Hurricane Wilma heads to Florida

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras -- The fringes of Hurricane Wilma lashed Caribbean nations on Wednesday, forcing schools to close and thousands to evacuate as it churned toward Mexico's Cancun resort and Florida after killing at least 12 people and becoming the most intense storm ever to form in the Atlantic.\nThe National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that Wilma would be a "significant threat" to Florida by the weekend in a season that has already seen devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Officials ordered tourists out of the Florida Keys.\n"We had well over 1,000 lives lost in Katrina. If Wilma, you know, comes into the U.S., to the Florida coast as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane, that potential for large loss of life is with us," said hurricane center director Max Mayfield.\nThe White House, stung by criticism that it had not responded quickly enough to Katrina, promised to stay on top of the situation. "We are closely monitoring what is an extremely \ndangerous storm," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "People should take this hurricane very seriously."\nTourists packed Cancun's airport in hopes of catching flights out and MTV postponed its Video Music Awards Latin America ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday at a seaside park south of the resort town.\nFloridians braced for the storm by boarding up windows and stocking up on supplies, although forecasters at the hurricane center said the forward motion of the Category 5 storm appeared to be slowing, which could cause it to eventually weaken.\nMayfield said Wilma may not reach the Florida Keys until Saturday, possibly toward the evening. It had earlier been expected to reach the Florida mainland Saturday. It was still a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds, down from 175 mph earlier in the day.\nHeavy rain from Wilma's outer bands also forced evacuations in Honduras, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti -- even as much of Central America and southern Mexico was still recovering from Hurricane Stan, which left more than 1,500 people dead or missing.\nWilma was on a curving course that would carry it through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico on Friday, possibly within a few miles of Cancun and Cozumel.\nAt 5 p.m. EDT, Wilma was centered about 285 miles southeast of Mexico's Cozumel island and about 465 miles south-southwest of Key West. It was moving west-northwest near 7 mph.\nWilma's confirmed pressure readings early Wednesday dropped to 882 millibars, the lowest minimum pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Americas, but it later lost power and rose to 900 millibars, according to the hurricane center. Lower pressure translates into higher wind speed.\nThe strongest Atlantic storm on record, based on pressure readings, had been Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which registered 888 millibars.\nWith heavy rain, high winds, and rough seas already pounding coastal areas, flood-prone Honduras warned that Wilma posed "an imminent threat to life and property." The country closed two Caribbean ports.\nThe closest land to Wilma's eye were the nearly uninhabited Swan Islands, once used by the CIA for propaganda broadcasts to Cuba. They were 35 miles west of the storm's center.\nThe head of Haiti's civil protection agency, Maria Alta Jean-Baptiste, said rains associated with Wilma caused floods and landslides that killed at least 11 people since Monday. At least 2,000 families were forced from flooded homes.\nJean--Baptiste later said she received unconfirmed reports that two more people drowned Wednesday while trying to cross a river that overflowed its banks in the southern town of Les Anglais.\nCuban authorities suspended classes in the western province of Pinar del Rio and prepared to evacuate tourists from campgrounds and low-lying areas, according to Granma, the Communist daily. More than 1,000 people were evacuated in the island's eastern Granma province.\nJamaica, where heavy rain has fallen since Sunday, closed almost all schools and 350 people were living in shelters. One man died Sunday in a rain-swollen river.\nA military helicopter plucked 19 people from rooftops Tuesday in St. Catherine parish, where some areas were flooded with up to 7 feet of water, said Barbara Carby, head of Jamaica's emergency management office.\n"The problem is that with the level of saturation, it doesn't take much more rain for flooding to occur, so we still have to remain very much on alert," she said.\nPrime Minister P.J. Patterson ordered the military to make emergency food shipments to stranded residents.

National Guard helicopter lands in Dunn Meadow

When Aileen Scales' Franklin Hall office windows began shaking Thursday morning, she ventured to Dunn Meadow to see what was going on. \nWhat she found was a large National Guard UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter sitting square in the middle of the meadow's west end. \nThe chopper arrived for an IU ROTC display and recruitment event and was landed by Lt. Bryon Blohm, a graduate of IU's program. Passersby had the \nopportunity to hop into the chopper, sit in its passenger seats or even spend some time in the cockpit learning about its many complex features. \nOne of those features, the rescue hoist used to lift people off the ground without landing, attracted Scales' attention.\n"I'd love to do that," she said. "I think it'd be like being on a rollercoaster, maybe."\nThe Blackhawk flew in from Shelbyville, Ind., in only 15 minutes -- compared to an hour-and-a-half-long car ride -- at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour. \nSgt. 1st Class Ty Barnett said the purpose of the event was to engage people and teach them about ROTC and the National Guard.\n"We are National Guardsmen, and this is part of our job," Barnett said. "We're explaining to everyone some of the different jobs we have and display the pride we have in what we do."\nBarnett said the Blackhawk can carry up to 11 passengers and a four-person crew and is built to be able to move a lot of people in a short amount of time and land in tight spaces. \nThose attributes came in handy in its last mission, helping with the hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast. Barnett was a part of that mission, which lasted through most of September. \nThough he said he witnessed a lot of destruction, Barnett said it was rewarding to see the guardsmen's work making a difference. \n"It's always rewarding just to have people come up and say 'thank you,'" he said. "That's a world of difference. We got to meet a lot of people there and they were all very appreciative that we dropped in and were giving them water and ice and food."\nHurricane relief efforts were a popular conversation topic at the event, though most people just stopped by to find out what a large helicopter was doing in the middle of campus.\nSophomore Brennan Golightly toured the Blackhawk Thursday afternoon. He said he figured it was for a military display, but he might have thought differently had he seen it land.\n"I don't know what I would have thought," Golightly said. "Seeing a helicopter landing here at first, I'd be like 'Uh,oh, someone's done something now. Someone's in trouble.'"\nCarlos Colon, who works with IU's instructional support services in Franklin Hall, said he came to see it because he's fascinated with aviation. Colon, who has flown planes before, was less enthusiastic about piloting the Blackhawk after spending several minutes in its cockpit getting a guided tour from a guardsmen.\n"If someone else is doing the flying, then yes," he said of going up for a spin. "Those things are really difficult to fly."\nSgt. 1st Class Dale Blubaugh, National Guard liaison for IU's ROTC, helped organize the helicopter landing. He said IU approved the event about two months ago after some planning.\n"We just said, 'we'll blow your leaves off for free,'" Blubaugh joked. "And we don't need an 'A' permit or anything."\nBlubaugh said the event was important to remind people of the importance of the National Guard for war-time and humanitarian purposes. \n"It's important for people to understand we're not just out here doing the war thing," he said. "We're trying to help where we're needed always"

Engaging North Korea

After being ignored by the Bush administration since Sept. 11, 2001, North Korea and its nuclear program are back at the negotiating table. For the past three years, six-party talks have been deadlocked as North Korea continued to accelerate its program. Monday, North Korea promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as soon as possible. But faster than you could say "kimchee," the North Koreans demanded they be given a civilian nuclear reactor before they would end their nuclear weapons program. \nIn case you're not quite up to date, here's the deal: North Korea wants nuclear weapons and nuclear power to dig itself out of its ongoing economic disaster. Meanwhile, the United States, China, South Korea and Japan don't want North Korea to have nuclear weapons because Kim Jung-Il is an unbalanced, megalomaniacal dictator. And with North Korea's latest demand, it looks as if the recent agreement has hit another crippling hurdle.\nAnd so it goes. We negotiate. North Korea signs a piece of paper. They toss it out the window. Rinse, repeat. The first treaty was signed in 1993. The last was not agreed upon Monday. How can we ensure nuclear weapons aren't built in North Korea? We're obviously not going to give them a civilian nuclear reactor. Simply continuing the unending series of talks with North Korea with the same issues on the table (humanitarian aid and security guarantees) also gets us nowhere. And a preemptive strike, whether legal or not, is simply unfeasible, especially considering what happened the last time we invaded North Korea.\nWhat can we do? We can't just offer appeasement at every turn, and any agreement will have to include the dismantling of any and all nuclear activity in North Korea, as well as significant cutbacks in intermediate- to long-range missiles. If we are serious about eliminating nukes in North Korea, we have to take real action now and offer the North Koreans the one thing they can't get anywhere else: normalized relations with the West.\nSince 1953, when the trade embargo was enacted, North Korea has been bereft of any real economy. Many people in the country are malnourished, and official malfeasance is at a disgustingly unacceptable level. North Korea is using nuclear weapons to bargain with the world to help fix its country, but North Korea doesn't need security guarantees. It needs free trade and diplomacy with the West, making its nuclear aspirations far too risky if it really wants to right its ship.\nWe have every right to cut off North Korea. We're an independent nation-state, and it'll be a long time before North Korea directly threatens us. \nRegardless, we must engage North Korea because it's our duty as the world's most powerful country, a title we will not hold forever. We should quit acting superior and start being superior. If we're serious about eliminating nuclear threat, then we must open up North Korea with real engagement, not empty treaties.

IU screens 3-part series from East Asia

In a small village in Tajikistan, a young boy named Khorshid works in an instrument shop. Since he cannot see with his eyes, he sees the world around him by listening. \n"His sensitivity to the sound of the moment exposes the silence in which most of us live," writes professor Paul Losensky in a summary in the IU events calendar.\nThe experiences of little Khorshid are portrayed in an award-winning Persian film "Sokut," or "Silence". The first of a three-part film series, Bloomington residents are invited to experience this Persian film at 7 p.m Thursday in Swain East 105.\nThe department of Central Eurasian Studies is currently promoting a three-film series, highlighting films from Iran, Hungary and Turkey.\nPaul Losensky, the director of the Persian program at IU, said he selected these films to expose students to Persian language and culture.\n"This is an opportunity to see one of the more prominent and innovative national cinemas in the world today," he said. "The films are engaging and of extremely high quality in terms of cinematography, and they open up a window to part of the world that we know mostly through biased newspaper coverage."\nLosensky will preface each screening by explaining to the audience items of cultural significance, in hopes they won't be lost during translation. Unlike Hollywood, he said, the Persian film industry is state-funded. Film producers must submit a scenario and screenplay, and once approved, the film is put into motion.\n"These things look very different when they're realized on screen, so often there are films funded by the state that are not released in Iran, and are smuggled out," he said.\nLosensky will show the uncensored versions of the films. \n"This gives us a chance to see how people in Iran actually live, and in the way they see themselves," he said.\nLosensky will feature a film called "Tangsir" Oct. 20, and wrapping up the series Nov. 17 is "Through Sunglasses." All films in the Persian series are subtitled in English.\nProfessor Lynn Hooker has designed a film series in conjunction with her second eight- weeks class within the CEUS department called "Budapest in the 19th and 20th centuries: The Evolution of a European Capital."\nHooker is a music scholar who became interested in Hungary by playing Hungarian music in high school orchestra. She said the films she has selected emphasize the cultural history and urban sociology of Budapest.\n"I hope (viewers) have a way of seeing into a place that they may not know very well," she said. "This is a chance to see a filmmaker's version of how the city has evolved."\nThere are six films in the Budapest series. The first is in English and is called "Sunshine." It will screen at 6:30 p.m. today in Swain Hall East 140. The remaining five are in Hungarian with English subtitles, and will show at 7 p.m. in the same room. \n"One of the things you'll find with some Hungarian films is that the expectation of a linear narrative doesn't hold," Hooker said of the "visually spectacular" films. "The formulas are different or non-existent."\nHooker said before each feature film, she will show short propaganda films and commercials from earlier times.\nFor Turkish film fans, there are four films remaining in the series. All are at 8 p.m. in Wylie Hall 005. The films Oct. 7, Nov. 11 and Dec. 29 will be in Turkish with English subtitles. The film screening Dec. 19 will be in Turkish without subtitles.\nFor more information on all of these series, visit the IU Events calendar at http://events.iu.edu.

Student alleges sexual assault in Wright Quad

A female student reported she had been raped in a Wright Quad dorm room early Sunday morning. The IU Police Department was contacted about 11 p.m. Sunday and was informed that the student was admitted to Bloomington Hospital, said Sgt. Leslie Slone. Evidence of a possible assault was gathered at the hospital. \nOfficer Randy Frye talked to the female student, who said she did not know the male who raped her, Slone said. It was reported that alcohol was involved, though police do not have proof of this, Slone said. \nIUPD is actively investigating the case as a rape, according to Slone. \n3 buildings on campus vandalized over weekend\nSmashed windows were discovered on three separate buildings across campus Friday.\nSomeone threw rocks at Willkie Quad, breaking five windows at the south entrance and causing about $3,000 worth of damage, according to police reports. IUPD was called at 8 a.m. to investigate. Evidence suggests the windows were broken between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m., according to Sgt. Craig Munroe. \nSecurity cameras on the south side of the building offered few clues, Munroe said. There are currently no suspects. \nA 10-foot-long wooden traffic barricade was thrown through a window in the Poplars building at 400 E. Seventh St. The barricade went through a 4-foot by 10-foot pane of high strength glass on the northwest corner of the building, where the human resources department is located, according to Munroe. The vandalism occurred sometime between 5 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. Friday, according to the complainant quoted in the police report. Damages are estimated to be worth $1,000. The police have no suspects. \nSometime Thursday night, someone broke a window of the History Department's Graduate Center on 712 E. Eighth St. It is unknown what method was used to break the window, Munroe said. There was no evidence the perpetrator tried to enter the building, and no items were reported missing, Munroe said. The damage has not been estimated, and there are no suspects. \nIUPD is currently investigating these cases, said Munroe. He speculated that some of these incidents were caused by drunk individuals wandering home from the bars Thursday night.

Buying at the 'Black Market'

Now you can buy a candy bar or a lottery ticket while simultaneously stepping back in time. \nDowntown Bloomington has a new late-night convenience store that provides a glimpse of its history. Inside the Black Mercantile, on the corner of Seventh and Walnut streets, the colors of shiny candy wrappers pop out against red brick walls that have existed for nearly 200 years. Neon signs glow inside windows that look as though they could've been taken out of a black and white movie; outside, you might half expect to see horse-drawn carriages rather than cars.\nMike Black noticed downtown Bloomington lacked a convenience store and he opened the Black Mercantile, or "Black Market." Black also owns the Video Saloon, a bar known to many as "The Vid," located directly above his new store. \n"It gave us a chance to do something besides sell alcohol," Black said.\nThe store opened Aug. 26 after about 11 months of construction and restoration work. It's convenient for students and Bloomington residents alike, open from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. weekdays and until 2 a.m. on weekends. Black's still testing store hours, waiting to observe customer flows before fixing a permanent schedule. \n"You can't tell the public what they want," he said. "They tell you." \nHe's considering making the store a 24-hour operation, although he suspects business would be bleak from 4 to 6 a.m.\n"Between those hours you could go lay down in the middle of the street and not get hit by a car," Black said.\nOnce he started renovating, Black realized the building below his bar had a lot of history, giving customers a peek of what businesses looked like in the early 20th century. He used maps and photographs of businesses in the area to aid in the design of the restoration project.\nBuilt as a brick house in 1828, the original brick walls are still visible inside the store today. The new storefront was partially designed after a market that stood on the same corner in the 1940s. \nTo recapture the architecture of the early 1900s, the building was literally given a facelift. The entire front of the building was removed, even the doors. Only the support structures remained until the market got an entirely new façade.\nPrevious businesses were built onto the building's original insides, and layers of carpeting and flooring were stacked on top of each other. Tools, which Black compared to ice scrapers, were used to peel away these layers, revealing the wooden floorboards customers walk on today. Black knelt down and moved his hand along the boards to demonstrate they are smooth and splinter-free. \nThe Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission aided in the restoration of the building. It took great pains to preserve the historic feel of the building's design. The most prominent feature of the store's façade is its tall, oblong display windows. It would have been much easier to build the windows with aluminum frames, but the Commission urged the use of wooden frames for authenticity. Black agreed, and the window frames were specially fitted with wood because as he mentioned, the Commission "said please and everything."\nNancy Hiestand, program manager of the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission, worked with Black to make sure the restoration process accurately echoed downtown Bloomington's architectural history.\n"He was very receptive to our ideas," Hiestand said.\nAs a result of Black's convenience store project, the Bloomington Urban Enterprises Association now offers a $10,000 grant to downtown business owners who want to restore their buildings. Hiestand said the grant was created to give incentive to restore and preserve the history of downtown's architecture. There are very few original storefronts left.\nThe Seventh Street side of the Black Mercantile is still under construction. Upon completion, it will include bay windows, an architectural feature common of downtown Bloomington's historic buildings. \n"They add to (the) uniqueness of Bloomington," Hiestand said.\nBut she lamented that many of these historic windows are covered with siding.\nStudents from Ball State University helped with the restoration process. Ball State has a Center for Historic Preservation as part of its College of Architecture and Planning. The students from the center developed guidelines for restoring the brick, options for painting and ways for the new design to complement the overall style of the building. \nTalisha Coppock, executive director of Downtown Bloomington Commission, said the Black Mercantile is a very important business to add to downtown. The Downtown Bloomington Commission is a non-profit organization that has been working to revitalize the downtown area for the past 20 years.\nCoppock accredited the push for the restoration of downtown to its importance in attracting tourists and improving the local economy. Bringing historic architecture to the surface helps preserve an area which makes Bloomington unique.\nThe Downtown Bloomington Commission's work to improve downtown is part of a statewide effort to preserve history, known as the Indiana Mainstreet Program. The program encourages Indiana towns to improve their downtown business districts. \n"Finding a vibrant downtown is important for the livelihood of the community," Coppock said. "Not every community has a vibrant downtown"

'Why did you do this to us?' Tragedy, triumph in Katrina's aftermath

NEW ORLEANS - Set down on dry land for the first time in three days, 83-year-old Camille Fletcher stumbled a few feet to a brick wall and collapsed. She and two of her children had made it through Hurricane Katrina alive, but her Glendalyn with the long, beautiful black hair was gone.\n"My precious daughter," she sobbed Wednesday. "I prayed to God to keep us safe in his loving care."\nThen, looking into an incongruously blue sky, she whimpered: "You're supposed to be a loving God. You're supposed to love us. And what have you done to us? Why did you do this to us?"\nBut for the rescuers rushing to pluck Fletcher and untold others from roofs, balconies and highways flooded by Hurricane Katrina, such questions were a luxury they simply could not afford.\nEmergency officials say 72 hours is about the longest they can expect most people to last in the sweltering Louisiana heat. So they called in volunteers from across this "fisherman's paradise" to help improve the survivors' odds.\nRonnie Lovett and about 30 of his crew from R&R Construction drove four hours from Sulphur, La., to join the rescue effort. They arose with the sun Wednesday after spending the night in sleeping bags on the pavement outside Harrah's casino on the Mississippi River, because they couldn't find rooms.\nLovett is paying the men's wages and furnishing gas for their personal boats.\n"They're all Bubbas, swamp men," said Lovett, who brought his own 21-foot fishing boat. "We're here for the duration, until they turn us loose."\nAt dawn, a motley armada of air boats, aluminum skiffs and even a two-seater Jet Ski moved out from the central business district. Heading east in the westbound lanes of Interstate 10, the boats passed the Superdome, where hundreds of ragged people stood on the hot pavement and helicopters buzzed around.\nMany of the displaced had clearly spent the night on the highway rather than suffer the stable-like conditions of the sports stadium. The caravan passed people dragging suitcases and pushing shopping carts. One man waved an empty water jug like a railroad lantern, pleading for someone to stop and fill it.\nAfter nearly an hour of zigzagging around downed lampposts and plowing through water up to past their wheel wells, the volunteer navy arrived at a staging point in New Orleans East, just south of Lake Pontchatrain.\nNew Orleans police Officer Martin Jules warned the men not to overload their boats. Some volunteers have had their rigs taken from them at gunpoint, so Jules also warned them not to be heroes.\n"These people have been out here two or three days," he said, standing on the bow of a flatboat. "They're scared, they're tired, they're thirsty, they're hungry. If it gets hostile, we roll, OK? We're here to help 'em. We got to be here to help them for the next couple of months, however long it takes. Our safety is No. 1."\nWithin minutes of launching, the men were returning with sunken-eyed, sallow-skinned survivors.\nKevin Montgomery, 40, had spent the past three days shuttling between the attic of a one-story home and a makeshift canopy he built on the roof. He and two other men rationed a gallon of water between them.\n"It was terrible," the carpenter said as he trundled through the gasoline-laced water.\nEvery once in a while, Mongtomery would see a body float by. But he cannot swim and had to fight the urge to wade in and tie them down.\n"All I could do was pass them by and hope that God takes care of the rest of that," he said. "You have to think of self, too."\nThe boats circled a Day's Inn, where people had hung sheets on the balconies reading, "SOS." and "We need food and water." At Forest Tower, a high-rise senior citizens apartment complex, one man waved his empty oxygen tank out a window.\nA boat floated through the building's shattered entrance and pulled right up to the stairs. Elderly residents stepped gingerly onto tables and into the boats.\nSimon Queen, 68, said he slept through Hurricane Betsy. But Katrina was like "King Kong pounding at the windows."\n"I need to get me to some high ground," he said. "I wasn't born with fins."\nAt the nearby United Medical Rehab Hospital, 14 patients, 11 staff members and their families awaited their saviors.\nNurse Bernadette Shine said the facility was nearly out of oxygen, and several diabetic patients had been without dialysis for nearly a week. After the fruit cocktail and peanut butter ran out, the staff broke into the candy and drink machines for sugary items to keep patients from going into shock.\n"There are people that are not going to make it," Shine said, her voice cracking. "One I've known since I was 10 years old. But we did what we could for them. We did everything we could for them."\nAfter several hours, a small fleet of rented moving trucks showed up to take the people to the downtown convention center so they could be taken out of the city. Police herded people up metal ramps like cattle into the unrefrigerated boxes.\nCamille Fletcher sat forlorn, not really caring when it would be her turn. Suddenly, a woman emerged from the waters and began walking toward her. She had long, disheveled black hair.\n"Mamma?" she shouted.\n"Oh my god, oh my God," the old woman screamed, kissing Glendalyn's hand and pressing it against her forehead. "My daughter's alive!"\nThe 60-year-old Glendalyn Fletcher told her family a harrowing story of how she had floated through a wall when her house started to collapse around her; how she had swum, stripped naked by the raging waters, to a neighbor's house and cowered in an attic; how someone had picked them up Tuesday and left them stranded on a water-locked section of I-10.\n"It was horrible, but there were millions of stars," the dehydrated woman said.\nA few moments later, it was time for Camille Fletcher to go to a shelter. Before being helped into the back of the moving truck, she looked back at her daughter and smiled.\n"God is good"

Hurricane Katrina plows into Gulf Coast but spares New Orleans its full fury

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Hurricane Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast at daybreak Monday with shrieking, 145-mph winds and blinding rain, submerging entire neighborhoods up to the rooflines in New Orleans, hurling boats onto land and sending water pouring into Mississippi's strip of beachfront casinos.\nAt least two highways deaths in Alabama were blamed on the storm, and an untold number of others were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods.\n"Some of them, it was their last night on earth," Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for New Orleans, said of people who ignored evacuation orders. "That's a hard way to learn a lesson."\nKatrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and made a slight turn to the right before coming ashore at 6:10 a.m. CDT near the Louisiana bayou town of Buras. The storm passed just to the east of New Orleans as it moved inland, sparing this vulnerable below-sea-level city its full fury and the apocalyptic damage that forecasters had feared.\nBut there was plenty of destruction in New Orleans, and a clearer picture of the damage emerged after the storm had passed: Mangled street signs, crumbled brick walls in the French Quarter, fallen trees on streetcar tracks, highrises with almost all of their windows blown out. White curtains that were sucked out of the shattered windows of a hotel became tangled in treetops.\nAn estimated 40,000 homes flooded in St. Bernard Parish just east of New Orleans.\nKatrina recorded a storm surge of more than 20 feet in Mississippi, where windows of a major hospital were blown out and billboards were ripped to shreds. In some areas, authorities pulled stranded homeowners from roofs or rescued them from attics. In Alabama, exploding transformers lit up the early morning sky and muddy, 6-foot waves engulfed stately, million-dollar homes along Mobile Bay's normally tranquil waterfront.\n"Let me tell you something folks: I've been out there. It's complete devastation," said Gulfport, Miss., Fire Chief Pat Sullivan.\nEmergency officials had not been able to reach some of the hardest-hit areas to determine the number of injuries or deaths. Officials across the region sent water rescue teams out and stood ready to dispense ice, water and meals to hurricane-stricken residents.\n"We know some people got trapped and we pray they are OK," Gov. Haley Barbour said.\nAt 3 p.m. EDT, a rapidly weakening Katrina was centered about 20 miles southwest of Hattiesburg, Miss., moving northward at about 19 mph. Its winds had dropped to about 95 mph, making it a Category 1 storm.\nEd Rappaport, deputy director of the hurricane center, estimated that the highest winds in New Orleans were about 100 mph. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said her office had reports of as many 20 building collapses in New Orleans, and scores of residents stranded in attics or on rooftops.\n"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson said via cellphone from his home east of the city's downtown. "The water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live."\nOn the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, entire neighborhoods of one-story homes were flooded up to the rooflines. The Interstate 10 off-ramps nearby looked like boat ramps amid the whitecapped waves. Garbage cans and tires bobbed in the water.\nTwo people were stranded on the roof as murky water lapped at the gutters.\n"Get us a boat!" a man in a black slicker shouted over the howling winds.\nAcross the street, a woman leaned from the second-story window of a brick home and shouted for assistance.\n"There are three kids in here," the woman said. "Can you help us?"\nAt least a half-million people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and well over 100,000 each in Alabama and Mississippi.\nAt New Orleans' Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees, the wind ripped pieces of metal from the roof, leaving two holes that let water drip in. People inside were moved out of the way. Others stayed and watched as sheets of metal flapped and rumbled loudly 19 stories above the floor. Outside, one of the 10-foot, concrete clock pylons set up around the Superdome blew over.\nAt the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, guests were told to go into the interior hallways with blankets and pillows and to keep the doors to the rooms closed to avoid flying glass.\nIn Alabama's Mobile Bay, Fred Wright's whole yard was flooded and muddy waves were hitting the back of his home. Wright, shirtless and wearing shorts, spoke of the high-dollar real estate on the waterfront: "There are lots of homes through here worth a million dollars. At least they were yesterday."\nBy midday, the brunt of the storm had moved beyond New Orleans to Mississippi's coast, home to the state's floating casinos, where Katrina washed sailboats onto a coastal four-lane highway. The Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino, one of the premier gambling spots in Biloxi, had water on the first floor, and the governor said other casinos were flooded as well.\nKatrina was the most powerful storm to affect Mississippi since Hurricane Camille came in as a Category 5 in 1969, killing 256 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.\n"This is a devastating hit -- we've got boats that have gone into buildings," said Sullivan, the Gulfport fire chief. "What you're looking at is Camille II."\nIn New Orleans' historic French Quarter of Napoleonic-era buildings with wrought-iron balconies, water pooled in the streets from the driving rain, but the area appeared to have escaped the catastrophic flooding that forecasters had predicted.\nOn Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the 278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots, ripping out a 30-foot section of ornamental iron fence and straddling a marble statue of Jesus Christ, snapping off only the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.\nAt the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony French doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.\n"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."\nFor years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.\nThe fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.\nOfficials said a levee broke on one canal, but did not appear to cause major problems.\nBlanco took little comfort in the fact that the hurricane may have spared New Orleans much worse flooding, given the still uncertain toll in surrounding parishes.\n"I can't say that I feel that sense that we've escaped the worst," she said. "I think we don't know what the worst is right now."\nCrude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to $68.95 by midday in Europe. The approaching storm forced the shutdown of an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.\nAuthorities closed a major bridge over the Mobile River in Alabama after it was struck by a runaway oil drilling platform.\nCalling it a once-in-a-lifetime storm, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordered a mandatory evacuation over the weekend for the 480,000 residents of the vulnerable city, and he estimated about 80 percent heeded the call.\nThe evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home residents died Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge church. Officials said the cause was probably dehydration.\nNational Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said the forecast track issued Friday night was only 15 miles off from where the storm actually hit.\n"If that is not a superb forecast, I don't know what is," he said.\nNew Orleans has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy in 1965, when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge submerged parts of the city in seven feet of water. Betsy, a Category 3 storm, was blamed for 74 deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.\nKatrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was blamed for 11 deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to 1.45 million customers. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.

Remembering 9-11 in visual exhibits

NEW YORK -- Days before the fourth anniversary of the 2001 attacks, a photographer is offering intimate images of death and love inside Ground Zero at a new museum that brings you nose-to-nose with the smoldering pit.\n"If people want to come past the security gates and see what our world was like down in the hole, this is as close as they can come to it," said Gary Marlon Suson, the official Ground Zero photographer for the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the city firefighters' main union.\nSuson spent eight months at the site with recovery workers searching for the remains of the 2,749 people who died on a sunny September morning, including 343 firefighters. His time in "The Pit" comes alive at the Ground Zero Museum Workshop of photographs, videos and artifacts, opening Sept. 8.\nLast year, Suson went to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and visited the home of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who wrote a diary of her life before the Nazis sent her to the Bergen-Belsen death camp.\n"Within two hours of being in there, I felt like I'd come to know this little girl. It put a face on the Holocaust," said the 33-year-old Suson. "I went back to the hotel and cried."\nThe experience inspired him to create the 1,000-square-foot museum, whose rooftop he stood upon in 2001 to take images of the Trade Center collapse.\n"I felt if I could create something that would have an effect on people similar to the one the Anne Frank museum had on me, it could help people connect more to 9-11. If you can't connect, you can't heal," he said.\nAt the second-floor museum in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, visitors are met by 3-D displays of photographs that pull the viewer close to the terror, dirt, sweat -- and death.\nSuson took one of the first photos of the firefighter honor guard that carried remains as they were found. He shot the scene in close-up, as he did other moments, such as a firefighter helping carry out the remains of his own son.\nThe museum has tangible vestiges of the Twin Towers, including pieces of window glass, lobby marble and jagged beam steel. One display case holds a beer can from 1971, when construction workers building the new towers shoved it between two steel beams before sealing them. The can was pried from the metal at Ground Zero, twisted and rusty.\nOne jarring item is a frozen clock, its simple black hands stopped at 10:02, and the small one at 14. The south tower collapsed first that day, at 10:02:14 a.m. The clock came from a room with a weightlifting bench used by Port Authority Trans-Hudson train workers.\nSuson, an actor and playwright, contributed thousands of dollars toward the $60,000 museum; the rest came from private donations. Proceeds from the $15 entrance fee ($12 for seniors and children) will go to six charities linked to Sept. 11, some benefiting families.

Police arrest suspected July 21 bomber

BIRMINGHAM, England -- Police pursuing suspects in the failed July 21 terror bombings in London raided four homes across Britain on Wednesday and detained four people, including a Somali man believed to be one of the fugitive bombers, media reports and a witness said.\nThe man was subdued with a stun gun when officers stormed a home in Birmingham before dawn. Members of the bomb squad, some dressed in armored suits, were seen entering the home after police evacuated 100 nearby residences in a quiet, ethnically mixed neighborhood of Britain's second-largest city.\nPrime Minister Tony Blair, without commenting on the man's identity, described the arrest as "an important development."\nThree more men were arrested in a pre-dawn raid at another home about two miles away in this city 120 miles northwest of London. The raids were carried out by 50 officers from London's Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch and West Midlands Police. No shots were fired.\nIn London, police said they raided two homes at 6 a.m. in the northern neighborhoods of Finchley and Enfield. No arrests were made, but forensic examinations were under way at the residences, a spokeswoman said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. She declined further comment.\nAuthorities said the four raids involved the investigation into the July 21 attack, during which bombs planted on three London subway trains and a bus failed to detonate fully. The attack came two weeks after four suicide bombers staged a similar assault that killed 52 other people.\nMeanwhile, police arrested a man at Luton airport near London under anti-terrorism laws as he prepared to leave on a flight for France, authorities said. Police did not say why he was detained or if the arrest was connected with the London attacks.\nTwo men also were arrested late Tuesday on suspicion of terrorism while traveling on a train in the Midlands region. Police said the train, which was on its way to London's King's Cross station from Newcastle, was stopped at Grantham and the men were taken off. It was not immediately clear if the arrests were linked to the investigation into the London bombings.\nAuthorities would not confirm BBC and Sky News reports that the Tasered man was Yasin Hassan Omar, a 24-year-old Somali suspected of trying to blow up a subway train near Warren Street station.\nAt least one witness said the man resembled Omar.\n"I looked out of the window and the road was full of armed police and they had got the road closed off," said electrician Andy Wilkinson, who lives nearby.\nHe said the suspect looked like Omar but could not confirm it was him.\n"After 10 or 15 minutes, they brought a guy out. He looked like the darkest-skinned one in the photos of the four suspects released by the police -- the one with the curly hair," Wilkinson said. "They had him dressed in one of those white suits. He had plastic cuffs on the front."\nSuch suits are used by police to preserve any physical evidence that may be on a suspect.\n"I think it is an important development," Blair, in London, said of the arrest. "Obviously we are greatly heartened by the operations today. The police have been working extraordinarily hard on this and have shown a tremendous amount of commitment and dedication to the task in hand."\nPolice launched a manhunt after releasing images of four men thought responsible for planting the July 21 bombs. The pictures have been plastered over much of London's transit and railway system while police have for more than a week released various details about the attackers.\nOn Monday, they released the names of two of the suspects, Omar and Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, also known as Muktar Mohammed Said. Both came to Britain as the children of refugees, the government said.\nOmar arrived from Somalia in 1992 at age 11 and has British residency, the Home Office said. Said came in 1990 from Eritrea, his family said, and officials said he was granted residency in 1992 and British citizenship in September 2004\nPolice have been trying to determine whether the failed July 21 bombings were connected to the deadly July 7 attacks.\nThe Birmingham arrests would bring the number of people that police have said are being held in connection with the July 21 bombings to nine.

Mosque investigation a high priority for FBI

The FBI is continuing to investigate the firebombing, classified as hate crime, of the Bloomington Islamic Center, an FBI spokeswoman said \nWednesday.\nThe FBI has been investigating the incident in collaboration with the Bloomington Police Department. Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan receives regular briefings about this incident. \nMaria Heslin, communications director for the City of Bloomington, said police increased patrols in the area immediately after the incident and it is of the highest priority, especially in light of the type of incident, location and time it took place.\n"Investigators are doing interviews with individuals who may have information, collecting evidence and sending things off to the lab," she said. \nEarly Saturday morning an unknown number of suspects threw a rock through a lower level of Bloomington's only mosque, located on Atwater Ave, authorities said. The perpetrators then threw a Mountain Dew bottle full of an unknown accelerant through the window and proceeded to light it on fire. \nMembers of the Bloomington community, including those from other religious organizations, were outraged by the attack and gathered at a "Vigil for Peace" around the Monroe County Courthouse in the early evening Wednesday. \nThe vigil was organized by the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition. In a statement the about the vigil the BPAC said they were "saddened and troubled" by the incident and "condemn and abhor all acts of hate and violence, including the terrorist attacks in London last Thursday, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the fire at the Bloomington Islamic Center"

LONDON -- Four explosions rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing in the worst attack on London since World War II. At least 40 people were killed, U.S. officials said, and more than 700 were wounded.\nA clearly shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called the coordinated attacks "barbaric" and said they were designed to coincide with the G-8 summit opening in Gleneagles, Scotland. They also came a day after London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. A group calling itself the Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe claimed responsibility.\nThe four blasts went off within an hour, beginning at 8:51 a.m. (3:51 a.m. EDT), and hit three subway stations and the double-decker bus. Authorities immediately shut down the subway and bus lines that log 8.4 million passenger trips every weekday.\nThe bus explosion seemed to go off at the back of the vehicle, said bystander Raj Mattoo, 35. "The roof flew off and went up about 10 meters (30 feet). It then floated back down," he said. "There were obviously people badly injured. A parking attendant said he thought a piece of human flesh had landed on his arm."\nDoctors from the nearby British Medical Association rushed into the street to treat the wounded from the bus. "The front of BMA house was completely splattered with blood and not much of the bus was left," said Dr. Laurence Buckman.\n"It was chaos," said Gary Lewis, 32, evacuated from a subway train at King's Cross station. "The one haunting image was someone whose face was totally black and pouring with blood."\nAs the city's transportation system ground to a near-halt, buses were used as ambulances and an emergency medical station was set up at a hotel. Rescue workers, police and ordinary citizens streamed into the streets to help.\nSome central London streets emptied of traffic. Groups of commuters who had been on their way to work gathered around corner shops with televisions, watching in silence. The mood was somber and subdued.\nAt the request of Queen Elizabeth II, the Union Jack flag flying over Buckingham Palace was lowered to half staff.\nBlair, flanked by fellow G-8 leaders, including President Bush, read a statement from the leaders. "We shall prevail and they shall not," he said.\n"Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world," he said earlier.\nReturning to London, he promised an intense police hunt for those responsible. He said he knew most Muslims worldwide "deplore this act of terrorism."\n"They are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us," he said. "They should know they will not succeed."\nIn Scotland, police evacuated a section of Edinburgh's main shopping street after a suspect package was found on a bus.\nIn Scotland, Bush warned Americans to be "extra vigilant," and his administration raised the terror alert for mass transit a notch to code orange. Security also was stepped up in the U.S. Capitol and in train and bus stations around the country.\nMuch of Europe also went on alert. Italy's airports raised alert levels to a maximum. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, the Netherlands, France and Spain also announced beefed-up security at shopping centers, airports, railways and subways.\nThe U.N. Security Council was expected to pass a resolution condemning the blasts later Thursday, an official said.\nA group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" posted a claim of responsibility, saying the blasts were in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.\nThe statement also threatened attacks in Italy and Denmark, both of which have troops in Iraq. It was published on a Web site popular with Islamic militants, and the text was republished on Elaph, a secular Arabic-language news Web site, and Berlin's Der Spiegel magazine.\nThe statement's authenticity could not be immediately confirmed, but terrorism experts said the blasts had the trademarks of the al-Qaida network.\n"This is clearly an al-Qaida style attack. It was well-coordinated, it was timed for a political event and it was a multiple attack on a transportation system at rush hour," said Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College in London.\nDeputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick said there had been no arrests, and it was unclear whether suicide bombers were involved.\nAsked about the claim of responsibility, Paddick said: "We will be looking at that ... at the moment we don't know if that's a legitimate claim or not." He added British officials had received no prior warning or advance intelligence that the attacks would occur.\nEuropean stocks dropped sharply after the blasts, with exchanges in London, Paris and Germany all down about 2 percent. Insurance and travel-related stocks were hit hard, and the British pound also fell. Gold, traditionally seen as a safe haven, rose.\nThe explosions also unnerved traders on Wall Street, sending stocks down sharply.\nThree U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed. They spoke on condition of anonymity and said they learned of the number from their British counterparts.\nIn London, police said they could confirm at least 37 people had been killed, including two in the bus attack.\nBuckman, the London doctor, said ambulance staff told him about 10 people died in the bus blast. BMA doctors treated about nine seriously wounded people in the building's courtyard, two of whom later died, he said.\nLondon police said at least 700 were wounded. Among them, at least 45 were in serious or critical condition, including amputations, fractures and burns, hospital officials told The Associated Press.\nLondon Mayor Ken Livingstone said the blasts were "mass murder" carried out by terrorists bent on "indiscriminate ... slaughter."\n"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful ... it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners," said Livingstone, in Singapore where he supported London's Olympic bid. Giselle Davies, an International Olympic Committee spokeswoman, said the committee still had "full confidence" in London.\nJay Kumar, a business owner near the site of the bus blast, said he ran out of his shop when he heard a loud explosion. The bus's top deck collapsed, sending people tumbling to the floor, he said. Bloodied people ran from the scene.\n"A big blast, a big bomb," he told The Associated Press. "People were running this way panicked. They knew it was a bomb. Debris flying all over, mostly glass."\n"I was on the bus in front and heard an incredible bang, I turned round and half the double decker bus was in the air," Belinda Seabrook told Press Association, the British news agency.\nTraces of explosives were found at two explosion sites, a senior police official said.\nExplosions were reported at the Aldgate station near the Liverpool Street railway terminal, Edgware Road and King's Cross in north London, Old Street in the financial district and Russell Square, near the British Museum.\n"I saw lots of people coming out covered in blood and soot. Black smoke was coming from the station. I saw several people laid out on sheets," office worker Kibir Chibber, 24, said at the Aldgate subway station.\nSimon Corvett, 26, on an eastbound train from Edgware Road station, described "this massive huge bang ... It was absolutely deafening and all the windows shattered."\n"You could see the carriage opposite was completely gutted," he said. "There were some people in real trouble."\nOn March 11, 2004, terrorist bombs on four commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people.

Downtown art gallery opens new summer show

Strolling around the Prima Gallery's new summer show, it's easy to forget every art piece and its respective price tag has a unique history, similar to the gallery itself. Tiny pots stock the shelves, mimicking the artists' hands who crafted them. Oil paintings snake up the stairs, offering narratives of the painter's life. Even a broom takes on meaning after hearing its torrid past from the broom's sculptor, David Eppinghouse, who retrofitted the cleaning tool with neon lights. \nAs the summer show opened at the Prima Gallery Friday night, art lovers had a chance to mingle with well-known and emerging artists to hear these stories behind their work. The summer show, "Paints, Pots, and Prints" opened to the tunes of a live accordion player and the excited chatter of exhibited artists, avid collectors and curious onlookers. Various artists made an appearance to reflect on their individual pieces, view other artists' works or grab a piece of pizza from the reception table.\n"We have old and new and rich and poor (artists) if you can use those generalities," said Eileen Rice, who has worked for the Prima Gallery the last seven years. \nThe Prima Gallery has maintained this hodgepodge of artists since the gallery first opened 37 years ago, in 1968. According to Rice, the first gallery owner, Rosemary Frasier started the Prima Gallery with other "faculty wives" because no Bloomington art gallery existed at that time. This original start-up team created the first gallery behind where Pygmalion's stands on Grant Street.\nMoving to Sixth Street 10 years ago, the current Prima Gallery took over space once owned and used by the Princess Theatre. The large glass windows and doors in the front of the gallery once housed the theatre's screen. \n"The (Prima) Gallery was the first gallery and it's lasted forever," said art exhibit installer and gallery artist David Eppinghouse. "This is like a flagship for the local art scene."\nIn the past year, the Prima Gallery has undergone more changes. The current owner, Linda Fratianni, bought the gallery last July. For the past year, she has been establishing her vision for the gallery with several month long shows and now the summer show. \n"I think we're different in how we present our shows, in our objectives," she said. "This show's objective is to present emerging and established artists." \nIU Fine Arts professor Rudy Pozzatti, recently named a "living treasure of Bloomington" by the Bloomington Area Arts Council, is one of the most established artists at the summer show. Pozzatti said the summer show gives his fans a chance to see what he's been working on, instead of waiting three more years for his next one-man show. For his pieces, "Prismatic V" and "Prismatic II," Pozzatti manipulated European candy wrappers to design the realistic looking stained glass windows in his pieces. \n"The wrappers in Europe are much nicer color-wise, design-wise, and the chocolate is damn good," said Pozzatti. \nFormer IU student and Evansville artist Shirley Kern mixed art materials for her summer show pieces. Kern created her oil paintings on wood slates and then added metal bolts to make the paintings appear like houses. Her four-squared wood image also plays on her notion that "everything's connected." \n"I sort of like to go back and forth between flat plane and sculpture so now I'm somewhere in between," said Kern, who used Asian influences to create impressionistic paintings.\nDavid Turner Hannon's oil paintings tell stories more than they conjure impressionistic images. Each of his four exhibited oil paintings not only includes the artist himself, but tells some facet of his life story. Not surprisingly, Hannon began as an illustrator and then moved to oil painting. \n"(I like) the narrative appeal where you're telling something beyond just one image, even though you're only giving one image," said Hannon. \nUnlike some of the more well-known artists, Hannon, a 2000 IU grad with an MFA in Fine Arts, got involved in the summer show completely by accident. When attending an opening at the Waldron Arts Center, he wandered into the Prima Gallery and introduced himself as an artist. Rice asked if he would be interested in displaying there. \nFor some of Prima Gallery's artists, it's just that simple. Jenni Cure, a local artist, walked into the gallery with her original wood cuts for the gallery exhibitors to examine. Those two original works, "Tree Shadow Two" and "Tree Shadow One," now hang in the summer show. \nIn addition to the summer gallery hours, artists and art lovers alike can view the show during the Downtown Gallery Walk July 8. As the eighth stop on the Gallery Walk, the Prima's Gallery Summer Show will provide Bloomington patrons an impressive collage of artistic talent.\n"It's the best commercial gallery in Bloomington -- the most established with the highest caliber of work," said artist Patricia Cole, whose ballpoint pen on paper drawings also hung in the summer show.\nPrima Gallery is located at 109 E. Sixth St. and is open Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Pubs and dubs in London

After doing extensive research on British culture before leaving Indiana (I watched "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Closer"), I arrived in London at the beginning of January expecting great things. I stood in immigration, waiting excitedly with passport in hand, and stepped up to the officer. I smiled, said hello, and waited for a response. Unfortunately, in the 10-minute quiz session that followed, the only thing I understood from his mouth was "'ello." The charming British accent I saw in the movies quickly turned annoying. Were they speaking a different language? What the heck was a queue? My class starts at 14:00? I was lost but not disenchanted. It was relatively easy to adapt to the British culture, and I quickly learned that the solution to any problem was to go to the pubs. Feeling alone? Go to the pubs. Tired of school? Go to the pubs.\nSo one night, my friends and I decided to go down to Picadilly Circus for some "problem solving." We started early, and after a few pints of beer, boarded the red double-decker bus #19 to begin our journey. Joking and laughing loudly on the bus (which is not "appropriate" in England), a very drunk British lady appeared from the top level of the bus and asked us what coast we were from in America. My friends replied one by one. "New York." "Boston." "Dallas." "Indiana." The lady replied, "Well I don't know where that last one is, but man, do I hate George Bush." She continued to drunkenly yell at us as if we were Dubya ourselves and then suddenly looked out the window, yelled, "Whoops, there goes my stop!" and jumped off the bus as it was rapidly rounding a corner. Unbelievably, she landed on her feet -- in heels -- and hurriedly made her way to Sloane Square. When we got to our destination, we stepped off the bus and went into a nearby pub. We sat down, ordered a drink and suddenly realized another person had joined our group: a British guy named Glenn. He had just gotten out of the "drunk tank" and decided to celebrate with a drink. We decided to take Glenn in as one of our own and had a much better experience than on the bus. He was fascinated to hear all about America and bought us all a round of drinks as we told our stories of home. \nWhen it was closing time, he decided to take his drink with him, hidden in the pocket of his jacket. Closing time in London is starting time at IU, though, considering the pubs shut their doors at 11 p.m. This works well for the Brits because they can still get up in the morning for work after a night out on the town. Not a bad idea, I have to admit. Now that my time in London is coming to an end, the annoyances I had when I first arrived have vanished. I'll miss the accent, the strange words, the double-decker buses and the crazy stories that can be told over a cold pint of beer at the local pub.

Business in Brief

Lender's to close bagel production line; 35 lose jobs\nMATTOON, Ill. -- The Lender's Bagels bakery is closing down a production line because of declining sales, a company executive said.\nThe move, effective May 9, will put 28 full-time and seven part-time workers out of a job. About 300 people work at the Lender's plant.\n"Over the last couple of years, the bagel business has continued to decline," Harold Tessman, senior vice president of operations for Pinnacle Foods Group Inc., Lender's owner, said Monday. "As a result, we are eliminating one of our bagel production lines and will be preparing the plant for the future production of different products."\nPinnacle Foods spokesman Kelley Maggs declined to comment about which products might be added to the plant's production lines. The Cherry Hill, N.J.-based company produces such products as Swanson frozen dinners, Mrs. Butterworth's and Log Cabin syrups and pancake mixes and Mrs. Paul's frozen seafood.

Jordan River Forum

Bursar billing agreement not acceptable\nI learned this afternoon that the IU Bookstore will no longer be allowing anyone but a select few on financial aid and student athletes to bill their semester books to their bursar. This has resulted because of the disagreement between T.I.S. and the IU bookstore about competition. This is really inconvenient for me, and personally I think a bit unfair. I was hoping that you, as the voice for the students, would write about this and speak out against it. It's important that the school not think this is an acceptable solution.\nKylie Stanley\nSophomore

Miami University students somber after 3 deaths in house fire

OXFORD, Ohio -- Students stunned by the deaths of three Miami University classmates in a house fire left bouquets of flowers at the site and paused for moments of silence in classes Monday, leaving the normally buzzing campus unusually still.\n"It's really quiet today everywhere," said Jennifer Hanson, 19. "Even when people are talking, this is what they're talking about."\nFire investigators were still trying to determine what sparked the blaze in the 19th-century brick home early Sunday, sending flames shooting out the windows. Investigators believe the fire started accidentally in the living room or recreation room on the first floor, fire chief Len Endress said.\nThe house, rented by nine students, complied with fire safety codes.\nAuthorities said one of the residents, Sebastian Barsh, used his cell phone to report the fire just after escaping through his first-floor bedroom window. He told a 911 dispatcher that a smoke detector woke him, and he saw a red glow under his bedroom door.\n"There's still somebody inside, I think," Barsh said on the tape.\nFire officials interviewed the eight survivors Monday, one of whom jumped to safety from a second-story window. Investigators believe 11 people -- seven residents and four guests -- were in the house when the fire started.\nJulia Turnbull, 21, of Milford, Ohio, and Kathryn Welling, 21, of Bronxville, N.Y., died of carbon monoxide inhalation in second-floor bedrooms, Endress said.\nA cause of death had not been determined for Stephen Smith, 22, of Bethesda, Md. Smith apparently had been shaken awake by a housemate and made it down a flight of stairs before becoming disoriented in the smoke, Endress said. His body was found near the front door.\nSmith, a rugby player, single-handedly stopped two scoring drives in a rugby game the day before the fire, friends said. The marketing major, who was expected to graduate next month, was known for his ability to make people laugh.\n"He had a lot of fun, and he knew people all over campus," said Sara Waterfield, 22, who met Smith in a study abroad program.\nTurnbull was a senior mass communications major, and Welling was a junior in the business school.\nMourners stopped by the house throughout the day Monday, some crying and hugging each other. Flowers were piled outside.\nThe house was in a neighborhood of older homes surrounded by large trees a few blocks from the campus, about 30 miles northwest of Cincinnati. Its roof had partly collapsed, and its windows had been blown out.\nUniversity President Jim Garland sent a note to faculty asking that they be sensitive to students' needs in Monday's classes.\nRhetta Bowers, 20, said one teacher let her class leave early.\n"I don't think I'll go to any of my other classes," she said. "It's just somber"

Torched Holocaust museum reopens

TERRE HAUTE -- A Holocaust museum gutted by a November 2003 arson fire reopened Sunday in an expanded space that includes displays of books and photos charred by the still-unsolved arson.\nAbout 500 people attended Sunday afternoon's reopening of the new museum. The 3,700-square-foot building's entrance is flanked by six slender windows that resemble candles and represent the estimated 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.\nHolocaust survivor Eva Kor in 1995 opened the original CANDLES museum, which stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Experiments Survivors.\n"I'm asking you a special favor, to remember today as a shining example of triumph over evil," Kor said to the crowd.\nAs a child, Kor, 71, and her identical twin sister, Miriam, were prisoners in Poland's Auschwitz concentration camp and were subjected to Josef Mengele's experiments on twins.\nThe museum, which Kor opened in hopes of teaching Midwesterners about the horrors of the Holocaust, saw thousands of schoolchildren visit in the following years.\nOn Nov. 18, 2003, the museum was gutted by an arsonist who apparently spray-painted "Remember Timmy McVeigh" on the outside wall next to the window that was smashed.\n"It happened because of hatred and prejudice," Kor said.\nMcVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who shared sympathies with white supremacists, was executed at a federal prison outside Terre Haute in 2001.\nThe fire is still under investigation by Terre Haute police and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said city police chief George Ralston.\nDonations of nearly $300,000 allowed Kor to rebuild.\nThe original museum occupied part of the same building and was a "modest museum," where posters were pinned to the wall, Kor said.\nPush pins were no longer tacked to the walls of the new building, which includes a dramatic entryway with a vaulted ceiling, a library room, offices and a display room, she said.\nThe new museum features 11 elongated windows, expanding the memorial to embrace not only Mengele's lab experiment victims but also the other groups persecuted and murdered by Nazis in concentration camps during their 12-year reign in Germany. It includes Jews and other religious groups, gypsies, the physically and mentally handicapped, homosexuals and political opponents, Kor said.\nThe new museum holds displays, memorials and local students' artwork commemorating the Nazis' 11 million victims.\nSurvivors of Nazi crimes, liberated from the camps 60 years ago, must forgive to free themselves from the tragedy, Kor said.\n"Physically, they were set free. Emotionally, they're still imprisoned," she said. "It's for the victim to reclaim their life"

Pope rumored to have received last rites

VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II developed a high fever Thursday because of a urinary tract infection and was being treated with antibiotics at the Vatican, his spokesman said. The latest health setback for the 84-year-old pontiff came one day after he began receiving nutrition through a feeding tube.\nThere were reports that the pope received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick -- what used to be called the last rites.\nBut the Italian news agency Apcom, without citing any sources, reported that John Paul's condition was "stable" early Friday, several hours after he started receiving antibiotics. Another Italian news agency, ANSA, said the pope "seems to showing a first positive reaction" to antibiotic therapy.\nAt the Gemelli Polyclinic, the hospital where the pope has been treated before, an emergency room chief said there were no plans to admit John Paul "at the moment," ANSA reported.\nHis assessment could mean that the Vatican medical staff feels confident it can handle the latest medical crisis with the sophisticated medical equipment installed at the Vatican. But it could also mean that the pope's condition was considered so precarious it would be better not to move him immediately.\nAt the edge of St. Peter's Square, hundreds of people gathered early Friday in a sign of concern over the pope's fragile condition. A few kneeled down on the cobblestones to pray, others wrapped blankets around themselves as they prepared to keep vigil throughout the night.\n"There's nothing we can do but pray. We're all upset," said Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno, who was in the crowd.\n"I was in the car and I heard on the radio about the grave condition of the pope. I immediately thought I would come to St. Peter's," said Antonio Ceresa, a Roman.\nPolice barriers kept the faithful and curious out of the square itself.\nVatican officials could not be reached for comment on a report by CNN quoting an unidentified Vatican source as saying that John Paul received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. The sacrament is often misunderstood as signaling imminent death. But it is performed not only for patients at the point of death, but also for those who are very sick -- and it may be repeated.\nThe pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, told The Associated Press by telephone that "the Holy Father today was struck by a high fever caused by a confirmed infection of the urinary tract."\nThe pontiff was started on "an appropriate" course of antibiotics, Navarro-Valls said. "The medical situation is being strictly controlled by the Vatican medical team that is taking care of him."\nIn medical terms, "appropriate" often refers to a choice of antibiotics based on laboratory analysis of the kind of bacteria causing the infection.\nLights in the papal apartment above St. Peter's Square were on until about 11 p.m., generally well past the papal bedtime. The light remained on in the Apostolic Palace's nursing station on the same floor as the pope's apartment.\nPolice cars and other vehicles were seen going in and out of the Vatican gates as the evening wore on, and a small crowd of Italians who were following news on television began gathering at the edge of the square.\nEarlier, ANSA and Apcom said the pope had suffered an alarming drop in blood pressure Thursday evening.\nA urinary infection can produce fever and a drop in blood pressure as reported in the pope, said Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist in internal medicine at the New York University Medical Center.\nThe pope's risk of such an infection is heightened because he is elderly -- which suggests his prostate is probably enlarged -- debilitated and run down from the illness that recently sent him to the hospital, Siegel said.\nUrinary infections tend to respond well to antibiotics, given either as pills or intravenously, and "I would suspect there's a very good chance he's going to recover well," Siegel said.\nHospitalized twice last month following two breathing crises and with a tube placed in his throat to help him breathe, John Paul has become a picture of suffering. When he appeared at his apartment window Wednesday to bless pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, he managed to utter only a rasp.\nLater that day, the Vatican announced he had been fitted with a feeding tube in his nose to help boost his nutritional intake.\nThe use of the feeding tube illustrates a key point of Roman Catholic policy John Paul has proclaimed: It is morally necessary to give patients food and water, no matter their condition.\nAs Parkinson's disease and other ailments have left him increasingly frail, the pope has been emphasizing that the chronically ill, "prisoners of their condition ... retain their human dignity in all its fullness."\nThe Vatican's attitude to the chronically ill has been apparent in its bitter condemnation of a judge's order two weeks ago to remove a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged American woman who died Thursday.\nVatican Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, reacting to Schiavo's death, denounced the removal of her feeding tube as "an attack against God."\nAlthough different, some see parallels in the two cases.\nUnder John Paul, Vatican teaching on the final stages of life includes a firm rejection of euthanasia, insistence on treatments that help people bear ailments with dignity and encouragement of research to enhance and prolong life.\nA 1980 Vatican document makes the distinction between "proportionate" and "disproportionate" means of prolonging life. While it gives room for refusal of some forms of aggressive medical intervention for terminally ill patients, it insists that "normal care" must not be interrupted.\nJohn Paul set down exactly what that meant in a speech last year to an international conference on treatments for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state.\n"I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory."\nJohn Paul's 26-year papacy has been marked by its call to value the aged and to respect the sick, subjects the pope has turned to as he battles Parkinson's disease and crippling knee and hip ailments.\nIt is not clear who would be empowered to make medical decisions for an unconscious pope. The pope has no close relatives, but the Vatican has officially declined to comment whether John Paul has left written instructions.\nThe Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of America, the Jesuit weekly magazine, published in New York City, said Thursday, "We don't know whether or not the pope has a living will. But if he does not, the statement issued a year ago would be a clear indication of his desire that he would not want to be disconnected from a feeding tube unless he was clearly dying"

Library to unveil new addition

Only silence and the clicking of keyboards will be heard in the new Information Commons 2 beginning today. The newest installment of the Information Commons at the Main Library will officially open for quiet individual study and work this afternoon with a reception and brief remarks by Dean of University Libraries Suzanne Thorin and Dean of Information Technology Brad Wheeler.\nAlthough the 9,600 square-foot study space has been open since late February, library officials have waited on the grand opening while final touches were being completed. But that hasn't stopped students from steadily pouring into the newest work area, located on the second floor of the west tower, directly above the current Information Commons.\n"I was surprised the second day construction was complete. I walked out of my office and (the IC2) was filled," Thorin said. "We hadn't even announced the opening and it was already filled."\nThe IC2 is described as a scaled-down version of the first floor IC with 68 individual work stations that feature a computer at each desk and an additional 100 desks with space for laptop users to plug in and access wireless Internet.\nThe IC2 is dedicated to individual work while its downstairs counterpart is for collaborative and group-based work, said Interim Head of Information Commons for Undergraduate Services Diane Dallis. The IC2 also boasts plush couches and glass windows that overlook the Arboretum.\nThe IC and IC2, a collaboration between IU-Bloomington Libraries and University Information Technology Services, combine information and technology, said Chip Rondot, senior communications specialist for UITS. Both offer research or computer tech support from librarians, reference assistants and technology consultants during their open hours.\n"Students are getting the best strengths of each," Rondot said. "With this joint project, students can get what they want 24/7; it's not 9-to-5 anymore. When students are getting ready to study at 11 o'clock they can have that luxury."\nWhile some professors argue that technology has begun to take over where books once ruled, Dallis said that the combined 36,600 square feet of the IC and IC2 haven't made books second-class citizens. \nThe new IC2 houses a current, high-use core collection, which offers more than 15,000 books. Along with the core collection are new materials and books available to check out, which Dallis said hasn't seen a decrease. She also said much of the library materials have been added online, so a computer addition isn't seen as a problem.\n"A lot of library materials are online, so we don't mind that it shares space with the books," Dallis said.\nThorin said with the new additions, the Main Library now has more to offer, giving students the option of collaborative learning in the IC or quiet study in the new IC2. \n"I think this gives students interested in a quiet study area a place to go to hit the books and have a computer in a safe and attractive environment."\nIUB Libraries and UITS will host the official opening of the IC2 today from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the second floor of the west tower of the Main Library. The event is open to the public.\n-- Contact Senior Writer\nKatie Schoenbaechler at kmschoen@indiana.edu.