Free Republic

SISTERON, France — The German co-pilot accused of crashing a passenger plane in the French Alps frequented a gliding club near the crash site as a child with his parents, according to a member of the club. Francis Kefer, a member of the club in the town of Sisteron, said on i-Tele television that Andreas Lubitz' family and other members of the gliding club in his home town of Montabaur, Germany, came to the region regularly between 1996 and 2003. ... The crash site is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) away from the Aero-club de Sisteron glider airfield.

NEW evidence has emerged that the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in southern France yesterday dived for 18 minutes, and not eight as previously thought. France’s Transport Minister Segolene Royal said this morning that the crew had stopped responding to radio messages at 10.30am, with the plane flying over the Mediterranean sea. The aircraft crashed into the side of a mountain in the French Alps at 10.48am, suggesting that the plane had descended from 28,000ft to 2,000ft without signalling an emergency. Ms Royal added that events in the cockpit in the 60 seconds between 10.30am and 10.31am were ‘crucial’ and...

Two base jumpers, including an Australian, were killed in separate accidents in the French Alps on Sunday (local time) after parachuting off mountains in their wingsuits. Their deaths bring to four the number of people killed taking part in the extreme sport in France this month. ... On August 6, two base jumpers, one from Switzerland, the other from France, died in similar accidents in the Alps and French Pyrenees. ... Unlike skydiving, which involves leaping from an aircraft, base jumpers take off with a parachute from a fixed point, usually a cliff or a bridge. The sport carries high...

It had been thought that Mr Mollier was killed because he witnessed the shootings as he cycled past. But Lt Colonel Benedict Vinnemann, who is leading the gendarme inquiry, revealed he was considering other possibilities. He said: ‘Was the al-Hilli family the main target? Was it not the cyclist? Only ongoing work on the scene can answer this question clearly. ‘We’re talking about someone whom everybody says was a gentleman, but who’s to say he did not lead a double life?’ Mr Mollier worked for Cezus, a subsidiary of the Areva Group, specialising in zirconium metalworking for nuclear fuel containers....

Immobilized with fear, a 4-year-old British girl huddled for eight hours beneath the legs of her slain mother in the back of a car filled with corpses on a remote Alpine road — all while French investigators stood nearby, unaware the girl was there.

Monks put their lives in focus with a silent film By Kate Connolly in Berlin Last Updated: 1:29am GMT 11/11/2005 The strictest monastic order in Christendom has opened its cloisters to a film director for the first time, allowing him to shoot a three-hour near-silent documentary about its life.What some critics feared would be this year's most boring movie turns out to be a strangely fascinating meditation on the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps.Into Great Silence depicts its Carthusian monks in the midst of their slow moving daily devotions and duties, from mending shoes to chopping vegetables. advertisement...