Pilot confirmed dead

Pilot confirmed dead

WESTFIELD, Mass.

The pilot of an F-15 jet that crashed this week in remote Virginia mountains was killed, military officials said Thursday.

Col. James Keefe said his “thoughts and prayers are with the family” of the pilot, whose identity wasn’t disclosed.

The pilot and jet were with the 104th Fighter Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

The F-15 fighter jet crashed in the mountains of western Virginia on Wednesday, shaking residents but causing no injuries on the ground.

Authorities said the pilot of the single-seat jet was headed to New Orleans for radar installation as part of routine maintenance and reported an in-flight emergency before losing radio contact.

Buffett heir buys Rosa Parks archive

DETROIT

Hundreds of items that belonged to civil-rights icon Rosa Parks and have been sitting unseen for years in a New York warehouse were sold to a foundation run by the son of billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett, the younger Buffett said Thursday.

Howard G. Buffett told The Associated Press that his foundation plans to give the items, which include Parks’ Presidential Medal of Freedom, to an institute or museum he hasn’t yet selected. Buffett said the items belong to the American people.

Parks, who died in 2005 at age 92, was one of the most beloved women in U.S. history.

Attempted call may alter plane search

CANBERRA, Australia

Shortly after the missing Malaysian airliner disappeared from radar, airline officials on the ground tried repeatedly to call the crew of the Boeing 777 using a satellite phone that might have left clues to the jet’s flight path.

Now an analysis of those failed attempts to reach Flight 370 could alter the search for the plane.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan said Thursday that the sprawling search area in the southern Indian Ocean may be extended farther south based on the new analysis, which suggests that the aircraft turned that direction earlier than previously believed.

Europe seeks role in postwar Gaza

JERUSALEM

European nations are offering to help enforce the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, a scenario that could provide key international backing for maintaining the peace and step up the pressure on Hamas militants to relinquish power.

The European plan remains vague, and it is unclear whether Israel or the Palestinians will agree.

But a European presence in Gaza could go a long way toward meeting two key demands: the Palestinians’ insistence on freer movement in and out of the territory, and the Israeli requirement that Hamas be kept in check.

Drugs killed man in troubled execution

OKLAHOMA CITY

An Oklahoma death- row inmate who writhed, moaned and clenched his teeth before he was pronounced dead about 43 minutes after his execution began succumbed to the lethal drugs he was administered, not a heart attack, after the state’s prisons chief halted efforts to kill him, an autopsy report released Thursday says.

Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton had said inmate Clayton Lockett died from a heart attack about 10 minutes after he ordered the execution stopped. It hadn’t been clear whether all three execution drugs administered to Lockett had actually made it into his system, but the independent autopsy performed for the state determined they did.

Associated Press