Branson co-pilot dies 3 months after parachute plunge
    LONDON - April 13, 1998 1:07 p.m. EDT - Richard Branson's balloon
 co-pilot, Alex Ritchie, has died three months after being seriously
 injured in a parachute accident, his son said Monday.
     Ritchie, who saved Branson's life in a round-the-world balloon
 bid last year, died Sunday of multiple injuries and severe blood
 poisoning.
     He was injured after falling 13,000 feet onto an airfield in
 Morocco when his parachute failed to open during training for
 another record balloon attempt in January.
     Branson paid tribute to his friend by saying he would dedicate
 his next balloon flight to him.
     Ritchie's son Duncan, 20, said: "He was a fighter and carried on
 fighting until the end. We are all obviously extremely upset, even
 though we knew how ill he was."
     Ritchie, 52, was practising emergency sky-diving techniques in
 Marrakech when the accident occurred. He suffered a severely broken
 leg, fractures to his pelvis and arms and internal bleeding.
     After being flown back to Britain by air ambulance, he underwent
 surgery several times to mend his shattered body, but developed
 septicaemia, or severe blood poisoning, after a hip operation.
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                      Pilots' bodies discovered
          believed to be from aborted Bay of Pigs invasion
     MANAGUA, Nicaragua - April 13, 1998 10:31 p.m. EDT - A U.S.
 Defense Department official said Monday he had found two bodies
 believed to be those of anti-Castro Cuban pilots who crashed on
 their way to support the aborted 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs.
     Bradley Adams of the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory
 (CILHI) told journalists that three weeks of excavation work had
 uncovered human remains and personal effects.
     "When we turned the wing over, there was a big FAR on it," Adams
 said, referring to the Spanish acronym for the Cuban armed forces.
     Aircraft bombing Cuba in 1961 as part of the failed invasion had
 Cuban insignia in order to confuse the Caribbean island's defenders,
 a U.S. embassy source said.
     "They had marked the planes with the same insignia as the Cuban
 communist planes," the source said.
     The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a 1961 plan by Cuban
 exiles to topple the government which took power in 1959 after a
 revolution led by Fidel Castro. Some were trained in Nicaragua, at
 that time ruled by pro-U.S. dictator Luis Somoza.
     The April 1961 invasion of Cuba failed to advance beyond a beach-
 head and the exiles were quickly surrounded by Cuban government
 forces who killed some 200 and captured 1,500.
     The CILHI will conduct dental and DNA tests to determine whether
 the bodies are those of Crispin Garcia and Juan de Mata Gonzalez, who
 were aboard a B-26 bomber which crashed near the northern Nicaraguan
 town of San Jose de Bocay while on its way to Cuba in 1961.
     Adams gave no further details of the findings but said he be-
 lieved the remains were of no more than two men. He said he would
 travel to CILHI headquarters in Hawaii on Wednesday to finish iden-
 tification work.
     Janet Weininger, who is acting as liaison between the U.S. De-
 fense Department mission and the pilots' families, said the CIA was
 helping to finance the excavation.
     Weininger said through an interpreter that the Nicaragua opera-
 tion was "the first time the CIA is undertaking an activity like
 this and helping with funds."
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            U.S. air safety agenda to be unveiled Tuesday
     WASHINGTON - April 13, 1998 10:37 p.m. EDT - The Clinton admin-
 istration said on Monday it would issue its aviation safety agenda
 on Tuesday to focus industry and government resources where the
 biggest improvements can be made.
     Top of the list are expected to be efforts to cut the number of
 controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) incidents where a perfectly
 airworthy plane is flown into the ground because the crew is unaware
 of its position.
     CFIT accidents are the single biggest cause of air fatalities
 throughout the world and there is widespread agreement on greater
 use of enhanced ground-proximity warning devices and better pilot
 training to combat the problem.
     The most-wanted list of safety improvements are due to be un-
 veiled by Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and Federal Avi-
 ation Administration chief Jane Garvey at Ronald Reagan Washington
 National Airport.
     Garvey has vowed to focus her agency on those safety improvements
 with the greatest potential out of more than 1,000 proposals she
 found on coming into the job last August.
     In February, aircraft manufacturers and airlines issued their own
 safety priority list with measures to combat CFIT accidents ranked
 number one.
     Other priorities included technologies to detect in-flight turb-
 ulence, reducing engine failures and minimizing runway incursions.
     The FAA cooperated with that aviation industry group in analyzing
 safety data to determine the priorities.
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