BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- A small plane collided with a glider over southern Germany Saturday afternoon, and all six people aboard the two aircraft were killed, police said.
The two aircraft collided near the town of Donauwoerth, northwest of Munich, just after 2 p.m. (1200 GMT) and crashed into fields.
The single-engined Cessna -- carrying four skydivers in addition to the pilot -- and the glider, with only the pilot on board, were flying at 1,200 meters (3,900 feet) at the time of the accident. Weather conditions were good.
The cause of the collision wasn't immediately clear, said Josef Baur, a spokesman for police in Donauwoerth. German air accident investigators sent two experts to the scene.
Police had no immediate information on the identity of the victims.

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) -- Emergency officials discovered the wreckage Saturday of a helicopter that crashed earlier this week in the Russian Far East. All 20 people aboard were killed.
The helicopter was found about 70 miles southeast of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the rugged, volcano-covered Kamchatka Peninsula, said Vitaliy Petritsa, duty officer at the Far Eastern regional emergency situations department.
Among the dead were Igor Farkhutdinov, governor of the oil-rich Sakhalin region, and top regional officials and business leaders. They had been traveling to the Kuril Islands chain when the helicopter disappeared Wednesday.
Search crews worked into the night to identify the bodies.
The cause of the crash was yet known. Helicopters are a major form of transport in many remote parts of the Russian Arctic and Far East, but the country's fleet is aging and crashes are common.
President Vladimir Putin ordered a state commission to investigate the crash, the Kremlin press service said.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I thought you'd all like to know

Sad but s**t happens.
I feel the first one was avoidable. Gliders & powered aircraft don't mix & shouldn't be in the same airspace. I never really liked helos. They're OK all the time everything works. If something drops off they usually fall out of the sky.

So sad.  I think that anyone in real world aviation knows and accepts the risks, only hoping for the best possible outcome.

As I said with the Columbia disaster, what makes these people heroes is that they did accept the risk, and they went anyway.

Their deaths are necessary, though, so as to improve flaws in the system for the rest of us.

God bless.

  I found out today that the pilot of the plane in the story I listed above was one of my work buddies Fathers best friends, he also knew the pilot and said he was one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet.
  Just kind of weird how close to home some of these things can hit.