Free Republic

When I first saw the KTVU video in which anchorwoman Tori Campbell gave the fictional names of the Asiana Airlines pilots -- Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow -- I laughed. I laughed out loud, and then I watched it again. After days of watching the painful news about the July 6 crash that killed three and left many wounded, it felt good to laugh. I didn't think that the gaffe had racist intent. I figured it was just a puerile newsroom prank that somehow made it on the air. I never...

A potentially telling revelation in the wake of the Asiana Airlines crash landing at the San Francisco airport: Asiana pilots have little training on manual flying and visual approaches, according to three pilots Bloomberg spoke to who have either flown for Asiana or helped train Korean crews. One of the three recalls preparing to land an Asiana jet at LAX and asking his Korean co-pilot to make a visual approach. The co-pilot couldn't do it, forcing the American captain to take over in order to avoid an accident. The co-pilot's explanation to him afterward: "I don't need to know this....

U.S. officials are privately pleased by North Korea’s seven missile launches last week, as they highlighted the danger posed by the communist regime in Pyongyang and the need for missile defenses. The missile launches were carried out with no advance warning and were fired into a commercial air corridor used by numerous trans-Pacific airlines. One of the missiles crossed the flight path of a South Korean Asiana Airlines jet shortly before the plane passed through the area off the Russian coast of the Sea of Japan. U.S. defense officials said the missile launches were an impressive show of joint missile...