Des Moines

If you think those aerial photographs of Des Moines under water were scary and heart-rending, wait till you see Ocean City under water.Coastal engineers, planners, environmentalists, insurers predict that if a major hurricane hits Maryland's beach resort head on, damage will be enormous. Hurricane experts believe a new cycle of heavy activity began last year and will last for perhaps 25 seasons. The odds are pretty good -- or bad -- that a hurricane will hit Middle Atlantic resort areas at least once in that cycle.

Folks have seen the sign at the Can Company announcing a BangBang Mongolian Grill for the old Austin Grill space. The website address on the banner www.bangbangmongolian.com leads to a restaurant by that name in Des Moines. Franchise opportunities are mentioned on the website, but, so far, far as I can tell, there's only one Bang Bang Mongolian Grill, the one on Mills Civic Parkway, just a quick distance west of I-35 and southeast of Jordan Creek Town Center. What a bunch of hick-sounding names, right?

Des Moines, Iowa, knocked off Springfield, Ill., as the nation's most affordable housing market for the fourth quarter of 2000, according to the National Association of Home Builders' Housing Opportunity Index. The NAHB's index shows what percentage of the homes sold in an area can be bought by a family earning the median income. Nationwide, families earning the median income of $50,200 could afford to buy 59.3 percent of homes sold - up more than 1 percentage point from the previous quarter.

On January 31, 2010 HARRY CHRISTOPHER CARROLL, devoted father of Susan Carroll Thompson and her husband Raymond Thompson and the late Chip Carroll Wyrde; dear brother of Timothy L. Carroll and Cynthia C. Koontz; grandfather of Robert and Kaitlyn Thompson. A memorial service will be held Friday 11:00 A.M. at Epiphany Episcopal Church, 2216 Pot Spring Road, Timonium, MD 21093. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 4002018, Des Moines, IA 50340-2018 or the Diocese of Maryland, 4 E. University Parkway, Baltimore,

MIAMI -- Ann Moshenek, waiting to board her American Airlines flight, is laden with two jam-packed carry-on bags. A missionary, she has checked another two suitcases full of clothes, medicines and supplies to take back to her home in the Costa Rican jungle."

1 day until Election Day THE TRAIL DEMOCRATIC TICKET Sen. John Kerry will visit Milwaukee, Detriot and Cleveland today, and will stay overnight in La Crosse, Wis. Sen John Edwards will visit St. Paul, MInn.; Des Moines, Iowa; Cincinnati;Pensacola and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., today. He will stay overnight in Fort Lauderdale. REPUBLICAN TICKET President Bush will visit Wilmington, Ohio; Burgettstown, Pa.; Milwaukee; Des Moines and Sioux City, Iowa; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Dallas today.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Normally, news conferences don't cover bathroom topics. Mayors don't discuss flushing, say, with the same ease as infrastructure. And engineers don't grin and talk about toilet overload.But with 250,000 people without water since last weekend, officials in Des Moines found themselves facing some unusual problems -- among them how to advise a whole city on the delicate topic of when to flush.So it was that in news conferences last week, officials soberly discussed "solid waste."

The Rev. Carl H. Mau Jr., 72, a sixth-generation American minister who led the international Lutheran movement during a critical period of realignment and initiative in the 1970s and '80s, died of cancer Friday in Des Moines, Wash.

Lee Hadley, 60, an author who collaborated with Annabelle Irwin to write the Hadley Irwin novels for teen-agers, died of cancer Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa. The women had written 13 novels in the past 15 years, all of them featuring lead characters who rise above hurtful circumstances.Ralph A. Hart, 91, former president of Heublein Inc. and Colgate Palmolive International, died of cancer Tuesday in Delray Beach, Fla.

When the Raccoon River inundated the Des Moines water treatment plant last weekend, the threat of disease hung over the flood-ravaged Iowa city until a Timonium-based maker of self-contained filtration machines provided thirsty residents with fresh water.Michael J. Glynn, president and chief executive officer of Memtec America Corp., said yesterday that when he saw news reports Monday about the loss of the Des Moines water system, he contacted government officials about sending some of his company's "small package plants" to the scene.

When investor Warren Buffett bought MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. for $2 billion in 2000, he bet it would be a good long-term investment even though shares of the company had recently plunged 21 percent. His bet turned out to be right. MidAmerican has expanded from its Des Moines base to become an aggressive deal-maker and, with yesterday's announced acquisition of Constellation Energy, North America's largest utility. It has steadily expanded through traditional utilities - the latest deal would give it 8.7 million utility customers from coast to coast - while becoming a leader in wind-powered energy.

DES MOINES, Iowa --Tonight, the voters are hitting the reset button on the presidential campaign. Both the Democratic and Republican contests will be reshaped nationally, perhaps in surprising ways, by Iowa's caucuses, the first voter test of the '08 race. Key questions surrounding the most wide-open presidential election in decades are about to get real answers. How big a threat does Illinois Sen. Barack Obama pose to Hillary Rodham Clinton's national standing? Has the Democratic contest become a two-person fight already, or are John Edwards' long-shot chances still alive?

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Surveying a sea of pumped-up activists at a campaign rally, Sen. Barack Obama asks if there are undecided voters in the crowd. Hundreds of Iowa hands pop up. Converting these last-minute deciders - as many as one in four caucus-goers aren't locked in yet, according to Obama's campaign and others - could be key to winning Iowa, the first voter test of the 2008 presidential campaign, on Thursday night. Obama has widened his lead over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in the Democratic race, according to a new Des Moines Register poll released last night, which showed him with 32 percent among likely caucus-goers to 25 percent for Clinton and 24 percent for Edwards.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The presidential campaign erupted yesterday into a full-blown debate over how best to stabilize Pakistan as candidates vied in the few days before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses to show who was best prepared to lead the war on terrorism. Following Thursday's assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates spent much of yesterday laying out specific policies they'd follow now - or, for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and two former Republican governors, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, trying to persuade voters that they're qualified to play in that league.

DES MOINES -- Tom Tancredo, the Colorado congressman best known for his bellicose views on immigration, pulled out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday and threw his support behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He also took credit for moving what he described as the "perilous consequences of massive, uncontrolled illegal immigration" to the forefront of the presidential campaign, at what was likely the best-attended news conference of his back-of-the-pack run. "Just this month, The Economist, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and even The New York Times have grudgingly accredited my campaign with forcing the issue of immigration to the forefront of the national stage," he said before a thicket of television cameras and reporters in a hotel ballroom here.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- As a long pre-primary campaign nears an end, the presidential contest has been turned upside down. In both parties, the ground has shifted drastically under the leading contenders. Much of what strategists thought they knew is now in doubt, and the nominations are very much up for grabs. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, once seen as the inevitable Democratic nominee, has been caught by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, according to recent early-state polling. At least as breathtaking has been the Republican upheaval.

On January 31, 2010 HARRY CHRISTOPHER CARROLL, devoted father of Susan Carroll Thompson and her husband Raymond Thompson and the late Chip Carroll Wyrde; dear brother of Timothy L. Carroll and Cynthia C. Koontz; grandfather of Robert and Kaitlyn Thompson. A memorial service will be held Friday 11:00 A.M. at Epiphany Episcopal Church, 2216 Pot Spring Road, Timonium, MD 21093. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 4002018, Des Moines, IA 50340-2018 or the Diocese of Maryland, 4 E. University Parkway, Baltimore,

IRS took action in '80s against Forbes advisersWASHINGTON -- Two of Steve Forbes' campaign advisers ran a nonprofit group that was stripped of its tax-exempt status after authorities concluded it had not delivered the projects it promised donors.Carter Wrenn and Tom Ellis, who are helping Mr. Forbes' campaign, were co-directors of the Coalition for Freedom Inc. The group raised more than $1 million in the mid-1980s, and had been granted tax-exempt status as a nonprofit educational group.But the Internal Revenue Service concluded that more than half the received donations went to a consulting firm controlled by Mr. Wrenn and Mr. Ellis, according U.S. Tax Court records.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- It was approaching midnight when Barack Obama climbed onto the spotlighted stage in a darkened Iowa arena and unleashed his most sweeping attack yet on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was seated nearby. With surgical precision, he struck at many of her perceived weaknesses in the Democratic primary race, including "voting like George Bush Republicans" on Iraq and Iran and adopting evasive, "poll-driven" positions on issues. To roars of approval from supporters, Obama said it was time to replace "the same old Washington textbook campaigns" with "change that is not just a slogan."

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Iowa's first same-sex couple to get married here tied the knot yesterday in a surprise breakthrough for gay rights advocates in this traditionally conservative Midwestern state. As wedding ceremonies go, the Rev. Mark Stringer admits the event he presided over in a front yard yesterday morning was "really brief" and lacked the usual lofty and sometimes somber oratory used at weddings. But taking advantage of a narrow window created by a Polk County judge - an opening that closed hours later when the judge agreed to stay his ruling - Stringer administered vows to university students Timothy McQuillan and Sean Fritz in what is believed to be Iowa's first same-sex marriage.