Dispel the Illusion

There's a new hotel coming to Canada, but you won't be able to stay in it. In December, PetSmart Inc. will bring its PetsHotel concept north of the border, starting with two locations in Ottawa. The kitty cottages, poochy cots, "exit" baths and "dog-safe soft-serve ice cream with a side of crunchy biscuits" are for the four-legged set, but the concept was created with "pet parents" in mind.

An estimated crowd of 500 turned out for a Candlelight Prayer Vigil outside George Tiller's infamous late-term abortion mill to kick off the Wichita Awakening Saturday evening. Rev. Rob Schenck led the group in prayer for an end to abortion. Rev. Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition also addressed the group. As music played, the group surrounded the clinic, lifting their hands in prayer that the abortion clinic would close and that abortion would end.

Members of the Bohemian Club began arriving Thursday for the secret society's annual male-bonding session ... Members of the 135-year-old club have included Charles Schwab, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Walter Cronkite and every Republican president in the last century.

Louisiana became the first state to outlaw a late-term abortion procedure today, when Gov. Kathleen Blanco approved legislation allowing doctors to be prosecuted for performing the surgery. The new law allows so-called "partial birth" abortions in only one situation: when failure to perform it would endanger the mother's life. The procedure would be a crime in all other cases, even if the pregnancy is expected to cause health problems for the mother.

The popularity of the morning-after pill Plan B has surged in the year since the federal government approved the sale of the controversial emergency contraceptive without a prescription ... The sharp rise was hailed by women's health and family-planning advocates, who say it illustrates the value of easing access to birth control to help prevent unwanted pregnancies ... But conservative groups that fought the change say they are disturbed by the surging use.

Fewer students also reported ever having had sexual intercourse with 47 percent of high school students in 2005 saying they had sex compared to 54 percent in 1991. The rate remained the same between 2003 and 2005. "The implications for the population are quite positive in terms of their health and their well-being," said Edward Sondik, director of the National Center for Health Statistics, according to The Associated Press. "The lower figure on teens having sex means the risk of sexually transmitted diseases is lower."

The format was supposed to have been badly wounded by the introduction of CDs and killed off completely by the ipod-generation that bought music online. But in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels, the latest phenomenon in a notoriously fickle industry is one nobody dared predict: a vinyl revival. Latest figures show a big jump in vinyl sales in the first half of this year, confirming the anecdotal evidence from specialist shops throughout the UK.

Most teenagers and adults 30 and younger are not following the news closely at all ... “We found that most young adults don’t have an ingrained news habit,” he said. “Most children today, when watching television, are not watching the same TV set that their parents are watching. So even if their parents are watching the news every day, the children are likely to be in another room watching something else and aren’t acquiring the news habit.”