Saturday,  June 30, 2012 • Vol. 12--No. 352 • 25 of 32 •  Other Editions

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• The drivers' education course at WHS recognizes that and incorporates the problem into its instruction process. Students get behind the wheel of a golf cart in a parking lot and attempt to navigate through an obstacle course marked by highway cones. While driving the cart, they either eat an ice cream cone, use a cell phone or do something else that's distracting. Not surprisingly, obstacles are hit more often than not.
• Hopefully, students will learn and remember the lesson from the parking lot and realize the problems distracted driving can cause in the real world. Instead of a highway cone getting clipped it could just as easily be another vehicle or a person walking down the road. It's a good lesson to learn and remember, and one students hopefully will take with them. That's why the driver's ed program has adapted its instruction to the times and real world situations new drivers are facing. It's something us older drivers would do well to learn and remember as well.
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AP News in Brief
Russia, US struggle to overcome differences at last-ditch Syria talks in Geneva

• GENEVA (AP) -- Russia's determination to preserve its last remaining ally in the Middle East collided head-on with U.S. and other Western powers' desire to replace Syrian President Bashar Assad with a democracy at a pivotal U.N.-brokered confer

ence on Saturday.
• Efforts at bridging the Russia-U.S. divide hold the key to international envoy Kofi Annan's plan for easing power from Assad's grip through a political solution that ends 16 months of violence in a country verging on a full-blown civil war, in one of the world's most unstable regions.
• Without agreement among the major powers on how to form a transitional government for the country, Assad's regime -- Iran's closest ally -- would be emboldened to try to remain in power indefinitely, and that would also complicate the U.S. aim of halting Iran's nuclear goals.
• At talks Friday night, top U.S. and Russian diplomats remained deadlocked over the negotiating text to agree on guidelines and principles for "a Syria-led transition." Annan, a former U.N. chief whose efforts to end the Syrian crisis have thus far fallen short, arrived Saturday morning without speaking to reporters.
• British Foreign Secretary William Hague, arriving at Saturday's conference, urged Russia and China, which is following the Russian lead, to join Western na

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