12 dead as Peru tourist planes crash in midair
     LIMA (August 30, 1997 10:58 p.m. EDT) - Two small tourist planes
 crashed in midair on Saturday and plunged to earth, killing 12
 people, including five Germans, Peruvian authorities said.
     The two planes were taking tourists to see the mysterious
 pre-Inca line drawings of Nasca.
     Fire-fighters and police inspecting the twisted wreckage of the
 planes, sprawled 65 feet apart on the ground, counted the remains of
 12 people. Police said there were five passengers and one pilot on
 each aircraft.
     Five passengers aboard one plane -- belonging to local tour
 company Aerocondor -- were German, air-traffic control official
 Enrique Gamboa told "Reuters" from Nasca, 290 miles south of Lima.
     Both pilots were Peruvian but the nationality of the passengers
 aboard the second plane, belonging to the Aeroparacas firm, was not
 immediately known.
     It was unclear what caused the planes to crash in clear skies at
 dusk, shortly after 5 p.m. local time, Nasca police said.
     Small tourist planes make frequent flights over the famous
 ancient lines, whose images of a monkey, an eagle, a man, a spider
 and of geometric figures can only be fully appreciated from the air.
     The lines are Peru's second most popular tourist destination
 after the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu as visitors are attracted
 by the unsolved mystery of how pre-Inca civilizations drew the huge
 figures.
     The white lines etched into shallow ditches through the coastal
 desert cover a total of 185 square miles. For centuries, the lines
 have confounded the scientific world, which is divided over whether
 the drawings were in honor of the gods or a used as a type of
 calendar.
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         TWA Flight 800 tests yield inconclusive results
     NEW YORK August 29, 1997 - 12:59 p.m. EDT -- Ten days of flight
 tests have bolstered the theory that mechanical malfunction brought
 down TWA Flight 800, but what triggered the explosion that killed
 all 230 people aboard still remains a mystery to investigators.
     Many more tests aimed at pinpointing the cause of the blast are
 scheduled for the next six months, Bernard Loeb, director of avi-
 ation safety for the National Transportation Safety Board, said
 Thursday.
     Tests conducted on a Boeing 747 on Long Island last month, along
 with tests in England in which explosives were set off, supported
 the theory that a mechanical malfunction doomed the plane,
 investigators said.
     However, authorities have not ruled out a missile or a bomb as
 possible causes of the July 17, 1996, explosion over the Atlantic
 Ocean off Long Island.
  (We had a saying in the Air Force.. S.O.S.  Jim) 
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