Scooters

If you're planning to visit Rome before you die, it pays to prepare for the experience. Here are 10 books and movies to help you understand what you see in the Roman Forum, at the Vatican and on the Piazza Navona. -- Susan Spano 1. "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (1961, by Irving Stone, and turned into a 1965 film starring Charlton Heston) is about the epic trials and tribulations of Michelangelo dealing with his patron Pope Julius II and painting the Sistine Chapel.

ZAP, a maker of battery-powered scooters and motorcycles that wants to sell electric autos, named its largest shareholder, Eqbal Yousuf, as chairman. Yousuf on June 2 will replace Chairman Gary Starr, who co-founded ZAP in 1994, the Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company said. The investor is president of Yousuf Group, a Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based company that includes auto retailing and rentals among its businesses.

SCOOTERS are prone to many of the same safety issues as motorcycles. Their size makes them difficult for drivers to see, and on smaller-displacement models in particular, their low power makes mixing with fast-moving traffic more challenging. If you want to ride a scooter and aren't already a regular rider of two wheels, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation has a few recommendations.

With red-and-blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, LAPD Officers Garrett Breegle and Paul Rodriguez were hurtling into law enforcement's future. Maybe hurtling is not the right word. Breegle and Rodriguez were doing all of 10 mph as they patrolled the area between downtown's toy and flower districts. They were aboard Space Age-looking scooters that have come to symbolize the high-tech turn that police work is taking in Los Angeles. "It's Robo Cop!"

Razor USA is recalling about 20,000 of its E300 electric scooters over concerns that the handlebars can break off, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said. The recall covers scooters with bar codes of 100620-03 through -09. Consumers were asked to stop using the scooters and contact Cerritos-based Razor for a repair kit. Information is available at www.razor.com/recall.

With interest in alternative-energy vehicles reaching an unprecedented fever pitch, Vectrix couldn't have timed its arrival any more perfectly. Its new Vectrix Maxi Scooter, which has been in the works for more than 10 years, was approved for sale in California just last week and is now officially on the market. Cue excited screams here.

Thousands of miles from the Alaskan wilderness, a pair of huskies charge down a dusty path with their master in tow. There is no sled under the feet of Rancy Reyes. Instead, his hounds work up a lather pulling his two-wheeled scooter through the brush of a Southern California park as he shouts commands that are as foreign in this sunbaked part of the world as snowflakes. In a city better known for its high-end indoor mall than high-energy outdoor activities, "urban mushing" has taken hold.

There were questions about Segway scooters, Scooter the Muppet and a child's toy scooter. But Patrick J. Fitzgerald drolly dodged questions about the one scooter everyone was curious about during his guest appearance on National Public Radio's quiz show "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!"

Re "Bush spares Libby from prison," July 3 As alleged conservatives celebrate President Bush's commutation of the prison sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, they show their true colors. They are not principled, as they would have us believe. Only partisan. MICHAEL OLSON Pasadena * Any defense lawyer can now maintain that the president says there should be no jail sentence for perjury. What a precedent this sets for our judicial system.