San Francisco

Poll: American attitudes warm toward China

Americans’ attitudes toward China have grown dramatically more favorable in the past 10 years, according to a new poll, and the country formerly viewed through Cold War lens is seen as a greater economic threat today than a military one.

Preliminary results of the survey, commissioned by the Committee of 100, a national organization of prominent people of Chinese descent, also show several contradictions: Americans blame China for taking U.S. jobs, but support doing business with the world’s most populous nation and importing its goods.

Experts in U.S.-China relations say the poll reflects long-standing ambivalence by Americans toward China. Public opinion tends to swing with media reports.

While U.S.-Chinese relations were at an all-time low in spring 2001 after an encounter between the Chinese military and a U.S. spy plane, they improved dramatically after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. China become an ally in the war on terror and in dealing with North Korea about nuclear weapons.

Alaska

Crews seek survivors after crab boat sinks

A crab boat with six crew members sank Saturday in the Bering Sea, killing at least one, and the Coast Guard was searching for three aboard who were still missing.

The Coast Guard and Alaska State Troopers said three crewmen were recovered: One survived, one died and the condition of the third man, who remained aboard a trooper vessel, was not immediately known, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Gail Sinner.

The Coast Guard received an “emergency position-indicating radio beacon” Saturday morning from the Big Valley, a 92-foot crab boat out of Kodiak.

A patrol vessel sent to the location of the beacon found a “debris field” where the Big Valley sank, Troopers Sgt. Lonnie Gonzales said. The patrol vessel and four aircraft took part in the search.

The Coast Guard helicopter picked up two crewmen: one from the water and one from a life raft. The man in the water died but the man in the raft, Cache Seel of Kodiak, was “doing well” at a St. Paul Island hospital, Sinner said.

The vessel was 70 miles west of St. Paul Island, which is one of the Pribilof Islands and about 750 miles west of Anchorage.

Louisiana

Manslaughter charge frees prison journalist

An award-winning black journalist who was convicted of murder three times by all-white juries in the 1961 death of a bank teller was found guilty of manslaughter Saturday by a racially mixed jury.

Wilbert Rideau, a confessed killer who gained fame for exposes of harsh Louisiana prison life, won his freedom after 44 years in Louisiana prisons. A manslaughter conviction allows his release for time already served.

Rideau, who escaped death row in the 1970s when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed then-existing death penalty laws, has had three previous convictions for the death of Julia Ferguson, a white bank teller. The convictions were overturned on appeal.

Rideau, who was 19 at the time of Ferguson’s death, never denied killing her. His lawyers contended he panicked after a botched bank robbery and stabbed her impulsively amid Louisiana’s 1960s-era climate of racial hostility.

Washington, D.C.

Submarine grounding blamed on old charts

Outdated charts may have been partially at fault for the undersea grounding of a U.S. nuclear submarine last weekend, according to a U.S. agency that analyzes spy satellite imagery and produces maps and charts for the Defense Department.

Officials at the Bethesda, Md.-based National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency said Saturday the main chart likely used by the USS San Francisco didn’t reveal any obstacle anywhere near where the boat struck on the floor of the Pacific Ocean during underwater operations Jan. 8 about 350 miles south of Guam.

The closest notation on the map indicates discolored water about three miles from the accident site. The discolored water was reported by the Japanese most likely in the 1960s or even earlier, according to David Burpee, the agency’s spokesman.

One sailor was killed and at least 23 were injured. The submarine has a crew of 137.