Linked

The city has received $341,077 for street maintenance under the county's Select System of Streets program. The funds are from the county gasoline tax and are designated for use on streets linked to the countywide highway plan.

Re "Gene Is a Factor in Hyperactivity, Researchers Say," May 1: In spite of careful reporting, some persons may come away with the idea that there is a causal relationship, or commonly put, a gene for ADD. While each month brings the announcement of a new gene linked to a specific behavior, it also becomes clearer that these behaviors are strongly modified by culture, environment and chance, to use the terms that geneticist David Suzuki uses....

Stock prices collapsed in late trading to close with the biggest one-day drop this year Thursday on selling linked to currency and interest rate worries. The key 225-share Nikkei index plunged 489.90 points, or 1.47%, to close at the day's low of 32,913.09, after gaining 189.44 points Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. said he was impressed with local health officials' response to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened dozens of people in Alamosa. "They very much have the situation under control," Ritter said. "We likely have not seen the last case of it because there is an incubation period." There have been 183 cases of salmonella linked to the outbreak, city spokeswoman Connie Ricci said. Of those, 57 were confirmed by lab testing, and nine people were hospitalized. Officials plan to begin flushing the water system Tuesday.

Regarding John Espey's review of "The Haiku Handbook" by William J. Higginson with Penny Harter, either Espey or the author of the book has blundered. Espey writes, "He (Higginson) explains and defines the forms of the Tanka , the Renga , the linked verse stanzas of the Senryu . . . ." Now Renga , not Senryu , is defined as linked verse by every Haikuist I have ever known or read about. Senryu is a comic or satiric form of Haiku, i.e. three lines of five-seven-five syllables respectively that do not necessarily include a seasonal theme as should Haiku.

A man wanted in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul was detained after officials rounded up suspects who had communicated with three assailants killed by police, media reports said. Officials are investigating whether the attackers were linked to Al Qaeda. So far they had no proof of a link, they said. Three policemen and three assailants died in the attack, which prompted Turkey to increase security at all U.S. diplomatic missions in the country. The private Dogan news agency reported that the alleged fourth gunman was caught after his getaway car was found and was being interrogated.

By now most of you probably have seen pictures of Frank and Louie, who, at age 12, is the oldest-living two-faced cat. They (he?) have two mouths, although only one is used for eating, and one brain. Although Frank and Louie have three eyes, only two are operational, and they seem to work just fine. The disorder is called diprosopus, or craniofacial duplication, a rare condition that causes duplication of the face and sometimes the cerebral frontal lobes. Felines with this condition are often called Janus cats after the Roman god who had two faces.