If it's bad news, gripes and complaints, Oak Bluffs selectmen don't want to hear it. This week they scrapped the annual meeting for the town's nonvoting taxpayers, saying they were in no mood to weather another barrage of criticism from the town's summer people.

If global warming is a subject that fails to grab you, or feels too distant to be real, the next time you eat pancakes or French toast, consider the source of your maple syrup.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, in the 1930s the maple sugar industry was centered in Virginia. In the 1950s the industry was centered in New England. Today it is centered in Canada.

Citizen Health Care Role Called Critical

By ALEXIS TONTI

If the Island wants better health care, its citizens must demand it.

This simple but straightforward directive was one of the chief messages of the second annual public symposium, Changing Our Health Care: Options for the Vineyard, held Sunday night at the Performing Arts Center.

A 54-year-old pilot was killed when a plane he had built himself crashed south of the Vineyard on Saturday afternoon. Timothy L. Crawford of Idaho Falls, Ida., was piloting a single-engined, two-seater Long-EZ aircraft from Barnstable Municipal Airport when for no known reason the plane crashed about four miles south of Long Point, West Tisbury.

FALMOUTH - - At a tense meeting that was marked by scattered calls for his resignation, Falmouth Steamship Authority governor Galen Robbins defended himself last night against a stream of accusations that he has defied the selectmen who are his appointing authority, especially on the subject of New Bedford ferry service.

State public health officials have confirmed that a dead crow found in Tisbury last Tuesday has tested positive for West Nile virus, marking the first appearance of the potentially deadly disease on the Vineyard.