Mwasala e-Solution

The Highlands offer gorgeous landscapes and stunning views. But three bed-and-breakfast inns are making the region a culinary destination as well. After decades of postwar neglect, the Sicilian capital is poised for a comeback. Crumbling roads are being repaved, landmarks scrubbed clean and a newfound pride can be felt.

The Highlands offer gorgeous landscapes and stunning views. But three bed-and-breakfast inns are making the region a culinary destination as well. After decades of postwar neglect, the Sicilian capital is poised for a comeback. Crumbling roads are being repaved, landmarks scrubbed clean and a newfound pride can be felt.

America’s romance with the automobile is being severely tested now that every trip causes financial worry, environmental guilt and self-consciousness about the size of your car.

For children who aspire to a career in the performing arts, attending summer theater camps can be a steppingstone to Broadway or even Hollywood.

Although women and men are creating blogs in roughly equal numbers, many women believe that they are not taken as seriously as their male counterparts.

POMPEII, Italy — Citing threats to public security and to the site itself, the Italian government has for the first time declared a yearlong state of emergency for the ancient city of Pompeii.

Nearly 2,000 years after Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii under pumice and steaming volcanic ash, some 2.6 million tourists tramp annually through this archaeological site, which is on Unesco’s World Heritage list.

Frescoes in the ancient Roman city, one of Italy’s most popular attractions, fade under the blistering sun or are chipped at by souvenir hunters. Mosaics endure the brunt of tens of thousands of shuffling thongs and sneakers. Teetering columns and walls are propped up by wooden and steel scaffolding. Rusty padlocks deny access to recently restored houses, and custodians seem to be few and far between.

This month the government drafted a retired lawman, Renato Profili, the former prefect of Naples, to map out a strategy to combat neglect and degradation at the site. Mr. Profili has been given special powers for one year so he can bypass the Italian bureaucracy and speedily bolster security and stop the disintegration.

The hope is that many houses and villas now closed to the public and exposed to looting and vandalism will soon be opened and protected.

“Pompeii is a calling card of Italy for foreigners, and it’s important that their impression be positive,” said Italy’s culture minister, Sandro Bondi. He directed Mr. Profili to crack down on “blatant abuses” like unlicensed tour guides and the souvenir vendors who aggressively approach tourists.

BOSTON — The Yankees have tried to find their own Josh Beckett for almost five years, ever since he blanked them in their last World Series game. They have yearned for a dominant starter to match an opponent’s ace, and Friday was a test.

Joba Chamberlain faced Beckett at Fenway Park, and he responded with the finest of his 10 major league starts. Chamberlain worked seven innings, striking out nine, allowing three hits and brushing back Kevin Youkilis again in a 1-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox. It was the Yankees’ seventh victory in a row, and not their only reason to celebrate.

During the game, the Yankees reached an agreement with the Pittsburgh Pirates to acquire outfielder Xavier Nady and the left-handed reliever Dámaso Marte for four minor leaguers, pending the approval of medical results. The deal fortifies the bullpen and the lineup at a time when the Yankees are surging.

Their seven-game winning streak is their longest immediately following the All-Star break since 1947, when they rode an 11-game run to a championship. They have ground to cover in their playoff race now, but when Mariano Rivera completed a five-out save, they pulled within two games of Boston for the American League wild-card lead.

“This is what makes you better; this is why you play the game,” Chamberlain said. “You understand that it’s going to be tough against them, and that’s the way it’s going to be. Josh is an unbelievable pitcher, and we got that one break.”

The break was a two-out single by Jason Giambi that dribbled through the left side of the infield, beating the shift and scoring Bobby Abreu. It was the only run Chamberlain needed to rise to a self-imposed challenge.

The last time he matched up against an ace, Chamberlain faltered first in a loss to Toronto’s Roy Halladay. That bothered him, he said, and motivated him not to be the first to bend.

A growing number of American children are taking drugs for a wide range of chronic conditions related to childhood obesity, according to prescription data from three large organizations.

The numbers, from pharmacy plans Medco Health Solutions, Express Scripts and the marketing data collection company Verispan, indicate that hundreds of thousands of children are taking medication to treat Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and acid reflux — all problems linked to obesity that were practically unheard-of in children two decades ago.

The data, disclosed publicly in recent months or provided at the request of The New York Times, shows that concerns that children will be taking adult medications — heightened recently by a controversial recommendation by a national pediatricians group — are already a reality.

This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that more children, as young as 8, should be given cholesterol-lowering drugs. The recommendation was quickly attacked by some experts as a license to put children on grown-up drugs.

While the drugs do help treat the conditions, some doctors fear they are simply a shortcut fix for a problem better addressed by exercise and diet. Even so, some pharmaceutical companies are developing new versions, including flavored ones, of adult medications for children.

While some of the percentage increases in the three analyses are significant, doctors empha-size that prescriptions of these drugs to children still represent less than 1 percent of their sales.

Researchers working on a NASA mission to understand the interplay of magnetic fields and charged particles blown outward from the Sun have identified the trigger for the colorful electrical storms in the polar regions. They hope this is a step in developing reliable forecasts of geomagnetic storms that can disrupt satellites in orbit and power grids on the ground.

The findings appeared in an article published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.

Scientists have long known that the dancing auroras of color known as the northern and southern lights are generated by charged particles flying from the Sun and interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field, which is then pulled into a windsock shape by the solar wind.

Turbulent storms on the Sun generate extremely bright auroral displays, but even in quieter times, smaller events known as substorms still generate the lights.

“They happen every three or four hours,” said Vassilis Angelopoulos, a professor of earth and space sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, and principal investigator of a NASA mission called Themis, short for Time, History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms. “The Earth’s environment stores energy. Then all of a sudden it releases it.”

Each substorm generates a current of about one million to two million amps over one to two hours, or a total energy equivalent to a magnitude-5 or magnitude-6 earthquake, Dr. Angelopoulos said.

Scientists knew two events that occur in the tail of the magnetic field during substorms, but did not know which event acted as the trigger for the auroras.

It was a little over three years ago that Mr. Jobs spoke those existential words, in a commencement address at Stanford. His thoughts about death came during a portion of his speech in which he publicly discussed — for the one and only time, so far as I can tell — his brush with pancreatic cancer.

He talked about how he had learned in 2004 that he had a tumor on his pancreas. How his doctors told him that he shouldn’t expect to live more than six months. How, after “living with that diagnosis all day,” he had a biopsy that showed that his was a rare form of pancreatic cancer, curable with surgery. “I had the surgery and I’m fine now,” Mr. Jobs told the Stanford graduates. He added, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

It was an uplifting tale, and an inspiring message. It was also less than the whole truth. In fact, Mr. Jobs first discovered he had an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor — which is both rarer and less deadly than other forms of pancreatic cancer — in October 2003. This was a full nine months before he had the surgery to remove it. Why did he wait so long? Because, according to a Fortune magazine article published in May, Mr. Jobs was hoping to beat the cancer with a special diet.