Out of America: Even after 400 years, the blood and death that stain America's history are clearly visible

The pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, which ditched into New York's Hudson River, calmly radioed to air traffic controllers, "We're going to be in the Hudson."

The US Airways Airbus 320 that made an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River last week had an engine compressor failure two days earlier, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said. The compressor, or fan, draws air into the engine.

The pilot who managed to safely land a plane on the Hudson River in New York, saving the lives of all 150 passengers on board, did "absolutely everything right," according to an aviation expert.

DOUBTS about Body Shop's commitment to the environment sent its shares sliding 6p yesterday to 236p - the apparent result of revelations that the company was responsible for the spillage of 30 gallons of Fuzzy Peach shower gel down a drain in New Jersey in 1992.

SEEN FROM the window of the train, the Hudson River has become like flat snow-covered fields, a frozen landscape in which there might as well be no river. In the worst winter for a decade, the Hudson has been covered by a foot and a half of ice. A smudge of grey in the distance where the ice-breakers have made a path is the only sign of water. A local newspaper reports that this channel can refreeze within half an hour of a ship passing. Local papers, in their attempt to come to grips with such extreme conditions, produce excessive lists of statistics, all meaningless, like the fact that New York has had snow 28 times in the last 32 days. Almost identical front-page stories are run by the Hudson Register Star (Keeping River Open Never Ending Task: and the Catskill Daily Mail (Keeping River Flowing A Tricky Task). The Star produces a story about a toll-booth attendant on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge who reported bleeding knuckles from the cold.