Coincidence

Did you notice that both the General Motors announcement to close 11 Midwest auto plants and President Reagan's veto of the Clean Air Act were held in abeyance until immediately AFTER the election. No coincidence? FRED R. HOFELD Los Angeles

KABUL, Afghanistan - On the day that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived in Afghanistan for an assessment visit, six Americans were killed Saturday in attacks by insurgents. Hours after Dempsey arrived, five Americans - three soldiers and two civilians - were killed when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded in Zabol province in the southeast. An Afghan doctor was also killed in the attack. Another American was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, military officials said.

To set the record straight, Richard Gunther did not try to sell Nikita Khrushchev a house and a lot in suburbia U.S.A., when the Soviet premier visited the Southland in 1959. "There's no truth to that at all," Gunther said recently, recalling that earlier flash of publicity. "A series of concidences . . . nothing more." So, how come the Chronology of American Cities lists the incident among the salient events in Los Angeles for that year?

CINCINNATI — The Angels' season-opening trip to Cincinnati and Texas is doubling as a Josh Hamilton reunion tour. Hamilton, a 31-year-old outfielder who signed a five-year, $125-million deal with the Angels in December, made his major league debut in Great American Ball Park almost exactly six years ago, appearing as a pinch-hitter for the Reds against the Chicago Cubs on April 2, 2007. His first big league hit, a home run at Arizona, came eight days later. Hamilton went on to hit .292 with 19 home runs and 47 runs batted in as a rookie for the Reds, who traded him to Texas for pitcher Edinson Volquez the following winter.

The timing was mere coincidence. At least that's what Erick Aybar said about the hitting tear he has gone on since Angels Manager Mike Scioscia gave him a day off earlier this month and temporarily moved Maicer Izturis into the leadoff spot. Aybar entered Saturday's game against the Dodgers hitting .474 since June 2, raising his average from .238 to .274. He had 14 hits in his last six games and had driven in five runs in 10 games this month, one more than in all of May. So, what's changed?

Well, so the same firm that ran the NBA lottery is employed by the Knicks. What a coincidence. And the NBA's TV contract is up after next year. What a coincidence. And New York is the largest TV market in the country. What a coincidence. Pro basketball and its so-called world's greatest athletes (world's tallest athletes is more like it) seem to be going the way of pro wrestling; or a combination of pro wrestling and "Dialing for Dollars." Adios, NBA. Your credibility is badly damaged, not only by the Ewing lottery.

I have been troubled by an Associated Press story out of Orange Park, Fla., reporting what seems to me an incredible coincidence. I wasn't going to take note of it here, but several clippings of it have been sent to me, from various newspapers, and I feel obliged to comment. The story said that Jim Mattson, an English teacher at Orange Park High School, had been collecting his students' malapropisms over a period of four years--both at Orange Park and during his previous assignment in Exeter, N.

As university presidents throughout the country view the steaming pile of rubble that was once college football's greatest coach and its most admired program, they should understand one thing. None of this is a coincidence. It is no coincidence that the most heinous scandal in the history of college sports happened at Penn State University. FULL COVERAGE: Penn State scandal It is no coincidence that an alleged child molester was allowed to roam the Penn State University grounds unchecked for nearly a decade with the knowledge of everyone from the school president to the football coach.

Re "British Government Wants to Play Online Big Brother," June 4: Is it merely coincidence that George Orwell was a Brit? M. YANCE HIRSCHI Claremont

Hurricane Sandy could affect how marketing spots for at least one big holiday movie are perceived. “Life of Pi,” Fox's Nov. 21 release about a boy who is stranded on a boat with a Bengali tiger in the South Pacific after a major storm, has unintended but unfortunate overtones in the wake of Sandy's devastation. PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy The massive storm, which churned across more than a half-dozen states Monday night and into Tuesday morning, has led to at least 33 deaths and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents along the East Coast.

The Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot has received praise from artists including Björk, Madonna, Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now the band is returning the favor. In a new video communique released by MTV, two members of the group thanked all those artists for their outspoken support while rappelling down the side of a large structure draped in a Pussy Riot banner. The video closes with them setting off flares to ignite a portrait of Vladimir Putin. It's unclear whether  those two balaclava-clad members are the same two who recently escaped from Russia under threat of prosecution . The group prizes anonymity, and technically, anyone can don the mask and be an axillary member of Pussy Riot.  But the video's curiously high production values and perilous stunt work -- a reference to some members' madcap rooftop escape from Russian police -- raises its own questions, especially given its release just before tonight's Video Music Awards on MTV. Chris Martins at Spin raises the hypothetical possibility that it's no coincidence at all . MTV is reportedly asking artists about Pussy Riot on the red carpet, and it broke the story of the video message.

Outside a Trader Joe's in Silver Lake, a man in sunglasses and flip-flops called out questions to bag-toting shoppers. "Do you support medical marijuana?" he asked. "Well did you hear what City Hall just did?" An army of signature-gatherers has hit Los Angeles streets in recent weeks in a drive to repeal a recent ban on marijuana dispensaries. If activists can collect the roughly 27,400 names required within the next three weeks, a referendum to overturn the ban would go before voters in March.

Engineers said Friday that the Curiosity rover happened to catch a picture of its own ride crash-landing on Mars - a wink-of-an-eye serendipity that some dismissed as a statistical impossibility, but appears to have been confirmed by a thorough review of landing data. The final seconds of Curiosity's eight-month-plus journey to Mars called for a spacecraft to lower the rover to the surface using a "sky crane" - three ropes. The ropes were then cut, and the last of the spacecraft, known as the "descent stage," cast itself toward the horizon.

Did Curiosity capture the galactic equivalent of the Zapruder film when it landed on Mars? Seconds after the NASA robot's landing Sunday night, Curiosity managed to squeeze off a handful of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs. One, taken with a device on its rear known as a Hazcam, captured the pebble-strewn ground beneath the rover and one of its wheels - and a blotch, faint but distinctive, on the horizon. The images were relayed by a passing satellite. Two hours later, the satellite passed overhead again.

Just in time for travel to the summer Olympics in London, US Airways has increased bag fees for transatlantic passengers. The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline increased the fee for a second checked bag to $100 from $70 for tickets purchased on or after July 11 or for flights departing on that date. A US Airways spokeswoman said the fee was raised to match higher charges imposed by the airlines' competitors and had nothing to do with the upcoming Olympics. "That's just a coincidence," said Liz Landau, a spokeswoman for US Airways.

Is there a correlation or just a coincidence the Dow Jones industrial average seems to parallel our national debt? ROBERT YOUNG Covina

Marina Stepanova of the Soviet Union just broke her own world record in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles. Coincidence or not, she has the appropriate name for her type of sport. JOSEPH P. KRENGEL Santa Monica

MOVIES One of the great films of noir intrigue, "The Mystery of the Double Cross" finds a man bound to inherit a fortune when a mysterious warning to, yep, avoid the "double cross" proves prescient after a woman bearing the mark enters his life. Coincidence or harbinger of doom? Either way, it's a must-see engagement of the episodic series in 8mm format. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. american cinematheque.com.