Fifteen Yale students staged a sit-in at the university's admissions office Thursday while nearly 100 others rallied outside urging the school to offer more financial aid.

The 10-hour demonstration ended peacefully Thursday evening when police led the 15 students out of the building and cited them for trespassing.

Some protesters called on Yale President Richard Levin to reduce by half the amount of money students on financial aid are required to pay. The students said families earning less than $40,000 a year should not have to contribute any money.

For Betty Jenkins and thousands of other Missourians, juggling grocery, utility and medical bills on a fixed income is a day-to-day struggle. The task becomes even more daunting when temperatures dip and home-heating bills reach triple digits, she said.

Jenkins, a retired social services worker in her 60s who lives on Social Security and disability insurance, said the cost of heating her six-room home in north St. Louis County can top $100 a month during winter. To get by, she turns down the temperature every afternoon and occasionally has relied on federal assistance to avoid disconnection of her gas service.

She and other Missourians who depend on home-heating aid may have fewer resources to draw from next winter because base funding for the country's biggest energy assistance program would be cut by $85 million, or 4.4 percent, under President George W. Bush's proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Missouri would see funding trimmed by $1.9 million; Illinois would get $4.9 million less. The amount of emergency aid available nationwide also would be reduced by a third, to $200 million from $297 million.

Kenny, 70, was banned yesterday for being just over the booze limit.

The 3ft 8in actor admitted having two glasses of wine before driving home after rehearsals for a play.

A BRITISH AIRWAYS jumbo jet carrying 351 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing after an 11-hour transatlantic flight with a failed engine.

The fault occurred on take-off from Los Angeles but the pilot declined all opportunities to land in the US and instead continued on three engines for 5,000 miles to Britain.

The incident happened three days after a European regulation came into force requiring airlines to compensate passengers for long delays or cancellations. Under the new rules, if the pilot had returned to Los Angeles, BA would have been facing a compensation bill of more than £100,000.

Let me speak for millions here who just want to listen to music: I don’t care about Ogg Vorbis. If Ogg Vorbis came to my house and waved tentacles at me demanding in a slobbery moan that I kneel and submit, I would shoot it. I don’t know what it is and I don’t care.

A consumer group sued the federal government Thursday, saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food.

Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said.

So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set limits for salt in foods.

Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would not join the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a decision that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race.

The company plans to introduce SQL Server 2000 Workgroup, a version for small businesses priced at $3,899 per processor, in the first half of this year. It will also add several features to the upcoming SQL Server 2005 update, which is due in the summer, and extend a reselling relationship with Dell, which will allow its customers to get support from the PC maker.

In the usual tug of war over suburban development, residents clamor to keep noisy businesses away from their backyards. But in this no-stoplight village, a stone quarry operator wants the backyards to stay away from his business.

Bill Halquist, the president of Sussex-based Halquist Stone, is objecting to a $30 million development that could bring 220 condominium and apartment units - and, he says, a population of new residents to complain about noise and dust from his processing plant.

"They wouldn't let us put a plant 54 feet away from somebody's house," Halquist said. "So why are they putting a house 54 feet from our plant?"

Hackers are using blogs to infect computers with spyware, exposing serious security flaws in self-publishing tools used by millions of people on the Web.

The problem involves the use of JavaScript and ActiveX, two common methods used to launch programs on a Web page. Security experts said malicious programmers can use JavaScript and ActiveX to automatically deliver spyware from a blog to people who visit the site with a vulnerable Web browser.

Spyware tools also have been hidden inside JavaScript programs that are offered freely on the Web for bloggers to use to enhance their sites with new features such as music. As a result, bloggers who use infected tools could unwittingly turn their sites into a delivery platform for spyware.

A broad spectrum of big-name religious leaders came together Tuesday to announce their intention to challenge Gov. Matt Blunt's proposed Medicaid cuts.

The meeting at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown St. Louis came on the heels of a boisterous rally Sunday at Lane Tabernacle C.M.E. Church in St. Louis, which was organized by clergy members of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

90 characters of CD keys

A recent survey of Choices reported that 95 percent of its graduates last year remained out of jail and drug free for at least a year. This is good news for a program that was badly hobbled after St. Louis County reduced its funding from $950,000 to $200,000 last year.

The budget cut forced officials to reduce the number of counselors in the program from eight to two, cut the number of inmates it served from 320 to 147 and shorten the overall program from 120 to 90 days. A midyear grant helped officials add another full-time and part-time counselor.

Pitkin County, Colo., Sheriff Bob Braudis said in a brief telephone interview that Thompson was alone in his kitchen of his Woody Creek home when he shot himself with a handgun. His wife was at a gym, Braudis said.

Wednesday will have a special surprise, and yes, I know I’m sounding like a grade school teacher.

Matches

The following items best match your score:

1. System: Conservatism
2. Variation: Economic Conservatism
3. Ideologies: Ultra Capitalism, Conservative NeoLiberalism
4. US Parties: Republican Party
5. Presidents: Ronald Reagan (93.75%)
6. 2004 Election Candidates: George W. Bush (80.24%), John Kerry (71.70%), Ralph Nader (53.02%)

Statistics

Of the 38260 people who took the test:

1. 0.4% had the same score as you.
2. 95.8% were above you on the chart.
3. 1% were below you on the chart.
4. 22.8% were to your right on the chart.
5. 70.8% were to your left on the chart.

Leach's belief that the anti-hunting forces are just getting warmed up is undoubtedly correct; as another hunter quoted by the Times observes, some of the hunting opponents "would protest the opening of a meat pie."

This is one time when we can say "It can't happen here," and really mean it. America's hunters are too powerful; I suspect they're also better armed than their English counterparts. I think it's time for the NRA to open a branch in England. [Emphasis mine]

Lou Emery used to sell donuts and bus rides out of town until a company man came by this month to tell her the Greyhound had made its last stop here.

He broke the news gently to Emery and the rest of the crew at Daylight Donuts on Interstate 44, about 65 miles southwest of St. Louis. The man gathered up Greyhound's equipment and apologized for shutting down the service. He left the slightly rusted bus sign in the parking lot.

Now the bus doesn't stop anywhere around Sullivan for miles. And most residents didn't even hear about it.

"It was never in the local paper or anything that we had lost it," Emery said.