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WALL TOWNSHIP, N.J. – A small plane trying to land broke apart and tore through a snowy field next to a runway Monday afternoon, killing all five people aboard, including a teenager and a child, and scattering debris over 200 feet.

The crash was reported at 3:45 p.m. at Monmouth Executive Airport, about 35 miles east of Trenton, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. The weather was overcast, but no precipitation was falling.

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Washington (CNN) — When the father of suspected terrorist Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab visited the U.S. embassy in Nigeria in November, he told officials he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen, a senior administration official said Monday.

Revealing new details, the official also denied the father told officials his son might be on a suicide mission:

“There was no suggestion he was about to carry out a terrorist act,” the official said.

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Barcelona – A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

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“We saw nothing,” he said.

Samuels is vice president of the Fremont Peak Observatory near Monterey, California, which had invited members of the public to watch Friday’s NASA mission through its telescopes.

The lunar strike happened shortly after 4:30 a.m. on the West Coast (7:30 a.m. ET).

NASA had encouraged everyone around the country to host “impact parties,” saying the plume of dust generated by the lunar impact would be visible through “mid-sized backyard” telescopes 10 inches or larger. It said the chances of seeing the plume were greater for people living in areas that were still dark.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A federal grand jury in the U.S. Virgin Islands has indicted two ticket agent contractors who worked for Delta Airlines and an airport employee on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S.

The ticket agents, identified as Diana Telemaque, 33, and Felicia Browne, 22, were arrested Thursday along with luggage handler Daniel Confidente.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in a statement that the two agents allegedly sold tickets to illegal immigrants. All three are accused of helping an unspecified number of migrants bypass customs officials from May 2008 to July 2009.

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The years-long U.S. commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking a significant toll on the children of service members, who are 2½ times more likely to develop psychological problems than American children in general, new research indicates.

The study, published this week in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, found that deployment of a parent was correlated to high stress levels in the parent who remains at home, which it said was linked to greater psychological impact on children.

The findings open a new window on the collateral damage wartime deployment can exact back at home.

Full Story at msnbc.com

Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.

A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.

The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK’s Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.
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“I would have to say this is one of the strangest planets we know about,” said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discovery.

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CLEVELAND – An Ohio bus driver who had been fired and reinstated after an earlier accident was on her cell phone when her bus struck and killed a pedestrian in March, according to investigators.

Angela Williams, 49, of Cleveland, was indicted Thursday on a felony charge of aggravated vehicular homicide. If convicted, she could get up to five years in prison in the death of Patrick Merrill, 59, of suburban Berea.

He was struck in a crosswalk while the bus was making a left turn. It was the second fatal bus accident involving a pedestrian in a crosswalk in seven months in Cleveland.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A space station air purifier was working again Sunday after it shut down at the worst possible time, when company was still visiting and had swollen the on-board crowd to a record 13.

The repair by flight controllers, albeit temporary, came as a great relief to NASA.

Even if the carbon dioxide-removal system had remained broken, shuttle Endeavour would not have had to undock early from the international space station, said flight director Brian Smith. But the system needs to work to support six station residents over the long term, he said.

Full Story at CBS News

(AP) The first visitors allowed into the Statue of Liberty’s crown in nearly eight years made the arduous climb Saturday on an Independence Day journey laden with symbolism of freedom, national pride – and for one couple, romance.

Aaron Weisinger, 26, got down on one knee on the crown’s small floor, pulled out a diamond ring and proposed to his girlfriend, Erica Breder. Stunned, Breder squeezed her eyes shut as tears rolled down her cheeks, and whispered an immediate yes.

“To propose in the crown was perfect,” 25-year-old Breder said later.

Full Story At msnbc.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – When the Soviet Union was beating America’s pants off heaving cosmonauts into orbit, a young president named John Fitzgerald Kennedy called a handful of top space experts in and decided Americans would walk on the moon.

Kennedy wanted to win the space race with the Russians — but more importantly, it was his dream to send astronauts to the moon. They needed to go because Earth is finite, a cradle for humans, and if humans are to survive they need homes out there.

America won that space race, and eventually the Cold War as well. Now another young president is facing a choice in space, and his decision could be as momentous as the one Kennedy made more than four decades ago.

Full Story At  CNN.com

1. Hasn’t swine flu been around for a while?

Yes. Swine flu was first identified in 1930 when researchers isolated the virus in a pig. In 1976, more than 200 soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, got swine flu. From 1976 until 2005, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received approximately one report every year or two of humans with swine flu. From December 2005 until January 2009, there were 12 cases of swine flu reported.

2. The folks who have it now, did they get it from pigs or people?

It appears that no one in the United States with swine flu had any contact with pigs.