Disruptive JetBlue pilot to stand trial
AMARILLO, Texas – A JetBlue Airways pilot who left the cockpit during a flight and screamed about religion and terrorists is mentally competent to stand trial, a judge ruled Friday.
A U.S. District judge in Texas also ruled that 49-year-old Clayton F. Osbon’s psychiatric evaluation be sealed.
Osbon was indicted in April on a charge of interfering with a flight crew after a March 27 incident on a plane bound for Las Vegas from New York. Osbon allegedly ran through the cabin yelling about Jesus and al-Qaida. The first officer locked him out of the cockpit, and passengers wrestled him to the floor. The plane made an emergency landing in Texas. If convicted, Osbon could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
Powell gets 21/2 years for recording girls
TACOMA, Wash. – The father-in-law of missing Utah woman Susan Powell was sentenced Friday to 21/2 years in prison for recording images of two neighbor girls in their bathroom in Washington state.
Powell, wearing a gray jail uniform, declined to speak.
Pierce County prosecutors had asked for Powell, 62, to be sentenced to 10 years. His attorneys sought zero to 12 months, saying it’s not clear exactly when Powell took the pictures, and it could have been before the state made voyeurism a ranked felony in 2006.
Powell is the father-in-law of Susan Powell, who disappeared from her home in West Valley City, Utah, in 2009. His son Josh Powell was the prime suspect in Susan’s disappearance. Josh Powell killed himself and his two young sons in a February fire at a home in Graham.
Steve Powell was arrested last September after investigators searching his home for evidence in Susan Powell’s disappearance came across computer disks with what they described as thousands of images of women and girls who seemed unaware they were being photographed. Those filmed, prosecutors say, included the neighbor girls, who were identified in court only by their initials and who were about 8 and 10 when the images were recorded.
Wallenda exuberant after walk across Falls
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario – There was “wind coming from every which way,” mist so powerful it clouded his vision and an unfamiliar wire beneath him, but daredevil Nik Wallenda didn’t let that stop him from becoming the first person to walk on a tightrope across the Niagara Falls.
He took steady, measured steps Friday night for 1,800 feet on a wire across the widest part of the gorge of the roaring falls separating the U.S. and Canada, accomplishing what he said was his childhood dream — albeit wearing a tether.
Suu Kyi to give Nobel speech 21 years later
OSLO, Norway – It’s been 21 years, and Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is about to give her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
The 66-year-old champion of democracy is being feted this month in European capitals after spending most of the past two decades kept under house arrest by Burma’s military-backed dictatorship.
Norwegian government leaders said they have eagerly awaited today’s speech at Oslo City Hall since Suu Kyi won the world’s highest diplomatic honor in 1991.
