Safety Board

WASHINGTON -- Federal aviation investigators called yesterday for precautionary repairs to fuel-gauge electrical systems in thousands of Boeing jetliners to prevent the kind of explosion suspected in TWA Flight 800.Electrical wiring from fuel-measuring devices that extend into fuel tanks should be rerouted or shielded "to the maximum extent possible" to guard against the kind of power surge suspected in the blast of the Boeing 747 in 1996, the National Transportation...

SEATTLE -- The rudder systems on Boeing 737 commercial jets do not provide the same level of safety as similar passenger aircraft, the National Transportation Safety Board declared yesterday.In one of its most vocal criticisms of the world's most widely used commercial jet, the NTSB also implied that existing 737s would not meet today's federal certification standards.It called on the Federal Aviation Administration to speed plans to order newly designed rudder control systems on all 737s.

It was supposed to be a milk run.For Conrail engineer Ricky L. Gates, the Sunday trip from Baltimore to Harrisburg was a four- or five-hour job that would net him two days' pay under union rules."

The National Transportation Safety Board released new details Wednesday on its investigation into last month's train derailment and explosion in Rosedale, finding that more chemicals were released in the crash than originally reported. NTSB investigators also found that stop signs at the grade crossing where a truck and freight train collided were faded and had been taken off their original mountings. The report is preliminary, and the board has said its full investigation into the derailment could take a year or more.

The small cargo plane that crashed into a Ferndale home in 1989 contained an unauthorized citizens band radio that could have overloaded the electrical system, according to federal investigators. The pilot and a baby in the home were killed.The National Transportation Safety Board could not determine if the radio actually caused the fire that erupted in the plane's cockpit shortly after it took off from Baltimore-Washington International Airport on July 19, 1989, said NTSB spokesman Alan Pollock.

For the first time, federal regulators released figures yesterday that show how prone individual models of new cars and light-duty trucks are to roll over in an accident, exposing the occupants to high risk of death or serious injury. Instead of assigning a star rating to each model it tests, as it has done in the past, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released figures that allow consumers to compare rollover risk model by model. The star system, which is continuing, has been criticized for not providing enough information to distinguish among different vehicles, because nearly all received either three or four stars.

Federal investigators looking into Saturday's fatal capsizing of a water taxi on Baltimore's Inner Harbor are examining the design of the two-hulled Lady D and may study the safety record of similar pontoon boats nationally. Some other water taxi services - including those in Delaware, Chicago, Boston Harbor, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Vancouver, Canada - use larger, conventional-hulled boats, which some captains consider more stable in high winds and choppy waters than smaller boats with raised platforms atop pairs of torpedo-shaped floats.

The Johns Hopkins University is investigating a researcher who tested an experimental anti-cancer drug on patients in India without seeking the permission of an internal review board that considers the safety of human studies, a spokesman said yesterday. The experiment, which was conducted on 26 patients in 1999 and 2000, sought to determine whether a chemical derived from the creosote plant could stop the growth of oral cancer. Ru Chih C. Huang, a Hopkins biology professor, said yesterday that she did not submit her study to a Hopkins review board because it was approved by a similar panel at the Indian cancer center where the trial was performed.

A state panel restored the license of the doctor who is medical director of a group of abortion clinics accused by state regulators of putting women's health at risk, while the licenses of two other physicians who worked at the clinics remain suspended. The Maryland Board of Physicians this week reinstated the license of Dr. Mansour G. Panah of Associates in OB/GYN Care, saying that evidence he presented at a hearing showed that he poses "no imminent danger to public health or safety.

A freight train smacked into a truck carrying garbage and careened off the tracks in Rosedale Tuesday afternoon, triggering an explosion felt throughout the region and sending up a plume of black smoke visible for miles. Authorities identified the driver of the truck as John Alban Jr., a retired Baltimore County firefighter who owns a waste collection company near the scene of the crash. The Essex man was listed in serious condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center Tuesday night, a hospital spokeswoman said.