WORLD IN BRIEF : BRITAIN : Bomb Probe Calls for Changes in Jets

British investigators issued their first official report on the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Scotland in which they recommended that aircraft be strengthened to withstand bomb blasts. In its report, which concentrated on technical matters, the British Transport Department’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch also recommended improvements in the manufacture of planes’ flight-recording systems, saying the recorders aboard Pan Am Flight 103 did not have any record of the explosion. A team of 15 inspectors worked for months reconstructing the Boeing 747 that was destroyed above Lockerbie, Scotland, by a bomb, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.