The 2005 crash at sea off Sicily left survivors swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.

A fuel-gauge malfunction was partly to blame but prosecutors also said the pilot succumbed to panic, praying out loud instead of following emergency procedures and then opting to crash-land the plane instead trying to reach a nearby airport.

Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down Monday.

The seven accused, who were not in court, will not spend time in jail until the appeals process has been exhausted.

Crash pilot who paused to pray is convicted

According to The Guardian

In a shock move on the third day of his trial, the 73-year-old calmly pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him, including negligent homicide and enslavement. He had already admitted four of the charges against him: incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment.

ritzl’s lawyer suggested his change of heart came as a result of the psychological impact of yesterday’s gruelling court session, in which he watched a recording of Elisabeth giving evidence.

“All I know is that he asked to see a psychiatrist in his cell [after hearing yesterday's testimony] and after that decided to give a full confession,” Rudolf Mayer told the Guardian.

Responding to reports that Elisabeth had been in court in person yesterday and today watching proceedings from an adjacent room especially set up for victims of sexual attacks, Mayer said he could not confirm that because it would breach the rules of in camera proceedings.

“You can draw your own conclusions from that. I’m the wrong person to ask. If she was there [yesterday], it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, in terms of his confession,” he told the Guardian.

Today, a 30-strong scrum of photographers followed a van leaving the court after the case was adjourned. The vehicle reportedly contained Elisabeth.

For the first time in the trial, Fritzl arrived in the courtroom without covering his face with a blue folder.

Opening the proceedings, the judge, Andrea Humer, said she wanted to return to Elisabeth’s testimony from yesterday.

“Do you have anything to say to me?” Humer asked Fritzl. “I recognise that I am guilty,” he responded, adding, “I regret it.”

“Why are you saying that now?” asked Humer. “Because of the videotape testimony of my daughter,” said Fritzl.

Referring to the murder charge, Humer asked why Fritzl had not done more to help his newborn baby boy, Michael, who died from breathing difficulties shortly after being born in the cellar in 1996.

“Did you not realise he was gravely ill?”

Fritzl responded: “I just overlooked it. I thought the baby was going to survive. I should have realised. It was only yesterday I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth. I had never realised it before.”

Fritzl had previously admitted burning the child’s body in an incinerator in his back garden, but had denied he was responsible for its death. The surviving twin, Alexander, was one of three of Elisabeth’s seven children who “appeared” above ground at the Fritzls’ house in Amstetten, west of Vienna. Alexander was the last of the three children to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie.

Fritzl also changed his plea from partial to full guilt on the rape charge and admitted the enslavement charge.

For the first two days of his trial, Fritzl had also denied that he enslaved Elisabeth in the purpose-built cellar he constructed under his own home.

The jury has been told that Elisabeth was imprisoned under Ybbsstrasse 40 at the age of 18. Her father forced her into the cellar on 29 August 1984 after putting a cloth over her nose and mouth. He then secured a chain around her stomach so she could not escape. The next day he raped her. As she bore his children over the next 24 years, he repeatedly raped her in front of them, the court heard.

Christiane Burkheiser, the prosecuting lawyer, described the cellar as Fritzl’s ­”playground”, where he used his daughter like a “toy”.

The case was adjourned until tomorrow morning. The eight members of the jury, assisted by three judges, will decide the sentence after hearing closing statements. Fritzl is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Josef Fritzl: the man who held his daughter captive for 24 years pleads guilty

Howard K. Stern and Drs. Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor were charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors after a two-year probe by the attorney general, state medical and insurance officials and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Doctors do not have a license to pump innocent and often vulnerable people full of dangerous chemicals,” Brown told a news conference. “Somebody died here, and this is bad business.”

In addition to conspiracy, the charges filed Thursday include unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance and prescribing, administering or dispensing a controlled substance to an addict. Stern faces six felony counts and the doctors face seven each.

Each defendant faces up to five years, eight months in prison, district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said.

“Howard K. Stern is the principal enabler, and Dr. Eroshevich and Dr. Kapoor are prescribing drugs excessively to a known addict and using false and fictitious names, all in violation of the law,” Brown said.

Medical Board of California spokeswoman Candis Cohen said action would be taken against the two doctors’ medical licenses after the criminal proceedings had been resolved. A range of disciplinary action could be taken, depending on the evidence, including possible revocation of their licenses.

Smith’s life had become a tabloid fixture by the time she died Feb. 8, 2007, in Florida. Embroiled in a battle to inherit millions of dollars from her late billionaire husband’s estate, her own son had died shortly after she gave birth to a girl.

Asked what may have been the motive for the alleged conspiracy, Brown suggested the potent allure of wealth and glamour.

“There’s a certain psychic gain here, part of the glitz and the celebrity and the power. There’s a lot of money floating around,” he said. “Is it self-indulgence? Is it some power trip? Is it just getting some contact high off of celebrity? That remains to be seen.”

Stern and Kapoor turned themselves in Thursday night and each posted $20,000 bond. Eroshevich was expected to surrender Monday.

Her attorney, Adam Braun, acknowledged Eroshevich wrote some of the prescriptions using fictitious names for Smith, but asserted it was for privacy reasons and not intended to commit fraud.

Braun said Eroshevich began treating Smith in September 2006 when she suffered a nervous breakdown stemming from the death of her 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, from an accidental drug overdose three days after his mother gave birth to a girl.

Brown declined to comment when asked if there was a trail leading to Daniel Smith from doctors in California, nor did he comment on whether other individuals may face charges.

“We have given you the evidence that we think is ready for the prosecution,” he said.

Eroshevich, who was Smith’s psychiatrist, traveled several times over six months to the Bahamas, where Smith was living with Stern and wrote the prescriptions.

The criminal complaint also alleges Kapoor gave her excessive amounts of sleep aids, opiates, muscle relaxants and methadone-like drugs used to treat addiction, knowing she was an addict. Kapoor saw Smith in the spring of 2006 when she was treated at a Los Angeles County hospital for opiate withdrawal and prenatal care for the pregnancy of her daughter Dannielynn, according to the complaint.

Stern’s attorney L. Lin Wood said he anticipated releasing a statement about the case sometime Friday.

Kapoor’s attorney, Ellyn Garofalo, said the charges were without merit.

“I was surprised that after all this time, these charges surfaced suddenly like they did,” she said. “They are attempting to impose criminal penalties against a doctor who acted in good faith and provided the best medical care he was able to under the circumstances. If not for the fact this was Anna Nicole, I don’t think these charges would have been filed.”

Garofalo said her client specialized in gerontology and had inherited Smith as a patient when he took over the medical practice of her former doctor in Los Angeles about five years ago.

Smith was found unconscious in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Hollywood, Fla. The former Playboy centerfold and Guess jeans model died the same day at a hospital. Her death was ruled an accidental drug overdose.

Aside from her time in the pages of Playboy, Smith gained notoriety for her marriage to J. Howard Marshall II, the Texas oil billionaire 63 years her senior whom she met while dancing at a Houston club. The pair married in 1994; she was 26, he was 89, and Marshall died the following year.

In 2002, Smith debuted her own reality TV show — the tagline for which was “she’s so outrageous” — in which cameras followed her through her daily life, often showing her in incoherent states. The star struggled with her weight and in 2003 became a spokeswoman for TrimSpa diet pills.

Stern originally claimed to be the father of Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn, but it was later established through a paternity test that photographer Larry Birkhead is the dad.

Jean Rosenbluth, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said prosecutors likely would have considered a range of charges including more serious ones.

They probably settled on the current charges, she said, because proving more serious allegations would have meant they needed to show malicious intent — something that may or may not have been present.

“The intent is always going to be key,” she said. “Was it always about making money, was it completely reckless and indifferent, or was there some, no matter how misguided, non-nefarious reason the defendant took the action?”

Loyola University Law School professor Laurie Levenson said prosecutors may have chosen not to file manslaughter or murder charges because “they did not establish exactly what caused her death. … It’s hard to say who is accountable for an accidental overdose.”

Brown, who is contemplating a run for governor next year, used his time at the podium to denounce abuse of prescription drugs and the “growing threat” from “people in white smocks in pharmacies … with their medical degrees.”

“Doctors do not have a license to pump innocent and often vulnerable people full of dangerous chemicals,” he said. “These cocktails of methadone and antidepressants and sleeping pills and Xanax — you put all that into a cocktail, it explodes.”

Arraignments had been set for May 13, he said.

Anna Nicole Smith’s boyfriend was ‘enabler

Amundsen disappeared aboard the French Latham 47 flying boat in the Barents Sea on June 18, 1928. The plane was searching for the gas-filled airship “Italia,” which crashed when returning from the North Pole during an expedition led by Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile.

“We want to find the plane and help solve the mystery,” said Navy Cmdr. Frode Loeseth said by telephone. “This will be conducted as a military operation.”

On Dec. 14, 1911, Amundsen, a Norwegian, became the first person to reach the South Pole, beating Robert F. Scott, a Briton. Scott and four companions reached the pole the following month but died on the way out.

Amundsen was also the first to sail the Northwest Passage north of Canada, and in 1918, allowed his ship “Maud” to freeze in into the Arctic ice in hopes of drifting with the floes to the North Pole. That effort did not succeed, but in 1926, Amundsen and a crew that included Nobile successfully flew over the North Pole in airship “Norge.”

Two years later, the “Italia,” with Nobile aboard, crashed in the Arctic, and Amundsen took off to join the search. Amundsen’s plane vanished, probably north of Bear Island in the Barents Sea, and no trace has ever been found of Amundsen or his crew.

Nobile and seven other members of the 16-person crew on the “Italia” were later found alive.

Loeseth said new clues and new technology, including a remote-controlled submarine, auguer well for a project that includes the Navy, the Norwegian Air Force Museum and specialist companies.

“If the plane is there, we will find it,” said Loeseth.

Even though the Latham 47 was built of wood on a steel frame, experts say major components such as the engines might still be visible on the ocean floor.

Norway Resumes Search for Roald Amundsen’s Plane That Vanished 81 Years Ago

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