Global Watch

Clear geographical lines for marriage8226; When it comes to walking down the aisle, geography really does matter, according to a new Census...

Clear geographical lines for marriage
8226; When it comes to walking down the aisle, geography really does matter, according to a new Census Bureau report of marriage, fertility and other socioeconomic characteristics. People in the Northeast marry later and are more likely to live together outside of marriage than people in the Midwest, West or South, the report released Thursday found. People in the Northeast also are less likely to become teenage parents than those in other parts of the country.

The bureau8217;s analysis, the first to examine this data by state, was based on a sample of more than 3 million households from the American Community Survey data from 2000-2003.

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, described Southern California as the 8220;Ellis Island of the West8221;, describing the high birth rate among California8217;s Hispanics as a natural consequence of immigration.

8220;The number of foreign-born right now in California is equal to that of the entire state population in 1940,8221; Pachon said. The Census Bureau also found that 15 per cent of all new mothers were not US citizens.

Scientists find fresh dinosaur-bird link
8226; Paleontologists working in northwestern Patagonia have unearthed the nearly complete skeleton of a small dinosaur whose bird-like appearance suggests that flight may have evolved twice 8212; not only in birds but also among the prehistoric raptors of the southern hemisphere. The newly discovered fossil, of a rooster-sized carnivore known as a dromaeosaur, lived 95 million years ago and is the oldest raptor ever found in the southern continents. Its discovery may signal that dromaeosaurs are much older than previously thought.

8220;We8217;re really just scratching the surface,8221; said Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator of Chicago8217;s Field Museum and lead author of a report on the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature. 8220;The evidence is that we have a distinct lineage of dromaeosaurs 8212; the southern lineage.8221;

2005 set to become hottest year ever
8226; New international climate data show that 2005 is on track to be the hottest year on record, continuing a 25-year trend of rising global temperatures. Climatologists at NASA8217;s Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculated the record-breaking global average temperature, which now surpasses 19988217;s record by a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, from readings taken at 7,200 weather stations around the world.

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The analysis comes as government and independent scientists are reporting other dramatic signs of global warming, such as the record shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice cover and unprecedented high ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. 8220;People shouldn8217;t be surprised this is happening,8221; said Goddard atmospheric scientist David Rind, noting that 2002, 2003 and 2004 were the second, third and fourth warmest years on record. 8212;

Agencies