To his right, Capt. Joseph Pastore saw a huge 21-million gallon oil drum filled with sand and water. To his front and his left, he saw another tank of equal size engulfed in a roaring firestorm and beginning to leak its boiling oil. Behind him grew the undergrowth and brush of untended Salinas Valley pastureland.

Former President Bill Clinton slammed the state's recall election Tuesday, 24 hours after a federal court threw the whole process into doubt.

When Nashville, Tenn., began exploring ways to redevelop its urban core, there was only one place the city chose to look — Portland and more specifically, the Pearl District.

Gov. Pataki's courtship of New York's Latino voters has never been a secret. Along with noted policy shifts opposing military exercises on the island of Vieques and his extension of health insurance to more than 500,000 of the state's underprivileged children, Pataki now greets Latino voters in Spanish, backed by an active "Amigos de Pataki" fundraising squad.

When Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante announced his run for governor on Aug. 6, political pundits hailed it as a major stumbling block for Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Republicans. The thinking: Bustamante would offer Latino and Mexican-American voters the chance to elect one of their own - "a farm worker from the barrio," as he describes himself.

Although the Democratic presidential primary sideshow comes to California in just two months, Monterey County voters are still scratching their heads when it comes to choosing a nominee.

During his administration, Bill Clinton was accused of "waffling" on everything from free trade to welfare, but now the former president is caught in the middle of what is perhaps the biggest waffle in state history. As the state considers a challenge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to delay the recall election, Clinton will discuss presidential leadership in the 21st century with Leon Panetta, his former chief of staff.

In 1999, California party leaders moved the state's primary to March 2 in hopes the state would finally factor into the nomination process. That didn't happen in 2000. Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush had already sealed up their respective bids for the presidency.

Bob Perkins, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, on Wednesday said he expects to challenge incumbent Simón Salinas, D-Salinas, for the 28th state Assembly district seat in 2004. Wednesday was the deadline for candidates to notify the county they're considering a run for state elective office. Dec. 5 is the cut-off date for declarations of candidacy.