By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - The for-sale listings on the online hub Craigslist come with plaintive notices, like the one from the teenager in Georgia who said her mother lost her job and pleaded, “Please buy anything you can to help out.”

Or the seller in Milwaukee who wrote in one post of needing to pay bills — and put a diamond engagement ring up for bids to do it.

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother’s dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.

“This is not about downsizing. It’s about needing gas money,” said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.

At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year-ago period.

Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster acknowledged the increasing popularity of selling all sort of items on the Web, but said the rate of growth is “moving above the usual trend line.” He said he was amazed at the desperate tone in some ads.

In Daleville, Ala., Ellona Bateman-Lee has turned to eBay and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

She said she needs the cash to help pay for soaring food and utility bills and mounting health care expenses since her husband, Bob, suffered an electric shock on the job as a dump truck driver in 2006 and is now disabled.

Among her most painful sales: her grandmother’s teakettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay.

“My grandmother raised me, so it hurt,” she said. “We’ve had bouts here and there, but we always got by. This time it’s different.”

Economists say it is difficult to compare the selling trend with other tough times because the Internet, only in wide use since the mid-1990s, has made it much easier to unload goods than, say, at pawn shops.

But clearly, cash-strapped people are selling their belongings at bargain prices, with a flood of listings for secondhand cars, clothing and furniture hitting the market in recent months, particularly since January.

Earlier this decade, people tapped their inflated home equity and credit cards to fuel a buying binge. Now, slumping home values and a credit crisis have sapped sources of cash.

Meanwhile, soaring gas and food prices haven’t kept pace with meager wage growth. Gas prices have already hit $4 per gallon in some places, and that could become more widespread this summer. The weakening job market is another big worry.

Christine Hadley, a 53-year-old registered nurse from Reading, Pa., says she used to be “a clotheshorse,” splurging on pricey Dooney & Bourke handbags. But her live-in boyfriend left last year, and she has had trouble finding a job.

Piles of unpaid bills forced her to sell more than 80 items, including the handbags, which went for more than $1,000 on a site called AuctionPal.com. Now, except for some artwork and threadbare furniture, her house is looking sparse.

“I need the money for essentials — to pay my bills and to eat,” Hadley said.

At AuctionPal.com, which helps novices sell things online, for-sale listings rose 66 percent from February to March, much faster than the 25 percent to 30 percent average monthly pace since the company was formed in September, CEO Maureen Ellenberger said. She said she was surprised to see that most of her clients desperately needed to sell items to raise cash.

For LiveDeal.com, a classifieds and business directory site, for-sale listings for January through March rose 10 percent from the previous year.

“We can definitely detect economic stress on the part of the consumer,” said John Raven, the site’s chief operating officer.

On Craigslist, Buckmaster said, three of the four fastest-growing for-sale categories are tied to gas — recreational vehicles like campers and trailers, cars and trucks, and boats.

Raven noted more and more listings for furniture, particularly in areas around Miami and Las Vegas and other regions hardest hit by the housing crisis.

Baughman, who runs eBizAuctions, said that over the past four months she’s been working with mostly desperate sellers instead of mainly casual ones. Most are middle-class customers who can’t pay their bills and now want to be paid up front for the items instead of waiting until they are sold, she said.

The trend may be hurting secondhand stores too. Donations to the Salvation Army were down 20 percent in the January-to-March period. George Hood, the charity’s national community relations and development secretary, said that was probably partly because people were selling their belongings instead.

And secondhand buyers want better deals now as well, driving prices down. Secondhand merchandise online is going for 25 to 35 percent below what it commanded a year ago, estimated Brian Riley, senior analyst at research firm The TowerGroup.

“It won’t hit the saturation point until the (economy) hits the bottom and right now, we don’t know when that is,” he said.

In Alabama, Bateman-Lee said that she only received $30 for her TV and $45 for her DVD player at a local flea market. She doesn’t have too much left to sell, but she’s going back to “sort through more things.”

Source:news.yahoo

While we may never know what it looks like inside a black hole, astronomers recently obtained one of the closest views yet. The sighting allowed scientists to confirm theories about how these giant cosmic sinkholes spew out jets of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light.

Ever since the first observations of these powerful jets, which are among the brightest objects seen in the universe, astronomers have wondered what causes the particles to accelerate to such great speeds. A leading hypothesis suggested the black hole’s gigantic mass distorts space and time around it, twisting magnetic field lines into a coil that propels material outward.

Now researchers have observed a jet during a period of extreme outburst and found evidence that streams of particles wind a corkscrew path away from the black hole, as the leading hypothesis predicts.

“We got an unprecedented view of the inner portion of one of these jets and gained information that’s very important to understanding how these tremendous particle accelerators work,” said Boston University astronomer Alan Marscher, who led the research team. The results of the study are detailed in the April 24 issue of the journal Nature.

The team studied a galaxy called BL Lacertae (BL Lac), about 950 million light years from Earth, with a central black hole containing 200 million times the mass of our Sun. Since this supermassive black hole’s jets are pointing nearly straight at us, it is called a blazar (a quasar is often thought to be the same as a blazar, except its jets are pointed away from us).

The new observations, taken by the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope, along with NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and a number of optical telescopes, show material moving outward along a spiral channel, as the scientists expected.

These data support the suggestion that twisted magnetic field lines are creating the jet plumes. Material in the center of the galaxy, such as nearby stars and gas, gets pulled in by the black hole’s overwhelming gravity and forms a disk orbiting around the core (the material’s inertia keeps it spiraling in a disk rather than falling straight into the black hole). The distorted magnetic field lines seem to pull charged particles off the disk and cause them to gush outward at nearly the speed of light.

“We knew that material was falling in to these regions, and we knew that there were outbursts coming out,” said University of Michigan astronomer Hugh Aller, who worked on the new study. “What’s really been a mystery was that we could see there were these really high-energy particles, but we didn’t know how they were created, how they were accelerated. It turns out that the model matches the data. We can actually see the particles gaining velocity as they are accelerated along this magnetic field.”

The astronomers also observed evidence of another phenomenon predicted by the leading hypothesis — that a flare would be produced when material spewing out in the jets hit a shock wave beyond the core of the black hole.

“That behavior is exactly what we saw,” Marscher said.

Source:news.yahoo

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is looking to get his campaign back on track today after making a strong effort to distance himself from his controversial former pastor.

An angry Obama told reporters yesterday he was “outraged” by what he called a “performance” by Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday and added that he was “saddened by the spectacle.”

Wright used the forum to reiterate some of his charges against the U.S. government, including his suggestion that the government invented the AIDS virus to destroy “people of color.”

Obama calls the comments “divisive and destructive” and says “they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate.”

The Illinois senator will hold a major rally tonight at Indiana University six days before crucial Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Thirteen hours after his former pastor startled some with a defiant performance that was televised nationwide, Obama urged 18,000 supporters to stay calm and shrug off such “distractions.”

By the next afternoon, however, his tone was dramatically different.

The Illinois senator summoned reporters Tuesday to say he was outraged by the Rev. Wright’s “divisive and destructive” remarks, scrambling to contain the flare-up in a controversy that has dogged him since clips of some of Wright’s most objectionable remarks began circulating on TV and the Internet.

Obama said he belatedly condemned Wright’s remarks because he did not see a transcript or video of Monday’s appearance until the next day.

Doubtless, too, campaign aides were inundated with calls and messages Tuesday urging a stronger reaction.

But Obama’s struggle to find the right tone — six weeks ago he said he couldn’t disown the pastor he’s known for 20 years — also reflects a striking difference in how Democratic voters view the controversy and its proper handling, a point made clear in interviews in North Carolina this week, ahead of the May 6 primary.

Black voters, in particular, urge Obama to rise above campaign attacks and dustups, saying he is not responsible for what Wright says. Many white voters say they were deeply troubled and baffled by Obama’s association with Wright, even before the preacher reiterated some of his most incendiary comments on Monday.

At the heart of this divide is a fundamental disagreement about Obama’s strengths and weaknesses in his battle against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination.

“I’m not so concerned” about Wright’s comments, said Aliki Martin, of Bahama. A compliance officer at Duke University Medical Center, she was among 18,000 people who awaited Obama’s arrival late Monday night at the University of North Carolina’s basketball arena in Chapel Hill.

“I hope he keeps things positive,” she said.

Obama seemed to follow that advice in his 45-minute speech. “I know we’re being goaded into stuff,” he said, referring vaguely to disputes with Clinton and her supporters. “Don’t get distracted,” he told the crowd.

He gently mocked his critics: “They say, ‘We don’t know enough about him. He doesn’t always wear a flag pin. His pastor once said something. He’s got a funny name, sounds Muslim.’”

By Tuesday afternoon in Winston-Salem, Obama wasn’t laughing it off any more.

Wright’s comments — including the suggestion that the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus to destroy “people of color” — “end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate,” Obama told reporters, “and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.”

It was the kind of comment Tom Lipsky, a record company owner in Raleigh, expected to hear earlier.

“It bothers me that he would take his two daughters” to a church headed by “a man who says those kinds of things,” said Lipsky, who is white, as he waited to see Clinton Tuesday morning at North Carolina State University. Lipsky, 53, said he’s a committed Democrat, but is not sure he could vote for Obama if he becomes the nominee.

John Overton, of Chapel Hill, also attending the Clinton event, had similar misgivings. “I’m afraid of his radical connections,” which include Wright, the 39-year-old software developer said.

“I was the only white person” for about a year at a black church in Beaufort, Overton said. “I never heard anybody talk like that.”

In interview after interview, black and white Democrats seemed to talk past each other on the issue of religion and campaigns, even though all said they deeply dislike President Bush and want a change in Washington.

“Obama is not responsible for what his preacher says,” said Copeland Richard, of Knightdale, who attended the Chapel Hill rally. “As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t have to answer that,” said Richard, 66, who is black. “He’s above that, he’s dignified.”

The differences dismay many North Carolina Democratic officials, who saw the excitement over the Obama-Clinton contest as virtually unprecedented, possibly leading to huge gains for the party in November.

“I see a permanent fissure developing now” between black and white Democrats, said state Rep. Dan Blue, of Raleigh, who was North Carolina’s first black House speaker.

With the Wright controversy hot again, and former President Clinton recently saying Obama’s campaign “played the race card” against him, Blue said a great opportunity may turn to tragedy.

“I don’t know how you repair it,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

Source:news.yahoo

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer

LUSAKA, Zambia - Southern African leaders discussed Zimbabwe’s deepening electoral crisis in a marathon summit that ended before dawn Sunday with a weak declaration that failed to criticize the absent President Robert Mugabe.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who claims to have won the March 29 election outright, had wanted the leaders to press Mugabe to resign after 28 years as Zimbabwe’s leader.

Western powers, the United Nations and regional church, democracy and human rights groups had called for the meeting to demand an immediate announcement of the long-delayed election results.

Instead, the declaration issued at the end of the 12-hour summit called for the expeditious verification of results in the presence of the candidates or their agents “within the rule of law.” The declaration also urged “all parties to accept the results when they are announced.”

Independent tallies indicate Mugabe lost the election, but garnered enough votes to force a runoff.

The summit promised to send observers if there were a second round of elections. The team it sent in March was led by a junior minister from Angola, a country that has not held elections since 1992.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa had called the emergency summit with 48 hours’ notice. Afterward, his foreign affairs minister told reporters there was no crisis in Zimbabwe, echoing statements made by South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki said Saturday there was “no crisis” after he had to fly to Zimbabwe before Saturday’s summit to engage Mugabe, who reportedly was not taking calls from African leaders last week.

Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe has been likened to appeasement that allows Mugabe to continue his autocratic rule unimpeded. The Southern African Development Community that held the summit has been accused of pandering to Mugabe with disregard for its own constitution to promote democracy.

Presidents at the conference rushed away when the meeting ended, refusing to answer questions. They left Zambia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Kabinga Pande to declare, “We listened to both parties, the opposition and the government, and both have said there is no crisis.”

Tendai Biti, the secretary-general of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Party, denied that was what it said. Tsvangirai had hurriedly left the summit four hours before it closed and did not return as promised.

Biti repeated charges that Mugabe has orchestrated a campaign of violence to intimidate opponents who voted against him, with allegations of beatings and burnings of huts corroborated by local and international human rights groups.

“We have a militarized, polarized situation,” Biti said in a news conference. “There is violence, intolerance, hate speech and vitriolic propaganda.”

Pande said the rival parties had agreed at the summit that the elections were free and fair.

Biti said, “We maintain that Zimbabwe is not capable of producing a free and fair election.”

Still, he said, the leaders’ response was “a major improvement” and that the economic bloc “has acquitted itself relatively well.”

“The very fact that they had the guts to actually hold this extraordinary summit acknowledges that things are not right in Zimbabwe,” Biti added.

Inviting Tsvangirai to the meeting was an unprecedented move that probably accounted for Mugabe’s absence.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said it would conduct a full recount of the presidential and parliamentary vote on April 19, the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper reported. Commission chairman George Chiweshe said candidates, party representatives and observers would be allowed to witness the process, the paper said. Mugabe’s party had demanded a recount, even without results of presidential elections announced.

Pande said the summit could not demand election results while Zimbabwe’s High Court is considering opposition application asking a judge to order the immediate publication of results. The court, stacked with judges loyal to Mugabe, has dallied more than a week over the urgent appeal.

There was no comment from Mugabe or the three hard-line ministers he sent to represent him at the summit.

Mugabe’s allies indicated Saturday’s summit was part of a Western plot to overthrow him because of his land reform program, which was touted as an effort to redistribute the wide swathes of fertile land owned by the tiny white community to poor blacks. Instead, farms went to Mugabe’s relatives, friends and cronies and the economy of the former food exporter collapsed.

“This time, African leaders are supposed to do the bidding of the white West, that is to pressure Zimbabwe to abet regime change agenda,” said a column in the state-run Herald newspaper Saturday.

With Mugabe on the defensive after the election, ruling party officials have encouraged militants to invade the country’s few remaining white-owned farms and some farms owned by black opponents, saying they were trying to protect Zimbabweans from encroaching colonialism. Opposition officials say such attacks are a smoke screen for assaults on mainly black opposition supporters.

The summit was seen as a major test for the Southern African Development Community.

“The very integrity and utility of the SADC is at stake,” said New York-based Freedom House, which charts democracy’s progress around the world.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, of Ghana, warned the leaders they had “a grave responsibility to act, not only because of the negative spillover effects on the region, but also to ensure that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are respected.”

An estimated one-third of Zimbabwe’s population has fled the country as it descended into political and economic chaos.

Before the summit declaration, U.S. Ambassador Carmen Martinez said the United States was looking for “at least one step forward.”

“If SADC cannot even get a state to release their election results, it’s going to be very difficult for SADC,” she said.

The release of Zimbabwe’s election results ceased after results from legislative races held the same day as the presidential vote showed Mugabe’s party lost control of parliament for the first time.

Mwanawasa, the Zambian leader, had opened the summit with a reassuring message for Zimbabwe’s leaders, saying “This summit is not intended to put President Robert Mugabe in the dock.”

____

Associated Press writers Joseph J. Schatz in Lusaka, Zambia, and Angus Shaw in Harare, Zimbabwe, contributed to this report.

LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
 
Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups.

The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband.

Researchers admit that looks are subjective, but studies show there are some universal standards, including large eyes, “baby face” features, symmetric faces, so-called average faces, and specific waist-hip ratios in men versus women.

Past research has shown that individuals with comparable stunning looks are attracted to each other and once they hook up they report greater relationship satisfaction. These studies, however, are mainly based on new couples, showing that absolute beauty is important in the earliest stages of couple-hood, said lead researcher James McNulty of the University of Tennessee. But the role of physical attractiveness in well-established partnerships, such as marriage, is somewhat of a mystery.
The new study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, reveals looks continue to matter beyond that initial attraction, though in a different way.

Supportive spouses

McNulty’s team assessed 82 couples who had married within the previous six months and had been together for nearly three years prior to tying the knot. Participants were on average in their early to mid-20s.

Source:news.yahoo

BY HARRY DUNPHY, Associated Press Writer
20 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Finance ministers and central bankers are focusing their spring meetings on ways to deal with the unfolding financial crisis that has roiled economies around the world and led to higher food and energy prices.
Sessions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank end Sunday with a look by the bank’s policy-setting committee at the effect on developing countries, especially poor ones where the bank is trying to reduce poverty.

“We must respond to the immediate emergency situation,” Robert Zoellick, the bank president, said before the meeting, but in a way that helps developing countries achieve objectives such as improved health care and reduced malnutrition and infant mortality.

The officials are also talking about climate change, investment in Africa and rising food prices.

“In the U.S and Europe over the last year we’ve been focused on the prices of gasoline at the pump,” Zoellick said. “While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it’s getting more and more difficult every day.” The poor already spend up to 75 percent of their income on food in many developing countries, he said.

Zoellick has said that to deal with the immediate crisis, the international community must fill a food shortage valued at a minimum of $500 million by the U.N. World Food Program.

A similar warning was sounded Saturday by the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He said there would be dire consequences if food prices remain high in developing countries, especially in Africa.

He added that the problem could also create trade imbalances that would hurt advanced economies, “so it is not only a humanitarian question.”

Governments in Haiti, Egypt and the Philippines are among those already facing social unrest because of food prices and shortages. If the price increases continue, Strauss-Kahn said, “Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives.”

The development group Oxfam, a frequent IMF critic, said rich countries are largely responsible for the food crisis because they have been cutting aid to developing countries and encouraging biofuel production, which the IMF says is responsible for almost half the increase in the demand for food crops.

“Rich countries demand for biofuel is driving up food prices and is a big part of the problem,” said Elizabeth Stuart, an Oxfam policy adviser. “Meanwhile, by cutting aid levels, they are doing precious little to be part of the solution.”

Germany’s development minister urged greater regulation of the global biofuels market to prevent its expansion from driving up food prices. “It is unacceptable for the export of agrofuels to pose a threat to the supply situation of the very people already living in poverty,” Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said in a statement.

___

Associated Press writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report.

Source:news.yahoo

By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer
AUGUSTA, Ga. - Trevor Immelman stood frozen in the fairway when the ball kept going, spinning off the 15th green and onto the ramp of tightly mowed grass, tumbling toward the water. One more turn and it would plop into the pond, leading to double bogey or worse Saturday at the Masters.
 
“I was begging for it to stop as soon as it could,” he said. Somehow, it did.

Immelman escaped with par and finished with a birdie for a 3-under 69, giving him a two-shot lead over Brandt Snedeker going into a final round sure to be filled with heart-pounding moments.

“I have no clue how the ball stayed up there,” Immelman said. “But obviously, I’m thankful.”

It was reminiscent of Fred Couples’ big break in 1992, when a blade of grass kept his tee shot from rolling into Rae’s Creek in the final round, allowing him to save par on his way to a one-shot victory.

“There’s a massive difference,” Immelman said. “This is the 15th hole of the third round, and his was the 12th hole of the final round. I was extremely fortunate that my ball stayed up there. But there’s still a long way to go in this tournament.”

And Tiger Woods is still in the picture, just barely.

In the easiest conditions at Augusta in three years, Woods had to settle for a bogey-free round of 68 that was probably the worst he could have done. He has never won a major when trailing going into the final round, and he has never won a PGA Tour event when trailing by more than five shots after 54 holes.

“If I had made a few more putts, I’d be right there,” Woods said. “But I’m right there anyway.”

That depends on the four guys in front of him, none of whom has ever won a major.

It starts with Immelman, who was at 11-under 205 on a damp, cloudy afternoon that included a 40-minute delay because of rain.

Snedeker steadied himself after three straight bogeys around Amen Corner, getting those shots back over the final five holes, including a 10-foot birdie on the 18th for a 2-under 70 that put him in the final group.

Steve Flesch was the best Lefty in his pairing with Phil Mickelson, also finishing with a birdie for a 69 to reach 8-under 208. Paul Casey, among four players who had a share of the lead, shot a 69 and was another shot back.

Casey has the most experience on this kind of stage, having played on two Ryder Cup teams. He atoned for a sloppy bogey on the 15th with an 8-iron to 6 feet for birdie on the 16th, one of only four in the third round.

Flesch wasn’t even expecting to be at the Masters, qualifying late in the year by winning two PGA Tour events against weak fields to finish among the top 30 on the money list. Now, he is only three shots back with 18 holes to play.

Standing on the 18th green before making his 4-foot birdie putt, Flesch gazed at the large leaderboard.

“I was curious like everyone else — what did Tiger shoot today?” he said.

It was the first time in a dozen rounds at the Masters that Woods broke 70, but he had reason to expect much more. The third round began under a light drizzle and was stopped for 40 minutes when storms rolled through eastern Georgia. That made the course soft and long, the greens receptive. With no wind, it was ripe for a charge.

But all Woods could muster was one birdie putt outside 10 feet. Two other birdies came on par 5s when he was putting for eagle, another with a wedge inside a foot on the 17th. Woods missed four straight putts inside 15 feet on the front nine that could have turned his fortunes, and an 8-foot birdie on the par-5 15th.

“This is the highest score I could have shot today,” Woods said. “I hit the ball so well and I hit so many good putts that just skirted the hole. But hey, I put myself right back in the tournament.”

Six shots is a lot to make up in the final round at the Masters, considering no one has done that since Nick Faldo beat Greg Norman in 1996. Woods’ best hope might come from the weather, and from the inexperience atop the leaderboard.

“All I can ask for myself is to go out there and play as hard as I can, and believe in myself,” Immelman said.

“There are so many great players out there. If I rest on a two-shot lead, I’m not going to do very well. I’ve just got to have positive thoughts and give it my best shot.”

Gary Player is the only South African to win the Masters, the last of his three victories coming 30 years ago.

Immelman’s lone mistake came on the par-3 fourth, but he was solid the rest of the afternoon and surged ahead with two spectacular shots and one incredible break.

He hit a low pitch across Rae’s Creek that hopped once and skidded to a stop 2 feet behind the cup for birdie on the par-3 13th for the outright lead. Then he went two shots ahead with an 8-foot birdie on the 14th.

It all looked as though it might wash away on the par-5 15th. Immelman hit a sand wedge for his third shot that came in low and spun back quickly, all the way off the green and down the hill.

“I knew there was a chance it was going to go in the water,” Immelman said. “I must say, I couldn’t quite believe it when it stayed up.”

Snedeker, playing his first Masters as a pro, nearly let his big chance get away with an errant tee shot on the 11th, a tee shot that sailed over the 12th green and an approach into Rae’s Creek that led to bogey on the 13th.

But he followed with consecutive bogeys inside 10 feet, and another one on the 18th to get into the final group.

“I’m going out there to play good golf and see what I’ve got,” Snedeker said. “This is the ultimate test for us.”

It could be a test in other ways. Behind the clouds was a front expected to send temperatures into the low 60s and bring 20 mph winds, the scariest conditions on a course where even a breeze can play tricks.

That might be what Woods needs to keep alive his fading hopes of a calendar Grand Slam.

“I’m sure he’s going to be a factor,” Snedeker said. “His name is going to be on the leaderboard somewhere tomorrow. It’s going to be there on the back nine. You have to realize that Trevor and all of us in front of him, if we go out there and play a good round of golf, he’s going to have to play an extremely great round of golf to beat us.”

Source:news.yahoo

By MIKE HARRIS, AP Auto Racing Writer

AVONDALE, Ariz. - Jimmie Johnson gave Hendrick Motorsports its first NASCAR Sprint Cup victory of the year, winning a fuel gamble Saturday night at Phoenix International Speedway.
 
As leader after leader dove for the pits to take on gas in the waning laps, Johnson’s No. 48 Chevrolet stayed on track and the two-time reigning Cup champion made it to the finish, beating Clint Bowyer — another gambler — by 7.002 seconds.

Forty-nine-year-old Mark Martin, now a part-time driver in the Dale Earnhardt Inc. No. 8, battled at the front with its former driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., for a lot of the 312-lap race on the mile oval.

And it appeared Martin had his first win since 2005 locked up after he passed Earnhardt for the win on lap 272 and began to pull away, building leads of more than a second. But, with the end in sight, Martin was called into the pits on lap 301, giving up the top spot to Johnson’s No. 48 Chevrolet.

With crew chief Chad Knaus telling him to keep conserving gas and that he had a big enough lead to slow down and save more, Johnson stayed on track and stayed in front to the end.

“I ran out of gas on the backstretch,” Johnson said, grinning. But he still had enough left for a celebratory burnout after taking the checkered flag.

“We’re back. We’ve been working very hard to get back. I couldn’t be more proud of the folks back at Hendrick Motorsports.”

We got out off cycle and got a little behind there and had to drive to front, and still wound up saving gas at the end,” Johnson said.

Knaus said he messed up at one point in the race, leaving Johnson on track when the other leaders pitted, said he knew his driver was doing a good job of saving gas.

“When the (No.) 07 (Bowyer) was behind us and he was about 10 seconds back, I knew we had it,” Knaus said.

Denny Hamlin, who did pit, finished third, followed by Carl Edwards, Martin, Jeff Burton and Earnhardt.

Martin, who shares the No. 8 with rookie Aric Almirola, was disappointed, but said, “I’m just really, really proud of this team. We just about pulled that one off tonight.”

He said he might have been able to get to the finish like Johnson and Bowyer.

“I saved a lot of gas, probably more than they knew,” he said. “You can’t stop if somebody else stays out.”

It was the 34th career win for Johnson, who had 10 of the Hendrick team’s 18 victories last season, including a win here last fall.

He and teammates Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt and Casey Mears has been shut out in the first seven races of 2008.

Mears finished 11th, while four-time Cup champion Gordon, who crashed and finished last in Texas a week ago, wound up 13th.
Source:news.yahoo

By JENNIFER DOBNER, Associated Press Writer

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Texas law enforcers met Saturday in Utah with the man accused of abusing the 16-year-old girl whose call for help triggered a raid on the West Texas compound of a secretive polygamous sect.
Dale Barlow, 50, of Colorado City, Ariz., has denied allegations of physical and sexual assault made in a whispered March 29 telephone call to a Texas domestic violence hot line.

Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, offered few details of the interview between Barlow and Texas Rangers.

“We have not made an arrest in this case and may not necessarily make one today,” she said.

A telephone message left at Barlow’s home by The Associated Press was not returned.

Barlow has said he doesn’t know the girl, whom Texas child welfare officials have not located.

In her phone call, the girl said that she was pregnant with her second child and that her husband beat her about the head and chest when angry. She said she was trapped and not allowed to leave the Yearn for Zion Ranch in Eldorado.

The ranch is owned by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose members believe practicing polygamy will bring exaltation in heaven.

The faith’s members have traditionally made their homes along the Arizona-Utah border, but in 2003 purchased the 1,700-acre former game preserve about 40 miles south of San Angelo.

Barlow spent 45 days in the Mohave County, Ariz., jail last year after pleading no contest to a charge of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He is a registered sex offender on probation and can’t leave the state without permission. Bill Loader, his probation officer, has said he saw Barlow in Arizona a day after the Texas raid.

Friend Walker, chief of the Mohave County probation office, said the meeting with Barlow on Saturday lasted about 90 minutes. Barlow has complied with all the terms of his probation and has never sought permission to leave Arizona, Walker said.

“He has not ever been given a travel permit to go to Texas,” Walker said.

Child welfare officials seized 416 children, most of them girls, in the raid on the compound, saying the youngsters were in danger of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Some 139 women from the ranch left voluntarily to be with the children, who are now housed in San Angelo’s historic Fort Concho and at the nearby Wells Fargo Pavilion. Officials have said they are having difficulty identifying some of the children.

Hearings to sort out the custody issues for the children are scheduled for Monday and Thursday.

The Texas legal community is responding to the challenge of recruiting as many as 350 court-appointed lawyers for the children in advance of Thursday’s hearing. Texas State Bar President Gib Walton said the group has already conducted free legal training for volunteer lawyers so that each child can have representation.

“This type of mobilization is unprecedented; there’s no doubt about it,” Walton said. “We’re very proud of the way that Texas lawyers have rallied to the situation,” he added.

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Associated Press writers Tony Winton in San Angelo and Bob Christie in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Source:news.yahoo

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed an American soldier in Baghdad on Saturday, capping the bloodiest week for U.S. troops in Iraq this year. Clashes persisted in Shiite areas, even as the biggest Shiite militia sought to rein in its fighters.
At least 13 Shiite militants were killed in the latest clashes in Baghdad’s militia stronghold of Sadr City, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police said seven civilians also died in fighting, which erupted Friday night and tapered off Saturday.

The U.S. military said the American soldier was killed in a blast Saturday morning in northwestern Baghdad but did not say whether Shiite militiamen were responsible.

The death raised to at least 19 the number of American troopers killed in Iraq since last Sunday.

American casualties have risen with an outbreak of fighting in Baghdad between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the largest Shiite militia — the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, repeated on Saturday his demand for American soldiers to leave the country and urged his fighters not to target fellow Iraqis “unless they are helping the (U.S.) occupation.”

Al-Sadr also blamed the Americans and their Iraqi allies for the assassination Friday of one of his top aides, Riyadh al-Nouri, director of his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Gunmen ambushed al-Nouri as he was returning home from Friday prayers, and al-Sadr followers shouted anti-American slogans at his funeral in Najaf.

Despite the strident rhetoric, however, there were signs that al-Sadr was trying to calm his militia to avoid all-out war with the Americans. Al-Sadr is also under pressure from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite, to disband the Mahdi Army or face a ban from politics.

Sadrist officials told The Associated Press they had received orders from their headquarters in Najaf to avoid confrontations with Iraqi and U.S. forces unless the Americans try to move deep into Sadr City, which has been under siege for two weeks.

The officials said the Sadrist leadership was concerned that the ongoing clashes were turning into a war of attrition that was weakening the movement and undermining support within its Shiite power base.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to discuss policy with outsiders.

In a move to bolster its image among Sadr City residents, the government Saturday lifted a ban on entering and leaving the district, home to some 2.5 million people. Police announced that one of the entrances had been opened to motor traffic.

Army patrols warned residents through loudspeakers to keep off the streets, saying the rebels had planted roadside bombs that needed to be cleared by the security forces.

Fighting also continued Saturday against Sunni insurgents in the north.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle Saturday into a U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle, detonating a nearby fuel truck. No American soldiers were killed or injured, but one Iraqi child died and four people were wounded, U.S. officials said.

U.S. and Iraqi troops killed five Sunni al-Qaida fighters and captured two in a joint air assault in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Elsewhere, Iraqi soldiers acting on tips from detained Shiite militiamen found 14 bodies that had been buried in a field south of Baghdad, officials said Saturday. It was the second discovery this week of mass graves in the area, raising to 45 the number of bodies located there.

The victims are believed to have been killed more than a year ago as part of a cycle of retaliatory violence between Shiites and Sunnis that has since ebbed.

Recent clashes in the Baghdad area have severely strained a unilateral truce which al-Sadr imposed on the Mahdi Army last August. He ordered the standdown to allow time to reorganize the force and purge criminal factions that had tarnished the image of his movement.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that al-Sadr’s truce, along with the Sunni Arab revolt against al-Qaida, had played a major role in reducing American and Iraqi deaths, especially in the Baghdad area.

With renewed Shiite militia fighting, Baghdad is now accounting for a growing number of American casualties.

Last month, 61 percent of the U.S. military deaths occurred in Baghdad, compared with 28 percent in February and 47 percent in April, 2007, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

Fighting in Baghdad broke out following last month’s ill-prepared Iraqi government offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in the southern city of Basra.

The offensive stalled in the face of fierce resistance by the militias, whose allies in the capital showered rockets and mortars on the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

Although fighting has eased in Basra, U.S. and Iraqi troops have been pressing militias in Baghdad’s Sadr City to drive them beyond rocket range to the Green Zone.

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Associated Press reporter Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and the AP’s News Research Center in New York contributed to this report

Source:news.yahoo