Small plane crash kills 4 at SE Michigan airport

WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A pilot and three passengers were killed Friday after a small plane crashed shortly after taking off from an airport northwest of Detroit.

Airport spokesman Dave VanderVeen said the Cessna 172 went down about 1:40 p.m. Friday at Oakland County International Airport in Waterford Township. Three people aboard the private flight were killed instantly, while the fourth died later at a hospital.

VanderVeen said three of the victims were male and one was female but couldn't identify them further.

"It's a very sad day for the airport," said VanderVeen, the county's director of central services, who previously managed the airport for 25 years. He added that the airport's last fatal crash was in 2006.

VanderVeen said the pilot took off from a runway designed for smaller planes and reached an altitude of about 100 feet before requesting permission to return. The plane crashed in a field.

The Federal Aviation Administration was en route to the airport and the National Transportation and Safety Board is expected to arrive Saturday.

Oakland County is the state's second busiest airport after Detroit Metropolitan Airport, which is in the Detroit suburb of Romulus.

In 2006, a flight instructor and his student were killed when a single-engine plane belonging to a flight school crashed at the airport.

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After brutal weekend, a small break

(CNN) -- Thousands of firefighters battling to control dangerous wildfires in Arizona will get a small measure of relief this week as winds calm and humidity levels rise, the National Weather Service said Monday.

Critical conditions are forecast Monday across large sections of New Mexico and Texas, and to a lesser extent in Oklahoma and Kansas. On Sunday, critical to extreme conditions could be found in those four states, plus Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Nevada.

Arizona bore the brunt of Sunday's fiery conflagration as flames outpaced firefighters' efforts.

The Monument Fire -- which U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell has deemed the nation's No. 1 priority, putting it first in line for any air, ground or other resources -- jumped Highway 92 late Sunday afternoon at Carr Canyon heading east, according to the Cochise County website.

"We've had a hard day today, with things that we didn't want to happen," fire spokesman Bill Paxton said Sunday night. "The bull came out of the pen."

Thanks to dry, windy conditions, the fire broke through four contingency lines, including going over to the other side of the highway, said Paxton, part of the national Interagency Incident Management Team.

"Everything aligned for a massive push," he said. "It's really hard on the community here."

The Cochise County Sheriff's Office broadened the evacuation zone east to the San Pedro River, reports InciWeb, an online interagency database that tracks fires, floods and other disasters.

On Sunday evening, the website noted the fire had burned at least 26,956 acres and was 27% contained. More than 1,000 personnel -- as well as 100 engines and nine helicopters -- were battling that blaze, which had destroyed 44 homes and 18 other structures from its start June 12 through Sunday.

The weather has hardly been cooperating in the fight, with humidity at 7% and temperatures topping 96 degrees. The National Weather Service forecast winds should weaken somewhat in the early part of this week, to between 7 mph and 13 mph in Sierra Vista, Arizona, though temperatures were still expected to remain in the 90s or higher all week.

People living in Sierra Vista were ordered to leave Sunday while firefighters conducted burn-out operations in an attempt to stop the fire moving that way, CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reported from the area.

Even as the flames spread, some Sierra Vista residents turned to their faith.

"There are disasters, calamities and tragedies," Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas said during a special weekend service at St. Andrew the Apostle Church, reported CNN affiliate KGUN-TV in Tucson.

"We are with them in solidarity," Kicanas said. "We pray for an end to the fire, we pray for the safety of our firefighters and we pray that the monsoon rains will come and free us from these terrible fires that have been so devastating."

The church is taking donations for fire victims.

Will Posko said he is housing several people in his home.

"Our hearts go out to those people," Posko told KGUN. "We all have to help one another in this community."

Parishioner Tom Felix said the community's spirit and support overwhelmed him.

"Coming here ... and just seeing everybody, my goodness that's beautiful faith," he told KGUN.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has issued emergency declarations for the Monument Fire and another blaze, Horseshoe II, making Cochise County eligible for $100,000 toward response and recovery expenses.

In Texas, critical fire weather conditions were predicted across much of the state Monday, the Texas Forest Service said.

The forest service is battling 20 wildfires, with 12 new large blazes reported Sunday. Some 500 homes are threatened in Jasper County, the service said, and 163 have been evacuated in Walker County.

Nationwide, wildfires have burned almost as many acres in the first half of 2011 as were recorded by the National Interagency Fire Center for all of last year.

The agency website reports 3.1 million acres in the United States had been ignited by wildfires as of May 31, compared with 3.2 million burned acres cited in the organization's year-end report in November 2010.

One Arizona blaze that started May 29 has mushroomed into a historically large wildfire. Known as the Wallow Fire, it has burned 519,319 acres and was 51% contained as of Sunday evening.

This fire caused power outages Sunday in Arizona cities Blue and parts of Alpine, Nutrioso and Greer, the Navopache Electric Cooperative reported on its website. Generators are powering some of the company's New Mexico customers as well as those in Alpine, Arizona.

Residents of Luna, New Mexico, were ordered to evacuate Saturday afternoon after the blaze jumped containment lines along U.S. 180, according to InciWeb.

But fire public information officer Rich Szlauko had some good news, saying that in terms of bringing the Wallow Fire under control, "Everything is starting to look pretty good."

Some 3,600 people continue to battle the blaze, in the face of winds Sunday measuring 20 mph to 30 mph, he said.

But even with marginally improved conditions, authorities across the Southwest and southern Plains enforced expanded evacuations as flames cut off power to communities.

CNN's Ed Payne and Greg Botelho contributed to this report.

CNN

Libyan begs NATO to save small town

Gadhafi has switched to more effective rockets, man saysTown's water poisoned, people used as shields, man saysNATO, he says, "could end the siege in two hours"

(CNN) -- The man in front of me clasping a new satellite telephone tells me he has an urgent message. He's just received a call from his hometown warning him Moammar Gadhafi's forces are on the verge of overrunning it and he's desperate for NATO to do something about it.

Mohammed, as he wants to be known, is a middle-aged, middle-class professional.

He says he walked out of al Galaa, population 16,000, under cover of darkness three weeks ago on a harrowing two-night trek to break the siege and bring word of their suffering. It's been his mission ever since, and tonight is no exception.

"The shelling has increased," he tells me.

Libyan leader Gadhafi's forces have the hilltop "surrounded" and have "switched to 106mm rockets" that he tells me are reaching their targets more effectively than the Grad and Katusha missiles they've been firing for the past two months.

Al Galaa is in the Nafusa mountains, about 129 kilometers (80 miles) from the capital Tripoli. It sits on a small plateau next to Yefren, a town of similar size. They are at the eastern tip of a slender sliver of rebel-held territory extending 270 kilometers (168 miles) westwards to the Tunisian border. Both have been targeted by Gadhafi since they joined the rebellion three months ago.

In that time, according to Mohammed, townspeople have had their water poisoned, their houses destroyed by shelling, been shot at, arrested, denied hospital treatment and even used as human shields.

Since arriving in the rebel stronghold of Zintan about 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, Mohammed has sent a satellite phone back to the rebels he left behind. That's how he says he stays on top of news from there.

He tells me Gadhafi's forces have taken control of the west of Yefren, including the hospital, the bank and the shops. What remains of the population, he says, are huddled in the east of Yefren, in al Galaa and in nearby caves.

Most of the 32,000 estimated residents fled about two months ago, he says. He says it's impossible to know exactly how many people are left but guesses it's about 1,000, half of them rebels, half of them civilians.

He claims they have been out of electricity and water for seven weeks and there is no access to the hospital, but what worries him most is Gadhafi's switch to 106mm rockets. He says it's now or never for NATO.

If they are serious, he says, "they could end the siege in two hours."

When I ask what he means, he explains the rebels have tried blowing up the two roads that lead to the mountain top without success. "All they need to do is blow up the roads to stop Gadhafi's advance."

Every day, he says, he calls in the latest coordinates of Gadhafi's forces to the rebel command in Benghazi. Each day with no NATO action, he says he can only hope his details are being passed along correctly. "Look at Benghazi and Misrata," he says. "Gadhafi's forces were stopped by NATO bombing, why not here in Yefren and al Galaa?"

It's impossible for us in Zintan to verify Mohammed's accounts. He says he could take us there but the several-day hike through the mountains would be incredibly dangerous and could end in disaster.

Zintan's rebel commander says he's getting no new information from Yefren and fears it may already be lost to Gadhafi's forces. According to a Libyan doctor at Zintan's hospital, four men arrived from al Galaa a few days ago.

They had walked for two days, they told him, taken the same nighttime route as Mohammed. One had a broken arm, the doctor said. It had been set in hardened henna because doctors had run out of regular bandages. Their stories he told me matched Mohammed's dire warning.

CNN's Kareem Khadder contributed to this report.

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Obama Targets Top Earners as Small Business Owner Sweats a Tax Hike

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President Obama was in his element on Wednesday: Shirt sleeves rolled up, lively and animated, clearly enjoying the youthful, largely sympathetic audience at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters, and the theater-in-the-round setting that enabled him to kibitz with the company’s youthful founder and CEO, Marc Zuckerberg.

Indeed, it was in a humorous vein that the president made his case on the normally staid subject of debt reduction. The White House plan for tackling America’s looming debt crisis calls for $4 trillion in deficits to be eliminated over the next decade, in part by cutting spending but also through a tax hike. This would come in the form of allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for the nation’s top income bracket to expire at the end of 2012.

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