Scooters

A 9-year-old Santa Ana boy was in critical condition Monday after being struck by a car while riding a motorized scooter on a street with another boy. The second child, who is 3, was in stable condition, authorities said. Police did not release either boy's name. The accident occurred about 6 p.m. near Pacific and Marion avenues when the pair rode into the path of an oncoming car, said Sgt. Brad Sadler, a spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department. No arrests were made.

Most legal experts were not surprised Tuesday when jurors convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on four of five counts of lying to federal investigators. What puzzled some of the experts were the statements Libby made to investigators about when and how he learned that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. Libby said NBC reporter Tim Russert told him during a July 2003 phone conversation.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a federal grand jury three years ago that he did not believe he had discussed the wife of an administration critic with officials from the CIA and the State Department, contradicting sworn testimony by the officials at Libby's perjury trial here. The revelation came Monday as prosecutors began playing audiotapes of Libby's eight hours of testimony before a grand jury investigating how the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame became public.

A teenage boy riding a scooter was struck and killed by a Blue Line commuter train Thursday afternoon at a crossing in Watts, authorities said. The boy, whose name was not released, was apparently trying to cross the tracks on a nonmotorized scooter near East 92nd Street and Graham Avenue shortly before 3:45 p.m. when he was hit by the Long Beach-bound train. Paramedics arrived, but the teenager died either on the way to St.

A jury was selected Monday to hear the case against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is charged with obstructing a federal probe into the disclosure of a CIA operative's identity. Culminating four days of questioning by lawyers and a judge that often exposed potential panelists' anti-Bush sentiments, 12 jurors and four alternates were selected to hear the case of Libby, 56, the one-time chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. U.S. District Judge Reggie B.

FROM the looks I got, you'd think I was riding a unicorn. Not that my bug-splattered two-wheeler was all that, aesthetically. I was riding a scooter, breezing along at a brisk 80 mph on the sort of in-the-sticks stretch of highway with two sorts of signs: the ones that give the speed limit and the ones that say "Next gas 36 miles." Think you can't tour on a scooter?

Segway, the two-wheeled personal transporter introduced in 2001 with great fanfare, was going to help reduce air pollution, ease traffic congestion and make riders look George Jetson-cool. But Thursday, it was looking a little less hip when the federal government ordered Bedford, N.H.-based Segway Inc. to recall all 23,500 scooters sold in the U.S. The recall was prompted by the discovery of a software glitch that can cause riders to be thrown off the vehicle.

WHENEVER I pull up on two wheels, I can count on one comment: "You're crazy," strangers tell me. "Riding is dangerous." The comment is usually accompanied by a horror story about some neighbor's friend's gastroenterologist or other distant acquaintance who had a spectacular crash. But a funny thing's been happening lately. In addition to the usual comments on my sanity and safety, I'm hearing envy, and the horror stories they tell are their own. "What kind of gas mileage are you getting?"

Praktan Kokila and record gasoline prices arrived in California at about the same time this spring. And that's why the Redlands resident, newly relocated from Washington, found himself navigating through hundreds of motorcycles one day last week in the San Bernardino showroom of Chaparral Motorsports. Fed up with spending as much as $60 a week to fill his Infinity G35 with premium, Kokila was ready to move from four wheels to two.