Suvs

The compassionate plea by Kathy Calvin, CEO of the United Nations Foundation, for increased funding to help women and others in the camps of quake-displaced Haitians ignores the United Nation's complicity in their plight ("Small measures can improve the lives of Haitian women," Sunday). There have been more than 10,000 armed U.N. security forces in Haiti since 2004, at a cost of $60 million a month. Yet there is no war in Haiti, no violent factions to restrain. Before the earthquake, U.N. cash had already failed to create infrastructure or sustainable job programs.

Police pulled a submerged SUV from the Schuylkill on Saturday afternoon, the second vehicle in a week recovered from the same stretch of river near Fairmount. About 1:40 p.m., a person walking along Kelly Drive north of Hunting Park Avenue alerted police to the Jeep Grand Cherokee that was underwater. Unsure if anyone was in the upside-down car, divers from the Philadelphia Police Department's marine unit searched the river and found the vehicle unoccupied, a marine-unit supervisor said.

Best place to catch a ride in Center City? How about grabbing a car off the pavement around City Hall, where all types of vehicles can be found parked these days? It's an old habit that the city supposedly broke back in the Rendell administration, when the apron was cleared of unsightly vehicles. Too bad it didn't last. In a supposedly pedestrian-friendly city, people shouldn't have to worry about being run down on the pavement near the city's premier public building. But today's scene under Billy Penn's statue represents a throwback, with commercial vehicles and official-looking black SUVs parked on the apron's north side and near the northeast corner.

An SUV was sideswiped by a box truck on Roosevelt Boulevard and forced up on the sidewalk, where it struck and critically injured a pedestrian Wednesday afternoon in the city's Feltonville section, police said. The Honda Pilot was traveling north on the boulevard near C Street around 3:45 p.m. when it was sideswiped by the white box truck, which did not stop, said Officer Deborah Kiker of the Accident Investigation District. The Honda hit the pedestrian and then crashed into a light pole, but the driver was not hurt.

A school bus and an SUV collided this morning in North Philadelphia but no one was hurt. Students were transferred to another bus for the trip to school after the smashup at the intersection of North Fairhill Street and West Hunting Park Avenue in Hunting Park. Police are investigating.

The impact of the crash was so powerful that it knocked out the car's engine, flipped the silver Jetta end over end, and hurled it into a stone wall. "And we're talking about a rear-end collision," Haverford Township Police Chief Carmen Pettine said. The car had been rammed by a stolen Range Rover rocketing more than 100 m.p.h. along Haverford Road in Bryn Mawr just after midnight Wednesday. Killed was Daniel Giletta, 22, a Villanova University senior and National Honor Society student from Wyckoff, N.J., known for his charity work.

DANIEL GILETTA would have been a star. He was among the smartest of the smart at his Bergen County, N.J., high school and earned a coveted distinguished-scholar honor from the state of New Jersey. He planned to follow his father into engineering and was set to graduate next year from Villanova University. But his promising path ended in an explosion of glass and metal early yesterday, when a thug fleeing police in a stolen Land Rover at more than 100 mph crashed into Giletta's car in Bryn Mawr.

ITHINK it's crazy that if you try to park an SUV in a Center City parking lot, you have to pay extra. Why? It's not like I'm taking up two spots. I'm parking just like everyone else. Oh, and when you buy lunchmeat, you have to pay extra money to have it shredded. Why extra? The person working is paid to do a job - slice the meat! Who cares if it is cut thick or thin, it's getting cut! Do your job! Erica Quinn Philadelphia

Megan Hamlin, 26, a Bucks County woman run over by an SUV while sunbathing in Florida 10 years ago, died Monday after years in a vegetative state. Hamlin had a seizure Saturday at the Luther Woods Convalescent Center in Hatboro and was taken to Abington Memorial Hospital, where she died from complications, said her grandmother Louise Hamlin. On the afternoon of June 20, 2000, Megan Hamlin, then 16, was sunbathing with a friend on a St. Augustine beach when the SUV ran over their heads.

Eight people were injured shortly before 7 p.m. Saturday when a school bus and an SUV crashed in the northbound lanes of I-676 in Camden near the Federal Street Exit, state police said. One vehicle sideswiped the other, authorities said, but further details were not available, including information about the owner of the bus. The injured, who were not believed to have been seriously hurt, were taken to Cooper University Hospital, police said. The accident briefly blocked four lanes of traffic.