oh, no, not me, it s somebody else. jay rollins, thanks so much. this is a real mystery. lot of foreign intrigue as well. thanks for being with us today. the president s decision to send up to 50 special forces into syria against isis, will it make a difference? is it too little? is it too much? i m joined by senator ben cardin, ranking democrat on the foreign relations committee. thanks for being with us. good to be with you. your initial reaction to what the white house ultimately called just a change of tactic, not a change of strategy but which others are saying is definitely not just an adjustment? i m very concerned about this. look, we all want to do everything we can to stop isil, to degrade it, to destroy it, but we have got to be very careful about ground troops in syria. there are two concerns we have in syria. one is isil, one is the aad regime. some players are playing both sides and it s very difficult
good day. i m andrea mitchell in washington. russian officials have not yet identified the cause of saturday s metrojet plane crash in egypt that killed all 224 people on board, almost all russians including a number of children. airline officials said today an external impact is the only probable cause of the crash. they re trying to rule out technical flaws or human error. nbc chief global correspondent joins me from cairo. it s understandable this airline would try to rule out anything that would imply or suggest any problem that they could have prevented, but what do we know so far? reporter: well, it s a very good question, because separating what we know from what we don t know is absolutely crucial. at the moment we know that the plane fell apart in midair and we know there was no distress call from the pilot, so it was a sudden and catastrophic plunge to earth. beyond that, there s not a great deal that we know, but we have got the two black boxes that were being wo
who died when a russian plane crashed saturday morning. investigators are scouring the crash site for clues as to what brought down the airbus a321. the flight recorders have been recovered and are being evaluated. the plane coming down in an area that s seen fighting between egyptian forces and islamist insurgents. they say militants lacked the weapons to do that. nevertheless, three major airlines, air france, lufthansa and emlirates all announcing they d halt flights over sinai for the time being. germany issued a warning for flight routes in the southeast sinai. bill neily is in cairo for us at this hour. what are we hearing in terms of why they have decided to stop flying over this area? well, it s an abundance of caution, really, richard. the claim by isis that they shot down the plane has been widely discounted by both russian and egyptian ministers because it s simply not thought isis or any group has the missile capable of shooting a plane down at 31,000 feet. what
but the left forward one, the right forward one and the rear on the right were all opened. those three. we can see the forward chute. we just had a close-up of it there. we see now as the camera goes back for a wider shot that the left rear slide was not deployed. then we see the other side, which is the clean side of this flight that was uninjured by any type of fire damage both sides have been deployed. but jay, the reports also are from another aircraft that this was leaking fuel as it was taxiing before the fire started. so explain the dynamic and also the quickness of how something like that can turn into something much like we re witnessing right now so quickly, especially the origination of the fuel leak. how come that wasn t found or determined in any type of proper safety check before departure? all right. there s a number of questions there. basically these engines are very
again, it s all very early. we re still trying to determine some of the facts here. kerry sanders reporting there at the airport for us. great work. thank you, sir. we re joined on the phone by jay rollins, a former american airlines pilot. he s flown this type of aircraft befo before. have you been able to see the images of this boeing 767? what does it look like to you where this fire may have originated? yes, i have seen the images. it appears the left-hand engine is the one in question. you were asking about the chute deployed. there are actually chutes there s a chute area over the wings as well. it does not appear that they were deployed. on the left side with the engine problem, the left rear does not appear to be deployed.