Safety

The roots of the worst passenger rail disaster in modern California history go far deeper than whether a Metrolink engineer ran through a red stop light and into the path of a Union Pacific freight train. Interviews with safety experts and former Metrolink officials and a review of thousands of pages of government documents show that the commuter line's founders made decisions two decades ago that -- knowingly or not -- gambled with passenger safety in the way they agreed to share tracks with two giant freight lines.

As a dangerous chunk of debris bore down on the International Space Station on Thursday, the crew took refuge in the Russian Soyuz lifeboat in case they had to flee to Earth. NASA said a 5-inch piece of a spent rocket motor came within striking distance of the $100-billion station. If it had hit the station, damage could have been catastrophic. Station Cmdr. Mike Fincke, Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and NASA's Sandra Magnus entered Soyuz and waited.

As the anniversary of the Sept. 12 Chatsworth train disaster approaches, officials with Southern California's sprawling commuter rail service are facing a vexing array of technical, financial and potential legal challenges as they struggle to deliver on pledges of trailblazing safety reforms. A burst of energy to remake the region's Metrolink train operation was unleashed by the deadliest rail collision in modern California history, a watershed event that killed 25, injured 130 and prompted landmark federal mandates to modernize the nation's rail safety systems.

Moments before steering US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River, Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III warned the cabin: "Brace for impact." Denise Lockie, in seat 2C, put her head between her knees. Tracey Wolsko, who had been listening to her iPod and reading a romance novel, removed her glasses and high heels and placed an airline pillow between her face and the seat back in front of her.

Don't look for much food from cloned animals or their offspring at your neighborhood supermarket or restaurant any time soon. Despite the Food and Drug Administration's declaration that such meat and milk are safe to eat, it is going to take years for ranchers to produce and raise the animals. Even then, many of the nation's biggest grocers say they are dead set against selling it.

It's "unsafe" at busy airports throughout the country. There's a "staffing emergency" in air traffic control facilities serving Southern California. A "dangerous situation" in the skies and on the ground is about to "get worse." National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. President Patrick Forrey made those allegations last week in news releases and during a teleconference with reporters in the latest salvo in a long-standing labor dispute between the union and the Federal Aviation Administration.

No one will ever confuse Jim Murray with a teenager. His tall frame, broad shoulders and clipped, gray hair give him away for the grandfather he is. But the 69-year-old retired police chief of this small Missouri farm town cuts a credible figure as a 13-year-old girl surfing the Web, looking for friends. He knows all the instant-messaging shorthand, the emoticons. Murray's retirement job from a rural home office has netted 20 arrests since he started in 2002.

The logistics of escape is the main topic of conversation these days for the people who live near an old mining tunnel. How many cars could make it up the snow-crusted emergency road at a time? What if it's 3 a.m., and they're sound asleep? How would someone in a wheelchair outrun a flood? Overnight, these have become pressing questions for the people who live below the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, just outside this mining town 85 miles southwest of Denver. The 2.

Irvine has grounded the Orange County Great Park balloon while the Federal Aviation Administration investigates claims by a former pilot that operators of the ride repeatedly ignored safety regulations, the city said Thursday. Irvine has hired an independent investigator to conduct its own review. The last flights were Sunday afternoon, and the decision to suspend operation of the tethered helium balloon was voluntary, said city spokesman Louie Gonzalez.

Since a psychologist was hacked to death in her Upper East Side office last month allegedly by a mentally unstable man wielding a meat cleaver, therapists across this city have been reevaluating safety practices as they confront risks inherent in their profession. "Anybody who goes into this business knows there is a possibility that something could happen," said Debra E. Pearl, a New York City therapist for more than 30 years, who sees patients in her doorman-secured office building.