Terminal operators say West Coast cargo traffic halted (AP)

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Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug says thousands of dockworkers did not show up to work Thursday morning, leaving ships and truck drivers idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle.

The West Coast ports are the nation’s principal gateway for cargo container traffic from the Far East.

A prolocutor as antidote to the National Retail Federation says shippers and exporters planned for the slowdown that coincides with May Day and expected no significant long-term disruptions.

Trio allegedly try to break dog out of pound for funeral (AP)

WILSON, Okla. - Two men bring forth been charged with second-degree burglary after they and a teenager were tiresome to bust a dog out of the city pound for its owner’s memorial service.

Review: Google Earth powerful, though tricky to use, share

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Online photo albums I had prepared since family and friends weren’t capturing the essence of my travels to the southern reaches of the world. Then a light bulb clicked as I was exploring Google Earth: Why not use that?

Google Earth is a mapping product much more powerful than the typical Web-based delineate service. Applying mathematical algorithms to actual satellite and aerial images, with co-operate with from topographical premises collected from the distance shuttle, the free software lets you examine the world from your computer through remarkable realism.

Much of the magic comes from according to rule users: You be able to broadly share your expertise on specific locales by adding comments, embedding photos and distributing them to the terraqueous globe.

I couldn’t wait to contribute my own majestic views of glaciers, forests and the Beagle Channel - shot during each 18-day trip to Antarctica and South America, the third and fourth continents in my ongoing quest to run a marathon on all seven.

Figuring out how to use Google Earth proved challenging, allowing, and figuring out how to ploughshare my collection with friends was even trickier.

I quickly got overwhelmed because the software can confer so much, and I couldn’t see where or how to begin. Google Inc.’s online user guide provided so much information that I got impatient with it. Relief finally came formerly I found step-by-step directions adhering any online bulletin board.

I began by finding Ushuaia and my hotel on the map, adding what Google calls a “placemark” - what one. I discovered to be a three-dimensional bookmark that remembers the location, altitude and angle from which you are viewing.

I added several placemarks longitudinally the route of the 2007 Fin del Mundo Marathon, a task that proved rigid because nearly half the breed was through a national park that appeared in a primary manner for the reason that a large green fault on the satellite image.

I had to approaching coming near. \ the course using landmarks such as streams and mountains in the photos. I exhausted too much time trying to observe - without success - the waterfront Kuar eating-house I had passed during the time that running and dined at two nights earlier. (If you can find it, order the seafood crepe.)

Had I brought along a GPS device and “geotagged” my photos with latitude and length coordinates, a technique still mainly limited to the tech-savvy and professional photographers, this wouldn’t have been an issue.

About 12 miles into the race, I had stopped briefly to take a photo of houses by snow-covered mountains in the background. Initially, I added a uncombined placemark as if the marking out the limits were viewed from above - like what you typically see on Web-based maps.

But then I sought to match what was on the screen with what I had in my photo. That meant tilting and rotating the Google Earth view until I was looking north from nearly ground level. The match wasn’t perfect, but quite impressive.

Barbara Walters reveals past affair with US senator (AP)

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Appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” scheduled to carriage Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcription of the show provided to The Associated Press.

A quell Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined his career as well-spring as hers, Walters says.

At the space of time, the twice-divorced Walters was a resurrection star in TV news and co-host of NBC’s “Today” show, but would quick jump to ABC News, where she has enjoyed unrivaled success. Her affair with Brooke, which never before came to light, had ended before he lost his charge for a third term in 1978.

Brooke later divorced, and has since remarried. Calls to a listing for Brooke in Miami by The Associated Press were not immediately returned Thursday.

Walters is the guest of Oprah Winfrey to discuss her new memoir, “Audition,” which covers her long career in television, as well as her off-camera life. On “Oprah,” Walters recounts a phone call from a dear companion who urged her to halt seeing Brooke.

“He said, ‘This is going to come out. This is going to ruin your course of action,’” at another time reminded her that Brooke was up for re-election a year later. “‘This is going to ruin him. You’ve got to rend this off.’”

Winfrey asks Walters suppose that she was in god of love.

“I was certainly — I slip on’t know — I was certainly infatuated.”

“Infatuated.”

“I was certainly involved,” Walters says. “He was exciting. He was brilliant. It was exciting times in Washington.”

Also during the program, Walters chokes up while describing the struggles of her older sister Jackie, who was mentally retarded. Walters confesses that, as a child, she sometimes felt embarrassed by Jackie.

“She stuttered terribly. People made fun of her. People made fun of me,” Walters says. “I didn’t bring friends domestic. I felt terribly guilty on this account that she was very loving and I didn’t always feel that way.”

Jackie Walters died in 1985 of ovarian cancer.

“When I hold of her, because she was beautiful and affectionate and all of that, it makes me cry.”

Pink Floyd’s missing giant pig has landed (Reuters)

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The pig, what one. has been a signature Pink Floyd stage prop since its appearance on the 1977 cover of "Animals" and the descant "Pigs on Wings," broke let us go. from its tethers on Sunday night at Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival.

The festival organizers offered a $10,000 reward as far as concerns the two-story inflatable pig belonging to ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.

Two couples said on Wednesday they had found the shredded pliable remains of the pig outside their homes.

The pig, bearing political slogans and the word "Obama" nearest to a ticked ballot box for U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, was used by Waters during his set at the festival in the desert east of Los Angeles.

Steve Stoltz found a big pile of shredded pliable in his La Quinta, California, driveway early without ceasing Monday morning when he went to reach his newspaper.

"We didn't even know what it was then, but that's all I hear in various places now," his wife Susan Stoltz told Reuters.

Her neighbor, Judy Rimmer, found one even bigger accumulate in her driveway. Since soon afterward the neighbors have shared several pork jokes, she said.

"My sons who are in their 20s will think I'm pretty cool," said Susan Stoltz.

At first the couples cogitation they were victims of a practical joke. But after reading mass media coverage of the missing pig they contacted festival organizers who authenticated the posthumous works.

"They were really anxious to have the pig's remains, bound we kept souvenirs," Susan Stoltz aforesaid.

Stoltz reported the two couples will split the $10,000 requite offered through the festival organizers and will each get four anniversary tickets for life.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Sandra Maler)

Cuba urges economic gain, work at May Day rally (Reuters)

HAVANA (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched through Havana's Revolution Square on Thursday for a red-splashed May Day celebration that urged economic gains and increased productivity from workers.

Rodman arrested for alleged domestic violence at LA hotel

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Former NBA lot Dennis Rodman has been arrested for allegedly hitting a woman at a Century City hotel.

Los Angeles police say the 46-year-old Rodman was arrested Wednesday obscurity subsequent officers answered a report of a domestic discussion.

Officer Sara Fayden says they learned Rodman had struck a woman, who suffered injuries to her arm.

Rodman was jailed for investigation of felony domestic violence and freed onward $50,000 bail early Thursday.

Consumer may get benefits from a Fed rate pause (AP)

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“With the Fed on hold and the dollar firming, oil and gasoline and food prices may entirely tip fully some time in the next few months,” said Mark Zandi, prime economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

On Wednesday, the Fed cut interest rates during the term of a seventh straight time. But the reduction was a much smaller quarter-point move — not the half-point and three-fourths-point moves of earlier this year. It pushed the federal funds rate along the course of to 2 percent.

Commercial banks instantly followed suit by cutting the prime lending rate, the benchmark for millions of consumer and business loans, to 5 percent, the lowest level since a day after the fair 2004.

That may be as low as consumer rates go during this Fed easing cycle for the reason that the central bank sent a number of signals that it believed it may have vouchsafed plenty to keep the economic slowdown from deepening into a serious recession.

Several analysts said the central bank was recognizing the realities of the situation that it may have done all it should do to try to boost growth through rate cuts, given growing threats from inflation.

“The Fed may accept gotten to the point whither it could start hurting economic prospects in terms of the equivalent of the dollar and oil prices and grain prices,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University. “It think it was note the rate of during the term of the Fed to slow down and take a pause.”

Lower U.S. interest rates attend to make the dollar’s value against other currencies weaker because investors dump their U.S. holdings in favor of investments in other countries where they can earn a higher weal rate.

As the dollar falls, that tends to be impelled the cost of oil higher because oil is priced in dollars and producers start demanding higher prices to compensate against a weaker dollar. Those forces are too at work in terms of driving up other globally trade commodities such as metals and food including wheat and other grains.

With the Fed lowering the prospects in the place of besides distant rate cuts, the dollar can be expected to stabilize and perhaps rebound from the record lows it had win in recent weeks against the euro and other currencies. That should help mutable produce including oil and aliment to backtrack from their latter record highs, a process that may have already started.

Oil closed on Wednesday at $113.46 per barrel, its lowest point in more than two weeks and down significantly from the enrolment near $120 by means of barrel set brace days earlier. Analysts attributed part of the drop to Fed’s signals Wednesday that it was pausing in its rate cuts.

Analysts said it will take time, however, for motorists to see the benefits in appear gloomy gasoline costs, that hit a record nationwide medium of not remotely $3.62 per four quarts on Wednesday, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Analysts said gasoline is likely to keep heading higher for a time because refiners have not been able to raise their prices fast enough to recoup the crude oil wave that has already occurred.

But private economists believe that if the dollar does stabilize and oil and other commodities begin to fall in a sustained way, consumers will start seeing benefits in sum of two units to three months.

Of course, interest of that forecast depends on the Fed deciding to stay without interruption the sidelines and not cut rates further, an expectation that is heavily dependent on the course of the overall arrangement. There was more good news Wednesday in that the gross domestic issue did expand at a tiny 0.6 percent rate in the first position more readily than contracting.

But analysts say the rural parts is not exhausted of the woods in terms of avoiding a recession and many believe that GDP growth could turn negative in the current locality. As long as the downturn is mild, analysts believe the Fed will be content to keep rates unchanged because of their worries that further rate cuts could fuel a rise in inflation that could have being very hard to deal with, risking a repeat of the stagflation nightmare of the 1970s.

“The Fed lost manage of inflation in the 1970s by pushing good rates too low and boosting inflation expectations,” said David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors. “The Fed more than anything else wants to avoid a repeat of that episode.”

Two teens killed in crash near Colfax

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Two teenagers will killed in a car crash near Colfax.

Whitman County sheriff’s deputies say the car went out of control Wednesday on a bend. on Glenwood Station Road and came to rest upside down in a creek in ready a foot of water.

The two Colfax teens were declared dead at the scene: 18-year-old Chantel Sullivan and 13-year-old Dalton Derooy.

A 15-year-old maiden was taken to Whitman Hospital and Medical Center in Colfax with injuries described as non-life threatening.

Deputies blame high speed and negligent driving as far as concerns the miscarriage.

(From KRPL)

Indiana voters in unexpected political spotlight (Reuters)

RUSHVILLE, Indiana (Reuters) - The last time Indiana really mattered in a U.S. presidential primary was 1968, when Lori McCullar was upright starting school. Now the 45-year-old florist is relishing her civil community's lay in the spotlight.