Dim

"Country & Western Hit Parade: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Hillbilly Music" is the second half of an invaluable album project from Bear Family Records that enables pop fans to step back in time to listen to music on the radio just like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles did more than half a century ago. Each of the single discs released in the "Dim Lights" series contains 25 to 30 of the most popular country songs of a given year, from 1945...

The House approved a bill Wednesday that rewrites two decades of water law in California, wiping out environmental protections and dropping reforms of federal irrigation policy that have long irritated agribusiness in the Central Valley. The legislation passed on a mostly party line vote of 246-175 in the Republican-controlled House. But its prospects of becoming law are poor. The White House has issued a veto threat, and it is unlikely to survive the Democratic-controlled Senate, where both of California's senators have vowed to work against it. "It essentially says farmers will get theirs and nothing for anybody else," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies over vast areas of Asia and in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns and threatening health and food supplies, the United Nations reported. The so-called atmospheric brown clouds are a mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. A report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program said the clouds dim light by as much as 25% in some cities, including Karachi, Pakistan; New Delhi; Shanghai; and Beijing.

USC 's struggles and injuries have put the Trojans on track for one of their worst men's basketball seasons in school history. But there has been an upside. Freshman Byron Wesley is quickly gaining more experience than either he or Coach Kevin O'Neill could have hoped for when Wesley arrived from Etiwanda High. Wesley, a 6-foot-5 guard, is averaging 34 minutes per game for the 6-18 Trojans, who play host to California on Thursday night and Stanford on Sunday at the Galen Center.

All right, Mr. Lau, don't keep it a secret. Where in Monterey Park would you send us round-eyed fans of San Francisco's Ocean City and Asia Gardens dim-summeries? P.S. It doesn't count unless they come out on carts. LEE MOLHO Los Angeles Lau suggests Casa de Oriente, 2000 W. Main, in Alhambra, where dim sum is served from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day--a la carts.

Like John F. Carlucci (Letters, March 15), I and my family and neighbors in Redlands witnessed the coming and going of Halley's comet in April, 1910. The smogless air was clear as crystal. After sundown the huge comet covering perhaps one-sixth of the sky was magnificently visible over Mt. San Bernardino. There were no street lights to dim the spectacle. The next night the comet was directly over head after sunset and the third night it appeared low in the west, not to be seen again until 1986.

Jorge Cantu hit a tiebreaking RBI single in the seventh inning Tuesday night, and the Florida Marlins damaged Atlanta's playoff hopes with a 5-4 victory that snapped the Braves' seven-game winning streak. The Braves fell three games behind the Colorado Rockies in the wild-card race and were pushed to the brink of elimination in the NL East, with Philadelphia taking a five-game lead with five to play. The Phillies' 7-4 win over Houston reduced their magic number for clinching the division title to one. Florida was officially eliminated from playoff contention when the Rockies beat Milwaukee later Tuesday night.

Having endured another onslaught of Spike Lee's racist drivel, I can only think "mental and moral midget." Instead of Malcolm X, the most fitting project for this rather dim sociologist would be the Don King story. DAN O'NEILL Los Angeles

This is a protest against blinding auto headlights. Years ago motorists were cited for glaring headlights. Today that law is not enforced. Observe night driving on any major thoroughfare. One out of 20 cars have unusually bright headlights, which could result in accidents. About one in a 100 even have all four headlights blazing. And nothing is done about it. Do auto parts suppliers offer a choice of regular and extra bright lights? The worst offenders: Cars with one light out or one dim defective light; then all the amperage flows into one blinding light.

Yes, there are two main streets in Chinatown ["Inside Chinatown," March 25]: Grant Avenue for the tourists and Stockton Street for the locals. There is also another "nontourist" area in San Francisco known as "Chinatown Two." It's in the Richmond area. If you don't want to drive the five or six miles, just jump on the No. 2 bus and get off at 22nd Avenue and Clement Street. Low-priced bakeries, restaurants and dim sum places abound. JOSEPH LEA Mission Viejo

Newt Gingrich's star is on the rise in Iowa, but a leading conservative voice in the Senate remains unimpressed. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn says he “will have difficulty supporting (Gingrich) as president of the United States” based on his experience serving in the House during Gingrich's years as speaker. “The thing is there are all type of leaders. Leaders that instill confidence, leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk, leaders that have one standard for the people they are leading and different standard for themselves,” Coburn said on Fox News Sunday.

Reporting from Phoenix — The improbable dream has become an impossible one. Not entirely, but close. For Matt Kemp to win the triple crown, the Dodgers would have to play close to 20 innings in their season finale at Chase Field on Wednesday. If Kemp goes eight for eight, the New York Mets' Jose Reyes goes 0 for 4 and the Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun 0 for 2 or one for five, the three players would finish with identical .333 averages. Kemp's average remained at .324 in the Dodgers' 7-6, come-from-ahead loss in 10 innings to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday, as he was two for five with a double.

The machine operators lean back lazily on rolls of cotton fabric, shooing flies from their sweat-soaked tunics as their boss, Abdul Latif, paces between rows of silent electric looms covered in lint. The textile plant owner knows it's just one of several rolling blackouts that will darken his plant today, as they have every day for four years. Along his street, other textile plants have either closed or begun selling their looms for scrap. Latif scrapes by, but the outages have cut his plant's output in half.

For decades, nearly every candidate who hoped to win the presidency has visited this state to pledge their allegiance to King Corn and to the government subsidies that have propped up its price and increased demand for it. But for the first time, the GOP field is dominated by candidates who want to do away with such kickbacks. One even used his formal campaign kickoff in front of the gold-domed statehouse here to announce his opposition to such subsidies. "Politicians are often afraid that if they're too honest, they might lose an election.

Tolu Olubunmi was brought to the United States from Nigeria when she was 14, graduated from college seven years later with a chemical engineering degree, and couldn't get hired because of her status as an illegal immigrant. "It was heartbreaking," she said. For Olubunmi, passage of the DREAM Act, which would establish a path to citizenship for some young illegal immigrants, is especially urgent. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story said Tolu Olubunmi was brought to the U.S. illegally from Nigeria.

In the last five years, singer and songwriter Bill Callahan has been making nouveau cowboy music, the kind that might have soothed his former self, the confessional, acerbic zinemaker who released tapes made out of his bedroom in the early '90s and went by the very unfriendly moniker Smog. But that was a long time ago. These days Callahan presents himself as a kind of pioneer, a picture of rugged individualism and other American myths that have become recurrent themes in his work as he has grown older.

When I was 17, that was 75 years ago, I saw and celebrated it--maybe not scientifically, but with lots of fun and interest as something special in our daily lives, on top of a two-story tenement in Brooklyn, N.Y. We observed, sang, danced and drank Coca Cola. My recollection is a bit dim, a great ball of fire and a lingering tail. This year, however, it will be different, coming to California to live. I've seen, learned and studied the heavens and shall go out to the deserts, mountaintops, observatories with interested groups.

Humans are light-sensitive beings. Whether it comes from the sun, a laser or a fluorescent bulb, light can affect our bodies and minds in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. If you believe actor Robert Wagner, a little light can banish pain. Wagner is the television pitchman for Light Relief, a hand-held device equipped with 59 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that flicker with pulses of blue, red and infrared light. The device also has four heat settings.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the Silicon Valley giant whose fortunes have been tied to the personal computer, is facing an uncertain future as the popularity of desktops and notebooks wane. The world's largest computer maker said Tuesday that consumer PC sales in the three-month period ended April 30 dropped more than 20% from the same quarter last year, and startled analysts by forecasting that its revenue this year would be lower than previously expected. The chilly outlook ignited a selloff among the company's investors, and the stock dropped close to 10% early in the day before recovering slightly to close at $36.91, a loss of 7.3%.

The annual stockholder meeting of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has long been more a party than a business event. Disciples of the investment guru snap photos with their hero, eat rib eye at his favorite steakhouse and queue up to buy baubles at a jewelry store owned by the giant holding company. As many as 40,000 delight in a long weekend of wholesome fun that Buffett has dubbed the Woodstock of Capitalism. And in an era in which bad business behavior is prominent in the public psyche, many Buffett admirers attend simply for life lessons from an octogenarian revered as much for his homespun values and ethical moorings as his financial wisdom.