Santa Cruz

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- One of Silicon Valley's least-known but most striking success stories isn't in the valley at all but high on a hill overlooking Santa Cruz.Considering the accomplishments of the Santa Cruz Operation during the 12 years since its founding, one would think that these should be the very best of times.SCO pioneered and now dominates one of computing's fastest-growing niches -- putting the Unix operating system on Intel-based desktop computers. Thousands of businesses, from small floral shops and real estate offices to huge chains such as Radio Shack and Taco Bell, run big chunks of their operations on SCO software every day.Privately held SCO's revenues were $135 million for its most recent fiscal year, up 30 percent from last year, putting it in the top flight of U.S. software companies.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Tabloid television reporters know where he lives. Anonymous female admirers phone at all hours. Scars that look like licorice whips crisscross his body. Friends have mailed him San Jose Sharks underwear.Life's a little different these days for Eric Larsen, the soft-spoken San Jose computer programmer who became an instant celebrity three months ago after surviving a great white shark attack while surfing near Santa Cruz."I've got a great story to tell at cocktail parties now," Larsen said this week.

Two adults and a child were killed and two other people were critically injured today when two cars crashed in the northbound lanes of I-95 near the off-ramp to Aberdeen, officials said.A greater tragedy was averted, an official said, when a buscarrying 31 junior high school students from California swerved to avoid the crashed automobiles and rumbled nearly 100 feet down the gentle slope of a grassy embankment and stayed upright.One of the students was injured when he broke his ankle."The bus driver did an outstanding job not hitting those cars and then keeping the bus upright when it went off the right shoulder and down the embankment," said Chief Michael E. Bennett of the Aberdeen Volunteer Fire Department.

The California cold snap has caused major damage to the state's $8 billion fruit and vegetable industry, destroying substantial portions of the citrus crop and affecting lettuce, broccoli, avocado and artichoke crops from San Diego in the south to Santa Cruz in the north, experts say.Consumers will almost certainly face sharp price increases at grocery produce departments, and growers are exhausted from several nights of trying in vain to raise temperatures in...

On the globe the Galapagos Archipelago appears remote and unapproachable. The 13 large islands and more than 40 smaller one lie unto themselves, an isolated cluster, about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.But because TAME Airlines sends a jet once a day, six days a week, from Ecuador's capital of Quito, about 40,000 to 60,000 tourists yearly enter an environment Jacques-Yves Cousteau likened to "being alive when the earth was young."The plane lands on desolate Baltra. Using runways built by U.S. forces during World War II, the aircraft taxis near an open-air terminal, where visitors pay $40 for a park permit.