White non-Hispanics, who make up about two-thirds of the population, accounted for less than one-fifth of the increase.

When the population reached 200 million in 1967, there was no accurate tally of U.S. Hispanics. The first effort to count Hispanics came in the 1970 census, and the results were dubious.

The Census Bureau counted about 9.6 million Latinos, a little less than 5 percent of the population, but the bureau acknowledged that figure was inflated.

In 1967, there were fewer than 10 million people in the U.S. who were born in other countries; that was not even one in 20.

Today, there are 36 million immigrants, about one in eight.

"We were much more of an insular society back then," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

As of early Sunday, there were 299,058,932 people in the United States, according to the Census Bureau's population clock. The estimate is based on annual numbers for births, deaths and immigration, averaged throughout the year.

The 300 millionth person in the U.S. will likely be born - or cross the border - in October, though bureau officials are wary of committing to a particular month because of the subjective nature of the clock.

Lee was driving and Ryan Todd Oman, 21, of Ogden, was in the passenger seat with a handgun when police pulled the car over in a parking lot around 2:30 p.m., said assistant police Chief Randy Watt.

Lee told police she wasn't being held hostage, but was worried Oman would shoot himself if she got out of the car.

Oman shot himself just before 4 p.m. as a negotiator tried to talk to him, Watt said. He later died at the hospital.

Police had been looking for Oman in connection with a June 13 shooting.

Ogden is about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City.

"It has exceeded all our expectations," the UAW local official said.

The offers end later on Friday.

The number of blue-collar workers who accept the early retirement incentives has been closely watched as an indicator of the success of GM's turnaround efforts.

"We believe the company is successfully accelerating its restructuring efforts through its buyout program. which will result in significant cost savings in the near term," said Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy, reiterating his "buy" rating on the GM stock on Friday.

TALLY ON MONDAY

But Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache said he was concerned cash cost savings will not be sufficient to offset the pace of market-share and product-mix erosion that GM is currently experiencing.

"We estimate every point of market share loss equates to roughly $1.3 billion pretax," Lache, who has a "sell" rating on GM stock, said in a note to clients.

GM has offered a sweeping package of buyouts, ranging from $70,000 to $140,000, to more than 125,000 unionized factory workers in a bid to reduce costly benefits for an aging work force.

GM spokeswoman Katie McBride said the company would not have an interim tally until Monday since afternoon shift workers still had until midnight Friday to sign up.

Also, workers who accepted the offer on Friday still have seven days to revoke their acceptance.

"The final, final day is really June 30," she said.

Delphi spokesman Lindsey Williams said the parts maker would not provide information on the acceptance rate before late Monday at the earliest.

A spokesman for UAW International was not available for comment.

GM lost $10.6 billion in 2005 amid rising costs and falling U.S. market share. The automaker's U.S. market share fell 3 percentage points to 22.5 percent in May. The company is in the midst of a sweeping restructuring, which includes shuttering 12 plants and cutting 30,000 jobs.

At Delphi, the buyout plan initially covered only up to 13,000 UAW workers.

In June, Delphi, the UAW and GM announced a supplementary agreement extending the pre-retirement plan to workers with at least 26 years experience and offered straight buyouts to the entire Delphi UAW workforce under the GM UAW buyout terms.

Philbin, ranked 20th by the International Federation of Competitive Eaters, which sanctioned the competition, used a simple technique to win: dunking his hot dogs in water before bites.

While other competitors shoved entire buns into their mouths or swung their heads back to help them swallow, Philbin kept his head down and one fist on the table as he steadily bit into the dogs.

"It's called hungry and focused. Think, 'Don't puke, don't puke!'" Philbin said of his strategy, which came in handy when a competitor next to him got sick during the contest.

To train, Philbin said he drinks a gallon of water in three minutes.

"It expands your stomach and it has a memory of that," said Philbin, who didn't eat for a day before the competition. He planned to eat a light dinner Friday.

Philbin said the summer heat was tough to overcome during the chow-down, but it didn't slow him enough to let second place winner Allen Goldstein, of Plainview, N.Y., catch up.

Goldstein, 42, who works in the medical field, ate 20 hot dogs as his wife and coach, Greta, cheered him the whole way.

"Competitive eating is basically 25 percent stomach capacity, 75 percent mental," said Goldstein, who danced along to pop music while eating.

A crowd gathered to watch the contestants, including people who made a special trip to watch the contest and travelers who happened to wander by.

"Gluttony has now become a national sport," said Russ Dodge, a 68-year-old from Salem County who was manning a table for the state Division of Fish and Wildlife during a sidewalk fair at the rest stop. "It's a sign of the times."

Philbin, who joined the competitive eating circuit last year after winning a radio show's egg nog drinking contest, won a trophy, a year's supply of Nathan's hot dogs and his second trip to the Coney Island finals. He ate 20 hot dogs at that competition last year.

The finals will feature 15 participants representing the United States and four international competitors.

Smith-Lovin's group used data from a national survey of 1,500 American adults that has been ongoing since 1972.

She said it indicated people had a surprising drop in the number of close friends since 1985. At that time, Americans most commonly said they had three close friends whom they had known for a long time, saw often, and with whom they shared a number of interests.

They were almost as likely to name four or five friends, and the relationships often sprang from their neighborhoods or communities.

Ties to a close network of friends create a social safety net that is good for society, and for the individual. Research has linked social support and civic participation to a longer life, Smith-Lovin said.

People were not asked why they had fewer intimate ties, but Smith-Lovin said that part of the cause could be that Americans are working more, marrying later, having fewer children, and commuting longer distances.

The data also show the social isolation trend mirrors other class divides: Non-whites and people with less education tend to have smaller social networks than white Americans and the highly educated.

That means that in daily life, personal emergencies and national disasters like Hurricane Katrina, those with the fewest resources also have the fewest personal friends to call for advice and assistance.

"It's one thing to know someone and exchange e-mails with them. It's another thing to say, 'Will you give me a ride out of town with all of my possessions and pets? And can I stay with you for a couple or three months?" Smith-Lovin said.

"Worrying about social isolation is not a matter of nostalgia for a warm and cuddly past. Real things are strongly connected with that," added Harvard University Public Policy Professor Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," a book on the decline of American community.

He suggested flexible work schedules would allow Americans to tend both personal and professional lives.

While the U.S. Department of Justice has requested more information about the sale of two newspapers involved in the Knight-Ridder deal, McClatchy spokeswoman Sarah Lubman said this week that the shareholder vote is still on track for Monday.

"I am sorry to see it going away," said Jinks, who joined the McClatchy board in 1995 after retiring from Knight Ridder, where he served stints as executive editor of The Miami Herald and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News. "I have been involved in newspapers since 1950, and the last year has been the most tumultuous of any that I can remember."

Knight Ridder's demise may foreshadow more sobering times ahead for newspapers if advertising continues its shift to the Internet, intensifying pressure on publishers to cut costs to satisfy investors who continue to demand higher profits despite the industry's eroding revenue and readership.

Those tensions buried San Jose-based Knight Ridder, which spent much of the past decade fruitlessly trying to please Wall Street. Knight Ridder's papers have a combined daily circulation of 8.1 million, down from 8.5 million five years ago.

The relentless pursuit of more profit became an uphill battle as the company tried to offset its diminishing revenue by eliminating 3,500 jobs, or 16 per cent of its work force, over the past five years.

The purge weakened Knight Ridder's newsrooms when it should have been bulking up to cope with the online revolution, said Jay Harris, who quit as the Mercury News' publisher in 2001 because he didn't want to make deep cuts at the Silicon Valley paper.

Shareholders weren't placated because management still couldn't deliver on its promise to bring the company's profits in line with the rest of the industry.

Last year, Knight Ridder's operating profit margin stood at 16.4 per cent compared to the industry average of 19.2 per cent, according to industry analyst John Morton.

And it was backpedaling faster than its peers. In 2004, it posted an operating profit margin of 19.4 per cent compared to 20.5 per cent for the industry, Morton said.

Investors took out their frustrations on Knight Ridder's (NYSE:KRI) stock, which plunged from a high of $80 in 2004 to a low of $52.42 last year. Shares dropped 0.8 per cent Friday to close at $60.96 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Exasperated with Knight Ridder's performance, the company's three largest shareholders confronted the board last year. That rebellion led to the McClatchy sale, a cash-stock deal initially valued at $67.25 per share when it was announced in March.

If shareholders give their approval Monday, Knight Ridder plans to close the sale Tuesday, ending the existence of a company with roots dating back to 1892, when Herman Ridder bought a German-language paper in New York.

In 1974, Ridder Publications Inc. merged with Knight Newspapers Inc., which began in 1903 in Ohio.

The newspapers owned by Knight Ridder and its predecessor companies have amassed 85 Pulitzer Prizes, rewarding a corporate culture devoted to the public's right to know.

The sale to McClatchy will splinter a group of newspapers that includes The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Kansas City Star, The Charlotte Observer, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Contra Costa Times and Mercury News.

McClatchy is keeping 20 of the daily papers and selling the rest. Sacramento-based McClatchy already has reached agreements to sell 11 papers to seven different buyers for more than $2 billion combined. It's still looking for a buyer for The Times-Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

"This is a tragedy for journalism and for the communities that were served by Knight Ridder's newsrooms," said Harris, currently the Wallis Annenberg Chair in journalism and communication at the University of Southern California.

Knight Ridder CEO P. Anthony Ridder declined to be interviewed for this story.

Selling the company against his will was something Ridder, 65, feared since he became Knight Ridder's chief executive officer in 1995. Unlike several other publicly held publishers, Knight Ridder never had a layer of elite stock to help insulate the company from dissident shareholders.

"Tony felt a great deal of pressure because he knew if just one institutional investor got really unhappy, it could bring the company's downfall," Morton said.

Morton doubts another executive could have saved Knight Ridder. "Considering the hand Tony was dealt, he did about as good as he could."