Helicopter

After a fellow soldier died, Army Sgt. Richard Essex watched his friend's family agonize over funeral details. He vowed to never let the same thing happen to his family. So while he was home for his sister's wedding last October, the Kelseyville, Calif., native gave his family some specifics. If anything happened to him, he didn't want to burden them with decisions. His car should go to his older brother and his guitar to a friend who wrote music. He made his family promise that the procession would pass in front of Kelseyville High School, from which he graduated in 2008.

Park rangers in Tennessee are sending a helicopter to try to rescue a hiker stranded on the Appalachian Trail, officials said Friday. The hiker, identified as Steven Ainsworth, from Washington, N.C., has a cellphone, a tent, sleeping bag, one day's worth of food and 1 1/2 liters of water, Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials said. Ainsworth, 56, is about half a mile down a  slope on Mount Chapman, one of the highest peaks on the trial and near the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

LA JOYA, Texas - Half a dozen Guatemalan men lay hidden in the back of a pickup speeding down a rural road near the border, side by side and covered with a sheet, when the truck bed was pelted with rocks. Or at least the men thought they were rocks. The truck was barreling down a dirt road and, as the men later told a consular official, they presumed the tires had kicked up rocks into the truck bed. The objects hitting the truck were bullets. A trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety had fired from a helicopter to try to force the truck to stop.

The Coast Guard said Monday it was searching for two crew members of the HMS Bounty, a three-masted tall ship that appeared in two Hollywood movies, after Hurricane Sandy sank the vessel in storm-churned waters off the coast of North Carolina. Fourteen were rescued. The Bounty began taking on water Sunday and lost power about 90 miles off Hatteras, N.C. The Coast Guard said it was using a C-130 Hercules aircraft and an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter to search the area for the two who were missing.

Sherman Oaks resident Bob Anderson recalls the Friday of Carmageddon as "wonderful" and "quiet," despite all the warnings of a traffic nightmare. He enjoyed a glass of wine with his wife, watched TV and drifted peacefully into a sound slumber without the sounds of cars zipping down the northbound 405 freeway near his house. Then the roar of a helicopter jolted Anderson awake at 11 p.m. "It sat above our house for two hours until 1 a.m. Then it went away," Anderson said. "We were thrilled, slept for a couple hours, and then it came back at 5 a.m. " Anderson was angry enough to grab a pair of binoculars and call the news station that owned the helicopter to complain.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Does a prince's presence endanger those serving alongside him? The Taliban launched a rare all-out assault on the heavily fortified NATO base in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province where Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, is deployed. The attack lasted into the early hours of Saturday and left two U.S. Marines dead, military officials said. Afterward, a Taliban spokesman reiterated the group's desire to kill or capture Queen Elizabeth II's grandson.

One homeowner complained that helicopters flew so low and so loudly over her neighborhood that she couldn't hear conversations and the vibrations rattled dishes in her china cabinet. Another likened the deafening chopper sounds to a "war zone. " More grumbling from Los Angeles homeowners? Nope. Long Island. Years of complaints about noise from helicopters shuttling well-to-do New Yorkers between the city and the Hamptons have led to new restrictions this month on helicopter traffic over Long Island - possibly offering a political lesson to Los Angeles residents seeking similar relief.

Re "Hundreds demand helicopter crackdown," Aug. 8 I am glad Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and the wealthy people of Palos Verdes Peninsula and Brentwood protest helicopter noise over the Hollywood Bowl and their well-to-do neighborhoods. We in Venice get helicopter noise every day in addition to the loud planes from Santa Monica Airport that turn south over Venice rather than north over Santa Monica. Why doesn't anyone care? Nelson Schwartz Venice ALSO: Letters: Voting with our stomachs Letters: How not to get hit by a train Letters: Election fraud and the right to vote

SAN DIEGO - In a ceremony that was brief but redolent of the sacrifice and pain of war, one of the last bits of unfinished business from the Vietnam War was completed Monday at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. The remains of Marine Pfc. Richard Rivenburgh were buried 37 years after his helicopter was shot down during the attempt to rescue the crew of the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez, which had been taken hostage byCambodia'sKhmer Rouge. The rescue is considered the last battle of the Vietnam War. Rivenburgh's name was one of the last placed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington.

William H. "Bill" Mensing, the owner of an aircraft sheet-metal business whose improved water-drop tanks made for Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopters in the early 1970s became widely used, has died. He was 88. Mensing died July 26 at his home in Santa Paula after a brief illness, said his family. A World War II veteran, Mensing opened a precision sheet-metal business called Sheetcraft in Northridge in the early 1960s and became known for his skill in making new parts for damaged helicopters and airplanes.