Los Angeles Times

A 23-year-old woman died and three others were critically injured early Sunday when their car sped down Wilshire Boulevard and slammed into a historic statue of a Los Angeles Times publisher at MacArthur Park. The vehicle hit the base of an 8-foot bronze statue of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, a Civil War veteran who bought part ownership of The Times in 1882 and was its publisher for 35 years. Authorities identified the dead woman as Dranov Khaliunaa of Los Angeles. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Re: "Childbirth: Can the U.S. improve?" May 17: Of course we can improve. Why, however, do you not address a key question: How does the medical malpractice issue factor into decision making? Our "Always blame someone else" society will not progress until we come to grips with the implications of allowing our legal system to influence each choice that we make. Ellen and Richard Brown Del Mar -- :: The story implies that too many cesarean sections are being done for the sake of hospital and/or physician profit and that as a consequence, more maternal/neonatal complications are occurring.

TMZ and Jackson coverage: An article in Friday's Section A about how gossip website TMZ scooped the mainstream media, including the Los Angeles Times, on the news of Michael Jackson's death said The Times bannered the news on its website at 2:51 p.m. Thursday. In fact, the home-page banner went up at approximately 3:15 p.m.

Drex Heikes, a former editor at the Los Angeles Times and most recently an editor in Las Vegas, has been named the next editor of LA Weekly. Heikes will replace Laurie Ochoa, who was forced to resign earlier this month by executives of Village Voice Media, which publishes the alternative newspaper. Heikes spent 18 years at The Times, including seven as an editor of the Los Angeles Times magazine. In 2005, he joined the Las Vegas Sun as the No. 2 editor. Most recently he assigned and edited the Sun's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of the deaths of construction workers.

It was not without trepidation in 1984 that I first met Pina Bausch, the revolutionary German choreographer who died unexpectedly Monday at 68. Her Wuppertal Tanztheater was about to make its U.S. debut by opening the Olympic Arts Festival at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and I asked for an interview. She was unknown in the States, and what I had gathered from a not always admiring European press was that she was angry, violent, feminist, sexually intimidating, emasculating. She said she would speak with me under two conditions: that I travel to Wuppertal, Germany, and that I first see her work.

I'll always regret that my last conversation with Michael Jackson ended with him angrily hanging up the phone -- at least I've long thought of Michael's mood that day more than a decade ago as angry. I realize now that a more accurate description would be "wounded." Michael was among the sweetest and most talented people I met during 35 years covering pop music for the Los Angeles Times. I was fortunate to be present at many of his proudest moments. I was in the audience the night in 1983 that he unveiled the electrifying moonwalk on the Motown TV special and in the studio in 1985 for the all-star "We Are the World" recording session.

Newspaper distribution: An article in Thursday's Business section about a distribution agreement between the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register misidentified the Register's vice president of circulation and distribution as Jack Riley. His name is Larry Riley.

The first sentence of Martin Miller's article about his trip to Gettysburg ["Living History," Sept. 6] reveals that he must be from the East Coast. Who else but an East Coaster could buy into the idea that California doesn't have history? In these times of reduced family travel budgets, it does a great disservice to readers of the Los Angeles Times, the vast majority of whom are Californians, to imply that they can't experience history in their own state. Christine Elowitt Thousand Oaks

The story of Ana Rodarte, the young Mexican American woman born with the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis, is now available in Spanish at latimes.com/historiadeana. The two-part series, which was originally published in the Los Angeles Times in April, chronicled Rodarte's experience growing up with the disfigurement associated with the condition and undergoing a series of surgeries at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla to correct her appearance. In February 2008, Rodarte became a U.S. citizen.