The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief grew out of an unlikely partnership between President George W. Bush and lawmakers led by the Congressional Black Caucus. It has come to represent what Washington can do when it puts politics aside and what America can do to make the world a better place.

President Barack Obama, speaking at the recent dedication of Bush's presidential library, praised the compassion Bush showed in "helping to save millions of lives and reminding people in some of the poorest corners of the globe that America cares."

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said of Bush in a statement that "while many events may distinguish his presidency, his devotion to combatting the scourge of HIV/AIDS will certainly define his legacy."

The AIDS program's future, however, is uncertain. Obama has upped the stakes, speaking in his State of the Union address this year of "realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation." But funding for the relief plan's bilateral efforts has dipped in recent years and it's doubtful that Congress, in its current budget-cutting mood, will reverse that trend when the current five-year program expires later this year.

The AIDS program is also trying to find a balance between its goals of reaching more people with its prevention and treatment programs and turning over more responsibility to the host nations where it operates.

"This has been an incredible achievement," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a senior Congressional Black Caucus member who played major roles both in passing the original 2003 act and its 2008 renewal that significantly increased funding for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatment in Africa and other areas of the developing world. She spoke of the more than 5 million people now receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment and 11 million pregnant women who received HIV testing and counseling last year. "But I'm worried that with any type of level-funding or cuts we'll go backward," she said.

The 2008 act more than tripled funding from the 2003 measure, approving $48 billion over five years for bilateral and global AIDS programs, malaria and tuberculosis. It also ended U.S. policy making it almost impossible for HIV-positive people to get visas to enter the country.

The AIDS program was the largest commitment ever by a nation to combat a single disease internationally. According to the U.N.'s UNAIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2011 the United States provided nearly 60 percent of all international AIDS assistance.

A decade ago, almost no one in sub-Saharan Africa was receiving antiretroviral treatment. By 2008, the AIDS program had boosted that number to 1.7 million. As of last year it was 5.1 million.

The State Department says the program last year also helped provide treatment to some 750,000 HIV-positive pregnant women, allowing about 230,000 infants to be born HIV-free, supported 2 million male circumcisions and directly supported HIV testing and counseling for 46.5 million.

"This is a remarkable story that the American people should know about," Kimberly Scott of the Institute of Medicine, which recently completed an evaluation of the AIDS program, said at a forum sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.

According to UNAIDS, the number of people living with HIV has leveled off, standing at about 34 million at the end of 2011. New infections that year reached 2.5 million, down 20 percent from 2001. AIDS-related deaths were 1.7 million, down from 2.3 million in 2005.

Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser, said most countries where the program operates have yet to reach the "tipping point," where new infections occurring in a year are less than the increase in people receiving treatment. Among the success stories were Ethiopia, where the 40,000 going on treatment in 2011 was almost four times the new infections. Still with a long way to go was Nigeria, which that year had 270,000 new HIV infections and a 57,000 increase in those getting treatment.

Chris Collins, director of public policy at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, also warned of potential repercussions as the AIDS program shifts from being an emergency response to the AIDS epidemic to a more supportive role for country-based health programs.

"The countries themselves largely are avoiding the important role that key populations play in epidemics," he said, referring to gay men, those injecting drugs and sex workers. These groups face discrimination and criminal charges in many cases, and 90 percent of the money to help them now comes from external sources.

Collins also spoke of the "huge mismatch" between the positive science and rhetoric on fighting AIDS and the money available. Since 2009 the funding for bilateral and global HIV and AIDS programs has largely stalled.

Kaiser's Kates said that while there's still bipartisan support for the AIDS program in Congress, "the big question is will the financing be there to reach the goals" of treating more people and advancing toward that AIDS-free generation. "The challenge right now is that the global economic climate is different, the U.S. climate is different, but the need is still great."

(Logo: )

"Today's passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act is a win for local governments and for businesses everywhere. It is the first critical step towards final passage, andour hope now is that the House will also approve it, so President Obama can sign it into law. This legislation will finally level the playing field by requiring all merchants, whether they sell over the counter on Main Street or over the Internet, to collect the same taxes.

"With federal funds to local governments dwindling and few other sources available to municipal leaders for raising revenue, this measure will provide a badly needed funding stream so we can better serve our residents -- from fixing crumbling roads and bridges to funding schools and first responders to maintaining and upgrading water systems.

"And during these tough economic times, the Marketplace Fairness Act will give a fundamental boost to metropolitan economies by helping to stimulate growth and create jobs. This is a victory for basic common sense and bipartisanship."

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. Thereare 1,295 such cities in the country today, and each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, themayor. Like us on Facebook at, or follow us on Twitter at .

SOURCE The U.S. Conference of Mayors

TOKYO (Reuters) - From a phoenix-themed collection by a Japanese designer who has clothed Lady Gaga to touches of traditional Mongolian decorations, designers showing at Japan Fashion Week set their sights firmly on Asia and its huge market.

Chinese consumers have become the world's leading buyers of luxury goods and account for one quarter of this market globally with demand growing, according to a report by consulting firm Bain & Co.

The fashion extravaganza showcasing the autumn and winter collections of 2013/14 kicked off at the weekend but Japanese brands took to the stage on Monday with Masanori Morikawa and his self-directed label, "Christian Dada".

Morikawa has created several pieces for American pop star Lady Gaga including a pink dress reminiscent of an origami crane for her 2012 "Born This Way Ball" tour.

This time he turned to Asia for inspiration with an edgy, androgynous collection titled "Fenghuang," which is Chinese for the mythical bird phoenix, pairing long, loose pants with richly embroidered lace on shirt sleeves for men and women.

Leather pants and jackets mingled with down-paneled trousers and shirts in plain, solid colors of black, white, red, blue and gold, which Morikawa said represented the nature of the phoenix.

"There's also the idea that the phoenix contains within itself both the male and the female, so we took this concept of fusion for the collection," Morikawa told reporters.

Asian influences came to the fore on Sunday as well as Mongolian designer Ariunaa Surenjav mixed modern designs with traditional raised forms on the shoulders and bunched sleeves.

"That part of the clothing design where the material goes up on the shoulder ... comes from the tradition in old Mongolia, where the local people who were noble and respected had that design," said Surenjav.

A NOD TO CHINA?

Although Morikawa said taking a Chinese title for the collection was just a reference to Chinese mythology and not a nod to the huge potential Chinese market, other designers were more open about their goals.

Conny Groenewegen, a Dutch designer who led off the runway on Sunday with clothing heavily influenced by Japanese designers, said her ambitions in Asia do not end with Japan.

"I would be very much interested to visit Shanghai and present my work over there, because I think that it is moving very fast," she told Reuters. "It's like a big youth culture over there and it has also a big, very rich history."

Although growth in China slowed last year, Bain is still forecasting growth of 4-6 percent a year for the global luxury market through 2015, after growth of 10 percent in 2012 to about $280 billion, largely driven by Chinese consumers.

With 1.3 billion consumers, many with a strong inclination for expensive brands that scream status, China remains a driving force in the luxury market.

Japan Fashion Week continues until March 24 with names such as Vivienne Tam and Hiroko Koshino also taking part.

(Additional reporting by Mariko Lochridge, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

The lizard, one of the largest ever known, has been dubbed Barbaturex morrisoni in honor of The Doors' singer Jim Morrison, who once wrote a song that included the lyrics, "I am the lizard king/I can do anything."

"This is a king , and he was the lizard king, so it just fit," said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who led the study and gave the ancient lizard its musically inspired moniker.

A lizard of unusual size

In modern times, most lizards are much smaller than the mammals that share their environment. The few exceptions, such as the gigantic and toothy , live in places where there are few mammals around (Komodo dragons are found on isolated Indonesian islands, for example).

B. morrisoni lived in a different world. About 36 million to 40 million years ago, the lizard outweighed the mammals that shared its mangrove forest home in what is now Myanmar. It was a gentle giant, with teeth designed for shearing vegetation, not slicing flesh.

The lizard fossils were first collected during expeditions in the 1970s, but they sat unanalyzed in a museum collection for more than 30 years until Head and his colleagues decided to study them. []

The jaw of B. morrisoni sported a series of ridges that suggest the animal had some sort ofsuch as a skin flap. The lizard might have looked something like the bearded dragons seen in pet stores today except instead of growing to be a foot or so long (30 centimeters), the ancient lizard would have been about 6 feet (1.8 meters) from nose to tail, Head said. It would have weighed about 68 pounds (30 kilograms).

"This was a really huge plant-eating lizard, much bigger than anything alive today," Head told LiveScience.

Komodo dragons can grow 10 feet long (3 meters), but they eat meat.

Warm world, big lizards

The lizard king discovery helps clear up a mystery about why lizards don't grow as large today as they once did, Head and his colleagues found. No one knew whether large plant-eating lizards are scarce today because they simply can't compete with mammals or because they're limited by modern-day temperatures. , meaning they rely on environmental heat to keep their body temperature up.

The Eocene epoch, when B. morrisoni lived, was much warmer than today. Based on the size of the lizard and the metabolism it would need to get that large, Head and his colleagues estimate that global average temperatures were 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) higher than today.

"This was a greenhouse world," Head said. "There was no ice at the poles. There were higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," trapping heat.

In this hot environment, the lizard king outgrew the plant-eating mammals in its ecosystem as well as many of the meat eaters, Head said. That growth ability suggests the presence of mammals is not keeping lizards down today; it's likely lower global temperatures.

"When we had these veryin the past, we had much different ecosystems, and reptiles could compete with mammals much more successfully," Head said. Plants may have also flourished more readily in this steamy climate, providing more food for the herbivorous lizards.

The findings, reported today (June 4) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveal how ancient ecosystems can hold up a mirror to modern ones, Head said.

"Paleontology is really vital for understanding not only where we've come from, but where we are now, and where we're going in the future," he said.

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(Reuters) - A federal judge lifted a 33-year-old injunction barring public access to a confidential database of Medicare insurance claims, a decision that could lead to greater scrutiny of how physicians treat patients and charge for their services.

Judge Marcia Morales Howard ruled Friday in favor of a motion by Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, that the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida lift an injunction imposed in 1979.

The American Medical Association had fought lifting the ban, arguing that disclosure of the information would violate physicians' right to privacy. Doctors had successfully made the same argument in 1979, when a judge ruled the release of such information would violate the 1974 Privacy Act.

The AMA suggested Friday that it might appeal the decision. In a statement, AMA President-elect Ardis Dee Hoven said the doctors lobby was "considering its options on how best to continue to defend the personal privacy interests of all physicians."

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services couldn't be reached for comment. A Dow Jones spokeswoman declined to comment.

Dow Jones went to court in January 2011, attempting to overturn the injunction after a series of stories in the Journal found tens of millions of dollars in fraud and other abuse by doctors and other Medicare providers. Medicare is funded by U.S. taxpayers.

The Journal's work, however, was restricted by limitations placed on the data released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which rendered anonymous all information pertaining to individual Medicare providers. That meant reporters weren't allowed to name individual doctors who the Journal identified solely through using the data.

In her ruling, Judge Howard said that because judicial rulings in the years since the injunction have restricted the Privacy Act's reach, the ban was based "upon a legal principle that can no longer be sustained."

When the suit was filed, the Journal's editor-in-chief at the time, Robert Thomson, said: "The Medicare system is funded by taxpayers, and yet taxpayers are blocked from seeing how their money is spent. It is in the interest of law-abiding practitioners that those who are gaming the system are exposed."

Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp.

(Edited by Michael Williams)

PARIS (Reuters) - After fickle Parisian weather and the exploits of a French heroine kept Novak Djokovic waiting to make his bow at Roland Garros on Tuesday, the world number one began his quest to complete his grand slam collection in style with victory over David Goffin. Home favorite Marian Bartoli saved two match points in a rain-interrupted three-hour triumph against Olga Govortsova, rewarding the patience of the fans who sat huddled under grey November-like skies for much of the day.

Hawks name Spurs assistant Budenholzer as new head coach

(Reuters) - Mike Budenholzer paid his dues during a long apprenticeship with one of the NBA's most successful franchises and the hard work paid off as he was named head coach of the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday. Budenholzer, 43, spent the last 17 seasons with the San Antonio Spurs as an assistant coach, serving the last six years as the top assistant to coach Gregg Popovich, who has taken the Spurs to four National Basketball Association (NBA) titles.

Beckham to visit Miami in quest for MLS team ownership

MIAMI (Reuters) - Former England captain David Beckham will visit Miami this week as he steps up his interest in owning a new Major League Soccer (MLS) team. Beckham, who played for L.A. Galaxy in the MLS, has an option to create a new franchise in the North American league.

NBA board approves sale of Kings basketball team to local investors

(Reuters) - The National Basketball Association's Board of Governors on Tuesday unanimously approved the sale of the Sacramento Kings to a California investor group, effectively ending a tug-of-war with competing potential bidders, one of whom had hoped to move the team to Seattle, a league official said. The deal to sell a majority stake in the team to investors led by tech developer and philanthropist Vivek Ranadive followed months of wrangling between Seattle-based investors who wanted the team to replace its beloved Seattle SuperSonics franchise lost in 2008, and California investors who wanted it to stay put.

Nike drops partnership with Lance Armstrong-founded charity

(Reuters) - Nike Inc is dropping its partnership with Livestrong Foundation, the cancer charity founded by disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, the latest repercussion from the doping scandal that last year stripped him of his titles. Nike said on Tuesday it would end production of its Livestrong gear and apparel after the holiday 2013 line, concluding a long-standing licensing agreement for footwear and apparel between the two that helped Livestrong raise a total of $100 million over the course of the partnership.

Djokovic too strong for young shot-maker Goffin

PARIS (Reuters) - Novak Djokovic showed glimpses of frailty along with his usual ruthless streak as he eased past French Open opponent David Goffin on Tuesday by moving through the gears whenever the first-round tie looked like getting tricky. Djokovic wrapped up a 7-6(5) 6-4 7-5 win in a little over two hours, but was frequently under pressure against an opponent who played without fear and showcased an attacking armory that belied his lowly ranking.

2014 Draft set for May 8-10, future dates uncertain

(Reuters) - The National Football League's (NFL) 2014 Draft will be held May 8-10 at Radio City Music Hall, two weeks later than its usual slot due to a scheduling conflict with the landmark New York City theater. No decision has been made regarding dates of the NFL Draft in 2015 and beyond, the NFL said in a statement on Tuesday.

Tomic stands by father and coach after French Open defeat

PARIS (Reuters) - Bernard Tomic's father accompanied his son to Paris despite being barred from attending any events sanctioned by the governing bodies of tennis, the Australian said on Tuesday. After losing in the first round of the French Open, Tomic stood by his dad John who faces a court case for assaulting his son's former practice partner Frenchman Thomas Drouet earlier this month in Madrid.

Three arrested after death of Dutch volleyball player

MADRID (Reuters) - Three men have been arrested on suspicion of murdering former Dutch Olympic volleyball player Ingrid Visser and her partner in what Spanish police believe may be a business-related incident. Visser, 35, and her partner Lodewijk Severein, 57, were reported missing on May 17, the Spanish police said in a statement. Two bodies fitting the descriptions of the couple were found in a shallow grave in a lemon grove outside Murcia on Sunday.

American young gun aiming to sock it to Haas

PARIS (Reuters) - While evergreen Tommy Haas was striking another blow for the over-30s on Tuesday, a few courts away at the French Open American Jack Sock, 15 years his junior, was crushing a seasoned Spanish professional with a display of pure youthful exuberance. When they meet in round two it will truly be a clash of the generations.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of genetic testing products maker Nanosphere Inc. climbed Monday after a Cowen & Co. analyst rated its stock "Outperform."

THE SPARK: Analyst Shaun Rodriguez is optimistic about the company's future revenue growth, and said he believes that more hospitals will start using its Verigene tests.

THE BIG PICTURE: The Northbrook, Ill., company's Verigene system is used in diagnostic DNA and RNA testing. Nanosphere said the system allows clinicians to run simple, inexpensive tests, and enables multiple tests to be run on the same sample simultaneously. It also allows laboratories that don't have advanced diagnostic capabilities to run genetic tests.

The company sold 166 Verigene systems in 2012, and expects that number to grow to 200 to 250 this year.

However the company had to lower its first-quarter guidance in February because of disappointing growth in international markets. Nanosphere now expects 45 to 55 placements during the first quarter, down from an earlier estimate of 80 to 100.

SHARE ACTION: Nanosphere stock rose 20 cents, or 7.8 percent, to close at $2.70. The shares fell 32 percent Feb. 14 but have recovered almost all of those losses.

Now the Pacers have a fighting chance to pull off a stunning playoff upset.

Roy Hibbert did everything but pull out the boxing gloves in Game 6, finishing with 24 points and 11 rebounds, and continually contesting Miami's shots to help Indiana stave off elimination with an emphatic 91-77 victory over the defending champs.

Paul George scored 28 points, had eight rebounds and five assists, and the Pacers held Miami to 36.1 per cent shooting as they booked a trip back to Miami for Game 7 on Monday night.

"Myself and David (West), we throw ourselves in the fray, in the paint. We like to muck it up," Hibbert said. "Paul and myself, we wanted to make sure we got this for him as well. We didn't want this to be our last game."

It wasn't.

Instead, after winning their first division crown since 2004, the Pacers are one win away from advancing to the NBA Finals for only the second time in franchise history. They lost to the Lakers 4-2 in 2000. They haven't played a decisive seventh game in the conference finals since losing to Chicago in 1998.

And amazingly, they've done it this time against the defending champions who many considered virtually invincible after winning 27 straight during the regular season, finishing with a franchise-record 66 wins and having won 23 of their last 24 road games before losing Games 4 and 6 in Indianapolis.

But the Pacers have pushed four-time MVP LeBron James and his high-scoring, high-profile teammates to the brink of elimination by punching back, and Game 6 followed a familiar story line. The Pacers had a 53-33 rebounding advantage, outscored Miami 44-22 in the paint and limited Miami's shooters to 16 of 54, 29.6 per cent, from inside the arc.

James led the Heat with 29 points on 10-of-21 shooting. Nobody else scored more than 10.

How have the Pacers done it? With Hibbert controlling the inside after adding MMA training to his off-season regiment.

"Roy Hibbert is making extraordinary plays in the pocket, poise in the pocket we call it," coach Frank Vogel said. "He's getting paint catches and just having great poise, great reads. He's not plowing over guys. He had a charge in Game 5, but has been under control."

It was everything an elimination game should be. The teams traded baskets and jabs, sometimes literally, and players ignored the bumps and bruises of yet another wrestling match that has made this tough-guy series compelling.

Both teams attacked the basket, sometimes with problematic results. Indiana missed about five dunk attempts in the first half and a series of short jumpers, too, costing them precious points.

The Heat struggled, meanwhile, starting the game just 3 of 22 from inside the 3-point line. Miami's Big Three James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh went just 14 of 40. Excluding James, Miami managed only 16 baskets eight 3s and eight 2s.

With Chris "Birdman" Andersen suspended for the game because of a shoving incident with Indiana forward Tyler Hansbrough on Thursday, the Heat couldn't keep up with Indiana's big rebounders inside. Even Lance Stephenson, who was not effective at Miami, finished with four points, 12 rebounds and four assists.

Indiana's loud crowd created a hostile atmosphere, too. Fans chanted "Heat Are Floppers!" sporadically throughout the second half, urging the Pacers to play harder, to defend better and to make another trip home. The only way to do that is to win Game 7 and avoid a second straight playoff elimination at the hands of the Heat.

For Miami, the stakes were so high that when James was called for an offensive foul midway through the fourth quarter, he lost his cool. James protested by running from one end of the court to the other, drawing a technical foul, and when Miami assistant coach David Fizdale showed his support for the league's four-time MVP, it drew another technical.

George Hill answered by making free throws and Hibbert followed that with a layup, ending any chance of Miami making a late comeback.

James said he was trying to avoid an ejection and would up spending the last 66 seconds sitting a few seats down from the Heat bench cheering on his teammates.

"Explain it? You seen it. It was total domination by the Pacers in the third," James said when asked what happened to the league's most dominant team on Saturday. "They made a lot of shots, we didn't get too many stops and we missed some very, very easy shots."

It was a complete reversal from Game 5, when Miami took control by outscoring the Pacers 30-13 in the third.

This time, against one of the league's top offensive teams, the Pacers gave up only six points in the first eight minutes of the quarter, using a 14-2 run to turn a 40-39 halftime deficit into a 66-49 lead with 1:15 left in the quarter. Hibbert scored nine in the quarter.

Miami did close to within 68-55 after three, but it was too big a deficit to overcome even with James running the show.

"They just flat-out beat us in every facet of the game. They just outclassed us in that (third) quarter," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said.

The Heat rallied early in the fourth, taking advantage of Indiana's 1 for 6 start from the field. When Mike Miller hit back-to-back 3s, the Pacers' lead was down to 70-64 and when James scored on a layup with 5:54 to play, the Heat were within 72-68.

But the run ended abruptly when George hit a 3, Miami's Joel Anthony was called for a loose ball foul on the offensive end and David West grabbed an offensive rebound and scored on a dunk to extend the lead to 77-68. Then came the technical flurry that finished it off.

West scored 11 points and had 14 rebounds despite playing with an upper respiratory infection that prompted Vogel to send him home early from the Pacers' morning shootaround.

He played with a fighter's mentality and gave the Pacers one more shot at the champs.

"We've come too far not to play," West said. "I'm not feeling good now although this win helps. I'm sure I'll be better tomorrow and I'll be ready for Monday."

Notes: Miami matched its season-low point total (77), which also occurred against the Pacers at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Jan. 8. ... Miami finished the season 1-4 at Indiana, losing twice in the regular season and twice in the playoffs. ... After the game, Hibbert criticized the media for not recognizing the Pacers as a good team using a foul two-word expletive that will almost certainly draw a fine from the league. ... Former Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Carl Erskine performed the National Anthem on a harmonica.

SIZE: There are more than 50 million eligible voters in a population of about 76 million. About a third of the voters are under 30 born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. About 60 percent of the voters are in cities.

VOTERS: Voting age is 18, raised from 16 in 2007. Iranians abroad can vote in diplomatic compounds and other polling sites.

PRESIDENTIAL PROCESS: The Guardian Council, controlled by the ruling clerics, vets all candidates for high office. In this election, 686 names were submitted and eight were allowed to run. A simple majority 50 percent plus 1 of votes cast is needed for victory. Otherwise, a two-candidate runoff will be held. The winner will take office in late August.

OTHER ELECTIONS: Municipal elections will also be taking place alongside the presidential vote for the first time. Nearly 350,000 candidates are registered for some 170 seats on municipal councils.

TURNOUT: Voter turnout was reported at nearly 85 percent in the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. In 2005, turnout was reported as 63 percent in the first round and 60 percent in the second. In 2001, it was reported as 68 percent.

WHO RUNS THE ELECTION: The Interior Ministry oversees the election. No outside election observers are permitted. Protesters in 2009 claimed vote rigging denied reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi victory and handed victory to Ahmadinejad. The ministry data claimed that Ahmadinejad had strong backing in rural areas that overcame Mousavi's core support in Tehran and other cities. Mousavi and another 2009 candidate, Mahdi Karroubi, have been under house arrest since early 2011.

PAST PRESIDENTS: Abulhassan Banisadr (1980-81, dismissed by parliament); Mohammad Ali Rajai (August 1981, assassinated); Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now Supreme Leader (1981-89); Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-97); Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005); Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13).

Yes, gridlock still prevails and drivers' blood pressure still spikes as LA's traffic arteries seize up during every morning and afternoon rush hour.

Yet, with the flip of a switch earlier this year, Los Angeles became a worldwide leader by synchronizing all of its nearly 4,400 stoplights, making it the world's first major city to do so.

The result? Well, it can still be hell to cross the City of the Angels by car. Synchronization has allowed LA to boast of real improvements on paper, however, the average driver won't always be able to discern the difference of a project that took nearly 30 years to complete.

"To be honest with you, I haven't felt it, yet," said Jack Abramyam, who has been driving a cab across LA's mean streets for 20 years.

"Late at night, maybe, yes," Abramyam said as he sat outside his cab on a street in Chinatown recently, waiting for a fare. "But it was never really bad then anyway. During the day it was bad. And it's still bad."

The way synchronization works is simple enough: With all the signals synchronized, if you drive down a street at the posted speed limit you should be able to make every green light from one end of this sprawling city of 469 square miles to the other.

Of course there are any number of obstacles that can prevent that.

On a recent mid-afternoon test drive down eight miles of Wilshire Boulevard, for example, I was cut off by a bus, stuck behind more than one right-turner waiting for pedestrians to cross the intersecting street and at one point had my lane blocked by a delivery truck.

Approaching the world famous La Brea Tar Pits where prehistoric dinosaurs once got stuck in muck, not traffic so many people were waiting to turn left into a parking lot that the street became gridlocked for more than two blocks. The numerous synchronized green lights didn't wait for me. But why would they? With the posted speed limit 35 mph, I was only averaging 15.

Still, once the LA County Museum of Art, the high-rise apartments, the headquarters of porn publisher Larry Flynt and the various other Wilshire Boulevard landmarks were in the rear-view mirror, the pace did pick up. So much so that 11 green lights in a row suddenly materialized. That string ended on the edge of downtown, however, when Wilshire simply became clogged with too many cars. It was a non-rush hour jam that demonstrated that, good as synchronization may be, it isn't a magic, traffic-breaking bullet.

Los Angeles Department of Transportation officials agree.

As they stated in a recent report praising the benefits of synchronized signals, "No traffic signal system is capable of 'fixing traffic.'"

If more motor vehicles show up in the years ahead (and there are already more than 7.1 million of them registered in Los Angeles County, a number greater than that of most states), then officials say LA traffic jams will probably get worse.

That's why, said Clinton Quan, an engineering associate with the Department of Transportation, planners are continuing to push people to ride bicycles, take commuter rail lines and other public transportation and move close enough to work that they can walk there.

The city has added three light rail lines in the last seven years and has more planned. Officials also recently approved plans to allow high-rise apartment and condominium buildings along a corridor in Hollywood where a subway connecting the city's West Side to downtown is supposed to go.

In the meantime, Quan says, the synchronized signal program is putting up some pretty impressive numbers, even if the average driver isn't noticing them. It has reduced the drive time on several major LA corridors, for example, by about 12 percent.

In driver-speak, that means the trip across town that used to take you an hour has been reduced to about 53 minutes.

And that's nothing to shrug at, says Robert Puentes, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution's metropolitan policy program, which studies among other things the impact of traffic on the quality of life in metropolitan areas.

Several other traffic-clogged cities are looking into instituting similar programs and New York already synchronizes some of its stoplights, said Puentes, who works in Washington, D.C., the ninth-worst traffic-clogged city in the country.

"If you can get a 12 percent reduction on, say, the Washington Beltway, that would be phenomenal," he said.