PASSAGE 1

Cats adopted from the local animal shelter are soothing inmates at the Lincoln County Jail in North
Platte.

Some inmates had been volunteering time at the shelter, cleaning cages and floors, walking dogs
and giving them baths.

Sheriff Jerome Kramer says he wondered having a couple of cats at the jail would help inmates
pass the time and lower tensions. He says studies show that pets can help relieve stress.

The cats have been a hit. Kramer says the inmates eagerly await their turns to take care of the two
declawed, neutered males, Nemo and Sarge.

According to North Platte television station KNOP, inmate Guy Meyers says the cats "bring out the
soft part in you, just like your kids do."

PASSAGE 2

It's a dog's life for a stray mutt in any country, but in Japan a canine that ends up in the municipal
pound is far more likely to be put down than to find a new home.

While in some other industrialized countries the idea of "saving" a pet from a shelter is well-
established, in Japan animal welfare activists say strays often fall foul of an attitude that prizes
puppies and pedigrees as status symbols.

"In Britain, the public go to animal welfare shelters to adopt an animal and save a life. The mindset
in Japan is still 'if you want a pet, go to a pet shop'," said Briar Simpson, a New Zealander who
works for Japan's animal shelter ARK, via e-mail.

In Britain, approximately 6 to 9 percent of dogs in pounds are put to death every year, 2007-2009
figures show, according to the website of Dogs Trust, the nation's largest dog welfare charity.

In Japan that figure is more than 70 percent, the Japanese animal welfare organization ALIVE
says.

In rural areas such as Tokushima Prefecture, on the southwestern island of Shikoku, the situation is
even worse. In 2008 alone, more than 88 percent of abandoned dogs at the Tokushima Animal
Welfare Center were put down.

PASSAGE 3

Comprehensive lifestyle changes including a better diet and more exercise can lead not only to a
better physique, but also to swift and dramatic changes at the genetic level, U.S. researchers said
on Monday. In a small study, the researchers tracked 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who
decided against conventional medical treatment such as surgery and radiation or hormone
therapy.

The men underwent three months of major lifestyle changes, including eating a diet rich in fruits,
vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products, moderate exercise such as walking for half an
hour a day, and an hour of daily stress management methods such as meditation. As expected,
they lost weight, lowered their blood pressure and saw other health improvements. But the
researchers found more profound changes when they compared prostate biopsies taken before and

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after the lifestyle changes. After the three months, the men had changes in activity in about 500
genes -- including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off. The activity of
disease-preventing genes increased while a number of disease-promoting genes, including those
involved in prostate cancer and breast cancer, shut down, according to the study published in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research was led by Dr. Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in
Sausalito, California, and a well-known author advocating lifestyle changes to improve health."It's
an exciting finding because so often people say, 'Oh, it's all in my genes, what can I do?' Well, it
turns out you may be able to do a lot," Ornish, who is also affiliated with the University of
California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview. "'In just three months, I can change
hundreds of my genes simply by changing what I eat and how I live?' That's pretty exciting,"
Ornish said. "The implications of our study are not limited to men with prostate cancer."

PASSAGE 4

The auction house thought the portrait was a 17th century Rembrandt knockoff, and valued it at
just $3,100. But the British buyer who paid about 1,500 times more than that apparently knew
what he was doing. Experts have confirmed "Rembrandt Laughing" bought for a bargain price of
$4.5 million at an English auction house in October is a self-portrait by the Dutch master himself,
depicted with his head tilted back in easygoing laughter.

William Noortman from Noortman Master Paintings, specializing in Dutch and Flemish masters, said
it's worth $30 million to $40 million, adding: "I'm very surprised it didn't make more at auction."

The 9 1/2-inch-by-6 1/2-inch painting will hang in the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam
through June 29, on loan from the anonymous Briton who bought it at the auction by Moore, Allen
and Innocent in Gloucestershire and had it cleaned and examined by British experts.

Art expert Jan Six from another auction house, Sotheby's, declined to put a new value on the
painting. But he said the sale itself was a rare opportunity, as Rembrandt's works come on the
market only once every few years. "A self-portrait by Rembrandt, that's absolutely unique not in
my lifetime," Six said.

Rembrandt made the self-portrait about 1628, when he was in his early 20s and still in his
hometown, Leiden. Already he was earning his reputation as an artist, and experimenting with a
mirror and his own face to capture expressions.

PASSAGE 5

From Butte, Mont., to Hagerstown, Pa., more than 100 small and medium-size cities across the US
will see reductions in airline service by year's end. Some communities will lose commercial service
altogether. Surging oil prices, driving up the cost of jet fuel, are behind the cuts. For the first time
in aviation history, airlines are forced to reduce the number of flights offered and eliminate some
destinations even as demand for their services remains high.

The result: It will be harder for many Americans to get from where they are to where they want to
go, planes will remain elbow-room-only packed, and ticket prices will soar higher. The aviation
reductions will also produce economic ripples that extend far beyond those airports with newly
empty tarmacs, some aviation experts warn. "This is not about Butte. This is about the national
economy," says Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association. "Commercial air service
is part of the backbone of the American economy.... All of the industries that have grown up with
cheap, competitive airfares over the last decade will be affected."

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The impact of the service cuts probably won't be felt until 2009, because most aren't slated to go
into effect until fall. The summer schedule has been pretty much set and sold for months. But
here's the rub: Most of the tickets for the peak summer season were sold before oil skyrocketed
above $130 a barrel. That means that even as passengers are packed like sardines into planes and
it would appear that the airlines should be raking in huge profits, the carriers are actually losing
money.

To make up the losses, airlines must ensure that in the future they fly only very profitable routes.
As a result, some communities where airlines rely on regional jets that guzzle a lot of fuel will see
service cuts, even though plenty of passengers may still want to fly from there.

PASSAGE 6

More people are hurt snowboarding than any other outdoor activity, accounting for a quarter of
emergency room visits, according to the first national study to estimate recreational injuries.
Trailing snowboarding are sledding and hiking, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention report in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. The most common
problems were broken bones and sprains, accounting for half of all cases.

"We want people to participate in outdoor recreational activities. But we want people to recognize
that there's cause for concern and people can and do get injured," study co-author Arlene
Greenspan said Tuesday. She said injuries can be avoided through planning and preparation:
making sure your fitness level and skills match the activity and using proper equipment like
helmets.

Greenspan said the study is the first to look at injuries from all activities, instead of individual
sports or geographic areas. The researchers looked at data on injuries from outdoor activities
treated at 63 hospitals in 2004 and 2005. They calculated that almost 213,000 people annually
were treated for such injuries nationwide. About half of those injured are young, between ages 10
and 24 and half of the injuries are caused by falls.

Males are injured at twice the rate of females, but the research didn't look at the reasons. "It could
be that males are more risky or it could be that males just participate more than females, or a
combination of both," said Greenspan. Nearly 26 percent of the injures were from snowboarding
followed by sledding (11 percent); hiking (6 percent); mountain biking, personal watercraft, water
skiing or tubing (4 percent); fishing (3 percent) and swimming (2 percent).

PASSAGE 7

When gas station manager Roger Randolph realized it was costing him money each time someone
filled up with $4-a-gallon gas, he hung a sign on his pumps: "No more credit cards." He may be the
first in West Virginia to ban plastic, but gas station operators nationwide are reporting similar woes
as higher prices translate into higher credit card fees the managers must pay, squeezing profits at
the pump. "The more they buy, the more we lose," said Randolph, who manages Mr. Ed's Chevron
in St. Albans. "Gas prices go up, and our profits go down." His complaints target the so-called
interchange fee a percentage of the sale price paid to credit card companies on every
transaction. The percentage is fixed usually at just under 2 percent but the dollar amount of
the fee rises with the price of the goods or services.As gas tops $4 a gallon, that pushes fees
toward 10 cents a gallon. Now stations, which typically mark up gasoline by 11 to 12 cents a
gallon, are seeing profits shrink or even reverse.

In a good month, Randolph's small operation would yield a $60 profit on gasoline sales. But that's
been buried as soaring prices forced the station to pay about $500 a month in interchange fees. "At
these prices, people aren't making any money," said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the Alexandria,

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Va.-based National Association of Convenience Stores. "It's brutal." Lenard's group reports
convenience stores paid roughly $7.6 billion in credit card fees last year, while making $3.4 billion
in profits.

The credit card companies say fees are just part of the cost of doing business. MasterCard has
capped interchange fees for gas purchases of $50 or more, said company spokeswoman Sharon
Gamsin. Accepting MasterCard also gives gas stations "increased sales, greater security and
convenience, lower labor costs, and speed for their customers at the pump," Gamsin said in an e-
mail to The Associated Press.Visa argues that the fees are offset "by the tangible benefits to
stations and their customers, such as the ability to pay at the pump," the company said in a
statement to the AP.

PASSAGE 8

The world's oceans have warmed 50 percent faster over the last 40 years than previously thought
due to climate change, Australian and US climate researchers reported Wednesday. Higher ocean
temperatures expand the volume of water, contributing to a rise in sea levels that is submerging
small island nations and threatening to wreak havoc in low-lying, densely-populated delta regions
around the globe.

The study, published in the British journal Nature, adds to a growing scientific chorus of warnings
about the pace and consequences rising oceans. It also serves as a corrective to a massive report
issued last year by the Nobel-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
according to the authors.

Rising sea levels are driven by two things: the thermal expansion of sea water, and additional
water from melting sources of ice. Both processes are caused by global warming. The ice sheet that
sits atop Greenland, for example, contains enough water to raise world ocean levels by seven
metres (23 feet), which would bury sea-level cities from Dhaka to Shanghai.

Trying to figure out how much each of these factors contributes to rising sea levels is critically
important to understanding climate change, and forecasting future temperature rises, scientists
say. But up to now, there has been a perplexing gap between the projections of computer-based
climate models, and the observations of scientists gathering data from the oceans.

The new study, led by Catia Domingues of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research,
is the first to reconcile the models with observed data. Using new techniques to assess ocean
temperatures to a depth of 700 metres (2,300 feet) from 1961 to 2003, it shows that thermal
warming contributed to a 0.53 millimetre-per-year rise in sea levels rather than the 0.32 mm rise
reported by the IPCC.