The New York Times
No trend by Earth is Irreversible. However. When measured in human existence and salvation it might be.
Climate Data Hint at Irreversible Rise in Seas
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: March 24, 2006
Within the next 100 years, the growing human influence on Earth's climate could lead to a long and irreversible rise in sea levels by eroding the planet's vast polar ice sheets, according to new observations and analysis by several teams of scientists.
One team, using computer models of climate and ice, found that by about 2100, average temperatures could be four degrees higher than today and that over the coming centuries, the oceans could rise 13 to 20 feet — conditions last seen 129,000 years ago, between the last two ice ages.
The findings, being reported today in the journal Science, are consistent with other recent studies of melting and erosion at the poles. Many experts say there are still uncertainties about timing, extent and causes.
But Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, a lead author of one of the studies, said the new findings made a strong case for the danger of failing to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in a greenhouselike effect.
"If we don't like the idea of flooding out New Orleans, major portions of South Florida, and many other valued parts of the coastal U.S.," Dr. Overpeck said, "we will have to commit soon to a major effort to stop most emissions of carbon to the atmosphere."
According to the computer simulations, the global nature of the warming from greenhouse gases, which diffuse around the atmosphere, could amplify the melting around Antarctica beyond that of the last warm period, which was driven mainly by extra sunlight reaching the Northern Hemisphere.
The researchers also said that stains from dark soot drifting from power plants and vehicles could hasten melting in the Arctic by increasing the amount of solar energy absorbed by ice.
The rise in sea levels, driven by loss of ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, would occur over many centuries and be largely irreversible, but could be delayed by curbing emissions of the greenhouse gases, said Dr. Overpeck and his fellow lead author, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
In a second article in Science, researchers say they have detected a rising frequency of earthquakelike rumblings in the bedrock beneath Greenland's two-mile-thick ice cap in late summer since 1993. They say there is no obvious explanation other than abrupt movements of the overlying ice caused by surface melting.
The jostling of that giant ice-cloaked island is five times more frequent in summer than in winter, and has greatly intensified since 2002, the researchers found. The data mesh with recent satellite readings showing that the ice can lurch toward the sea during the melting season.
The analysis was led by Goran Ekstrom of Harvard and Meredith Nettles of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., part of Columbia University.
H. Jay Zwally, a NASA scientist studying the polar ice sheets with satellites, said the seismic signals from ice movement were consistent with his discovery in 2002 that summer melting on the surface of Greenland's ice sheets could almost immediately spur them to shift measurably. The meltwater apparently trickles through fissures and lubricates the interface between ice and underlying rock.
"Models are important, but measurements tell the real story," Dr. Zwally said. "During the last 10 years, we have seen only about 10 percent of the greenhouse warming expected during the next 100 years, but already the polar ice sheets are responding in ways we didn't even know about only a few years ago."
In both Antarctica and Greenland, it appears that warming waters are also at work, melting the protruding tongues of ice where glaciers flow into the sea or intruding beneath ice sheets, like those in western Antarctica, that lie mostly below sea level. Both processes can cause the ice to flow more readily, scientists say.
Many experts on climate and the poles, citing evidence from past natural warm periods, agreed with the general notion that a world much warmer than today's, regardless of the cause of warming, will have higher sea levels.
But significant disagreements remain over whether recent changes in sea level and ice conditions cited in the new studies could be attributed to rising concentrations of the greenhouse gases and temperatures linked by most experts to human activities.
Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years as an aftereffect of the warming and polar melting that followed the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. Discriminating between that residual effect and any new influence from human actions remains impossible for the moment, many experts say.
Satellites and tide gauges show that seas rose about eight inches over the last century and the pace has picked up markedly since the 1990's.
Dr. Overpeck, the co-author of the paper on rising sea levels, acknowledged the uncertainties about the causes. But he said that in a world in which humans, rich and poor, increasingly clustered on coasts, the risks were great enough to justify prompt action.
"People driving big old S.U.V.'s to their favorite beach or coastal golf course," he said, should "start to think twice about what they might be doing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/science/earth/24melt.html
Bus Plunge That Killed 12 in Chile Echoes in New York Area
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: March 24, 2006
Ten members of a New Jersey retirement community and a Connecticut couple were killed in Chile on Wednesday when a minibus returning to their cruise ship from an adventurous excursion high in the Andes swerved to avoid a truck on a cliff road and plunged 300 feet down a mountainside.
Rescue workers and civilians rush toward the scene of a bus accident in Arica, Chile. Twelve Americans died when a tour bus returning to their cruise ship plunged 300 feet down a mountainside.
Our blog takes a look at the race for mayor in New Jersey's largest city, and the colorful characters and moments that drive the campaign.
The bus was returning to a cruise ship after a tour of the Andes.
Half a hemisphere away, their deaths reverberated yesterday in voices of grief and remembrance, in a retirement village near Princeton and in Stamford. They told of a couple soon to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, of a fun-loving retirement-trip organizer who previously led the way to China, of a neighborhood Mr. Fixit and of a couple who had waited their whole lives for this trip.
The victims, all in their 60's and 70's, many of them lifelong friends who had lived, worshiped and even retired together, had long looked forward to a South American cruise with exotic inland treks to the windswept Andean aeries of soaring condors, of llamas and alpacas. Most were traveling with a tour sponsored by B'nai B'rith, the Jewish service organization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/nyregion/24bus.html
Women Wage Key Campaigns for Democrats
By ROBIN TONER
NARBERTH, Pa. — If the Democrats have their way, the 2006 Congressional elections will be the revenge of the mommy party.
Democratic women are running major campaigns in nearly half of the two dozen most competitive House races where their party hopes to pick up enough Republican seats to regain control of the House. Democratic strategists are betting that the voters' unrest and hunger for change — reflected consistently in public opinion polls — create the perfect conditions for their party's female candidates this year.
"In an environment where people are disgusted with politics in general, who represents clean and change?" asks Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Women."
Republicans, who have prospered in recent elections by running as the guardians of national security and clearly hope to do so again, dismiss this theory. But it will ultimately be tested in places like this Philadelphia suburb, where Lois Murphy, a 43-year-old lawyer and Democratic activist, lost a Congressional campaign in 2004 by just two percentage points.
This time, as she challenges the same Republican incumbent, Representative Jim Gerlach, Ms. Murphy said in an interview in her campaign headquarters in Narberth, she senses an electorate that is "really, really" ready for change, tired of the ethics scandals, and convinced "that their government has been letting them down."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/politics/24women.html?ei=5094&en=9a5ed7f39bb11677&hp=&ex=1143262800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Woman, 24, Says Neighbor Held Her Captive for 10 Years
By IAN URBINA
A girl who vanished more than 10 years ago was reunited yesterday with her mother in a Pittsburgh suburb two days after confiding to a store owner that she was being held captive, the police said.
"I guess she just chose me to lean on," said Joe Sparico, owner of J. J.'s Deli Mart in McKeesport, Pa., where the young woman, Tanya Nicole Kach, broke into tears on Tuesday while telling him that she was living with a man against her will. "I'm just glad she's happy and home now."
Ms. Kach, now 24, was 14 when she was reported missing on Feb. 10, 1996, after walking out of her father's house, two miles from where she said she had lived in secrecy.
"We're investigating this further, but I have to tell you there is still a lot we need to figure out," said Charles Moffatt, superintendent of the Allegheny County Police Department.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/national/24missing.html
Cheney's Needs on the Road: What, No NPR?
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON, March 23 — Vice President Dick Cheney may be a rock star only to his most ardent Republican supporters, but he has on-the-road demands just like the Rolling Stones. Still, Mr. Cheney appears easier to please than Mick Jagger or Keith Richards.
At least that was the evidence from "Vice Presidential Downtime Requirements," the heading of a document posted Thursday on the Smoking Gun Web site and confirmed as authentic by Mr. Cheney's office.
The document listed 13 requirements. Among them were these: All televisions sets in Mr. Cheney's hotel suite should be tuned to Fox News, all lights should be on, and the thermostat set at 68 degrees. Mr. Cheney should have a queen- or king-size bed, a desk with a chair, a private bathroom, a container for ice, a microwave oven and a coffee pot, with decaf brewed before arrival.
The vice president should also have four cans of caffeine-free Diet Sprite and four to six bottles of water. He must have the hotel restaurant menu, with a copy faxed ahead to his advance office. If his wife is with him, she should have two bottles of sparkling water, either Calistoga or Perrier.
For his reading material, Mr. Cheney should have The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and the local newspaper.
"The vice president maintains an active schedule, which requires regular travel throughout the United States and at times involves a hotel stay," said Jenny Mayfield, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney. "Our advance office provides guidelines for our volunteers in the field. This is just a routine little check list."
The downtime requirements said nothing about exercise equipment, but aides to Mr. Cheney have been spotted on his travels loading and unloading a stationary bicycle from Air Force Two.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/politics/24cheney.html
Tuberculosis Declines to Historic Low in the U.S.
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Tuberculosis cases in the United States fell to historic lows last year, public health authorities said yesterday. At the same time, doctors said, there was a small but worrisome increase in the number of cases resistant to several drugs.
The total number of cases in 2005 was 14,093, or 4.8 cases per 100,000 people, the lowest per capita rate since 1953, when national reporting began.
In New York City, which has among the nation's highest rates of tuberculosis, cases fell to 989, below 1,000 for the first time, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city's health commissioner announced. The rate is still twice that of the nation, largely because New York has so many foreign-born residents, who account for 70 percent of the city's caseload.
The number of drug-resistant cases in the United States increased by 13 percent from 2003 to 2004, the last year for which data was available, said Dr. Kenneth G. Castro, head of tuberculosis elimination at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Of the 128 drug-resistant cases, 97 were in people born abroad. Driven by the global AIDS epidemic, tuberculosis, which thrives in weakened immune systems, is a major killer in poor countries, accounting for nearly nine million new cases and nearly two million deaths a year.
Immigrants from many countries, including China, India, Mexico, Vietnam, the Philippines, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, have been found with drug-resistant strains of the disease.
Health authorities are creating a new category for people resistant not only to two first-line antibiotics, but also to at least one of the expensive, toxic second-line drugs. The new classification is nicknamed XDR, for extensively drug-resistant, and supersedes MDR (multidrug-resistant).
Tuberculosis is generally curable, even the XDR type, but the treatment can take years and require surgery, Dr. Castro said.
He warned against complacency, recalling that the disease surged in the early 1990's, especially in New York.
"As we make progress against TB," Dr. Castro said, "there is a tendency to prematurely declare victory and let our guard down — and then we see a resurgence."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/health/24tb.html
Basque Nationalists See an Opening for Autonomy
By RENWICK McLEAN
Published: March 24, 2006
MADRID, March 23 — The governing party in the Basque region of northern Spain said on Thursday that the permanent cease-fire announced Wednesday by the militant Basque separatist group ETA opened the way for the region to loosen its ties with the central government in Madrid.
Iñigo Urkullu, a member of the governing Basque Nationalist Party, said that it was time for the central government to begin addressing the demands of the Basque region's peaceful separatists and supporters of more autonomy, who had long complained that they were unfairly associated with ETA.
"There is a political problem that predates the atmosphere of violence that has caused so much pain in Basque society," Mr. Urkullu said Thursday in an appearance on the region's public television station.
His comments echoed the views expressed Wednesday by the president of the Basque region, Juan José Ibarretxe, shortly after ETA announced that on Friday it would end its four-decade campaign of violence, during which it killed more than 800 people, in pursuit of an independent Basque state.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/international/europe/24spain.html
Belarus Protest Dispersed as Police Arrest Hundreds
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: March 24, 2006
MINSK, Belarus, Friday, March 24 — Belarussian riot police officers arrested hundreds of antigovernment demonstrators early Friday morning in the central square of Minsk, ending five days of protests with a swift police action.
The police arrived on six large trucks just after 3 a.m., wearing black riot helmets and masks, and surrounded the small encampment in October Square.
The demonstrators, who had been protesting a rigged presidential election last Sunday, stood their ground while the officers dismounted and jogged into place in lines, cutting off any chance of escape.
For a few minutes, as the police awaited the final command, the demonstrators' loudspeaker worked, and one of their leaders ordered the protesters to sit down and hold hands before the police moved in.
They chanted, shouting "The police are with the people!" and "Truth! Truth! Truth!" but offered no resistance visible to journalists, who were ordered by the police to stand about 50 yards away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/international/europe/24belarus.html
Haaretz
Harvard to remove official seal from anti-AIPAC 'working paper'
By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent
WASHINGTON - Harvard University has decided to remove its logo from a study that denounces the pro-Israel lobby's impact on American foreign policy, in order to distance itself from the study's conclusions.
The university also appended a more strongly worded disclaimer to the study, stating that it reflects the views of its authors only. The former disclaimer said merely that the study "does not necessarily" reflect the university's views.
The controversial study, published this week, was authored by Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. It charged that American foreign policy has been subordinated to Israeli interests and accused the pro-Israel lobby of responsibility for America's invasion of Iraq.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/698307.html
So pro-Israel that it hurts
By Daniel Levy
The new John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt study of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" should serve as a wake-up call, on both sides of the ocean. The most obvious and eye-catching reflection is the fact that it is authored by two respected academics and carries the imprimatur of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. The tone of the report is harsh. It is jarring for a self-critical Israeli, too. It lacks finesse and nuance when it looks at the alphabet soup of the American-Jewish organizational world and how the Lobby interacts with both the Israeli establishment and the wider right-wing echo chamber.
It sometimes takes AIPAC omnipotence too much at face value and disregards key moments - such as the Bush senior/Baker loan guarantees episode and Clinton's showdown with Netanyahu over the Wye River Agreement. The study largely ignores AIPAC run-ins with more dovish Israeli administrations, most notably when it undermined Yitzhak Rabin, and how excessive hawkishness is often out of step with mainstream American Jewish opinion, turning many, especially young American Jews, away from taking any interest in Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/698302.html
Abbas: Peace deal can be reached within one year
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
A peace deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be achieved within less than a year, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Haaretz on Wednesday.
Speaking to Haaretz from the Muqata compound in Ramallah, Abbas said he had proposed to the United States to open covert negotiations for a final status settlement. The talks would be spearheaded by President George Bush, after the new Israeli government was set up.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/698140.html
Olmert to tap FM Livni as deputy PM should Kadima win election
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will become deputy prime minister should Kadima, as expected, win next week's election, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Thursday.
Livni, therefore, would automatically replace Olmert if he were out of the country or temporarily incapacitated.
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Olmert said Thursday that he attributed great importance to announcing the identity of his deputy, since he himself was catapulted into the prime minister's chair by the fact that he was serving as deputy premier when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke. Kadima officials said they expected the other prime ministerial candidates to name their designated deputies as well.
According to the law, an acting prime minister can serve for a maximum of 100 days; after that, the cabinet must either confirm him as prime minister or choose another of its members to assume the post. Since Olmert's 100 days expire on April 11, if a new government has not been formed by that date, the outgoing cabinet would have to convene and formally name him as prime minister. Once that happens, he would be free to name Livni as his deputy.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/698141.html
Election 2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/elections2006.jhtml?contrassID=1&subContrassID=30
Security forces preparing for possible Election Day terror
By Haaretz Service
Security forces are preparing for possible terror attacks ahead of the elections Tuesday, and the army will maintain its closure on the territories until after Election Day.
Police will be on the highest level of alert the day of the elections, but began bolstering forces in big cities and along the seam line this week, the head of the police's operational department, Berti Ohayon, said Friday.
"The closer we come to Election Day, the more police activity will be bolstered," said Ohayon. He said police are targeting Palestinians staying in Israel illegally and deploying additional officers to Jerusalem and other cities, as well as along the seam line.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/698354.html
Israeli restrictions create isolated enclaves in West Bank
By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent
The regime of restriction on movement imposed by Israel on the Palestinians has crumbled the West Bank into dozens of closed or partially closed enclaves isolated from each other despite their geographical proximity. Permanent and mobile checkpoints, along with physical barriers of various kinds, fenced-off main roads, limitations on Palestinian traffic on east-west and north-south arteries, have cut off direct transportational links between areas of the West Bank.
Thus, a new geographic, social and economic reality has emerged in the West Bank.
Hundreds of exits from Palestinian communities to main and regional roads are blocked. Traffic among the enclaves is directed to secondary roads and a small number of main roads passing through Israel Defense Force-controlled bottle-necks. Entry to the Jordan Valley, Palestinian East Jerusalem and to enclaves between the separation fence and the Green Line is barred to all Palestinians except those registered as residents of those areas. To enter such areas, special authorization to "non-residents" must be obtained, which is rarely given.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/698316.html
THIS reminds me of the old USA in the fifties. Everything about government had to be perfect otherwise everything was wrong with the world. Israel needs a reform movement where openness between the people and their government is the agenda.
Agriculture Ministry suspects PA concealed outbreak of avian flu
By Yuval Azoulay and Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondents
The Agriculture Ministry suspects that the bird flu that hit Israel last week originated in the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinian Authority attempted to conceal the outbreak.
"We suspect that the avian flu outbreak in Israel originated in the Palestinian Authority," Agriculture Minister Ze'ev Boim (Kadima) said Thursday, while touring the sites of the outbreak in southern Israel. "There is reason to suspect that the Palestinian Authority tried to conceal the outbreak from Israel."
Initial tests conducted on chicken carcasses from Gaza this week indicated the existence of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu there. The virus was found in coops built on the ruins of the former settlement of Netzarim, in the central Strip
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/698337.html
The San Francisco Chronicle
S&P adding Google to 500 index; stock soars 9 percent
Google Inc.'s stock will be added to the Standard & Poor's 500 index, a long-anticipated rite of passage that lifted the online search engine leader's recently sagging shares.
Standard & Poor's announced the forthcoming change after the stock market closed Thursday. Google will replace Burlington Resources Inc. in the closely watched barometer March 31. Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston, is being acquired by ConocoPhillips Inc. in a deal worth about $35.6 billion.
Google's shares gained $1.67 to close at $341.89 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then soared $30.82, or 9 percent, in extended trading.
Before Thursday's announcement, Google's market value had dropped by nearly 20 percent so far this year, wiping out about $20 billion in shareholder wealth amid concerns about slowing earnings growth and questions about its often cryptic communications with Wall Street.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2006/03/23/financial/f163904S12.DTL
Let's do the Bush Bash
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/
Wannabe rockers sniff out the big time at 'Rock Star: The Series' auditions in S.F.
What's that smell?
Oh right, it's the bovine musk of the leather trousers that were pulled out of closets all over Northern California on Tuesday in anticipation of the San Francisco open auditions for the second season of "Rock Star: The Series," held at the newly opened Rockit Room on Clement Street.
For those who missed it the first time around (the ratings started slow but finished strong), that's the CBS reality show produced by "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" creator Mark Burnett in which aspiring rockers try out for the lead position of an established band. Last year's winner, 31-year-old Canadian J.D. Fortune, is fronting INXS, the Australian group whose original singer, Michael Hutchence, was found hanging naked from a door in a Sydney hotel room in 1997. This year's show, scheduled to premiere this summer, doesn't quite have such a grim air about it.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/23/DDGR9HRU2S1.DTL
Lawyers for Bonds plan to sue over steroids book
'Game of Shadows': Attorneys say transcripts obtained illegally so profits should go to charity
Barry Bonds' lawyers say they will ask a judge today to confiscate all profits from a new book alleging that the Giants slugger used steroids, arguing that the book was based on illegally obtained grand jury transcripts.
Any profits from the sale of "Game of Shadows," or from excerpts published in The Chronicle or Sports Illustrated magazine, should be turned over to charity, Bonds' lawyers said Thursday in a statement outlining a lawsuit they plan to file in San Francisco Superior Court.
"Bonds is not seeking personal recovery of any of the illegal profits," said attorneys Michael Rains and Alison Berry Wilkinson. "Instead he will call upon the court to donate all book proceeds to bona fide charitable organizations which serve the low-income youth who need it the most."
They also plan to ask a federal judge today to begin contempt-of-court proceedings against the book's authors,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/24/BONDS.TMP
This woman didn't kill for no reason with four children to support. It has to be an affair or a 'Burning Bed' issue. Has to be.
Wife a Suspect in Killing of Minister
A popular and charismatic Tennessee minister was found shot to death in his parsonage, and authorities labled his wife a suspect after she and the couple's three young daughters were found in Alabama on Thursday after a daylong search.
"We've known from the beginning that she was either a suspect or a victim," said Jennifer Johnson, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.
Church members went looking for 31-year-old Matthew Winkler when he did not show up for an evening service at the Fourth Street Church of Christ. They used a key to enter the parsonage and found him dead in a bedroom late Wednesday, Police Chief Neal Burks said.
There were no signs of forced entry at the parsonage, authorities said, but Winkler's family was gone, along with their minivan.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/03/23/national/a203835S06.DTL
Laptop with private info of thousands of HP workers stolen
A laptop with the personal information of about 196,0000 Hewlett-Packard current and former employees has been stolen from mutual fund company Fidelity Investments, which manages the tech giant's pension and retirement plans.
The theft, which happened last week, prompted HP and Fidelity to alert the affected employees about the security breach. "HP is working closely with Fidelity to minimize the impact of this information breach," said HP Spokeswoman Brigida Bergkamp.
The employees have been informed via email and regular mail of the breach. Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley said the company has arranged for them to use a credit monitoring service at the investment company's expense.
Fidelity has also set up extra identification verification measures to prevent unauthorized use of the accounts. Any employee losses as a result of the security breach will be reimbursed, Crowley said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/23/BUG9MHSTFV9.DTL
Poll finds U.S. warming to gay marriage
Opposition off 12% since '04 -- support for adoption, military role is up nationally
Opposition to same-sex marriage dropped sharply across the country during the past two years, though just over half of Americans still oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday.
The poll also showed increased support for allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, and substantial backing for the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
The survey was released one day after a poll of California residents indicated increasing support for gay rights in the state, including for same-sex marriages. The nonpartisan Field Poll found that support for same-sex marriage in the state had risen from 38 percent in 1997 to 43 percent today.
The Pew center's national poll of 1,405 adults, conducted from March 8-12, found that 51 percent opposed same-sex marriage and 39 percent supported it. In February 2004, as same-sex couples were marrying in San Francisco, a Pew poll found 63 percent of Americans opposed the right of gays and lesbians to marry and 30 percent in favor. The margin of error in the latest survey was plus or minus 3 or 4 percentage points, depending on the question.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/23/MNGAOHSE4I1.DTL
Bus Carrying U.S. Tourists Unregistered
The tour bus that crashed in northern Chile, killing 12 elderly American tourists returning to their cruise ship after an excursion, was unregistered and not authorized to transport passengers, government officials said Thursday.
The cruise line, meanwhile, said the excursion had been arranged privately and was not among those offered to its passengers.
Two Americans survived the crash but suffered broken bones and were moved to an intensive care unit at a local hospital as a precaution, according to Celebrity Cruises President Dan Hanrahan and a doctor in Miami.
The Chilean driver and tour guide also were hospitalized, but Juan Carlos Poli, a city hall spokesman in the Pacific port city of Arica, said they were in better condition and the guide was expected to be released Thursday. Poli said the bus had a capacity of 16 passengers.
The tourists — apparently members of the Jewish group B'nai B'rith on vacation from Connecticut and New Jersey — were returning to Celebrity Cruises' ship Millennium from an excursion to Lauca National Park Wednesday when the bus swerved to avoid an approaching truck and plunged off the rugged highway near Arica, 1,250 miles north of Santiago, he said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/03/23/international/i093753S15.DTL
U.S., U.K. Forces Rescue Hostages in Iraq
Without firing a shot, U.S. and British forces stormed a house Thursday and freed three Christian peace activists who were bound but unguarded, ending a four-month hostage ordeal that saw an American in the group killed and dumped along a railroad track.
The U.S. ambassador and the top American military spokesman held out hope the operation on the outskirts of Baghdad could lead to a break in the captivity of American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for The Christian Science Monitor who was abducted Jan. 7.
The military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said the 8 a.m. rescue of the Briton and two Canadians from a "kidnapping cell" was based on information divulged by a man during interrogation only three hours earlier. The man was captured by U.S. forces on Wednesday night.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/03/23/international/i203056S41.DTL
U.S. Military Asserts Most of Iraq Peaceful
The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq asserted Thursday that major violence is largely confined to just three of the country's 18 provinces, but fighting there raged on with at least 58 people killed in execution-style slayings, bombings and gunbattles.
For the third straight day, Sunni insurgents hit a major police and jail facility — this time with a suicide car bombing that killed 25 in central Baghdad. The attacker detonated his explosives at the entrance to the Interior Ministry Major Crimes unit in the Karradah district, killing 10 civilians and 15 policemen, authorities said.
As insurgent forces raised the stakes with the attacks, the U.S. military announced late Thursday that it was in the second day of an operation with Iraqi soldiers "to disrupt anti-Iraqi forces and to find and destroy terrorist caches in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/03/23/international/i142455S31.DTL
Reinventing the wheel
Nothing stands still. Especially, stuff with wheels. Bikes, scooters, skates are subject to small-scale inventors trying to score a ride to the big time and the big money by reinventing the wheel -- or at the very least, the frameworks by which new wheels get delivered to a giddy public.
Trajectories of past successes offer ready inspiration. In the late 1990s, the new sport of inline skating (led by pioneer Rollerblades) sprinted from 3.6 million users to a peak of 27 million. Next, foldable scooters took off (led by the aluminum, two-wheeled Razor). The Razor and many similar knock-offs roared to a peak of 9.2 million sales in the year 2000.
That rumbling sound is the approach of a new crew of wheeled sports devices that hopes to catch up to such sterling examples, or possibly surpass them.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2006/03/23/SPGELHSGCH1.DTL
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