Nation briefs 04/07/03

Plane makes emergency landing on LA freeway

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- A small plane having engine trouble clipped a car but landed safely amid the traffic of the Riverside Freeway that runs through the Los Angeles suburbs.

The impact Saturday afternoon shattered the car's rear window, scattering glass on two children who were in the back seat on their way to Disneyland, but authorities said no one was seriously injured.

Kevin Glovinsky said he saw a shadow over his car and heard his girlfriend, Tiffany Jennings, screaming that an airplane was landing on the freeway. He said they had to pick broken glass out of the hair of his 4-year-old son and her 8-year-old daughter.

The pilot, Mike Manning of West Covina, had been headed to the nearby Fullerton Municipal Airport but was having engine trouble shortly after 1 p.m. He set the plane down on the freeway, where traffic was relatively light, and was able to pull it over to the shoulder near an exit, said Highway Patrol officer Colleen Richardson. Two freeway lanes were shut down for about three hours.

Airline service improves for second straight year

WASHINGTON -- Tighter airport security made it harder for people to catch their flights last year, but the experience probably improved once they reached the airplane.

A study to be released today concludes that most major airlines' service got better last year, according to such criteria as on-time performance, denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints.

Service has steadily improved since the delay-ridden summer of 2000 because passenger traffic fell after the economy slowed and Sept. 11 terrorists crashed four planes, said the study, supported by the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Wichita State University.

Two airlines that filed for bankruptcy protection last year -- United and US Airways -- managed to be on time more often, mishandle fewer bags and generate fewer consumer complaints than they did the previous year, the report concluded. United also bumped fewer passengers.

The only major airline that made a profit last year, Southwest, also got better. Southwest consistently has the lowest complaint rate of .33 per 100,000 passengers, compared with an industry rate of 1.22, the report said.

Ebola, poaching spark ape population decline

In just 20 years, poaching and the Ebola virus have cut in half the ape population of western equatorial Africa, long considered the last stronghold of the continent's gorillas and chimpanzees, according to a new study.

The study, appearing today in the electronic edition of the journal Nature, is only the latest to warn that wild ape populations are vanishing. However, it is the first to use large-scale surveys to demonstrate the immediate threat of extinction.

"The bottom line is that this time the sky really is falling," said Peter Walsh, a visiting research fellow at Princeton University and co-author of the study.

The forests of Gabon and the Republic of Congo are believed to still hold tens of thousands of apes, or most of the world's common chimpanzees and roughly 80 percent of its gorillas.

-- From wire reports