By Wallace Kaufman
ALMATY, Nov 1
(The GLOBE)
Flying from New York to Egypt, an Egypt Air flight 990 that originated in Los Angeles plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the northeast coast of the U.S. early Sunday morning 33 minutes after takeoff carrying with it 199 passengers and 18 crew members. U.S. Coast Guard search boats found one body, lifeboats, seats, and other debris from the Boeing 767.
The plane took off later than scheduled but climbed into a cloudless sky to its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet (10,000 meters), then suddenly plunged into the sea. The last cockpit communication with the outside world was normal and land station in New Hampshire and New York heard no distress calls according to information published by the Associated Press and New York Times.
U.S. air traffic radar sweeps the sky every twelve seconds showed the plane plummeted intact from 10,000 meters to some 6,000 meters in 36 seconds more than ten times the rate of a normal descent. The plane was following a familiar transatlantic route, similar to the one followed by Swissair Flight 111, a McDonnell Douglas MD11, that crashed off Nova Scotia on Sept. 2, 1998 killing 229. The crash site for the EgyptAir flight wa not far from where John F. Kennedy�s son Joe crashed this summer.
As dawn broke the Coast Guard retrieved one body and airplane debris. At a news conference in Boston Sunday afternoon Rear Adm. Richard M. Larrabee said, �I want to re-emphasize our focus, and that is a continued effort to find victims who may still be alive.�
The head of EgyptAir held a news conference in Cairo and responded to questions about warnings the US Federal Aviation Administration may have given him about terrorist threates. Mohammed Gahim Rayan said, �We take all precautions and we have plenty of warnings from everybody, including the FAA.� According to an A.P. report a U.S. said Sunday morning that intelligence agencies were investingating the possibility of sabotage but had no evidence yet.
The crash of the ten year old Boeing, Flight 990, was EgyptAir�s first fatal accident. Among the passengers according to EgyptAir were 62 Egyptians, two Sudanese, three Syrians, and one Chilean. Officials offered no data on other nationalities on Sunday.
The U.S. Navy search and rescue ship �Grapple� was on its way to the site. This is the ship that helped recover wreckage and bodies from the Kennedy plane last summer.
November 2, 1930 Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
November 2, 1948 president Truman surprised the experts by being re-elected in a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.
November 2, 1969 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem was assassinated in a military coup.
November 2, 1984 Velma Barfield, convicted of the poisoning death of her boyfriend, was put to death by injection in Raleigh, North Carolina, becoming the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
November 3, 1957 the Soviet Union launched �Sputnik Two,� the second manmade satellite, into orbit; on board was a dog named �Laika� which was sacrificed in the experiment.
November 3, 1903 Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia.
November 3, 1970 Salvador Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile.
November 3, 1992 Bill Clinton was elected 42nd president of the United States, defeating President Bush.
November 4, 1922 the entrance to King Tutankhamen�s tomb was discovered in Egypt.
November 4, 1956 Soviet troops moved in to crush the Hungarian Revolution.
November 4, 1989 Up to one million East Germans filled the streets of East Berlin for a pro-democracy rally. Iran marked the tenth anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy with a poorly attended commemoration.
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of S. Kalmykov, I. Itkind, and V. Eifert�s works, and Rudolf Nuriev�s painting.
From 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Closed on Mondays.
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