Rock School star Lil' Chris found dead in Lowestoft
Chris Hardman rose to fame as Lil' Chris after appearing in Rock School in 2006
Lil' Chris, who launched a singing career after he found fame on reality show Rock School, has died.
The 24-year-old, whose real name was Chris Hardman, starred in the Channel 4 programme set at Kirkley High School in Lowestoft, Suffolk.
He had his first hit single, Checkin' It Out, after he appeared on the show in 2006.
Suffolk Police said it was not treating the death, reported on Monday, as suspicious.
The force was called to an address in Union Road, Lowestoft, at around 11:45 GMT to reports a man had died suddenly, a spokeswoman said.
A number of musicians paid tribute to Lil' Chris after news of his death was announcedChris Hardman (second row, right) appeared on the Channel 4 show alongside tutor Gene Simmons
A post-mortem examination to establish the cause of death is due to take place, and a file will be passed to the coroner, she added.
Gene Simmons, who appeared on Rock School as Lil' Chris's music teacher, led tributes to him. "He was loved," the Kiss frontman tweeted.
TV presenter and Strictly Come Dancing champion Caroline Flack tweeted: "He was a regular guest on [CBBC show] TMi Friday. Always always such a polite lovely guy. That's so sad."
Chris Hardman (left) appeared on stage in Loserville
McBusted drummer Harry Judd tweeted: "Shocked and saddened to hear the news about Lil' Chris.
"He supported us a while back and was a little star and an awesome guy."
Lowestoft boxer Anthony Ogogo, who went to the same school as the singer,called him a "super-talented kid".
Debut single Checkin' It Out reached number three in the UK singles chart in 2006
"Thoughts go out to his family. Such a shame. Really nice guy and positive role model for our area," he added.
‘A’ Is Revealed On ‘Pretty Little Liars’ But Who The Eff Is He?!
Rounding up the most jaw-dropping moments from the finale.
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“Pretty Little Liars” took a turn for the super effing weird in its season five finale (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”), and we’re not sure how we feel about it. On the one hand, we know who A is. On the other hand, we have no idea who A is. Do you see why we’re so confused?!
Who is Charles? And is he a DiLaurentis? Again, we have no clue, but the “PLL” Powers That Be did a pretty solid job of convincing us that our favorite pathfinder Andrew Campbell is somehow connected to this mess. But A’s kinda-sorta reveal wasn’t even the most jaw-dropping moment of the action-packed finale!
The Liars get swiped from the police van on their way to prison, only to wake up in A’s deranged dollhouse. He’s basically using the Liars as his own personal plAythings — and its borderline gross. Soul or no soul, this Charles needs serious therapy. And, you know, a butt-kicking from Spencer. Here are the most OMFG moments from the “Pretty Little Liars” season five finale.
Mona is alive.
ABC Family
Just as we previously speculated, Mona is alive. It turns out A has been keeping her in his psycho dollhouse these past few months. But wait. It gets worse. Mona has to pretend to be Ali when A’s looking, which is all the effing time. She even dyed her hair to play the part! While we’re disappointed to see the writers’ use Mona’s “death” as yet another red herring (ugh), we’re so happy to see Mona again. She really is the best. Without Mona, the Liars would have no clue what was happening.
Four chimes means it’s game time.
ABC Family
While locked in A’s dollhouse, the Liars have to play a game of Mystery Date Game. The objective is simple: you play to win a prom date, courtesy of A. Because clearly, A is planning a prom for the Liars. The theme? Night at the opera — AKA Melissa and Ian’s prom theme. But the Liars aren’t so pleased when they discover that Ezra, Caleb and Toby’s lives are at stake. Hanna gives A an ominous warning: touch Caleb, and she’ll kill him. Damn, girl! Where has this Hanna been the last few episodes? We already knew A was sick, but these IRL gAmes take things to an even more effed up level.
Caleb, Ezra and Toby are the ultimate #squadgoals.
ABC Family
When the Liars went missing, Detective Tanner acted shady AF. (What else is new?) So Toby, Caleb and Ezra went rogue to try and track them down because that’s what good boyfriends (and ex-boyfriends, in Ezria’s case) do. Caleb used his hacker skills to find evidence that A tampered with the GPS in the security system, prohibiting the Rosewood P.D. from finding the van. When Toby took his findings to Tanner, she immediately put a warrant out for Caleb’s arrest because clearly Caleb is the only hacker in Rosewood. ARE ALL ROSEWOOD POLICE THIS USELESS? Thanks to a little help from his awesome legal team — Mr. and Mrs. Hastings to the rescue! — Caleb is able to convince Tanner to let him try and track down the girls. Caleb ultimately finds the location of the van, which is conveniently park outside Boo Boo’s Ice Cream factory — AKA “the Campbell’s farm.” Excuse me, Mama Hastings, but did you just tell us Andrew’s family owned a farm in the same location as Boo Boo’s Ice Cream? OMG.
The Hastings know about A.
ABC Family
Finally! The Hastings know about A, and it took all of fourfiveseconds for them to do something about it. Because the Hastings get s–t handled around here. And their first order of business is going through all of the information on A that #TeamBoyfriends has pulled together. If anyone is going to find those girls, it’s Veronica Hastings. Well, and Peter, but mostly Veronica.
It has a name.
ABC Family
And his name is Charles. We already knew Charles had something to do with A when Aria, Spencer and Emily found Mona’s note in the mirror. The typewritten note read: “Chandelier’s rituals/Sister launched lair/A ruler’s list chained.” Each line is an anagram for “Charles DiLaurentis.” This was confirmed in the finale when Spencer puts the pieces — er, alphabet blocks? — together to spell the name “Charles.” So we know Charles is A, but who the eff is he? We think he might be Jason DiLaurentis’ twin. When the Liars shut off the power, Spencer, curious about what A could be hiding, entered his personal vault, and what she found might have just blown this whole A case wife open. She discovered a home video of Mrs. DiLaurentis, outside of Campbell’s farm, holding a baby girl (Ali) and talking to two toddler boys. Sure, one is presumably Jason, but who’s the other little boy? Could that be Charles? And if that is Charles, then that means he’s Spencer’s half-brother too.
Phantom of the Opera
ABC Family
Thank you “Pretty Little Liars” for forever ruining Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” for us. We used to associate that song with convertibles and sunshine, and now we can only picture A’s creepy AF prom. A definitely knows how to make an awkward situation — like a dance floor full of mannequins — even more awkward by having the Liars dance to “Unwritten” at their “senior prom.” Yes, it was just as cringe-worthy as it sounds.
A has a soul.
ABC Family
Mona says this upon entering A’s secret room, where Spencer found the home videos, but we’re not entirely ready to empathize with A just yet. If we know anything about Charles, it’s that he’s a madman — and no amount of mommy issues make it okay to be a total dick to people for no reason. He locked Mona up FOR MONTHS. He made her listen to her mother’s cries from her funeral. That is not okay. Sorry, “PLL.” We’re not ready for forgive A anytime soon.
The Liars are trapped.
ABC Family
The Liars, plus Mona, end the finale just where they started: trapped inside A’s dollhouse. Will the next 11 episodes all take place inside the dollhouse? Or will the Liars escape? We’re not going to lie, the thought of spending the entire summer season in A’s dollhouse does sound kind of amazing… and twisted in the best way possible. Because if there’s one thing “Welcome to the Dollhouse” did right, it was show how strong the Liars can be when they team up against their enemy. More of this, please!
Angelina Jolie Has Ovaries Removed After Doctor Detects Possible Sign of Early Cancer
FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2014 file photo, director Angelina Jolie poses for photographers during a photo call for her film
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Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie revealed Tuesday that she has undergone more preventive surgery, having her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed in hopes of reducing her risk of cancer.
Writing in The New York Times, the filmmaker and philanthropist said a recent blood test showed a possible early sign of cancer. The news was a blow to the star who had already had a double mastectomy.
"I went through what I imagine thousands of other women have felt," she wrote. "I told myself to stay calm, to be strong, and that I had no reason to think I wouldn't live to see my children grow up and to meet my grandchildren."
Jolie, 39, revealed two years ago that she carries a defective breast cancer gene that puts her at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Her mother died of ovarian cancer, and her maternal grandmother also had ovarian cancer — strong evidence of an inherited, genetic risk that led the actress to have her healthy breasts removed to try to avoid the same fate.
Only a small percentage of women inherit the same faulty gene, known as BRCA1 — the name stands for breast cancer susceptibility gene. These mutations are most commonly found in women of Eastern European Jewish descent, though other groups, including the Norwegian, Dutch and Icelandic, also have slightly higher rates of these mutations.
The average woman has a 12 percent risk of developing breast cancer sometime during her life. Women who have inherited a faulty BRCA gene are about five times more likely to get breast cancer.
Jolie said that while having the gene mutation alone was not a reason to resort to surgery — other medical options were possible — her family history influenced her decision to have further surgery now. The surgery puts a woman in menopause and Jolie wrote she's now taking hormones.
Her courageous decision to publicly announce her double mastectomy was praised as a watershed moment in efforts to persuade women to get breast cancer screening — and to raise awareness of the need for early detection. The same sense of mission led her to write about her follow-up care, although she said her decision wasn't necessarily the right one for everyone.
"There is more than one way to deal with any health issue," she wrote. "The most important thing is to learn about the options and choose what is right for you personally."
Coming forward to tell her story will play a vital role in raising awareness, those who work for cancer charities say. They hope other women at risk will be encouraged to speak with their doctors.
"Angelina Jolie has made a really brave decision," Katherine Taylor, acting chief executive of Ovarian Cancer Action. "It immediately puts the person into surgical menopause so it is not a decision to take lightly."
Jolie's article makes plain the anguish the results of the new blood tests brought. She said she immediately called her husband, the actor Brad Pitt, who flew home from France within hours.
"The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity," she wrote. "You know what you live for and what matters. It is polarizing, and it is peaceful."
Mist obscures the majestic cathedral spires. A distant bell tower chimes the witching hour. A gas lamp spills its pale light onto the damp cobblestones. High overhead, a blood moon lights up the city of Yharnam in unholy crimson. Facing down the interminable night, one hunter stands alone — and that hunter will die. Welcome to Bloodborne.
Bloodborne ($60) is a PS4-exclusive action/role-playing game developed by From Software, the Japanese company that brought you Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. However, while Bloodborne is an exceptional game for both longtime fans and newcomers, it's also just a little less delightfully vexing than its predecessors.
Gameplay: The Hunt Begins
Once you create a demon hunter (you can customize his or her name, sex, appearance and origin story) and select your weapons, you set off into the city of Yharnam to do battle with the crazed townsfolk, monstrous ogres and skeletal werewolves that dwell therein.
The game's difficulty is one of its defining points. Regular enemies can kill you in three or four hits, and bosses require even fewer. The level design will run you off of cliffs, into enemy strongholds and through ancient labyrinths teeming with traps.
Each enemy you defeat leaves behind "blood echoes" — aspects of its powers that you can use to improve your stats, strengthen equipment and buy items. If you die, the blood echoes you've gathered linger behind. You'll have one chance to retrieve them, but if you die trying, they're gone forever. When you fall prey to a run-of-the-mill villager with a pitchfork while on your way to collect tens of thousands of souls, you will spout curses that you didn't even know you knew.
Both attacking and dodging enemies consume stamina, which recharges between actions. If you run out of stamina when that giant boss has one sliver of health left and is about to pound you flat, you're out of luck.
Managing stamina is crucial to combat, and Bloodborne's wealth of options makes it challenging to do so. From basic attacks, strong attacks and switching weapons, to secondary forms, backstepping and rolling, there are plenty of ways to fight.
Bloodborne speeds up combat through the inclusion of guns and the regain system, which gives you a chance to recover health during battles. By interrupting enemy attacks with a pistol or shotgun blast, you can bring foes to their knees and inflict critical damage. If you get hit, you have a brief window to regain some health by striking back. As always, combat feels precise, demanding and utterly exhilarating.
As before, the game incorporates both synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer gameplay. You can team up with other players to conquer bosses, invade their worlds to slaughter them and leave messages to help or hinder their progress.
New to the game are the Chalice Dungeons — procedurally generated areas full of unique enemies, equipment and bosses. You can tackle Chalice Dungeons alone or with friends, and share online. All of the multiplayer features enhance Bloodborne, but if you prefer to play alone, you're not missing much (except the messages, which are important).
Slow Down; You Move Too Fast
Fast-paced combat comes at a cost. Compared to the studio's previous games, From Software streamlined Bloodborne from the ground up. Your hunter has fewer stats to invest in. There's less equipment lying around, and only one shop. Weapons have only one upgrade path (although you can customize them with gems and runes); you can't upgrade armor at all.
Demon's Souls and the two Dark Souls games could, indeed, get too far into the weeds, but that wonderful, hideous complexity held much of the games' richness. The protagonists were very uniquely yours; in Bloodborne, making your perfect character is pretty simple.
You can hold more healing items right from the start, and they take effect almost instantly. There are fewer multiplayer factions to join. Ranged combat is a complement, not a play style in and of itself. There's no penalty for dying, other than having to regain your blood echoes.
These changes do not actually make Bloodborne any easier than the last three games. The combat is still brutal, and you'll die dozens of times. But the character-building between levels feels much blander than it did in the earlier games.
Story: Something Wicked This Way Comes
The ramshackle city of Yharnam is almost deserted. Inhuman beasts roam its streets. The once-magnificent houses, castles and churches have crumbled into disrepair. Only a few motley demon hunters, who infuse themselves with beast blood, stand between the city and total chaos, and many of them are just as murderous as their prey.
After a blood transfusion, you become a hunter, only to find that death lurks around every corner. Your only respite is the Hunter's Dream — an ethereal otherworld where a forlorn, almost-human Doll can channel blood echoes into strength.
The Souls series has a penchant for minimalist stories, and Bloodborne is no exception. You'll piece together Yharnam's backstory from snippets of dialogue with reticent characters, descriptions of equipment, a few scattered notes and the very occasional cutscene. The story itself is convoluted and opaque, but that's by design; when it all comes together, it's as good a reason as any to explore the city.
The problem with the story actually hearkens back to the game's dearth of equipment. Previous Souls games had so much lore that the loading screens (which, in Bloodborne, are very long) used to show characters, equipment and consumable items, all of which helped flesh out the world. Instead, loading screens now just show the Bloodborne logo, which didn't pique my curiosity about anything except when the game would finish loading.
Graphics and Art: Yharnam Gothic
If you've kept up with the art and trailers for Bloodborne, the game sells itself largely on setting. Yharnam represents a weird fusion of Gothic horror and Victorian London, and From Software makes the combination look effortless. From eerie town squares to haunted woodlands to vast underground cities, every part of Yharnam feels unique and looks absolutely gorgeous — particularly since the game progresses from sundown to evening to midnight and beyond as you travel.
The level design, too, is something to behold. Bloodborne splits the difference between the completely interconnected world of Dark Souls and the four distinct, branching paths of Dark Souls II. Although there are four tiers of areas, and you can often choose the order in which to tackle them, they connect in clever and unexpected ways. Yharnam and its surrounding areas feel authentic and lived-in.
Character design and textures are, unfortunately, not up to the same standard. Clothing looks a little too slick, especially once it's been splashed with blood. (If you've ever gotten blood on your clothing, you can attest that it is not very shiny.) Despite the deep character-creation system, it's also extremely difficult to make a character who doesn't look strange — but perhaps that's the point. Bloodborne is a very pretty game about a very ugly world.
Music and Sound: Background Noise
Although it's an action/role-playing game through and through, Bloodborne takes a lot of influences from the horror genre. As such, sound design is a crucial part of the experience, and the game excels on this front. Music is usually sparse and minimalistic. That way, on the few occasions that you do hear it — such as eerie chanting in a forgotten prison, or a sweeping choir during a climactic boss fight — you sit up and take notice.
The voice acting is fine, but the sound effects are where the game stands out. A distant bell or a low moan is sometimes all it takes to get your heart pounding, making you terrified of what's just beyond the next darkened corner or locked, thumping door. The sounds of battle, monsters and even the environment itself are all calibrated to keep you on your toes, and they do an excellent job.
Bottom Line: Bless Us with Blood
Bloodborne is in the unenviable position of being a great game that's not quite as great as its predecessors. Making the game more accessible was probably necessary, especially since Bloodborne isn't just another action/RPG — it's one of the selling points of buying a PS4 instead of an Xbox One. A company can't promise the next big thing and deliver a game that few people can complete. Still, for longtime fans, it feels like a step down, albeit not a catastrophic one.
Besides, Bloodborne gets just about everything else fantastically right. The fast-paced combat feels fluid and exciting, without sacrificing the bone-crushing difficulty of earlier games. Yharnam is an amazingly otherworldly place to explore for a few dozen hours. Visual and audio elements are mostly top-notch.
Germanwings Crash in French Alps Kills 150; Cockpit Voice Recorder Is Found
A rescue helicopter over the French Alps near the crash site of the Airbus A320 on Tuesday.DIGNE-LES-BAINS, France — A German jetliner en route from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, plunged from the sky on Tuesday and slammed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.DIGNE-LES-BAINS, France — A German jetliner en route from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, plunged from the sky on Tuesday and slammed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
Helicopters and rescue personnel swarmed into the remote, rugged area in southeastern France after the crash but found no signs of life. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said none of the 144 passengers and six crew members survived.
The authorities and executives of the airline, the budget carrier Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, had no immediate explanation for the cause of the crash, which occurred just before 11 a.m. At a news conference Tuesday evening, Heike Birlenbach, the vice president of Lufthansa, said, “At this stage, we consider this to be an accident,” adding that everything else was speculation.
As night fell in the area, officials said they had recovered one of the jet’s so-called black boxes: the cockpit voice recorder, which captures up to two hours of the pilots’ conversations as well as other cockpit noises, including any alarms that would have sounded as the plane descended. A few hours later, they called off the search for the evening.
The plane, an Airbus A320 that carried young people, vacationers and others, crashed after an eight-minute descent from 38,000 feet, the managing director of Germanwings, Thomas Winkelmann, said at a news conference.
When French air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:53 a.m., it was flying at just 6,000 feet, Mr. Winkelmann said, and it crashed shortly afterward. The terrain in that area rises to an elevation of more than 6,000 feet.
Security personnel in Digne-les-Bains, a town close to the crash site, described a scene of almost unimaginable wreckage, with even the plane’s metal structures smashed into countless pieces.
“The airplane had completely disintegrated,” Capt. Benoit Zeisser, head of the center of operations and information for the local police in Digne-les-Bains, said late Tuesday. “There is nothing left; the area of the crash is huge.”
As emergency crews combed France’s Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department, Mr. Valls announced a judicial investigation into the crash. Many questions remained, including whether the pilots were in control of the aircraft during the descent and what would have caused a plane with an experienced pilot and solid safety record to crash in largely clear and cloudless weather.
The passengers included Germans, Spaniards, Turks and Australians, and among them was a class of 16 German high school students and two teachers who were returning from a study program near Barcelona. Some of their parents gathered at the airport in Düsseldorf, frantically waiting for news.
The managing director of Germanwings, Thomas Winkelmann, said the Airbus A320 rapidly lost altitude for more than eight minutes before crashing in the French Alps on Tuesday.
Video by AP on Publish DateMarch 24, 2015. Photo by Patrik Stollarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
“This is the darkest day in the history of our city,” said Bodo Klimpel, the mayor of Haltern am See in northwestern Germany, where the 10th-grade students went to school. He added, “It is about the worst thing imaginable.”
As he spoke, people began arriving outside the Joseph König high school in the small city, bearing flowers and candles.
According to Germanwings, at least 67 Germans were among the passengers, which included two infants. The airline was working to inform families before releasing further information about those on board.
But Barcelona’s Liceu opera house said late Tuesday that two singers who had been performing in Wagner’s “Siegfried” were on board: the baritone Oleg Bryjak and the contralto Maria Radner. Ms. Radner was traveling with her husband and baby, said Joan Corbera, a Liceu spokesman.
Two employees of Delphi, an American automotive company, and at least one employee of Bayer, a German chemical company, were also among the passengers, according to Spanish news reports. Two Australians, a mother and adult son from Victoria, died in the crash, said Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop.
At El Prat Airport outside Barcelona, dozens of relatives were kept in a waiting area, attended to by psychologists and protected by the police.
Flight takes off from Barcelona, about 26 minutes late.
The aircraft took off at 10:01 a.m. No distress call was received, and the pilots lost radio contact with their control center, said France’s aviation authority.
Evelyne Bayle, who lives in Le Vernet, France, said she heard the engines, but the sounds did not suggest that the plane had gone into free fall. “I was on my veranda and I heard the plane flying down; the engines were making a lot of noise,” she said. “The noise that we were hearing was really progressive.”
The leaders of France, Spain and Germany made public addresses to offer comfort and reassurances that the crash would be thoroughly investigated. The National Assembly in France observed a minute of silence.
President François Hollande of France, standing with King Felipe VI of Spain, who was in Paris for a state visit, warned that access to the crash site would be very difficult. The Interior Ministry in France said that more than 400 police officers and rescue personnel had been sent to the area. Mr. Hollande said that none of the people on board were believed to be French.
“We must feel grief because this is a tragedy that happened on our soil,” Mr. Hollande said.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, who was flown over the crash scene on Tuesday, said the site was “a picture of horror.”
The French president, the German chancellor and the Spanish prime minister discussed the next steps their countries are taking after a Germanwings plane crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday.
Publish DateMarch 24, 2015. Photo by Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency.
Wreckage was located by a French military helicopter near the town of Prads-Haute-Bléone, said Eric Héraud, a spokesman for the French aviation authority.
A French official with direct knowledge of the investigation said the search was continuing for the second black box, the flight data recorder, which tracks roughly 1,300 statistics, including the plane’s position, speed, altitude and direction.
Aviation safety experts said a descent of eight minutes from cruising altitude was slower than the three to four minutes that would normally be expected in the case of a sudden midair upset such as an aerodynamic stall, suggesting that the pilots may have been trying to maintain control of the plane as it lost altitude.
“While investigators still need to verify the data are correct, eight minutes is definitely longer compared with the experience we have had in past cases,” said Olivier Ferrante, a former crash investigator for the French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses who is now an adviser on aviation safety for the European Commission in Brussels.
In the 2009 crash of an Air France flight over the Atlantic, the plane, an Airbus A330, took just three and a half minutes to fall from 38,000 feet to the surface of the ocean, Mr. Ferrante said.
Regarding the images of the debris field, Mr. Ferrante said the small size of the pieces suggested the plane hit the ground at a very high speed.
Photo
Rescue teams assembled Tuesday near the site of the Germanwings crash in the southern Alps.CreditPatrick Aventurier/Getty Images
Frédéric Atger, a spokesman for Météo France, which monitors weather across the country, said that the conditions had been “particularly calm” in the area. “The visibility was good, and there were little clouds at low altitudes,” he said.
Bruno Lambert, a mountain guide who lives in Chanolles, a hamlet in the Prads-Haute-Bléone municipality, said the area of the crash was sparsely populated with steep mountain terrain.
The type of aircraft that crashed, an Airbus A320 single-aisle jet, is a workhorse of many airline fleets, with more than 5,600 in service around the world.
The aircraft’s safety record has been very good, but not spotless. Since entering service in 1988, A320 aircraft have been involved in 12 fatal accidents, according to Ascend, a London-based aviation consulting firm.
Airline officials said that while the plane that crashed was an older model — it was delivered new to Lufthansa in 1991 — its maintenance history was unremarkable. A routine maintenance inspection had been performed Monday, said Martin Riecken, a spokesman for Lufthansa in Frankfurt. A more extensive check had been done in the summer of 2013.
Mr. Riecken confirmed that a minor repair had been made Monday to the plane’s front nose gear door — a flap that closes during flight to cover the retracted landing gear — but stressed that even if it had not been fixed, “this would not be something relevant to flight safety.”
Photo
A section of fuselage and other debris from a plane that was flying from Spain to Germany as it crashed on Tuesday.CreditDenis Bois/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Germanwings, based in Cologne, was founded in 2002 and acquired by Lufthansa in 2009. It has since grown to become Lufthansa’s main operator for domestic and short-distance European flights from cities other than the hubs of Munich and Frankfurt.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her deep sympathy for the families of the victims, saying that the crash was a “terrible shock.”
“I feel terribly sorry because so many people died in this disaster,” she said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with these people.” Ms. Merkel said she would fly to southern France on Wednesday to meet the authorities there.
At the Düsseldorf airport Tuesday afternoon, a small crowd of people stood around a television set at a cafe in the departure area and watched Germanwings officials give a news conference. The viewers’ expressions were somber and they talked quietly among themselves.
Among them were Patrick Huber, 25, and Helena Henkel, 26, who wore backpacks and said they were on their way to Barcelona for an 11-day vacation.
“On Germanwings,” Mr. Huber said, with a nervous laugh. But he said they would fly anyway. “Still,” Ms. Henkel added, “I’ll be happy when we land.”
The crash is the deadliest on French territory since a 1981 crash of a Yugoslavian airliner in Corsica, which killed 180. The deadliest one in France occurred in 1974, when a Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashed outside Paris, killing more than 335 people.
Correction: March 24, 2015
An earlier version of a capsule summary with this article reversed the direction of the plane’s flight. It was flying from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. An earlier version of this article misattributed a quotation by an airline traveler. Helena Henkel, not Patrick Huber, said she would be happy to land in Barcelona.
Helicopters and rescue personnel swarmed into the remote, rugged area in southeastern France after the crash but found no signs of life. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said none of the 144 passengers and six crew members survived.
The authorities and executives of the airline, the budget carrier Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, had no immediate explanation for the cause of the crash, which occurred just before 11 a.m. At a news conference Tuesday evening, Heike Birlenbach, the vice president of Lufthansa, said, “At this stage, we consider this to be an accident,” adding that everything else was speculation.
As night fell in the area, officials said they had recovered one of the jet’s so-called black boxes: the cockpit voice recorder, which captures up to two hours of the pilots’ conversations as well as other cockpit noises, including any alarms that would have sounded as the plane descended. A few hours later, they called off the search for the evening.
The plane, an Airbus A320 that carried young people, vacationers and others, crashed after an eight-minute descent from 38,000 feet, the managing director of Germanwings, Thomas Winkelmann, said at a news conference.
When French air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:53 a.m., it was flying at just 6,000 feet, Mr. Winkelmann said, and it crashed shortly afterward. The terrain in that area rises to an elevation of more than 6,000 feet.
Security personnel in Digne-les-Bains, a town close to the crash site, described a scene of almost unimaginable wreckage, with even the plane’s metal structures smashed into countless pieces.
“The airplane had completely disintegrated,” Capt. Benoit Zeisser, head of the center of operations and information for the local police in Digne-les-Bains, said late Tuesday. “There is nothing left; the area of the crash is huge.”
As emergency crews combed France’s Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department, Mr. Valls announced a judicial investigation into the crash. Many questions remained, including whether the pilots were in control of the aircraft during the descent and what would have caused a plane with an experienced pilot and solid safety record to crash in largely clear and cloudless weather.
The passengers included Germans, Spaniards, Turks and Australians, and among them was a class of 16 German high school students and two teachers who were returning from a study program near Barcelona. Some of their parents gathered at the airport in Düsseldorf, frantically waiting for news.
The managing director of Germanwings, Thomas Winkelmann, said the Airbus A320 rapidly lost altitude for more than eight minutes before crashing in the French Alps on Tuesday.
Video by AP on Publish DateMarch 24, 2015. Photo by Patrik Stollarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
“This is the darkest day in the history of our city,” said Bodo Klimpel, the mayor of Haltern am See in northwestern Germany, where the 10th-grade students went to school. He added, “It is about the worst thing imaginable.”
As he spoke, people began arriving outside the Joseph König high school in the small city, bearing flowers and candles.
According to Germanwings, at least 67 Germans were among the passengers, which included two infants. The airline was working to inform families before releasing further information about those on board.
But Barcelona’s Liceu opera house said late Tuesday that two singers who had been performing in Wagner’s “Siegfried” were on board: the baritone Oleg Bryjak and the contralto Maria Radner. Ms. Radner was traveling with her husband and baby, said Joan Corbera, a Liceu spokesman.
Two employees of Delphi, an American automotive company, and at least one employee of Bayer, a German chemical company, were also among the passengers, according to Spanish news reports. Two Australians, a mother and adult son from Victoria, died in the crash, said Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop.
At El Prat Airport outside Barcelona, dozens of relatives were kept in a waiting area, attended to by psychologists and protected by the police.
Flight takes off from Barcelona, about 26 minutes late.
The aircraft took off at 10:01 a.m. No distress call was received, and the pilots lost radio contact with their control center, said France’s aviation authority.
Evelyne Bayle, who lives in Le Vernet, France, said she heard the engines, but the sounds did not suggest that the plane had gone into free fall. “I was on my veranda and I heard the plane flying down; the engines were making a lot of noise,” she said. “The noise that we were hearing was really progressive.”
The leaders of France, Spain and Germany made public addresses to offer comfort and reassurances that the crash would be thoroughly investigated. The National Assembly in France observed a minute of silence.
President François Hollande of France, standing with King Felipe VI of Spain, who was in Paris for a state visit, warned that access to the crash site would be very difficult. The Interior Ministry in France said that more than 400 police officers and rescue personnel had been sent to the area. Mr. Hollande said that none of the people on board were believed to be French.
“We must feel grief because this is a tragedy that happened on our soil,” Mr. Hollande said.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, who was flown over the crash scene on Tuesday, said the site was “a picture of horror.”
The French president, the German chancellor and the Spanish prime minister discussed the next steps their countries are taking after a Germanwings plane crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday.
Publish DateMarch 24, 2015. Photo by Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency.
Wreckage was located by a French military helicopter near the town of Prads-Haute-Bléone, said Eric Héraud, a spokesman for the French aviation authority.
A French official with direct knowledge of the investigation said the search was continuing for the second black box, the flight data recorder, which tracks roughly 1,300 statistics, including the plane’s position, speed, altitude and direction.
Aviation safety experts said a descent of eight minutes from cruising altitude was slower than the three to four minutes that would normally be expected in the case of a sudden midair upset such as an aerodynamic stall, suggesting that the pilots may have been trying to maintain control of the plane as it lost altitude.
“While investigators still need to verify the data are correct, eight minutes is definitely longer compared with the experience we have had in past cases,” said Olivier Ferrante, a former crash investigator for the French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses who is now an adviser on aviation safety for the European Commission in Brussels.
In the 2009 crash of an Air France flight over the Atlantic, the plane, an Airbus A330, took just three and a half minutes to fall from 38,000 feet to the surface of the ocean, Mr. Ferrante said.
Regarding the images of the debris field, Mr. Ferrante said the small size of the pieces suggested the plane hit the ground at a very high speed.
Photo
Rescue teams assembled Tuesday near the site of the Germanwings crash in the southern Alps.CreditPatrick Aventurier/Getty Images
Frédéric Atger, a spokesman for Météo France, which monitors weather across the country, said that the conditions had been “particularly calm” in the area. “The visibility was good, and there were little clouds at low altitudes,” he said.
Bruno Lambert, a mountain guide who lives in Chanolles, a hamlet in the Prads-Haute-Bléone municipality, said the area of the crash was sparsely populated with steep mountain terrain.
The type of aircraft that crashed, an Airbus A320 single-aisle jet, is a workhorse of many airline fleets, with more than 5,600 in service around the world.
The aircraft’s safety record has been very good, but not spotless. Since entering service in 1988, A320 aircraft have been involved in 12 fatal accidents, according to Ascend, a London-based aviation consulting firm.
Airline officials said that while the plane that crashed was an older model — it was delivered new to Lufthansa in 1991 — its maintenance history was unremarkable. A routine maintenance inspection had been performed Monday, said Martin Riecken, a spokesman for Lufthansa in Frankfurt. A more extensive check had been done in the summer of 2013.
Mr. Riecken confirmed that a minor repair had been made Monday to the plane’s front nose gear door — a flap that closes during flight to cover the retracted landing gear — but stressed that even if it had not been fixed, “this would not be something relevant to flight safety.”
Photo
A section of fuselage and other debris from a plane that was flying from Spain to Germany as it crashed on Tuesday.CreditDenis Bois/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Germanwings, based in Cologne, was founded in 2002 and acquired by Lufthansa in 2009. It has since grown to become Lufthansa’s main operator for domestic and short-distance European flights from cities other than the hubs of Munich and Frankfurt.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her deep sympathy for the families of the victims, saying that the crash was a “terrible shock.”
“I feel terribly sorry because so many people died in this disaster,” she said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with these people.” Ms. Merkel said she would fly to southern France on Wednesday to meet the authorities there.
At the Düsseldorf airport Tuesday afternoon, a small crowd of people stood around a television set at a cafe in the departure area and watched Germanwings officials give a news conference. The viewers’ expressions were somber and they talked quietly among themselves.
Among them were Patrick Huber, 25, and Helena Henkel, 26, who wore backpacks and said they were on their way to Barcelona for an 11-day vacation.
“On Germanwings,” Mr. Huber said, with a nervous laugh. But he said they would fly anyway. “Still,” Ms. Henkel added, “I’ll be happy when we land.”
The crash is the deadliest on French territory since a 1981 crash of a Yugoslavian airliner in Corsica, which killed 180. The deadliest one in France occurred in 1974, when a Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashed outside Paris, killing more than 335 people.
Correction: March 24, 2015
An earlier version of a capsule summary with this article reversed the direction of the plane’s flight. It was flying from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. An earlier version of this article misattributed a quotation by an airline traveler. Helena Henkel, not Patrick Huber, said she would be happy to land in Barcelona.
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