3-D television: a new device, a new language

Let's say you've started lusting for a 3-D television.

Never mind that when you get to the store to sample 3-D TV, you discover that World Cup soccer in 3-D may not grab you like a scene from the 3-D animated film "Monsters vs. Aliens." The soccer match seems disappointingly flat in its wide shots. "Monsters vs. Aliens" immerses you in its animated antics.

You've just learned a basic lesson of 3-D: It isn't all the same.

But when it's good, it's very good. It sucks you in. It's in your face, you're in its face. Or so it seems. No wonder you're picturing one of these sleek, wide-screen beauties in your own living room.

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Central Idaho; report

SUN VALLEY CENTER FOR THE ARTS LOSES A VALUED MEMBER

The Sun Valley Center for the Arts's former director of visual arts is moving on. Jennifer Gately has been named Portland Museum of Art's new curator of Northwest art. As director of visual arts, Gatley will be the museum's first full-time curator devoted to this branch of art. As her first project, she will undertake the organization of the 2006 Oregon Biennial which takes place July 29 through October 8.

SVCA may be losing its director of visual arts, but it is gaining a new part-time public relations assistant in Laura Caruso. She was recently the director of publications for the Denver Art Museum and her …

Report: French intelligence operation dismantles support network for al-Qaida branch

A French intelligence operation has dismantled a logistical support network of the al-Qaida branch that claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing at Algeria's U.N. offices, a news report said Thursday.

Le Figaro newspaper reported that eight men working in connection with al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa were detained Tuesday in the Paris area and in the region around the Normandy city of Rouen.

The Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment on the report.

Le Figaro said the DST counterintelligence service worked for months on the operation to dismantle the logistical support network. At suspects' homes, police …

Dilemma in Denver

There are two competing groups when it comes to public opinion on Tim Tebow.

The first group thinks Tebow is God's gift to humanity and that his NFL quarterbacking skills will catch up to his holiness if the Denver Broncos ever give him a chance.

The second group is creeped out by the first group.

Tebow isn't the best quarterback on his team. That would be Kyle Orton, the former Bear whose numbers the last two years are better than the player he (and some high draft picks) were traded for: Jay Cutler.

But the Broncos find themselves in a very awkward position because they took Tebow with their first-round pick last year, well above where most teams had …

WHO'S A HERO?

Claim casts doubt on teenage rescuer's story

So who was the hero? A cryptic e-mail sent to reporters last week accused Brooke Garcia of trying to steal the credit for someone else's act of heroism.

A fight over the title of hero is rare, according to Idaho State Police spokesman Rick Ohnsman.

He also believes that not a word of the protest is true. He'd reviewed the e-mail's claims, that someone other than Garcia had saved a 3-year-old boy from a flaming car.

The state police investigated the crash, Ohnsman said, and found no reason to doubt previous accounts of the story. By now, it's an old one: An SUV swerved on Interstate 84. The driver overcorrected. The …

Explosion and Fire at Idaho Plant Kills 1

BOISE, Idaho - An explosion and fire Friday at a building being converted into a biodiesel plant killed one man and injured the victim's father and another employee, state police said.

Blaise Black, 25, was killed. He had been welding on top of a biodiesel storage tank at Blue Sky Biodiesel at the time of the blast, state police spokesman Rick Ohnsman said. The tank contained an unknown amount of the fuel, and the blast set off another, smaller one and a fire, he said.

Black's father, Rob, who tried to …

Aussie official: Glue on toilet seat a 'sick joke'

A man who used a public toilet in a shopping mall was taken to a hospital to have the toilet seat removed from his backside after someone smeared it with glue in what an official condemned Monday as a sick joke.

Police urged possible witnesses to come forward after the 58-year-old man was humiliated in the northeastern city of Cairns by the prank.

An ambulance was called to help the man after he was found stuck by fast-acting adhesive glue to a toilet seat on Saturday …