Western United States

As much of the country awoke to a welcome reprieve from heavy snowfall and ice-slickened roads, a new winter storm in the West snarled holiday traffic and darkened lights on Christmas trees in thousands of homes Thursday. In the Sierra Nevada, heavy snow and whiteout conditions led police to shut down an 80-mile stretch of Interstate 80 for several hours between the California-Nevada line and Applegate, Calif. The California Highway Patrol told drivers to be prepared for slow going.

An unusually weak Dungeness crab harvest is compounding the financial woes of West Coast fishermen who were already struggling with depressed consumer demand and the unprecedented collapse of the Pacific chinook salmon fishery. Commercial fishermen in California, Oregon and Washington are struggling to stay afloat financially. They say the downturn could force fishermen who depend heavily on crab and salmon to leave the shrinking ranks of the region's fishing fleet.

\o7L\f7IKE many Western towns, Rifle is a plain-looking community in a remarkable location. The town is wedged into a gulley carved by Rifle Creek as it trickles from the northern plateaus into the Colorado River. Most of Rifle consists of a narrow grid of modest clapboard and midcentury houses. It's the scenery that commands attention here. Looming above town are enormous sagebrush-studded plateaus, framed by rocky triangular hills that recede into the horizon.

In a plan to curb global warming, five governors from Western states agreed Monday to work together to set a regional cap this year on carbon dioxide emissions, and join forces in a market-based emissions trading program within 18 months. The agreement came as the largest utility in Texas, TXU Corp.

I thought I knew Monument Valley. I'd seen the westerns John Ford shot here, as well as the Isuzu car commercials. I'd read the books and devoured the documentaries. I knew that John Wayne had referred to this remote region of Navajo country as the place "where God put the West." So what would be the purpose of actually coming here? More than that, I worried that the experience might be anticlimactic.

Although much of the Western United States has been in the throes of a drought that began around 2000, Southern California's taps have continued to flow, thanks to a giant system of aqueducts and storage reservoirs that draw from different regions. Here is a look at the drought and how this area's urban users have been largely protected from it so far. The parched Western U.S.

Gonorrhea cases are rising at an alarming pace across the western United States, even while declining in the rest of the country, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. The number of cases in California and seven other western states increased 42% from 2000 to 2005 while declining 10% nationally, according to the report. An increase in gonorrhea is typically associated with a rise in other sexually transmitted diseases -- most importantly HIV infection.

Crime busters they aren't. But for more than 60 years, a group of myth busters, led by a literary "sheriff" and his posse of fact-checking historians, has pursued the legends of Western lore as doggedly as real lawmen chase outlaws. The organization was founded in 1944 by a group of Chicagoans who considered themselves Westerners, not Easterners. They dedicated their group, the Westerners, to "fun and scholarship." Since then, it's spun off more than 140 chapters around the world.

WHERE TO EAT I gorged on good and cheap food in San Francisco's Chinatown, not fine cuisine. If that's what you're after, you may want to look beyond Chinatown's core area. THE BUZZ In local polls, three of the perennial favorites are Ton Kiang on Geary Street, Yank Sing (two locations south of Market Street) and Tommy Toy's (on Montgomery Street). I didn't eat at any of those places, nor at the widely admired R&G Lounge at 631 Kearny St.