Watercooler Stories

College football routs hurricane victims

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Hurricane Katrina refugees will be asked to leave Tallahassee, Fla., motels and hotels this weekend to accommodate college football fans.

Florida state law mandates hotels honor reservations, meaning hundreds of evacuees will be asked to leave during the weekend in the run-up to Monday's fiercely competitive Florida State Seminoles-Miami Hurricanes game.

The Tallahassee Area Convention & Visitors Bureau has sent Red Cross contact numbers to hotels and motels, telling them to inform evacuees they have to vacate rooms, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

"There is absolutely no compassion here whatsoever," Lynne Bernard wrote on a bulletin board on the Web site of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. "The Hampton Inn in Tallahassee is pretty much throwing us out because of a football game."

At least six Tallahassee churches said they would provide shelter to anyone displaced by the disaster and football conflict.

New Google project said to aid terrorists

MOSCOW, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- International terrorists will find a lot to like about Google's new project Google Earth, a source in the Russian Special Services says.

Earth.google.com was launched this summer and distributes free photos made from space that have a capacity to view objects as small as two meters.

"On these pictures terrorists will see all that they need to carry out an attack in any part of the world," the source was quoted by MosNews.

A Russian military expert, Lt. Gen. Leonid Sazhin, said that "from now on international terrorists do not have to inspect the site of a would-be terrorist attack. An international company is doing the work for them."

'No Child' law perplexes Calif. educators

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Four out of five California public schools met targets this year for improved performance, but U.S. officials still regard many of those schools as failures.

California education officials said 81 percent of the state's schools had met state improvement targets, up from 64 percent last year, reported the Los Angeles Times. However, more than 2,300 schools that met state targets fell short of goals mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Differences between federal accountability standards and California's Academic Performance Index have left many teachers and administrators frustrated, the newspaper reported. John Adams Middle School in South Los Angeles scored more than double its state expectations, but Principal Joseph Pena Santana said it wasn't enough to meet tougher new federal requirements.

"Our API scores are going up and up and up and up, but we're still not making (the federal goal) because they raise the mark on us," he said. "As soon as we think we've got it, they take it right out from underneath us."

Liverpool strives to be gay friendly

LIVERPOOL, England, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Liverpool, the city best known as the home of the Beatles, is considering becoming more gay-friendly.

The Liverpool Echo reports local officials want a share of the "pink pound," money spent by gay and lesbian visitors. They look enviously at nearby Manchester, where the Gay Village area brings in millions of pounds.

City Council member Steve Munby said he wants to start a discussion and was inspired by a report that none of Liverpool's institutions of higher education ranks in the top 10 for gay and lesbian students.

Liberal Party leader Steve Radford, the first openly gay member of the council, said he believes the private sector is likely to be more effective at creating a gay-friendly area, although the council can lend a hand.

"I was involved in the management committee for Liverpool's only Gay Pride event a number of years ago and we got very little support from the council," he said.

Radford points out that Liverpool is the only major city in Britain with no annual Gay Pride festival or parade.