Western United States

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.

EVERY road sings its own tune. Route 66 is a classic, sometimes raucous ditty from Chicago to L.A.; Highway 1 a twisty ballad to the voluptuous California coast; and U.S. 395 a mandolin-driven ode to the West that evokes images of cowboy boots and roadside diners. Route 395 is our mother road. Its two-lane panoramas of the Eastern Sierra -- especially from Lone Pine to Mono Lake -- are an invitation to shift into a simpler time.

As California becomes increasingly reliant on oil from elsewhere, state and federal officials are trying to figure out how to get enough energy to the West Coast if disaster strikes. The need became clear in August, when corroded BP pipelines threatened to halt supplies from an Alaskan oil field that fed West Coast refineries.

The energy boom across the West has created tens of thousands of jobs and funded state scholarships, teacher raises -- even top-of-the-line sports centers in remote ranch towns. The other day, Roger Hawkins was reminded how much all that wealth would cost him. Strolling his 32-acre ranch in southwest Colorado, Hawkins came across yellow survey tape running past a web of deer tracks.