SAN FRANCISCO
Google submits bid to connect whole city
Google Inc. wants to connect all of San Francisco to the Internet with a free wireless service, creating a springboard for the online-search-engine leader to leap into the telecommunications industry.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company filed an application Friday to provide wireless, or “WiFi,” service that would enable anyone in San Francisco to connect to the Internet.
Google submitted its 100-page bid in response to a request from Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is looking for a company to finance a free wireless network to lower the financial barriers to Internet access in his city.
More than a dozen other bidders are competing with Google.
WASHINGTON
Dems to add 2 states to early primaries
Democrats trying to change their presidential primaries for 2008 agreed Saturday to recommend that at least two other states join Iowa and New Hampshire in voting during the opening days of the nominating campaign.
That expansion, debated before a commission considering changes in the primary calendar, is intended to provide more racial and geographic diversity to an opening process now dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire.
Those states, representing about 1.5 percent of the country’s population, have residents who are mostly white.
The additional states, expected to be named later, were likely to include a smaller state from the South and a smaller state from the Southwest or West.
NEW YORK
Man charged with murdering girl’s mom
A Queens man was charged Saturday with murdering his live-in girlfriend, a week after the woman’s 4-year-old daughter was found walking down a city street alone in the middle of the night, police said.
Cesar Ascarrunz, 32, was arrested on murder charges two days after he was picked up by investigators, police said. Authorities were still searching Saturday for 26-year-old Monica Lozada’s remains.
More than a dozen tips came in to police after child-welfare officials took the unusual step of putting the child, Valerie Lozada, on television Thursday, in the hopes it would produce more information. In the appearance, Valerie described her mother as looking “like a princess.”
Lozada was last seen at the apartment she shared with Ascarrunz on Sept. 24, at 11:45 p.m., authorities said. A little more than an hour later, Valerie was found on a Queens street, shivering and barefoot. She told residents that her father dropped her off and drove away, but showed no signs of abuse. She remained in foster care Saturday.
AURORA, Ill.
Relative questioned about 4 found dead
A 28-year-old man was being questioned in the deaths of four family members, whose bodies were found in an upscale suburban neighborhood that boasts round-the-clock security patrols and sprawling homes.
The man, who was not identified, was picked up Friday near Portage, Wis., about 175 miles from his home in Naperville, Ill., authorities said.
“There was no resistance,” said Columbia County, Wis., Sheriff Steven Rowe. The man was arrested on an outstanding warrant from Illinois, but details were not released.
Police in Aurora, about 30 miles west of Chicago, found the bodies Thursday in a two-story brick house surrounded by well-manicured flower beds and a trim, sloping lawn. Authorities were checking on the residents after they didn’t show up for work.
WASHINGTON
Postmaster thinking of another rate hike
Gasoline prices that have millions of Americans digging deeper into their pockets are spurring thoughts by Postal Service officials that an increase in mail rates may be needed in 2007, following one already planned for next year.
The fact that it costs the mail agency $8 million for every penny increase in gasoline prices for its 212,000 vehicles is a major factor in a postal-rate increase expected in 2007, after one next year, Postmaster General John Potter said Friday.
