"Days of flash flooding, tornadoes and historic rainfall across central Texas and Oklahoma swept away hundreds of homes and left at least five people dead and a dozen missing..."

The Washington Post reports.

My son Chris took these pictures in Austin yesterday:

"I think the fact that I walked off kind of made it even more surreal because a lot of people didn't walk off. I walked off as if, like, I was in a movie."

"There were people standing around, people with bloody faces. There were people, chairs, tables mangled about in the compartment... power cables all buckled down as you stepped off the train."

Train wreck in Philadelphia. 

Funchu Tamang, 101 years old, pulled alive from the wreckage of his collapsed house...

... 7 days after the earthquake in Nepal.

"I don�t think the government is doing anything... You can see how many humans are in need."

"This is the corruption and laziness in government... We look at the news, and every country gives us something, but the Nepal government doesn�t give to us."

"A powerful earthquake shook Nepal on Saturday near its capital, Katmandu, flattening sections of the city�s historic center..."

"... and trapping dozens of sightseers in a 200-foot watchtower that came crashing down into a pile of bricks."

Officials in Nepal put the preliminary death toll at 1053, nearly all of them in the valley around Katmandu... The quake set off avalanches around Mount Everest, where several hikers were reported to have died... [T]he most terrible damage on Saturday was to the oldest part of the city, which is studded with temples and palaces made of wood and unmortared brick.

For many, the most breathtaking loss was the nine-story Dharahara Tower, which was built in 1832 on the orders of the queen. The tower had recently reopened to the public, which could ascend a narrow spiral staircase to a viewing platform around 200 feet above the city.... The police on Saturday said they had pulled around 60 bodies from the rubble of the tower....

"A letter found in a waste bin in Andreas Lubitz's apartment indicated he 'was declared by a medical doctor unfit to work'..."

"... Dusseldorf prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said."

And here's a NYT op-ed, written by a former pilot titled "Inside a Pilot�s Mind/After Germanwings Plane Crash, Pondering Pilot Psychology":

I flew many times with a born-again Christian who talked constantly about Adam and Eve and other Bible stories. Could his religious beliefs have caused us to handle an in-flight emergency differently? It never happened, so I can�t say. Another pilot would tell me about his crazy sex life on the road. He�d kiss his wife and kids goodbye and then become a totally different person for seven days.

But these are ordinary varieties of human behavior � nothing that would predict some catastrophic course of action....

Click for more �

"The German investigators said they had not found a suicide note or 'any indication of a political or religious' nature among the documents secured in Mr. Lubitz�s apartment."

"'However, documents were secured containing medical information that indicates an illness and corresponding treatment by doctors,' prosecutors said in a statement...."

Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, said on Thursday that Mr. Lubitz had passed the company�s health checks with �flying colors.�

�He was 100 percent flightworthy without any limitations,� Mr. Spohr said.

Click for more �

"There was a 'deliberate attempt to destroy the aircraft'..."

"... Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said Thursday about the Germanwings crash."

The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight �accelerated the descent� of the plane when he was alone in the cockpit, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said Thursday. That can only be done deliberately, he said. The co-pilot was alive until impact, Robin said, citing the sound of breathing in the cockpit.

The most plausible explanation of the crash is that the copilot, �through deliberate abstention, refused to open the cabin door � to the chief pilot, and used the button� to cause the plane to lose altitude....

ADDED: Here's a much more substantial report in the NYT report:

[Brice Robin] said it appeared that the intention of the co-pilot, identified as Andreas Lubitz, had been �to destroy the aircraft.�... He said there was no indication that this was a terrorist attack, and that Mr. Lubitz was not known to law enforcement officials...

The prosecutor said that the authorities had a full transcript of the final 30 minutes of the voice recorder. �During the first 20 minutes, the pilots talk normally,� he said, saying they spoke in a �cheerful� and �courteous� way. �There is nothing abnormal happening,� he said...

�You can hear the commanding pilot ask for access to the cockpit several times,� the prosecutor said. �He identifies himself, but the co-pilot does not provide any answer. You can hear human breathing in the cockpit up until the moment of impact,� he said.