Search crews Friday found the cockpit voice recorder from United Flight 93 that could reveal whether passengers tried to gain control of the hijacked plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
The "black box" was discovered some 7.5m deep in the crash site crater, FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said. It was sent to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington.
FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said the recorder appears to be "in fairly good shape," citing descriptions by those who found it.
The recorder is designed to capture at least the last 30 minutes of cockpit conversation. The plane's other black box, the flight data recorder, was found Thursday.
The Boeing 757 left Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday morning, bound for San Francisco. Radar showed the plane was over Cleveland when it abruptly turned back east, began losing altitude and flying erratically before it crashed in western Pennsylvania.
Mobile phone calls made by passengers to relatives before the crash suggested they planned to wrest control of the jet from the hijackers and prevent the plane from becoming a missile like the ones that toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
Some have speculated that the hijackers planned to target Camp David in Maryland, the Capitol or even the White House.
In a tribute Friday night that brought friends and relatives of the dead to tears, Governor Tom Ridge called some of the passengers heroes for battling their captors.
"The passengers on that plane decided to fight back their hijackers," Ridge said at a vigil attended by thousands. "They undoubtedly saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives in the process. They sacrificed themselves for others -- the ultimate sacrifice."
"What appears to be a charred, smoldering hole in the ground is truly and really a monument to heroism," he said.
About 80 friends and relatives, none who spoke at the service, were escorted by police and Red Cross workers past a crowd estimated at 3,000 to attend the vigil. Many cried as they waved candles and flags while singing God Bless America.
Earlier, volunteers at the crash site led a prayer service. Heeding President George W. Bush's call for a national day of prayer, Salvation Army and Red Cross workers prayed and sang Amazing Grace.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS