>Police watch LA synagogues, seek suspect after blast

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Police have stepped up patrols around synagogues and Jewish centers in the west Los Angeles area after a homemade bomb blast triggered a hunt for a suspect described as “extremely dangerous.”

Detectives issued a mugshot of a 60-year-old homeless man, Ron Hirsch, wanted over the explosion Thursday near the Chabad House Jewish temple in Santa Monica, west of Los Angeles.

“We’re making routine patrols four or five times during our watch,” said Sergeant Richard Parks of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Pacific station, which covers an area west of LA.

Some 100 peope were evacuated after early morning blast, which officials initially said was due to some kind of industrial accident.

But intensive analysis by bomb experts over 24 hours found material linked to a known transient in the debris of a 300-pound (135 kg) metal post cased in cement which landed on a nearby roof.

The blast shattered windows, damaged an outside wall of the synagogue, and propelled the metal pipe onto a neighboring house, where a boy was sleeping, police said.

The suspect was identified as Hirsch — who also goes by the name of Israel Fisher, and who is wanted on charges of possessing a destructive device — late Friday. By Sunday he had still not been found.

Hirsch “is known to frequent synagogues and Jewish community centers seeking charity from patrons,” said a Santa Monica police spokesman, adding that he was known to beg across the LA’s Westside to Santa Monica, on the seafront.

“Based on his suspected involvement in this incident, Hirsch is considered extremely dangerous,” added the spokesman, Jay Trisler, who issued a mugshot showing Hirsch with a full beard and green eyes.

Nobody was injured in the early morning blast, which triggered initial reports of a pipe bomb before police said it due to “some type of mechanical failure” — but then confirmd late Friday that it was an explosive device.

A statement on the Chabad House website said a service was going on at the time of the scare, adding that those praying inside “did not hear or feel anything” and were alerted to the incident by police.

An update later said: “Some individual was attempting to separate concrete and pipe.

“He left the debris next to Chabad House and some chemical reaction took place which made the pipe shoot up and hit the roof of the next door property,” it added, saying there was “some small damage to our outside wall.”

Janti Rashti, 59, whose home was damaged when the concrete mass fell on her rooftop, said she recognized Hirsch among a number of photos police showed her after the incident.

He sometimes slept by the side of the synagogue, she told the LA Times newspaper, but added: “I just don’t believe it was him …The synagogue was never mean to him. I certainly never did anything to him.”

A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the type of explosive device was very unusual. “This is clearly not a traditional type of explosive device,” spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told the LA Times.

“This was a huge mechanism with construction-type materials that were painstakingly taken apart by experts” before they confirmed what it was, and launched a manhunt for the man suspected of making it.

>Southwest Grounds 79 Planes After Scare

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Southwest Airlines grounded 79 airplanes on Saturday after a piece of the fuselage on one of its Boeing 737s ripped open during a flight the day before, leaving a hole in the cabin ceiling and rapidly depressurizing the aircraft.

“We’re taking them out of service to inspect them over the next few days,” Whitney Eichinger, a Southwest spokeswoman, said Saturday. She said they would be “looking for the same type of aircraft skin fatigue.”

In a news release, Southwest announced that it would cancel about 300 flights on Saturday because of inspections, and that customers should expect delays of up to two hours.

“The safety of our customers and employees is our primary concern,” Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “We are working closely with Boeing to conduct these proactive inspections and support the investigation.”

The Southwest plane, a 15-year old Boeing 737-300, was cruising at around 35,000 feet on Friday afternoon en route to Sacramento from Phoenix when passengers heard an explosion. The Associated Press reported that one woman described it as “gunshot-like.”

Oxygen masks were released, and two people, a passenger and a flight attendant, passed out as the pilot descended to make an emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, Ariz. Nobody was seriously injured, Ms. Eichinger said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation told The Associated Press that there was no reason to suspect terrorism.

All 118 passengers on board chose to continue on to their destination Friday evening aboard a replacement jet, Ms. Eichinger said.

Southwest Airlines’ fleet is made up entirely of Boeing 737s, and the 79 planes the company grounded were all 737-300s.

Pictures of the airplane show that a flap of the aircraft’s skin near the overhead baggage compartments was peeled back.

“You can see completely outside,” one passenger, Brenda Reese, told The Associated Press. “When you look up through the panel, you can see the sky.”

This was not the only incident in American skies on Friday.

In a separate episode, an American Airlines flight from Reagan National Airport in Washington to Chicago made an emergency landing in Dayton, Ohio, after two flight attendants told the captain they were feeling dizzy. Jim Faulkner, a spokesman for American Airlines, said they were investigating whether the plane had depressurized improperly. No other planes had been taken out of service.

And an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight from Atlanta to Little Rock, Ark., made an emergency landing after hitting a flock of birds. None of the 48 passengers or three crew members on the regional jet were injured, and the plane was operating normally when it landed in Little Rock, said Kate Modolo, a spokeswoman for Atlantic Southeast.

CNN reported that the aircraft sustained substantial visible damage to its nose and that at least one dead crane was stuck to the front when it landed.

Regarding the Southwest incident, James E. Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the company worked its airplanes especially hard, scheduling flights with very quick turnaround times. “They pound their airplanes daily,” Mr. Hall said.

Two years ago, Southwest faced a similar episode when a hole ripped open in a plane’s fuselage and forced an emergency landing on a flight bound for Baltimore. Earlier that year, Southwest was fined $7.5 million for safety violations by the Federal Aviation Administration.

In 1988, a flight attendant was swept to her death and scores of passengers were injured when an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a 20-foot rupture in its fuselage during a flight in Hawaii. The flight, carrying 89 passengers and a crew of five from Hilo to Honolulu, was at 24,000 feet when the tear occurred.

The pilots sent an emergency message to air traffic controllers and then guided the aircraft to a safe landing at the Kahului airport on the island of Maui. The right under-wing engine had been knocked out of commission by debris from the fuselage section that ripped away.

Though one flight attendant was swept from the plane, passengers held on to a second to keep her from being pulled out. Sixty passengers were injured.

Despite Friday’s episode, Mr. Hall said, “My experience with Southwest is that they have a good safety program.”

>Suspect in Yale killing to plead guilty, attorney says

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A lab technician charged in the strangling of a Yale graduate student less than a week before she was to be married plans to plead guilty Thursday, his attorney said.

Raymond Clark III will plead guilty at a court in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of a plea bargain, according to public defender Joseph Lopez.

Lopez would not divulge the details of the agreement.

The 26-year-old had pleaded not guilty in January 2010.

He is accused in the killing of Annie Le, 24, who was pursuing a doctorate in pharmacology at Yale when she went missing on September 8, 2009.

Le’s body was discovered inside a wall of a Yale lab building four days later after an extensive search by the FBI and police.

She had planned to marry Columbia graduate student Jonathan Widawsky on the day her body was found.

Clark was not a Yale student, but had worked as a lab technician at the university since 2004, after graduating from high school. He lived with his girlfriend, who also is a Yale lab technician, according to police.

A Yale faculty member described Clark’s job as maintaining colonies for animals used in research.

A motive in Le’s killing was unclear, but police said they were treating the case as workplace violence.

Calls to the New Haven district attorney’s office and Yale University seeking comment were not immediately returned.