrees in its final moments, then pitched down at 45 degrees.

The plane rolled to the left at 46 degrees, then snapped back to the right at 105 degrees — 15 degrees beyond vertical.

Radar data shows Flight 3407 fell from 1,800 feet above sea level to 1,000 feet in five seconds, he said. Passengers and crew would have experienced G-forces up to twice as strong as on the ground.

The plane crashed belly first on top of a house Thursday night, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

Just before they went down in a suburban neighborhood near the Buffalo airport, the pilots discussed "significant" ice buildup on their wings and windshield. Other aircraft in the area told air traffic controllers they also experienced icing around the same time.

The Dash 8 Q400 plane operated by Colgan Air was equipped with a "stick shaker" mechanism that rattles the yolk to warn the pilot if the plane is about to lose aerodynamic lift, a condition called a stall.

When the stick shaker engaged, it would have automatically turned off the autopilot, Chealander said.

Chealander said the plane's deicing system was turned on 11 minutes after it took off from Newark, N.J., and stayed on for the entire flight. Indicator lights showed the system appeared to be working.

Investigators who examined both engines said they appeared to be working normally at the time of the crash, too.

In a December safety alert issued by the NTSB, the agency said pilots in icy conditions should turn off or limit the use of the autopilot to better "feel" changes in the handling qualities of the airplane.

Colgan Air operates a fleet of 51 regional turboprops for Continental Connection, United Express and US Airways Express.

Chealander said Colgan, like most airlines, had begun following NTSB recommendations that pilots use deicing systems as soon as they enter conditions that might lead to icing.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency advises pilots to disengage the autopilot when ice is accumulating, but the guidance is not mandatory.

She also said some planes are certified to be flown on autopilot in icing conditions because doing so "may actually keep the aircraft at a steadier speed and altitude than a pilot could flying it manually."

Brown said the agency considered making the guidance mandatory, but others in the aviation community argued against it, citing the capabilities of such advanced planes.

She did not know if the 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft that crashed Thursday was certified to be on autopilot during icing conditions.

By Sunday, authorities had recovered the remains of 15 people from the wreckage as crews raced to finish their work before a storm arrives later in the week.

Erie County Executive Chris Collins said recovery efforts intensified after the arrival of additional federal workers. A storm forecast for Wednesday added to the urgency.

The storm could hamper recovery efforts, but "the investigation will continue snow, rain or shine," said David Bissonette, the town's emergency coordinator.

Recovery crews could need as much as four days to remove the remains from the site. Chealander described the efforts as an "excavation."

"Keep in mind, there's an airplane that fell on top of a house, and they're now intermingled," he said.

DNA and dental records will be used to identify the remains, he said.

Once all the remains are recovered, the focus will turn to removing wreckage of the 74-seat aircraft from the neighborhood."