Searchers

In July, a team searching for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane was wrapping up an expedition and feeling downhearted.  They had come away with apparently little to show for their $2.2 million worth of efforts. But now those searchers says high-definition video from that trip shows promising evidence.  "We have man-made objects in a debris field," Ric Gillespie told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Monday morning. And those objects are "in a location where we had previously reasoned where airplane wreckage should be. " PHOTOS: Amelia Earhart Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were lost on their July 2, 1937, flight from New Guinea to Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean.

Medical examiners have removed two more bodies from the square-mile debris field of last month's devastating Washington state landslide, pushing the death toll to 39 on Wednesday. The three bodies recovered this week have not been identified, keeping the number of people missing at seven. If all those missing are eventually confirmed dead, at least 42 people will have died in the swift collapse of a 600-foot-high hillside. The gush of mud, clay and silt spilled across a river and wiped out homes and a highway in its path, leaving behind hundreds of acres of muck that searchers have been trudging through for 3 1/2 weeks.

An ambitious, five-day undersea search of Santa Monica Bay for the last missing Womens Airforce Service Pilot from World War II ended Saturday with the whereabouts of Gertrude Tompkins' P-51D Mustang fighter plane still a mystery. But divers found the wreckage of two civilian planes -- a light aircraft and a helicopter, they announced Saturday evening. In April, while doing a preliminary search for Tompkins, they discovered an Air Force T-33 jet trainer that had been missing since Oct. 15, 1955.

BEIJING - Investigators looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have put away their towed pinger locator and are about to call off searches for surface debris. Now, it's all up to a little yellow robotic submarine to find the missing Boeing 777 in an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles. Technicians aboard the Australian ship Ocean Shield on Monday afternoon deployed the Bluefin-21 underwater autonomous vehicle in the Indian Ocean, sending it almost three miles down to the seabed and using its side-scanning sonar arrays to look for wreckage from the plane.  “It is time to go underwater,” retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search from Perth, Australia, said in announcing the new phase of operations.  Unless the robot sub gets lucky, the process could take a while: The U.S. Navy, which lent the Bluefin-21 to the search team, said mapping the area where the plane most likely disappeared could take six weeks to two months.  The 16-foot, 1,650-pound sub moves at a walking pace and will be searching an area of about 600 square miles.

Searchers in a helicopter may have located the bodies of three climbers atop a mass of frozen chunks of snow that cascaded off Mt. Rainier's treacherous north side, a park spokesman said Thursday. It was too dangerous to send rangers to retrieve the bodies, but officials believe that they are Craig Adkison, 37, of Kirkland, Wash., David R. Kellokoski, 30, of Tahoe Paradise, Calif., and Greg Remmick, 32, of Citrus Heights, Calif., park spokesman Cy Hentges said.

The wreckage of an Afghan passenger plane missing since Monday has been discovered in rugged mountain terrain with no sign of survivors, officials said Thursday. There were 44 people aboard the Antonov-24 twin turboprop, including an American and three Britons. The flight, operated by private Pamir Airways, crashed on a domestic run from the northern city of Kunduz to the capital, Kabul. NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which helped with the search, said it would aid Afghan security forces in recovery efforts.

The Coast Guard recovered the bodies of three men whose 24-foot recreational boat was found capsized near Santa Cruz Island after a family member reported it missing Sunday morning, officials said. Searchers spotted the body of a fourth man who was on the boat but were unable to recover it, Petty Officer Adam Eggers said Sunday night. None of the men was wearing a life jacket. Eggers said he was prohibited by Coast Guard policy from releasing the victims' names. No one answered the phone at the Santa Barbara County coroner's office, which is involved in the case.

Take heart, Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis searchers--Napoleon has resurfaced in Texas. IRA M. LANDIS Los Angeles

A Westminster man who had disappeared Thursday while hiking in Yosemite National Park was found injured but alive Tuesday. He told rescue teams that he had fallen about 50 feet. Park spokeswoman Lisa Dapprich said that Michael Kalantarian, 30, was found in a forested area on the lower west face of Mt. Clark about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. Searchers said he appeared to have sustained a broken ankle and two broken wrists and to be suffering from frostbite.

Searchers have found the bodies of three snowboarders missing since early December in a skiing area northeast of Mt. Rainier. Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said searchers advantage of melting snow and searched Saturday in the area where the three disappeared. Authorities planned to airlift the bodies from the remote site in the Cascades near Crystal Mountain. Kevin Carter, 26, Devlin Williams, 29, and Phillip Hollins, 41, all of the Seattle area, are believed to have been killed by an avalanche.

BEIJING - Crews continued searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean west of Australia on Tuesday as authorities emphasized ramped-up efforts to determine what happened to the airliner that went missing March 8. Officials said an Australian military ship towing a pinger locator - which can scan the sea for the sounds of a beacon attached to the plane's flight data recorder - left port for the search zone Monday night. It was expected to arrive in the search area about 1,250 miles west of Perth, Australia, on Thursday.

BEIJING -- The search and rescue teams working off the west coast of Australia seeking the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 discovered what oceanographers have been warning: Even the most far-flung stretches of ocean are full of garbage. For the first time since the search focused on the south Indian Ocean 10 days ago, the skies were clear enough and the waves calm, allowing ships to retrieve the “suspicious items” spotted by planes and on satellite imagery. But examined on board, none of it proved to be debris from the missing plane, just the ordinary garbage swirling around the ocean.

ARLINGTON, Wash. -- Washington officials on Friday pleaded for patience from a heartbroken public as they continued work to identify the dead from the mudslide that officially killed 17 when it tore through the rural town of Oso. At a morning news conference, Snohomish County Fire Chief Travis Hots told reporters that the confirmed death toll remained at 17 but repeated that it was expected to increase as the medical examiner's office completed identifications...

From the co-founder of Flickr comes a new travel app that's three parts photo-inspired sticky notes and one part treasure map. Name: Findery Available for: Website and iPhone, iPad and iPod touch What it does: Geo-tags "notes" all over the world connecting people with places, and places with stories. Create your own "notemaps," or list of notes. Even better - discover the world through other travelers' lists. Cost: Free What's hot: Lots of hyper-local travel apps point out brag-worthy hotspots, but Findery delves deeper, encouraging travelers and locals to imprint their memories and stories on a place.

An hours-long search for a puppy trapped in a drainage pipe at a Newport Coast home ended sadly Thursday night, authorities said. The 7-week-old male puppy named Hunter was reported trapped at about 6:53 p.m., according to a news release from the Newport Beach Fire Department. "Unfortunately, based off of our experience there yesterday ... we don't think the dog survived," Fire Capt. Mike Liberto said Friday. A fire engine and the department's Urban Search and Rescue Team responded to the scene, where crews used specialized equipment like confined-space optical cameras to search for the missing canine, Liberto said.

The teenage hiker rescued from Trabuco Canyon on Wednesday night after being missing since Easter told authorities he thought his friend had already been rescued. Nicholas Cendoya, 19, was found confused and dehydrated about half a mile from where he and his hiking companian, Kyndall Jack, 18, had parked their vehicles on Sunday. He was alone and authorities intensified their search Thursday for Jack, who remains missing. When Cendoya was found, he thought Jack had also been saved, said the girl's father, Russ Jack.

The Kern River claimed two more lives this week. Searchers located the body Wednesday of a man who drowned while on an inner-tube on the Kern with his sister. Anthony Haywood, 27, of Redondo Beach, and his sister Robin, Robin, 20, an airwoman stationed a Edwards AFB, were reported missing last Saturday morning. The woman's body was found Tuesday.

A skier is dead after an avalanche at Utah's Snowbird resort. A spokeswoman for University Hospital in Salt Lake City said the woman died after being pulled off Mt. Baldy. She was in her 20s. Searchers initially feared other skiers might have gotten buried. But Sheriff Jim Winder said he was confident the woman was the only victim.

The teenage hiker still missing in the Trabuco Canyon area of Orange County apparently couldn't keep up with her friend as the two tried to make their way out of the brush, possibly because of a twisted ankle, her father said. Russ Jack told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday morning that some information had been gleaned from his daughter's friend, Nicholas Cendoya, 19, who was rescued Wednesday night. Cendoya and Kyndall Jack, 18, called authorities Easter Sunday and said they were lost.

Volunteers who are helping authorities search for two missing hikers in Orange County are being urged to take extra precautions of their own. In a statement released by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, authorities said individuals who want to contribute to the effort should "be prepared, be safe and have a plan. " "When hiking in wilderness areas, be prepared for the unexpected," the statement said. Kyndall Jack, 18, and Nicholas Cendoya, 19, both of Costa Mesa, got lost on Easter Sunday, telling authorities late that evening that they were about a mile from their car in Holy Jim Canyon.