NY nanny accused of killing kids appears in court

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York nanny charged with murder in the stabbing deaths of two small children under her care has appeared in court for the first time.

Yoselyn Ortega was hospitalized for weeks with stab wounds police said were self-inflicted after the Oct. 25 killings. She was arraigned at the hospital in November but has since been released. She appeared in court Friday wearing glasses and her hair in braids.

Lawyers say psychiatric evaluations for Ortega are not complete, and they need more time to review medical records to determine whether she is fit for trial.

Authorities say Ortega stabbed 6-year-old Lucia Krim and her 2-year-old brother, Leo, while the children's mother was out with a third child.

The three were found in the bathroom of the Upper West Side apartment.

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Air balloon in Egypt falls 1,000 feet, killing 18

LUXOR, Egypt (AP) — A hot air balloon flying over Egypt's ancient city of Luxor caught fire and crashed into a sugar cane field on Tuesday, killing at least 18 foreign tourists, a security official said.

It was one of the worst accidents involving tourists in Egypt and likely to push the key tourism industry deeper into recession.

The casualties included French, British, Belgian, Hungarian, Japanese nationals and nine tourists from Hong Kong, Luxor Governor Ezzat Saad told reporters.

Three survivors of the crash — two British tourists and one Egyptian — were taken to a local hospital. Egypt's civil aviation minister, Wael el-Maadawi, suspended hot air balloon flights and flew to Luxor to lead the investigation into the crash.

According to the Egyptian security official, the balloon carrying at least 20 tourists was flying over Luxor early Tuesday when it caught fire, which triggered an explosion in its gas canister, then plunged at least 300 meters (1,000 feet) from the sky.

The balloon crashed into a sugar cane field outside al-Dhabaa village just west of Luxor, 510 kilometers (320 miles) south of Cairo, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Bodies of the dead tourists were scattered across the field around the remnants of the balloon. An Associated Press reporter at the crash site counted eight bodies as they were put into body bags and taken away. The security official said all 18 bodies have been recovered.

The security official said foul play has been ruled out. He also said initial reports of 19 dead were revised to 18 as confusion is common in the aftermath of such accidents.

An official with the state prosecutor's office said initial findings show that the accident occurred when the pilot's landing cable was caught around a helium tube. He spoke anonymously because the investigation is ongoing.

The head of Japan Travel Bureau's Egypt branch, Atsushi Imaeda, confirmed that four Japanese died in the crash. He said two were a couple in their 60s from Tokyo. Details on the other two were not immediately available.

In Hong Kong, a travel agency said nine of the tourists that were aboard the balloon were natives of the semiautonomous Chinese city. There was a "very big chance that all nine have perished," said Raymond Ng, a spokesman for the agency. The nine, he said, included five women and four men from three families.

They were traveling with six other Hong Kong residents on a 10-day tour of Egypt.

Ng said an escort of the nine tourists watched the balloon from the ground catching fire around 7 a.m. and plunging to the ground two minutes later.

In Britain, tour operator Thomas Cook confirmed that two British tourists were dead and two were in hospital.

"What happened in Luxor this morning is a terrible tragedy and the thoughts of everyone in Thomas Cook are with our guests, their family and friends," said Peter Fankhauser, CEO of Thomas Cook UK & Continental Europe.

"We have a very experienced team in resort with the two guests in the local hospital, and we're providing our full support to the family and friends of the deceased at this difficult time," he said.

In Paris, a diplomatic official said French tourists were among those involved in the accident, but would give no details on how many, or whether French citizens were among those killed.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to be publicly named according to government policy, the official said French authorities were working with their Egyptian counterparts to clarify what happened. French media reports said two French tourists were among the dead but the official wouldn't confirm that.

Hot air ballooning, usually at sunrise over the famed Karnak and Luxor temples as well as the Valley of the Kings, is a popular pastime for tourists visiting the area. Tickets for a hot air balloon ride per person are around 200 Egyptian pounds, or roughly $30.

The site of the accident has seen past crashes. In 2009, 16 tourists were injured when their balloon struck a cellphone transmission tower. A year earlier, seven tourists were injured in a similar crash.

Egypt's tourism industry has been decimated since the 2011 uprising and the political turmoil that followed and continues to this day. Luxor's hotels are currently about 25 percent full in what is supposed to be the peak of the winter season.

Scared off by the turmoil and tenuous security following the uprising, the number of tourists coming to Egypt fell to 9.8 million in 2011 from 14.7 million the year before, and revenues plunged 30 percent to $8.8 billion.

Magda Fawzi, whose company operates four luxury Nile River cruise boats to Luxor, said she expects the accident will lead to tourist cancellations. Tour guide Hadi Salama said he expects Tuesday's accident to hurt the eight hot air balloon companies operating in Luxor, but that it may not directly affect tourism to the Nile Valley city.

Poverty swelled at the country's fastest rate in Luxor, which is highly dependent on visitors to its monumental temples and the tombs of King Tutankhamun and other pharaohs. In 2011, 39 percent of its population lived on less than $1 a day, compared to 18 percent in 2009, according to government figures.

In August, Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi flew to Luxor to encourage tourism there, about a month after he took office and vowed that Egypt was safe for tourists.

"Egypt is safer than before, and is open for all," he said in remarks carried by the official MENA news agency at the time. He was referring to the security situation following the 2011 ouster of autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

Deadly accidents caused by poor management and a decrepit infrastructure have taken place since Morsi took office. In January, 19 Egyptian conscripts died when their rickety train jumped the track. In November, 49 kindergarteners were killed when their school bus crashed into a speeding train because the railway guard failed to close the crossing.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful political force and Morsi's base of support, blames accidents on a culture of negligence fostered by Mubarak.

___

Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong, Jill Lawless in London and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

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'Killing Lincoln' with Hanks

Tom Hanks narrates National Geographic Channels "Killing Lincoln.""Killing Lincoln" covers ground not included in the recent Spielberg filmIt's National Geographic Channel's first scripted drama"Killing Lincoln" is produced by Ridley and Tony Scott

(EW.com) -- National Geographic Channel's new film "Killing Lincoln" explores a key part of the 16th president's story that Steven Spielberg's big screen hit largely passed over.

Based on Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's bestselling book, Killing Lincoln chronicles the final days of President Lincoln (Billy Campbell) and the plot by his assassin John Wilkes Booth (Jesse Johnson). Below is the first trailer for the movie, which debuts next month.

"Killing Lincoln" spends time portraying both men as it builds toward, as narrator Tom Hanks puts it, "the most resonant crime in the history of the nation," and then chronicles the extensive manhunt to bring Booth to justice. The show's auspices are quite impressive. In addition to Hanks, Killing Lincoln is produced by Ridley and Tony Scott (the latter having joined the production before his death last year) and is directed by Adrian Moat (Gettysburg). "This is really the Lincoln story you've never seen before," Ridley Scott says.

"Killing Lincoln" marks Nat Geo's first scripted drama. Here's the debut preview. There's a couple brief interview snippets with the actors and producers, but the home stretch of the two-minute video is a theatrical-style trailer.

Below, some previously released quotes from Johnson and Campbell about their performances:

"The prevailing image of Booth is one of a two-dimensional, mustache-twirling villain," Johnson says. "My job was to dig deeper. Show that he was as complex as a Shakespearean character he portrayed on the stage. Demonstrate the artistry, obsession and Southern rigor as well as the virulent disdain for an 'inferior' president that culminated into his own bloody, one-act play."

Adds Campbell: "Lincoln is so adored, so universally revered today that it's easy to forget he was a controversial president — one with many enemies — in fact he repeatedly dreamt of his own assassination. We felt it important to convey this hidden side of Lincoln, this sense of his almost wasting away with premonitions of death, even as he was outwardly so poised and steadfast through the closing of the war."

See original story and watch the trailer at EW.com.

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Militants attack Yemen intelligence HQ, killing 14

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Suspected al-Qaida militants attacked a Yemeni intelligence headquarters on Saturday, killing 14 people in a bold attack in the country's main southern city of Aden, officials said.

The attack in the heart of the port city underscored al-Qaida's ability to launch deadly strikes despite a two-month Yemeni military offensive backed by the U.S. that earlier this year dislodged militants who had taken over a string of southern towns near Aden.

Militants attacked the intelligence building from two sides, firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, according to intelligence officials in the city and witnesses from the adjacent state TV and radio building. The assault left 11 soldiers and three intelligence officers dead, and six people wounded, the officials said.

They and the witnesses, who are government employees, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

Al-Qaida-linked militants took advantage of political turmoil in Yemen to overrun several major towns in Abyan province, neighboring Aden. They held many of them months until the military drove them out of most areas in May, including the Abyan provincial capital of Zinjibar and the nearby town of Jaar. More than 100,000 people fled the violence there, with many taking refuge in makeshift shelters and schools in Aden.

Many of the militants escaped into nearby mountains, however, and have continued to carry out attacks. Suicide bombings and assassinations have targeted officials in Aden tasked with fighting al-Qaida. An al-Qaida front group, Ansar al-Shariah, was behind the kidnapping of a Saudi Arabian diplomat in the port of Aden in March.

The area sees other violence as well. Earlier this week, gunmen stormed a passenger plane after it landed in Aden and grabbed an opposition leader from his seat and spirited him away to an unknown destination. The masked gunmen burst into the airport building first, meeting no resistance from airport security. They then ran onto the runway and boarded the plane to kidnap retired Maj. Gen. Ahmed Abdullah al-Hassani, a former Yemeni navy commander and a prominent campaigner for the south's secession. It is not clear who was behind the abduction.

The United States considers al-Qaida in The Arabian Peninsula as the terror network's most dangerous offshoot, held responsible for several failed attacks on U.S. territory.

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How Gas Prices Are Killing My Mortgage, Housing Industry (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | I know that many people have written, blogged, ranted and screamed about high gas prices. Some have even tried to imply that $4.00 a gallon isn't bad, in terms of inflation and historical percent of gas compared to the household budget. Now let me lay down the cold, frightening truth of what today's gas prices are doing by exposing my own ordeal to public scrutiny. I nearly lost my home. And I won't even go into what my mortgage company was doing to hose me.

I bought my home based on standard mortgage lending processes of applying a mortgage of no more than 33 percent of household income. All was fine and gas was running me about $1.25 to $1.50 a gallon, or $25 to $30 a tank to fill up my truck. That equaled $60 to $90 a week, $240 to $360 a month.

At $3.75 a gallon, my truck costs $82.50 a fill up. Two and a half times each week. $206.00 a week. 4 weeks a month, or $824.00. And that is a serious hit to the monthly household budget. My gas bill is nearly as much as my mortgage, and as far as I can tell, that has never happened. Do the math. High gas prices are literally driving people out of their homes. No pun intended of course. When you buy a house and can afford $360 a month for gas, and then gas goes through the roof to $824 a month and your pay has not gone up in years, it just becomes too much. Add just one family emergency and everything falls apart.

So you default on your home, and many others have no choice but to follow suit. Now, I know that many risky loans were made. But far more loans were based on good math. They just never expected to have to pay nearly $1000.00 a month, a third or more of their salary, just to get to work.

Gas is killing the housing and mortgage industry. Period. I'm just glad that my 401(k) plan invests in gas, because the oil companies are making a killing. Again, no pun intended.

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