Eglin Air Force Base

Federal investigators in Pensacola are looking into allegations that inmates at a minimum-security prison camp for white-collar criminals paid bribes to leave the camp and meet their wives and girlfriends, a prosecutor said. Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen Preisser confirmed the probe at Eglin Federal Prison Camp but would give no details.

A new cruise missile flew more than 190 miles, went through a window and destroyed a two-story test house at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in its final test flight, clearing the way for possible use in Iraq, an Air Force official said at Florida's Eglin Air Force Base. The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM, is next scheduled for operational tests before delivery to combat units in September, but it could be delivered sooner, said the official.

The Navy will begin launching Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Gulf of Mexico in September with the opening of an East Coast test range for Atlantic Fleet vessels that will carry the weapons, the Pentagon said Thursday. Test firings of the missiles over parts of California, Utah and Nevada have been conducted from submarines and ships in the Pacific since the late 1970s. The Tomahawk has a maximum 1,500-mile range.

Windows rattled and pets scattered as Navy jets dropped live bombs for a training exercise that was moved to Eglin Air Force Base, near Crestview in northwest Florida, because of protests against training drills on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico. Planes from the aircraft carrier George Washington dropped 62 tons of bombs on an Eglin test range Friday, the first and most intense day of live bombing during war games that continue through this week.

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. won contracts from the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration with a combined potential value of $712 million, equal to more than 20% of last year's sales. The Pasadena-based company won an eight-year, $404-million contract from the FAA to provide architectural and engineering design at FAA facilities, Jacobs said.

Two former space shuttle pilots will take over as head of the famed test pilot school and as ranking officer at Edwards Air Force Base in the Antelope Valley, Air Force officials said Wednesday. Maj. Gen. John P. Schoeppner Jr., 52, is retiring from the service and as commander of the Flight Test Center, the base's top job. Schoeppner has held that post since July, 1988. He will be succeeded Sept. 1 by Brig. Gen. Roy D. Bridges Jr., 47, a senior officer at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Convicted U.S. District Judge Walter L. Nixon Jr. has been released from a minimum security prison and sent to a halfway house, 15 months into a five-year prison term for lying to a grand jury. Federal prison officials said that Nixon, who served on the federal bench in Mississippi, was transferred last week from Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle to Volunteers of America Community Correction Center in New Orleans.

A Florida-based Air Force helicopter crashed and burned shortly after leaving Pope Air Force Base on Friday, killing all four crew members, authorities said. The UH-60 Blackhawk went down about four miles north of Pope while on a routine flight from the base to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, officials said. The exact nature of the mission was not immediately known, said Capt. Pat Englehardt, a public affairs officer at Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Fla., where the craft was based.

A 12-year-old autistic boy who spent four nights lost in a swamp that was a challenge even to Army Rangers was found Sunday naked and hungry but with just a few scratches. Taylor Touchstone was hospitalized in good condition, police said. A boater found Taylor bobbing along in East Bay River about 14 miles from where he vanished Wednesday on an outing in a remote area of Eglin Air Force Base.

An Air Force investigator has found that pilot error, and not an aircraft malfunction, caused the crash of an F-16 in May. Air Force investigators attributed the crash to "momentary complacency" on the part of the pilot, Joe Bill Dryden, who was killed. "The fact that this type of accident occurred at all was very surprising to all concerned," Col. Edward L. Daniel of Eglin Air Force Base said in a report made public Tuesday.