'Miracle on the Hudson' plane preps for final trip

HARRISON, N.J. – The trays of food that never got served have been removed, along with some of the seat cushions and the mold from dried river mud. Aside from that, the damaged Airbus A320 jet is largely frozen in time from the day it splashed down safely on the Hudson River in 2009 and gave a country reeling from economic calamity something to cheer about.

The US Airways jet has spent the last two years in a hangar just outside Newark at J. Supor and Sons, a company that specializes in large-scale salvage and moving projects. On Friday, crews continued preparations for the plane's final journey, to an aviation museum in Charlotte, N.C., where it will be on permanent display.

The wings of the plane, which are detached, will be moved first, followed by the fuselage in the next two weeks, Carolinas Aviation Museum president Shawn Dorsch told The Associated Press. He said it will take about five days to drive the 120-foot fuselage from New Jersey to North Carolina on a large flatbed truck.

The museum, in the city where US Airways Flight 1549 was bound on Jan. 15, 2009, reached an agreement earlier this year to acquire the plane.

"We're really over the moon about this," Dorsch said Friday as he watched workmen climbing in and out of the back of the plane cabin via a ladder. "We're not the Smithsonian, so to be able to get something like this is like getting the space shuttle."

Flight 1549 had just taken off from New York's LaGuardia Airport when a flock of birds struck both engines, shutting them down. The pilot, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger considered trying to land at nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey but quickly realized he wouldn't be able to make it that far, at one point telling the control tower, "We're gonna be in the Hudson."

As passengers and crew lined the wings of the slowly-sinking plane, rescue boats rushed to the scene. The plane was submerged up to its windows when they arrived and managed to save all 155 people aboard.

The museum exhibit is scheduled to open next January and will feature taped interviews with passengers and crew. Dorsch said many passengers from the flight will be on hand when the plane arrives in North Carolina.

Getting the plane there is requiring a good deal of planning. Toll booths and low overpasses need to be avoided, and Dorsch said the plane may have to avoid the New Jersey Turnpike as a result. A proposed route will take the plane west from the outskirts of Baltimore bypassing most of Virginia, and then through West Virginia before reaching North Carolina, he said.

Report: Hincapie tells feds Armstrong used PEDs

NEW YORK – A report by "60 Minutes" says George Hincapie, a longtime member of Lance Armstrong's inner circle, has told federal authorities he saw the seven-time Tour de France winner use performance-enhancing drugs.

A segment of the report aired Friday night on the "CBS Evening News," one day after it broadcast an interview with another former member of Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team, Tyler Hamilton, who said he also used PEDs with Armstrong.

Hincapie has often been depicted as one of Armstrong's most loyal teammates and was with him for all seven Tour victories. In an interview last year, Armstrong said Hincapie was "like a brother to me."

Hincapie is among a number of former Armstrong teammates and employees who have appeared before a federal grand jury in Los Angeles investigating doping in cycling. Hamilton said he testified for six hours before the panel.

Armstrong has never tested positive and has steadfastly denied doping.

Using unidentified sources, "60 Minutes" reported that Hincapie testified that he and Armstrong supplied each other with the endurance-boosting substance EPO and discussed having used another banned substance, testosterone, to prepare for races. Citing the ongoing investigation, Hincapie declined to be interviewed by "60 Minutes," which will air its piece on the Armstrong investigation at 7 p.m. EDT Sunday.

Reached by The Associated Press at the Tour of California in Solvang, Hincapie said he didn't want to talk about the "60 Minutes" report.

"It's just unfortunate that that's all people want to talk about now," he said. "I'm not going to partake in any cycling-bashing. I have done everything to be the best I can be. ... I want the focus on the future of the sport, what it's done to clean itself up. I believe in cycling and want to support it."

Later, Hincapie released a statement through his attorney: "I can confirm to you that I never spoke with `60 Minutes.' I have no idea where they got their information. As I've said in the past, I continue to be disappointed that people are talking about the past in cycling instead of the future. As for the substance of anything in the `60 Minutes' story, I cannot comment on anything relating to the ongoing investigation."

Asked to comment on the newest "60 Minutes" report, Armstrong spokesman Mark Fabiani said: "We have no way of knowing what happened in the grand jury and so can't comment on these anonymously sourced reports."

The Hincapie and Hamilton revelations come a year after Floyd Landis, who had his 2006 Tour title stripped for using steroids, turned the focus of the feds' cycling investigation onto Armstrong, claiming he and Armstrong had both used drugs while on the U.S. Postal team.

But while Hamilton and Landis have credibility problems that Armstrong has pointed out — both cyclists denied using drugs for years before changing their story and implicating Armstrong — there aren't nearly as many issues with Hincapie.

The 37-year-old cyclist from New York has no known positive tests. He was on the Postal team even before Armstrong and, once Armstrong joined it, the two were frequent roommates on the road.

When Landis alleged that drug use was common on the U.S. Postal team — and included Hincapie among those who doped — Hincapie responded by saying, "It bothers me, because I've been doing this for 17 years and never heard anything bad about me."

After CBS aired the Hamilton interview Thursday night, the cyclist gave his 2004 Olympic gold medal back to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which said it is working with the International and U.S. Olympic committees on an investigation.

"60 Minutes" also released an excerpt from another Armstrong teammate, Frankie Andreu, who said he took banned substances because lesser riders he believed were doping were passing him during races.

"Things were just getting faster and faster and sprinters were getting over the big mountains and winning, you know, climbing stages," Andreu said in the interview. "There's 200 guys flying over these mountains and you can't even stay in the group. And it's just impossible to keep up. And it's like, 'What the hell's going on here?'"

After the Hamilton and Andreu interviews went public, Armstrong launched a website refuting the claims and calling into question the credibility of Andreu, Hamilton and Landis. He also posted a letter addressed to CBS News, calling the "60 Minutes" reporting "disgraceful journalism."

Meantime, a pair of Armstrong's former European teammates told the AP they had no knowledge of doping within the ranks of the U.S. Postal team.

Pascal Derame, a Frenchman who was on the 1999 Tour-winning team with Armstrong, said he never saw Armstrong dope, but also conceded he wasn't in the cyclist's inner circle. Steffen Kjaergaard of Norway, who rode for U.S. Postal in 2000 and 2001, said he didn't feel any pressure to dope and "didn't have any hints _`You should do this. You should do that.' "

Face of 49-Million-Year-Old Spider Revealed in 3-D

A very old spider has shown its face to the world for the first time in 49 million years, as scientists used high-tech X-ray methods to peer through the shroud of amber encasing the fossilized arachnid.

The report, published online April 28 in the journal Naturwissenschaften, confirms that the ancient spider is a member of the genus Eusparassus. These arachnids, also known as Huntsman spiders, live in the tropics and in Southern Europe today. From leg to leg, they can grow to a size of almost a foot (0.3 meters). Huntsman spiders are non-aggressive and non-toxic to humans, but they can deliver a painful bite.

The ancient spider fossil, which is housed in the Berlin Natural History Museum, is buried in a darkened chunk of amber and is barely visible. Using a method called X-ray computed tomography, researchers from Germany and the United Kingdom created three-dimensional images and movies of the spider inside the amber.

The resulting X-ray images reveal fangs, eyes and "pedipalps," or the feelers on the spider's face. 

The same method has been used to reveal other fossilized spiders.

What was around when this giant arachnid crawled what is now central Europe? Another giant, it seems, as researchers recently reported a hummingbird-size ant lived in what is now Wyoming at the time. The ancient Huntsman fossil was found in the 1800s. Naturalists then suspected that it was a Huntsman, but modern researchers thought it strange that such a large, active spider would get trapped in tree resin. By comparing the specimen to other fossils and modern spiders, however, they determined that the fossil really is a Huntsman.

"The research is particularly exciting because our results show that this method works and that other scientifically important specimens in historical pieces of darkened amber can be investigated and compared to their living relatives in the same way," study researcher David Penney of the University of Manchester said in a statement.