THE subway train that ploughed into another stopped train, killing at least seven people and injuring scores of others in Washington, was part of an aging fleet that officials had sought to phase out because of safety concerns, an investigator said yesterday.

Former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and celebrity disc jockey DJ AM are expected to fully recover from burns they suffered in a fiery South Carolina jet crash that killed the other four people aboard, one of their doctors said today.

A small plane slammed into a 40-storey apartment building in New York, killing two people in a crash that rained flaming debris onto the pavements and briefly raised fears of another terrorist attack.

The lone US air traffic controller on duty the morning Comair Flight 5191 crashed had cleared the jet for takeoff, then turned his back to do some “administrative duties” as the aircraft veered down the wrong runway, a federal investigator said in Kentucky.

Investigators in Kentucky, probing a weekend plane crash in which 49 people were killed, were today trying to determine why the commuter aircraft used a runway that was too short for take-off.