Western United States

The powerful union representing 60,000 West Coast dockworkers is stepping publicly into the port air pollution arena for the first time, saying it will pressure seaports and shipowners to slash emissions. Leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on Monday will join Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in Long Beach to announce a campaign to reduce pollution in seaports from Seattle to San Diego.

It keeps moving, but when I was a child growing up on the outskirts of Houston I believed that it was already all gone, that I had just missed it, the West, by only a single generation, or at the most two--as maybe every generation believes it has just missed the West.

Apartment rents are increasing more rapidly in many of the West's major markets as the economy produces more jobs and rising interest rates prevent more people from buying homes, according to statistics being released today. The average apartment rent in March rose by at least 4% in nine of the 20 Western markets surveyed by RealFacts, a Novato, Calif.-based real estate research firm.

Schools in the Western United States can forbid a high school student to wear a T-shirt with a slogan that denigrates gay and lesbian students, a sharply divided federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Thursday. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S.

A new alliance is about to give the sometimes unappreciated field of California and Western history a boost, scholars say. This contemporary peace accord is not among political parties, ethnic groups or water rights claimants who have squabbled in the region's past.

A prolonged drought has created ideal wildfire conditions across much of the West and Southwest this summer, alarming forestry officials, who already are dealing with an unusually high number of fires. Nationwide as of Saturday, officials have reported 54,686 fires charring more than 3.2 million acres this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Both figures are the highest in at least a decade for the same period.

In the churning debate over immigration, there are perhaps no words as loaded or controversial as Aztlan, the name of the mythical Aztec homeland. For many it carries potent political overtones, for others it is a romantic ideal, and to those most opposed to illegal immigration it represents a strategic effort to reclaim land that was once part of Mexico. "Aztlan is a state of mind for some people. It's a point in history. For some it's a political place.

Rising temperatures throughout the West have stoked an increase in large wildfires over the past 34 years as spring comes earlier, mountain snows melt sooner and forests dry to tinder, scientists reported Thursday. More than land-use changes or forest management practices, the changing climate was the most important factor driving a four-fold increase in the average number of large wildfires in the Western United States since 1970, the researchers concluded.

For 35 years, Peter Runyon has been photographing the stunning landscapes of this Rocky Mountain resort. His postcards capture winter's showy white and summer's serene green, flecked with wildflowers in yellow, purple and red. This summer, two new colors streaked the familiar peaks: the orange of dying trees and the ghostly gray of dead ones. An unprecedented infestation of tiny flying beetles has put the great forests of the Mountain West under siege.

Rising temperatures in the 11 Western states due to global warming will cause more prolonged droughts, more widespread wildfires, and extensive die-offs in regional plant, fish and game habitats, according to a report Thursday from the National Wildlife Federation. "The American West is truly on the front line," said Patty Glick, the federation's global warming specialist. "The latest science is painting a bleak picture."