Cockpit recordings have been recovered from the jet involved in a collision just outside of Washington, DC, a German far-right party is participating in mainstream politics for the first time since World War Two and researchers are studying nuclear weapons at an underground facility in Nevada.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Denice Rios, Ryland Barton, Gisele Grayson, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas, Claire Murashima and Chris Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent and our technical director is Stacey Abbott. Our executive producer is Kelley Dickens. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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We're starting to learn the identities of crew members on board the flights that collided just outside Washington, D.C.
Cockpit recordings from the jet have also been recovered. What can they tell investigators about why this happened?
I'm Michelle Martin, that's A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. The German parliament passed a motion to restrict immigration by turning back asylum seekers at the border. It narrowly passed with the support of the country's extremist far-right party. Lawmakers' cooperation with them broke a long-standing taboo against working with the far-right.
What does it mean that these extremists are now participating in mainstream politics?
And we pay a visit to a top-secret lab underneath the Nevada desert where nuclear weapons are tested and studied. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. Federal investigators have retrieved the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from the American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter Wednesday night.
The crash, which occurred over the Potomac River, killed 67 people. We're also beginning to learn the identities of some of the crew on those aircraft.
NPR's Frank Langfitt has been following this story. Frank, so what will investigators be hoping to find out from the black boxes of that regional jet?
Yeah, A, I think the final conversations in the cockpit, obviously before the two aircraft collided, they'll also be able to see about the plane's performance, data points, and including, and I think this is really important, the altitude of the plane leading up to and at the time of the collision.
It's not yet clear how these two aircraft, who are supposed, of course, to pass at a safe distance, how they ended up in the same place at the same time. Of course, also going to need the Army Black Hawk black box to be able to compare. And a question that's really coming up, I think, particularly yesterday, talking to people at the NTSB is, was that helicopter on the right flight path?
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