Disaster

A routine helicopter power-line inspection turned tragic when it crashed onto train tracks near the Baltimore,MD/Washington,D.C. airport causing a fire and delaying rail service. Three people on board were injured, and the crash resulted in delays to Amtrak services between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. According to Reuters: An Amtrak spokeswoman said that by mid-afternoon all service had resumed between the two cities. Airline operations were not affected, airport spokeswoman Whitney Kidd said.

Its being called the flight from hell. Paralyzing, terrifying turbulence hospitalized six people, bloodied many more, and sent luggage and even one passenger flying through the air. The New York Post reports: The Boeing 777 was en route from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Bangkok, Thailand, carrying 72 passengers and 12 crew when it was hit by severe turbulence. Shocked cabin crew posted photos of the bloody aftermath on social media, which reveals a seat stained with blood from an injured passenger who hit his head after bouncing off the roof of the plane.

NASA engineers declare Kepler space telescope ‘stable’ a few days after the spacecraft slipped into Emergency Mode (EM). Scientists were surprised when the planet-hunting probe went into EM last week, putting the next phase of its mission to study the Milky Way into jeopardy. NPR reports: Kepler, which is currently nearly 75 million miles away from Earth, placed itself into Emergency Mode sometime in the middle of last week. But it wasn’t until a scheduled contact on Thursday that mission engineers discovered the problem.

A prank caller pretending to be from the fire department persuaded Burger King employees in Minnesota and Oklahoma to smash up their restaurants to stop the buildings from exploding. Mail Online reports: Posing as a fire department official, the caller convinced two outlets – one in Shawnee, OK, on Thursday; one in Coon Rapids, MN, on Friday – that there were perilously high levels of carbon monoxide filling up the buildings. The only way to save the place from exploding, they said, was to smash all the windows as quickly as possible.