plagiarism? what we are learning today from harvard insiders. plus, the deadly airport runway inferno. two lanes collide, five on one jet nearly killed, 400 escaped alive. how did the planes and up on the runway in the first place? and the senior member of hamas assassinated at an explosion in beirut. is the situation in the middle east about to get even worse? happy new year, and welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper, and we start out with raking news. harvard university s claudine gay is stepping down as president, resigning after just about six months on the job. the student journalist who broke the story of her stepping down for the harvard crimson newspaper noted that this is the shortest presidential tenure in harvard s august history. it has been quite a tumultuous month for the now former present. when asked for calling for the genocide of would violate harvard campuses code of conduct. yes or no. it can be, depending on the context. from that, to multiple allega
story from washington. pete, can you give us the latest on what we know, how long this pilot has been in the air, and what the danger is to the public at this point? reporter: well, sara, we know that this plane took off from the tupelo regional airport around 5:00 a.m. central time, 6:00 a.m. on the east coast. we re coming up on the plane being in the air for about five hours now. the plane is a king air c-90. you can see it there, that s a small twin-engine turboprop airplane. it seats between six and eight people. it can go about 250 miles an hour. the question now is how this will end, how this story will end. will the airplane run out of fuel? we ve been talking to sources who fly king airs and they tell me it can only fly for between four and six hours if the plane is fully loaded with fuel. that is the track from flighfl flightaware. you can see the plane took off from touupelo airport, circled e airport at a relatively low altitude, then continued northbound over t
however, four crew members on the coast guard plane were killed. the best way to determine who is responsible, pete, your some new reporting on air traffic control calls. tell us more. this really sort of lays out the japan airlines crew was told to land, and they read back that transmission to air traffic control. it really sort of paints a picture here that maybe there was confusion on the part of the coast guard aircraft. why they were in that spot is still unclear, and it s something that investigators really want to know as they dig into this. 379 people on board, airbus eight 350, slammed right into this from the japan coast guard. the twin turboprop airplane, big questions now about who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. and it is something that we ve seen over and over again in the united states. it s a wake-up call around the
story from washington. pete, can you give us the latest on what we know, how long this pilot has been in the air, and what the danger is to the public at this point? reporter: well, sara, we know that this plane took off from the tupelo regional airport around 5:00 a.m. central time, 6:00 a.m. on the east coast. we re coming up on the plane being in the air for about five hours now. the plane is a king air c-90. you can see it there, that s a small twin-engine turboprop airplane. it seats between six and eight people. it can go about 250 miles an hour. the question now is how this will end, how this story will end. will the airplane run out of fuel? we ve been talking to sources who fly king airs and they tell me it can only fly for between four and six hours if the plane is fully loaded with fuel. that is the track from flighfl flightaware. you can see the plane took off
take off, or was it? bring in pilot and aviation expert when you listen to the air traffic conversation. it s a bizarre conversation with a person who just stole an airplane and likely suicidal. kudos to the air traffic controllers. they did everything they could in the right way, trying to keep him talking. trying to keep him away from the populated areas of seattle and they did. they kept asking him to make left turns under the auspices of saying they could lose radio contact but trying to bring him over the water. a turboprop airplane.