Obama reaches out to Iran with video message

President Barack Obama is reaching out to the Iranian people in a new video with Farsi subtitles, saying the U.S. is prepared to end years of strained relations if Tehran tones down its bellicose rhetoric.

The video released Friday was timed to the festival of Nowruz, which means "new day" and marks the arrival of spring. It's a major holiday in Iran.

"So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders," Obama said in the video. "We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing …

DAVE'S DAWN PATROL

Sometimes the brightest stories are backstage.

The guitar technician for the Michelle Shocked tour is JohnDeFoore, a Texas singer-songwriter with blue-bonnet eyes and a walrusmustache. You'll see him attending to Shocked's guitars when thesinger-songwriter appears with her band at 7 tonight at the Vic, 3145N. Sheffield (559-1212) and at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Mandel Hall, 5706S. University on the campus of the University of Chicago (702-7300).Austin, Texas-based funseekers Poi Dog Pondering and Englishsinger-songwriter John Wesley Harding will open both shows.

Shocked also will appear with Harding and the BoDeans in anacoustic setting at 10 a.m. Sunday in the south …

APNewsBreak: Chevron exiting coal mining

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Petroleum giant Chevron Corp. said Friday it plans to get out of the coal industry by the end of the year.

The decision came after the company determined that new coal technologies were developing too slowly to make staying in the industry a good strategy, Chevron Mining Inc. spokeswoman Margaret Lejuste said.

One of the technologies is known as coal-to-liquids, in which coal is processed into diesel, gasoline or other fuels.

"Those technologies are so far into the future, 10 to 15 years in the future, they made the strategic decision to focus on other operations other than mining," she said of the company.

Chevron intends to sell off three …

Spanish court orders extradition of pilot

Spain's National Court has ordered that an Argentine airline pilot be extradited home to face charges that he flew planes from which dissidents were thrown to their deaths during his country's "dirty war."

A court statement released Monday says Julio Alberto Poch is wanted in Argentina in connection with some 600 deaths.

The 57-year-old Poch was …

`Oklahoma!' at the Royal National Theatre

`Oklahoma!' at the Royal National Theatre

LONDON With its full-scale, athletic and loving rendition of"Oklahoma!" the Royal National Theatre has approached Rodgers andHammerstein with the same care and intellectual respect it would showto Ibsen.

Oscar Hammerstein II is often underrated because of hissimplicity. "Oh, what a beautiful morning/Oh, what a beautiful day"is the lyric that starts the show, soaring through the theater on thewing of a perfectly shaped melody (and on Hugh Jackman's lovelytenor). Hammerstein's writing has all of the elegant directness ofthat lyric - the elemental, inevitable quality of a Shaker chair.Adapting the Lynn Riggs play "Green Grow the Lilacs," he fashioned amusical about a territory on the verge of statehood.

Save one, his characters are likable, particularly the cowboyCurly (a thoroughly winning Jackman) and his sometimes ornery girl,Laurey (the graceful Josefina Gabrielle). Their courtship is hauntedby the farmhand Jud (Shuler Hensley), a creepy pariah who becomes theviolent emblem of the disenfranchised.

Director Trevor Nunn begins the show with a kind of reverenthush, ringing a false alarm that the evening will be stiff andformal. As the overture starts, Nunn lets the audience glimpse theorchestra at the back of the deep stage. Scrims lower and raise togive us new images: a forlorn, angular prairie house in the middleground, then in the foreground, a high field of corn.

Next, the show's title is projected on a blank curtain, as if itwere the frontispiece of an expensive, shrink-wrapped book, with theword "Oklahoma!" written as if with a cowboy's rope. But Nunn isonly clearing his throat; he gets the fusty, presentational style outof his system and does not look back.

He is helped immeasurably by Susan Stroman's choreography.Cowboys pair off with women in calf-length skirts that swirlperfectly as they leap, recalling the work of the originalchoreographer, Agnes de Mille. As much as any other element in theshow, these dances define the pre-neurotic and uninhibited way thesecharacters deal with their emotions.

In Nunn's production, Jud is the show's central performance.Living in a squalid smokehouse, with nudie pictures for decoration,Hensley's Jud is a swampy thing full of fetid anger that is strongereven than his desire for love.

Set designer Anthony Ward employs stark lines for his windmilland farmhouse. In the background, the orange arc of a prairie andlooming blue sky imitate the aching emptiness of regional prairiepaintings. Though one might argue with some of Ward's flat, uglycolors, his lines are exactly right.

They suggest we view this show as a valuable document, one thatcan tell us something about our origins. Set in the beginning of thecentury, written in the middle of it, now at century's end, a Britishproduction reminds us that "Oklahoma!" is an American treasure, bothprimitive and profound. Los Angeles Times

State of being single not a sickness

Being single isn't the equivalent of being desperate.

I bring this up because some people seem to believe that I wouldbe-no, make that should be-willing to go out with any man rather thannot have a boyfriend.

Worse yet, they take it as a personal insult if I don't follow upon their offers to set me up.

Case in point: A good pal, who herself is unattached, suggestedthat I have lunch with her friend. I wanted to know why she didn'tdate him herself. She mumbled something about him beinggeographically undesirable.

Uh huh.

It's never a good sign when they use that as a reason, 'causefrankly, if the guy is great enough, you'll board an airplane to seehim again.

She told me a little about him-a writer who shared none of myinterests. Then she showed me his picture, which didn't do anythingto help his cause.

So I politely declined her offer.

Imagine my surprise when she tsk-tsk'd me and said, "Oh, Jae.You're not exactly in a position to be picky."

Excuse me? When did I suddenly become a member of the unchosenones?

I realize that no one's going to mistake me for Tyra Banks andthat Keanu Reeves probably won't be knocking on my door any time soonwith an engagement ring (although a girl can always dream). But I'vegot a good career going, my mental health is stable and I'm debt-free.

In some countries, I would be considered a good catch.

But still, her words stung and I convinced myself that maybe shewas right.

So I went out with her friend. He spent most of the mealcomplaining about his ex-girlfriend, his job and why he hated thedairy industry. Halfway through the date, I forced myself toconcentrate on a blister on his face. That was the only way I couldblock out his mind-numbing diatribe.

The whole event reminded me of a high school gym class. There weretwo non-whites in class-me and another Asian boy. Almostautomatically, everyone in class said we should be boyfriend andgirlfriend since we had so much in common. Our common factor? We wereboth Asian.

Likewise, my friend assumed that since her friend and I were bothsingle, we should hook up. When I told her that there wouldn't be asecond date with Writer Guy, she got snippy with me.

I shared this story with another friend of mine who had justbroken up with a long-term boyfriend.

My pal said that a married colleague of hers tried to pair her upwith a man she had met. When my friend declined the offer, sayingthat she wasn't ready to date again, the colleague told her to getover it, and then blamed her for being a snob.

It's a weird world we live in when it's considered better to bewith someone-anyone-than to go home alone.

And it's a sentiment that I am guilty of having myself sometimes.

After a recent breakup, I repeated a line that Chandler said on"Friends" a few seasons ago: "I am going to die alone."

A particularly patient friend took me aside and made a commentthat made me re-think my statement.

"Even Chandler found love," she said. "He's marrying Monica."

So he is.

Jae-Ha Kim is a Sun-Times staff reporter.

Mutant gene test may predict breast cancer return, spread

SAN ANTONIO Testing for a gene mutation may enable doctors topredict whether some breast cancer patients will have a relapse orwhether their cancer will spread, scientists said at a symposiumhere.

By detecting the presence of the mutated gene, doctors may beable to determine which breast cancer patients need strongchemotherapy and extensive surgery and which will survive withsurgery to remove only the tumor.

A German researcher at the meeting reported a related finding:By measuring certain substances produced by tumor cells, doctors maybe able to identify breast-cancer patients who are in danger ofrelapsing and treat them with chemotherapy.

The test for the mutant gene also may help low-risk people avoidthe unpleasant and often serious side effects of high doses ofchemotherapy, including hair loss, nausea, vomiting and infections,Dr. Ann D. Thor, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, said at the14th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

With new laboratory techiques, this gene, called the p53 gene,can be easily studied and measured, and it is being implicated inmany types of human cancers, she said.

The normal p53 gene suppresses growth in all human cells. Butthrough mutation it loses its normal function and may promote cellgrowth.

In her study of 300 patients, Thor found that women who had themutant gene when their breast cancer was diagnosed had a much worseoutcome and survival rate.

Women with a family history of breast cancer were more likely tohave the mutated gene, Thor said.

Women who might benefit most from the new gene findings likelywill be those whose breast cancer has not invaded nearby lymph nodes, Thor said.

In the second breast cancer finding reported at the meeting, aGerman researcher described the role of two substances produced bytumor cells which he said can be used to predict how invasive breastcancer will be.

By measuring the substances, doctors can identify patients whoare in danger of relapsing and treat them with chemotherapy, whilesparing those who are not at high risk, said Dr. Fritz Jaenickeof theFrauenklinik/Women's Clinic of the Technical University of Munich inGermany.

About 45,000 American women are expected to die this year frombreast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.