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HAVANA — At the intersection of Marina and Jovellar streets, more than 50 people wait along a potholed sidewalk and broken curb for a bus that wheezes up to the stop already full. Somehow, a dozen or so manage to squeeze into the windowless contraption that dates to the days when Moscow provided much of the means to keep the Cuban economy moving. Today, the buses barely keep Cubans moving. Many people spend as much as two hours each night getting home from their jobs in the center of Havana. Their homes are also in a sad state, with at...

SACRAMENTO - California will reach another big milestone on the road to healthier air this week as suppliers of diesel complete a mandated switch to an ''ultra low-sulfur'' blend. Remarkably, the sweeping changeover in fuel arrives unheralded by the usual angst or trepidation over engine breakdowns, performance drops and price spikes at the pump. ''It's been very quiet, to the point that we had to publicize that it's taking place,'' said Jerry Martin, veteran spokesman for the state Air Resources Board, which adopted the diesel rule. Smog regulators demonstrated the new fuel in Sacramento last week by holding a bleached-white...

Does the sudden appearance of a Firefox crop circle imply which browser extraterrestrials prefer? We don't know, but it was still fun to make! Constructed by local Firefox fans and the same team that created the Firefox mural from cornstarch and kool-aid and launched the Firefox weather balloon, the Firefox Crop Circle project shows that we have so much passion for Firefox that we want it to be visible from space! Planned in under two weeks and completed in under 24 hours, the crop circle had a final diameter of 220 feet. We constructed the circle in an oat field...

ABC Sports, which once defined sports television and was the home of Roone Arledge, Jim McKay, “Wide World of Sports,” Howard Cosell, 10 Olympics and Mexican cliff diving, died yesterday after one final big gulp by ESPN. Skip to next paragraph The sports division that was nurtured to prominence through Arledge’s production vision and deal-making savvy had been in fading health and recently lost the rights to “Monday Night Football.” ABC Sports was only 45. “My heart just weeps for Roone’s legacy,” said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports, whose career started as an Olympic researcher at ABC Sports...

Are we too spoiled as a society to recognize the importance of soccer? I was watching a television promotion for the FIFA World Cup Tournament the other day, and the theme of the spot was that this simple thing — a little round leather ball — can bring so much national pride, so much joy and so much energy to entire nations around the world. Except ours, that is. Why is that?

NEW YORK (AP) - Middle- and working-class Americans signed up for high-speed Internet access in record numbers in the past year, apparently lured by a price war among phone companies. Broadband adoption increased 59 percent from March last year to March 2006 among U.S. households with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, according to a survey to be released Monday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Marie Brenner, a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair magazine whose reporting career began against the backdrop of the Watergate era, said Saturday that war is being waged against this nation's press and journalists must stand together to turn back assaults on their freedoms. Her speech opened the two-day San Antonio Express-News/Poynter National Writers' Workshop, one of several such journalism conferences held around the country each year. In her speech, Brenner drew parallels between the Watergate era of the 1970s and today's "Plamegate" era, in which the disclosure of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity led to a criminal investigation that saw...

Legendary "Star Wars" film creator George Lucas told a packed house the United States is a provincial country with a culture that has invaded the world via Hollywood. Lucas made the comments as he was honored with a "Global Vision Award" by the World Affairs Council in a downtown San Francisco hotel ballroom. "As long as there has been a talking Hollywood, Hollywood has had a huge impact on the rest of the world," Lucas said as he discussed his films and enhancing education with computer technology. "It shows all the morality we espouse in this country, good and bad....

MAKERS of the hit cartoon The Simpsons have a filmed the show's opening titles using real actors. In the hit viral going around the world we get to see what Bart, Homer, Marg, Lisa and Maggie would look like if they were humans.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Republican national chairman this week suggested Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too "angry" to win the White House in 2008. And to hear Republicans tell it, Mrs. Clinton is just one of many Democrats with an anger-management problem. Former Vice President Al Gore is angry. So is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The party is held hostage by the "angry left." In recent months, Republican operatives and officeholders have cast the Democrats as the anger party, long on emotion and short on ideas. Analysts say the strategy has been effective, painting Democrats' differences with the...

All you need to know about how hard it will be to get people to watch the Oscars is that a nominated documentary about penguins has been watched by more moviegoers than any of the five best picture contenders. Or that four out of five people — and sometimes fewer — tuning into the broadcast will not have seen any of those movies in a theater. Or that roughly only 200,000 people so far have seen Felicity Huffman's Oscar-nominated performance in "Transamerica." That's less than 1% of the weekly viewers who watch her on ABC's "Desperate Housewives."

To enter Columbia University's graduate school of journalism is to enter the highest temple of a religion in decline. A statue of Thomas Jefferson guards the plaza outside the doors, and the entry room is suitably grand. Two raised platforms proclaim the missions in bold gold letters: "To Uphold Standards of Excellence in Journalism" and "To Educate the Next Generation of Journalists." The marble floor tells you that the school was endowed by Joseph Pulitzer and erected in 1912 in memory of his daughter Lucille. A bronze quotation from Pulitzer's 1904 cri de coeur in the North American Review is...

he New York Times reported on January 1 that, although a Democratic takeover of the House is doubtful, Senate chances look rosy. After all, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott may be retiring, so Democratic strategists say that state is in play. Forget the fact that the South is the equivalent of Bangladesh in terms of the Democrats’ knowledge of the voting populace; the “Republicans are evil” campaign just might make the South rise again in its entire 40 years of dead Democratic splendor. The Democrats underestimate the intelligence of the voting public. The public wants a plan, not just a list...

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood ticket sales took a little swan dive in 2005. Why? The consensus hypothesis appears to be that the movies were -- brace yourselves -- not good. The industry and its observers are also variously blaming DVDs, video games, iPods, cellular phones, HBO, crying babies, $10 tickets, Chinese pirates, big screen plasma TVs, an aging demographic, liberal bias, video-on-demand, annoying pre-feature commercials and the Bush administration's energy policy. The Great Box Office Slump has been covered by the entertainment press with a kind of giddy obsession ever since the summer proved blockbuster-deficient. Each week, the prognosticators sought...

HAWAII, Dec. 29, 2005 — Rachel Cambra couldn't wait to see the look on her 14-year-old son's face when he opened a very special present on Christmas morning. The Mililani, Hawaii, woman had saved up to surprise her son with what he wanted most for the holiday, a new Apple iPod with video. Surprised he was, and so was Cambra. When her son opened the box for the high-tech toy, he discovered the iPod that should have been there wasn't. It had apparently been replaced with some kind of mystery meat.

The biggest story in movies this year was the decline in box office. Ticket sales were down for the third straight year, and overall revenues were down for the first time in more than a decade. Meanwhile DVD sales continued to climb. Was this just an anomaly? A blip? Probably not. Was this simply not a very good movie year? To an extent, yes. But something else seemed to be at play in 2005 -- the inevitable drift of movie consumers from theaters to home video. The drift has been ongoing, but this year the box office started feeling the...

NEW YORK (AP) - There's one silver lining to the New York City transit strike that has shut down buses and subways, while crippling many businesses. Online retailing - which has enjoyed robust sales this holiday season - is getting a further boost in the season's final days, as New York area shoppers turn to the Internet for last-minute buying. And there are at least a handful of merchants including jcrew.com and ice.com that are only too willing to help out by serving up free shipping aimed at New York area residents that guarantee arrival before Dec. 25. For New...

When Air America's epitaph is finally chiselled into a cold granite headstone, which antics will be most remembered as standout, rock-bottom moments? The Randi Rhodes Show's Bush execution skit? Or Al Franken clearing the room with a long-winded radio convention speech? The Radio Equalizer hereby nominates Air America host Sam Seder, who's managed not only to make the liberal radio network look less credible than ever before, but at the same time, taken CNN itself down for the count. It was audience tune-out, defined.

Our moral imagination is haunted by monsters--and the greatest aspect of this horror is the fact that so many monsters are real. Is the world ready to face the reality of Mao Zedong? For the last seven decades or so, Mao has been a focus of admiration among many on the Left. Many Americans have known Mao primarily through the work of sympathetic biographers who became champions of the Chinese Communist regime. For many others, Mao has remained a man of mystery, whose true character and legacy have been hidden from Western eyes. All that is about to change. The...

The paranormal at PETA are at it again with another stupidity campaign, and this one, mom and dad, is aimed at your kids. PETA, with its couldn't-be-more-bizarre-if-they-tried zombies, is out in full farce with their sights set on getting your little ones, apart from you, to worship animals and eat lettuce for the rest of their lives. Their current cacophony of craziness is this: if you took Skooter, Jr. fishing this year, well then, you're the devil. You . . . are a bad parent. And the kids should, "turn in their fishing tackle" and even grab "Grandpa's fishing rod...