, sending 12 people to the hospital. A sightseeing

WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — As the World War II bomber Heaven Can Wait was hit by enemy fire off the Pacific island of New Guinea on March 11, 1944, the co-pilot managed a final salute to flyers in an adjacent plane before crashing into the water.All 11 men aboard were killed. Their remains, deep below the vast sea, were designated as non-recoverable.

Yet four crew members’ remains are beginning to return to their hometowns after a remarkable investigation by family members and a recovery mission involving elite Navy divers who descended 200 feet (61 meters) in a pressurized bell to reach the sea floor.Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan, the radio operator, was buried with military honors and community support on Saturday in his hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York, more than eight decades after leaving behind his wife and baby son.The bombardier, 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly, was to be buried Monday in Livermore, California, where he grew up in a ranching family. The remains of the pilot, 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson, and navigator, 2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick, will be interred in the coming months.

The ceremonies are happening 12 years after one of Kelly’s relatives, Scott Althaus, set out to solve the mystery of where exactly the plane went down.“I’m just so grateful,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s been an impossible journey — just should never have been able to get to this day. And here we are, 81 years later.”

The Army Air Forces plane nicknamed Heaven Can Wait was a B-24 with a cartoon pin-up angel painted on its nose and a crew of 11 on its final flight.

They were on a mission to bomb Japanese targets when the plane was shot down. Other flyers on the mission were not able to spot survivors.Novelist John Banville poses in front of Tiziano’s ‘The Emperor Charles V at Muhlberg’ at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Novelist John Banville poses in front of Tiziano’s ‘The Emperor Charles V at Muhlberg’ at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul White)The painting — a paragon of Baroque sophistication — has fascinated generations of artists. Banville, with his love of poetic detail, is no different.

“I find that ‘Las Meninas’ is always a surprise to me, and a challenge,” Banville told The Associated Press during a recent stroll through the Prado.“It’s the enigma of it, the strangeness of it. Every time I look at it, it becomes stranger again,” he said, surrounded by throngs of museumgoers. “Velázquez looks at you, saying, ‘Look what I did. Would you have been able to do anything like this?’”