Crash near airport kills 6 aboard plane

A twin-engine plane whose pilot had reported engine trouble crashed on approach to an airport in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., killing all six aboard, officials said.

The plane was en route from Trenton, N.J., to North Myrtle Beach when it crashed Friday night, officials said. North Myrtle Beach is 128 miles east of Columbia.

Federal investigators referred questions about the victims' identities to the Horry County coroner, who did not return a phone message.

The plane, a King Air 200, was registered to Weekend Air Charter Services of Trenton, officials said.

NASA boss promises

"scientific openness"

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, facing complaints from agency scientists that political appointees were stifling discussion of global warming, acknowledged problems late Friday and pledged his commitment to "scientific openness."

In an e-mail to the agency's 19,000 employees, Griffin wrote, "It is not the job of public-affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."

Griffin's statement came four days after House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., asked NASA to respond to charges by its most senior climate scientist that the agency had tried to keep him from speaking out about global warming.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told The Washington Post and other news organizations last month that senior political appointees were "trying to control what's getting out to the public."

Proposal to retaliate

against Souter fails

Residents of Weare rejected a proposal Saturday to evict U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter from his farmhouse to make way for the Lost Liberty Hotel.

A group angered by last year's court decision that gave local governments more power to seize people's homes for economic development had petitioned to use the ruling against the justice.

But voters deciding which issues should go on the town's March ballot replaced the group's proposal with a call to strengthen New Hampshire's law on eminent domain.

Souter, who grew up in Weare, a central New Hampshire town of 8,500, has not commented on the matter. Joshua Solomon, a member of the Committee for the Protection of Natural Rights, was disappointed.

"We lost today, not because there isn't support in this town but because the turnout wasn't here," he said.

Instruction planned

in voting from afar

Louisiana officials are preparing to send nearly 1 million mailers as part of a campaign to tell voters who fled the wrath of Hurricane Katrina how to cast ballots from afar, a problem not as widespread in other Gulf Coast states.

Louisiana officials estimated 400,000 registered voters were displaced by the storm that ravaged the coast last summer. Displaced voters have relocated to every state except Alaska, Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater said Saturday.

Before Katrina intervened, voters in New Orleans had been scheduled to pick a mayor and other city officials Saturday.

Elections are now planned for April 22, with a runoff, if necessary, May 20.

Ater said he hopes November elections in the state will go ahead without major problems.

Compiled from The Associated Press and The Washington Post