Toilets

Japan's leading toilet maker, Toto Ltd., is offering free repairs for 180,000 toilets after wiring problems caused several to catch fire, the company said. The electric bidet accessory has caught fire in three separate incidents since March 2006. The model, which is not sold overseas, sent up smoke in 26 other incidents, the company said. "Fortunately, nobody was using the toilets when the fire broke out and there were no injuries," a company spokeswoman said.

The green, oval, vaguely Art Deco pod arrived in Pershing Square six months ago -- billed as the answer to one of downtown's most human of needs. It's a luxury automated toilet, the kind seen on the streets of world-class cities such as Paris and New York and a prototype for as many as 150 that officials plan to roll out across Los Angeles in the next few years.

Toilets and pet fish have an unhappy history, but AquaOne Technologies is changing that -- one flush at a time. This wasn't how the Westminster-based company set out to make its name. Really. The serious-minded small business was founded seven years ago with the worthy goal of ending the biggest single source of wasted water in any household: leaky and overflowing toilets.

Every morning before sunrise, Ravi Shankar Singh, a cheerful man known to his neighbors as "Luv" Singh, sets out to patrol the potholed roads and rice fields of this north Indian village. He carries a whistle and a flashlight. He sings while he walks. The village's self-appointed sanitation guardian, Singh is on the lookout for anyone squatting in the fields or alleys, using the cover of darkness to do what millions of people have always done across India: defecate outdoors.

Just across the street from the historic produce stalls of Pike Place Market sits a gunmetal gray cylindrical pod with shiny silver doors, a structure that would look right at home on the bridge of the starship Enterprise. It is the public restroom of the future. But its heyday here may soon be in the past. After three years in operation, Seattle is considering pulling the plug on these space-age restrooms, which cost the city $6.6 million.

MAYBE the problem is the name. Bidet. Rhymes with ballet. Sounds altogether too French, fussy and feminine. Or maybe it's the shape, the low profile that can look like a miniature tub for washing the feet or an infant -- a silly and ultimately extraneous bathroom fixture. Whatever the reason, Americans have remained suspicious of the 300-year-old invention whose name is derived from the old French word for "to trot," a reference to the fact that one straddles the apparatus.

Philadelphia officials approved the use of waterless, no-flush urinals in what will be the city's tallest skyscraper -- but only after reaching an agreement with plumbers. In a deal that attested to the clout of the city's unions, the developer agreed to a five-year trial of the 116 urinals. The developer is barred from installing the urinals in any other buildings in Philadelphia during that period, and they will have to be replaced with water-using units if they do not work as billed.

If Dean Wormer of "Animal House" were a Los Angeles hockey fan he would have said, "Every Halloween the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode. Every April, the hapless Kings rebuild." Mike Kichaven Sherman Oaks

When nature calls at 30,000 feet, is $1.40 a wee price to pay? Or could it force passengers without correct change into a whole new kind of holding pattern? The head of European budget airline Ryanair unleashed a flood of indignation and potty humor Friday when he suggested that future passengers might be obliged to insert a British pound coin for access to the lavatory to get some in-flight relief. Airline chief Michael O'Leary suggested that installing pay toilets would lower ticket costs and make flying, somehow, easier for all. Not even his own aides seemed to be sure if he was serious or pursuing his penchant for making brazen declarations to get free publicity for Ryanair.

Re "Earth: Shabby Parklands," editorial, May 7: It is ironic that as America's national parks face record numbers of visitors this summer, the leadership in our nation's capital has failed to provide adequate funding. The fact is that education, resource protection and scientific inquiry are every bit if not more important to the National Park Service mission as flushing toilets and paved roads. The Bush administration may not be the first to neglect our parks, but has done little to remedy inadequate funding and has initiated policies, such as outsourcing of National Park Service jobs, that have undermined the NPS mission.