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Air show officials are hoping that any public backlash following the tragic air crash at the Reno Air Races, in which 10 people were killed, does not extend to their industry’s scripted entertainment.

By

Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer /
September 19, 2011

A model plane lies among candles at a memorial near the entrance of an airport in Reno, Nev., Monday, where the Reno Air Races were held. The remaining Reno Air Races were canceled after the deadly crash, Friday. The crash caused a review of safety regulations, but will it also cause audiences to stay away?

Paul Sakuma/AP

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MONITOR QUIZ: Weekly news quiz for Sept. 11-16, 2011

Both became wildly popular before World War II but the air race business has shrunk – the Reno event is the only unlimited class (i.e. vintage planes) air race event in the US, he says – while air shows continue to grow.

Air racing involves competition between pilots racing vintage airplanes up to 500 mph, whereas air shows are choreographed entertainment in which the same stunts – barrel rolls, inverted loops, wing walking etc. – are repeated performance after performance.

While the Reno Gazette has editorialized that spectators need to be better educated about the risks of air racing, Mr. Cudahy says the safety rules for air shows have been a top priority since the formation of his group in 1964. Although both have evolved over the years, he says air shows have very specific rules governing how close the planes can fly to spectators.

Cudahy cautioned against reaching any conclusions about the Reno tragedy until officials have completed their investigations. He said the safety record of air shows was a perfect, zero deaths in 2008, 2009, and 2010 before this year’s string of six deaths – three pilots and three wing walkers.

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The Senate proceeding is just one of an array of inquiries into Google’s behavior by various federal and state authorities in this country, as well as by regulators in Europe and Asia. And though the company and the times are different, there are echoes of a hearing before the same Senate body, the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, 13 years ago and the last sweeping antitrust investigation of an American technology powerhouse, Microsoft. Later, the federal government, joined by 20 states, filed suit against Microsoft.

“Google is a great American success story, but its size, position and power in the marketplace have raised concerns about its business practices, and raised the question of what responsibilities come with that power,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who is a member of the antitrust subcommittee and who as the attorney general of Connecticut played a leading role among the states that sued Microsoft.

Today Google, like Microsoft then, is both admired and feared. Google has used the riches from its dominance in search and search advertising to expand into video distribution with YouTube, smartphone software with Android and Web browsers with Chrome. It has added online commerce offerings in local retail and restaurants, comparison shopping and travel, and folded them into its search engine, prompting complaints that Google is giving its businesses preferred placement in search results.

Google executives have consistently replied that its search results are the product of extensive user testing, and do not favor its own offerings. If users become dissatisfied with Google search results, the company argues, they will go elsewhere, to rival search engines like Microsoft’s Bing, sites that focus on specific products or services like Yelp, or social networks like Facebook.

“Using Google is a choice,” Amit Singhal, a senior engineering manager at Google, wrote on the company’s blog in June, after the Federal Trade Commission began its investigation. “And there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information.”

Competitors disagree. Yelp, the popular Web site for user reviews and recommendations for restaurants and other businesses, has noticed a difference in search rankings since Google established its own online businesses, said Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and chief executive of Yelp, which gets half its traffic from Google searches.

Two years ago, Google offered to buy Yelp, but the talks broke down. Last year, Google introduced Places, a Yelp-like service for listing businesses and collecting consumer reviews. A Google search for a restaurant often displays the Places entry — linked to a map, user reviews and other services — ahead of Yelp.

“Google develops its own in-house properties and it preferences those, so it’s leveraging its dominance in Web search,” he said.

Mr. Stoppelman, who is scheduled to testify at the Senate hearing on Wednesday, added, “When it comes to Web search, Google says you have great content, you rise to the top and that’s historically been true for us. But we do feel like that world is changing because Google has decided it’s not enough to own and dominate Web search.”

This month, Google acquired Zagat, the restaurant listing and review service, to strengthen its local commerce offering. Yelp is Zagat’s leading online rival.

Google, legal experts say, presents some challenges for the traditional doctrine of antitrust. The Microsoft case, too, required adapting antitrust principles to modern technology, and the complaint filed against the company was filled with technical computing terms like “cross-platform middleware” and “application programming interfaces.”

Yet Microsoft’s dominant product — the Windows personal computer operating system — was something consumers and companies paid for, as with any conventional good.

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RENO, Nev. – A 10th person died overnight from injuries suffered Friday in the nation’s deadliest air racing disaster, a crash that also sent about 70 people to Reno-area hospitals.

Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Jamii Uboldi said Monday morning the patient who died was male, but she couldn’t immediately release his name, age and hometown.

Strangers united to help air race crash victims
Air race crash plane a “missile on steroids”
Air race safety questioned after Reno crash

Also Monday, the names of two more victims were released. Washoe County medical officials say 53-year-old Regina Bynum, of San Angelo, Texas, and 47-year-old Sharon Stewart, of Reno, were among the 10 people who died.

Officials have yet to identify three of the dead. Pilot Jimmy Leeward was among those killed.

Amid the horrific aftermath of the crash, a sort of calm pervaded.

Witnesses were spattered with blood and pieces of flesh, yet video of the scene shows paramedics, police and spectators attending to the wounded with a control that seems contradictory to the devastation.

Deadly crash at Reno air races

Speaking from his hospital bed at Northern Nevada Medical Center in Sparks, Nev., Noah Joraanstad, a 25-year-old commercial airline pilot from Anchorage, Alaska, told CBS’ “The Early Show” Monday that the plane sounded like “a missile on steroids.”

“It just hit so violently and I kind of, at the last second, closed my eyes and just hoped and prayed, and it just kind of threw me across the ground and, right after that, I got up and ran on adrenaline for a couple of seconds,” Joraanstad told “Early Show” co-anchor Chris Wragge.

Joraanstad, covered in aviation fuel, was burned severely in the crash. Shrapnel tore into his back, narrowly missing his lung and kidneys.

“This happened so fast, there was just a sense of shock. But people were very calm. You know, they didn’t know me. They came, held my hand, told me I was going to be all right,” Joraanstad told The Associated Press. “They walked into a scene where people were amputated, whatever, and just carnage everywhere, and they decided to help. To me, those were the real heroes.”

As NTSB investigators combed through the wreckage during the weekend, officials said they may be close to finding the cause, CBS News correspondent Karen Brown reports.

The tail is key because photos show that, just seconds before the plane plummeted to the ground, a piece of the tail section was missing — something that could have caused the pilot to lose control.

Officials and those in the tightly-knit air racing community credit not only a detailed plan for just such a crash, but the type of people at the event: pilots, veterans and others accustomed to dealing with a high-pressure situation.

Doctors, nurses and military veterans from the crowd volunteered their services to emergency crews, said Reno Fire Battalion Chief Tim Spencer, a 29-year veteran who has worked at the air races for 27 years. Those without medical skills helped firefighters transport the injured.

“It wasn’t uncommon to see one firefighter and three people in civilian clothes carrying a litter to the proper area” for evacuation, Tim Spencer said. “Everybody pulled together perfectly and worked side by side.”

Video: Reno plane crash perhaps due to broken tail: NTSB

Such cooperation helped save Ed Larson, one of the victims cut down by a wall of shrapnel kicked up when the Galloping Ghost, a souped-up WWII-era P-51 Mustang fighter plane, crashed into the VIP section Friday, disintegrating over a two- to three-acre area.

Metal fragments and wreckage hit Larson, 59, in the head and back and legs, shredding his calf and severing his Achilles tendon. He was knocked unconscious but came to as he was being loaded on a transport helicopter.

“All I saw was a real coordinated effort,” Larson said from a wheelchair at Renown Regional Medical Center, which handled 36 of the most severely injured patients, including two who died.

The carnage left even seasoned emergency room surgeons and rescue workers shaken.

(At left, watch the terrifying pictures in a “CBS Evening News” report broadcast Saturday)

“This is the worst I’ve seen,” said Dr. Mike Morkin, the emergency services director at Renown. He did his trauma training at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and helped in the aftermath of Chicago’s Paxton Hotel fire that killed 19 people in 1993. Yet he said he had never seen so many patients with such severe injuries at one time.

Paramedics, police and firefighters, hospitals and event organizers had drilled for such a disaster, some just hours earlier.

Emergency workers were quickly putting into practice the skills they’d learned in drills. They separated the wounded depending on the severity of injuries as ambulances and transport helicopters moved in. A Vietnam-era Huey helicopter from a military display was pressed into service to fly victims to the hospital.

“It was triage on the tarmac,” said David Edgecomb, 41, a volunteer security guard from Paradise, Calif., who said he saw a man in an electric wheelchair dead in the spectator area. Edgecomb cut strips of bunting from the VIP boxes into strips to be used for tourniquets, while larger pieces of the material were used to cover body parts.

The Rev. Thomas Babu was at St. Michael’s Catholic Church four blocks from the airport when he saw the fire engines and ambulances streaming past.

“I thought it was my duty to go there,” said Babu, 37.

He held hands and prayed with the family of a woman who had been killed.

“Tragedy brings people together. We become more good human beings when there is something bad happening around us,” he said.

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Updated at 11:50 a.m. ET

Taking a defiant tone against Republicans unwilling to raise taxes in order to close the deficit, President Obama today unveiled a $3 trillion long-term deficit reduction plan that relies heavily on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

“This is not class warfare — it’s math,” Mr. Obama said from the White House Rose Garden, addressing GOP critiques of his plan head on.

“The money has to come from some place,” he continued. “If we’re not willing to ask those who’ve done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit… the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more, we’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor.”

The core of Mr. Obama’s deficit reduction plan is $1.5 trillion in new taxes. About $800 billion comes from repealing the Bush-era tax rates for couples making more than $250,000. The plan also closes certain corporate tax loopholes and limits certain tax deductions.

The president is also putting forward a measure he’s calling the “Buffett Rule” — named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett — to compel those making $1 million or more a year to pay the same overall rate as other taxpayers. Taxpayers making $1 million or more often make their fortune through investment income, which is taxed at 15 percent; the top income tax rate is 35 percent.

Even before the president unveiled it Monday, Republicans on Capitol Hill were declaring the president’s deficit reduction plan dead. On Sunday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said Mr. Obama’s plan signaled the president is too focused on his own re-election. “He’s in a political class warfare mode and campaign mode. And that’s not good for our economy,” Ryan said.

In response, Mr. Obama said, “I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare. I think it’s just the right thing to do.”

The plan also includes about $580 billion in cuts to mandatory benefit programs, including $248 billion from Medicare. However, in a nod to his liberal base, the president made clear he would veto any plan to cut Medicare benefits that isn’t paired with tax increases on upper-income people. (Watch at left.)

The plan doesn’t touch Social Security, and there is no proposed increase in the Medicare eligibility age — a cost-saving proposal the president was willing to agree to earlier in the year, to the dismay of liberals.

To get to $3 trillion in savings, the White House is counting $1 trillion in savings over 10 years from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Mr. Obama earlier this year was seeking a “grand bargain” with Republicans over deficit reduction, he’s now adopting a decidedly populist, combative tone designed to contrast his vision of the future with the GOP vision.

Mr. Obama specifically called out House Speaker John Boehner, blaming him for their inability to come to an agreement for deficit reduction earlier in the year. Mr. Obama said they were close to the “grand bargain,” but “Unfortunately, the speaker walked away.”

He also blasted Boehner for delivering an economic speech last week in which he came out against any plan for deficit reduction that included raising taxes. “The speaker says we can’t have it ‘My way or the highway’ and then basically says ‘My way or the highway,’” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama also took a shot at Ryan’s budget blueprint, which proposed turning Medicare into a voucher system. “While we do need to reduce health care costs, I’m not going to allow that to be an excuse for turning Medicare into a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry,” he said.

The president said that trying to significantly reduce the deficit without raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations would lead to crumbling infrastructure, second-rate schools and a lack of investments in critical research.

“That’s unacceptable to me, [and] that’s unacceptable to the American people,” Mr. Obama said. “It will not happen on my watch. I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing the deficit on ordinary Americans.”

Mr. Obama will send his deficit reduction plan to Congress as a means of paying down the debt, as well as a means of paying for the $447 billion economic plan he unveiled earlier this month. Larger than most people expected, that plan includes an extension of unemployment benefits, investments in areas like infrastructure, and tax cuts for small businesses and individuals.

The president urged Congress to pass the economic plan right away. “There shouldn’t be any reason for Congress to drag its feet,” he said. “I’m ready to sign a bill. I’ve got the pens all ready.”

Specifically, Mr. Obama will send his deficit reduction plan to the so-called congressional “super committee” tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings by Thanksgiving. The “super committee” was created as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling. That deal also included $1 trillion in budget savings that have already been signed into law.

(Watch Mr. Obama criticize Boehner’s deficit reduction ideas, at left.)

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Image Credit: Phil McCarten/Fox

That flat opening skit (Leonard Nimoy is not a comedy substitute for Alec Baldwin). The never-to-be-seen-again “Emmytones” choir. Those painful voiceover presenter introductions. Man, even Charlie Sheen and Ricky Gervais seemed neutered.

Sunday night’s Emmys will not be ranked among the most-loved productions of the annual awards show, but at least it won’t be the lowest-rated: Last night’s show delivered 12.4 million viewers, down 8 percent from last year. Yet among adults 18-49, the show’s rating rose slightly, up 2 percent to a 4.2. And among adults 18-34, the show had its biggest number in four years. Those comparisons to aren’t bad considering the Emmys faced NBC’s Sunday Night Football last night. (In 2010, NBC aired the awards show.) The lowest-rated Emmys was in 2008 on ABC, which was seen by 12.3 million and had a 3.8 rating.

Overall, the night was dominated by Sunday Night Football, the Eagles vs. Falcons game registering a 15.7 overnight household rating, up 3 percent from last year’s Week 2 game.

Read more:
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Emmys 2011: 14 Moments to Buzz About

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Rivera entered the eight-game game homestand needing just one save to break the record. And when he got out, it was simple, as he retired three straight Twins in the top of the ninth with the crowd urging him on. The last out, the record save, came on a called third strike to Chris Parmelee.

Earlier in the game, though, the Yankees and A.J. Burnett kept fans guessing Monday as to whether Rivera would have a chance at history.

In fact, Monday’s game was a microcosm of Burnett’s 13-season career and definitely took some of the glow off of Rivera’s achievement with the playoffs on the horizon. Burnett tantalized the crowd with his raw stuff, striking out seven in the first three innings, and ran the total to eight in four innings. But the fifth inning saw a different pitcher take the mound as the pitches he did throw for strikes were hit, and they were hit hard.

Manager Joe Girardi characterized Burnett’s start before the game as a postseason tryout of sorts, and his dominant three innings, followed by him unraveling, likely did little to help answer the questions regarding his preparedness.

The Yankees rotation seems to be full of question marks with the playoffs nearing and Girardi is somewhat alarmed by the timing.

“It’s not what you want,” Girardi said. “I can only think of one worse time and that would be during the postseason.”

Burnett’s final line for the day was a somewhat misleading four innings, eight strikeouts, one walk and four earned runs that appears strong on the surface but was largely aided by Girardi pulling the plug as soon as things went south.

The Yankees got on the scoreboard quickly against Twins rookie starter Scott Diamond, with Derek Jeter singling to start the game and then immediately being driven in by Curtis Granderson’s 41st home run of the season. It appeared that things could get out of hand when Mark Teixeira singled, making it three consecutive hits and no outs, but Alex Rodriguez grounded into a double-play to limit the damage.

Granderson, who came to the plate to a small chant of “MVP! MVP!”, is now one home run shy of Toronto’s Jose Bautista for the major league lead.

The Yankees broke things open in the third inning. Rodriguez drew a one-out walk and was then driven in on a triple to deep center by Robinson Cano. Swisher singled Cano home to make the score 5-0 and Diamond again seemed on the verge of an implosion. Andruw Jones doubled to right to put runners on second and third with one out, but Diamond was able to retire Montero and Martin to end the inning.

The fourth inning proved difficult for Burnett, who had cruised up until that point. Chris Parmelee led off the inning with a home run to right that spoiled Burnett’s shutout and then Danny Valencia and Brian Dinkelman both singled to put the first real pressure on Burnett of the day. Twins third-baseman Luke Hughes hit a fly out to the wall in left field that was a few feet from making it a 5-4 ballgame and with that Burnett seemed to settle, getting Rene Rivera to fly out and then striking out Ben Revere.

The fifth inning proved too much though, as Burnett was chased after failing to retire any of the first three batters. Along the way he allowed a single to Trevor Plouffe, a two-run home run to Michael Cuddyer and a double to Parmelee. At that point Girardi cut his losses and turned to reliever Cory Wade who allowed two runs, one charged to Burnett, before getting out of the inning with the lead intact.

The starting rotation for the Yankees may be a question mark, but the back end of the bullpen did not appear to be one Monday as Rafael Soriano retired the side in order in the seventh inning and Dave Robertson did the same in the 8th before giving way to Rivera. With Soriano and Robertson both pitching well and bridging the gap to Rivera, the Yankees starters may be asked to just get through six innings going forward, a more manageable task.

Monday’s contest against the Twins was a makeup game because of a rainout on April 6, which led to a somewhat sparse crowd for the momentous occasion, regardless of the announced attendance of 40,045. But the on-line ticket marketplace StubHub reported an uptick in interest with Rivera in the hunt for the saves record.

A representative for StubHub said that tickets for the game were the most-searched-for event on the site today and that Yankees tickets over all were accounting for twice as many searches as all other events.

The fans that were present were able to celebrate with Rivera, widely considered to be a Hall of Famer despite the fact that being the career saves leader was not enough to gain enshrinement for Jeff Reardon or Lee Smith, the leaders prior to Hoffman.

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RENO, Nev. – Amid the horrific aftermath of the nation’s deadliest air racing disaster, a crash that killed nine and sent about 70 people to Reno-area hospitals, a sort of calm pervaded.

Witnesses were spattered with blood and pieces of flesh, yet video of the scene shows paramedics, police and spectators attending to the wounded with a control that seems contradictory to the devastation.

Air race crash plane a “missile on steroids”
Air race safety questioned after Reno crash
Plane in Reno crash had “radical” changes

Speaking from his hospital bed at Northern Nevada Medical Center in Sparks, Nev., Noah Joraanstad, a 25-year-old commercial airline pilot from Anchorage, Alaska, told CBS’ “The Early Show” Monday that the plane sounded like “a missile on steroids.”

Deadly crash at Reno air races

“It just hit so violently and I kind of, at the last second, closed my eyes and just hoped and prayed, and it just kind of threw me across the ground and, right after that, I got up and ran on adrenaline for a couple of seconds,” Joraanstad told “Early Show” co-anchor Chris Wragge.

Joraanstad, covered in aviation fuel, was burned severely in the crash. Shrapnel tore into his back, narrowly missing his lung and kidneys.

“This happened so fast, there was just a sense of shock. But people were very calm. You know, they didn’t know me. They came, held my hand, told me I was going to be all right,” Joraanstad told The Associated Press. “They walked into a scene where people were amputated, whatever, and just carnage everywhere, and they decided to help. To me, those were the real heroes.”

As NTSB investigators combed through the wreckage during the weekend, officials said they may be close to finding the cause, CBS News correspondent Karen Brown reports.

The tail is key because photos show that, just seconds before the plane plummeted to the ground, a piece of the tail section was missing — something that could have caused the pilot to lose control.

Video: Reno plane crash perhaps due to broken tail: NTSB

Officials and those in the tightly-knit air racing community credit not only a detailed plan for just such a crash, but the type of people at the event: pilots, veterans and others accustomed to dealing with a high-pressure situation.

Doctors, nurses and military veterans from the crowd volunteered their services to emergency crews, said Reno Fire Battalion Chief Tim Spencer, a 29-year veteran who has worked at the air races for 27 years. Those without medical skills helped firefighters transport the injured.

“It wasn’t uncommon to see one firefighter and three people in civilian clothes carrying a litter to the proper area” for evacuation, Tim Spencer said. “Everybody pulled together perfectly and worked side by side.”

Such cooperation helped save Ed Larson, one of the victims cut down by a wall of shrapnel kicked up when the Galloping Ghost, a souped-up WWII-era P-51 Mustang fighter plane, crashed into the VIP section Friday, disintegrating over a two- to three-acre area.

Metal fragments and wreckage hit Larson, 59, in the head and back and legs, shredding his calf and severing his Achilles tendon. He was knocked unconscious but came to as he was being loaded on a transport helicopter.

“All I saw was a real coordinated effort,” Larson said from a wheelchair at Renown Regional Medical Center, which handled 36 of the most severely injured patients, including two who died.

The carnage left even seasoned emergency room surgeons and rescue workers shaken.

(At left, watch the terrifying pictures in a “CBS Evening News” report broadcast Saturday)

“This is the worst I’ve seen,” said Dr. Mike Morkin, the emergency services director at Renown. He did his trauma training at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and helped in the aftermath of Chicago’s Paxton Hotel fire that killed 19 people in 1993. Yet he said he had never seen so many patients with such severe injuries at one time.

Paramedics, police and firefighters, hospitals and event organizers had drilled for such a disaster, some just hours earlier.

Emergency workers were quickly putting into practice the skills they’d learned in drills. They separated the wounded depending on the severity of injuries as ambulances and transport helicopters moved in. A Vietnam-era Huey helicopter from a military display was pressed into service to fly victims to the hospital.

“It was triage on the tarmac,” said David Edgecomb, 41, a volunteer security guard from Paradise, Calif., who said he saw a man in an electric wheelchair dead in the spectator area. Edgecomb cut strips of bunting from the VIP boxes into strips to be used for tourniquets, while larger pieces of the material were used to cover body parts.

The Rev. Thomas Babu was at St. Michael’s Catholic Church four blocks from the airport when he saw the fire engines and ambulances streaming past.

“I thought it was my duty to go there,” said Babu, 37.

He held hands and prayed with the family of a woman who had been killed.

“Tragedy brings people together. We become more good human beings when there is something bad happening around us,” he said.

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• Next Page »

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Microsoft will restrict general distribution of Metro apps to the Windows Store, but grant exceptions to enterprises and developers, allowing them to side-load applications onto Windows 8 devices. While Windows 8 will be an operating system for both desktops and tablets, Microsoft is creating two sets of rules for traditional desktop apps and Metro-style apps, which are optimized for touch screens but will run on any Windows 8 device.

A primer for Windows developers on Microsoft’s website states that distribution of traditional desktop applications will proceed as usual. “Open distribution: retail stores, web, private networks, individual sharing, and so on” will be allowed, Microsoft says. Metro apps, on the other hand, will be “Distributed through the Windows Store. Apps must pass certification so that users download and try apps with confidence in their safety and privacy. Side-loading is available for enterprises and developers.”

This approach is similar to the one taken by Apple with its iPhone and iPad App Store, and also similar to Microsoft’s own Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, although jailbreaks and workarounds allowing side-loading have been released by independent developers for both iOS and WP7. With Google’s Android, by contrast, it is easy for any user to install non-market applications from either third-party app stores such as Amazon’s or by downloading software directly from an app maker’s website. The exceptions carved out by Microsoft will let developers test apps and businesses distribute custom or private apps to employees.

Windows Phone 7 uses a 70/30 revenue split in which Microsoft keeps 30 percent of app payments, and a similar split seems likely for Windows 8 Metro apps. According to the IStartedSomething.com blog, Microsoft’s primer for Windows developers briefly confirmed the 70/30 split for Metro apps but later deleted the information. In other news, we learned last week that while Windows 8 devices with ARM processors won’t run apps originally built for Intel-based computers, Microsoft is working on a Metro version of its popular Office software.

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