ShareThisHere is the Scripps Howard News Service NEWS budget for Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008. If you have questions or comments, SHNS editors can be reached at 202-408-1484. For all SHNS content and archives visit our Web site at www.shns.com.NATIONALBATMANUNMASKED (Zayas, St. Petersburg Times) -- TAMPA, Fla.: A Florida law casts an unwelcome light on the nightclub patron known as Batman. 550.CAL-PROP8 (Kuruvila, San Francisco Chronicle) -- SAN FRANCISCO: Conservative Christians across the nation are leading the push for California Proposition 8, which would create a state constitutional amendment to take away the right of gay and lesbian couples to get married in California. 800.MILITARYDESERTERS (Garry, St. Petersburg Times) -- The military deserter rate is climbing and some say the Army lowering its standards to meet recruiting goals has led to more losses. 850. SEXYSOLDIER (Misterek, Tacoma News-Tribune) -- Sgt. Mat Vance is hardly your basic infantry grunt. The 26-year-old who just returned from a 15-month deployment in Iraq is also one of America's 51 "Hottest Bachelors of 2008," according to Cosmopolitan magazine. 590.LEFTYROSENTHAL (Manning, Las Vegas Sun) -- Former Las Vegas casino executive and mob-connected sports handicapper Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal died. Robert De Niro played a character based on Rosenthal in the film "Casino."300.GOOD NEWSLEARNINGCHINESE (Matus, St. Petersburg Times) -- Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more than 1 billion people. Yet just a few years ago, it wasn't even an afterthought in U.S. schools. Today, an informed guess pegs the figure at 50,000, making Chinese far and away the fastest-growing language taught. 800. With photos: SH08J132LEARNINGCHINESE, SH08J133LEARNINGCHINESEHEALTH AND SCIENCEMEDICAL (Bowman, SHNS) -- The Medical Journal. The brain shrinks with age like most everything else. But researchers are beginning to find some standards for what's normal and what might be preventable. 700.INTERNATIONALGORDONBROWN (Saunders, Toronto Globe and Mail) -- Meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the man who saved the world banking system. 700.IN THE WESTCAL-FIRES-PLANTS (Santschi, The Press-Enterprise) -- SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.: San Bernardino's top firefighter blamed neglected freeway landscaping for fueling a destructive blaze that burned downtown businesses, stopped trains and sent motorists fleeing from their cars on Interstate 215. 650.NOGALES-VIOLENCE (McCombs, Arizona Daily Star) -- Unprecedented levels of drug-related violence in Nogales, Mexico have landed the border city on the U.S. State Department's "travel alert" list alongside notoriously dangerous cities such as Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo. 550.
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE NEWS BUDGET
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
