1:19 p.m. (1219 GMT 8:19 EDT)

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says work on identifying remains of the 150 victims from Tuesday's crash of the Germanwings flight has begun.

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1:00 p.m. (1200 GMT 8:00 a.m. EDT)

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says passengers on the doomed Germanwings flight could be heard screaming just before the crash.

He said the co-pilot's responses, initially courteous, became "curt" when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing of the Germanwings flight which crashed in France, killing 150 people.

He refused to give details on the pilot's religion or ethnic background. Prosecutor says German authorities were taking charge of the investigation of the co-pilot, whom he identified as Andreas Lubitz.

Robin refused to give details on the pilot's religion, saying: "I don't think it's necessarily what we should be looking for."

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12:57 a.m. (1157 GMT 7:57 EDT)

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says pounding could be heard on the door during the final minutes of the flight of the doomed Germanwings airliner as alarms sounded. He said the co-pilot "voluntarily" refused to open the door, and his breathing was normal throughout the final minutes of the flight.

He identified the pilot as a German national and who had never been flagged as a terrorist.

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12:51 p.m. (1151 GMT 7:51 EDT)

French prosecutor says Germanwings co-pilot appeared to want to "destroy the plane." Prosecutor says information was pulled from the black box cockpit voice recorder, but the co-pilot did not say a word once the captain left the cockpit. "It was absolute silence in the cockpit," he said.

Tuesday's crash in France killed 144 passengers and the crew of six.

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12:46 p.m. (1146 GMT 7:46 a.m. EDT)

French prosecutor says the co-pilot was alone at the controls of the Germanwings flight that slammed into an Alpine mountainside and "intentionally" sent the plane into the doomed descent, killing 150 people.

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12:14 p.m. (1114 GMT) 7:14 a.m. EDT

Duesseldorf airport says two special Lufthansa flights for relatives of the plane crash victims left for southern France Thursday morning. The German Parliament held a minute of silence for the victims, as did schools and companies in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state where Duesseldorf is located.

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11:39 a.m. (1039 GMT, 6:39 a.m. EDT)

A Lufthansa plane carrying 62 relatives of victims who will visit the plane crash site in the French Alps has arrived in Marseille on a flight from Barcelona.

Lufthansa says they will meet up with 14 others who decided not to fly to France and instead took an overnight bus from Barcelona provided by the airline.

The airline said the relatives will be taken together "to the closest point possible to the accident zone, taking into account the difficult access conditions." Part of the zone is closed to everyone except crash investigators and experts removing remains of the victims.

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10:42 a.m. (0942 GMT, 5:42 a.m. EDT)

An Airbus training video shows that the A320 cockpit has safeguards in case one pilot inside becomes incapacitated while the other is outside, or if both pilots inside are unconscious. Normally, someone trying to get into the cockpit requests access and a camera feed or peephole lets the pilot decide whether to accept or specifically deny access.

If there is no response, a member of the flight crew can tap in an emergency code again requesting access. If there is still no response, the door opens automatically. If, however, the person in the cockpit denies access after the emergency request, the door remains locked for five minutes, according to the Airbus video.

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8:55 a.m. (0755 GMT, 3:55 a.m. EDT)

Lufthansa says the co-pilot joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly after training, and had flown 630 hours.

The captain had more than 6,000 hours of flying time and been Germanwings pilot since May 2014, having previously flown for Lufthansa and Condor, Lufthansa said.

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8:20 a.m. (0720 GMT, 3:20 a.m. EDT)

An official with knowledge of the audio recordings from the Germanwings flight says one of the pilots apparently was locked out of the cockpit when the plane went down.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, told The Associated Press Thursday the details emerged from recordings recovered from the black box found among the debris of the pulverized aircraft.

Lufthansa on Thursday said it had no new information about the investigation and could neither confirm nor deny reports about the pilot.