Hudson River

NEWARK, N.J. - The crowded airspace over the Hudson River, where nine people died in the collision of a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter, will be split into a low-altitude zone for local traffic and a higher one for longer-distance flights, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday. The new rules provide structure to a Hudson River air corridor that some pilots had compared to the wild West, with helicopters loaded with commuters and sightseers cutting across the waterway as fixed-wing private planes travel down it on longer journeys.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he hopes his city's subway system will be extended to New Jersey "in somebody's lifetime. " Bloomberg was responding Tuesday to comments by the chief of the nation's largest subway system, who said it would cost too much. Bloomberg's administration pitched the concept of extending the No. 7 train to the Garden State in 2010. Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota told business leaders he can't see extending the system underneath the Hudson River "in our lifetime" or "anybody's lifetime.

HOBOKEN, N.J. - Divers pulled a helicopter and four more bodies out of the murky Hudson River yesterday in their search for victims, wreckage, and explanations from a midair collision of a sightseeing helicopter and a small plane that killed nine people. The dead from Saturday’s crash include three fathers and their three teenage sons. The private plane carried a family from Pennsylvania, and the helicopter held five Italian tourists celebrating a couple’s 25th wedding anniversary.

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. - A fired government worker with a protest sign dangled for hours from New York's Tappan Zee Bridge yesterday, backing up traffic for miles before dropping into the Hudson River and being hauled aboard a police boat. Michael Davitt, 54, of Garnerville, N.Y., had been angry about being dismissed in 2008 from his counseling job with the Rockland County mental health department and was well known to law enforcement, county Sheriff James Kralik said. Yesterday morning, Davitt drove a van onto the bridge, lowered a rope ladder, and climbed down, then sat in a harness...

NEW YORK - The airline captain who glided his US Airways jet safely into New York’s Hudson River will return to the cockpit soon, the airline said yesterday. Captain Chesley “Sully’’ Sullenberger will pilot regular flights and join the airline’s flight operations safety management team. The airline said it was still working out the details of his return to flight duties. Sullenberger, 58, has finished the training required to return to the cockpit and is eligible to fly, said Jonathan Freed, a spokesman for US Airways Group Inc. The requirements...

HOBOKEN, N.J. - Two bodies were pulled yesterday from the wreckage of a small plane that collided with a sightseeing helicopter over the Hudson River, completing the recovery of all nine crash victims, police said. Medical examiners will determine whether the bodies are those of the plane’s pilot and a passenger, chief police spokesman Paul Browne said. Saturday’s crash killed three Pennsylvania residents on the plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot on the helicopter.

NEW YORK - Salvage crews hoisted a battle-scarred US Airways jetliner from the Hudson River and onto a barge late last night, three days after the pilot of the crippled aircraft made what he told investigators was a split-second decision to attempt a water landing to avoid a possible catastrophic crash in a populated neighborhood. Much of the top half of the aircraft appeared as though it might be ready for takeoff - a stark contrast with the charred-looking right wing, and the destroyed right engine, which appeared as though the outside...

Arizona PHOENIX — A 13-year-old Arizona boy died after a baseball hit him over the heart as he tried to bunt in a Little League game, officials said. Hayden Walton went for the bunt during a game Tuesday night in the close-knit northern Arizona city of Winslow, said Jamey Jones, a Winslow Little League official. He died the next morning at a hospital. New Jersey Hudson River plane going to museum HARRISON — The plane that safely landed on the Hudson River and captivated the world two years ago rolled out of a warehouse...

LONDON - A transport helicopter crashed into the North Sea last evening, but all 18 aboard were rescued from the chilly waters, British officials said. Mark Clark, a spokesman for the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency, said the crash was "on the level of the Hudson River in the States," a reference to the successful splash-landing of a passenger jet in the Hudson River in New York last month. "They're clearly traumatized and they're cold, but they're walking wounded," Clark told Sky News television.

WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities and General Electric Co. struck a deal yesterday on dredging PCB-contaminated sediment from the Hudson River, a big step forward in the delayed Superfund cleanup plan. The deal was announced by the Environmental Protection Agency, which filed a consent decree in federal court in Albany, N.Y. The Hudson River dredging project, estimated to cost about $500 million, had been delayed by the EPA, which cited the complexity of the project to remove toxic PCBs from the riverbed.

PAINTING THE AMERICAN VISION At: Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, Salem, through Nov. 6. 866-745-1876, www.pem.org SALEM - The Hudson River School artists had a particular and romantic agenda: to transmit the sublime experience of nature they found in the American landscape. For 19th-century artists such as Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Albert Bierstadt, the wilderness represented something pure and holy, a majesty that could not be found during a grand European tour, a must for American artists of the day. "Painting the American Vision" is a traveling exhibit put together by the...

Arizona PHOENIX — A 13-year-old Arizona boy died after a baseball hit him over the heart as he tried to bunt in a Little League game, officials said. Hayden Walton went for the bunt during a game Tuesday night in the close-knit northern Arizona city of Winslow, said Jamey Jones, a Winslow Little League official. He died the next morning at a hospital. New Jersey Hudson River plane going to museum HARRISON — The plane that safely landed on the Hudson River and captivated the world two years ago rolled out of a warehouse and across the...

HOBOKEN, N.J. — A commuter train from New York pulling into a station for its final stop crashed into the bumpers at the end of the tracks yesterday morning, injuring 34 people, shutting down service for hours, and putting this morning’s commute in jeopardy. None of the injuries in the PATH train’s 8:30 a.m. crash was considered life-threatening, though several victims were taken away on stretchers or put in neck braces as a precaution, Mayor Dawn Zimmer said. The injured, who mostly sustained cuts and bruises, were taken to three area hospitals for treatment; most, if...

NEWBURGH, N.Y. — The suicidal mother who loaded her four children into a minivan and drove into the frigid Hudson River warned in a cryptic Facebook message just before the fatal plunge: “I’m so sorry everyone forgive me please for what I’m gonna do… . This Is It!!!!’’ Her 10-year-old son, who swam ashore as his mother and three siblings drowned, says she told her children, “you’re all going to die with me,’’ then changed her mind and tried, too late, to back out of the river, according to the woman who found the sopping wet boy. ...

KINGSTON, N.Y. — State Police divers recovered a pilot’s body yesterday from the cockpit of a vintage military jet that crashed into ice on the Hudson River near a Kingston airport. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Holly Baker said the body of Michael Faraldi, 38, a podiatrist from Germantown, was removed around 3 p.m. yesterday. The aircraft was lifted onto a barge. The accident happened at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday near the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, midway between Albany and New York City.

WASHINGTON — Most people think of evolution occurring gradually over thousands of years, but apparently no one told the Atlantic tomcod. In just 50 years or so, the Hudson River fish has evolved to become resistant to toxic PCBs that polluted the river, researchers reported yesterday. Their secret is a gene variant. “You’re talking about very rapid evolution,’’ said Isaac Wirgin, an associate professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine.

NEW YORK — An unhappy mother hurled her toddler daughter into the chilly Hudson River and then jumped in herself in an apparent murder-suicide attempt intended to spite her husband, prosecutors said yesterday. Dispirited after a few years of moving around the United States because of her husband’s job, Devi Silvia told relatives she wanted to go back to her native India with her 19-month old daughter shortly before the river plunge Tuesday, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Robert Hettleman said.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he hopes his city's subway system will be extended to New Jersey "in somebody's lifetime. " Bloomberg was responding Tuesday to comments by the chief of the nation's largest subway system, who said it would cost too much. Bloomberg's administration pitched the concept of extending the No. 7 train to the Garden State in 2010. Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota told business leaders he can't see extending the system underneath the Hudson River "in our lifetime" or "anybody's lifetime.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The US Airways jet that made a near-miraculous landing on the Hudson River in 2009 will finally reach its destination, but as a museum piece rather than in service. The Carolinas Aviation Museum has almost completed a deal to buy the damaged plane from the insurance company that owns it, museum president Shawn Dorsch said yesterday. The museum is in Charlotte, which was the destination of US Airways Flight 1549 until a flock of geese disabled the engines.

ALBANY, N.Y. — General Electric Co. said yesterday that it will proceed with the next phase of PCB dredging in the Hudson River under terms laid out last week by federal environmental regulators. The Environmental Protection Agency had said the company must remove more PCB-tainted sediment from the river and will have to take better samples of the river bottom when it resumes dredging. “We engaged in intensive and constructive discussions with EPA, and the agency’s decision reflects our discussions and many of our proposals,’’ Ann Klee, GE’s vice president of...