The James Logan Courier

By Peter Hecht
McClatchy Newspapers(MCT)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Attorney General Jerry Brown, who has set out on a legal crusade to force local government agencies in California to reduce greenhouse gases through better land use planning, was upstaged recently by a talking snowman.

The former governor and national political figure made a YouTube video for last Tuesday's CNN Democratic presidential debate, asking the candidates what they will do about "climate disruption and global warming."

But Brown didn't make the cut. Instead, millions of viewers for days watched repeated plays of a video — created by two Minneapolis men — depicting a forlorn snowman and his frosty sidekick.

"I've been growing concerned about global warming," the snowman says. "The single most important issue to the snowmen of this Global warming permeates public discourse

By Stevenson Swanson
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

NEW YORK — Just say H-2-No.

That's what an increasing number of public officials, environmental advocates and restaurateurs are urging people to do when they're tempted to reach for bottled water.

Rather than spend their dollars on costly plastic containers of water, consumers should boot the bottle and turn on their taps, according to such officials as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.

Those three sponsored a resolution at last month's meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors calling for a study to examine the environmental impact that millions of empty water bottles have on municipal garbage operations.

By Pepper Moto, Courier Staff Writer

Some James Logan students have their prized copies of the just-released Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," after waiting outside local booksellers for the tome to go on sale last weekend.

“It's not a book series; it’s a way of life.” Caitlin of Union City commented as she stood inside Borders Books in her Slytherin costume. “You can't just live with it as a book; you get immersed in it.”

She wasn’t the only fan who felt this way, as the Union City Borders was packed with Harry-cravers from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.

By David Gollust
VOA News, Washington

Senior diplomats of the United States and India Friday ended four days of closed-door negotiations in Washington on an unprecedented nuclear cooperation agreement. They reported "substantial progress" but no final agreement.

The U.S.-India talks, originally scheduled to last two days, stretched into a four-day negotiating marathon.

Though a final agreement was not announced, the two delegations said substantial progress was made on outstanding issues and that their work would now be submitted to the respective governments for final review.

By Liz Ruskin
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

LONDON — A giddy carnival erupted in the alley beside Europe's largest bookstore Friday night, as thousands of Harry Potter fans waited for the stroke of midnight, when the seventh and final book in the Potter series was released.

At the front of the line, near the front door to the Waterstone's store at Piccadilly Circus, a few haggard fans had been waiting since Wednesday, but where the queue bent around the corner the absurdist fun began.

A purple-robed man in a pointy hat shouted into his cell phone and danced with shrieking girls waving scarves of maroon and gold, Harry Potter's house colors. A few yards away, Alon and Yuval Avrami, 17-year-old identical twins from Jerusalem, passionately defended the virtue of Snape, one of Harry's professors, to anyone who would listen. Someone blew a kazoo. Amid the cacophony, two fans made up as owls perched in silence, rereading their Potter tomes.

By Sue Stock
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

RALEIGH, N.C. — Milk is $4 a gallon.

Cereal is $4 a box.

And an orange for your lunchbox can run $1.50 or more.

Food prices are rising faster than they have in 17 years, and there's no relief in sight. Economists had expected a 4 percent increase this year — we reached that in May.

By William Mullen
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

CHICAGO — Deep in the Petrified Forest formation on New Mexico's Ghost Ranch, a group of paleontologists have come across the fossil remains of a surprising creature whose existence could almost certainly will rewrite the books on how dinosaurs came to be.

The story as it is being rewritten is that the first dinosaurs on Earth were relatively pint-sized animals and spent 15 million to 20 million years low in the minor leagues of in life's pecking order before they became the world's dominant animal life form. That idea runs counter to the prevailing theory that after dinosaurs first evolved, their numbers and their relative size exploded, quickly making them the dominant animal life form on Earth.

By Margaret Talev and Renee Schoof
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON — With lawmakers bleary-eyed and irritable from an all-night debate, Senate Democrats shelved a massive defense policy bill Wednesday after Republicans blocked their amendment to start withdrawing troops from Iraq.

The 52-47 vote in favor of ending debate and moving to a final vote on the withdrawal amendment was eight votes short of the 60-vote supermajority needed under Senate rules to force an end to the orations and 15 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

By Margaret Talev and Renee Schoof
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON — Cots for senators to nap on were trucked in. Anti-war veterans planned to pack the Senate gallery after dark. And the leadership of the self-styled "world's greatest deliberative body" gave senators round-the-clock assignments so that the chamber would always be manned.

"I'm going to be presiding at 4 a.m.!" said freshman Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

Democrats moved ahead Tuesday with the Senate's first official all-nighter in four years, hoping that the publicity would make Republicans look extra bad for using their procedural powers to block a vote on an amendment forcing troop withdrawals from Iraq.

By Heda Bayron, VOA News

Hong Kong —Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in northwestern Japan due to fears of mudslides and aftershocks following Monday's powerful earthquake. At least nine people were killed in the disaster.

Relief and rescue operations continued in northwestern Japan Tuesday, where thousands of people are sheltering in school buildings and community centers. The 6.8 magnitude earthquake destroyed homes and cut water, gas and power supplies.

By Renee Schoof and Margaret Talev
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON — Hours after President Bush appealed for more time for his Iraq plan to work, the House of Representatives voted 223-201 Thursday for a dramatic change of course — a troop withdrawal to start in four months and a shift in the mission by next year mainly to fight against international terrorists.

Both the House vote and a similar one planned in the Senate next week add pressure on Republicans facing widespread frustration with the war. Most Republicans say they won't vote to force Bush to withdraw troops on a timetable and that they'll wait for a mid-September report to decide whether to change course.

By Suzette Hackney
Detroit Free Press (MCT)

DETROIT — A horse-drawn carriage pulled a pine casket topped with black roses through the streets of Detroit on Monday.

The coffin was cheap, and the flowers were fake — a fitting send-off for something despised by so many.

This was no celebration-of-life funeral. The thousands who gathered in Hart Plaza on the city's riverfront were more than happy to rejoice in this passing, the hoped-for demise of the N-word and its slang derivative.

A gospel choir rocked out, and speaker after speaker jovially bid good riddance to the words historically associated with the racist degradation of African-Americans, but now often casually used to greet friends or get a point across in a song's lyric or stand-up comic's routine.

By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

The Board of Education on Tuesday night approved the installation of solar energy systems at Kitayama Elementary School and James Logan High School, which will become the second and third New Haven Unified schools to “go solar.” Earlier this year, Conley-Caraballo High became the first school in Alameda County to be powered primarily by solar energy.

By Amy Driscoll
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Erik Botta believes he's done right by his country.

Days after Sept. 11, as a young Army reservist, he volunteered to go to war. He was soon in Afghanistan.

The next year, he was sent out again, this time to Iraq, part of a Special Operations team.

In the next two years, he was sent to Iraq again. And again.

He thought he was done. But now, the Army wants Sgt. Botta one more time.

By Jim Farber
New York Daily News (MCT)

NEW YORK — A galaxy of pop stars, appearing in an atlas full of cities, performed at the environmentally friendly Live Earth concert Saturday — creating what might have been the longest, loudest, most-viewed concert in history.

The epic day and night weren't only about playing. They were also about pleading.

A steady interruption of public service ads broke up the music to nudge viewers to be less piggy about their use of the world's energy. At the same time, the sheer scale of the event meant Live Earth had to be pretty hog-like itself.

By Rosanne Skirble, VOA News
Washington, DC

A grassroots movement to phase out inefficient light bulbs is gaining international strength. The movement is promoting the replacement of traditional incandescent bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescents, a switch that activists say will help cut global electricity use and reduce harmful global warming emissions.

Fifty-five million light bulbs are sold every day in the United States. Most of these are incandescent bulbs in which electricity passing through a thin metal filament inside the bulb's sealed vacuum turns it white-hot and throws off light.