National News

By MICHAEL DOYLE
Monday, November 20, 2006
Annette Pombo wants her husband home. Because of last week's election, that's right where he's going.

"She's got a list, a long list, of stuff that need to be done," Richard Pombo said with a laugh Wednesday afternoon.

For the next six weeks or so, Pombo still will be formally known as Rep.

By CLEA BENSON
Monday, November 20, 2006
`With a decline in home sales driving a slowdown in California's recent economic boom, lawmakers will find it "much tougher" to balance the state budget next year than they did this year, the Legislature's nonpartisan budget adviser said in a report Wednesday.

The economy is still doing slightly better than lawmakers expected when they approved the current $131 billion state spending plan in June, partly because oil prices have dropped since the summer, the report said.

By MICHAEL DOYLE
Monday, November 20, 2006
Former California congressman Gary Condit is back in federal court, again charging author Dominick Dunne with defamation.

Condit and Dunne have fought it out before, settling an earlier defamation suit just hours before Condit was set to face explicit questioning about his sex life.

Monday, November 20, 2006
Much of the concern about access to a college education in California has focused on the effects of Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot initiative which banned the use of race or gender in college admissions.

Monday, November 20, 2006
Imagine this scenario.

California public schools become overcrowded to twice their capacity, reaching a point where little actual instruction is possible, and the health and safety of students and school personnel are threatened.

By JESSICA GUYNN
Monday, November 20, 2006
The high-tech industry is touting a new study that showcases the economic contributions of talented immigrants as part of an orchestrated campaign to alter the nation's immigration laws to expand the number of highly skilled, foreign-born professionals allowed to work here.

By LYNDA GLEDHILL
Sunday, November 19, 2006
California will continue to see relatively low voter turnout for the foreseeable future in nonpresidential elections as minorities, independents and young voters increase the ranks of the state's "occasional" voters, two of the state's top pollsters say.

That trend was evident in last week's election, where only about half of the state's registered voters turned out to the polls. Those voters, while motivated, did not always vote along party lines. GOP incumbent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger defeated Democrat Treasurer Phil Angelides by 17 percentage points.

By DAN SORENSON
Sunday, November 19, 2006
The jury is still out on our effect on Kartchner Cavern's mama bats, but we're a big hit with cave slime.

Since humans started visiting in numbers _ the cave opened in 1999 _ some microscopic cave species are "getting fat and happy," said Raina Maier, a University of Arizona professor of soil, water and environmental science studying the cave's microbes.

Maier heads a UA team recently awarded a five-year, $1.6 million National Science Foundation grant to monitor microbial activity in the caves 50 miles southeast of Tucson.

Although the National Science Foundation-funded portion of the study is just getting under way, Maier said ongoing work at Kartchner shows that the microbes that appear to be thriving aren't directly connected with humans.

By MARY ANN CAVAZOS
Friday, November 17, 2006
Police were bombarded with phone calls from media outlets from across the country after a video of a peewee football referee being attacked by a coach during a game earlier this month surfaced on the Internet.

By CHRISTINA JEWETT
Friday, November 17, 2006
He posed as a trick-or-treater at the door of one woman he raped; 20 days later he called her to apologize.

He took another for a ride in her own car, raped her repeatedly and left her bound with duct tape.