LOS ANGELES — A large metal baggage container was sucked into the engine of a Japan Airlines Boeing 747-400 on Monday as the giant jetliner prepared to depart with 245 passengers from Los Angeles International Airport, authorities said.
Airport officials said the vacuum created by the air intake of the left outboard engine was so strong that it pulled the empty container off a baggage cart that was either parked or driven too close to the aircraft.
The metal box, which is used by airline baggage handlers to haul luggage to and from aircraft, measures approximately 5-feet-by-5-feet-by-4-feet. Officials said the container became lodged in the engine’s housing.
Japan Airlines took the plane out of service.
Ohio: Suspected Nazi guard is deported to Germany
Deported by the United States, retired autoworker John Demjanjuk was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed Cleveland on Monday evening for Germany, which wants to try him as an accessory to the murders of Jews and others at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Demjanjuk, 89, denies Germany’s accusations, saying he was held by the Germans as a Soviet prisoner of war and was never a camp guard.
New York: FAA stops Navy flyover
The Federal Aviation Administration turned down a U.S. Navy request to fly a P-3 Orion reconnaissance plane past Manhattan on Monday, two weeks after an Air Force photo shoot over the Statue of Liberty caused panic. The agency said it refused clearance for the flight, which would have flown no lower than 3,000 feet, down the Hudson River because the Navy had given it only a few hours notice of its plans. In late April, office workers near the World Trade Center site and across the river in New Jersey ran for cover when a Boeing 747 sometimes used as Air Force One circled the harbor at 1,000 feet with a fighter jet in tow.
California: Race against wildfires
Firefighters rushed to wipe out the last remnants of a wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in the hills above Santa Barbara, racing against forecast winds that might whip the blaze back to life. The 13-square-mile blaze was 80 percent encircled after several days of good weather over the Santa Ynez Mountains, and full containment was expected Wednesday.
Iran: U.S. journalist freed
An American journalist jailed on espionage charges in Iran for four months was freed Monday from a Tehran prison and reunited with her parents. The United States had said the charges against Roxana Saberi, a 32-year-old dual Iranian-American citizen who was arrested in January, were baseless and repeatedly demanded her release. Her release came when an appeals court reduced her eight-year prison sentence on charges of spying for the U.S. to a two-year suspended sentence. She is free to leave the country.
Israel: Pope pays respects at Holocaust memorial
Pope Benedict XVI laid a wreath and rekindled the “eternal flame” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on the first day of his visit to Israel on Monday, shaking the hands of six Holocaust survivors and saying victims of the genocide “lost their lives but they will never lose their names.” Benedict’s attempts to ease tensions with Jews after his recent decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denying bishop appeared to enjoy only partial success. The top two officials at Israel’s Holocaust memorial faulted the pope for not apologizing nor using the words “murder” or “Nazis” during a speech at the site.
Saudi Arabia: Judge says it’s OK to slap a spendthrift wife
A Saudi judge told a conference on domestic violence that a man has the right to slap a wife who spends money wastefully and said women were as much to blame as men for increased spousal abuse, a Saudi newspaper reported. “If a person gives 1,200 Saudi riyals ($320) to his wife and she spends 900 riyals ($240) to purchase an abaya (head-to-toe robe) from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment,” Judge Hamad Al-Razine was quoted as saying by the English-language Arab News newspaper on Sunday. Women in the audience loudly protested the judge’s remarks, the newspaper said.
From Herald news services
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