“Yosemite National Park to expand by 400 acres”

Thanks to a generous land donation, Yosemite National Park will grow by an additional 400 acres of wetlands and meadow habitat on its western boundary. It is the largest planned expansion for the California park since 1949. The land, known as Ackerson Meadow, was purchased from private owners for $2.3 million, and then officially presented to Yosemite National Park on Thursday. The new addition encompasses forests and meadows that blossom with wildflowers. It's also home to several types of wildlife, including songbirds and black bears. Yosemite National Park Superintendent Don Neubacher called it a "generous donation" that will "preserve critical meadow habitat.” Yosemite is the country's fourth most popular national park. Located in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, the park is home to Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America, and rock formations such as Half Dome and El Capitan.

In Other News A flight to Malaysia from Sydney accidentally flew to Melbourne instead because its pilot entered the wrong coordinates, an Australian aviation investigation report has found. Carrying 212 passengers, the AirAsia flight bound for Kuala Lumpur, was incorrectly guided to Melbourne after the pilot manually entered the wrong coordinates into the flight's onboard navigation systems. When manually entering the coordinates of the plane's position, the pilot incorrectly entered the longitude from a sign outside the cockpit window as 01519.8 east (15 degrees 19.8 minutes east) instead of 15109.8 east (151 degrees 9.8 minutes east), the report said. "This resulted in a positional error in excess of 11,000 kilometers (6,835 miles), which adversely affected the aircraft's navigation systems and some alerting systems," the report said. President Barack Obama has nominated a Washington lawyer to the US District Court bench who would become the country's first Muslim-American federal judge if he is confirmed. Abid Riaz Qureshi is a lawyer at the Latham & Watkins law firm in Washington, specializing in health care fraud and securities violations, according to the White House. Obama nominated him Wednesday to serve on the US District Court for the District of Columbia.