The pilot of a post-World War II aircraft died Saturday after a fiery runway crash at a West Virginia air show.

The crash came the day after a stunt pilot crashed his older-model plane at a Nevada air show on Friday, killing nine people.

In this most recent crash, the West Virginia Air National Guard said no spectators were injured on the ground. Only the pilot was killed.

The plan was part of the T-28 Warbird Aerobatic Formation Demonstration Team, known as the Trojan Horsemen. The group performs at air shows around the country.

“We were fortunate that the safety measures put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration ensured the safety of those on the ground,” Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard, said in a statement. “Right now our thoughts and prayers are with the family members of the deceased.”

Officials have not released the pilot’s name. The North American Aviation-built T-28 Trojan plane date back to 1949 test flights. Nearly 2,000 were built in the 1950s. It is a single-engine propeller training craft.

The Associated Press reported that the plane was built in 1958 and was owned by John Mangan of Concord, N.C.

According to the Journal of Martinsburg, the crashed T-28 was part of a six-plane formation. It lost control and crashed near a group of hangers as thousands of onlookers cried and prayed.

Three people were injured Friday morning in Lowell after a 2-vehicle crash involving a Trinity Ambulance Co. ambulance, police said.

Police responded to Branch and School streets at 9:30 a.m., said police Captain Randall Humphrey, in a statement.

According to Humphrey, the ambulance was responding to a medical emergency, but it collided with another vehicle at the intersection. The ambulance had its lights and siren activated at the time.

The ambulance driver, passenger, and the driver of the second vehicle were taken to local hospitals with non life-threatening injuries, Humphrey said. Their names were not released.

The driver of the second vehicle was cited for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle.

An 18-year-old Braintree woman faces several charges after an early morning crash allegedly caused by her texting at the wheel.

The teen, whose name was not released, will be charged with negligent operation of a motor vehicle, failure to keep within marked lanes and sending or receiving a text message while operating a motor vehicle after a 3 a.m. accident on Rt. 37 on Wednesday, said Braintree Deputy Police Chief Russ Jenkins.

She was apparently driving north when she veered across, into the southbound lane and struck a utility pole with her Nissan Pathfinder near Wampatuck Road. When rescuers arrived, the pole was resting on the roof of her car.

She was treated at South Shore Hospital with non-life threatening injuries, Jenkins said. No one else was injured.

The driver allegedly told police that she was texting before the crash.

State Police are investigating an early morning car crash in Walpole that killed one man and left another seriously injured.

A 2007 Dodge Caliber SUV was traveling northbound on I-95 when the driver, Jacob Whitman, 20, of Danvers, lost control. The vehicle rolled over several times, State Police said.

The passenger, Kevin McCarthy, also 20 of Danvers, was ejected and was then run over by two passing cars on the highway, police said.

McCarthy was pronounced dead at the scene.

Whitman suffered serious injuries and was transported to Boston Medical Center.

Police are working to determine a cause of the accident and are trying to figure out how Whitman lost control.

TORONTO — The southeastern Ontario town of Napanee is in mourning this week after two crashes involving the same local firefighters, including a bus that rolled over and killed a 49-year-old mother of three, devastated the small city.

Five local firefighters crashed near London, Ontario Saturday while on their way back to their hometown of Napanee from a firefighter fitness competition.

Some of the injured firefighters were taken to a local hospital, and then boarded a charter bus, along with family, to drive nearly 250 miles back to Napanee.

That bus then crashed on Sunday near Woodstock — just 30 miles from London — after it hit a highway guardrail, flipped over and rolled into a ditch. Darlene Goodfellow, the 49-year-old wife of one of the firefighters who was injured in the Saturday crash, was killed in the accident.

Twelve people were injured on Sunday, including four of the firefighters injured in the Saturday crash. Two of the men, including Goodfellow’s now-widowed husband, had surgery yesterday.

An outpouring of grief continues on social media sites like Twitter, where many continue to express their condolences, especially for Goodfellow and her family.

Ontario Provincial Police continue to investigate the crashes, though a cause has not yet been named.

Only two shows of note tonight: “Crash” premieres on Starz at 10, and “Eureka’s” finale is on SyFy (still not used to spelling it that way) at 9.

On Sunday, HBO restarts “Curb Your Enthusiasm” at 9 p.m. The popular show from the “Seinfeld” people is back. CBS is also airing the Emmy Awards at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Spike TV’s 10th season premiere of “The Ultimate Fighter” on Wednesday is the most watched episode of the fighting series ever, and the most watched original show ever on the Spike TV Network, drawing g4.1 million total viewers — almost wholly male, according to Nielsen.

The History Channel had some success with its “MysteryQuest” series, which also premiered Wednesday, drawing 1.2 million watchers.

Scroll down for updates. Last updated June 10 at 12:30 p.m. This piece will be updated several times a day.

Forty-one bodies have been found in the Atlantic thus far, two on Saturday, 14 on Sunday, eight on Monday, and 17 on Tuesday, all confirmed to have been on Air France Flight 447, Brazilian officials said Wednesday. Four have been confirmed male and four female.

The first set of bodies were found about 200 miles off the coast of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul archipelago. Tuesday’s findings were discovered 50 miles away.

Sixteen of the 41 bodies found will reach Recife today. The remains will be shipped to the Legal Medical Institute in Brasilia for investigation and identification, CNN reports. DNA samples must be taken from the relatives of the deceased to help with the investigation

The bodies of the other 25 found victims will go through the same process on Thursday, CNN reports.

Investigators hope they can use dental records and DNA samples to identify each of the found bodies.

Officials say the location of the found remains is not an indicator of the crash site, since the current in the area is very strong the bodies would no doubt have drifted far away since Monday. They are however unsure exactly how far the bodies drifted.

Just days before the first bodies were discovered, officials told families the possibility of finding any remains were extremely low. Relatives are now increasingly hopeful they will at least be reunited with their lost kin.

One CNN reporter noted that the bodies looked bloated after days of floating in the ocean.

Other items were recovered as well, about 700 miles off the coast of Brazil. They include part of the plane’s wing and tail, two seats, luggage, a life vest and a leather bag with a Flight 447 boarding pass still inside, according to CNN.

An oxygen mask was also found, which could reinforce the automated message’s claim that the plane was losing cabin pressure.

Brazilian officials say their number one priority is to find as many bodies as possible and to return them to grieving families. They are also placing much importance on finding pieces of the plane, which they say will aid in the crash investigation.

French nuclear sub arrives

France deployed a nuclear sub, the Emeraude, to help find the sunken black boxes. The sub arrived Wednesday and is actively searching for the downed plane.

Also, two American acoustic devices are to be placed aboard two French ships. The devices will try to pick up signals from the plane’s sunken recorders, still pinging at the bottom of the ocean.

The devices can search for the beacons to a maximum of 20,000 feet.

Improper speed could be plane crash culprit

Air France and French officials are in charge of finding out what caused the Air France plane to plunge into the Atlantic without any manual warning. It is currently being speculated that the plane broke up in flight.

However without the black boxes, investigators may never know for certain why the plane crashed.

The plane sent out four minutes of automated messages before going down. The messages suggest the plane may have been flying at an improper speed through a heavy storm, possibly due to malfunctioning Pitot tubes. Air France will soon replace Pitot tubes on all of its medium- and long-haul Airbus jets.

Malfunctioning Pitot tubes could have caused the Air France airliner to decelerate and accelerate too rapidly for a storm of such magnitude. The storm faced by the plane, reportedly, sucked up water from the ocean below with 100 mph updrafts. The wet air then rapidly froze at the plane’s high altitude, causing major turbulence and possibly resulting in the Pitot tubes sending improper speed readings to the jet’s on board computers.

Air France told its pilots’ unions that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless two of three Pitot tubes have been replaced, CNN reports.

Plane may have broken up in-air

CBC reports the Brazilian navy has found a large piece of the tail of Flight 447. The navy revealed the vertical stabilizer – which forms part of the tail -was recovered whole in the ocean.

William Waldock, an air crash investigation professor told the Associated Press that piece has what looked like lateral damage. This would reinforce the theory that the plane broke up in-air.

“If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces,” said Waldock, CBC reports. Further examining the piece can indicate from which direction the force that caused the stabilizer to detach from the Airbus came.

As questions about Airbus A330 safety arise, several airlines have rushed to its defense.

“It is a very robust airplane. It has been flying for many years, clocking hundreds of millions of hours and there is absolutely no reason why there should be any question over this plane. It is one of the best flying today,” said Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur.

However on Wednesday, an Airbus A320 flying from the Canary Islands to Olso, Norway had to make an emergency landing after the pilot detected a “problem with the engine.” There were reportedly 189 passengers on board, none of whom were injured. All are expected to take another flight, though many will perhaps inquire about the make and model of their new plane.

Scroll down for updates. Last updated on June 6 at 12:01 a.m.

French authorities are urging searchers to show “extreme prudence” before identifying wreckage found in the Atlantic as being from Air France Flight 447, after Brazilian workers incorrectly publicized they had found debris from the missing plane Thursday.

New reports indicate that Brazil’s declaration that debris from the missing Airbus A330 had been found was premature, and as of yet no official evidence has been retrieved from the missing plane, CBC reports.

French Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau said he regretted Brazilian search teams had publicized a recovery of debris from the plane Thursday. The recovered wooden cargo pallet was never on the plane, officials said. They’ve referred to the pallet as “sea trash,” of which there is a lot floating around in the ocean.

“It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane,” said Ramon Borges Cardoso, general director of the Brazilian Aerospace Control Department, in Recife, Brazil, CNN reports. “It is a pallet of wood that is utilized for transport. It is used in planes, but on this flight to Paris, there was no wooden pallet.”

Bussereau later expressed the need for caution. “French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent,” he said. “Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing.”

Earlier in the week searchers found two trails of wreckage, about 56 miles from one another. The debris included a life vest, pieces of metal, a jet seat, a 12 mile oil slick and what is believed to be a 23-foot piece of the plane. The items were picked up by helicopters and dropped onto three Brazilian naval vessels.

It has not yet been confirmed that any of these materials are from the missing plane, though it has been confirmed, by Cardoso, that the oil slicks are not. He said the slicks are too big and the quantity of oil found exceeded the amount on the plane, according to CNN.

“No material from the airplane was picked up,” he later added.

Probability of finding bodies low

Cardoso said Brazilian teams are focused on finding the bodies of the Flight 447 victims, though the likelihood of retrieval has decreased. “With every moment, the probability of finding the bodies decreases because more than 100 hours have passed since the accident and that possibility is more remote each time,” he said.

The black boxes have not yet been found. Without them investigators may never know exactly what happened to the plane and whether it was weather, electrical failure, foul play, or a combination that brought down the missing plane.

Currently, Bussereau said, French teams are focused on finding the underwater wreckage and the recorders. He added that with each passing day, the wreckage underwater will continue to sink into the mountainous underwater terrain and spread out as currents in the area are very strong.

Two mini-submarines will be deployed next week to aid in the investigation, one of which, the Nautile, was used to search the wreckage of the Titanic.

Speculation surrounding crash intensifies

A French agency investigating the crash cited brutal turbulence and an inconsistency in the speed readings as a probable factor in the crash, CBC reports.

Le Monde newspaper released a report yesterday claiming that the pilots of Flight 447 may have been flying at an incorrect speed through violent weather. According to the agency’s investigation, a plane must be flying at just the right speed through harsh conditions, too slow and the pilot could lose control, too fast and the plane could break apart.

However, it is not known at which speed the plane was traversing through the storm. The French Accident Investigation Agency said Thursday that the automated messages transmitted by the plane did not indicate speed, but did show conflicting readings on board, CBC reports.

Airbus recently issued reminders to pilots explaining what to do when on-air instruments give conflicting read-outs. They said the reminder in no way indicates that improper speed was the official cause of the Air France crash.

It is not officially known what caused the plane to crash and what role, if any, weather played in the tragedy.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared early Monday after submitting four minutes of automated messages that indicated electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure. It is believed the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people on board.

Updates:

CBC reports meteorologists say Air France Flight 447 entered a storm with 100 mph updrafts. The updrafts acted like a vacuum, sucking water up from the Atlantic, thousands of feet below. The moist air then quickly rose up to the plane’s altitude and immediately froze in the -40 F conditions.

The intense updraft would have also caused brutal turbulence.

Investigators are reportedly now checking whether the plane’s external probe that measures air pressure may have froze over, possibly because of the updraft, CBC reports.

Cardoso said debris believed to be from the plane has been spotted (the two wreckage trails found earlier) but cannot yet be retrieved or verified due to poor visibility and conditions, CBC reports.

“Aircraft are making visual recognitions on the different contacts but currently I am not sure that those contacts are really part of the aircraft,” said French air force Colonel Thierry Bon, reinforcing Cardoso’s claim.

The French navy announced it will be sending a nuclear submarine, the Emeraude, to aid other French and Brazilian vessels in the search. French Defense Minister Herve Morin said the Emeraude is equipped with surveillance apparatus that may help find the crashed plane’s recorder, according to CBC.

The sub isn’t expected to arrive on the scene until next week.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Air Force flew some of the victims’ families from Rio to Recife so they could take a tour and ask any questions they may have had. Any remains found will be taken to the base in Recife, a northeastern Brazilian city.

Much has been made of French prosecutors opening a manslaughter probe into the case. This is a routine occurence when French citizens die overseas.

Evening:

CNN reports a huge development. Apparently at least 12 planes traversed the sky along with Air France Flight 447, around the same time and in the same area, and none reported any seriously foul weather conditions.

Officials are now speculating that mechanical errors were the main cause of the crash, though weather is still thought to have played a part. One of the main crash theories is that the plane flew through bad weather at an improper speed, even though none of the dozen aircraft reported serious weather problems.

Aviation officials say that weather could still have played a part in the crash since patterns change very suddenly in the region and vary through short distances.

It has not yet been reported whether any of the other planes, besides the Air Comet plane headed by two Spanish pilots, saw Air France plunge into the Atlantic early Monday morning. Aviation officials also say that no single issue could have caused the crash of such a major airliner. Many things would have had to have taken place both on board and in the plane’s surroundings for it to die out and crash so suddenly.

The other planes landed safely at their destinations.

The mystery surrounding Air France Flight 447 continued to grow Thursday as conflicting reports from Spanish pilots and Brazilian experts regarding the cause of the plane’s crash emerged, CNN reports.

Two Spanish pilots say they witnessed an “intense flash” in the area where AF447 plunged into the Atlantic, while a Brazilian minister has all but ruled out a mid-air explosion.

Brazil’s defense minister says the oil slick in the ocean is evidence the plane did not break up until it hit the water. That would rule out the possibility that the plane split in half or exploded before crashing.

According to the two pilots who were flying an Air Comet flight from Lima to Lisbon, “”¦we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds.”

A report in France’s Le Monde newspaper suggests yet another possibility, that the pilots were not flying the correct speed while navigating through the intense storm. Airbus had recently sent out recommendations to pilots of A330 jets with new advice on how to traverse bad weather conditions. The pilots may not have followed this advice.

The number of conflicting reports adds nothing but uncertainty and frustration to an investigation that is already being viewed as hopeless by many officials.

Brazilian ship arrives as search continues

While experts were speculating, the first Brazilian ship arrived on the crash site. Planes still circling the area say they found more, larger debris, but have yet to see any bodies or remains. All 228 passengers and crew are believed to be dead.

The 23-foot piece of plane that was discovered yesterday is believed to be part of the fuselage or tail, BBC reports. CNN reports that because of the distance between debris findings, the search area has been widened to 300 miles.

Officials are still not optimistic that the recorders, which could be buried more than a couple miles below water, will ever be found. Their beacons can only transmit signals for 30 days.

Deep water submarines – key to the discovery and recovery of the black boxes – are not expected at the suspected crash site until next week.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared early Monday on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Reports came in on Wednesday that a bomb threat was called in on an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris a few days earlier. The threat was deemed fake and, at this time, there seems to be no connection between the AF447 crash and the threat.

French officials have invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to aid in the investigation, CNN reports. The NTSB accepted.

Messages give some clues

The missing plane sent a number of electronic messages before disappearing off radar. According to Air France, the plane first sent a message saying it was entering thick black clouds, which are normally associated with lightning and high winds. According to U.S. transportation experts these conditions are not uncommon off the Brazil coast.

Ten minutes later automatic messages were sent indicating that the autopilot had been disengaged and that a main computer on the plane was switched to alternative power, signaling electric failure.

Next, according to the messages, stabilization controls were damaged, the pilots could no longer see information like altitude or even speed (which could corroborate French testimony) and an alarm sounded, indicating the situation was getting much, much worse.

The flurry of messages ended with one indicating a loss of air pressure throughout the A330 and mass electrical failure.

The plane then crashed.

Update:

The Brazilian navy began retrieving pieces of Air France Flight 447 today. CNN reports helicopters were lifting debris and dropping them onto three Brazilian vessels.

“The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear,” said French military spokesman Christopher Prazuck, CBC reports. “That’s the priority now, the next step will be to look for the black boxes.”

The Porquoi Pas, a French research ship carrying mini-submarines, won’t arrive until June 12, Prazuck said. One of the subs, the Nautile, was used to explore the underwater wreckage of the Titanic.

Not much is happening today. No remains have been reported as of yet, though CBC reports soldiers at Fernando de Noronha airport were seen unloading body bags and a refrigerator truck from a military helicopter. Any remains, if found, would be taken there.

The biggest development came out of France today, when a report in French newspaper Le Monde reported the plane may have been flying at an improper speed through the storm. This is a possibility since electrical failures reportedly knocked out many of the planes measuring instruments.

Still, experts can only speculate until the black boxes are found. If they ever are.

Scroll down for updates.

French investigators say they are not optimistic the black box recorders from Air France Flight 447, now buried deep in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, may ever be found, CBC reports.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France’s accident investigation agency, told reporters that planes in the area had not yet picked up any signals from the beacons attached to the recorders. The beacons can only transmit electronic indicators for 30 days.

“We may be unable to find the black boxes due to circumstance and logistics,” said Arslanian, citing the underwater area’s mountainous landscape.

“This catastrophe – which is the worst that our country has witnessed in terms of aviation, took place in a very difficult region… so the investigation will not be easy… but we are not giving up” he added later, CBC reports. Experts say the underwater terrain could make this one of the most difficult recovery missions cine the Titanic.

French and Brazilian forces have deployed ships to survey the area. France has sent a research ship equipped with two mini-submarines that will be used to recover the wreckage from the ocean’s floor, in what is now being called a navy operation. Four Brazilian Navy ships carrying recovery equipment and divers will reach the site today. The ships are traversing rough waters to reach the site.

A U.S. navy surveillance plane is also aiding in the search.

CBC reports the accident agency will submit a report by month’s end, according to Alain Bouillard, who is leading the exploration. The report will be submitted regardless of whether the black boxes are found.

Experts explore possibilities

According to several experts it is highly unlikely the recorders were destroyed, as they are designed to survive high impact and intense underwater pressure and conditions.

Arslanian said the end result of the investigation could however prove to be disappointing. “I cannot rule out the possibility that we might end up with a finding that is relatively unsatisfactory in terms of certainty,” he said.

Understanding exactly what caused the plane to crash will be very difficult without the recorders, which, if found, will hopefully provide some clues as to what happened on board. Without the recorders however it is possible the cause of the crash may never be revealed.

Arslanian also told reporters that a team is currently studying the Airbus’s maintenance records and there are so far no indications that anything was wrong with the jet before it took off.

Investigators are still speculating about the conditions under which the plane plunged into the Atlantic. They have not yet decided whether the plane hit the water intact or broke up in air before impact.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared Monday while on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after sending out a series of automated messages indicating electrical failures. No manual distress signals were sent by the pilot.

On Tuesday it was confirmed the plane crashed in the ocean after investigators spotted a trail of plane debris in the water 400 miles off the coast of the Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands. The debris was later confirmed to have belonged to the missing plane.

It is believed that all 228 people on board Flight 447 died in the crash. A memorial service took place Wednesday at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni were in attendance.

Click here to read yesterday’s developments.

Updates:

Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral says search planes have located more debris, including an approximately 23-foot long piece of the plane, BBC reports.

The site, about 56 miles south of the other field of wreckage, contains 10 metal objects scattered in a three mile radius and an oil slick that has spread about 12 miles, Amaral said.

Soon after that announcement, French officials provided their first update at a press conference that took place at an airport north of Paris. Arslanian said signals from the black boxes have not yet been picked up.

In order to find the capture the low frequency signals he says the team will have to narrow their search to a very limited range. Officials are still not hopeful the recorders will ever be found.

BBC reports Brazil has taken charge of the search for the wreckage, while France will focus on the crash investigation. French and Brazilian ships, struggling to navigate through high seas, have not yet arrived at the site.

Air France has said it received a bomb threat directed towards a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Paris on May 27, just a few days before Flight 447 went missing, The Economic Times reports. There seems to be no connection between the threat (which was rendered fake after teams searched the plane) and Flight 447′s disappearance.

Experts still speculate that several factors contributed to the plane’s crash, since being struck by lightning alone would not have been enough to bring down the Airbus. Hail, cyclonic weather patterns and severe winds could have all potentially played a part in the disaster.

Some are also wondering whether the chief pilot was flying the plane when the problems arose, since pilots on long-distance flights take turns in order to stay alert and focused.

Memorial service begins

Back in Paris, hundreds of mourners gathered at Notre Dame Cathedral for today’s private memorial service. The cathedral’s bell tolled 228 times, once for each victim of the tragic Flight 447 crash.

The CBC reports French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke with the victims’ family members in private at the ceremony. Sarkozy reportedly said arrangements will be made for the families to fly over the debris and suspected crash site if it is something they feel necessary during the grieving process.

The Pope sent a message of condolence to the mourners. It was played at the memorial service.

]]> http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/features/world-news/flight-447s-black-boxes-may-never-be-found-investigators-say/feed/ 0 http://blastmagazine.com/archive/the-news/postal-worker-arrested-after-driving-crashing-mail-truck-without-a-license/ http://blastmagazine.com/archive/the-news/postal-worker-arrested-after-driving-crashing-mail-truck-without-a-license/#comments Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:55:17 +0000 John M. Guilfoil http://blastmagazine.com/?p=12776

If you were driving past the Boston Herald building Thursday afternoon in the area of the I-93 on-ramp, you may have noticed the banged up United States Postal Service vehicle in the guardrail and the cops investigating creating a slight traffic headache.

Turns out, a postal worker crashed the truck after, he told police, he was cut off by another driver. But when cops began investigating, the postal worker couldn’t produce a driver’s license.

According to police, a computer check revealed that his license had been suspended and that there was a warrant out for his arrest.

Roy Triolo, 36, of Revere was arrested.

You’d have a lot of be fired up about if you were Hayley Marie Norman this year. An up-and-coming actress, Norman has and will continue to show her diversity and talent as an actress in 2009, including roles in the TV series “Crash,” an upcoming film “Nephilim,” and “Fired Up,” which is in theatres now.

“Fired Up,” released on February 20th, is a teen comedy about two high school jocks who decide to ditch football camp to join the girls at cheer camp, is Hayley Marie Norman’s first major film, and might have been as fun to film to make as it was to watch.

“Filming was so fun because before we started, we got to go to cheer camp for a month,” Norman said on preparing for the film.

Although she didn’t have any previous experience with cheering, Norman found the situation a little ironic: “It’s so amazing how things have come full circle – I had to choose between cheer camp and acting and I always felt bad about having to choose.”

Just as brutal as any cheer camp could be, the actors had to begin doing stunts on the very first day; nevertheless, joined by professional dancers and cheerleaders, the cast somehow came out of camp (and filming) unscathed.

“We all did come out with tons of bruises,” she said, “but how did nobody get seriously hurt?”

Despite Hayley’s obvious sense of humor, she can hang with the best when it comes to drama. Proving herself in a recurring role on the TV series “Crash,” a spin-off of the Oscar-winning film, Hayley will have a chance to show her talent in a second season.

As far as what can be expected for the upcoming season, Hayley only said, “you never really know what’s going to happen, but my character is definitely a bad girl.”

In Hayley’s next project, an action flick titled “Nephilim,” she will portray an angel.

“What it really boils down to is good versus evil,” Norman said. “All of the biblical stories you hear about are personified by these characters in the movie.”

Hayley also has her eye on a future book to movie adaptation: “The Garden of Last Days,” set to release in 2011. “I’m going to start lobbying for it now,” she laughed.

With her recent successful and upcoming projects, Hayley Marie Norman is definitely seeing opportunities open up to her, and will most likely continue to do so in the future. She’s in love with the art, and will cause audiences to fall in love with her as a result.

“I honestly feel really blessed to be in the position I’m in. I love working, I love making movies, I love becoming a family with the different casts and crews you work with – it’s so fun for me,” Norman said. “It’s really my life right now, it’s sort of my business, and besides that I’m really down to earth girl.”

In a way, Crash of the Titans represents everything about Playstation 2 in 2008 — still bloody good, but there’s not a whole lot more to expect out of it.

Even without its original creator, Crash Bandicoot is still a strong video game franchise, and it’s the best thing Sierra has going for it right now.

“The evil Neo Cortex has turned the creatures of Crash’s island into horrific mutations! But by using a whole arsenal of new combat moves, Crash can hijack the monsters and gain control of their awesome powers.”

Radical Entertainment has come in to develop Crash games, and “Titans” is a hearty effort, though fairly predictable. Crash and Neo Cortex crossed paths in 2004′s Crash Twinsanity and are back to do battle once again.

The best part of this game is that you build up your power by attacking Cortex’s monsters. Once you build up enough star power, you can hop on the monster and use it as a makeshift mount, employing its attacks on other enemies. It’s a pretty original tactic, and there are plenty of these monsters to dive up on.

While you don’t get the same experience as the original PSX classics, Radical does show that they have the potential to bring Crash Bandicoot back to glory, and it will be interesting to see how they handle the Playstation 3 this year.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2
Launch Date: October 4, 2007

Playability: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars