Accidental Deaths

Indonesia's poor aviation safety record came under renewed scrutiny Wednesday as officials said at least 98 people died in the crash of a military plane that was carrying troops and their families. Officials had initially said at least 68 people were killed after the plane caught fire and nose-dived into a residential neighborhood early Wednesday. Survivors said they heard at least two loud explosions and felt the C-130 Hercules wobbling from left to right as it plummeted to the ground.

A man was struck and killed Thursday by a train on light rail tracks near downtown Los Angeles. City Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said the accident occurred on the Metro Blue Line about 2:30 p.m., about three miles south of downtown. Officer Jason Lee of the Los Angeles Police Department said a 45-year-old man was trying to cross the tracks at an intersection when he was struck by the train. He died at the scene.

The death of a temporary employee who was crushed in a stampede of post-Thanksgiving shoppers at a Wal-Mart store could have been prevented, federal officials said Tuesday as they proposed fining the world's largest retailer $7,000 -- as much as it makes in about 18 seconds. The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it was citing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for inadequate crowd management after the Nov. 28 death of Jdimytai Damour at a Long Island store.

Thunder rumbled through the Southland and freak storms pelted the region with hail, lightning and unseasonable rain, killing two women in San Bernardino County, bedeviling aviation and touching off more than a dozen brush fires on the parched mountain slopes ringing Los Angeles County.

A fire last week that killed 44 children at a Mexican day-care center was caused by a damaged air conditioner in a neighboring warehouse, the attorney general said Wednesday. Authorities are investigating whether owners, employees or government officials could face negligence charges after the fire raged through the ABC day-care center in the northern city of Hermosillo on Friday, Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora said.

Toxicology tests have detected alcohol in the blood of the driver who was with Los Angeles Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart before a deadly collision in April. The Orange County Sheriff's Department says Courtney Stewart had consumed alcohol shortly before the crash but says it does not know how much. Stewart, along with Adenhart and Henry Pearson, died when their car was broadsided April 9 in Fullerton by a minivan allegedly driven by Andrew Gallo.

Autopsies have revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France crash victims, injuries that, along with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic, strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air, experts said Wednesday.

The operator of the Metro train that slammed into a stationary train apparently had activated the emergency brake in a failed effort to stop before the deadly collision, federal officials said Tuesday, as they searched for the cause of Monday's wreck that killed nine and injured 80. Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said the emergency brake was depressed, and the steel rails showed evidence that the brakes were engaged.

Local transit officials are closely monitoring the investigation of Monday's deadly train wreck in Washington, D.C., because major parts of Los Angeles' subway rely on an automated train control system similar to the one targeted for scrutiny by investigators.

Most of the youngsters don't go on to become lifeguards. Many of them sign up and, to their surprise, spend sometimes challenging half-days of instruction on the sand and in the sea. They sometimes go home both happy and somewhat worn out. But above all else, the Junior Lifeguards program in Huntington Beach -- like in other beach towns up and down the coast -- is supposed to be fun.