■UNITED STATES
Keyboardist Knechtel dies
Larry Knechtel, a Grammy award-winning keyboard artist who accompanied leading musicians and combos from Elvis Presley and Ray Charles to Elvis Costello and the Dixie Chicks, has died at 69. Knechtel died on Thursday at a hospital in Yakima, Washington, of an apparent heart attack. Knechtel performed live and in studio recordings with a wide range of artists, including Neil Diamond, Randy Newman, Ray Charles, The Beach Boys, The Doors, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams Jr and Elvis Costello. He earned a Grammy for his arrangement of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, played keyboard on the Dixie Chicks’ Grammy award-winning album Taking the Long Way and performed on the group’s tour of the same name.
■UNITED STATES
Cars hit plane on freeway
The Federal Aviation Administration said a small airplane was struck by three vehicles just after it made an emergency landing on a California freeway. Agency spokesman Ian Gregor says the Piper PA-24 Comanche with two people on board was bound for Santa Barbara Airport on Sunday when the pilot told air traffic controllers he had no fuel remaining and landed on the southbound side of US Highway 101, about 1.6km northeast of the airport. California Highway Patrol Officer James Richards says three cars were unable to avoid the plane and crashed into it. The occupants of the plane and the cars were not injured.
■CHILE
Sea lions dying en masse
At least 200 sea lions have been found dead along the country’s northern coast near Iquique. The national fishing service says many of the dead apparently are young sea lions abandoned when their mothers were drawn too far offshore hunting food. It says the El Nino phenomenon has made prey scarce near shore. Environmental groups said on Saturday they suspect a local molybdenum plant or other industry may be to blame.
■UNITED STATES
French teens killed in crash
Two French teenagers were killed and five other French nationals were injured when the driver of their van fell asleep, causing the vehicle to veer off the road and roll over, the California Highway Patrol said on Sunday. The accident happened on Saturday morning on State Route 190 in California’s Death Valley National Park, about 60km west of Las Vegas, Captain Tim Lepper said. The driver of the rented passenger van, 31-year-old Nassera Soudani of Levallois Perret, France, will likely be charged with vehicular manslaughter, Lepper said. “She admitted to being tired and falling asleep,” he said. “It’s a very desolate area out there. You drive for miles and miles before you see anything other than landscape.”
■VENEZUELA
Chavez slams bases pact
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday charged that the controversial new US deal to use Colombian military bases means US troops can move anywhere within the South American country. “They are turning all of Colombia into a [US] base,” Chavez said in his TV and radio program Alo Presidente. “They cannot keep this a secret; the details are coming out. Gringo miltary staff have been authorized to operate anywhere in Colombia,” he said. He displayed a document that he said was from the US Air Mobility Command to justify his claims. He said he would bring it to a meeting of Latin American leaders on Friday in Bariloche, Argentina, which has been called to discuss the US military presence in Colombia.
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