■ Brazil
Jet door falls off
A jet owned by leading Brazilian airline TAM landed safely on Tuesday after one of its doors fell off and crashed to earth next to a supermarket shortly after departure from Sao Paulo. No one was hurt in the incident, a TAM spokeswoman said. The Fokker 100 plane with 79 people aboard en route to Rio de Janeiro returned to the airport safely 18 minutes after taking off. TAM has been replacing its Fokker planes since the Dutch aircraft maker went bankrupt 10 years ago. It still has 22, but expects to gradually eliminate all of them by 2010. The same type of plane, also operated by TAM, caused one of Brazil's worst air disasters in 1996. It crashed in an urban area shortly after taking off from Sao Paulo, killing 100 people.
■ United States
Headware gets thumbs up
The US Coast Guard is changing its regulations to allow religious head coverings -- but certain headware, such as Sikh turbans, would still be excluded. That's because the head coverings will have to fit under a uniform hat or helmet. "We should respect people's religious values ... We should find a way to accommodate them," said State Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn, who served as an advocate for a Hasidic Jew who challenged the rule. Coast guard spokesman Dan Tremper said on Wednesday that the new rules "have verbally gone into effect."
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