Just heard on NPR that the two Russian plane crashes were not terrorist related . . .
WE don't wait until the fires are out. The Ruskies are slackers...
Oh phew. Time to move on then. (/sarcasm)
That's weird because I was just scanning some wires across the globe and saying to myself how refreshing it is that most outlets are saying that "terrorism" or an "act of sabotage" has not been ruled out. Leave it to npr to be different... Actually, npr probably is not alone in doing this. So many media outlets don't want any threats in the news that interfere with their flattering coverage of johnny effin' kerry.
Doing some more scanning....Well, the flip flopping in this one article alone would normally make me laugh if the topic wasn't the double tragedy that occurred.
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TERROR LINK RULED OUT
Two planes that crashed almost simultaneously in Russia were not downed in terrorist attacks, Russia's security services have said.
The Federal Security Service said it was sure the planes were neither bombed nor hijacked.
But the country's chief prosecutor said it was too early to determine the cause of the crashes.
A London-based spokesman for the leader of Chechnya's main rebel group said it was responsible for the attack.
All 89 passengers onboard the planes were killed when they crashed on Tuesday night.
Investigators are exploring other possibilities such as technical failures, the use of poor quality fuel, breaches of fueling regulations and also pilot error.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the first plane, Sibir Airlines Tu-154, as it flew from the Russian capital to the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
It dropped off radar screens near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, 600 miles south of Moscow.
"A minute before the plane disappeared from the radar screens the interior ministry received a report from an air traffic controller that there had been an attack on the crew," an Interior Ministry official was quoted as saying.
A Sibir Airlines spokesman said: "We are considering an act of terror as one possibility, especially after we received an automatically generated telegramme from the Sochi air control centre that the plane had been hijacked."
Just a minute later, the second plane, Tu-134, took off from Moscow airport bound for Volgograd.
The plane's tail was found in the Tula region, 110 miles south of the capital.
Witnesses on the ground saw an explosion on board the second plane just before it crashed, sending debris falling from the sky.
"Around 11pm, give or take five minutes, there was this strange noise in the sky, then this torn-up book fell onto our garage," a local man told NTV television.
The Volga-Aviaexpress carrier, which owned the plane, said it was in good shape and its passengers had undergone all necessary security checks.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13204349,00.html