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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

San Francisco Air Crash Emergency Calls Released

Emergency calls from those who witnessed the crash of a Boeing 777 at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, and those who were aboard the plane, emerged late Wednesday, released by the California Highway Patrol, according to reports.

The audio, as posted by the San Jose Mercury News, begins with a hiker who witnessed the crash. Later in the recording one woman, who gives her last name as Stone, complains that emergency vehicles had not yet arrived at the crash site. “There are no ambulances here, we have been on the ground 20 minutes,” she tells a dispatcher. “There are people laying on the tarmac with critical injuries, head injuries, we’re almost losing a woman here, we’re trying to keep her alive.”

The crash killed two, and seriously injured about 50 people. Its cause, and the aftermath of the crash, are under scrutiny.



Video Shows Shooting of Protester in Egypt

A pro-Morsi protester moments before he was shot in the head and killed outside the barracks where the deposed president is believed to be held.Khaled Elfiqi/European Pressphoto Agency A pro-Morsi protester moments before he was shot in the head and killed outside the barracks where the deposed president is believed to be held.

As my colleagues Ben Hubbard, David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El-Sheikh report from Cairo, large protests in support of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi were marred by violence on Friday, when witnesses said that at least five demonstrators were killed by security forces outside the Republican Guards barracks where it is believed Mr. Morsi is being held.

Reuters reported that one of its journalists saw Egyptian security forces fire into the air, then “heard shotgun fire” and saw “at least eight demonstrators hit,” as a military helicopter flew over the crowd.

Simon Hanna, a British-Egyptian journalist in Cairo, drew attention to a video posted on YouTube on Friday that appeared to show at least one pro-Morsi protester shot in the head from close range by Egyptian security forces standing behind barbed wire outside the barracks where Mr. Morsi is believed to be held. The video contains graphic content.

Video posted to YouTube on Friday shows a pro-Morsi protester shot in the head and killed outside the barracks where the deposed president is believed to be held.

Cliff Cheney, an American photojournalist who lives and works in Egypt, drew attention to a second video that appeared to show the same dead protester from a different angle. Mr. Cheney was not in Egypt on Friday.

Video posted to YouTube on Friday appeared to show the body of the same protester shot from a second angle.

Before the shooting began, Reuters said that its journalist observed the following interaction between pro-Morsi protesters and Egyptian soldiers guarding the barracks.

He had seen hundreds of demonstrators approach the military cordon. A handful of men walked to a barbed wire barrier and place a poster of Mursi on it. A soldier removed it and tore it up. The crowd shouted curses at the soldiers, some waved shoes in a traditional gesture of insult.

The Egyptian-British journalist and blogger Sarah Carr, who was at the scene of the shooting, said in an update posted to Twitter that a witness told her that a man was shot by Republican Guards after he tried to put a picture of Mr. Morsi on the barbed wire ringing their barracks. She later posted a picture of the man to Twitter.

Alastair Beach, a correspondent in Cairo for the British newspaper The Independent who was at the scene of the shooting, said in an update posted to Twitter that shots were fired when protesters approached the barbed-wire barricade after soldiers had warned them not to. However, he said, some witnesses told him that the shooter was not a uniformed soldier, but one of several men behind the barricade who appeared to be in civilian clothes.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous, a Cairo-based correspondent for The Nation magazine and the radio show Democracy Now, was reporting from the protests when the shooting began. He posted a series of updates and pictures to Twitter that captured the tension and confusion in the crowd, and also showed at least one dead body being carried away in a makeshift funeral shroud.

Jeremy Bowen, Middle East editor for the BBC, was also reporting from the protest when the violence broke out, and said he was mildly injured when he was hit on the head by several shotgun pellets. He posted several updates to Twitter throughout the shooting and immediately afterward, describing what he witnessed, including the body of one protester that he believed had been killed by “live fire” from the security forces.

After the shooting ended, Mr. Kouddous posted a picture to Twitter of Mr. Bowen staring at the ground as two men wrapped his head injury with a white bandage. “He's O.K.,” Mr. Kouddous said.

Robert Mackey contributed reporting.



Social Media Updates on Clashes in Cairo

Chaotic clashes broke out on Friday night between supporters and opponents of the ousted Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, in a riverside neighborhood of downtown Cairo near Tahrir Square, drawing thousands of people into the streets and shutting down a major bridge spanning the Nile.

The violence appeared to have started shortly after sunset, when a large Islamist march moved across downtown Cairo's Sixth of October Bridge in the direction of Tahrir Square, where Mr. Morsi's opponents held a large rally on Friday, according to a report by The Associated Press. The report said that 10 people were killed and 210 were injured in protests and clashes nationwide on Friday, but the actual toll of the clashes was not clear.

Ayman Mohyeldin, a correspondent for NBC News, posted a picture on Twitter of what he described as “thousands” of pro-Morsi protesters crossing Cairo's Sixth of October Bridge at sunset, shortly before violence erupted in the area.

Sherine Tadros, a correspondent for Al Jazeera English, watched the street battle unfold after nightfall from a nearby office building in a corner of the neighborhood known as Maspero, and posted regular updates on Twitter.

For almost two hours, neither police nor military forces intervened as the two sides battled each other with rocks, fireworks and guns, leading some on social media to bitterly mock the security forces, including an activist, Ahmed Aggour.

Tarek Shalaby, a prominent activist who was among the crowd of Mr. Morsi's opponents, shared pictures and observations about the clashes in a series of updates posted to Twitter. The most pitched battles appeared to be on Sixth of October Bridge, he said, and near the Ramses Hilton, a towering luxury hotel.

Mr. Shalaby, an activist against human rights abuses under Egypt's previous military government, also expressed dismay that many anti-Morsi protesters were chanting slogans in support of the defense minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who announced Mr. Morsi's ouster in a nationally televised address on Wednesday.

Adham Abdel Salam, a presenter on Nile FM, an Egyptian radio station, was also present among the anti-Morsi protesters and documented his experience of the clashes through a series of updates posted to Twitter.

Mr. Abdel Salam said that he believed he had seen a protester killed, and also accused Mr. Morsi's supporters of firing live ammunition at their opponents, but neither claim could be independently verified.



Train Derails and Explodes in Canada

Video of a train that derailed and exploded in Quebec.

A train carrying petroleum products derailed and exploded Saturday morning in a town in Quebec. Videos, apparently shot by witnesses, show billowing flames and secondary explosions.

Video of a train that derailed and exploded in Quebec.

It was not immediately clear Saturday whether the explosions, in the Canadian town of Lac Mégantic, had caused any injuries or deaths. Fire officials told Reuters that 30 buildings had been destroyed in the town's center.

The Associated Press reported that the train was headed to Maine.



Video Shows Street Violence in Egypt

Video produced by Mada Masr, an English-language news Web site in Cairo, shows supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, reacting to an attack by security forces on protesters outside the Republican Guards barracks where Mr. Morsi is believed to be in custody.

As Ben Hubbard, a colleague in Cairo, reports, Egyptians struggled on Saturday to come to terms with an explosion of violence in Cairo and other cities that left more than 30 dead and 1,400 injured as opponents and supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, clashed two days after he was removed from office by Egypt's military.

Many were surprised by the scale and ferocity of the violence, with street battles erupting in normally quiet residential neighborhoods. The fighting also shut down a major Nile bridge in downtown Cairo, steps from Tahrir Square.

Hisham Abu Aisha, director of the emergency department at a prominent Cairo hospital, said that some patients continued fighting even after they were taken to the emergency room for treatment. “There were dead and wounded from both sides,” he said, “and they wanted to finish each other off, so they beat each other inside the hospital.”

Video of the violence taken by participants in the fighting, witnesses and Egyptian and foreign television crews flooded social media on Saturday. It was not clear from any of the videos what incited the fighting in each incident, and because the violence was primarily civilians fighting other civilians, it was difficult to determine who was fighting on which side.

One video circulating widely on Saturday appeared to show Islamists in the port city of Alexandria pursuing a group of young men to a building's roof. The young men appear to hide atop a concrete tower, but they are eventually caught, with their attackers throwing them off the tower and beating them as they lie injured on the roof.

Video posted to YouTube on Friday shows Islamist supporters of Mr. Morsi pushing two young men off a concrete tower onto a building rooftop, and violently beating them as they lie injured after they fell.

The attackers appear to be supporters of Mr. Morsi, and one of them wears a long, scraggly beard typical of an ultraconservative Salafi. He carries a black flag emblazoned with the Islamic declaration of faith, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God,” that is commonly associated with jihadist groups.

The video appears to have been filmed by someone in a neighboring building, and the emotional voices of a man and a woman can be heard throughout. “They beat him, they killed him, they killed him,” the man can be heard saying before the young men are thrown from the tower. When they fell, the woman shrieked: “Why? Why are they killing them? Why? This is a sin!” The sound of gunshots can be heard.

Mada Masr, a bilingual English and Arabic news Web site based in Cairo, posted a video on its YouTube channel of pro-Morsi protesters outside the Republican Guards barracks reacting to a security forces' attack on their protest that killed at least four people on Friday.

On Friday, the Lede reported on video of the attack that was posted to YouTube and included graphic footage of a Morsi supporter being shot in the head from close range by an unseen gunmen who witnesses said was affiliated with Egyptian security forces.

Al Masry Al Youm, an independent daily newspaper, posted several videos of Friday's violence on its YouTube channel, focusing on confrontations between Mr. Morsi's supporters and opponents in two areas of downtown Cairo - the residential neighborhood of Manial and the Nile-spanning Sixth of October Bridge, one of the most important traffic arteries in the Egyptian capital. It is near Tahrir Square and a number of high-profile buildings, including the state television headquarters, the Egyptian Museum and the Ramses Hilton, a high-rise luxury hotel.

Video posted to YouTube by an Egyptian newspaper shows supporters of opponents of Mr. Morsi engaged in street battles on a major bridge in downtown Cairo.

In one video of fighting from the bridge posted by Al Masry Al Youm, the two sides have claimed the sidewalk across the street from each other and are engaged in fierce combat, throwing rocks, setting off fireworks and shooting at each other with handguns. Terrified motorists race through the fighting. Some of the fighters appear to be wearing police riot helmets, but no other body armor, while others seem to have donned Guy Fawkes masks.

Video posted online by an Egyptian newspaper of fighting between Morsi opponents and supporters on a major Cairo bridge shows men armed with rifles and handguns.

Another video posted by Al Masry Al Youm of fighting on the bridge claims to show Morsi supporters firing birdshot at anti-Morsi protesters on the street below, using the bridge as high ground. It is not clear from the video who are the Morsi supporters and who are the opponents. Some of the videos show civilians armed with what appear to be handguns and rifles.

Mike Giglio, a correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast who was reporting from the scene of Friday's violence in downtown Cairo, posted a photograph to Twitter that shows a weapon being used by one of the combatants. Mr. Giglio described it as a handgun that fires shotgun shells, and it appeared to be a homemade or improvised weapon.

As the violence on Sixth of October Bridge unfolded on Friday, some activists complained that neither the police nor the military were attempting to intervene. On Saturday, Mosireen, an activist video collective based in Cairo, posted a video to YouTube that showed police and army vehicles sitting idly as protesters fought nearby. In the video, it appeared that security forces intervened only after Morsi supporters withdrew.

Video posted online by an activist video collective in Cairo appeared to show security forces sitting idly as protesters battled each other on a major bridge in downtown Cairo.

Al Masry Al Youm also posted video that shows scenes from fighting on Friday night between Morsi supporters and residents of the island neighborhood of Manial, where at least four people were killed on Friday night. The video contains graphic images of wounded civilians, including one man who appears to have been shot in the back or neck.

Video posted online by an Egyptian newspaper shows fighting in the residential island neighborhood of Manial in central Cairo. It contains graphic images of injured civilians.

The video from Manial also includes scenes of fighting on University Bridge - which connects the neighborhood to the Giza campus of Cairo University - and near the university entrance, where supporters of Mr. Morsi have staged a protest for several days. The neighborhood around Cairo University has been the scene of violence since the middle of the week, and more than a dozen people have been killed there.



Video of San Francisco Plane Crash

Amateur video of the San Francisco air crash, first broadcast by CNN.

Video broadcast Sunday showed the crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777, with 307 passengers aboard, at San Francisco International Airport the previous day.

The footage, shot by an amateur cameraman, Fred Hayes, from about a mile away, was obtained and broadcast by CNN. It corroborates eyewitness accounts that the plane came in with its nose in the air, hit with its tail first and bounced and spun down the runway. Two people died, and at least 180 were injured.



Plane Crash in Alaska Kills 10, but Draws Scant Attention

Less than 24 hours after a plane crash at San Francisco International Airport killed two people and injured 180 others, 10 people died in a plane crash in Soldotna, Alaska. But while the accident in hyperconnected San Francisco instantly drew global attention through social media postings, video from dedicated plane-spotters and extensive news coverage, the crash in a town on Alaska's Kenai peninsula has barely bubbled into national consciousness hours after it occurred.

The pilot and all nine passengers on the air taxi were killed in the crash at 11:20 a.m. Sunday at the municipal airport, which is regularly used to transport tourists and residents for fly fishing, hunting and sight-seeing excursions. The passengers, a family of five and a family of four, were from Greenville, S.C., according to The State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C.

While the events in San Francisco were unfolding online in real time, it took hours before the scale of the incident in Alaska was reported. Just before midnight Eastern time The Anchorage Daily News reported that 10 had been killed.

Some of Soldotna's users of social media also got word of the crash, Alaska's worst plane crash since 2001, only gradually, like one Soldotna resident on Twitter who published the following message on Sunday:

The National Transportation Safety Board announced that it had dispatched a team to investigate the crash in Soldotna, a town of 4,284 residents about 75 miles southwest of Anchorage. Because of the number of people killed, a safety board investigator working on the San Francisco investigation had been summoned to Alaska, according to KTUU.

A reporter with a local newspaper, Rashah McChesney of The Peninsula Clarion, captured the scene a few hours after the crash occurred:

The Clarion identified the pilot of the plane, a single-engine de Havilland Otter, as Willy Rediske, who owned a local charter plane company.

Local social media users took to Web sites to share their condolences. The boyfriend of a niece of the plane's pilot urged his friends on Facebook, “Be grateful for the ones you have.” And a local sportfishing association shared the following message on Twitter on Sunday:

Alaska is no stranger to civil aviation disasters. In 2010, a plane of the same model as the one involved in Sunday's accident crashed in a remote part of Alaska's southwest, killing former Senator Ted Stevens and four others aboard.



Video of Army Shooting Islamists in Cairo Stokes Anger

Video recorded during deadly clashes on Monday between Egyptian security forces and Islamist protesters, provided to The Lede by Ibrahim el-Sheikh, a witness.

Updated | Wednesday 5:20 p.m. In the hours after at least 51 civilians and one police officer were shot and killed at a Cairo sit-in on Monday, Egyptians on both sides of the bitter divide between supporters and opponents of the deposed Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, shared video of the clashes online, as two conflicting narratives about who was responsible for the deaths took hold.

Video of Monday's clashes in Cairo released by Egypt's military included footage of three men firing at soldiers from the Islamist side and close shots of whisky bottles the authorities claimed to have found in a protest camp.

While footage released by the Egyptian military that appeared to show gunshots coming from the pro-Morsi camp was broadcast on state television and posted online by an independent newspaper, Islamists pointed to clear images of shots being fired by army snipers - proof, they said, that peaceful protesters were murdered in cold blood.

Video posted on YouTube on Monday by Emad Eldin Elsayed showed badly wounded protesters and an army sniper firing from a rooftop during clashes in Cairo.

Most of the clips of the confrontation were recorded from opposite sides of the front line between the army and the protesters in Cairo's Nasr City neighborhood, but one witness to the clashes, a resident of the area who strongly supported Mr. Morsi's ouster, recorded footage from his apartment building that offered vivid evidence of the barrage of shots fired by the soldiers.

The witness, Ibrahim el-Sheikh, a brother of a Cairo-based New York Times employee, posted four video clips on Facebook, including one of what he said was the car of a police officer who was killed during the clashes coming under fire from advancing soldiers.

Mr. Sheikh said later that the officer who was killed, Mohamed el-Mesairy, was a well-known neighborhood policeman who had sought to hide in his parked car as the security forces fired at Mr. Morsi's supporters. Shortly after recording the footage, Mr. Sheikh said he went to the car and carried the officer's body to an ambulance himself.

After the deadly clashes, a spokesman for the Egyptian military, Ahmed Aly, denied that the army had killed peaceful protesters, screening clips for journalists of Islamists throwing rocks and fireworks at soldiers and firing at least two gunshots. “The armed forces kills its enemies,” Mr. Aly told reporters at a news conference, it “would never kill its children.” He insisted that the clashes began only after soldiers and police officers guarding the military officers' club where Islamists believe the deposed president is detained had come under attack at about 4 a.m. from “a group of armed men.”

Mr. Aly was not asked about visual evidence of soldiers shooting at Morsi supporters on Monday, or about the military's role in a notorious massacre of protesters in late 2011.

One widely shared clip of the clashes, viewed more than 260,000 times on Monday, appeared to show one masked man moving through a group of stone-throwing Islamists to fire a gun.

According to a title added to the video, it was recorded at 6:20 a.m., after the initial wave of fighting, at the intersection of El-Tayaran Street and Khedr El-Touny Street, near the military officers' club.

While the Islamists had less access to television, the army attack on the protesters was extensively documented in online video shared with reporters by Sondos Asem, a media coordinator for Mr. Morsi.

Among the most viewed clips, watched 500,000 times on Monday, was close-up footage of a man in uniform firing down from a rooftop, as a cameraman stood behind him filming. (Members of the Muslim Brotherhood said later that this brief video clip of the sniper was recorded by a photographer who was subsequently shot and killed.)

Video posted online by supporters of Egypt's deposed president, said to show an Egyptian soldier firing down at Islamist protesters from a rooftop in Cairo on Monday.

Many of the images were clearly recorded after the start of the confrontation, which reportedly began after dawn prayers, but shots rang out on the soundtrack of another brief clip shared by Ms. Asem that was apparently filmed before sunrise.

Video said to show the early stages of an attack by Egyptian security forces on an Islamist sit-in.

(Readers should note that this video, posted on YouTube at about 6 a.m. local time in Cairo, bears the date July 7 because the video-sharing site uses the date in California when clips are uploaded.)

Another clip uploaded to YouTube early on Monday shows badly wounded men being rushed for treatment through the crowd of protesters in the predawn light.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Monday morning in Cairo appeared to show wounded protesters being rushed for treatment.

Ms. Asem also pointed to video posted online by a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated channel that appeared to capture the sound of gunshots as the sun rose - on a street that looked very similar to the one outside Mr. Sheikh's home - and another clip that showed wounded men being treated in the courtyard of a mosque.

Video posted on an Islamist YouTube channel on Monday, said to have been recorded as shots were fired at supporters of Egypt's deposed president by the security forces.

Video said to show wounded protesters being treated in Cairo's Nasr City neighborhood on Monday.

Two more clips uploaded to a YouTube account registered to a Mohamed Madaney later Monday morning showed very graphic images of wounded men being carried from the scene of the street battle and desperate efforts to revive one man in what looked like an improvised field hospital.

Graphic video posted online Monday showed wounded men being evacuated from the scene of a street battle between Islamists and the security forces in Cairo.

Video of medics trying to revive a man on Monday in Cairo

Brotherhood activists also drew attention to distressing, extremely graphic video, said to have been recorded on Monday in a field hospital in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, showing the blood-drenched bodies of “martyrs and wounded from the Republican Guards massacre.”

Extremely graphic video of dead bodies, said to have been recorded on Monday in a field hospital in Cairo.

In the clip, an unidentified man who appears to be a medic, said that the soldiers had attacked people while they were praying. “This was a massacre,” he said, before adding: “The Egyptian army has not even fired one bullet at the Jews. The scene you see here is a sin.”



Survivors of Asiana Flight 214 Describe Escape From Burning Plane

When Asiana Flight 214 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, Fey Xion was sitting with her 8-year-old son in Row 31, expecting she was going to know what “it felt like to die.”

In an interview with a Fox television news affiliate in Los Angeles, Ms. Xion described how her son jolted her into action. “He's so brave,” Ms. Xion told reporters at San Francisco General Hospital after being released for treatment of her injuries on Monday. “He told me, ‘Mom, we must go out' and he ran out of the plane. And he jumped down first and then I come out.”

Two days after the crash landing that killed two 16-year-old passengers and injured more than 180 others, more passengers and crew members were describing their harrowing escape as smoked filled the cabin and they struggled to get out of rows of seats that collapsed onto each other. A flight attendant told how members of the flight crew had to use axes to properly activate the emergency slides on the Boeing 777. Of the 307 passengers and crew members on the flight from South Korea, 305 survived.

The National Transportation Safety Board posted multiple images of the crash scene on Twitter and video on YouTube.

The National Safety Transportation Board posted video of the crash scene.

Wen Zhang also described to Fox News 11 her escape with her young son. She was sitting in Row 40 with her 4-year-old, whose left leg was broken as the row of seats in front of them collapsed on them. They escaped through a gaping hole in the fuselage. “A big hole near the bathroom, most of the bathroom is gone,” she said

In this video uploaded to YouTube, taken by Jennifer Solis just moments after the crash, people can be seen going down the inflatable slides and running from the plane as emergency vehicles arrive to douse the spreading flames.

But the evacuation did not begin smoothly because the slides initially inflated inside the cabin instead of outside, pinning two flight attendants to the floor.


According to The Associated Press, the cabin manager, Lee Yoon-hye, who sustained a broken tailbone and was the last person to leave the plane, said that crew members deflated the slides with axes to deploy them properly and rescue their colleagues. She told of several dramatic moments during the evacuation, including putting out fires as she ushered passengers off the plane. She said a flight attendant put a child on her back as they went down the slide to safety. The Associated Press reported:

Lee Yoon-hye, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 flight attendant and cabin manager, spoke at a news conference in San Francisco on Sunday.Yonhanews/European Pressphoto Agency Lee Yoon-hye, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 flight attendant and cabin manager, spoke at a news conference in San Francisco on Sunday.

Ms. Lee, 40, who has nearly 20 years' experience with Asiana, said she knew seconds before impact that something was wrong with the plane.

“Right before touchdown, I felt like the plane was trying to take off. I was thinking, ‘What's happening?' and then I felt a bang,” Lee said. “That bang felt harder than a normal landing. It was a very big shock. Afterward, there was another shock and the plane swayed to the right and to the left.”

Lee said that after the captain ordered an evacuation, she knew what to do. “I wasn't really thinking, but my body started carrying out the steps needed for an evacuation,” she said. “I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger.”

When Lee saw that the plane was burning, she was calm. “I was only thinking that I should put it out quickly. I didn't have time to feel that this fire was going to hurt me,” she said.

Lee said she was the last person off the plane and that she tried to approach the back of the aircraft before she left to double-check that no one was left inside. But when she moved to the back of the plane, a cloud of black toxic, smoke made it impossible. “It looked like the ceiling had fallen down,” she said.

In a statement released on Monday, Asiana Airlines said that it was “dedicating great efforts to support and ensure a swift and thorough investigation.”

The special charter flight dispatched by Asiana Airlines yesterday at 13:33 (Korea Time) carrying twelve support staff, eight government inspectors and members of the Korean media has arrived on location in San Francisco. Its passengers have begun supporting the victims and their families and assisting in the investigation.

Asiana Airlines is providing airfare and lodging for families of the passengers. In the event that the number of family members seeking support increases, Asiana is also preparing to operate additional charter flights.

Two Korean family members departed for the United States yesterday. Another four are expected to depart today followed by an additional four on Wednesday. Asiana Airlines is also supporting twelve Chinese family members and six Chinese government officials, who will depart from Shanghai for the United States (via Incheon) today.

48 injured persons are being treated at local hospitals in the San Francisco area. Each hospital is staffed with dedicated personnel and transportation to provide the utmost support for the victims and their families.

Asiana Airlines deeply regrets this accident and is dedicating great efforts to support and ensure a swift and thorough investigation.

As my colleagues, Matthew L. Wald and Norimitsu Onishi report, Deborah A.P. Hersman, head of the National Safety Transportation Board, said a significant part of the plane's tail was found in the water in San Francisco Bay.

Deborah A. P. Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, delivering an update to reporters Monday.

The safety board is also investigating a crash in Alaska that killed a pilot and all nine passengers less than 24 hours after the crash in San Francisco, as my colleague Michael Roston reports.



Der Spiegel Publishes Portion of Snowden Vetting Interview

The German magazine Der Spiegel published a partial interview on Monday with Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who remains in legal limbo in a Moscow airport. The interview, conducted by a cybersecurity expert, took place before Mr. Snowden's disclosures about far-reaching government surveillance programs. Der Spiegel reports that the interview was part of an effort by Laura Poitras, a documentary film producer, working with Mr. Snowden to gauge his credibility.

In it, Mr. Snowden describes cooperation between the N.S.A. and foreign intelligence services as well as with multinational companies based in the United States, which he said, “should not be trusted until they prove otherwise.”

He was asked what happens after a computer user becomes the focus of N.S.A. surveillance.

They're just owned. An analyst will get a daily (or scheduled based on exfiltration summary) report on what changed on the system, PCAPS 9 of leftover data that wasn't understood by the automated dissectors, and so forth. It's up to the analyst to do whatever they want at that point - the target's machine doesn't belong to them anymore, it belongs to the US government.



Aftermath of Bomb in Lebanese Suburb

MTVLebanon video shows the Lebanese interior minister being attacked at the scene of the bomb.

Video and photographs from journalists and witnesses in Lebanon showed the aftermath of a car bomb on Tuesday that struck Bir al-Abed in Beirut's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has its offices and supporters.

As my colleague Anne Barnard reported, the bombing raised concerns of increasing spillover from the war in neighboring Syria. It came amid fears that Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite Muslim militant group and political party, would face attacks in response to its increased military intervention in support of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, against the two-year-old uprising challenging his rule.

Several observers said it reflected the tensions between Sunnis and Shiites that have flared domestically, like those recently in the port city of Sidon and in Tripoli, Lebanon.

Joyce Karam, a correspondent for Al Hayat, remarked on her Twitter account @Joyce_Karam that supporters of a radical Sunni cleric, Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, distributed candy in the streets of Lebanon, as Hezbollah fighters did recently after fierce fighting in a Syrian village, and she included a photograph.

She used the word “dahiyeh,” which is one way to transliterate the Arabic word loosely meaning suburbs.

Mr. Assir had been amassing weapons and threatening Shiites, giving voice to some of the Sunni anger over the dominance of Hezbollah and its decision to intervene militarily in Syria, as Ms. Barnard recently reported in an article about Sidon.

Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch also remarked on reports of what appeared to be celebratory responses to the bombing.

In its online report, The Daily Star posted video of the recovery efforts after the blast and reported that the Lebanese health minister, Ali Hasan Khalil, said 53 people were wounded, most of them lightly.

The Daily Star posted online video of the aftermath of the Bir al-Abed bomb.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast, although a statement appeared on a Facebook page quoting a brigade of the Free Syrian Army as claiming responsibility in retaliation for Hezbollah's role in Syria's conflict.

MTVLebanon News posted video on its Web site of protesters at the scene surging around the Lebanese interior minister, Marwan Charbel, and throwing objects at him as he then retreated, surrounded by security forces, amid the sound of erupting gunfire apparently meant to keep the crowd back.

Bassem Mroue, a reporter with The Associated Press, posted video on his Twitter account, @bmroue, of the minister's car moving through the throngs of people after he said it had been held up for about 45 minutes.

Bassem Mroue, a Lebanese reporter, posted video of the interior minister speeding away.

Essam Sahmarani, a blogger, posted on his Twitter account @esahmarani photographs and video of the flaming aftermath of the bombing.

Essam Sahmarani, a blogger, posted his video of the bombing aftermath on YouTube

Ali Hashem, the chief correspondent for Al Mayadeen Network, posted a photograph on his Twitter account @alihashem_tv that showed the bomb blast wreckage on fire, and he also referred to the last time there was a car bomb explosion in the suburb, decades ago, apparently targeting a top Shiite cleric.

The reference was to Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah at the time. In the car bomb attack, which took place on March 8, 1985 and destroyed a building near the residence of the prominent Shiite clergyman, as The New York Times reported then. The death toll in the 1985 blast climbed to at least 80 people.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



Video and Images From Debate Over Abortion Bill in Texas

Updated | Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. Two weeks after State Senator Wendy Davis of Texas rocketed to national attention for blocking passage of a bill restricting abortion rights, state lawmakers returned to Austin this week and resumed debate on the bill.

As my colleague, John Schwartz, reported, the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives gave provisional approval of the bill on Tuesday night. It sailed out of committee after thousands of people registered their positions on both sides of the debate and more than 500 people testified until 1:45 a.m. on Tuesday. The final House vote is expected Wednesday and then the Senate will take it up later this week.

The measure would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and impose new regulations on clinics that supporters of abortion rights say would lead to the shutdown of multiple clinics and restrict access.

Although Ms. Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, successfully blocked the bill with a filibuster as people from across the country rallied online and in the Senate gallery, the victory is very likely to be short-lived.

The bill is expected to also win approval in the Republican-controlled Senate later this week, then signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican whoannounced on Monday that he would not seek re-election.

Leading up to Tuesday's vote in the House of Representatives, supporters of the bill gathered in Austin, dressed mostly in blue as opponents showed up wearing mostly orange. Some supporters of the legislation carried baby shoes while opponents waved wire coat hangers, including Democratic lawmakers.

Before dawn on Tuesday, supporters of the bill were already on the Capitol's steps, and later singing in the rotunda.

Also on Tuesday, Democrats announced a statewide bus tour with Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, with the goal of getting their message out about the impact of the Republican votes and agenda on women's health care services across the state.

Ms. Davis posted a photo on Twitter of her speaking to opponents of the bill outside the Capitol.

Online, the debates and pleas for support on the issue continued.



New Video Appears to Show How Predawn Raid Unfolded in Cairo

Updated | Wednesday, 10:20 a.m. One day after Egyptian security forces killed more than 50 Islamist protesters camped outside a military facility in Cairo, 28 minutes of video recorded by a witness from a building high above the clashes appeared to offer the first clear images of the predawn phase of the confrontation.

A copy of video posted on YouTube on Tuesday, said to show an early-morning battle between protesters and the security forces in Cairo that left at least 54 people dead.

According to Mohamed El-Zahaby, a 33-year-old software engineer who uploaded the video to YouTube early on Tuesday, it was recorded Monday morning by a friend who feared reprisal by the security forces and wished to remain anonymous. In an Internet exchange, Mr. Zahaby told The Lede that he was one of the youth activists who had supported the revolution that began on Jan. 25, 2011, and spoke with sarcasm of “our new democratic country,” where the police are “capturing a lot of youth nowadays.” Explaining why he wanted the video to be viewed as widely as possible, he wrote, “Our media is dealing with the matter in a very bad way … showing a lot of lies.”

Unlike most of the video clips of the clashes posted online Monday, which were recorded after sunrise and distributed by supporters of the protesters or of the military, this predawn video seems to have been recorded before 4 a.m. and was circulated by someone who claimed to oppose both the Muslim Brotherhood and Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister who deposed the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, last week.

Mr. Zahaby wrote that he was indifferent to the Ikhwan, using the Arabic term for the Brotherhood, and accused Egypt's powerful defense establishment of hijacking the 2011 revolution he had supported. “I don't care about Morsi,” he wrote, “but simply it is a real coup. Most people here are happy to remove the Ikhwan regime, but they don't know that 25Jan revolution is totally failed.”

“We are extremely disappointed,” he added. “We expect to be captured as well very soon.” He continued that being detained or even killed would be better “than living like dogs in a country which is supposed to be our county. We will fight and fight again - we here I mean youth, not Islamist people.”

Later on Tuesday, Mr. Zahaby replaced the entire soundtrack of the video at the request of the person who recorded it, removing the cameraman's voice, and also covering the crackle of gun shots and tear gas rounds being fired with music. He said that he was aware, however, that dozens of copies of the original video had already been made and posted on other YouTube channels. (Before the soundtrack was changed, The Lede also downloaded a copy of the original video used in this post.)

The video appears to have been recorded above Salah Salem Street, near the officers' club where supporters of Mr. Morsi believe the deposed president is detained. A mosque at the corner of Salah Salem and Youssef Abbas Street, where Morsi supporters reportedly took refuge after the initial clashes, is visible to the right of the picture.


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Among the video clips uploaded to YouTube on Monday, one appeared to show soldiers outside that mosque trying to convince the Morsi supporters inside its gate to allow the authorities to enter to provide medical care to wounded protesters.

Video posted on YouTube on Monday appeared to show Egyptian soldiers trying to convince Islamist protesters in a mosque courtyard to allow the authorities to enter.

The long video uploaded Tuesday by Mr. Zahaby begins with the sound of protesters close to the security forces banging on light posts, apparently to alert demonstrators camped in tents behind them that an assault had begun. When the camera pans back to the massed security forces, the air fills with tear gas and the sound of shots.

While these new images do not resolve the question of which side started the violence, this visual evidence does seem consistent with the written account of another witness, Mirna El-Helbawi, who watched much of Monday's violence unfold from the balcony of her apartment. According to Ms. Helbawi, who described events in real time on her Twitter feed, and later posted a full account on Facebook in Arabic (which she later translated into English), the violence began when the security forces moved to drive protesters out of the area with overwhelming volleys of tear gas, but only turned deadly after protesters responded with some kind of gunfire.

Writing on Twitter at 3:42 a.m. Cairo time on Monday, Mr. Helbawi reported: “they're really banging hard under our house and saying ‘God is great' in loud voices, it looks like there is shooting or some clashes and people are running.” She added her location with the hashtag, “#salahsalem.”

Seven minutes later, she wrote: “the police are shooting gas and the Brotherhood are shooting birdshot.”

In her retrospective Facebook account, Ms. Helbawi wrote that she first became aware of trouble in the street below her home shortly after the end of dawn prayers, when the protesters began to loudly bang on the lamp posts and chant “God is great” to warn that the military was beginning to move in. Then, she said, officers fired large amounts of tear gas and many protesters fled while others stood their ground.

“The protesters responded at first with rocks and stones, and then suddenly I heard the sound of gunfire - I could not tell if it was birdshot or live ammunition - and the police and army retreated very quickly to past the gas station and it became clear that these bullets were from the protesters' side,” Ms. Helbawi wrote. It was when the security forces returned, she said, that the officers began shooting as well.

As our colleagues in Cairo, David Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim reported, while Ms. Helbawi did not see the very start of the conflict, others, “including both supporters and opponents of Mr. Morsi, said the military and the police had fired with little or no provocation, unloading tear gas, birdshot and bullets.”

Video images of three men on the Islamist side firing shots in the direction of the security forces, released on Monday by the spokesman for Egypt's military, all appeared to have been recorded at a later stage of Monday's clashes, after sunrise.

Another female resident of the area who told Sky News in English that she saw protesters cut down by live fire coming from the direction of the massed security forces, suggested that “the attack” looked like a planned operation by the police and army to remove the protesters from the area. In a second account of what she witnessed posted on YouTube, the woman described the security operation as “an ambush” of the protesters.

Arabic-language video of a woman in Cairo who said she witnessed Monday's “Ambush” or protesters by the security forces.

Speaking in Arabic in the YouTube clip, the woman, who did not give her name, said the armored vehicles that moved in on the protesters “were exactly under my house.” She said that the security forces seemed to have little reason to fear the protesters who “were in lines, praying, and there wasn't anything going on…. I don't know what they were so afraid of.”

Describing her self as neutral - “I'm not with Morsi, I'm not with Sisi” - the woman was adamant that the demonstrators had not started the clash. “The ones opening fire and shooting birdshot were the armored cards from the Interior Ministry,” she said.

In her account, Ms. Helbawi also described seeing a large number of protesters seeking refuge in the nearby mosque, where some of the wounded apparently sought medical treatment before being taken away by ambulances. “Such a large number of protesters went in the mosque and sought shelter there that the sheik said it was a million wounded people,” she wrote.

Soon, though, they barricaded themselves inside the mosque and refused to leave, while chanting in support of protesters who had been arrested by the army. One part of the new video appears to show protesters being detained near the mosque. On Tuesday, the Nadeem Center, a human rights organization in Cairo, released the names of 647 people arrested during Monday's spasm of violence.

Ms. Helbawi also wrote that she watched a gunfight break out between soldiers and two protesters who she said climbed on the roof of the mosque. “One of the scenes that most stays with me, since I live on a high floor, was two people climbing the roof of the mosque and suddenly the army surrounded it, and then they started firing on the army from up on the roof,” she wrote.

Another video clip posted on YouTube on Tuesday, apparently recorded during Monday's clashes, featured graphic images of Islamist protesters being gunned down later in the day on El-Tayaran Street, which leads from Salah Salem Street to the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, where Morsi supporters have rallied for days. That annotated video appears to have been edited down from a 17-minute clip uploaded to YouTube on Monday, which showed a number of men crumple to the ground as gun shots rang out.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Monday appeared to show Islamist protesters being gunned down in Cairo.

Permeating this video, apparently recorded by a protester, is a sense of the importance of documenting the armed attack by the security forces. Just before the four-minute mark, young men display shell casings for the camera and one says, “live ammunition.” Off-camera someone else says “film it.” Moments later a voice says, “They're really shooting, they're really shooting!” About a minute later, another man says, “Tell the world that we are here, we are here, and the army is shooting us with live ammunition.”

Around 11 minutes in to the clip, an injured man who looks like a teenager is evacuated by motorcycle from the front line. He screams, “No! I want a car, I want a car. No, dad! Dad! Dad! No! Dad!” A man behind him replies, “Wait! Get on! Hold on!” The young man is then rushed away for treatment.

Later, the protesters chant: “Leave, Sisi! Leave, Sisi!”



Mos Def Video Puts Force-Feeding in Spotlight

A video re-enacting the force-feeding at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from the human-rights group Reprieve.

In an online video this week, the rapper and actor Yasiin Bey, also known as Mos Def, is shown in a baggy orange prison uniform with shackles around his wrists and ankles, and strapped into a medical chair.

What happens next is an attempt by the human-rights group Reprieve, to turn a spotlight on controversial procedures by re-enacting how the United States military is force-feeding detainees on hunger strike at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In the video, a slender feeding tube is lubricated and then inserted into Mr. Bey's right nostril by a person in medical scrubs wearing rubber gloves. Mr. Bey grimaces and struggles as the tube is pushed deeper. Moaning, he is physically restrained and pushed down by several men, as he arches his back to resist being held in the chair.

As the tube is withdrawn and then prepared for reinsertion, he gags and pleads: “It is me, please stop. I can't do it.”

Since it was posted, the video has drawn about five million views on The Guardian's Web site and YouTube channel, according to the latest analytics provided by Reprieve in an e-mail statement on Wednesday. It has been viewed almost 100,000 times on Reprieve's own online channel.

But Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, the Pentagon spokesman for Guantánamo policy, called the video “a clever bit of cause marketing by Reprieve and The Guardian,” according to a Miami Herald article by Carol Rosenberg, who covers Guantánamo. “It doesn't comport with our procedures,” he was quoted as saying.

The video was shot on June 15 this year in London and released on July 8, the same day that Judge Gladys Kessler of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that she had no power to order the military to refrain from force-feeding a detainee at the prison. Judge Kessler also wrote that it was “perfectly clear” that the procedure was “a painful, humiliating and degrading process,” as my colleague Charlie Savage reported.

Lawyers are working with Reprieve on that case.

At just over four minutes long, about one minute and 30 seconds of the video is dedicated to the intubation, struggles and restraint of Mr. Bey, although a caption said the procedures can take two hours.

After he pleads for them to stop, Mr. Bey sobs into his hands and then speaks. He said, in part:

When the tube went in, the first part of it is not that bad, but then you get this burning. And then it starts to be like really unbearable. It feels like something is going into my brain. And it started to reach the back of my throat. I really couldn't take it.

According to the military, 45 detainees are “approved” for force-feedings if they refuse to eat, out of the 106 detainees participating in the hunger strike, Mr. Savage reported.

In a commentary published in Opinion section of The New York Times in April, one of the detainees represented by Reprieve lawyers, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, described being force-fed after being on a hunger strike since Feb. 10.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



Egyptian Journalist Was Killed by Army Sniper He Filmed, Family Says

An image posted online by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party of Ahmed Assem, 26, a photographer for the Islamist movement's newspaper who was killed on Monday. An image posted online by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party of Ahmed Assem, 26, a photographer for the Islamist movement's newspaper who was killed on Monday.

As The Lede reported on Monday, one of the most widely viewed images of the clashes in Cairo that morning, which left more than 50 dead, was a harrowing snippet of video that appeared to show an army sniper firing down at Islamist protesters from a rooftop, before turning his gun to take aim at the camera.

Video posted online Monday, said to show an Egyptian soldier firing down at Islamist protesters from a rooftop in Cairo.

After the video began to spread on social media - becoming, for many Islamists, emblematic of what they described as a massacre of peaceful protesters by the Egyptian military that deposed President Mohamed Morsi last week - an editor at the Muslim Brotherhood's official newspaper told The Telegraph that the footage had been recorded by a young colleague who was himself shot and killed moments after the recording ended.

The photographer was Ahmed Assem, 26, who was brought to a morgue in Cairo later in the day with a bullet hole in his chest. In an interview with a reporter from The Times on Monday, the dead man's father, Dr. Samer Assem, said that his son had been working for the Brotherhood's newspaper since the 2011 revolution, against the wishes of his family, who did not share his Islamist politics. Dr. Assem said the Brotherhood had “brainwashed” his son and was responsible for his death.

On Wednesday, though, the victim's brother said in a telephone interview that the family planned to take legal action against the soldier, whose image was captured on video a split-second before the fatal shot was fired.

Eslam Assem, the older brother of the photographer, said Ahmed's friends contacted the family members on Tuesday to give them the video. “They gave it to us and said it was the last one on his camera, the last one he made before he got shot and fell,” said Mr. Assem, 29, a police officer.

His upper-class family members had been opposed to his younger brother's affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood and worried after they learned of his death that he had been involved in violence against the army. But Mr. Assem said the video vindicated his brother.

“Before we saw the video, I knew that he was a photographer, but I did not know what he doing there,” he said. “But once I saw the video, I knew that he wasn't doing anything and that they shot him because he was filming.”

He said the family was considering legal action against the shooter in the video. “I thought that Ahmed had been killed randomly while he was running and the bullets were flying, but the video shows that he was killed deliberately,” he said. “I won't be quiet about this.”

He said the killing had devastated the family and that the whole neighborhood was sad over the death of a social kid they all called “bunduq,” or “hazelnut.”

“I was very worried about him and I used to argue with him a lot, but he loved his work and he jumped into it,” he said.

Several other video clips recorded during Monday's street fighting between the military and the Islamist protesters also showed snipers firing down from rooftops.

Video posted online on Monday appeared to show a sniper firing at Islamist protesters in Cairo.

A video tribute to the dead journalist, circulated by @Ikhwanweb, the Brotherhood's English-language Twitter feed, set photographs of Mr. Assem to music. The montage ended with a close shot of his dead body and his bloody camera.

A video tribute to Ahmed Assem, titled “A Martyr of the Army's Betrayal.”

Liam Stack contributed reporting.



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