SANTA CRUZ, Ariz. – Authorities rescued an injured pilot who was trapped for about eight hours in the wreckage of an experimental plane that crashed on an Indian reservation south of Phoenix.

Authorities say the pilot radioed the Glendale Airport around 9 a.m. Wednesday, saying the home-built Varieze (very-ease) was experiencing power failure and was going down about 25 miles southeast of Glendale.

Search crews looked for the plane throughout the day and finally found the wreckage about 5 p.m. on the west side of the Gila River Indian Community reservation.

Gila River Fire Department officials say rescue crews had to remove the underside of the single-engine plane to free the unidentified pilot, who remained conscious through the ordeal.

Authorities said he was in critical condition Wednesday night at a local hospital.

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BEIJING (Reuters) –
Chinese firms selling advertising space on Google’s search pages have demanded clarity about the Internet company’s plans in China, warning they will demand compensation if it shuts its Chinese portal.

The warning from Chinese online advertising sales companies comes amid signs that Google Inc may soon move to close Google.cn, more than two months after it hit back against sophisticated hacking attacks from inside China and said it was no longer willing to offer a censored search engine.

Google and China have been tight-lipped since then about any talks to reconcile their differences.

A letter purportedly from 27 Google-authorized sales representative companies says the wait has gone on for too long, eroding their business, scaring off employees and putting big investments in jeopardy.

“We see a constant stream of information but cannot predict the future, we see business sliding, but there is nothing we can do,” says the letter, which was also posted on a website affiliated with China’s central television. “We are waiting now in incomparable pain and disquiet.”

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BEIJING – China without Google — a prospect that looks increasingly likely — could mean no more maps on mobile phones. A free music service that has helped to fight piracy might be in jeopardy. China’s fledgling Web outfits would face less pressure to improve, eroding their ability to one day compete abroad.

The extent of a possible Google Inc. pullout from China in its dispute with the communist government over censorship and hacking is unclear. But on top of a local search site that Google says it may close, services that might be affected range from advertising support for Chinese companies to online entertainment.

“If Google leaves, it’s a lose-lose scenario, instead of Google loses and others gain,” said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a Beijing research firm.

Chinese news reports say Google is on the verge of shutting its China site, Google.cn, and has stopped censoring results. A Google spokesman, Scott Rubin, denied censorship had stopped and would not confirm whether Google.cn might close.

“We have not changed our operations in China,” Rubin said by phone from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. CEO Eric Schmidt said last week something would happen soon, and Rubin said he had no further details.

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Meet the first-nighters of the new Broadway comedy Looped, starring Valerie Harper.

Gangway, Daahlings! Tallulah’s back in town, arriving three sheets to the wind March 14 in rickety high heels at the Lyceum, Broadway’s oldest theatre and only a few months younger than what La Bankhead would have been (108, if you please).
She arrived in Looped, in all senses of that word, in the form of TV’s former Rhoda Morgenstern, Valerie Harper, dropping the F-bomb the second she hit the stage as if to eradicate any image you might have of her. The only constant is the kind of classic comic timing you can set a Swiss watch by. Not for nothing was her mother on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Rhoda” played by Nancy Walker.

This timing gets a rat-a-tat-tat workout in the vehicle Matthew Lombardo has scripted and Rob Ruggiero has directed. It catches Tallulah on what would be her last day of film work, at a Los Angeles recording studio trying to approximate an impossibly contorted line of expositional dialogue for a 1965 penny-dreadful British horror flick titled, Tallulah-like, “Die! Die! My Darling!”

Naturally, she reported to work thoroughly sloshed and tardy, much to the teeth-grinding consternation of the sound engineer on duty (Michael Mulheren) and the poor flunky assigned to squeeze that single line of dialogue out of her (Brian Hutchison). After many failed felled swoops at the assignment, she stalked off the soundstage, returning after intermission contrite and coked-up (“There was the longest line in the ladies’ room,” she explained, dusting her nose a bit). And the beat goes on, one long Ta-loop-de-loop till relative recording success is met.

After the play, first-nighters retired to Tallulah’s favorite saloon, Sardi’s, where the after-party was splashed over three floors and remembered Tallulah lines bounced off the walls at every level. Press was poised in the cubbyhole bar by the entrance.

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Seoul, South Korea –
There once was a time when horseless carriages were jeered on city streets. Suh Nam-pyo, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), invokes that image as he introduces another technological breakthrough: a motor vehicle that consumes no fuel, gets electrical charges while in motion without plugging in — and then goes “anywhere.”

“Many people said it couldn’t be done,” says Mr. Suh, for 35 years a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “In spite of many negative comments, we have shown it is a viable concept.”

Suh introduced OLEV, the “on-line electric vehicle,” on a circular drive within the spacious wooded confines of Seoul Grand Park, a zoo and amusement area on the southern fringe of the capital. The technology powers a trolley train of three or four open cars, a converted kiddy ride. Without having to travel on a fixed route, it runs without stopping. A bar code on a computer screen on the front seats lets passengers know when an underground cable, connected to an ordinary electric grid, is recharging the battery via powerful magnets.

The magnetic field is so strong that the train’s battery takes the charge without the slightest sign of movement. No part of the train other than the wheels comes closer than about 7 inches to the ground – a difficult technological achievement considering that the power is passing through a layer of air.

The wheels, the only contacts with earth, move the vehicle along, noiselessly, at a maximum speed, in this early version, of 30 or 40 mlles per hour..“The battery will power the cable when the electrical cable is absent,” says Suh. “We feel this is the way to transform the transportation industry, not only automobiles but other forms of transportation.”

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