G8 News Blog @newzblogz.com

Shakespeare scholar L.C. Knights wrote a provocative essay in the '60s titled "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?" His purpose was to mock critics who waste time on such unanswerable questions, as if characters in books had real lives beyond the printed page.

But crime novelists, I've found, especially those with long-running series and recurring characters, really do seem to think inkspots talk. Talk, walk, breathe, sweat, bleed and brood. Always brooding. Like a real person.

Take, for example, Scotland's Ian Rankin. "I still don't think I've unpeeled all the layers of the onion," he says earnestly of John Rebus, the Edinburgh detective inspector he introduced 20 years ago. The Naming of the Dead, the 17th installment in the Rebus series, has just been released in this country.

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John Larson's legacy at General Motors may not be the vehicles he gave life

to, but rather the ones he helped kill.

As general manager of the Buick-Pontiac-GMC Division, he dumped the

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In his letter to The Chronicle April 19, Darrell Wilson takes me to task for not providing references for statements I made regarding Alaska's permafrost and the melting glaciers and ice packs of Greenland and Antarctica (page A8, "Claims About Ice Pack Melting Are Unsubstantiated".

Frankly, given the frequent reports in the nation's news media (including many in the pages of The Chronicle), they hardly seemed necessary.

About permafrost: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's State of the Arctic report says that permafrost temperatures continue to rise. Observations over the past 20 years show increases from 0.5?-2.0? C. The "active layer" (the relatively thin layer of ground between the surface and permafrost that undergoes seasonal freezing and thawing) is also unstable.

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The Bush administration on Monday welcomed the election of French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, a pro-American conservative, as an opportunity to strengthen relations with France.

"We certainly look forward to cooperation with the French," White House press secretary Tony Snow said Monday. "And we know that there are going to be areas of disagreement. But on the other hand, there are certainly real opportunities to work together on a broad range of issues."

Sarkozy was elected president of France Sunday with a mandate to chart a new course for an economically sluggish nation struggling to incorporate immigrants. He reached out to the United States in his victory speech, a sign of his desire to break the tension of U.S.-French relations that took hold under the outgoing leader, Jacques Chirac, particularly over the war in Iraq.

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The Bush administration on Monday welcomed the election of French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, a pro-American conservative, as an opportunity to strengthen relations with France.

"We certainly look forward to cooperation with the French," White House press secretary Tony Snow said Monday. "And we know that there are going to be areas of disagreement. But on the other hand, there are certainly real opportunities to work together on a broad range of issues."

Sarkozy was elected president of France Sunday with a mandate to chart a new course for an economically sluggish nation struggling to incorporate immigrants. He reached out to the United States in his victory speech, a sign of his desire to break the tension of U.S.-French relations that took hold under the outgoing leader, Jacques Chirac, particularly over the war in Iraq.

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