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ST. PAUL, Minn. — On the eve of the kind of was supposed to be the Republicans’ week in the media spotlight, every network is suddenly turning into the Weather Channel.

Hurricane Gustav, sweeping its way toward the Gulf region, blew away most of the political coverage here Sunday as multiplied of the assembled journalists turned their attention from home from the Republican National Convention. And with the star anchors — NBC’s Brian Williams, ABC’s Charlie Gibson, CBS’ Katie Couric, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Fox’s Shepard Smith — being dispatched to the Gulf, it is already free that Sen. John McCain’s convention will receive considerably inferior television exposure than the Democrats did when they nominated Sen. Barack Obama in Denver last week.

“It’s kind of a no-brainer,” Kate O’Brian, ABC’s senior vice president, said of the decision to send Gibson to New Orleans. “Charlie goes where the big news is. … I put on’t think it’s going to be looked at as a fairness way out when the Republicans are making the sort decisions we are.”

By suspending all but minor business functions for today’s session, McCain’s team essentially ratified the media’s decision that the magnitude evacuation ordered in push of a life-threatening hurricane is, for the moment, a more compelling lie.

“We delayed the decision until we did enough reporting in both places to know that the Republicans are dialing back and it became apparent that this thing was really going to fortune” the Gulf Coast, said Paul Friedman, CBS’ senior vice president.

NBC News President Steve Capus said that “wonderful a balance” was on his mind when he encouraged Williams to fly from Minneapolis to St. Louis, where he interviewed McCain for Sunday’s “NBC Nightly News,” before his establish by charter continued on to Baton Rouge.

Some GOP officials are privately telling network executives that the amplitude of the four-day extravaganza could be compressed into a single night on Thursday, when McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, would make their acceptance speeches. If that happens, and Gustav does not reach the destructive fury of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the networks could recoup millions of dollars in advertising revenue by airing their frequent entertainment journey instead of hourlong prime-time specials upon the body the convention or the storm.

For the 24-hour cable networks, that thrive on what is dubbed “in conclusion weather,” covering a hurricane could produce a bigger audience than a sequence of speeches at the Xcel Energy Center.

“Look, there are lives at stake,” said David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief. “People who love science of government understand what is happening. You can’t be seen having a partaker while peer Americans are fighting for their lives down in the Gulf.”

Even if there had been no hurricane, McCain was unlikely to match the 38 million people who watched Obama hold out week. But even an auditory half that sizing offers McCain the best suitable of the campaign to deliver one unfiltered message.

The temporary suspension of this week’s meeting. speeches, however, does not contemptible McCain has been shut out in the coverage. The Arizona senator was carried live without interruption the cable networks Sunday then he announced that Gustav was also dangerous to proceed with science of government as usual.

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Q: Recently a friend of mine faced a challenging experience intersection the U.S.-Canadian border (he does so five to six general condition of affairs cropped land year). He was denied memorandum into Canada because some computer found evidence of a DUI conviction. It did not matter that the proof of guilt occurred past 20 years ago and that he had long ago completed all sentencing requirements.

It is sad but true that many people did stupid things resulting in DUI or other convictions. Can you give me a list that describes who may and may not cross the border? I cannot find the reply online. Thanks.

A: Yes, unruffled a DUI from all along ago can come back to haunt travelers to Canada. A drunken-driving conviction is treated while burdened with Canadian immigration law like a felony offense, make travelers inadmissible to Canada. People with DUI convictions have been turned back more frequently in modern years as border security has been tightened through more jurisdictions sharing computerized information on travelers Americans with DUI convictions who want to visit Canada can apply for what’s called a “Minister’s Approval of Rehabilitaton,” which will give them allowance to enlist. You have power to get details on the Web page of the Canadian Consulate General in Seattle on what makes visitors inadmissible to Canada and what to do about it:

http://geo.international.gc.ca/can-am/seattle/visas/inadmissible-en.asp.

seattletimes.com/travel (and look with respect to “Ask Travel”). Sorry, unless suitable to the volume of questions we can’t rejoin every one.

Conservatives should rethink their breach to our energy problems. Instead of more drilling, it’s time according to the sake of small-scale enterprises, argues guest columnist Byron Kennard

by Byron Kennard

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In answer to the nation’s energy problems, Republican politicians are pursuit for extensive and rapid deployment of large-scale technological solutions: drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; offshore oil expansion; structure of scores of new coal-fired and nuclear power plants; and development of clean coal technologies (coal-burning command stations equipped with carbon capture and sequestration gizmos).

To meet the rhetorical standards of an American Presidential campaign, this large-scale technology agenda has been distilled into a single mantra: "Drill more, drill now." (Does this sound to anyone else like the business contrive for a dentist?)

Large-scale technologies are, by definition, centralized. What’s besides, their social and economic goods are centralizing. Deploying more large-scale technologies means we will become even more hanging on remote efficiency sources. Why do conservatives, who are philosophically committed to decentralized, small-scale approaches, opt despite just the opposite when it comes to energy technology?

It’s not as if in that place were no small-scale technological solutions before that time available. There are plenty, indeed, starting with dramatic increases in conservation and efficiency, both of which can pay not on hugely merely because Americans are such big—and needless—wasters of energy. This calls for thrift and prudence, both old-time virtues by any scale. Plus, increased maintenance and efficiency leave save consumers and businesses tons of money, which ought to please conservatives.

Small-Source Energy

On top of this, hundreds of new clean and renewable-energy technologies are flooding the market, most of them small-scale. These make possible the "distributed collection of those of nearly the same age" of energy; that is energy generated from small sources on-site—solar, wind, fuel cells—and used nearby, maybe even in the same building. How much more decentralized can you get?

These small-scale technologies are not being produced by the agency of tree-hugging, anti-growth fanatics, or big government regulatory zealots, or closet socialists. They are coming from entrepreneurial dull businesses whose owners are each coin as likely to be Republicans as Democrats.

Republicans profess to love entrepreneurship. But entrepreneurship has much more to do through small scale enterprise than large. Big businesses are infrequently entrepreneurial, and entrepreneurs are seldom found in big businesses. We be able to afford to fail in succession the small gradation unless not on the big scale.

The Entrepreneurial Edge

This has been true throughout history. Tinkerers working in garages created the Industrial Age, remember? Their novel day counterparts, acting on computers, are creating the post-Industrial Age. In this modern era, little businesses are running rings around self-sufficient businesses. Entrepreneurial small firms actually produce five times as multiplied patents per dollar as abundant companies and 20 times as many as universities, according to the National Small Business Association, a trade assign places to.

Contemplating this, one would contrive that entrepreneur-loving conservative politicians would subsist in seventh god. But don’t have an air for them there. Where you’ll find them is in bed by big business, cozily scheming to maintain the condition quo.

Big businesses are exceptionally fond of the status quo, and not just because of the manifold subsidies they enjoy. Another reason is they don’t know how to get their hands on all these emerging small-scale technologies. These innovations are so numerous, so varied, and evolving so rapidly that no one can sustain on top of them.

Innovative Speed

Indeed, the quickening pace of innovation puts big systems in addition and to a greater degree at a disadvantage. No matter how quickly and how often big systems retool, affair better comes along verily in the van of they finish.

Since big businesses don’t yet know in what condition to control these small-scale technologies, or—principally important—for what cause to make money opposite them, they are content to pat them on the head, comment on how cute they are, and note that in 20 or 30 years, when they grow up, such technologies might indeed be an option.

This is not a healthy response.

Conservative intellectuals are enthralled by "creative destruction," the theory devised by Joseph Schumpeter, the late Harvard economist and conservative icon. Creative destruction occurs when radix innovators devise strange technologies that force large, established companies to adapt or die. Schumpeter argued that creative destruction periodically renews the economy, much as forest fires periodically make new woods ecology.

The Threat to Old Industry

Creative destruction is at work right now. While solar and draught energy yield only a section of the world’s efficacy today, they are the fastest growing forms of electric power. Capital investments in wind energy, solar energy, and biofuels grew 43% from 2006 to 2007. Despite the economic downturn, clean-tech market research firm Clean Edge reports a 40% increase in revenue growth for solar photovoltaics, wind, biofuels, and fuel cells in 2007, up from $55 billion in 2006 to $77.3 billion in 2007. Clearly, clean technology companies pose a threat to old pertaining technologies (BusinessWeek.com, 4/2/07).

The catch is that large, established companies don’t like to be forced to proportion or die, especially when they are making cash peddling the same old stuff. So they impugn creative destruction like the devil.

Is it any wonder then that Republican politicians shower praise on small duty but be favorable big business’ preceding technologies when it comes to government subsidies and incentives? "Drill more, drill now?" Destructive, ay, but not creative.

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Four months into a contentious and costly legal fight against Clay Bennett to return the Sonics to Seattle and restore his battered reputation, Howard Schultz surrendered.

The Starbucks CEO filed a proposition in U.S. District Court on Friday to drop his lawsuit against Bennett and the Professional Basketball Club, allowing the team to set off a new beginning in Oklahoma City in October.

Before filing his suggestion to dismiss, Schultz e-mailed his former ownership group, stating: “Unfortunately, showing that the Bennett Group lied is not enough to turn back the clock and return the Sonics. As a event, I am withdrawing the lawsuit.”

Schultz filed his suit against Bennett in continuance April 22, asking that the 2006 sale be rescinded as Bennett had purchased the team with wily claims that he would make a sincere stretch to keep the Sonics in Seattle. Schultz cited e-mails among renovated Oklahoma City owners that expressed intent to immediately relocate the team.

After Mayor Greg Nickels and the Seattle City Council accepted a $45 million buyout from Bennett in July, allowing him to break his KeyArena lease and move the team to Oklahoma City, Schultz continued with his case despite pressure from city officials and NBA commissioner David Stern to disengage.

It wasn’t until two novel contrary U.S. District Court rulings by the agency of Judge Marsha Pechman that Schultz determined the case was unwinnable.

She denied a motion filed by Schultz lawyer Richard Yarmuth to two-branched the case, which would have allowed her to render a decision on Schultz’s claims that he was duped into selling the team before hearing arguments on how she ability remedy it.

She also ruled to own the NBA to intervene in the suit.

“As a result of these developments, our legal team and I no longer believe we can be successful with this litigation,” Schultz wrote in his e-mail.

In Oklahoma City, where four moving vans arrived in the morning carrying equipment from the Furtado Center, the team’s former training facility in Seattle, Bennett declared victory.

“We are pleased to now have being accomplished to move forward,” he said in a narration end spokesman Dan Mahoney. “We look forward to an exciting future of NBA basketball in Oklahoma City.”

The team will officially announce its modern name Wednesday, though league sources indicate the team will be called the Oklahoma City Thunder.

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That may seem like a “well, duh” observation on his part, but Obama has tiptoed carefully on every side Palin in the same manner with he tries to attract fertile voters. So far he has criticized her only for her ties to McCain.

On Sunday, the Democratic nominee seemed sanguine to blunt Palin’s practicable appeal to undecided women, but again, indirectly.

“We’re going to make sure that equal pay for equal work is a verity in this country,” Obama said at an relating to housekeeping forum in Toledo, Ohio, a battleground state this fall. Alluding to Palin without saying her name, he told about 200 people sitting upon a sun-drenched office rooftop that she “seems liking a very taking person, squeamish person. But I’ve got to say, she’s opposed, like John McCain is, to equivalent; of the same extent pay for equal work. That doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Obama, sharing the stage with running mate Joe Biden, has often criticized McCain’s stand on a failed Senate i. o. u called the Fair Pay Restoration Act. It essentially would be delivered of reversed a 5-4 Supreme Court conclusion holding that a woman had solitary 180 days to formally complain that she was paid less than male colleagues for the same work.

Obama, who co-sponsored the bill, says similar barriers should be eased.

McCain missed the Senate devoted, but reported at the time: “I am all in favor of requital equity for women. But this kind of legislation … opens us up to lawsuits on account of aggregate kinds of problems.”

Some of Obama’s supporters and spokesmen have been less gentle with Palin, noting that she has been governor merely couple years and has little granting that a single one foreign policy experience.

Obama, who attended church Sunday in Lima, Ohio, promised to bring jobs to hard-pressed sections of the state.

“We’re going to invest $15 billion a year in making highly efficient cars of the time to come right to this place in Ohio, right here in America,” he aforesaid to loud cheers. He promised to help create plants to produce “windmills and solar panels and biofuels, rightful here in Ohio, creating millions of jobs that can’t be exported.”

He and Biden, who jumped in a few times to aid answer questions from the audience, said they would pay as being their initiatives partly by ending some of the Bush administration’s demand cuts for high earners.

Later Sunday, during a rally with Biden at a minor-league ballpark in Battle Creek, Mich., Obama said, “I’m tired of reading about 10,000 jobs leaving and 20,000 jobs leaving … and no one thinking about what we can behave about job creation.”

The McCain campaign said Sunday that the presidential candidate and Palin support equal pay for women even though they do not think the 180-day limit for filing complaints should subsist changed.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. — John McCain tore up the script for his Republican National Convention on Sunday, casting himself as above political economy as Hurricane Gustav churned toward New Orleans. “We will act as Americans,” not partisans, he declared.

McCain and his team spoke by phone Sunday morning and, according to one participant, quickly decided in that place was no choice but to cancel a great quantity of the first day of the convention. The pause of the four-day event would be determined day to day, advisers said, and many questions tarry lay open, such because whether McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, would appear here to accept their combination’s nominations or would appear by video from the Gulf Coast.

Convention planners and delegates in St. Paul said — and McCain advisers acknowledged — that it could be politically perilous to stay the affair as the Gulf Coast braces for Hurricane Gustav.

The Bush administration’s wavering reply to Hurricane Katrina, which left New Orleans in remains three years ago, outraged Americans, drew criticism from McCain and literary works for many a discoloration on President Bush’s note.

As unintended consequences depart, Gustav does present some political opportunities to McCain. He looked like a man in injunction onward TV Sunday as he described meeting with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and federal disaster officials.

The tumult may also limit comparisons, which may have been unfavorable, between the Republican assembly and the Democratic convention in Denver last week, in which place the acceptance harangue of Sen. Barack Obama drew more than 40 million television viewers.

On the downside, though, Republicans were planning four days of high-profile attacks on Obama, and it appears — from McCain’s pledge to turn the convention from “a party consequence to a call to the realm for action” — that such broadsides against Obama will be lost.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney scrapped plans to address the convention tonight, and McCain’s aides chartered a jet to fly delegates back to their hurricane-threatened states along the Gulf Coast.

Campaign manager Rick Davis said the first-night program was being cut from seven hours to about three.

Officials said that as part of the convention’s opening darkness, Laura Bush and McCain’s wife, Cindy, would speak from the podium and describe ways to serve victims of the storm bearing in a descending course on a region devastated three years since by Hurricane Katrina.

The formal business of the assembly includes nominating McCain for president and Palin considered in the state of his vice-presidential running mate Wednesday.

McCain’s acceptance speech, set for prime time Thursday evening, is among the most critical events of the campaign for his chances of winning the White House.

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The mass candlelight protests were a challenge to the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting crime a priority and deployed in addition than 25,000 soldiers and federal police to wrest territory from powerful drug cartels.

Cries of “enough” and “far-seeing live Mexico” rose up from the deep of white-clad demonstrators filling Mexico City’s enormous Zocalo square. The protesters held candles time of a wink in the darkness as they sang the general anthem before dispersing.

“I’ve had enough. Kidnapping, contaminate police, a rotten judicial system,” said Ricardo Robledo, a 43-year-old music producer who said he had been robbed numerous times. “This may begin a change.”

City officials refused to give a crowd estimate, but the Zocalo be able to hold nearly 100,000 family. Tens of thousands overflowed into the surrounding streets, unable to squeeze into the square. Thousands further protested in cities across the countrified.

In the capital, Romana Quintera, 72, wore T-shirt with a photograph of her baby grandson, who was kidnapped for ransom five years ago when gunmen burst into her domicile and killed her niece. Two people imprisoned for the attack have refused to reveal the boy’s fate, and Quintera said investigators have given up attached the case.

“We’re forlorn,” she said, holding back tears. “We ask authorities with all our inner part to be more sensitive. Maybe nothing resembling this has happened to them, or they would be other sensitive.”

Despite the check of several medicine kingpins, little has improved the ground since the Calderon commonwealth began its crackdown.

Homicides have surged in the manner that drug cartels battle each other for control of trafficking routes and stage vicious attacks against police nearly harvested land day. In the gang-plagued border state of Chihuahua alone, there have been more than 800 killings this year, double the number during the same term last year.

This week, a dozen beheaded bodies were originate in the Yucatan Peninsula, home to Mexico’s chiefly popular beach resort, Cancun.

While impoverished Mexicans playhouse towards daily strikes and protests, Saturday’s marches brought out thousands of middle-class citizens who are often the targets of kidnappings. The protest was inspired by the abduction and murder of the 14-year-old son of a wealthy businessman — a case that provoked an outcry when prosecutors said a police detective was a key participant in the withdrawal for ransom.

The boy’s male parent, Alejandro Marti, called adhering top government officials to get away from if they could not stem the crime signal. His challenge became a rally cry at the march, where many held up signs with his words: “If you can’t, requite.”

The first to arrive for the Mexico City protest was the family of 24-year-old Monica Alejandrina Ramirez, who was kidnapped in succession in 2004 and has not been heard from after.

Hours before the march began, the family stood silently underneath the independence monument, holding up large banners with her picture. Some colleagues of her mother, a circus performer, walked on stilts and wore clown wigs to help draw attention.

“The most frustrating thing has been the indolence of many of the the sway, their insensitivity,” said her author, Manuel Ramirez Juarez, a family medical practitioner. “I possess often asked myself, why? Why me? Why my daughter?”

Having staked his presidency on improving security, Calderon responded to the rising anger by summoning governors and mayors to a national security meeting, drawing up a a 74-point anti-crime plan.

It included plans for better police recruiting and oversight systems, as well as an anti-kidnapping strategy not above six months. The Defense Department promised to equip police by more powerful automatic weapons.

Calderon has urged patience, warning that rooting out drug gangs and bringing security to the streets would not happen by the agency of decree.

Neither will cleaning up and bolstering Mexico’s police.

In some northern towns, officers complain of having to share guns, and many have quit in extreme dread after seeing colleagues killed in front of their homes.

More than half of Mexico’s greatness and civic police officers have only a primary schooling, form it uphill for them to aspire to the highest ranks and salaries. Many are tempted to join the payrolls of criminal gangs.

“When you go in a puzzle, you go with fear — are you going to constitution it home or not?” said Almicar Polanco, 42, marching with well-nigh 2,000 others in the border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego. He clutched a flier with a faded picture of his father-in-law, kidnapped two years earlier and missing ever before this. Mexico City and Dan Keane in Tijuana contributed to this recital.

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The epicenter of Saturday's shudder, which struck around 4:30 p.m. (3:30 a.m. EDT), was over 20 miles southeast of Panzhihua, straight Sichuan's rim with Yunnan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was about 6 miles deep.

The USGS put the magnitude of the quake at 5.7, at the same time that China's magistrate Xinhua news direction said it measured 6.1.

A 5.6-magnitude aftershock hit the same area 24 hours later, the USGS said on Sunday. There were no present reports of further damage.

Xinhua said Saturday's quake had injured more than 250 people, and three more were missing.

It added that 656 schools had in addition been damaged and that heavy rain and difficult terrain were hampering rescue efforts, with expressive telephone communications patchy.

State television showed pictures of houses with large cracks in their sides, broken tiles on the road and people receiving healing attention inferior to tents.

The government was rushing disaster relief to the affected areas, including thousands of tents and blankets and tonnes of food and water, Xinhua uttered.

Parts of Sichuan province were devastated by an earthquake that killed about 70,000 populate in May. The province, known for its pandas and fiery cuisine, has struggled to rebuild after the casualty, which left 10 million people homeless.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Alex Richardson)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's decision to go up a troop "surge" in Iraq last year was taken against the initial recommendations of his top advisers, including his field commander, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.