NFL NOT IN A RUSH

Past words come back to bite

Talk-radio mogul Rush Limbaugh has spent his career testing the limits of free speech, and now he's found the dividing line: the point at which his mouth hurts his business partners' ability to make money.

After it became clear that Limbaugh's bid to buy the St. Louis Rams would receive little support from National Football League owners, the provocative political commentator was dropped from the group of investors hoping to buy the team.

STILL KICKING

Columbia Inn Round Table lives on

More than eight years after the closing of Kapiolani Boulevard's fabled Columbia Inn, two dozen or so of the regulars at the Round Table reunited at Murphy's Bar & Grill for pau hana Wednesday.

Columbia Inn owner Gene Kaneshiro organized the get-together, and future renewals are planned before too many of the grayed and graying imbibers relocate to the Round Table in the sky.

I'M MELTING!

Ten years from now, it could be a whole new world

The North Pole without ice? Unbelievable as that sounds, it will become a reality within 10 years, acccording to explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months.The Catlin Arctic Survey team found that summer sea ice is quickly melting, due to global warming.

“;The area is now more likely to become open water each summer, bringing forward the potential date when the summer sea ice will be completely gone,”; said professor Peter Wadhams of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, which analyzed the data.

He said the information backs the new consensus that the Arctic will be open sea and ice-free in summer within 20 years, with much of the meltdown coming within 10 years.

The trickle-down effects are huge — on the Earth's climate system and flooding, as well as on resource development and shipping routes.