CAUTION JUSTIFIED - AT 7:26 A.M. ET:  Yesterday we urged readers to be cautious about a widely circulated report that two passengers aboard Air France flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic off Brazil last week, had the same names as two people on a terrorist watch list.  We noted that identical names do not always translate into identical people. 

Our caution was justified.  It was only the names that were identical:

Meanwhile, two terror suspects who died alongside 226 other passengers on the stricken jet have been ruled out as a cause of the disaster.

The two men only "shared the same name" as known Islamic radicals, posthumous security checks found.

Although their bodies have yet to be recovered, France's Interior Ministry confirmed that a "deep and wide-ranging investigation has allowed us to clear them."

We promised to follow the investigation into this crash because it was mysterious, and terrorism is always a concern.  The clearing of the two passengers does not absolutely rule out terrorism, only that the two passengers had no problematical backgrounds.

At the same time, the mysteries build.  The bodies of passengers have been found more than 50 miles apart, indicating that the plane broke up in the air in stages, not in one big burst.  But why the plane broke up is still unknown.

June 11, 2009