Guam

I awoke to the creak of wood and the slap of water. The easy roll that had lulled me to sleep was now a jarring bounce. I could feel the bow rise high out of the water, pause, then smack the swelling waves. I clipped on my safety harness and headed for the deck. It was our second night at sea. Ghostly whitecaps flashed through the blackness. The clouds raced over head. Water crashed onto the deck. My lips tasted salty from the spray.

The Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Babe Ruth All-Star team ran into Ted Langowski on Wednesday night--and was stopped in its tracks. Langowski pitched a two-hitter in lifting Alameda to a 4-0 victory over Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks in the winners' bracket final of the Pacific Southwest Regional Tournament at Lawrence Park.

Welcome to Roy's, home of a red-hot bar scene, inventive Pacific Rim cuisine and Muzak in the valet lot in Newport Beach. If you go to Hawaii much, you've probably heard of chef Roy Yamaguchi. He pioneered Pacific Rim cookery at his L.A. restaurant, 385 North, in the mid-'80s. It proved ahead of his time over here, so he closed it and shrewdly moved to Hawaii, where he quickly established himself as the Aloha State's celebrity chef.

As the Supreme Court hears arguments over gay marriage, the debate over the rights of couples of the same sex has also reverberated around the globe. Wedding bells are still a distant dream for gays and lesbians in many countries, especially in Africa and the Middle East, where couples of the same sex often face persecution and arrest. In the Sudan, for instance, sodomy--a catchall category that encompasses gay and lesbian sex--is punishable by death after multiple offenses. Saudi Arabia whips or sometimes stones to death people for the same crime, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.

More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami. State-issued aid cards have been used at hotels, shops, restaurants, ATMs and other places in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, according to data obtained by The Times from the California Department of Social Services.

Four young brothers and their uncle died of apparent smoke inhalation Monday morning after a fire engulfed their Oceanside apartment. Firefighters responded shortly after 8 a.m. to a report of smoke curling from the windows of a ground-floor apartment in the eastern section of the city. Battering in the door of the apartment, they found two of the boys and their uncle dead, and two other boys unconscious and barely clinging to life. The latter two were taken by helicopter to San Diego's Children's Hospital about 20 miles away, where they were pronounced dead in the emergency room.

A moderate earthquake shook the Pacific Ocean near Guam early Saturday, the Royal Observatory reported. There were no details of damages or injuries. The quake, which measured 5.3 on the Richter scale, was centered about 280 miles southwest of Guam, the observatory said.

Typhoon Koryn, packing sustained winds of 75 m.p.h., swept past this U.S. Pacific territory Sunday night before heading toward the Northern Mariana Islands, authorities said. Two minor injuries were reported.

If its potential consequences were not so serious, it would be tempting to dismiss the constitutional drama now being played out in Guam as theater of the absurd. However, when the first legal action taken under the island's restrictive new anti-abortion statute seeks not to halt termination of a pregnancy but to prohibit speech, it is clear that what's in progress is comedy too dark for laughs. Guam is a self-governing U.S. territory.