By John Johnson
Asiana Airlines might someday be defending itself in court in the wake of the fatal San Francisco crash, but its lawyers are playing offense, too. The airline says it might sue KTVU after the TV station got pranked and aired fake pilot names that were actually crude racial jokes such… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
The National Transportation Safety Board apologized and blamed an intern on Friday for confirming a set of names said to belong to the pilots of the ill-fated Asiana Flight 214. The names were fake and realized as a prank after a KTVU news anchor in California read them out loud on the station’s midday newscast. …read more
Source: The Christian Post
A San Francisco Bay Area TV station has apologized after reporting bogus names of the four pilots aboard Asiana Airlines flight 214 that were a play on Asian names.
KTVU-TV co-anchor Tori Campbell read the racially offensive names on the air Friday. The report was accompanied by a graphic with the phony names listed alongside a photo of the burned out plane.
After a break, Campbell apologized for the error. She said a National Transportation Safety Board official confirmed the names to the station.
Video of the report spread across the Internet Friday.
Paul Cheung, president of the Asian American Journalists Association, released a statement saying KTVU’s reporting of the names was “not only wrong, but grossly offensive.” The phony names caricatured Asian names, said Cheung, who also is interactive and graphics editor for The Associated Press.
In a statement on its website, KTVU said it had made a mistake by not phonetically sounding out the names.
“We heard this person verify the information without questioning who they were and then rushed the names on our noon newscast,” the station said.
The NTSB also apologized and said a summer intern “acted outside the scope of his authority” when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew.
“Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated,” the NTSB said in a statement.
Neither the station nor the NTSB commented on where the names originated.
Flight 214 crashed Saturday at San Francisco International Airport, killing three and injuring dozens.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
By Ruth Brown
There’s not fact checking, and then there’s… not even using your brain. A newscast on Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU apparently fell for a (racist and offensive) joke, incorrectly reporting that the pilots of the plane that crashed at San Francisco airport were named “Sum Ting Wong,” “Ho Lee Fuk,… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
A San Francisco Bay area man has turned himself in to authorities after being identified as a suspect in the theft of more than $1 million of gold and other items from a far Northern California county courthouse.
David Dean Johnson, 49, of El Cerrito surrendered to a sheriff’s detective on Monday. He is being held at Siskiyou County Jail in Yreka with bail set at$1 million, sheriff’s officials told KTVU.com.
Johnson and 51-year-old Scott Wayne Bailey of El Sobrante were recently named as suspects in the 2012 heist at the Siskiyou County Superior Courthouse in Yreka. About $1.3 million in gold, jewelry and artifacts were taken from a display case in the courthouse lobby.
The entire gold collection before the theft was valued at about $3 million. Sheriff Jon Lopey said last week that it would be “highly speculative” to guess how much of the gold, if any, would eventually be recovered.
As of Tuesday morning, Bailey remained at large, sheriff’s officials told KTVU.com.
Surveillance footage captured video images of two men breaking into the courthouse at the time of the heist. An alarm that was rigged to notify Yreka police and sheriff’s deputies did not sound at the time.
Yreka, the seat of Siskiyou County, sits in the shadow of 14,000-foot Mount Shasta near the Oregon border.
Miners and other residents donated much of the gold to the collection over the past century.
Sheriff’s officials say at least some of the gold proceeds appear to have been used to purchase other items. The Sheriff’s Department is continuing to investigate the case.
It was not immediately clear whether Johnson had an attorney.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A lawyer for a man who claims he was wrongly added to a California city’s “Most Wanted” list says it is a “scandalous error,” while the city’s police department is defending its actions.
Chau Van, 37, filed a lawsuit against Oakland on March 5 that said his reputation was “irreparably harmed,” KTVU reports.
Van’s name and image first appeared during a Feb. 7, 2012, news conference on Oakland gang violence, in which Police Chief Howard Jordan said he was wanted for a shooting.
A week later, Van visited the Oakland Police Department to clear up the confusion but was searched and held in custody for three days before being released, the lawsuit says. At the time, Jordan said in a press release that one of Oakland’s most wanted criminals had surrendered and that he was wanted for assault, not a shooting, KTVU reports.
On Friday, Jordan stood behind the police department’s actions, saying in a statement that Van is still an identified suspect for an incident in which a man was nearly beaten to death with a baseball bat in December 2011. The investigation into the beating is still ongoing, the Oakland Tribune reports.
Van was never charged for that beating, his attorney said.
A status conference on the case is scheduled for June 7.
By The Huffington Post News Editors
A California preschool teacher, accused of attempting to drug young children, was arrested this week on child endangerment charges.
According to Morgan Hill police, Kiddie Academy employee Deborah Gratz on Friday allegedly used over-the-counter sleep aid Sominex to drug the drinking cups of several toddlers, local TV station KTVU reports.
Police obtained a search warrant after a witness to the alleged incident came forward. Sergent Troy Hoefling said the witness saw Gratz deposit an unknown substance into the cups of students in her class, whose ages range between 1 and 2. Gratz, 59, was arrested after local authorities on Monday discovered evidence at her home.
A California preschool teacher is facing felony charges after she allegedly drugged toddlers with a sleep aid.
KTVU reports 59-year-old Deborah Gratz was arrested on child endangerment charges after she was fired from her job at the Kiddie Academy preschool in Morgan Hill.
A witness told authorities they observed Gratz putting an unknown substance into the drinking cups of the children in her classroom, who range in ages 1 to 2.
Police say when administrators confronted Gratz, she admitted putting an over-the-counter sleeping aid “Sominex” into the kids’ drinks. None of the children drank from the cups the day the incident was reported.
Officials say Gratz had worked at the childcare center for the past five years.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
San Francisco leaders and the local Muslim community are slamming what they call a series of anti-Islam bus ads that contain quotes attributed to terrorists.
The ads, which began appearing on at least 10 city buses Monday, contain quotes such as one attributed to the militant Islamic group Hamas that reads: “Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah.”
“San Francisco is a city that celebrates its diversity and hateful speech and discrimination against our Arab and Muslim communities will never be tolerated,” Mayor Ed Lee said according to KTVU.
Lee, District Attorney George Gascon and other elected officials joined Arab and Muslim community leaders to publicly condemn the ads Monday, calling them racist.
“These offensive ads serve no purpose than to denigrate our city’s Arab and Muslim communities,” Gascon said.
The ads are paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative and feature Usama bin Laden, the Times Square car bomber and the alleged gunman in the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings accompanied by quotes about warfare and weapons that the group links to Islam.
The group ran similar ads in San Francisco in August and has also posted ads in New York City, including one in September that called enemies of Israel “savages.”
San Francisco‘s transit agency believes a First Amendment court decision forces it to accept the advertising. It plans to give the $5,000 used to pay for the ads to the city’s Human Rights Commission to study the impact of discrimination on San Francisco‘s Islamic communities and run its own ads against discrimination.
American Freedom Defense Initiative‘s executive director, Pamela Geller, told The Associated Press on Tuesday the purpose of the campaign is to show the “reality of jihad and root causes of terrorism, from the words of jihadists themselves.”
“City officials denounce our ads, but not the actual quotes from high-profile jihadists calling for holy war and genocide,” she said in an email.
“Our new campaign focuses on how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The sister of an American woman missing in Peru said it’s “highly unusual” for her to drop off the grid and fears Jamie Neal and her boyfriend may have been kidnapped.
Neal and Garrett Hand, both from the San Francisco area, left for Peru in December and were last heard from on Jan. 25, according to the woman’s sister, Jennifer Neal.
“There’s a part of me that thinks someone has taken them,” Neal, of West Sacramento, Calif., told FoxNews.com on Monday.
The U.S. State Department is assisting in the search for the couple, who reportedly disappeared in January during a biking trip in the country.
Jennifer Neal said her sister has stopped posting photos of that trip on Facebook and said Hand’s cellphone is turned off.
“It goes straight to voicemail,” she said. “It’s not like them to be out of touch for this long.”
The couple was last seen on Jan. 26 taking a bus from Cusco to Lima and then getting in a cab, KTVU reported.
The U.S. State Department has made a poster of Neal and Hand, while the U.S. Embassy in Peru‘s website posted a travel warning for Americans.
The warning, which was posted on Feb. 13, is about a potential kidnapping threat.
“The Embassy has received information that members of a criminal organization may be planning to kidnap U.S. citizen tourists in the Cusco and Machu Picchu area,” the statement said. “Possible targets and methods are not known and the threat is credible at least through the end of February 2013.”
Neal said that the couple likely had no idea about such a threat.
“They would have no known anything about it because they’re not watching the news,” Neal said. “They’re riding their bicycles around everywhere.”
Anyone with information on the couple’s whereabouts is urged to call the U.S. Embassy in Lima or the U.S. State Department.
Fox News’ Cristina Corbin and Molly Line contributed to this report.
The U.S. State Department is now assisting in the search for an American couple who disappeared in January during a biking trip in Peru.
Jamie Neal and Garrett Hand, both from the San Francisco area, left for Peru in December and were last heard from on Jan. 25, Fox 40 reports.
Neal has stopped posting pictures of the trip on Facebook and Hand no longer answers his cellphone.
“Until someone shows me proof that she’s not missing, I don’t believe it,” Jennifer Neal, one of Jamie’s sisters, told Fox 40.
The couple was last seen on Jan. 26 taking a bus from Cusco to Lima and then getting in a cab, KTVU reports.
The U.S. State Department has made a poster of Neal and Hand, while the U.S. Embassy in Peru‘s website posted a travel warning for Americans.
The warning, which was posted on Feb. 13, is about a potential kidnapping threat.
“The Embassy has received information that members of a criminal organization may be planning to kidnap U.S. citizen tourists in the Cusco and Machu Picchu area,” the statement said. “Possible targets and methods are not known and the threat is credible at least through the end of February 2013.”
The family says the U.S. Embassy in Lima, as well as Peruvian authorities, is helping to look for the couple and the embassy is in contact with their families.
A Nevada womanwho was lost in the Sierra Nevada mountains for nearly a week is recovering after she was rescued by her own brother Wednesday, but her boyfriend, who left her to try and find help, was found dead.
Citrus Heights police spokesman Officer Bryan Fritsch says 46-year-old Paula Lane was found near Highway 88 in Alpine County around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Fox40.com reports Lane and her boyfriend, 44-year-old Roderick Clifton, were on an off-roading drive through the mountains on Nov. 29 when their car apparently got stuck in the snow.
Lane’s doctors told Fox40.com Clifton left the car to try and find help, but never returned. Lane then wrapped herself in blankets and headed out on her own, trying to reach a road.
She slept in hollowed-out trees and ate snow and tomatoes to survive. Eventually, she discovered Clifton’s body.
Meanwhile, KTVU reports, the woman’s family refused to give up looking for her after authorities ended their search.
Lane’s brother headed out into the wilderness to search for her, and eventually found her walking alongside the highway.
Lane is being treated for severe hypothermia and frostbite, KTVU reports.
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Source: Fox US News