USA News

State of Transportation is Weak

2011-01-24T16:34:00.000-08:00

Washington (CNN) -- As President Obama is set to take stock of the nation during his State of the Union address Tuesday, a civil engineers group gives the U.S. transportation system low grades.

For example, the nation's bridges. Most of us don't think much about bridges until one we need is closed or is damaged or collapses, as the I-35W one did in Minneapolis in 2007, killing 13 people.

Yet engineers all over the country who really know about such things say we ought to be thinking about bridges a lot more.

And here is something we should consider: One in four of our bridges is either in need of repair or obsolete in terms of handling modern traffic and loads.

That startling fact comes from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which every few years consults with dozens of the nation's experts on all sorts of infrastructure matters. The society gives U.S. bridges a grade of C.

And bridges aren't the only problem in what we could call the State of the Union's Infrastructure. Roads, airports, water supplies, railways, dams, schools and on and on it goes; all are, according to the engineers' latest report in 2009, in pretty dire shape.

The amount of air travel in the U.S. increased by 7% last year, but an overhaul of the air travel infrastructure is long overdue, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The group gave the nation's aviation system a grade of D.

Compared with trucks, railways are much more efficient for moving goods: using about 20% less energy per mile if used properly. But comparatively little has been invested in expanding U.S. railroad capacity. Rail gets a C minus.

E Pluribus Unum: The American Experience

2010-12-09T18:44:00.000-08:00

E Pluribus Unum is the United States motto, appearing on the nation’s coins and paper money, and on many of its public monuments. It means “From many, one.” First used to unify the 13 British colonies in North America during the American Revolution (1775-1783), this phrase acquired new meaning when the United States received wave after wave of immigrants from many lands. These immigrants had to find ways to reconcile their varied backgrounds and fit together under a constitution and a set of laws. That process of creating one society out of many different backgrounds is one of the biggest stories of the American experience.

“What then is the American, this new man?” asked one of thousands of immigrants who came to North America in the 18th century. “He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles…Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.”

Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur, who wrote under the pseudonym J. Hector St. John, wrote these words more than 200 years ago. In 1759, at the age of 24, Crèvecoeur emigrated from France to the American colonies. Learning English quickly and making a success of himself as a farmer in upstate New York, he married an English woman and became a celebrated observer of the American scene. Amazed at the mingling of people from many parts of the world, Crèvecoeur pointed to a family headed by an Englishman who had married a Dutch woman, whose son married a French woman, and whose four sons had each married a woman of a different nationality. “From this promiscuous breed that race now called Americans have arisen,” he proclaimed.

A hundred years later, on the other side of the continent, Harriette Lane Levy wrote of growing up as a Jew. In her San Francisco neighborhood, she remembered, “The baker was German; the fish man, Italian; the grocer, a Jew; the butcher, Irish; the steam laundryman, a New Englander. The vegetable vendor and the regular laundryman who came to the house were Chinese.”

The United States began as an immigrant society, and it has continued to be a mingling of immigrants ever since. Even Native Americans, the first people to live in North America, descended from people who arrived from Asia many thousands of years ago. Since 1820, 63 million immigrants have arrived in the United States. Never in the history of the world has a country been braided together from so many strands of people arriving with different languages, histories, and cultures.

How could a nation of such diversity meld together so many different humans? Alexis de Tocqueville, another Frenchman who traveled to the United States, was fascinated with this question. He knew that the nation had to find some kind of glue to bind together so many different peoples. He found that glue in the American political system that had developed by the 1830s—a politics of participation based on the notion that to be legitimate and lasting, a government had to derive its power from the people. These principles were part of the political system created by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. This system aimed to create “one federated whole,” but this was an ideal yet to be accomplished. Today, the American people are still reaching for that ideal.

The goal of E pluribus unum has been closely connected with an ongoing debate: What is the meaning of the three resounding words that open the Constitution of the United States—“We, the people.” Every generation has faced the question, How wide is the circle of “we”? The various answers to that question have defined the degree of democracy in the United States. Creating one from the many, then, has been inseparable from deciding how democratic the nation will be.

Accordingly, a second theme of this set of articles on the United States is the growth of democracy in the nation and in its institutions and culture. This process has sometimes been tumultuous and often dramatic. The idealistic agenda set forth by the Founding Fathers—that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—remains the standard by which we judge ourselves.

These two themes help connect the various parts of the American experience, each of which is described in one of the six articles on the United States. Each of the articles is one part of the jigsaw puzzle that is the American experience. The puzzle forms a picture, which can only be fully understood when all the pieces are in place.

USA Newspaper Election And Media

2010-10-28T03:21:00.000-07:00

The media, especially television, have played a role in the increasing cost of campaigns because candidates spend a large amount of money on advertising. Today individual candidates spend more money on media advertising than ever before. In 1860 the Republicans spent only $100,000 on Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaign and on those of all Republican House and Senate candidates. In 1988 Republican candidate George H. W. Bush spent $70 million, just on the presidential race. During the 1998 elections, a 60-second spot on prime-time television cost as much as $100,000 every time it ran. As a result, campaigns have become more expensive, forcing candidates to concentrate more on fund-raising and less on presenting issues to voters.

USA Measurement systems

2010-10-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

Main articles: United States customary units and Metrication in the United States

The country retains United States customary units, constituted largely by British imperial units such as yards, miles, and degrees Fahrenheit. Distinct units include the U.S. gallon and pint volume measurements. The United States is one of three countries, along with Burma and Liberia, that has not officially adopted the metric system. However, metric units are increasingly used in science, medicine, and many industrial fields.

USA Sports

2008-09-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

USA

Sports

Since the late nineteenth century, baseball has been regarded as the national sport; American football, basketball, and ice hockey are the country's three other leading professional team sports. College football and basketball also attract large audiences. Football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States. Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. Soccer, though not a leading professional sport in the country, is played widely at the youth and amateur levels. Tennis and many outdoor sports are also popular.

While most major

U.S.

sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the

United States

. The

United States

has won 2,191 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 216 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most.

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USA Food

2008-09-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

USA

Food

Mainstream American culinary arts are similar to those in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses ingredients such as turkey, white-tailed deer venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, indigenous foods employed by Native Americans and early European settlers. Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue, crab cakes, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American styles. Soul food, developed by African slaves, is popular around the South and among many African Americans elsewhere. Syncretic cuisines such as Louisiana creole, Cajun, and Tex-Mex are regionally important. Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed. Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages. During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%; frequent dining at fast food outlets is associated with what health officials call the American "obesity epidemic." Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular; sugared beverages account for 9% of the average American's caloric intake.

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USA Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

2008-09-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

USA Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as another essential American poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel." Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. Postmodernism is the most recent major literary movement in the world, and though on the theory side postmodernism began with French writers like Jacques Derrida and Alain Robbe-Grillet, and was transitioned into largely by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, it has since been dominated by American writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, John Barth, E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and many others.

The transcendentalists, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the twentieth century, the work of W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty helped bring analytic philosophy to the fore in U.S. academic circles.

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was an important mid-nineteenth-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new styles, displaying a highly individualistic sensibility. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein have developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has also brought American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry to the top of their field.

One of the first notable promoters of the nascent American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the twentieth century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.

Though largely overlooked at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major

U.S.

composer in the classical tradition; other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created an identifiably American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a unique American synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham were central figures in the creation of modern dance; George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in twentieth-century ballet. The

United States

has long been at the fore in the relatively modern artistic medium of photography, with major practitioners such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, and many others. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both

U.S.

innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.

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USA Popular media

2008-09-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

USA Popular Media

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early twentieth century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time. American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997), and the products of Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.

Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world, and the average time spent in front of the screen continues to rise, hitting five hours a day in 2006. The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day. Aside from web portals and web search engines, the most popular websites are eBay, MySpace, Amazon.com, The New York Times, and Apple. Twelve million Americans keep a blog.

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the twentieth century. Country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll emerged between the 1920s and 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's greatest songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.

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USA Culture

2008-09-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

USA

Culture

The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. There is no "American" ethnicity; aside from the now relatively small Native American population, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries. The culture held in common by the majority of Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English and Dutch settlers. German, Irish, and Scottish cultures have also been very influential. Certain cultural attributes of Mandé and Wolof slaves from West Africa were adopted by the American mainstream; based more on the traditions of Central African Bantu slaves, a distinct African American culture developed that would eventually have a major effect on the mainstream as well. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced many new cultural elements. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has had broad impact. The resulting mix of cultures may be characterized as a homogeneous melting pot or as a pluralistic salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.

While American culture maintains that the United States is a classless society, economists and sociologists have identified cultural differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. The American middle and professional class has been the source of many contemporary social trends such as feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree. While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute. Though the American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, played a key role in attracting immigrants, particularly in the late 1800s, some analysts find that the United States has less social mobility than Western Europe and Canada.

Women, many of whom were formerly more limited to domestic roles, now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees. The changing role of women has also changed the American family. In 2005, no household arrangement defined more than 30% of households; married childless couples were most common, at 28%. The extension of marital rights to homosexual persons is an issue of debate; several more liberal states permit civil unions in lieu of marriage. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional; the Supreme Court of California ruled similarly in 2008. Forty-three states still legally restrict marriage to the traditional man-and-woman model.

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USA Crime and Punishment

2008-09-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

USA Crime and Punishment

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as appeals from state systems.

Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide. In 2006, there were 5.7 murders per 100,000 persons, three times the rate in neighboring Canada. The U.S. homicide rate, which decreased by 42% between 1991 and 1999, has been roughly steady since. Some scholars have associated the high rate of homicide with the country's high rates of gun ownership, in turn associated with U.S. gun laws which are very permissive compared to those of other developed countries.

The

United States

has the highest documented incarceration rate and total prison population in the world and by far the highest figures among democratic, developed nations. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were held in American prisons or jails, more than one in every 100 adults. The current rate is almost seven times the 1980 figure. African American males are jailed at over six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males. In the latest comparable data, from 2006, the

U.S.

incarceration rate was more than three times the figure in

Poland

, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate. The country's extraordinary rate of incarceration is largely caused by changes in sentencing and drug policies. Though it has been abolished in most Western nations, capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in thirty-seven states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year moratorium, there have been over 1,000 executions in the United States.In 2006, the country had the sixth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and Sudan. In December 2007, New Jersey became the first state to abolish the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision.

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USA Health

2008-09-06T07:03:00.000-07:00

USA

Health

The American life expectancy of 77.8 years at birth is a year shorter than the overall figure in Western Europe, and three to four years lower than that of Norway, Switzerland, and Canada. Over the past two decades, the country's rank in life expectancy has dropped from 11th to 42nd place in the world. The infant mortality rate of 6.37 per thousand likewise places the United States 42nd out of 221 countries, behind all of Western Europe. U.S. cancer survival rates are the highest in the world. Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight; the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century. Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by healthcare professionals. The U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is nearly four times that of France and five times that of Germany. Abortion in the United States, legal on demand, is a source of great political controversy. Many states ban public funding of the procedure and have laws to restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate a waiting period prior to treatment. While the incidence of abortion is in decline, the U.S. abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.

The United States healthcare system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP. Unlike most developed countries, the U.S. healthcare system is not universal, and relies on a higher proportion of private funding. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditure, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%. The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. healthcare system in 2000 as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance. The United States is a leader in medical innovation. In 2004, the U.S. nonindustrial sector spent three times as much as Europe per capita on biomedical research. Medical bills are the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States. In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, or 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The primary cause of the decline in coverage is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance, which fell from 62.6% in 2001 to 59.5% in 2005. Approximately one third of the uninsured lived in households with annual incomes greater than $50,000, with half of those having an income over $75,000. Another third were eligible but not registered for public health insurance. In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate health insurance; California is considering similar legislation.

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USA Education

2008-09-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

USA

Education

American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. Children are required in most states to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through 12th grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen. About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled. The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education, as well as local community colleges of varying quality with open admission policies. Of Americans twenty-five and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees. The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%. The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for twelfth-best in the world.

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USA Religion

2008-09-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

USA

Religion

The United States government does not audit Americans' religious beliefs. In a private survey conducted in 2001, 76.5% of American adults identified themselves as Christian, down from 86.4% in 1990. Protestant denominations accounted for 52% of adult Americans, while Roman Catholics, at 24.5%, were the largest individual denomination. A different study describes white evangelicals, 26.3% of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort; evangelicals of all races are estimated at 30–35%. The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2001 was 3.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990. The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.4%), Islam (0.5%), Buddhism (0.5%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%). Between 1990 and 2001, the number of Muslims and Buddhists more than doubled. From 8.2% in 1990, 14.1% in 2001 described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion, still significantly less than in other postindustrial countries such as Britain (2005:44%) and Sweden (2001:69%, 2005:85%).

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USA Language

2008-09-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

USA Language

English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2003, about 215 million, or 82% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by over 10% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught foreign language. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states. Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law. While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French. Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms. Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.

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USA Demographics

2008-09-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

USA

Demographics

As of 2008, the United States population was estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to be 304,516,000. The U.S. population included an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants. The overall growth rate is 0.89%, compared to 0.16% in the European Union. The birth rate of 14.16 per 1,000 is 30% below the world average, while higher than any European country except for Albania and Ireland. In 2006, 1.27 million immigrants were granted legal residence. Mexico has been the leading source of new U.S. residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year. The United States is the only industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.

The United States has a very diverse population—thirty-one ancestry groups have more than a million members. Whites are the largest racial group, with German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constituting three of the country's four largest ancestry groups. African Americans constitute the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group. Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ancestry groups are Chinese and Filipino. In 2006, the U.S. population included an estimated 4.5 million people with some American Indian or Alaskan native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and over 1 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively).

The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans has been a major demographic trend. Approximately 44 million Americans are of Hispanic descent, with about 64% possessing Mexican ancestry. Between 2000 and 2006, the country's Hispanic population increased 25.5% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 3.5%. Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2004, 12% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, over half that number from Latin America. Fertility is also a factor; the average Hispanic woman gives birth to three children in her lifetime. The comparable fertility rate is 2.2 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1). Hispanics and Latinos accounted for nearly half of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 2005 and July 2006.

About 83% of the population lives in one of the country's 363 metropolitan areas. In 2006, 254 incorporated places in the United States had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four global cities had over 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston). The United States has fifty metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million. Of the fifty fastest-growing metro areas, twenty-three are in the West and twenty-five in the South. Among the country's twenty most populous metro areas, those of Dallas (the fourth largest), Houston (sixth), and Atlanta (ninth) saw the largest numerical gains between 2000 and 2006, while that of Phoenix (thirteenth) grew the largest in percentage terms.

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USA Energy

2008-09-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

USA

Energy

The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, compared to Germany's 4.2 tons and Canada's 8.3 tons. In 2005, 40% of the nation's energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and various renewable energy sources. The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum. For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries. Recently, applications for new nuclear plants have been filed.

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USA Transportation

2008-08-30T05:38:00.000-07:00

USA

Transportation

As of 2003, there were 759 automobiles per 1,000 Americans, compared to 472 per 1,000 inhabitants of the European Union the following year. Approximately 39% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks. The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes behind the wheel every day, driving 29 miles (47 km). The U.S. intercity passenger rail system is relatively weak. Only 9% of total U.S. work trips employ mass transit, compared to 38.8% in Europe.Bicycle usage is minimal, well below European levels. The civil airline industry is entirely privatized, while most major airports are publicly owned. The five largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are all American; American Airlines is number one. Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).

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2008-08-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

USA Science and Technology

The

United States

has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late nineteenth century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first

U.S.

patent for the telephone. The laboratory of Thomas Edison developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. In the early twentieth century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford pioneered assembly line manufacturing. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made what is recognized as the "first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight." The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many important European scientists, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, to immigrate to the

United States

. During World War II, the U.S.-based Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. The

United States

largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, the bulk of research and development funding, 64%, comes from the private sector. The

United States

leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor. Americans enjoy high levels of access to technological consumer goods, and almost half of

U.S.

households have broadband Internet service. The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food; more than half of the world's land planted with biotech crops is in the

United States

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USA Income and Human Development

2008-08-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

USA Income and Human Development

According to the Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2006 was $48,201. The two-year average ranged from $66,752 in New Jersey to $34,343 in Mississippi. Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, the overall median is similar to the most affluent cluster of developed nations. After having declined sharply throughout the mid 20th century, poverty rates have plateaued since the early 1970s, with roughly 12.3% or 13.3% of Americans below the federally designated poverty line in any given year, with 58.5% spending at least one year below the poverty line at some point in their lives between the ages of 25 and 75. Owing to lackluster expansion since the late 1970s, the U.S. welfare state is now among the most austere in the developed world, reducing relative poverty by roughly 30% and absolute poverty by roughly 40%; considerably less than the mean for rich nations. While the American welfare state preforms well in reducing poverty among the elderly, from an estimated 50% to 10%,it lacks extensive programs geared towards the well-being of the young. A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations, covering a broad range of factors, ranked the U.S. next to last.

Despite strong increases in productivity, low unemployment and low inflation, income gains since 1980 have been slower than in pervious decades, less widely shared and accompanied by increased levels of economic insecurity. Between 1947 and 1979, real median income rose by over 80% for all classes, more so for the poor than the rich. While median household income has increased for all classes since 1980, largely owing to more dual earner households, the closing of the gender gap and longer work hours, growth has been slower and strongly titled towards the very top (see graph). As a result, the share of income of the top 1% has doubbled since 1979, leaving the

U.S.

with the highest level of income inequality among developed nations. While some economists do not see inequality as a considerable problem, most see it as a problem requiring government action. Inequality has been accompanied by a shift in economic risk, from being shared widely among households, firms and government agencies and distributed among large population pools, to increasingly being shouldered by individual households, with income volatility having increased by over 50% since the early 1970s. Wealth, like income, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share of any democratic developed nation. The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.

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USA Economy

2008-08-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

USA

Economy

The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States GDP of more than $13 trillion constitutes over 25.5% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP). The largest national GDP in the world, it was slightly less than the combined GDP of the European Union at PPP in 2006. The country ranks eighth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and fourth in GDP per capita at PPP. The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners. The leading export commodity is electrical machinery, while vehicles constitute the leading import.

The private sector constitutes the bulk of the economy, with government activity accounting for 12.4% of GDP. The economy is postindustrial, with the service sector contributing 67.8% of GDP. The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is finance and insurance. The United States remains an industrial power, with chemical products the leading manufacturing field. The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world. It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP, the United States is the world's top producer of corn and soybeans. The country's leading cash crop is marijuana, despite federal laws making its cultivation and sale illegal. The New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest by dollar volume. Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.

In 2005, 155 million persons were employed with earnings, of whom 80% worked in full-time jobs. The majority, 79%, were employed in the service sector. With approximately 15.5 million people, health care and social assistance is the leading field of employment. About 12% of American workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe. The U.S. ranks number one in the ease of hiring and firing workers, according to the World Bank. Between 1973 and 2003, a year's work for the average American grew by 199 hours. Partly as a result, the United States maintains the highest labor productivity in the world. However, it no longer leads the world in productivity per hour as it did from the 1950s through the early 1990s; workers in Norway, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg are now more productive per hour. The United States ranks third in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index. Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income taxes are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption taxes are lower.

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USA Foreign Relations and Military

2008-08-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

USA Foreign Relations and Military

The United States has vast economic, political, and military influence on a global scale, which makes its foreign policy a subject of great interest around the world. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many host consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, Sudan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.

American isolationists have often been at odds with internationalists, as anti-imperialists have been with promoters of Manifest Destiny and American Empire. American imperialism in the Philippines drew sharp rebukes from Mark Twain, philosopher William James, and many others. Later, President Woodrow Wilson played a key role in creating the League of Nations, but the Senate prohibited American membership in it. Isolationism became a thing of the past when the United States took a lead role in founding the United Nations, becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and host to the United Nations Headquarters. The United States enjoys a special relationship with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, and fellow NATO members. It also works closely with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2005, the United States spent $27.3 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world; however, as a share of gross national income (GNI), the U.S. contribution of 0.22% ranked twentieth of twenty-two donor states. On the other hand, nongovernmental sources such as private foundations, corporations, and educational and religious institutions donated $95.5 billion. The total of $122.8 billion is again the most in the world and seventh in terms of GNI percentage.

The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in times of war. In 2005, the military had 1.38 million personnel on active duty, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard for a total of 2.3 million troops. The Department of Defense also employs approximately 700,000 civilians, disregarding contractors. Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. The rapid deployment of American forces is facilitated by the Air Force's large fleet of transportation aircraft and aerial refueling tankers, the Navy's fleet of eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea in the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. Outside of the American homeland, the U.S. military is deployed to 770 bases and facilities, on every continent except Antarctica. Because of the extent of its global military presence, scholars describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases."

Total U.S. military spending in 2006, over $528 billion, was 46% of the entire military spending in the world and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. (In purchasing power parity terms, it was larger than the next six such expenditures combined.) The per capita spending of $1,756 was approximately ten times the world average. At 4.06% of GDP, U.S. military spending is ranked 27th out of 172 nations.The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2009, $515.4 billion, is a 7% increase over 2008 and a nearly 74% increase over 2001. The estimated total cost of the Iraq War to the United States through 2016 is $2.267 trillion. As of June 6, 2008, the United States had suffered 4,092 military fatalities during the war and nearly 30,000 wounded.

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USA States

2008-08-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

USA States

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Most of the rest have been carved from territory obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. The exceptions are Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii; each was an independent republic before joining the union. Early in the country's history, three states were created out of the territory of existing ones: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the states do not have the right to secede from the union.

The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the only other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States possesses five major territories with indigenous populations: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.

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USA Parties, Ideology and Politics

2008-08-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

USA Parties, Ideology and Politics

Politics in the United States have operated under a two-party system for virtually all of the country's history. For elective offices at all levels, state-administered primary elections are held to choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the two dominant parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824 (though its roots trace back to 1792), and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.

Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered "center-right" or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered "center-left" or liberal. The two ideologies competing within the political mainstream are modern liberalism and modern conservatism. The former is distinguished through its belief in Positive liberty, holding that freedom requires the opportunity to live life as one would chose. Consequently liberalism seeks the universal provision of all three generations of human rights, including for example, freedom of speech, property ownership, education, health care and a clean environment - all of which are seen as prerequisites for liberty and human development. Modern conservatism is a hybrid of classical liberalism, which promotes Negative liberty, holding that liberty is nothing more than the absence of direct coercion by other individuals, and social conservatism, which emphasizes hierarchy and authority. It consequently often rejects state efforts to secure second and third generation rights, seeing the state's rightful role almost exclusively limited to securing first generation rights and the social hierarchy necessary for the maintain order. While modern liberalism was the dominant ideology on domestic policy throughout the mid 20th century, during a period often dubbed the "Keynesian consensus," it has been engaged in a fierce battle with modern conservatism, since the latter's rise in the late 1970s, leading to a sharp resurgence in political polarization. The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states" in political parlance, are relatively liberal-leaning. The "red states" of the South and the Rocky Mountains lean conservative.

The incumbent president, Republican George W. Bush, is the 43rd president in the country's history. All U.S. presidents to date have been white men. If Democrat Barack Obama wins the forthcoming presidential election, he will become the first African-American president. Following the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party controls both the House and the Senate. Every member of the U.S. Congress is a Democrat or a Republican except two independent members of the Senate—one a former Democratic incumbent, the other a self-described socialist. An overwhelming majority of state and local officials are also either Democrats or Republicans.

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USA Government and elections

2008-08-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

USA Government and Elections

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law." It is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy, though U.S. citizens residing in the territories are excluded from voting for federal officials. The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the United States Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document and as a social contract for the people of the United States. In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels. Federal and state judicial and cabinet officials are typically nominated by the executive branch and approved by the legislature, although some state judges and officials are elected by popular vote.

The federal government is composed of three branches:

* Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.

* Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.

* Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.

The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the fifty states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. Each state has two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every second year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned by state. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

All laws and procedures of both state and federal governments are subject to review, and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution by the judicial branch is overturned. The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government, the relationship between it and the individual states, and essential matters of military and economic authority. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of individual rights in the United States.

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USA Contemporary Era

2008-08-22T05:01:00.000-07:00

USA

Contemporary Era

The leadership role taken by the United States and its allies in the United Nations–sanctioned Gulf War, under President George H. W. Bush, and later the Yugoslav wars helped to preserve its position as the world's last remaining superpower. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House on charges relating to a civil lawsuit and a sexual scandal, but he was acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.

The 1990s also saw a rise in Islamic Terrorism against Americans from al-Qaeda and other groups, including an attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, an attack on U.S. forces in Somalia, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, the 2000 millennium attack plots, and the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in October 2000. In Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein proved a continuing problem for the UN and its neighbors, prompting a variety of UN sanctions, Anglo-American patrolling of Iraqi no-fly zones, Operation Desert Fox, and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which called for the removal of the Hussein regime and its replacement by a democratic system.

The presidential election of 2000 was one of the closest in U.S. history and saw George W. Bush become President of the United States. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In the aftermath, President Bush urged support from the international community for what was dubbed the War on Terrorism. In late 2001, U.S. forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps from Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war against a NATO-led force. Controversies arose regarding the conduct of the War on Terror.

Using language from the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act and the Clinton Administration, in 2002 the Bush Administration began to press for regime change in Iraq. With broad bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress, Bush formed an international Coalition of the Willing and in March 2003 ordered Operation Iraqi Freedom, removing Saddam Hussein from power. Although facing pressure to withdraw, the U.S.-led coalition maintains a presence in Iraq and continues to train and mentor a new Iraqi military as well as lead economic and infrastructure development.

In the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the Republican Party candidate, four-term Senator John McCain of Arizona – a former U.S. prisoner of war who served in the Vietnam War – will face the Democratic Party candidate, freshman Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the first African American to head a major political party's presidential ticket.

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USA Cold War and Civil Rights

2008-08-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

USA Cold War and Civil Rights

The United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The United States promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. Both the United States and the Soviet Union supported dictatorships, and both engaged in proxy wars. United States troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.

The Soviet Union launched the first manned spacecraft in 1961, prompting U.S. efforts to raise proficiency in mathematics and science and President John F. Kennedy's call for the country to be first to land "a man on the moon," achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, America experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement headed by prominent African Americans, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., fought segregation and discrimination, leading to the abolition of Jim Crow laws. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War.

As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, rather than be impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power; he was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford. During the Jimmy Carter administration in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy experienced stagflation. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 marked a significant rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Soviet Union's power diminished, leading to its collapse and effectively ending the Cold War.

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USA World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

2008-08-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

USA

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many citizens, mostly Irish and German, opposed intervention. In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, turning the tide against the Central Powers. Reluctant to be involved in European affairs, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism. In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. Partly because of the service of many in the war, Native Americans gained U.S. citizenship in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity as farm profits fell while industrial profits grew. A rise in debt and an inflated stock market culminated in the 1929 crash that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration. The nation would not fully recover from the economic depression until the industrial mobilization spurred by its entrance into World War II. The United States, effectively neutral during the war's early stages after the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program.

On December 7, 1941, the United States joined the Allies against the Axis powers after a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. World War II cost far more money than any other war in American history, but it boosted the economy by providing capital investment and jobs, while bringing many women into the labor market. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war. Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was achieved in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war. The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.

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USA Civil War and Industrialization

2008-08-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

USA Civil War and Industrialization

Tensions between slave and free states mounted with increasing disagreements over the relationship between the state and federal governments and violent conflicts over the expansion of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession from the United States, forming the Confederate States of America. The federal government maintained secession was illegal, and with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the American Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. The Union freed Confederate slaves as its army advanced through the South. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves, made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.

After the war, the assassination of President Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, which lasted until 1929, provided labor for

U.S.

businesses and transformed American culture. High tariff protections, national infrastructure building, and new banking regulations encouraged industrial growth. The 1867 Alaska purchase from

Russia

completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the archipelago was annexed by the United States in 1898. Victory in the Spanish-American War that same year demonstrated that the

United States

was a major world power and resulted in the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the

Philippines

. The

Philippines

gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico remains a commonwealth of the

United States

; and Guam remains a

U.S.

territory.

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USA Independence and Expansion

2008-08-18T04:22:00.000-07:00

USA Independence and Expansion

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights," the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Declaration, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, pronounced the colonies sovereign "states." In 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted, uniting the states under a weak federal government that operated until 1788. Some 70,000–80,000 loyalists to the British Crown fled the rebellious states, many to Nova Scotia and the new British holdings in Canada. Native Americans, with divided allegiances, fought on both sides of the war's western front.

After the defeat of the British army by American forces who were assisted by the French, Great Britain recognized the sovereignty of the thirteen states in 1783. A constitutional convention was organized in 1787 by those who wished to establish a strong national government with power over the states. By June 1788, nine states had ratified the United States Constitution, sufficient to establish the new government; the republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. New York City was the federal capital for a year, before the government relocated to Philadelphia. In 1791, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the Constitution forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections. Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the African slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution." In 1800, the federal government moved to the newly founded Washington, D.C. The Second Great Awakening made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements.

Americans' eagerness to expand westward began a cycle of Indian Wars that stretched to the end of the nineteenth century, as Native Americans were stripped of their land. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 virtually doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against

Britain

over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened American nationalism. A series of

U.S.

military incursions into Florida led

Spain

to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The country annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845. The concept of Manifest Destiny was popularized during this time. The 1846 Oregon Treaty with

Britain

led to

U.S.

control of the present-day American Northwest. The

U.S.

victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation much less arduous for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, commonly called buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the bison, a primary economic resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.

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USA History

2008-08-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

USA History

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are thought to have migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000 years ago. Several indigenous communities in the pre-Columbian era developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous population. In the years that followed, the majority of the indigenous American peoples were killed by epidemics of Eurasian diseases.

On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Of the colonies Spain established in the region, only St. Augustine, founded in 1565, remains. Later Spanish settlements in the present-day southwestern United States drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; FranceGulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, an estimated 50,000 convicts were shipped to England's, and later Great Britain's, American colonies. Beginning in 1614, the Dutch established settlements along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. The small settlement of New Sweden, founded along the Delaware River in 1638, was taken over by the Dutch in 1655. eventually claimed much of the North American interior as far south as the

By 1674, English forces had won the former Dutch colonies in the Anglo–Dutch Wars; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680. By the turn of the century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had active local and colonial governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self government that stimulated support for republicanism. All had legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonies doubled in population every twenty-five years. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. By 1770, those thirteen colonies had an increasingly Anglicized population of three million, approximately half that of Britain. Though subject to British taxation, they were given no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

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USA Environment

2008-08-16T04:13:00.000-07:00

USA Environment

U.S. plant life is very diverse; the country has more than 17,000 identified native species of flora. More than 400 mammal, 700 bird, 500 reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 insect species have been documented. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The U.S. has fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas. Altogether, the U.S. government regulates 28.8% of the country's total land area. Most such public land comprises protected parks and forestland, though some federal land is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, or cattle ranching.

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USA Geography

2008-08-15T04:09:00.000-07:00

USA Geography

The United States is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: the contiguous United States stretches from the Pacific on the west to the Atlantic on the east, with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, and bordered by Canada on the north and Mexico on the south. Alaska is the largest state in area; separated from the contiguous U.S. by Canada, it touches the Pacific on the south and Arctic Ocean on the north. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America. The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, before or after China. The ranking varies depending on (a) how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and (b) how the total size of the United States is calculated: the CIA World Factbook gives 9,826,630 km² (3,794,083 sq mi), the United Nations Statistics Division gives 9,629,091 km² (3,717,813 sq mi), and the Encyclopedia Britannica gives 9,522,055 km² (3,676,486 sq mi). Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada. The United States also possesses several insular territories scattered around the West Indies (e.g., the commonwealth of Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (e.g., Guam).

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie land of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region along its southeastern portion. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the continental United States, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. The area to the west of the Rocky Mountains is dominated by the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Mojave. The Sierra Nevada range runs parallel to the Rockies, relatively close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the country's tallest peak. Active volcanoes are common throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and the entire state of Hawaii is built upon tropical volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.

Because of the United States' large size and wide range of geographic features, nearly every type of climate is represented. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semi-arid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in Coastal California, and arid in the Great Basin. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the continental United States, primarily in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.

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USA Etymology

2008-08-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

USA Etymology

The term America, for the lands of the western hemisphere, is mostly believed to have been coined in 1507 after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer and cartographer. The full name of the country was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, which was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776. The current name was finalized on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" Common short forms and abbreviations of the United States of America include the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., and America. Colloquial names for the country include the U.S. of A. and the States. Columbia, a once popular name for the Americas and the United States, was derived from Christopher Columbus. It appears in the name "District of Columbia". A female personification of Columbia appears on some official documents, including certain prints of U.S. currency.

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.

The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g, "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865. However, it became increasingly common to treat the name as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard, while the plural form is retained in the set idiom "these United States."

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The United States of America USA

2008-08-14T04:02:00.000-07:00

The

United States of America

, usually referred to as the

United States

, the

USA

, the

U.S.

America

, is a constitutional federal republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by

Canada

to the north and

Mexico

to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with

Canada

to its east and

Russia

to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$13 trillion (over 25% of the world total based on nominal GDP and almost 20% by purchasing power parity).

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.

In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. However, the Jim Crow laws passed after reconstruction allowed racism and inequality to persist. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the nation's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. In the post–Cold War era, the United States is the only remaining superpower—accounting for approximately 50% of global military spending—and a dominant economic, political, and cultural force in the world.

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Two blasts rock Istanbul; deaths reported

2008-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

Two blasts rock Istanbul; deaths reported

/europe

ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- Two explosions rocked suburban Istanbul Sunday night, injuring several people, according to journalists and video footage from the scene.

Video footage from the scene showed several bloodied people being transported into ambulances.

The back-to-back blasts happened in Istanbul's Gungoren community at about 10 p.m., a journalist with Turkish news agency DHA told CNN Turk. The journalist, Zafer Karakoc, said he witnessed the explosions.

Police did not immediately report official injury and death tolls, but Turkey's state-run Anadolu Ajansi news agency reported eight fatalities.

Up to 30 people were taken to hospitals, journalist Andrew Finkel told CNN.

Video footage from the scene shows several bloodied people being transported into ambulances.

Dozens of firefighters and paramedics were on the scene.

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Obama showed independent streak in lobbyist dealings

2008-07-07T04:35:00.000-07:00

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WASHINGTON — On Wednesday nights during Illinois General Assembly sessions, a group of lobbyists and lawmakers used to gather at the headquarters of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association for a weekly poker game. Barack Obama, who represented part of Chicago as state senator from 1997-2004, was a regular.

These days, Obama says lobbyists are part of the problem with Washington, and he refuses to accept their fundraising help. But during his eight years in Springfield, Ill., Obama played golf and basketball with them and hit them up for campaign donations, according to records and interviews. He shared meals with them, though he was careful to pay his own way, they say.

Obama also accepted lobbyist money when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, and he later used his influence to help secure grants for 16 Illinois-based institutions represented by six of his lobbyist contributors, public records show.

He did all that while retaining a reputation for independence. "I can't remember a time that state senator Obama wasn't on the side of the consumers," said David Kolata, executive director of the non-partisan Illinois Citizens Utility Board.

A look at Obama's past relationships with lobbyists shows that, for most of his political career, Obama wasn't as attentive to the appearance of coziness with special interests as he is now. But it also shows that he often voted against the interests of his lobbyist friends, and he helped pass two significant upgrades to Illinois campaign finance and ethics laws.

"I think that he understood that lobbyists had valuable information and are a part of the system," said Illinois lobbyist Paul Williams, an Obama contributor who represents the cable television industry, a major electric utility and other powerful interest groups. "But he doesn't necessarily want to be tied to or indebted to their financial support, which might have an influence on his decision-making process."

Obama has said he stopped taking money from lobbyists and political action committees when he began running for president in January 2007 because he came to believe that special interests were too influential in Washington. Before that, his Senate campaign committees took in $140,400 in lobbyist contributions from 2003-06, and $1.2 million from PACs, out of about $16.3 million raised, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

In an interview last month with USA TODAY, Obama said his self-imposed ban on lobbyist and PAC donations means there are "fewer strings attached to me." He said, for example, that a lobbyist who raises campaign funds for him "is going to have some very specific interests that they want you to deal with," adding, "I'm never in that situation."

Records suggest a more complicated reality. As a U.S. senator, for example, Obama helped secured three grants totaling nearly $8 million for military fuel-cell research and other projects at Chicago State University. The university's lobbyist, Anita Estell, contributed $1,500 to Obama in 2004. Other employees at her then-firm, Van Scoyoc Associates, gave Obama $2,750, records show.

Last year, Estell brought Chicago State to her new firm, Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus. While Estell by then was barred from giving, Polsinelli lawyers who aren't lobbyists contributed $7,498 to Obama's presidential campaign, records show.

Estell said Obama was inclined to aid a minority-serving school. Donations "may matter with some candidates; I don't think it matters with him," she said.

Although he did business with lobbyists, Obama in 1998 helped pass a bill restricting lobbyist gifts and fundraisers near the Illinois Capitol building in Springfield. In 2003, he helped draft gift restrictions for state employees. And in Congress last year, he worked to enact disclosure requirements for lobbyists who raise funds for lawmakers.

He also cast some high-profile votes against powerful interest groups. In May 2003, for example, SBC Communications, Illinois' main telephone provider, deployed dozens of lobbyists who lined up much of the Democratic establishment behind legislation that consumer groups said would increase phone bills.

Michael Lieteau, a lobbyist for SBC, had played poker and basketball with Obama. Lieteau recalled, noting, as other lobbyists did, that Obama always paid his own tab.

Obama was one of just six Democratic senators who voted no. He sided against the Democratic governor, the Democratic House speaker and his mentor, Democratic Senate President Emil Jones. Even the political consultant he had hired to help him run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, David Axelrod, was working for SBC.

Bush defends decision to attend Olympics

2008-07-07T04:32:00.000-07:00

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By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY

TOYAKO, Japan — President Bush on Sunday defended his decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games next month, saying that skipping the event "would be an affront to the Chinese people."

Bush said that he "doesn't need the Olympics to express my concerns" about China's human rights record, something he said he has consistently done in past meetings with Chinese leaders. In Beijing next month, he intends to cheer on U.S. athletes. "It's an athletic event," he said.

Bush made the comments in a press conference here with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the eve of the annual Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations.

Fukuda also ended speculation by declaring that he would attend the Aug. 8 opening of the Games. Some human rights groups have called for world leaders to boycott the ceremony to protest China's repression of dissidents and its support for pariah states Burma and Sudan.

"You don't have to link the Olympics to politics," Fukuda said. "I would not like the Chinese to become unhappy. We are neighbors, after all."

Meeting in a resort on the northern Japanese island Hokkaido, the leaders of the G8 nations — the United States, Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Canada and Italy — will work through a packed three-day agenda covering topics such as:

•Global warming

•Soaring energy and food prices

•Economic uncertainty following the collapse of the U.S. housing market

• The nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran

•Aid for Africa

Fukuda hopes to use the G8 summit to broker a deal to reduce by 50% worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Bush has balked at the idea, believing that any G8 agreement to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases — which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming — would be meaningless unless emerging economic powerhouses China and India sign on, too.

"The president's trying to shift the blame to developing countries," says Alden Meyer, policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit environmental group. Meyer said that China and India have already signaled at a climate change conference in Indonesia, last December that they're willing to accept emissions-cutting targets.

"On the topic of climate change, this year will be a place-holder summit," William Antholis, managing director of the Brookings Institution think tank, predicted.

Antholis said that U.S. presidential contenders Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama were more committed than Bush to stopping global warming. When a new U.S. president meets G8 leaders again in Italy next year, he said, "industrial nations may finally step up to the global challenge of cutting emissions."

In an hour-long meeting Sunday afternoon, Bush, who was celebrating his 62nd birthday, sought to reassure Fukuda on another issue sensitive in Japan: the abduction by North Korea of at least 17 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.

Last month, the United States removed North Korea from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism — a reward for Pyongyang's progress toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program. The decision was widely criticized in Japan, which wants to see North Korea pressured into accounting for the missing Japanese.

"As a father of little girls, I can't imagine what it would be like to have my daughter just disappear," Bush said. He said he told Fukuda "the United States will not abandon you on this issue."

Weather aids tired firefighters in Calif.

2008-07-07T04:24:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Firefighters on Sunday took advantage of cooler, damper weather to battle a vast blaze ravaging Santa Barbara County as they tried to gain a foothold against the fire before the expected return of hotter, drier conditions.

Moist air currents from the ocean cooled temperatures to the high 70s Sunday, helping fire crews keep the four-day-old blaze from spreading. The fire, which has been burning since Tuesday, was less than a third contained Sunday afternoon.

"We've got a window here with the humid weather that's really helping us. But we know we're in this for the long haul," said Dixie Dies, spokeswoman for the state Incident Management Team.

Temperatures are forecast to start climbing Monday and to reach the 90s by Thursday. The moist air currents are expected to dissipate, causing drier conditions, Dies said.

Lightning strikes were also possible as a new weather system moves in, forecasters said.

The fire, 28% contained Sunday night, has consumed about 13 square miles of Los Padres National Forest.

Nearly 2,700 homes were in jeopardy earlier in the weekend, but by Sunday night many of the evacuation orders were lifted or downgraded to warnings.

"People are filtering back to their neighborhoods and they're very happy," said forest spokesman John Ahlman. Some mandatory evacuations remained in scattered mountain communities south of Highway 154 and in areas on the west end of the fire, Ahlman said. He did not have exact numbers of how many homes were affected.

Firefighting crews made progress Sunday in controlling the fire's perimeters, said Santa Barbara County spokesperson Carrie Topliffe.

"It's pretty well stopped on the southern flank, where most of the structure threat was," Topliffe said.

The fire is blazing through 15 to 20-foot tall forest in extremely steep, rocky terrain. Crews are relying mainly on drops of flame retardant by helicopters and DC-10s to control the burning ridges and canyons, Dies said.

Officials decided Sunday that the nearly 1,200 firefighters, from 22 states and the District of Columbia, are sufficient to combat the fire, Dies said. "They're working incredibly hard," she said.

The fire still had the potential to roll through a hilly area of ranches, housing tracts and orchards between the town of Goleta and Santa Barbara.

Investigators suspect the fire was human-caused. The U.S. Forest Service has asked for public help in determining how it was set.

Sunday's cooler weather also helped firefighters advance on a two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest.

"The fog held on a little bit stronger than was originally anticipated, which was great for the crews out working on the lines," said Sarah Gibson, a spokeswoman for the command post in charge of fighting the blaze.

The improved weather did have some drawbacks. Fog made the takeoff of firefighting aircraft more difficult and hampered efforts to start controlled burns to clear out brush ahead of the advancing wildfire, Gibson said.

The fire, which has charred 113 square miles, was 11% contained, a slight jump from the day before. Fire officials said crews were burning out brush between the fire's edge and Big Sur's famed restaurants and hotels and cutting more lines to halt flames creeping down from ridge tops.

"The biggest challenge is whether or not the containment lines that they're building now and continuing to improve are going to hold as the fire approaches," said Rolf Larsen, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

Wildfires have burned more than 800 square miles of land and destroyed at least 69 homes throughout California, mainly in the northern part of the state, in the past two weeks. One firefighter died of a heart attack while digging fire lines.

About 1,400 fires have been contained, but more than 330 still burned out of control Sunday morning.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who on Saturday visited a command post in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County, has ordered 400 National Guard troops to be trained in wildfire fighting so they could help fight the state's blazes.

He also urged lawmakers to adopt his budget plan for a $70 million emergency surcharge on home and business insurance policies to buy more firefighting equipment.

California now has a year-round fire season and needs the money from the fee, which should cost the average homeowner about $1 a month, Schwarzenegger has said.

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Waits Dazzles With Glitter

2008-06-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

Do a quick internet search and there are more than 600 references of "Tom Waits" and the term "huckster" together. Snake oil, parodist, sly salesman, etc., a vocabulary of carnival-esque trickery have followed the man; as critic Robert Christgau quipped in the 1970's, "Waits is so full of shit…" (as he ripped the Pomona, Calif., native apart).

But whatever Tom Waits is selling, his diverse and unifyingly strange fanbase is buying. The whole Glitter & Doom tour is sold out, with many dates since opening day. With Waits' latest release almost two years behind him -- and a rarities and leftovers triple-disc collection "Orphans" at that --the songwriter wasn't on any agenda to promote new efforts, having any number of suitcases from which to pull his wares at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis.

The scene was already set for poetry, play and parody. This gorgeous, longstanding venue has lasted more than 70 years, ornate as though it were brand new.

Sheathed in gold paint and dollops of ruby, rich blues, Moorish design and accent lights, Fox Theatre is a treasure to house treasures. Suspended above the stage in topsy-turvy fashion and perched on a series of metal bars in the back, the heads of megaphones and bullhorns were suspended, pulled from their bodies like the beheaded victims of Waits' pagan rituals.

Starting out with a literal bang, the 58-year-old singer stepped to the mic and stomped his foot onto his soapbox, causing baby powder or whatever fine magical dust he had up there rise up like smoke and he tore into "Lucinda." He wagged a warning finger and threw his arms across his body like a drunken evangelist, his face taut in revealing the Good Word.

"Way Down in the Hole" was quickly stolen by Vincent Henry, who played on double sax. The song title, too, was an apt description for the sound mix. Though Waits' astonishingly tight and emotional band had the mix down, his grumbling vocals seemed to fall on either side of one's ear, but never quite in it. The nuanced performance lost some luster, on and off, as his lyrics were muddied.

Solitary and sultry, Waits sang "Falling Down" in front of a red haze and built tension where previously there was none on "Black Market Baby." As the crowd shouted their I -ove-yous to Waits in between tracks, he volleyed back "I love you too, babe," flashing the inside flap of his red satin-lined suit jacket.

Omar Torrez, who kept his utterly delightful nastiness buried previously, started "All the World is Green" with a dextrous Spanish guitar intro. Waits' son Casey on percussion kicked off the sample-based "Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song)," playing along on an intense wood block board -- think less "Snow White" and more "Alice in Wonderland." Waits finally gathered up a working bullhorn (which had yet to be dismembered) and otherwise cupped his hand about his mouth on this impressive vocal performance.

Samples were also used later for the claps on "Get Behind the Mule," a track that went a little too long to be comfortable. It's hard to shake, but there's something a little disappointing about listening to a quality ensemble that still uses tracking and pre-recorded snippets, no matter how essential those sounds are.

Waits picked up his junior guitar, blowing off the "smoke": "I miss you so much / I can't wait to see you / the day after tomorrow," he sang on touching "The Day After Tomorrow," barely accompanied. The ballad was replaced by creepy and hilarious "Rain Dogs" track "Cemetery Polka," "inspired by relatives who came too early and left too late." The sextet was ensconced in a sick green light, and Waits finished with the punchline: "That's family for you."
Sticking with the "Rain Dogs" theme, he crept to the piano for "Hand Down Your Head" and, later, "Anywhere I Lay My Head," "Singapore" and the klezmer/Weimar influenced title track.

He slid over to organ for "Lost in the Harbor" and returned to the full band format on "I Make It Rain," during which, naturally, he was rained upon by glitter at the signal of his whistle. The gold confetti stuck to his face and filled the brim of his bowler, dumped off later and revealing his aging, downy hair. "This is about a girl who lied to me. And I told her to continue to do so," Waits recalled before starting the rockabilly "Lie to Me" from the Brawlers "Orphan" disc. Sad waltz "On the Other Side of the World" precluded sea-lovin' "Singapore," Waits' idiosyncratic hrm-chah leading it off like the engine of whatever vessel (or planet) he's on.

The band lost it a little on long-running "Dirt in the Ground" but then a single, precariously blinking lightbulb descended from the ceiling to inspire the spoken word "What's He Building"… before Waits accidentally killed the bulb. The group raced toward the end, Waits introducing all the band -- including keyboardist/pianist Patrick Warren and upright bassist Seth Ford-Young. "16 Shells" preceded a chill-inducing "Rain Dogs."

The group shined off with "Goin' Out West," "Anywhere I Lay My Head" and piano-led "You Are Innocent When You Dream" for the encore. Waits invited the theater to join him on the latter, one of the few times the songwriter encouraged such participation. For a huckster, Waits certainly is generous.
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The Cure Brings Darkness and Light to NYC

The Cure Brings Darkness and Light to NYC

2008-06-28T02:31:00.000-07:00

As any fan will tell you, there are two faces of the Cure. One is that of a quirky, iconic pop band whose skill at composing endearingly offbeat radio hits made them the crossover darlings of the pre-grunge alt-rock scene. The other is that of a brooding post-punk archetype, whose downbeat songs of angst, sorrow and all-around misery have allowed frontman Robert Smith to reign as the unchallenged King of Goth for almost 30 years.

But one thing the Cure doesn't have is an identity crisis. Smith and co. know that their bread is sufficiently buttered on both sides, so it's no surprise that equal helpings of darkness and light were brought to New York City on June 20 and 21 for the final two dates of the band’s Cure 4 tour.

At the first show – a sold-out appearance at Madison Square Garden -- the group proved its prowess as the arena-rocking monster it became during the mid-80s. The band treated the packed house to a marathon, 35-song set of classic hits and new tunes from their forthcoming 13th studio album (due in September).

Most great frontmen – Bono, for example – are effective due to rock-god bravado and good old-fashioned showmanship. Comparatively, the mop-topped Smith seems more like alt-rock's court jester than one of its kings. During the show, he flopped around the stage (when not standing motionless behind the mic), often forgot the lyrics to his biggest hits and mumbled incoherently between songs. But these factors only seemed to increase Smith's anti-hero cachet. The more awkward he appeared onstage, the more favorably the crowd responded. And for almost three hours at the Garden, Smith had the 17,000-strong audience eating out of his eccentric hands.

After a typically moody opening, the band quickly leapt into its lighter fair, nestling the upbeat melodies of like crowd favorites like "Friday I'm in Love," and "Just Like Heaven" with jangly new singles like "The Only One." While the group occasionally dipped into darker material – the ominous "Prayers for Rain" was an early highlight – the band mostly played to a crowd that was clearly in the mood for a party.

But the group had a different game plan for its final show, at the more intimate Radio City Music Hall. While the MSG set was designed to woo even the most casual Cure listeners, much of the Radio City show seemed geared to thrill superfans. After lulling the audience with the strains of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," the band wandered through a somber, deliberately paced set that shied away from singles and relied largely on obscure album cuts and B-sides.

Though band intended to add an air of tension to the performance, some stress was derived from elements other than the music. Guitarist Porl Thompson – who drives much of the bands melodies now that the Cure performs without a keyboardist – was plagued with sound problems, a fact that clearly aggravated and distracted Smith at times.

But where there had been a brooding king of pain during the opening 24-song set, Smith emerged as his more jovial self for the band's first encore. After launching into the new single "Freakshow," Smith danced clumsily with bassist Simon Gallup before – in an uncharacteristically rock-star move -- climbing the famous Radio City steps up to the balcony where he serenaded fans in the "cheap" seats.

The festive mood continued with upbeat gems like "Close to Me" and "Why Can't I Be You," and a second encore that consisted of early, punky classics like "10:15 Saturday Night" and "Killing An Arab," which displayed the band's newfound power as a four-piece.

The band came full circle and concluded the three-hour concert with a sinister version of "A Forest" and the unreleased rarity "Forever," leaving the crowd on a delightfully down note. Though each of the band’s New York performances had its merits, it was simply a case of once not being enough. At the end of the day, the complete Cure experience could only be attained by attending both shows – something the band's most devoted fans intended to do all along.
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Aerosmith Unveils 'Guitar Hero' In New York

Aerosmith Unveils 'Guitar Hero' In New York

2008-06-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

Aerosmith

June 27, 2008 , 5:35 PM ET

Laura Leebove, N.Y.

Real-life Aerosmith fans screamed as loudly as the animated ones in a video sneak preview of "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" played today (June 27) during a press conference at New York's Hard Rock Cafe. All five band members attended the event to answer questions about the game, which fans got a chance to test-run before it hits stores Sunday.

The premise of "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" is for players to progress through the band's nearly 40-year career. Gamers have the opportunity to play seminal Aerosmith songs, all taken from the band's master recordings, as well as tracks from artists who have played with or influenced the band such as Joan Jett and Run DMC.

Among the Aerosmith tracks used in the game are "Sweet Emotion," "Livin' on the Edge," "Walk This Way" and "Dream On." The game will be released for Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 and 3.

Singer Steven Tyler said the process of animating the band was not easy. Game creators "wrapped me in a rubber suit, and I spent seven hours a day for two weeks getting in there with my hands and making this thing be all that Aerosmith is," he explained. Bassist Tom Hamilton joked that the game reminded him of the first time the band was animated, which was on "The Simpsons."

Players begin as guitarist Joe Perry, but completing different levels allows them to also play as guitarist Brad Whitford and Hamilton. The band starts out with club gigs and makes its way to stadium shows.

"Playing the 'Guitar Hero' game put me in that mode of the old songs," drummer Joey Kramer said. "I went back and started listening to the old albums. It's just really amazing. It made me really proud of all of us because I haven't listened to those records in so long."

Perry said the "Guitar Hero" series, regardless of which band's music is used, shows the significant changes in the music business. "Everybody's wondering how they're gonna [sell] their music [and] how the musicians are gonna get paid for it," he said. "I think this is one of the avenues that is gonna be an outlet and it's actually as important as albums used to be."

"Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" is the fourth game in the best-selling, but the first based on a specific band. The fifth edition, "Guitar Hero: World Tour," is slated for a late October release. As tipped here earlier this month, Guitar Hero franchise publisher Activision is expected to announced another special edition of the game featuring Metallica.

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Exclusive: Miley Cyrus Grows Up On 'Breakout'

Exclusive: Miley Cyrus Grows Up On 'Breakout'

2008-06-28T02:25:00.000-07:00

Miley Cyrus

June 27, 2008 , 11:00 AM ET

Cortney Harding, N.Y.

Miley Cyrus is a superstar to millions of teens around the world as Hannah Montana, but it's a more grown-up Cyrus that emerges on her new album, "Breakout." The set is due July 22 via Hollywood; first single "7 Thing" rockets 70-10 this week on the Billboard Hot 100.

"It's grown-up," Cyrus tells Billboard in an exclusive interview. "I wrote all the songs except two. My last one, 'Meet Miley Cyrus,' was more just meeting me, finding out who I am, and here it's more getting in depth of what's been going on in my life in the past year."

Cyrus pushed to write the songs herself this time around, saying that, "No matter how long what I'm doing here lasts, I want to be a songwriter for the rest of my life. I love it and it's my escape. I just hope this record showcases that -- more than anything -- I'm a writer."

The artist found herself in a media firestorm earlier this year when a photo of her bare shoulder, entwined in a bed sheet, appeared in Vanity Fair.

"I was embarrassed," she says in her rapid, self-assured clip, "but also it's like, every career thing that I do can't be perfect, and sometimes my decisions are wrong. I think that just makes me even more relatable. I don't think people will look at me any differently because they're like, 'You know what, I'm going to do stupid stuff too, and I'm going to make mistakes, and that's fine.' It still hurts when I think about it -- but you know what, it doesn't mean that you can't move on."

Cyrus is in the midst of filming the third season of her hit Disney show "Hannah Montana," as well as a "Hannah" movie in Tennessee. Her team is also plotting a successor to her runaway smash 2007 concert tour, which drew nearly 1 million fans.

"We're weighing the pros and cons of having her do multiple nights in one big city versus her doing one-night shows in a number of smaller markets," says Chip McLean, senior VP of Buena Vista Concerts for Disney Music Group. "Since she is someone who appeals to families, we can't just have her play the top 15 markets. Families won't be able to afford to make the trip, buy the tickets and pay for the hotel if we did that."
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Rapper Jal, living to tell about it

Rapper Jal, living to tell about it

2008-06-28T02:19:00.000-07:00

TARZANA, Calif. — While kids his age elsewhere in the world engaged in skirmishes on baseball fields and Game Boy screens, Emmanuel Jal was wielding an AK-47 as a child soldier in Sudan's civil war.

"My childhood was destructive," says Jal, 28. "It stresses me when I share my story, but it's a responsibility now. A lot of Sudanese have the same story, and they are quiet. If I testify, I might prevent another kid from losing his childhood."

Jal is testifying on three fronts. His major-label debut, WARchild, chronicles Jal's journey in a blunt rap diary. He's the focus of the upcoming War Child documentary, winner of the Cadillac Award at New York's Tribeca Film Festival. And an autobiography, Warchild: A Boy Soldier's Story, is due in early 2009 from St. Martin's Press.

Soaking up the sun in the backyard of his publicist's hilltop home, the lanky, dreadlocked Jal could be any rising rapper, except that his vivid tales of brutality are all too real. The title track and Forced to Sin offer harrowing details of his war-torn youth, including his temptation "to eat the rotten flesh of my comrade" when fellow child soldiers resorted to cannibalism after escaping the rebel army.

"I don't take modern hip-hop as real," says Jal, whose tune 50 Cent appeals to the rap icon for a ceasefire on violent lyrics that glamorize thug life. "It's entertaining, it's fake, like James Bond. If you really kill, you don't want to talk about it."

Jal's ordeal began at age 7, when his father sent him, along with thousands of children, to the Ethiopian bush to train with the Sudan People's Liberation Army, in combat with government forces since 1983. Jal did not resist.

"A seed was planted in me," he says. "I lived in war. Our village got burned, and I thought the world was ending with these loud bombs and houses burning and people screaming. My grandmother and uncle were beaten almost to death. When I saw my mom beaten and my auntie raped, a feeling of hatred was developing inside me."

On the treacherous walk to the training ground, several children fell prey to wild animals or drowned crossing rivers. Boot-camp conditions weren't much better.

"I was beaten until I was dizzy," Jal says. "I remember thinking, 'If I finish this training, I'm going to kill the trainer.' We were made hard. But I was happy to join. My desire was to kill as many Arabs as possible."

After a year of training and five years of fighting, an exhausted Jal and about 400 "lost boys" deserted the army, fleeing across Sudan's parched landscape with a meager supply of maize.

"When the food got finished, we depended on snails, snakes and rats," he says. "Soldiers too weak to hunt were forced to eat bodies."

Most succumbed to enemy attacks, disease, starvation and suicide. Only 16 survived.

Jal was spotted dragging a machine gun through the dirt at a refugee camp by British aid worker Emma McCune, who found the 13-year-old's tale heartrending and smuggled him to Nairobi.

"I thought, 'OK, this is an opportunity to be a better soldier. I'll learn to fly, steal a plane from the air force in this white woman's country, come back and kill these Arabs,' " Jal says. "That's being a kid. Luckily, things changed."

Jal's attitude shifted as a normal routine reduced flashbacks of his life in the killing fields. When he drew graphic scenes of dismembered villagers, McCune introduced him to cartoons, "so I started drawing hippos."

McCune's death in a car crash six months after rescuing Jal was a devastating setback.

"My life was crushed," says Jal, who was aided by McCune's friends. "So I started going to church and singing in the choir. Love let me heal. Letting go of my hatred for Muslims helped the most. And music was therapy."

Jal began dabbling in rap, and one of his home demo tapes got regional airplay, leading to a record deal. In 2005, single Gua ("peace" in his native Nuer) won global attention and an invitation for Jal to perform at the Live 8 benefits. "That was the beginning of the end of poverty in my life," says Jal, who relocated to London to pursue music full time. "I started supporting myself."

He began performing widely, and his music appeared on benefit albums War Child: Help! A Day in the Life and Instant Karma, as well as in the film Blood Diamond and TV's ER.

A spokesman for Make Poverty History, Jal hopes someday to build a school in McCune's name to rehabilitate child soldiers. He sees little hope for ending the genocide in Darfur until multiple nations pressure Sudan's leaders.

"Wars are made by rich people to kill poor people," he says. "The wealthiest Sudanese don't know what war is. Their children are safe in school." He grins. "But I don't want the wealthy to hate me, because I'm going to join them soon."

Jal cracks jokes to cope. He has never seen a psychiatrist and still struggles with nightmares.

"The killing and stealing I did in war, I can justify with what happened in my home," he says. "I don't feel guilty, but I'm haunted. I used to say, 'Why didn't I die?' Now I know I'm here to tell my story."

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California Chooses Sterile Insects to Fight Moth Invasion

2008-06-28T02:16:00.000-07:00

SACRAMENTO, California -- Backing off earlier plans for aerial spraying, California state officials announced they will fight the light brown apple moth farming pest by using a form of insect birth control.

The plan by the California Department of Food and Agriculture is to release mass quantities of infertile moths, interfering with the insects' ability to reproduce.

Environmental groups that had rallied against a proposal to aerial spray the Monterey and Santa Cruz coastal region this summer, praised the change.

"We at Earthjustice are glad that the CDFA has acknowledged that its plan to aerially spray Bay Area cities with pesticides to eradicate the apple moth was a terrible idea from the start - it wasn't safe, it wouldn't work, and it wasn't necessary," Managing Attorney Deborah Reames said in a statement.

"Sterile moths are a very good idea for long-term management of a pest like the light brown apple moth," added Pesticide Action Network North America in a website posting.

State Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura said officials started looking into alternative forms of pest control when the light brown apple moth was identified in California in March 2007, but had not anticipated that the so-called Sterile Insect Technique, or SIT, would be ready so quickly.

"SIT has been successful for more than 30 years in California and around the globe against a variety of insects - most famously the medfly," Kawamura said in a statement.

"Scientists had expected to need five to seven years to adapt SIT to the apple moth, but their work has progressed much more rapidly than expected," he said. "We now plan to begin limited releases of the sterile moths in 2009, with a full-scale program up and running in 2011."

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a letter of support to Kawamura, said that "creating the most sustainable tools to halt these pests is imperative. That will continue to be my direction in addressing all invasive pests that threaten California."

The light brown apple moth is a native of Australia, and is found also in New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Hawaii. Detection of the moth in California?s San Francisco Bay Area last year was the first on the mainland, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Its name notwithstanding, the moth larva feeds on a wide variety of plants, including - most ominously for California agriculture - peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, grapes, cherries and citrus, as well as apples and pears. It can also damage landscape trees; among them, state signature species such as cypresses, redwoods and oaks.

The use of Sterile Insect Technology involves subjecting male insects to ionizing radiation, which renders them infertile while still enabling them to "function in the field," successfully mating with wild females, according to a report on the subject by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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Lifestyle brand Juicy Couture appoints Mr Edgar as President

2008-06-28T02:09:00.000-07:00

Tapping a respected executive with two decades of experience and a stellar reputation as a brand builder, Juicy Couture announced the appointment of Edgar O. Huber as president of the company.

Huber, who will work in partnership with the company's co-founders and creative directors, Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy, will guide the overall management of the global lifestyle brand, ensuring its integrity during a period of significant global expansion.

Huber segues to Juicy Couture from L'Oreal SA where, as managing director of Major Markets he oversaw a portfolio of brands including Ralph Lauren Fragrances, Giorgio Armani Beauty, Diesel Fragrances, Lancome, Shu Uemura, and Kiehl's Since 1851.

In this role he was directly responsible for leading the luxury products group in more than 30 of L'Oreal's most important markets including the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Eastern Europe.

Huber, who in his 15 years with L'Oreal previously served as president of luxury products, L'Oreal USA, began his career 20 years ago as a brand manager.

Commenting on the announcement, Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy stated, "We fell in love with Edgar and his innate understanding of building luxury brands, as well as his knowledge of both the retail and wholesale markets.

We have been searching for the perfect executive partner to manage our astronomical growth and ensure that the Juicy brand is never compromised in realizing its world-dominating potential. His accomplishments speak for themselves, and we are thrilled to have him."

William L. McComb, chief executive officer of Liz Claiborne Inc, the parent company of Juicy Couture, said, "Edgar is a great fit for both Juicy Couture and the corporation at-large.

We are particularly impressed with his leadership of Kiehl's, spanning both wholesale and retail, growing a small business into a very large global one.

His talents and experience beautifully complement those of the Juicy team. He has focused on building brands during his entire career, and we are confident that he is the best person to help the Juicy brand reach its full potential." The search was conducted by Spencer Stuart.

Juicy Couture

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Jennifer Lopez names newborn twins Emme and Max

2008-06-28T02:06:00.000-07:00

Enlarge Photo Singer Jennifer Lopez is seen performing on ABC's "Good Morning America" television show in New...

Sat, Mar 1 07:50 AM

Movie and recording star Jennifer Lopez and her husband, salsa singer Marc Anthony, have named their newborn twins Max and Emme, her manager told People magazine's Web site on Friday.

The brother and sister -- the first children born to the 38-year-old actress -- were delivered about 10 minutes apart last Friday at a Long Island hospital.

Emme, weighing (2.6 kg), arrived first at about 12 minutes past midnight, and Max was born at 12:23 a.m., tipping the scales at 2.7 kg even, Lopez's manager, Simon Fields, confirmed to People.com.

Lopez and Anthony, who has a daughter and two sons from two previous relationships, married in 2004. It is her third marriage. The couple starred together last year in "El Cantante," a film about salsa legend Hector Lavoe.

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Drew Barrymore donates $1 mln to feed Kenyan kids

2008-06-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

Enlarge Photo Actress Drew Barrymore listens during a news conference where she was named Ambassador against Hunger...

Tue, Mar 4 03:44 AM

U.S. actress Drew Barrymore donated $1 million of her own money on Monday to the World Food Programme (WFP) that the U.N. agency said would be used to feed thousands of schoolchildren in Kenya.

Barrymore, 33, a WFP ambassador against hunger, announced her pledge on The Oprah Winfrey Show to kick off the agency's $3 billion "Fill the Cup" campaign that aims to feed 59 million hungry school children in developing countries for a year.

WFP hopes the United States will be able to donate enough money to feed 10 million of those children.

"I have seen with my own eyes what a difference a simple cup of nutritious porridge can make in a child's life," said the "Charlie's Angels" star, who has traveled to Kenya twice in the past two years for WFP.

"It helps them learn, stay healthy and sets them on track for a bright future. I urge everyone -- everywhere -- to help WFP 'Fill the Cup' for hungry children, and make hunger history," she said in a statement released by the agency.

Barrymore, who gained fame as a child star in the film "ET: The Extra-Terrestrial," is the eighth-highest-paid actress in Hollywood, according to The Hollywood Reporter, earning more than $10 million a movie.

Josette Sheeran, WFP's executive director, said $50 "fills a child's cup for a year" and called on people to donate through the Web site www.wfp.org.

The organization said last year it provided more than 20 million school children with a daily cup of porridge, rice or beans and also gave many girls a monthly ration to take home to their families. It said up to 70 percent of its food used for school meals is bought from farmers in developing cpountries.

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World Chefs - Love urbanizes U.S. western cuisine

2008-06-28T01:59:00.000-07:00

Tue, Mar 4 04:47 PM

Texas-based Tim Love is known for his sophisticated interpretations of U.S. western cuisine while preserving its bold flavors and multi-cultural origins.

Meat and wild game, the focal point of Love's cooking, are often paired with global touches such as Swedish lingonberries and Spanish Manchego cheese.

In 2003, the self-taught chef and a crew traveled in a trail drive from Fort Worth to New York City after the James Beard House invited him to cook a celebration dinner in honor of the late chef and food writer's 100th birthday. During the trip Love, bought ingredients from local markets, which he used for the dinner.

Love, who often sports a cowboy hat, owns three restaurants in Fort Worth including his flagship, The Lonesome Dove Western Bistro.

Love, 36, spoke to Reuters about his cooking and why Australians like Texans.

Q: What makes your cuisine "urban Western"?

A: "I was born and raised in Denton, Texas, so in Texas you are around a lot of different cultures all the time. There is a lot of hunting capabilities in Texas so that style of cooking encompasses a lot of wild animals and cultures that make up the West. You have the Germans, Italians, French traders and Chinese railroad workers and all these influences using native ingredients. I've taken all those cultures and urbanized it."

Q: What part of the world inspires you now?

A: "Now I use things from Australia and New Zealand because to me, when I visited there, it had the same thing Texas had going for it back to in the days of wide open spaces. I consider it's the New West. I have visited there a few times. I have a friend in Perth. I visited the wine areas. They really embrace Texans. They are really proud of where they are from, just like Texans."

Q: Any tips for cooking games?

A: "Game meats in themselves are not that gamey if it's prepared correctly. The thing that makes it gamier is the fat content. Game meat tends to be leaner so you add fat to the meat by like using lardon and other pork products. You need the fat in there to flavor the meat. You also want to use really bold flavors and really pungent herbs like garlic, chilies, rosemary and thyme."

Q: What is your favorite game to work with?

A: "Rabbit is the best white meat in the world. When prepared properly and you put it next to chicken, there is no comparison. It has a creamy quality to it. It's a little less lean than chicken. As far as bird goes, I love working with pheasants. As far as four-legged animal, I love working with red deer. As far as wild fish, I love barramundi."

Q: What do you cook for yourself?

A: "I like to cook whole anything but I end up feeding like a million people when I do it. You get so many different flavors and textures when you finished with just out one cooking process."

RECIPE

SPICY LAMB CHILI (Serves 6)

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 lb. lean ground American lamb

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

4 tablespoons chili powder

1 bay leaf

1 (14-1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice

3 cups canned kidney beans

Salt and pepper

Dry Jack cheese, for garnish

Chopped onion, for garnish

1. In a large heavy-bottom stock pot, heat olive oil and cook onions and ground lamb over medium heat.

2. When onions are soft and meat browned, add garlic and season with red pepper flakes, oregano, cumin, allspice, cinnamon, chili powder and bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste. Saute for 1 to 2 minutes.

3. Add tomatoes and beans and bring soup to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. To serve: Ladle into bowls and garnish with toppings.

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Anna Nicole Smith daughter Dannielynn named heir

2008-06-28T01:53:00.000-07:00

Enlarge Photo Anna Nicole Smith walks into the media tent during an appearance backstage in this file...

Wed, Mar 5 04:16 AM

A judge on Tuesday ruled that the baby daughter of deceased model Anna Nicole Smith is the sole heir to her estate, meaning 18-month-old Dannielynn could inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff's ruling also established a trust for Dannielynn that would be administered by Smith's companion, Howard K. Stern, and Dannielynn's father, Larry Birkhead.

Smith, a former Playboy model and television actress, died in February last year of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, roughly five months after Dannielynn was born. Smith's son, Daniel, died only three days after Dannielynn's birth. He was 20.

Daniel had been Anna Nicole Smith's heir according to a will that was written well before his death, but the actress/model never changed the will. Stern, who is executor of Smith's estate, had petitioned the Los Angeles court in October to name Dannielynn as the sole heir.

"We and Mr. Stern always believed that Anna Nicole never intended to disinherit her daughter," Stern's lawyer, Bruce Ross, said after the hearing. "I'm pleased to say this chapter in the saga is closed."

At the time of her death, Smith was embroiled in a legal battle over the will of billionaire oil tycoon Howard Marshall.

She married Marshall when she was 26 years old and he was 89. He died 14 months later with a fortune estimated at $1.6 billion, triggering a battle between Smith and Marshall's family over his estate that still has not been resolved.

If that dispute is settled and Anna Nicole Smith's estate receives a large payout, the money would belong to Dannielynn.

The birth of Dannielynn and deaths of Daniel and Anna Nicole Smith were the subjects of a huge media frenzy last year due to the actress/model's celebrity.

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Should these stars hold on to their hats?

2008-06-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

From '40s fedoras to '80s headbands, stars are crowning their outfits these days. USA TODAY's Olivia Barker asked Brooke Magnaghi, accessories and jewelry director at W magazine, to dissect the trend.

Hats are "a great way to show individuality," but they're hard to wear, Magnaghi says. "People are intimidated (by them). When someone wears one, they're making a statement" — sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly.

By Ed Jones, AFP/Getty Images

Fetching fedoras

The fedora has edged out the newsboy cap as today’s menswear- inspired hat of choice. “It’s the ultimate boyfriend accessory,” says Magnaghi — or ex-boyfriend. The brimmed toppers started popping up a year or two ago among the indie crowd (think of Pete Doherty and his former paramour, Kate Moss). The narrower-brimmed trilby, as modeled by Sienna Miller at the Edinburgh premiere of The Edge of Love, is particularly popular. “It’s really flattering,” says Magnaghi. Pairing one with a cocktail dress for a formal event, à la Miller, “plays on the whole masculine- feminine look.” Take a shift, “slap on a fedora, and it automatically adds a cool factor to the outfit.” And in the case of hit-and-miss fashion maverick Miller, “it looks casual. She makes it look easy and effortless. It doesn’t look like she’s trying too hard.”

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Trim the grocery bill, not nutrition

2008-06-28T01:44:00.000-07:00

TORONTO, (Reuters) -- Food prices, fuel costs and economic fears are growing, but that doesn't mean you can't eat healthfully while on a recession diet.

Feeding yourself and your family on a budget can still include nutritious lean protein, fruits and vegetables in your diet every day, said Holly Scherer, a registered dietician at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor. It just requires an open mind and a bit of extra time.

"With a little bit of planning, you can watch how much you're spending and still eat a healthy diet," Scherer said.

The food inflation rate is currently double the overall rate at 4.2 percent annually, according to the Department of Labor, and the USDA estimates the rate will be between 3 and 4 percent this year, the highest since the early 1990s. Labor Department figures show milk, dried beans, peas and lentils up 17 percent, cheese up 15 percent, rice and pasta up 13 percent, bread up 12 percent, and eggs up 25 percent, all over the last year. And rising prices at the pump mean that transportation costs are eating a larger chunk out of people's incomes. Many families are now looking for ways to make their food budgets go further, or to increase it by cutting spending somewhere else.

All of that may leave some people worried that they will have to begin relying on fast food and less-healthy options for their meals, but there are a lot of ways to cut a grocery budget without giving up fresh foods, Scherer said.

Eating in season is one key way to cut your food bill. Farmer's markets can offer savings on produce because you're buying locally and directly from the farmer. But watch prices there, Scherer said. The savings can be significant, but some items, such as organic produce, may actually cost more. "You may pay more if you're not careful about what you're choosing," she said.

Local co-operatives where you trade money or labour in order to reap the benefits of a larger community garden or local farm are another option for fresh fruits and vegetables, Scherer said. And if you're so inclined, you can save money by planting your own produce and herbs. A plant that costs just a few dollars can provide a large amount of produce, she said.

When fresh options are too expensive or unavailable, consider frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Look for frozen and canned vegetables without added ingredients like sauces and salt, and fruits that are not frozen or canned in sugar -- check for sugar or high fructose corn syrup in the ingredients, and avoid them, Scherer said. Some fruits will be canned in a light syrup, which is their own juices and is a better choice. Also, produce to be frozen and canned is selected at the peak of its freshness. "They can be just as nutritious if you follow those guidelines, and very economical," she said.

Protein is another area where grocery costs can become quite high -- and therefore, where cuts can be made. For a lot of people, protein means meat, and plenty of it. The United States Department of Agriculture recommends four ounces of meat per person per day, but per capita meat consumption is consistently a half-pound daily. So one option is to simply eat less meat with our meals. "A lot of us do eat more meat than we really need, with large portions," Scherer said. Though the price of eggs has increased, they are still a cheaper source of protein than meat. Beans are another option for adding protein to meals at a low cost.

But eating more economically doesn't have to mean eliminating meat, it just means making smarter choices, Scherer said. Less expensive cuts are often less tender, which makes them good choices for meals like stews and casseroles. Watching for sales allows you to purchase preferred cuts at a discount and freeze them for later use.

Buying chicken breasts with the bone and skin on and filleting and skinning them yourself will also save money because the price per pound is lower. The National Institutes of Health recommends buying whole chickens and cutting them up yourself; the carcass can then be used to make soup stock. Avoiding pre-cooked or pre-seasoned meat can also mean consuming fewer preservatives, additives and sodium, Scherer added.

This is true across the board of convenience items, she pointed out -- though time is also valuable, any time some of the work has been done for you, the cost will be higher.

"Any time the item is more prepared for you, whether it's in meats, fruits and vegetables, non-perishable items -- you're going to pay more for that," Scherer said. "In actuality, it's only a few minutes of your time that's added to food preparation in order to do that yourself."

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Californian drivers told to drop their cells

2008-06-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Next week California will try to wrest cell phones from the hands of drivers, telling everyone from movie starlets and dot-com millionaires to surfers and soccer moms that conversations behind the wheel must be on a headset.

Several U.S. states and some two dozen countries around the world already have restrictions on mobile phones while driving but now such a law has come to California -- where the car is king and much of life is spent on the famously snarled freeways.

Californians interviewed by Reuters mostly supported the law requiring hands-free phones in cars and outlawing cell phones entirely for drivers under 18, which takes effect on Tuesday -- though they were puzzled by a loophole that allows seemingly more dangerous text messaging.

Others cast a jaundiced eye on lawmakers, who they blame for failing to build more freeways or public transportation in the face of increasingly gridlocked roads in the nation's most populous state and say hands-free conversations are no safer.

"I can't believe that (Californians) will put up with all these nanny, nit-picking laws," KFI-AM radio talk-show host John Kobylt told Reuters.

"It's stupid because we've gone over about seven different studies and each one of them says it's the conversation that distracts you, not holding the phone," he said.

TEXT MESSAGING OK?

Besides, he said, many Californians are forced to use their cars as offices while stuck on the freeway.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, who authored the bill, disputes those studies and says keeping both hands on the wheel is always safer. He expects his law to save hundreds of lives.

"There are more and more people out there on the highway and the CHP (California Highway Patrol) has collected data every year showing that cell phones are the number one cause of distracted drivers," Simitian said.

Fines for a first offense are $20 plus fees and $50 plus fees for subsequent convictions.

The Democratic lawmaker is working on a follow-up bill to outlaw text messaging in the car, which he says wasn't an issue when he began working on the first one in 2001.

Connecticut, New Jersey and New York already prohibit drivers from talking on hand-held cell phones, along with some two dozen countries around the world. In New Jersey, police have issued 35,000 tickets for using a hand-held phone or texting while driving since the law went into effect March 1.

But the random sampling of Californians interviewed by Reuters expressed ambivalence.

"On the one hand I don't want people crashing into each other, but I'm not going to go get an ear thing," 38-year-old bank employee Jason Fischer said in Los Angeles. "I'll give it up and then one day I'll make a call and get a ticket. I don't want a headset. I'm too lazy to get a headset."

Rachel Kucsulain, 36, said she rides her bike to her job as an administrative assistant in Los Angeles and wants cell phones taken out of the hands of drivers.

"I've almost been hit multiple times. I think it's totally a threat," Kucsulain said. "Two blocks from here someone (on a cell phone) turned on me as I was crossing a crosswalk. They were only inches away from me. It's just distracting."

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Free-agent history mixed, but these will draw lots of attention

2008-06-28T01:36:00.000-07:00

Free-agent history mixed, but these will draw lots of attention

There are those who still can't get their heads around how late the hockey season ends, yet no one seems to complain when Christmas comes to the NHL on July 1. The day the annual free-agent market opens is arguably the most anticipated on the league calendar, a wild free-for-all despite the restrictions imposed by a salary cap after the lockout. Growing revenues that have increased the payroll limits -- this year's cap is going to be $56 million -- help, of course, but so do the remnants of a business mindset among owners and general managers that says you have to spend to win.


Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr wants to continue to play in New York, but has no new deal on the table. (Getty Images)

Sometimes that works, but not always or right away. In the first three seasons under the current CBA, the free-agent market has produced some $10 million annual salaries, a bidding war on previously avoided restricted free agents and protectionist action by teams that created the first nine-figure deal in NHL history.

But no one involved in those headline-making deals has won anything. Still, the law of supply and demand has always ruled, and it will be no different when the 2008 class hits the market Tuesday.

A dozen unrestricted free agents to watch next week:

Marian Hossa: He's an elite offensive player who increased his value with the best postseason of his career. But Hossa also priced himself out of the Pittsburgh Penguins' budget in the playoffs, and perhaps those of a few other teams as well. Hossa should be worth about $7.5 million a year but has hinted he might take less to hook up with a perennial contender. How much less and on what kind of term is unknown. The Penguins have several players to re-sign this year and next, so their room is limited, and in Detroit, another team that is thought to be interested, it's unlikely the Red Wings will give him more than the $6.7 million Pavel Datsyuk makes. Look for Hossa to land with either Montreal, the Rangers or Boston.

Brian Campbell: When the Sharks picked up Campbell at the trade deadline, they looked like they pulled off the deal of the day, getting a puck-moving defenseman who made them nearly unbeatable with him in the lineup. Campbell was brilliant down the stretch and seemed to be headed for a major payday, but his star lost some shine in the playoffs, and that could keep him from getting to the top salary tier for defenseman. His continuing struggles in the postseason raised questions about how effective he could really be in the more physical Western Conference. The Sharks seem to want him back, but the deal would have to be too good to pass up, because Campbell has personal reasons for being on the East Coast.

Brian Rolston: Rolston has been quiet about whether he wants to remain in Minnesota, but his agent isn't returning Wild phone calls about a contract extension, which tells you something. Maybe that's because Rolston could end up being one of the prize signings of the summer. He's usually good for around 30 goals, a nice addition to any offense. Rolston is also one of the league's most versatile forwards, able to play either wing or center, kill penalties and man the point on power plays. He has a booming shot, and, at age 35, is thought to be thinking reasonably -- about $4 million per season -- in terms of his contract expectations.

Mats Sundin: He's going to the Hall of Fame, sooner rather than later if he actually calls it quits now. That's the big question for the Maple Leafs captain, who had a strong individual season for hapless Toronto and proved he still can be an impact player. Sundin, 37, has seen his negotiating rights offered conditionally to Montreal and the New York Rangers in advance of the market opening but is leaning toward waiting for the official bidding begins before making any decision. If he decides against retiring, several other teams will get in on the action. Toronto might still be in the mix as well, although his recent history with the club makes a reconciliation unlikely.

Ryan Malone: The Pittsburgh native got a lot of exposure during the playoffs, and for good reason. His hard-nosed (and often broken-nosed) play came to symbolize the gritty determination of the young Penguins while raising Malone's profile even more than his breakout 27-goal season did. What that means is Malone is going to get someone to overpay for him on the open market. The Penguins want him back, but they won't be able to match offers that will likely go beyond doubling his salary. And that actually makes Malone a gamble. He's a good player who brings intangible qualities, but he won't be on a line with Evgeni Malkin anywhere else.

Jose Theodore: The former Hart and Vezina winner seemed to resurrect his career with a great second half in Colorado, but whether he convinced anyone that he is really back will become clear pretty quickly. There are not many goalies available, so that could work to his advantage. Theodore's time with the Avs was spotty, even though he was among the top earners in his position. Colorado expected him to take a significant cut from his $6.5 million salary, but Theodore and his aggressive agent, Don Meehan, seem to think it won't have to be that steep some place else.

Jaromir Jagr: The aging Rangers captain says he would like to continue his career in New York. But the team has not been in a hurry to get a new deal worked out, and a lucrative offer to play for the new Russian-driven league in Europe lurks in the background. Money is obviously an issue for Jagr. He was the highest-paid player in the league not that long ago and showed how effective he can still be during a great, if limited, playoff run this season. He's probably looking for about $5 million a season for a couple of years, The Rangers seem to be headed in a different direction, but at that price, Jagr's presence could be attractive to some teams -- maybe even old buddy Mario Lemieux's Penguins, especially if they have to replace Hossa's output.

Wade Redden: The Senators realized they erred in choosing Redden over Zdeno Chara after the lockout but felt he still contributed enough to be kept at the right price. However Redden didn't want to slice his salary in half, and now will find if other teams think he or the Senators had the right fix on his true value. He's only 31 and still can move the puck, but he has made a lot of mistakes at bad times over the past two seasons. He's probably a better fit as a No. 3 defenseman than a No. 1 but is looking to be paid like a top guy and has enough of a reputation that he probably will.

Ray Emery: This one is worth watching. Only a few months after taking the Senators to the Stanley Cup Finals, Emery became a lightning rod for controversy in Ottawa. He was largely blamed for everything that went wrong, including the midseason firing of a coach, and was bought out as promised as soon as the rules allowed it. But Emery is a talented if idiosyncratic goaltender and is the ideal candidate for a new start. The Senators are paying him $1.5 million for the next four years, so he won't be that expensive either.

Sean Avery: You either love him or hate him, and in most places, it seems to be the latter. But Avery has become a really big fan favorite at Madison Square Garden and an intangible factor for the Rangers considering the serious gap in their success rate with and without him in the lineup. Avery is the most notorious agitator in the NHL, but he can play the game and has a good skill set. The issue is the value of that. Avery wants about $1 million more per season than the Rangers want to give him, and he might be hard pressed to find anyone who will pay more. Worth noting is that Avery might be best suited for New York, where his play seems inspired from becoming a fixture on the city's gossip and nightlife circuit.

Mark Streit: Streit kind of hit the lottery in his contract year, when he was one of the league's lowest paid players with the Montreal Canadiens. He had a career season with the Northeast Division champions and was widely lauded for his work quarterbacking the league's best power play. That was a big concern before last season in Montreal because of Sheldon Souray's free-agent departure. But Streit broke out offensively and filled the void on the point despite being one of the league's lowest paid players at $600,000. He could get five or six times that next week.

Brooks Orpik: Orpik made his mark with four heavy hits during one incredible Stanley Cup Finals shift for the Penguins, underlining his reputation as one of the most physical young defensemen in the league. But he had already opened a lot of his eyes in the playoffs and could have several teams lining up for him if he gets to the market. Orpik will be 28 when the season begins, and his overall defensive play has improved noticeably in the last couple of seasons under Michel Therrien Orpik was rumored to have some issues with the coach during the playoffs, but he hasn't ruled out staying with the Penguins either.

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Famously boorish Sapp should still be a Hall of Fame lock

2008-06-28T01:32:00.001-07:00

Famously boorish Sapp should still be a Hall of Fame lock

So Warren Sapp is having a retirement party Saturday night in Tampa. Wonder who the life of that shindig will be?

If you've ever encountered Sapp, you know it's always about the big guy. Put him in any room and that Sapp voice -- and signature laugh -- will rise above all, much like it always did when he was playing the game as a dominant defensive tackle for Tampa Bay and Oakland.

In my dealings with Sapp, which were limited, I found him to be loud, obnoxious, rude, nasty, controversial, combative and downright mean at times. The stories about his boorish behavior dealing with the public are even worse. They say asking him for an autograph at times was like poking a stick into a pen of rattlesnakes.

He treated the media like crap. And that's being kind.

But before you think I'm kicking a man on his way out the door, there's another reason for pointing out all of this.

Warren Sapp should be a lock for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, his attitude and actions might hold him back some from getting there.

That shouldn't happen. But you can bet when the Hall voters gather in the room to discuss his candidacy in five years, Sapp's negative approach to dealing with the media will come up. They will point out how difficult he was as an interview subject, how he was rude to questioners, how he berated those asking questions he didn't like.

None of that should matter. I was one of Sapp's biggest critics in terms of the way he handled himself. He was rude to me on several occasions. Big deal. Didn't bother me none. Those more sensitive will see it another way.

The vision I have of Sapp is of him sitting at his locker after a game, just a towel covering his privates, his ample belly hanging over it, a cup on the ground in front of him to catch the drip from the wad of chew in his mouth, and him holding court.

One by one, especially after a loss, the media would approach him to ask a question. If Sapp didn't like it, the response was one of these two:

• Who you?
• Next question.

At times, when he was in a good mood, Sapp was engaging, fun and analytical. That wasn't often.

What was common was his dominating play on the field. For much of his career, he was a disruptive a force inside in that Tampa-2 defense. Teams doubled him with regularity and he often beat them. His quickness was amazing for a man who weighed 325 pounds at certain points in his career.

In 2000, he had 16½ sacks, showing off his ability to get push inside. He had three other seasons with 10 or more sacks, finishing with 96½ in his career.

It's too bad all the other stuff overshadows his greatness.

That's what bad actions can do to a player. In addition to his angry relationship with the media and fans, Sapp had the high-profile "dirty" hit on Green Bay Packers tackle Chad Clifton. That led to a postgame confrontation with then-Packers coach Mike Sherman in which Sapp essentially challenged Sherman to a fight.

Sapp also dropped former teammate Chidi Ahanotu during a locker room disagreement. Nice teammate. During an interview in 2004, Ahanotu described his time playing with Sapp as "six years in hell."

He also said he wasn't the only player who disdained Sapp.

"I think everyone raised their hand on that one," Ahanotu said.

Even so, Sapp should still get a bust in Canton. Those voters who might think about holding his ways against him should realize it's the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It's not the Life Hall of Fame. If it were that, we'd go back in and take a lot of players out.

One does have to wonder how much of a lock Sapp would be if he played with the class of former teammate Derrick Brooks. As it is, if we rated Warren Sapp on how he treated people in his career, he'd be a scrub. As a football player, he was one of the best.

Here's hoping his retirement party Saturday night will signal a new start. Being nice really isn't so bad, Warren. Plus, you might need it now.

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Ponson's gem helps Yankees earn two-ballpark split with Mets

2008-06-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

Ponson's gem helps Yankees earn two-ballpark split with Mets

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two ballparks, two blowouts. Call it even.

Sidney Ponson pitched a gem in his return to the New York Yankees, silencing Carlos Delgado and the rest of the New York Mets for a 9-0 victory Friday night and a split of their two-stadium doubleheader.Delgado dominated the day game at Yankee Stadium. He set a Mets record with nine RBIs and hit a grand slam for one of his two homers in a 15-6 win that lasted 3 hours, 54 minutes."You have to be able to respond," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.His team did just that.After both squads got police escorts for their rush-hour bus trips to Shea Stadium, Bobby Abreu went 4-for-4 with a walk and three RBIs as the Yankees enjoyed a rout of their own.Ponson outpitched Pedro Martinez with six shutout innings, and the Bronx Bombers broke loose in Queens for their first win in four Subway Series games this season."It was a big start for us tonight," Girardi said. "He gave us everything we needed."Robinson Cano homered and drove in three runs for the Yankees, who have won 10 of 14 overall. Derek Jeter extended his season-high hitting streak to 15 games with an RBI double off the center-field fence.With a history of off-the-field trouble, Ponson pitched well for Texas this season but was cut for being a disruption to the team.Missing three injured starters, the Yankees signed him to a minor league deal last week and he made one four-inning start at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre before drawing a big assignment against the crosstown rival Mets.Ponson (5-1) certainly delivered after the Mets apparently used up all their big hits in the opener. The beefy right-hander, who pitched briefly for the Yankees in 2006, pumped his fist after wriggling out of a bases-loaded, none-out jam in the second.He loaded the bases in the third, too, then escaped again when Ramon Castro grounded sharply into an inning-ending double play."It's a fresh start," Ponson said. "I'm more comfortable here."The Yankees soon got to Martinez (2-2), who allowed six runs and six hits in 5 2/3 innings while dropping his second consecutive start."I'm just not doing my job and that's something to worry about. It's time for me for getting better, not getting worse. I've got to make some adjustments," Martinez said. "The health is there. It's not physically, it's got to be mechanically."Ponson pitched around five hits and four walks, one intentional. Kyle Farnsworth, Jose Veras and Kei Igawa completed the eight-hitter.After the Yankees left a season-worst 14 runners on base in the opener, the Mets stranded eight in the first three innings of the nightcap.Still, Girardi wouldn't commit to another start for Ponson."We haven't had a chance to talk about it," he said. "I'm actually going to go home to sleep and then I'll make some decisions."This was the third time the teams played a two-stadium doubleheader. The Yankees swept the other two (July 2000 and June 2003).Game notes
Abreu also stole two bases in the nightcap. ... Former Mets and Yankees slugger Darryl Strawberry threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Shea.
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2009 NBA Draft Prospects: Top 100

2008-06-28T01:20:00.001-07:00

To see Chad Ford's complete Top 100, become an ESPN Insider. Already an Insider? Sign in above or click here.

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2009 NBA Draft Prospects: Top 100
RK	NAME	POS	HT	WT	AGE	SCHOOL/COUNTRY	PROJECTION
1	Blake Griffin	PF	6-10	245	19	Oklahoma	Top 5
Griffin has the size, strength and athleticism that NBA teams covet in power players. While... more
2	Demar DeRozan	SG	6-6	210	18	USC	Top 10
DeRozan's combination of athleticism, size and skill have drawn Kobe Bryant comparisons. That's a little... more
3	B. J. Mullens	C	7-1	260	19	Ohio State	Top 10
No one in the draft has more upside than Mullens. NBA scouts dream of athletic... more
4	Brandon Jennings	PG	6-2	165	18	Arizona	Top 10
Jennings will battle Ricky Rubio for the title of best point guard in the draft.... more
5	Ricky Rubio	PG	6-4	180	17	Spain	Top 10
Rubio has been on the NBA radar screen since he was 15. No one in... more
6	Austin Daye	SF	6-10	190	20	Gonzaga	Lottery
A very gifted prospect who, if he can fill out, will be a likely lottery... more
7	Hasheem Thabeet	C	7-3	265	21	Connecticut	Lottery
Thabeet was pegged early as a potential late-lottery sleeper. His size, athleticism and growing basketball... more
8	Jrue Holiday	PG	6-4	180	18	UCLA	Lottery
Scouts believe Holiday may be the most complete freshman in the country. He can dominate... more
9	Earl Clark	SF	6-9	200	20	Louisville	Lottery to mid-first round
An excellent NCAA tournament, in which Clark was Louisville's best player, combined with a solid... more
10	James Harden	SG	6-4	215	18	Arizona State	Lottery to mid-first round

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Point guards lead the way for 2009 draft candidates

2008-06-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

To see Chad Ford's complete Top 100, become an ESPN Insider. Already an Insider? Sign in above or click here.

Become an Insider | Take the Tour

2009 NBA Draft Prospects: Top 100
RK	NAME	POS	HT	WT	AGE	SCHOOL/COUNTRY	PROJECTION
1	Blake Griffin	PF	6-10	245	19	Oklahoma	Top 5
Griffin has the size, strength and athleticism that NBA teams covet in power players. While... more
2	Demar DeRozan	SG	6-6	210	18	USC	Top 10
DeRozan's combination of athleticism, size and skill have drawn Kobe Bryant comparisons. That's a little... more
3	B. J. Mullens	C	7-1	260	19	Ohio State	Top 10
No one in the draft has more upside than Mullens. NBA scouts dream of athletic... more
4	Brandon Jennings	PG	6-2	165	18	Arizona	Top 10
Jennings will battle Ricky Rubio for the title of best point guard in the draft.... more
5	Ricky Rubio	PG	6-4	180	17	Spain	Top 10
Rubio has been on the NBA radar screen since he was 15. No one in... more
6	Austin Daye	SF	6-10	190	20	Gonzaga	Lottery
A very gifted prospect who, if he can fill out, will be a likely lottery... more
7	Hasheem Thabeet	C	7-3	265	21	Connecticut	Lottery
Thabeet was pegged early as a potential late-lottery sleeper. His size, athleticism and growing basketball... more
8	Jrue Holiday	PG	6-4	180	18	UCLA	Lottery
Scouts believe Holiday may be the most complete freshman in the country. He can dominate... more
9	Earl Clark	SF	6-9	200	20	Louisville	Lottery to mid-first round
An excellent NCAA tournament, in which Clark was Louisville's best player, combined with a solid... more
10	James Harden	SG	6-4	215	18	Arizona State	Lottery to mid-first round

Point guards lead the way for 2009 draft candidates

2008-06-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

Point guards lead the way for 2009 draft candidates A year before the 2009 draft, Oklahoma's Blake Griffin stands above the crowd as the No. 1 prospect.

The 2009 NBA draft doesn't appear to have the sex appeal of this year's draft. So far there are no Rose- or Beasley-type players. In fact, many NBA scouts are saying the upcoming draft could be the weakest in several years.

Still, there are some very good players in next year's draft.

The '09 draft should be richer in point guards than the '08 draft. Led by Arizona's Brandon Jennings and Spain's Ricky Rubio, 11 point guards are ranked in my top 30.

The crop of small forwards also seems enticing. Eight of the 30 slots in my first-round projections are occupied by small forwards, led by Gonzaga's Austin Daye.

But the center and power forward positions are terrible. I have only four power forwards and four centers in my top 30 at the moment.

To see how everyone stacks up, check out my 2009 Top 100.

Here's why the class appears to be weaker than usual:

1. There are fewer high-quality college holdovers

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

UConn's Thabeet's defensive presence alone will get him drafted in the first round.

Thanks in part to the NBA's new eligibility rules, a record number of "one-and-done" freshman hit the draft this year.

Only a small handful of talented players decided to skip the draft this year and return to college. Only one of them -- Oklahoma's Blake Griffin -- could have been a lottery pick this year.

A few others, including UConn's Hasheem Thabeet, Gonzaga's Austin Daye and Arizona's Chase Budinger, likely would have been first-rounders had they decided to declare.

Had players such as DeAndre Jordan, J.J. Hickson, Kosta Koufos and Donte Greene stayed in school, next year's draft class would be much deeper.

Given the drain on this year's freshman class, there aren't a lot of other up-and-coming college players. But a few, like Louisville's Earl Clark, Arizona State's James Harden, Florida's Nick Calathes, Tulsa's Jerome Jordan, Arizona's Jordan Hill and Kansas center Cole Aldrich, look like they could make a splash.

In short, this class isn't brimming with returning college players who look destined to be great.

2. The incoming freshmen class is weaker

In 2007, a record six freshmen -- Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, Mike Conley, Brandan Wright, Spencer Hawes and Thaddeus Young -- were drafted in the lottery.

In 2008, seven freshmen -- Derrick Rose, Michael Beasley, O.J. Mayo, Kevin Love, Eric Gordon, Jerryd Bayless and Anthony Randolph -- went in the lottery.

This year I'm projecting only four high school prospects as lottery picks -- USC's Demar DeRozan, Ohio State's B.J. Mullens, Arizona's Brandon Jennings, and UCLA's Jrue Holiday.

One of those four, Jennings, is still trying to qualify academically. If he doesn't, he may have to skip college and head to Europe or the D-League. That would potentially hurt his stock and push him out of the lottery.

Several other freshmen, including Wake Forest's Al-Farouq Aminu, Memphis' Tyreke Evans, West Virginia's Devin Ebanks and Tennessee's Scotty Hopson, are possible first-rounders, but most scouts think they really need at least two years on the college level.

3. The international crop remains thin

Danilo Gallinari was the hot name in 2008, but the rest of the international class was subpar. In the end, only four international players went in the first round and only two -- Gallinari and probably Nicolas Batum -- are expected to play in the NBA in the upcoming season.

In 2009, the talent is even weaker. Spanish point guard sensation Ricky Rubio is widely seen as a top-10 pick, but no one else is a lock for the first round.

A few interesting international prospects, such as Spain's Victor Claver, Israel's Omri Casspi and Lithuania's Dontas Motiejunas, will get close looks. But they'll need big seasons with their clubs to move off the first-round bubble.

Overall, the draft class of 2009 will probably be better than it looks now. Some players that we're not talking about will rise -- they always do. Russell Westbrook, for example, wasn't in my top 50 a year ago. Ditto for Anthony Randolph.

As the Nike and ABCD camps and international tournaments get underway, look for further reports, including my stock watch.

Chad Ford covers the NBA for ESPN Insider.

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