The nation in brief

Sunday, March 16, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I think after 9/11 and the constant concerns about identity theft and that sort of thing, that there’s been more reluctance on the part of public officials to give access to information that’s clearly public.”

Alan Miller, managing editor/news at Ohio’s The Columbus Dispatch newspaper, about what’s seen as increasing government secrecy in the U.S.

Article, this page

Chicago dyes river for St. Patrick’s Day

CHICAGO - The Chicago River was glowing a bright emerald green Saturday as the city kicked off its St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

Thousands of cheering onlookers clustered along downtown bridges as members of Chicago Journeymen Plumbers Union Local 130 began dumping containers of dye into the river from motorboats Saturday morning. The annual tradition began at 9:30 a.m. and immediately preceded the St.

Patrick’s Day parade.

The union has done the dyeing since 1962. Organizers had feared large chunks of ice would impede the process, but recent warm weather kept the river clear. The hue typically lasts about six to 12 hours.

The parade began at noon. A second parade on the city’s South Side will take place today.

8 hurt at Austin festival still in hospital

AUSTIN, Texas - Eight people who were injured by a suspected drunken driver at the South By Southwest music, film and interactive festival remained hospitalized Saturday, including two in critical condition.

Rashad Charjuan Owens, 21, of Killeen, Texas, has been charged with capital murder and was still in custody Saturday.

His bail is $3 million, according to Travis County jail records.

Owens, 21, was accused of smashing his car through a street barricade and accelerating as he approached crowds, according to an arrest warrant released Friday. Two people died, and emergency personnel attended to 23 injured people.

Six victims were still at University Medical Center Brackenridge on Saturday, hospital system spokesman Steve Taylor said. Two were in critical condition; two were listed as serious, and two were in good condition, Taylor said. St. David’s HealthCare spokesman Denise Bradley said two patients remained in fair condition.

Police Chief Art Acevedo has said Owens intentionally steered toward pedestrians in hopes of escaping an officer who was trying to pull him over. A breath test indicated Owens’ blood-alcohol content was 0.114, past the Texas legal limit for driving of 0.08, according to the warrant.

U.S. to cede oversight of Web addresses

WASHINGTON - The United States will give up its role overseeing the system of Web addresses and domain names that form the basic plumbing of the Internet, turning it over in 2015 to an international group whose structure and administration will be determined during the next year, government officials have said.

Since the dawn of the Internet, the United States has been responsible for assigning the numbers that form Internet addresses, the .com, .gov and .org labels that correspond to those numbers, and for the vast database that links the two and makes sure Internet traffic goes to the right place.

The function has been subcontracted since 1998 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an international nonprofit organization, with the expectation that the United States would eventually step back from its role.

LA subway dig finds prehistoric artifacts

LOS ANGELES - Scientists have known that long before tourists were crowding Los Angeles’ trendy Miracle Mile district, prehistoric animals were doing the same.

Now, after a subway dig, they’re discovering that sea lions may have been swimming nearby as well.

An exploratory subway shaft dug just down the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has uncovered a treasure-trove of other prehistoric artifacts in the land where saber-toothed cats and other early animals once roamed, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

They include mollusks, asphalt-saturated sand dollars and possibly the mouth of a sea lion dating to 2 million years ago, a time when the Pacific Ocean extended several miles farther inland than it does today.

“Here on the Miracle Mile is where the best record of life from the last great ice age in the world is found,” paleontologist Kim Scott said.

The area, dotted today with museums, restaurants, boutiques and apartment buildings, also includes the world-famous La Brea Tar Pits. It was there that mammoths and saber-toothed cats got stuck in the pits’ oozing muck, which preserved their skeletons for millennia.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/16/2014