National Traffic Safety Board

Federal aviation officials said Monday they were investigating the possibility that a San Diego traffic reporter--not the pilot--might have been at the controls of a light plane that crashed into a freeway embankment in Solana Beach last month, killing both men and narrowly missing rush-hour traffic.

Federal aviation officials said Monday they were investigating the possibility that a San Diego traffic reporter--not the pilot--might have been at the controls of a light plane that crashed into a freeway embankment in Solana Beach last month, killing both men and narrowly missing rush-hour traffic.

Thank you for your excellent coverage and accompanying editorial of the National Traffic Safety Board's recommendations regarding alcohol-impaired driving among minors. Your article serves as a wake-up call--for parents especially--to realize that every 57 seconds a teen-ager dies in an alcohol-related crash. The policies offered in your editorial represent a significant message to minors about not drinking. Zero tolerance in particular is a strong message, hitting young people where it matters most: transportation!

The scenario is familiar: A traffic light turns green, the car at the front of the line hesitates and stalls, and a horn begins to blare. When the cars finally get through the intersection, the irate driver passes the offending vehicle, complaining loudly about senior citizens behind the wheel. But if the American Assn. of Retired Persons (AARP) can help it, the stereotype of the incompetent older driver will be a thing of the past.

A well-known San Diego traffic reporter and his pilot were killed Thursday morning when their small plane crashed along Interstate 5 in Solana Beach, narrowly missing the very lines of congested rush-hour traffic that they were reporting on, authorities said.

Stopping just short of ruling the crash of TWA Flight 800 an act of terrorism, federal agents said Friday they were approaching it as if it were and broadened their hunt for clues to the explosion that blew the plane to pieces and killed all 230 people on board. Investigators grew more suspicions of sabotage as they reviewed mechanical data that the Boeing 747 had radioed back to TWA about a minute after taking off.

In August, Mattel Inc. recalled 7.3 million Polly Pocket play sets with small magnets that could come loose and, if swallowed, tear holes in a child's digestive system. Hearing that, Lisa Davis didn't think twice about removing the toys from her 5-year-old daughter's room and "chucking them in the trash" rather than returning the items for a replacement. "It's just not worth my time to go through the hassle," Davis said.

Jung Won Ko was hospitalized for two months, much of it in an anesthetic haze, after she was hit by a car being pursued at high speeds by police. It took four weeks for her friends to tell her what had happened to her face. Nobody had the courage. Once they did, it took all her strength to look in a mirror. "I just cried and said, over and over, that's not me, that's not me!" she said.