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AP News in Brief

NTSB: Data show crew discussed ‘significant ice buildup’ on wings before deadly NY crash

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The crew of a commuter plane that fell out of the sky, killing all 49 people aboard and one person on the ground, noticed significant ice buildup on the wings and windshield just before the plane began pitching and rolling violently, investigators said Friday.

Officials stopped short of saying the ice buildup caused Thursday night’s crash and stressed that nothing has been ruled out. But ice on a plane’s wings can interfere catastrophically with an aircraft’s handling and has been blamed for a number of major air disasters over the years.

Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J., went down in light snow and fog late Thursday and crashed into a house in suburban Clarence. Killed were 44 passengers, four crew members, one off-duty pilot and one person on the ground.

Two others escaped from the home, which was engulfed in a dramatic fireball that raged higher than the treetops and burned for hours. Bodies still could not be recovered hours later.

The plane went through a “severe pitch and roll” experience after positioning its flaps for a landing, said Steve Chealander, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

Doug Hartmayer, a spokesman for Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which runs the airport, said: “The plane simply dropped off the radar screen.”

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Democrats push historic $787 billion stimulus through House despite wall of GOP opposition

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats pushed a huge, $787 billion stimulus bill through the House and toward final approval on Friday, launching a costly attack on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and handing President Barack Obama a major victory early in his term. The House vote was 246-183, with Republicans unanimous in opposition to the bill, which includes tax cuts and an estimated $500 billion in federal spending.

Senate leaders set a confirming vote for several hours later, and in a show of urgency, the White House dispatched a government plane to Ohio to fly back a senator who was home for his mother’s Saturday morning funeral.

Supporters said the bill would save or create 3.5 million jobs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer conceded there was no guarantee, but he said that “millions and millions and millions of people will be helped, as they have lost their jobs and can’t put food on the table of their families.”

Vigorously disagreeing, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio dumped a copy of the 1,071-page bill to the floor in a gesture of contempt. “The bill that was about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that’s about spending, spending, spending,” he said.

The legislation, among the costliest ever considered in Congress, provides billions of dollars to aid victims of the recession through unemployment benefits, food stamps, medical care, job retraining and more. Tens of billions are ticketed for the states to offset cuts they might otherwise have to make in aid to schools and local governments, and there is more than $48 billion for transportation projects such as road and bridge construction, mass transit and high-speed rail.

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Kidnappers threaten to kill American UN worker seized in Pakistan, seek prisoner release

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Kidnappers threatened on Friday to kill an American employee of the United Nations within 72 hours and issued a grainy video of the blindfolded captive saying he was “sick and in trouble.”

A letter accompanying the video delivered to a Pakistani news agency said the hostage, John Solecki, would be killed unless authorities released 141 women it said were being held in Pakistan.

The video and the demands indicated that Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Quetta, a city near the Afghan border, was alive and that his captors wanted to negotiate.

Solecki, who appeared blindfolded and with a shawl draped over his shoulders in the 20-second clip, said his message was addressed to the United Nations.

“I am not feeling well. I am sick and in trouble. Please help solve the problem soon so that I can gain my release,” he said.

The kidnappers have identified themselves as the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, suggesting a link to local separatists who have waged a long insurgency against Pakistan’s government rather than to the Taliban or al-Qaida, which are fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

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Va.-based Peanut Corp. of America files for bankruptcy after recalls, salmonella outbreak

ATLANTA (AP) — The peanut processing company at the heart of a national salmonella outbreak is going out of business.

The Lynchburg, Va.-based Peanut Corp. of America filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Virginia Friday, the latest bad news for the company that has been accused of producing tainted peanut products that may have reached everyone from poor school children to disaster victims.

“It’s regrettable, but it’s inevitable with the events of last month,” said Andrew S. Goldstein, a bankruptcy lawyer in Roanoke, Va., who filed the petition.

The salmonella outbreak was traced to the company’s plant in Blakely, Ga., where inspectors found roaches, mold and a leaking roof. A second plant in Plainview, Texas was shuttered this week after preliminary tests came back positive for possible salmonella contamination. So far, the outbreak has been suspected of sickening more than 630 people and may have caused nine deaths. It also has led to more than 2,000 product recalls, one of the largest recalls in U.S. history.

Companies file Chapter 7 to liquidate their assets and distribute the proceeds to creditors. A trustee is automatically appointed to oversee the wind down, as opposed to a Chapter 11 filing that gives a company breathing room while it tries to reduce its debts and continue in business. The company said in the filing that its debt and assets both ranged between $1 million and $10 million.

The board had considered a Chapter 11 bankruptcy but decided on an outright liquidation. It said in a court filing that the recalls had been “extremely devastating” to the company’s financial condition.

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British Airways jet carrying 71 crash-lands in London after part of its landing gear fails

LONDON (AP) — A British Airways passenger jet carrying 71 people crash-landed at London City Airport on Friday evening, scraping across the tarmac after part of its landing gear failed, officials and witnesses said. One person was taken to a hospital with a minor injury.

BA Flight 8456 was flying from Amsterdam to London and the airline said in a statement the four-engine plane’s nosewheel failed on landing. Emergency slides were deployed to evacuate the passengers.

British Airways said the Avro 146-RJ100 — made by BAE Systems — was carrying 67 passengers and four crew.

London firefighters said the plane crashed onto the runway around 8 p.m. (2000 GMT, 3 p.m. EST), and ambulance officials reported that four people were treated for minor injuries.

One of the passengers, Justin Fletcher, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that “there was obviously quite a loud bang as the plane scratched in. The stewards and stewardesses were quick to evacuate everyone off. There was a few scrapes and cuts due to hitting the asphalt. All in all everyone seems to be doing quite well now.”

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VA patients in Tenn. possibly exposed to others’ body fluids; other VA centers review methods

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Thousands of patients at a Veterans Administration clinic in Tennessee may have been exposed to the infectious body fluids of other patients when they had colonoscopies in recent years, and now VA medical facilities all over the U.S. are reviewing their own procedures.

VA officials also said a problem was found with equipment at an ear, nose and throat clinic at the VA medical center in Augusta, Ga., and 1,800 veterans have been notified they may have been exposed to infection there.

A spokesman at the Alvin C. York VA Medical Center in Murfreesboro, Tenn., said the clinic is offering free blood tests and medical care to all patients whose records show they had colonoscopies between April, 23, 2003 and Dec. 1, 2008.

Christopher Conklin said in a telephone interview Friday that notification letters were sent this week by registered mail to 6,378 patients of the Murfreesboro facility. He said no related health problems have been reported, and every measure is being taken to assure that affected veterans are screened.

One veteran who received notification, Gary Simpson, 57, said, “The fact that it took five years for them to catch a mistake like that — it seems like somebody should have caught an incorrect valve and incorrect cleaning of the equipment during that time.” His wife Janice called the discovery “sickening” and “horrifying.”

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Man who calls himself Rockefeller to use insanity defense in alleged kidnapping of daughter

BOSTON (AP) — The man who authorities say pretended to be a member of the famous Rockefeller dynasty and fabricated elaborate stories about his past will use an insanity defense when he goes on trial in the kidnapping of his 7-year-old daughter, his lawyers said Friday.

Lawyers for the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller filed notice of the mental health defense in Suffolk Superior Court on Friday, three days after Rockefeller rejected a plea deal.

The notice does not specify what type of mental illness Rockefeller will cite at his trial, but says his lawyers plan to rely on a defense that claims he lacks “criminal responsibility” for his actions because of a “mental disease or defect” at the time of the alleged crime.

His lead attorney, Jeffrey Denner, said the illness includes “an underlying delusional state.”

“Suffice it to say that there are independent experts who will testify that he was suffering from a serious and long-standing mental illness at the time of the alleged offenses in this case, and there was a causal relationship between the acts that occurred and the mental illness,” Denner said.

Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley, declined to comment on the insanity defense but said the office remained “confident in the evidence and our ability to prove our case to a jury.”

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Scientists say kissing unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes

CHICAGO (AP) — “Chemistry look what you’ve done to me,” Donna Summer crooned in Science of Love, and so, it seems, she was right.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a panel of scientists examined the mystery of what happens when hearts throb and lips lock. Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.

Chemicals in the saliva may be a way to assess a mate, Wendy Hill, dean of the faculty and a professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Friday.

In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.

Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined.

For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. “This was a surprise,” Hill said.

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Done deal: Heat swap Shawn Marion for Raptors’ Jermaine O’Neal, ending weeks of talks

MIAMI (AP) — Shawn Marion’s most memorable play with the Miami Heat was his last.

Hours after Marion’s last-second dunk lifted the Heat past the Chicago Bulls, he was traded Friday to the Toronto Raptors in exchange for Jermaine O’Neal, ending a weekslong saga involving the expected deal.

NBA officials approved the swap Friday afternoon by conference call, the Heat said.

“I developed an unbelievable relationship with Shawn,” Heat star guard Dwyane Wade said in Phoenix, where he’s part of All-Star weekend. “You’re sad to lose a friend on and off the court. At the same time, Shawn and I just had this conversation that it’s part of the business and we knew it was a possibility.”

Toronto also gets guard Marcus Banks and cash considerations, while Miami will receive forward Jamario Moon and a future first-round draft pick, to come sometime between 2010 and 2015. It’s lottery-protected, essentially meaning the first time the Raptors make the playoffs after this season, their first-rounder goes to Miami.

If Miami does not get that first-round pick in 2010, it will get an additional second-round pick that year.

“This is a win-win for both Toronto and Miami and we wish J.O. and Jamario the best,” said Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo, who is familiar with Marion from his time with the Phoenix Suns.