Team owner Roger Penske said he was "very happy with the outcome" following John Middlebrook's decision.

"All of us have lost points, six, eight, 10, 12 for certain infractions over the years," Penske said. "I don't think this is something we worry about. Obviously we don't worry about it. But from my perspective, the key thing is to have our people back at the race track, operating in full control. I think that's most important. If we're going to win, and be a leader and win a championship again, we've got plenty of time to do that."

NASCAR inspectors confiscated parts from the rear suspensions of the cars of defending champion Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano before the April 13 race at Texas. NASCAR alleged the parts were not approved, while Penske maintained the parts had been approved but the organization was applying them in a way that fell in a gray area of the rule book.

Penske still felt that way Tuesday: "I don't think we were confused. As we interpreted the rules, these are undefined areas."

"This sport has been built on innovation," he said. "All of us have tried to innovate in areas not defined in the rulebook. We were in that area."

NASCAR docked Keselowski and Logano 25 points each, and fined crew chiefs Paul Wolfe and Todd Gordon $100,000 each. NASCAR also suspended Wolfe, Gordon, competition director Travis Geisler, car chiefs Jerry Kelley and Raymond Fox and engineers Brian Wilson and Samuel Stanley for six races.

All suspensions were reduced to two points races, plus next week's All-Star race. They can return to work at Dover for the June 2 race. Penske did not immediately address how the organization would address the personnel issues at Darlington Raceway this weekend.

"The important thing is, this is over," Penske said. "This has been 2-3 weeks of constant questions, lots of emotions. I feel our bench is strong and people can fill in for the crew chiefs."

Middlebrook, a former General Motors executive who is paid $1 per year by NASCAR, heard two cases last year. He reduced similar penalties against Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Chad Knaus after the initial appeals board upheld his punishment.

He lifted the suspension and reinstated Jimmie Johnson's points, but left intact the $100,000 fine NASCAR levied against Knaus for altering sheet metal on the car before inspection at the season-opening Daytona 500. Middlebrook also upheld all penalties on Richard Childress Racing for modifications made to Paul Menard's frame rails.

Penske praised NASCAR's appeals process, and didn't mind the two phases. But it's becoming clear that those who run afoul of NASCAR have their best chance at redemption with Middlebrook: Since NASCAR began keeping records in 1999, the first-phase National Stock Car Racing Appeals Panel that Penske went before last week has upheld 106 of 150 appeals.

Still, he said the system is fair.

"I think the process is good. The panel is the first step and you don't go to the Supreme Court the first day," Penske said. "We operated within the guidelines and I'm happy with the outcome."

During the first phase of appeal, each side presents its case separately to a three-member panel that is chosen from a pool of 49 potential jurors. The other side is not in the room during the presentation.

During final appeal, each side presents its case separately and Middlebrook then brings both parties into the room to question them together. Penske said that was the first time his organization was able to hear from Sprint Cup Series director John Darby directly about the infractions.

"Today we had the opportunity to meet with the chief appellate officer and we had that opportunity in conjunction to meet with NASCAR, and this was the first opportunity we had to listen to John specifically to say 'These are the areas we think you are over the line on,'" Penske said. "Obviously we had our rebuttal on that, and then the appellate officer had a chance to take into consideration all of the comments we made and NASCAR made, and he came up with a final ruling."

It's a busy week for NASCAR, which on Wednesday defends before the three-member panel penalties levied against Joe Gibbs Racing for an illegal part being found in Matt Kenseth's race-winning engine from Kansas.

JGR is not arguing the part was illegal. The team is instead seeking a reduction of the penalties because the infraction was a mistake on manufacturer Toyota's part that the team had nothing to do with, and it did not provide a competitive advantage.

Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station which is in Hawaii sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That was during the Pleistocene Era. "It was much warmer than it is today," Tans said. "There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between 10 and 20 meters (33 to 66 feet)."

Other scientists say it may have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first modern humans only appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The measurement was recorded Thursday and it is only a daily figure, the monthly and yearly average will be smaller. The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it's a round number not because any changes in man-made global warming happen by reaching it.

"Physically, we are no worse off at 400 ppm than we were at 399 ppm," Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. "But as a symbol of the painfully slow pace of measures to avoid a dangerous level of warming, it's somewhat unnerving."

Environmental activists, such as former Vice President Al Gore, seized on the milestone.

"This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years and especially over the last several decades we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization," Gore said in a statement. "We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate."

Carbon dioxide traps heat just like in a greenhouse and most of it stays in the air for a century; some lasts for thousands of years, scientists say. It accounts for three-quarters of the planet's heat-trapping gases. There are others, such as methane, which has a shorter life span but traps heat more effectively. Both trigger temperatures to rise over time, scientists say, which is causing sea levels to rise and some weather patterns to change.

When measurements of carbon dioxide were first taken in 1958, it measured 315 parts per million. Some scientists and environmental groups promote 350 parts per million as a safe level for CO2, but scientists acknowledge they don't really know what levels would stop the effects of global warming.

The level of carbon dioxide in the air is rising faster than in the past decades, despite international efforts by developed nations to curb it. On average the amount is growing by about 2 parts per million per year. That's 100 times faster than at the end of the Ice Age.

Back then, it took 7,000 years for carbon dioxide to reach 80 parts per million, Tans said. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, carbon dioxide levels have gone up by that amount in just 55 years.

Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels were around 280 ppm, and they were closer to 200 during the Ice Age, which is when sea levels shrank and polar places went from green to icy. There are natural ups and downs of this greenhouse gas, which comes from volcanoes and decomposing plants and animals. But that's not what has driven current levels so high, Tans said. He said the amount should be even higher, but the world's oceans are absorbing quite a bit, keeping it out of the air.

"What we see today is 100 percent due to human activity," said Tans, a NOAA senior scientist. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

The world pumps on average 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the air every second for a total of 38.2 billion tons in 2011, according international calculations published in a scientific journal in December. China spews 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air per year, leading all countries, and its emissions are growing about 10 percent annually. The U.S. at No. 2 is slowly cutting emissions and is down to 5.9 billion tons per year.

The speed of the change is the big worry, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. If carbon dioxide levels go up 100 parts per million over thousands or millions of years, plants and animals can adapt. But that can't be done at the speed it is now happening.

Last year, regional monitors briefly hit 400 ppm in the Arctic. But those monitoring stations aren't seen as a world mark like the one at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Generally carbon levels peak in May then fall slightly, so the yearly average is usually a few parts per million lower than May levels.

___

Online:

NOAA monitoring at Mauna Loa: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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For more mainstream Republicans and commentators, the Benghazi controversy is as obvious -- the Obama Administration spun the attacks on Sunday talk shows in a way that would minimize political fallout in the middle of a presidential election -- as it is tedious.  used for those Sunday shows (), the heart of the scandal is whether bureaucrats talked about a tragedy properly. It's about whether the Administration was playing politics with a terrorist attack -- did the State Department use the word "terrorists" behind the scenes? Is the word "" close enough?

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But for Benghazi truthers, the scandal is much, much more interesting. Theyre is actually two camps: regular old Benghazi truthers believe that the CIA was arming Syrian rebels out of the Benghazi annex, while the ultra truthers believe the Obama administration colluded with terrorists to stage the kidnapping of Ambassador Chris Stevens in order to set up a prisoner exchange that would made President Obama look like a tough peace negotiator right before the election. Some people with surprisingly solid credentials buy these theories. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has hinted he's a Benghazi truther, floating the idea that the CIA annex was attacked because it was part of a secret gun-running operation. Retired Admiral James Lyons, who commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the 1980s, is a Benghazi ultra truther. The Atlantic Wire spoke to Lyons to better understand his theory.

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, what happened in Benghazi is a gripping, tragic story -- a deadly attack by a shadowy terrorists we still haven't fully identified. But what most Republicans are hoping will become a major scandal is not about that. It should not be surprising that The White House played politics with Benghazi (or that House Republicans are playing politics with Benghazi now) since that's what politicians do. But if you're going referee this particular game of politics, anyone watching the politics play out last fall has to conclude that while Obama's team handled the politics deftly, the Republican presidentail campaign's attempts to play politics with Benghazi was a miserable failure. (Warning: the cynical armchair thinking driving this narrative follows.) Hours after the attack, Mitt Romney issued a statement saying President Obama was "sympathizing with those who waged the attacks," which made him look like a jerk, and also neglected the more important talking point, which was that Obama was incompetent on national security. The Romney campaign's clumsiness turned what, by cynical rules of D.C. politics should have been a layup — a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11 happens right when a Republican challenger is accusing the sitting Democratic president of being soft on terrorism — turned into a win for Obama who looked better suited for handling crises abroad and avoided the usual media freakout in the wake of a terrorist attack. A Romney aide's new tell-all ebook says the off-key response "left the candidate ." And it wasn't the last time on this very issue.

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Six weeks later, Romney looked stupid again when he insisted Obama had not called Benghazi a terrorist attack, and Obama cooly responded that the moderator should "check the transcript." (He had.) Republicans are furious about this. The Republican National Committee  on Thursday. American Crossroads  on Friday. And so Republicans are letting their slip show a teeny bit as they analyze  all the emails between bureaucrats to see exactly how the Obama campaign managed this public relations feat. They want a Benghazi do-over, and, with the flailing Romney response receding into ancient political history, they just might get it.

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But in the meantime, the people breathing on the Benghazi scandal embers have been up in arms about much more interesting claims. On a radio show in March, Sen.that the Obama administration was covering up a lot more than a terror attack on 9/11 in an election year. "What are they covering up?" Paul asked. He continued:

I have a feeling that it had something to do with the CIA annex. You know, a week before the ambassador was killed in Libya, a ship left Libya and docked in Turkey and it actually interviewed the captain of that ship who said there were arms on board and that he actually witnessed the rebels taking the arms and disputing over who got what. That there were grenade launchers; that there were significant arms being transferred...

Now that doesn’t say the CIA was involved, but that begs the question (what) was the CIA annex there.

Others havethis idea up.  wrote last week that Obama, Hillary Clinton, and David Pretraeus "were likely behind a mishandled gun-trafficking program that ended up arming the radical jihadist rebels who stormed the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on that fateful day." She pointed to Clinton's support for arming Syrian rebels last summer, omitting that Clinton wasby the White House. (According to The Washington Post, the administration will .) But Paul pushed this theory again this week . "I’ve actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria," Paul said. What did that have to do with Susan Rice's talking points on Sunday talk shows after the attack? "I don't know," he said. "Were they trying to obscure that there was an arms operation going on at the CIA annex?"

There's the sense among some conservatives that Benghazi is one of the greatest scandals the country has ever seen.  said Wednesday, "And it isn't Watergate. Nobody died in Watergate. Four people died in Benghazi. Nobody died in Watergate." But for that comparison to be perfect, you'd have to assume that Obama ordered the attack on Benghazi, or at least, that his reelection campaign did so on his behalf. It turns out some people think that's what happened.

Retired Admiral James Lyons takes the CIA-was-arming-Syrian-rebels theory and pushes it a step further. In November, just after the election, Lyons was asked to speculate what he thought was behind the attack on Fox Business News' . He said:

"I speculate that Ambassador Stevens was supposed to be kidnapped, held hostage, in exchange for the release of the Blind Sheikh that we're currently holding in prison. That's the only thing that makes sense to me."

This theory had been circulating since October. Ultra-truthers believe the Benghazi attack was orchestrated by the Obama administration in cooperation with terrorists -- that's why there wasn't enough security at the consulate. The terrorists would kidnap Ambassador Chris Stevens, and then set up a prisoner exchange, in which Obama would get Stevens back in exchange for the Blind Sheikh, , who was convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. "The plan was to make Obama look like 'a badass' and a to have him revel in this through October and into the November election,"  wrote on HillBuzz.org on October 8. Some sites claim to have real evidence this happened. "What is most shocking, however, is that a source within the White House states that it was arranged as an October surprise by Barack Obama,"  on October 20. They've kept up the fight. In January,  wrote, "Some will say that Admiral Lyons’ accusation is not a smoking gun. We agree; that’s exactly why Congress must investigate Benghazi-gate."  picked it up in February.

When we spoke to Admiral Lyons we asked if he still thinks it was a conspiracy to kidnap the ambassador? Lyons would not rule it out. "I was asked to speculate by Lou Dobbs what did I think happened during that raid?" he said. "I think it was an attack that went terribly wrong... I would have suspected that they wanted to take Ambassador Stevens hostage and hold him in exchange for the release of the Blind Sheik. Nothing else seemed to make a lot of sense to me, since Ambassador Stevens was one of the great faciliators in the arming of the rebels in the takeover of Libya... Why kill the golden goose?"

The kidnapping theory holds that the terrorists did not expect the resistance they met when the six-man security team was sent from Tripoli, so they killed Stevens. Or something like that. "If they meant to kill him right out," Lyons says, "why bother taking him to the hospital that Ansar al — the terror group that conducted the attack — controlled? They controlled that hospital. If they wanted to kill him, why take him to the hospital?" From there, we worked through the theory. I asked why, after killing Stevens, the terrorists attacked the CIA annex several hours later. He responded, "They [the terrorists] planned to do this the whole time. This wasn't just a pickup fight."

Why not just give up once Stevens was dead?

"Those are questions that will have to come out. What else was going on at that annex? I think obviously the terrorists had a pretty good idea," Lyons said, alluding to earlier in our conversation, when he floated the idea that the CIA was arming Syrian rebels out of the annex.

Did that mean the Libyan terrorists were mad the CIA was arming Syrian rebels, because they preferred Bashar al Asad's regime?

"I dont know why they attacked the annex. I think some of their testimony might give us some insight to that."

The only answer, he says, is to ask more questions at hearings. On this, the ultras and the mainstreamers certainly agree. Lyons wants a select committee to investigate -- "we gotta get people in there under oath and ask them." But House Speaker John Boehner won't convene one, and , too. The folks at  explain:

This kind of fawning, sycophantic behavior toward Obama on Boehner's part has had GOP tongues wagging for months creating speculation of the motivation of Boehner protecting Obama from Boehner being threatened by Obama to being mentally ill (Benghazi-Truth's opinion based on Boehner's repeated uncontrollable public sobbing over the slimmest of reasons is that he is mentally ill, and Obama's people have experts in psychology guiding Obama on how to manipulate a person in Boehner's particular psychological state, which basically would wrap it all up these questions in one jigsaw puzzle completed).

The new taxation plan, less punishing than a scheme the separatist Parti Quebecois had promised in its 2012 election campaign, came as sagging demand and falling metal prices cut into already tight margins in the mining sector.

The plan, posted on the provincial government website late on Monday, would see miners pay the greater of two options: either a royalty on the value of ore, set at 1 percent for the first C$80 million and 4 percent for anything over that, or a graduated tax on profits, ranging from 16 to 28 percent.

The Parti Quebecois had previously proposed a 5 percent royalty on the gross value of all mining output, and a "super-tax" on profits above a certain point.

Dale Coffin, a spokesman for Agnico-Eagle Mines which operates three gold mines in Quebec, said the overall impact on Agnico's operations appeared to be minor, although he noted the company was still reviewing the proposed changes.

"Hopefully this will signal an end to this period of uncertainty, as it is important that stability and investor confidence is restored for the long-term viability of the industry," he said.

Metal prices hit record highs after the global financial crisis, prompting governments around the world to demand a bigger slice of profits from mining companies.

Quebec said the plan would increase government revenues by a total of between C$770 million and C$1.8 billion over the next 12 years. In 2015 revenues should be C$50 million higher than under the existing regime, introduced by the previous, Liberal, government.

"Quebecers were justifiably dissatisfied with the Liberal regime because some mining corporations could continue developing natural resources over a long period without paying a penny in royalties," Quebec Finance Minister Nicolas Marceau said in the statement.

"In addition, when large profits were earned because of a sudden rise in prices, the share of profits paid in royalties did not budge."

($1=$1.01 Canadian)

(Reporting by Randall Palmer in Ottawa and Julie Gordon and Allison Martell in Toronto; Editing by Bernard Orr and Janet Guttsman)

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Facebook makes pretty much all of its money off advertising . The strategy Facebook has been following is the more information it can offer brands about its users the more valuable their advertising. Facebook has already been , and adding your exact whereabouts could help the social network offer the . With Waze's GPS data, if you're near that CVS where you bought some deodorant about six months ago——Facebook could serve you an ad for Arm & Hammer while you're in the neighborhood. 

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In Facebook's theory, this will make the network's ads more useful. Rather than see a sponsored story for something we don't need at a time when we have zero intention of buying, this alerts our consumerist senses at the "right" moment. To others, however, this might come off as creepy or invasive. 

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Waze, a "community based" traffic and navigation app that uses real-time data from users to give the best directions, already has a big, rapidly growing user-base. It has more than doubled in size since last July, now reporting to TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden that it has 47 million users. The app works a lot like a Garmin on your phone, giving travelers turn-by-turn directions. The innovation is how it gets that data: Rather than use satellite information from navigation companies like TomTom, it relies on its users for intel on traffic, construction, and road reports. Just by driving with the app turned on, people contribute to the maps. But, people can also actively report accidents, hazards, police and other road happenings. The flow of information also works the other way, with the app sending road alerts as a person drives. 

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This move also fits handily into the network's plans to get smartphone users using its products. It has either amassed or built all the important software parts and apps to do that—besides a maps app. People spend about 31 percent of their time on smartphones deciphering their whereabouts, . And, as we've seen with the whole Google and Apple Maps fiasco, people develop deep loyalties to their mapping apps. Rather than building its own copy-cat app, Facebook could just scoop up all the Waze users and brand them Facebook maps users.

Ramage, 22, just completed his senior year at the University of Wisconsin.

The Badgers captain had eight goals, 12 assists and 65 penalty minutes in 42 games.

The Flames drafted the six-foot, 195-pound defender in the fourth round of the 2010 NHL entry draft.

Ramage totalled 14 goals and 39 assists in 157 games for the Badgers.

He was captain of the U.S. junior team at the 2011 world junior hockey championship in Buffalo, N.Y., where the host country won a bronze medal.

His contract with the Flames carries a base salary of $600,000 each season. Including bonuses, it will count $900,000 annually against the salary cap.

Ramage was born in St. Louis, Mo., and is the son of Rob Ramage, a defenceman who played 15 seasons in the NHL for eight different clubs.

The turmoil appears to have sent jitters beyond Libya's borders, with the U.S. and Britain expressing concern over the prospects of continuous unrest in the North African country.

For nearly two weeks, Libya has been gripped by fear of armed conflict after heavily armed militias stormed and surrounded government buildings in the capital, Tripoli, blocking access to ministries in an attempt to push parliament to pass a contentious law that would prevent members of Moammar Gadhafi's regime from serving in senior government posts.

Lawmakers approved the bill during the weekend, with guns still drawn on the streets, and the militias gradually ended their siege in the capital. But there were reports late Friday that armed men had returned to the streets outside some ministries, including the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, after the day's protests.

The show of force has left many Libyans fearful over the country's rocky transition to democracy.

In Tripoli, activists took to the streets Friday with placards reading: "Law under the guns; constitution under fire" a reference to both to the recent siege and the country's upcoming milestone, Libya's new constitution, which is to be drafted next year.

In the eastern city of Benghazi the birthplace of the 2011 uprising that evolved into an eight-month-long civil war and ended with the ouster and killing of Gadhafi hundreds of protesters staged a protest against the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist group is charged with engineering the new law, set to take effect in early June. The legislation could remove a whole class of post-Gadhafi officials including the head of the current parliament, Mohammed al-Megarif.

While the law might also affect Brotherhood members and other ultraconservative Islamists, it would get rid of Brotherhood's top foe, Mahmoud Jibril, a liberal-leaning war-time prime minister and who enjoys wide popularity in the country.

Jibril was a top aide to Seif-Islam, one of Gadhafi's sons and heir apparent, before he defected to the rebels. His coalition, The National Forces Alliance, won the biggest number of parliament seats allocated for political groupings in the July parliament elections.

"No to Brotherhoodization of the state," read a banner held by a Benghazi protester. The term is used to express fear of the radical group installing its loyalists in government posts. Other protesters hanged an effigy of the ruler of Qatar, the country Libyans see as a key Brotherhood backer.

Similar protest took place in the eastern city of Tobruk, where advocates for a semi-autonomous eastern region are active.

After the fall of Gadhafi, Libya was left without a strong police force or unified military, and the new authorities had no option but to depend on former rebels and mushrooming number of militias to maintain law and order. However, the militias soon became a source of trouble and at the same time, the security deteriorated.

In Benghazi, series of assassinations and bombings of police stations have prompted diplomatic missions to leave over the past year. On Sept. 11, Islamic militants attacked the U.S mission there, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

On Friday, two bombs exploded outside police stations in different districts of Benghazi. No injuries were reported, but the state news agency said buildings and vehicles were damaged.

Last month, a car bomb hit the French Embassy in Tripoli, wounding three people and partially setting the building on fire. It was the worst attack on a diplomatic mission in Libya since Steven's slaying.

No group has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.

On Friday, an American military official said U.S. forces in Europe are on a heightened state of alert in response to a deteriorating security situation in the Libyan capital. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The alert order came a day after the State Department said it was advising U.S. citizens against all but essential travel to Tripoli and all travel to Benghazi and other locations in Libya. It cited "ongoing instability and violence" and said the State Department's ability to provide consular services to U.S. citizens there was "extremely limited."

Meanwhile, Britain's Foreign Office says it temporarily withdrew some staff from its embassy in Tripoli in light of the recent political unrest.

___

Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

There are just 1,000 individual Yangtze finless porpoises left in the wild, according to a new report. That's less than half of what a similar survey of the porpoises found six years ago.

The rapidly dwindling numbers have conservationists worried that the species could vanish from the wild as early as 2025.

"The species is moving fast toward its ," said Wang Ding, head of the expedition to count the porpoises and a professor at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Yangtze finless porpoises, the only freshwater finless porpoise in the world, live mainly in theand China's Dongting and Poyang lakes. They are threatened by shrinking food resources and man-made disturbances like shipping traffic.

The expedition, which took place over 44 days last fall, comes after a similar trek along the Yangtze in 2007 failed to find any surviving , a close relative of the finless porpoise that was subsequently declared functionally extinct.

The new report showed that some finless porpoises are splintering off into relatively isolated groups, which could hurt their ability to reproduce. The scientists also noted that more of the animals seemed to be flocking to wharf and port areas, perhaps to look for food.??

"They may risk their lives for rich fish bait resources there," Wang said in a statement from the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation group involved in the report. "But busy shipping traffic close to the port areas poses a threat to the survival of finless porpoise."

Other finless porpoises seemed to be avoiding human disturbances and were spotted gathering in dense groups in waters not open to ship traffic. But that strategy could backfire in these waters, the animals risk getting caught in illegal fishing traps.

As part of their conservation recommendations, the report authors urge for a year-round fishing ban in all river dolphin reserves, and for new reserves to be established in Poyang Lake and along the Yangtze.

The report, called the 2012 Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Survey Report, was released Thursday (March 28).

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Self-identified Republicans are less likely than Democrats to say global warming concerns them, but while Democrats'has remained relatively steady, Republicans' worry is climbing. In 2011, just 30 percent of Republicans said they worried a "great deal" or "fair amount" about climate change. This year, that number reached 40 percent.

The poll queried a random sample of 1,022 adults, weighted to match national demographics. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The new numbers show Republican concerns reaching levels that haven't been seen since since 2009, when 35 percent said they worried about global warming. Three-quarters of Democrats currently say they worry about global warming a great deal or fair amount. []

Republicans have also become more likely to say that global warming's effects have already been felt, the poll found. In 2011, only 32 percent of Republicans said climate change effects were already happening, a number which rose to 39 percent in 2013.

More than half (52 percent) of Republicans now agree that most scientists think global warming is occurring, up from a low of 37 percent in 2011. But there's a big party split in opinions on causes: 78 percent of Democrats blame human activities compared with only 39 percent of Republicans. Half of Democrats think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetimes, compared with just 18 percent of Republicans. (Independents tend to fall between Democrats and Republicans on all of the poll questions.)

High-profile cases like the "Climategate" scandal involving leaked emails between climate scientists may have contributed to Republican skepticism over the past few years, Gallup reported. Now that those news stories have faded, climate-change belief is recovering.

The findings track with a recent poll analysis released by Gallup that found, overall, more Americans arethan in the past. That polling found that 58 percent of Americans worry a great deal or fair amount about climate change, up from 51 percent in 2011.

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SEATTLE (AP) -- Students heading off to college in Washington state next fall will have to wait awhile to find out how much tuition they'll be paying.

Since the Legislature was set to go home without finishing the state budget, no one is sure whether Washington students will be getting a tuition increase, a cut, or neither. All three ideas have been proposed this year.

If you go to the University of Washington or Washington State University, tuition and mandatory fees already add up to nearly $13,000 a year, so plus or minus $390 may not seem like a lot to individual students or their parents.

But students aren't the only ones waiting for a decision from the Legislature. The state's college and universities are also on hold.

They can't finish putting together their budgets for next year until the Legislature finishes its work. Depending on the choices lawmakers make when they return to Olympia soon, universities are waiting to hear whether they'll get millions more from the state this year and next.

Officials at all Washington's public colleges and universities will likely have to wait a few weeks or even a few months longer before they can set tuition for next year.

For the most part, college officials say they're not chewing their fingernails over the delay.

"It's not that unusual in the first year of a biennium," said Todd Sprague, spokesman for The Evergreen State College.

Although trustees of the Olympia college usually make their tuition decision in June, they also have a July meeting scheduled and can add a special meeting if they need one, Sprague said.

"We wouldn't do anything without getting direction from the Legislature," he said.

Until then, curious students and parents can get an estimate of next year's tuition bill on the school's website, where administrators have used a 5 percent increase to help estimate costs this fall. Sprague emphasized that number is just an example, not a guess.

The college has raised tuition about 14 percent during each of the past four years, under the guidance of the Legislature.

State government support for higher education has been cut about in half over the past decade. Before the legislative session began in January, a group of college presidents said they would agree to freeze tuition if lawmakers pumped $225 million back into Washington's higher education system.

This year, the three primary budget proposals before the Legislature estimate tuition will go up 3 percent in the fall, go down 3 percent or stay the same. Lawmakers will likely return to Olympia later this spring or summer for a special session to finish the state budget and set tuition for the next two years.

The Legislature gave the state's four-year schools tuition-setting authority in 2011. Double-digit tuition increases have nearly doubled tuition at Washington schools over the past five years. While the schools now have the authority to set their tuition as high as they want, most have continued to defer to the Legislature, which has put double-digit tuition increases into recent state budgets.

Central Washington University may use that flexibility to start to build back up its own budget over the next two years, said college spokeswoman Linda Schactler.

CWU officials were expecting the Legislature to authorize a modest tuition gain of up to 5 percent and were looking at the possibility of raising tuition by an additional 3 to 7 percent depending on how much money the state allocates for the university, she said.

"We're really looking for some opportunity to start to gain ground again," Schactler said.

UW is planning to set its tuition where the state Legislature decides and the university's staff is doing some budget modeling based on all the proposals in Olympia, said UW spokesman Norm Arkans.

Although the UW regents usually set tuition in June, in other years they haven't finished their budget until July. Arkans said they need more clarity from Olympia before they can move forward.

Western Washington University also is in wait-and-see mode, said spokesman Paul Cocke, but WSU is on its own tuition path this spring.

Washington State University President Elson Floyd has promised tuition won't go up any more than 2 percent this fall. If the Legislature creates a budget based on less than a 2 percent increase, WSU will follow their lead, said Colleen Kerr, WSU assistant vice president for external affairs and chief legislative officer.

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Contact Donna Blankinship through Twitter at https://twitter.com/dgblankinship