Wisconsin

Police limit kegs at college block party

Police set a beer quota on an annual spring block party that draws thousands of drunken revelers, but Saturday’s partiers weren’t exactly tapped out: The limit was four kegs per household.

The keg crackdown for the annual Mifflin Street block party near the University of Wisconsin still gives each apartment between 700 and 800 beers. And the block is lined with wood-frame houses divided into apartments, giving some addresses as many as 16 kegs.

But police say what sounds like a lot of beer is much less than what has been available in the past. Last year, some houses had as many as 50 kegs, said acting Madison Police Assistant Chief Luis Yudice.

The Mifflin Street event started 35 years ago and is part of the campus culture that put UW-Madison second on The Princeton Review’s national “party school” rankings in 2003, behind only the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Los Angeles

Report: Anti-Muslim incidents triple in state

Reports of hate crimes and harassment against Muslims in California tripled last year from the year before, the highest number ever recorded outside the immediate aftermath of 9-11, according to a report to be released today by a national American Muslim organization.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 221 incidents in 2003 of anti-Muslim bias in California, ranging from the severe beating of a Yorba Linda youth to vandalism against a San Luis Obispo mosque. Nationally, the council reported 1,019 anti-Muslim incidents, representing a 69 percent increase.

The report attributed the increased incidents to several factors, including a “lingering atmosphere of fear” stemming from the 9-11 attacks, fallout from the Iraq war, anti-Islam rhetoric from some conservative religious leaders, increased reporting of incidents by communities to the council and U.S. anti-terrorism policies, which Muslims say adversely affect them.