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(Continued from page 32)
• "A large amount of that has been discharged," Kidd said. He said a plan was being developed to remove the remaining oil from the barge, but the removal had not begun.
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Japan's biggest, rapidly aging slum is not on official map or in film festival
• OSAKA, Japan (AP) -- Japan's biggest slum is visible just blocks from bustling restaurants and shops in Osaka, the country's second-largest city. But it cannot be found on official maps.
• Nor did it appear in the recent Osaka Asian Film Festival, after the director of a new movie that is set in the area pulled it, accusing city organizers of censorship.
• Osaka officials asked Shingo Ota to remove scenes and lingo that identify the slum, on the grounds that it was insensitive to residents.
• "To me, what they were asking was a cover-up attempt to make this place non-existent," he said in a recent interview.
• This place is Kamagasaki, home to day laborers, the jobless and homeless, where one in three are on welfare. About 25,000 people live in this compact area, mostly single men who stay in free shelters or dozens of cheap dorms that charge as little as 800 yen ($8) a night.
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Hundreds of same-sex couples marry before federal appeals court halts gay marriage in Michigan
• MASON, Mich. (AP) -- MASON, Mich. (AP) -- An appeals court reinstituted Michigan's constitutional ban on gay marriage, but not before several hundred same-sex couples rushed to the state's county clerk's offices to get hitched.
• The order on Saturday by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati to at least temporarily restore the ban that Michigan voters approved in 2004 came after Glenna DeJong, 53, and Marsha Caspar, 51, of Lansing, were the first on Saturday to arrive at the Ingham County Courthouse in the central Michigan city of Mason. DeJong and Caspar, who have been together for 27 years, received their license and were married by Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum.
• "I figured in my lifetime it would happen," Caspar said. "But now, when it happens now, it's just overwhelming. I still can't believe it. I don't think it's hit me yet."
• Similar nuptials followed one after another, at times en masse, in at least four of (Continued on page 34)
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