Access Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail from AOL.com

AOL added a feature to its Web site on Wednesday that lets users access several Web-based e-mail accounts directly from AOL.com.

A window on the right side of AOL.com now features boxes that lets users sign in to Yahoo! Mail, Gmail.com, and Hotmail.com. The move is part of a larger revamp of the company’s main site, which will soon include new features to give users more control over displayed content, as well as custom feeds from social networking sites, local news, and RSS enabled sites on AOL.com.

After you sign in and give AOL permission to access your outside accounts, the boxes will notify you when there are new messages. You can mouse over the boxes and get a preview of new messages waiting in your Yahoo! and Gmail inboxes, but Hotmail does not support e-mail preview.

If you click on an e-mail message, a pop-up browser window will take you to the full Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail inboxes. The AOL.com boxes also provide a direct “compose e-mail” link that will navigate directly to the compose screen.

Read more: Access Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail from AOL.com

A Convoy Heads for Gori to Investigate Rumors of Plunder

OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia, Aug. 13 — Near a sign reading “J. Stalin’s Home Country,” Russian military vehicles lumbered along the highway, rifles pointing out from drivers’ windows. Most of the soldiers inside looked stony-eyed at the civilian cars going past. But a few nodded and gave casual waves, as if their presence there were no big deal.

It was a big deal for Alexandre Lomaia, secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council. Along with Estonian Ambassador Toomas Lukk, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and a group of Georgian and foreign journalists, he had come hoping to see for himself the place where hostile troops were said to be ravaging what was left of the town.

“There were numerous reports that the Russian regular army let the irregulars into the city this morning, and immediately after that, we started getting desperate calls from the people, saying, ‘Help us, they are looting, they are humiliating us, they are crushing our houses.’ “

The “irregulars,” according to Lomaia, were Cossacks, Chechens and — perhaps most terrifying for Georgians in this conflict — Ossetians. Ossetians and Georgians fought a vicious ethnic war in the early 1990s. The current conflict was ignited last week in South Ossetia.

Read more: A Convoy Heads for Gori to Investigate Rumors of Plunder

More drilling is part of a strategy that works

I do not understand how anyone can say that drilling for offshore oil and oil elsewhere will not affect our situation. I also disagree when it is said it will not have an effect for years.

Let’s turn back the clock about 35 years. The oil gangsters of OPEC decided to cut the production of crude oil and drove up the price. The United States then decided to allocate several billion dollars to exploration for oil and for alternative energies. When the oil gangsters realized the United States was serious about this, they opened up the oil faucets and drove the price of crude oil back down, and in the process made that several-billion-dollar investment in new oil and energy sources unattractive.

Read more: More drilling is part of a strategy that works

Library as community is worth the taxes

Two starkly different libraries - the Clarendon branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library in Setauket - stand like friendly bookends at opposite ends of my life. And they came to mind this week as I read Randi F. Marshall’s detailed and well crafted look at the costs and the services of libraries on Long Island.

Her hard work constitutes a real public service, allowing library patrons to find in one Newsday database useful information about their own library, in comparison with others. If people use that information to make library trustees and staffs spend their tax dollars more wisely, that would be great.

But I suspect that a lot of folks are something like me: They love their local libraries so intensely that the taxes don’t bother them much. That’s probably why library budgets get rejected so much less frequently than school budgets do. In my case, I pay less than $300 for the services of Emma Clark. That’s a bargain compared to what I spent on Mets tickets this year, and Emma’s a lot more reliable than the Mets bullpen.

Read more: Library as community is worth the taxes

Vintage BMWs to rumble through county

Aptos will be overrun by vintage BMWs this weekend — 65 to be exact.

The BMW Vintage & Classic Car Club of America is holding a road rally for vintage BMW automobiles and motorcycles through Northern California, beginning Thursday at the Seascape Resort in Aptos.

Sixty-five vintage BMWs, manufactured between 1928 to 2002, are expected to participate in this year’s California Marathon, a rally which covers 2,000 miles of California roads. The rally starts in Aptos, then heads north to Eureka and southeast to South Lake Tahoe before returning to Aptos.

“We wanted to have the rally in California because it’s a wonderful place,” said club president Goetz Pfafflin, referring to the scenic Northern California roads with views of the Pacific Ocean.

This is the club’s first rally in California and its second in the United States. The club was established in 1973, but reorganized in 2003.

Pfafflin said the club’s first rally grew out of a European rally where he and seven others brought their vintage BMWs to Germany in 2001. They drove 2,500 miles through 11 countries before returning home.

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So, you want to be a writer?

When people hear that I’m a novelist, I get one comment more than any other. “I’m a physician (or a third-grade teacher, or a venture capitalist) but what I really want to do is write.” A mother of three muses: “I’ve always loved writing since I was a little girl.” A physicist declares, “I’ve got a great idea for a mystery-thriller-philosophical-love story - if I only had the time.”

I nod, resisting the temptation to reply: “And I have a great idea for a unified field theory - if I just had a moment to work it out on paper.”

Book sales are down, but creative writing enrollments are booming. The longing to write knows no bounds.

A lactation consultant told me, “I have a story inside of me. I mean, I know everybody has a story, but I really have a story.”

Read more: So, you want to be a writer?

Sinti Leader: Racism, Discrimination Remain Problems for Europe

The head of Germany’s Central Council for Sinti and Roma told DW-WORLD.DE that not enough is being done to root out the causes of prejudice in Europe. He said many Sinti and Roma integrate by denying their ethnicity.

Romani Rose is the head of the German Central Council for Sinti and Roma. He has fought for official recognition of the Sinti and Roma suffering under the Nazi government. Thirteen of his family members were murdered in death camps.

DW-WORLD.DE: Czech neo-Nazis want to resettle 200,000 Roma in India and in Italy authorities are fingerprinting all Sinti and Roma on the basis of their ethnicity. Arson occurs at Sinti and Roma camps. The German Central Council for Sinti and Roma has said racism is growing. Are Sinti and Roma the new scapegoats of the European Union?

Read more: Sinti Leader: Racism, Discrimination Remain Problems for Europe

American Airlines waives third bag fee for traveling soldiers

American Airlines Inc. said Wednesday it will waive fees on third checked bags when the passenger is an active member of the U.S. military, effective immediately.

Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp. (NYSE: AMR), the parent company of American Airlines, says fees on first and second checked bags have always been waived for active-duty soldiers. The carrier also said it knew soldiers traveling on duty were reimbursed by the military for fees paid beyond the first two bags.

Tom Del Valle, American’s senior vice president-airport services said Wednesday “after recently, hearing of the burden the military reimbursement process put on soliders traveling to war zones, the choice for us to forego payment for a third check bag from the Department of Defense was clear.”

American says the company’s previous policy allowed military personnel to travel with up to 190 pounds of luggage at no charge, which included a 100-pound bag, a 50-pound checked bag and another 40 pound-carry on bag.

Read more: American Airlines waives third bag fee for traveling soldiers

Lights go out in Georgia

RUSSIA’S lopsided five-day war with Georgia was nasty, brutish and short – to borrow philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ view of life. And as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called a halt to fighting Tuesday, Moscow had achieved its war aims.

Georgian forces were driven from the separatist South Ossetia enclave that wants to join Russian North Ossetia. Georgia’s U.S.-trained military was routed and “disorganized” (in Mr. Medvedev’s words), having fled to the outskirts of their capital, Tbilisi.

The Russians pursued them into Georgia’s undisputed territory, destroying bases, airfields and command centres, bombing urban areas and taking control of the main east-west highway.

Georgia’s ambitions to join NATO and the European Union have been set back and its ability to offer Europe a secure oil-and-gas pipeline route that isn’t controlled by Russia has also been cast in doubt.

By humbling and destabilizing a troublesome U.S. ally, Moscow has shown there are limits to what America can or will do to confront Russia in its old sphere of influence.

Read more: Lights go out in Georgia

Russia and Georgia agree to truce

The heavy fighting between Russian and Georgian forces appears to have ended after the two sides agreed to an EU-backed ceasefire plan.

Speaking early on Wednesday in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who currently holds the rotating EU presidency, confirmed that both sides had agreed to pull back their troops.

The peace plan demands that Russia and Georgia immediately end all hostilities and allow free access to the region for humanitarian assistance.

But the exact details of the truce must still be finalised and there are still reports from both sides that some fighting has continued.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, had ordered an end to military operations inside Georgia, but Georgia said Russian aircraft continued bombing villages and towns, killing several people.

Read more: Russia and Georgia agree to truce