Patriotism is mostly a New World concept, the researchers said. Former colonies and newer nations were more likely to rank high on the list, while Western European, East Asian and former socialist countries usually ranked near the middle or bottom.

The U.S. ranked highest overall and in five categories: pride in its democracy, political influence, economy, science and military. Venezuela ranked highest in four categories: sports, arts and literature, history, and fair treatment of all groups in society.

Eric Wingerter, a Washington spokesman for the Venezuelan government, said many Venezuelans believe President Hugo Chavez has helped create a new sense of national pride. "There's been a real emphasis on rediscovering what it means to be Venezuelan," he said.

Chavez rails against the U.S. government and the Bush administration in particular.

Ireland came in at No. 3, followed by South Africa and Australia.

Cultural differences might explain the lower rankings for the three Asian countries on the list - Japan (18th), Taiwan (29th), and Korea (31), Smith said.

"It is both bad luck and poor manners to be boastful about things there," Smith said.

Countries that were part of the former Soviet Union or in the former Eastern Bloc ranked lower because they are still struggling to find new national identities, Smith said. Hungary was the highest Eastern European country on the list at 21.

This is not the first time that the Senate has attempted to rally around the flag in this way since the US Supreme Court ruled that burning the Stars and Stripes is an example of free speech and protected by the US constitution.

On this occasion though, the vote could not have been closer.

Just one more senator on board and a ban on the desecration of the American flag would have been sent to individual states for ratification - a very rare occurrence indeed.

'Unpatriotic'

There have been only four recorded acts of flag burning in the United States this year but this did not stop the Senate from spending two days debating the issue.

A majority of Republicans argued that the Stars and Stripes is a cherished symbol of US freedom and values which needs protection.

But Democratic opponents dismissed the amendment as the latest attempt by Republicans to appeal to their conservative base ahead of November's mid-term elections by painting those who voted against the bill as unpatriotic.

Fourteen Democrats backed the measure in the end, earning the praise of President Bush who said he continued to believe that the American people deserved the opportunity to express their views on this important issue.

The president met the soldier on a New Year's Day visit to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where Bagge had been recuperating from his injuries for months. Bagge, now 23 and a native of Eugene, Ore., was in a convoy hit by roadside bombs a year ago in the remote Iraq desert south of Kirkuk.

Bagge's left leg was amputated just above the ankle, and his right leg ends just above the knee.

He told Bush during their January visit that he wanted to run with him. Bush was an avid runner who had mostly traded the activity for mountain biking in the last couple of years because of knee problems.

"I looked at him, like, you know, there's an optimistic person," Bush said. "It's an amazing sight for me to be running with a guy who, last time I saw him, was in bed wondering whether or not - I was wondering whether or not he'd ever get out of bed."

But, the president added, in tribute to the hard work Bagge did to realize this goal, "There was no doubt in his mind that he would."

"It's a privilege," commented Bagge, who had changed in the Oval Office into a special set of prosthetic legs that he uses to jog.

And then the pair took off for the remainder of their run.

"The broadcast environment remains tough," Debra Schwartz, a media analyst for Credit Suisse, wrote in a report.

The totals are not complete because only three of the five networks - the new CW, Fox Broadcasting and NBC - have completed their sales. Fox, part of the News Corporation, and CW, owned by the CBS Corporation and Time Warner, finished late last week.

NBC, part of the NBC Universal division of the General Electric Company, finished on Monday.

-The remaining two networks - ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Company, and CBS - are still negotiating with advertisers and agencies. They are expected to finish by Friday, if not sooner.

"People would like to go off for the Fourth of July and be done," said an executive at one network.

In some recent years, when demand from advertisers was particularly strong, the upfront market was completed by Memorial Day.

In other, less frenetic years, the bargaining continued until around Independence Day. Occasionally, when demand was especially soft, the upfront market muddled through the summer and ended by Labor Day.

For decades, the broadcasters took in more during each upfront market than the one before, except when recessions dampened advertiser demand. That reflected a relentless focus on using mass media to reach consumers quickly.

Now, marketers' desire to explore alternatives, particularly digital media, is leading them to divert ad dollars from television or to add money to their budgets specifically for new media.

That significant change has not escaped the attention of the broadcast networks. They are offering marketers opportunities to buy commercial time or ad space in places away from the TV set.

NBC, for instance, has booked an estimated $50 million in digital revenue separate from the broadcast airwaves, said Randy Falco, president and chief operating officer at the NBC Universal Television Group in New York.

An additional $200 million in commercial time that NBC sold during the upfront market was attached to digital deals, Mr. Falco said. NBC sold an estimated $1.9 billion in commercial time in the upfront market, about even with last year.

"We feel very good about where we are, being flat in a down market," Mr. Falco said.

The NBC total of $1.9 billion includes an estimated $200 million in revenue from its new "Sunday Night Football" broadcasts, and the preshows, which start in September. Some industry analysts are reluctant to count football revenue in the upfront market results along with revenue from entertainment programming. Others, however, willingly include it in a network's total.

Estimates are that when ABC is finished, it will have sold about $2.2 billion in commercial time, an increase from the estimated $2.1 billion it sold during the upfront market last year.

ABC is radically remaking its prime-time schedule for 2006-7, hoping to build on the success of series like "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost" with nine new series for the fall (and an additional half-dozen waiting in the wings for midseason).

When CBS is done, estimates call for its total to reach $2.4 billion, about the same as last year. That would give CBS the lead among the broadcasters in total sales for the second year in a row.

CBS fared well in 2005-6 with returning shows like "Without a Trace" and scored with several new series like "Ghost Whisperer," "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Unit."

-Fox sold about $1.8 billion in commercial time, compared with $1.6 billion last year. Fox enjoyed high ratings with mainstay series like "American Idol" and "24" and newcomers like "Prison Break."

"Fox is the champion when it comes to charging a premium to reach the 18-to-49 audience," said Mr. Friedman of MediaPost, referring to the age group most coveted by advertisers.

CW, which is replacing the UPN and WB networks, sold about $650 million in commercial time. Last year, WB sold about $625 million and UPN sold about $250 million.

Because ratings for UPN and WB during the 2005-6 season fell below expectations, few analysts expected CW to do better in the upfront market than matching the WB performance last year.

During the upfront market, networks sell anywhere from 65 percent to 90 percent of the commercial time in the coming season. They hold back the remainder to sell during the season in what is called the scatter market.

"The big question now is really what the scatter market is going to be like," Mr. Friedman said. "Many media buyers are saying they want to wait for the scatter market to evaluate the new-media opportunities the networks are offering."

Given the challenging environment the broadcasters are facing, they may consider it a victory that the upfront market is not much lower than last year's.

"We believe that when the dust settles on the upfront market, total broadcast upfront-dollars results will be somewhere in the middle of bullish and bearish," William Drewry, another analyst for Credit Suisse, wrote in a report.

Or as Mr. Friedman put it: "Considering all the alternatives, that the upfront still has the power to do what it does is not so bad. If I were the networks, I'd take the money and run."

The survey also found that 41 per cent of Americans asked would support replacing oil from unstable areas of the world with oil from Canada "even if doing so resulted in higher prices for U.S. consumers."

"The findings suggest a foundation of American public support for meaningful initiatives to expand Canadian energy supplies to the U.S.," said CABC chairman Randoph Dove in a statement.

"As more and more Americans recognize Canada as a secure source of energy resources, this support should only increase," he said.

The release of this poll came just as energy-rich Alberta launched a massive lobbying effort in Washington to get across its message that Canada - and especially Alberta - has a stable and secure supply of oil that it's eager to sell the U.S.

Exhibits about Alberta and its vast oil sands deposits occupy a prominent place in this year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington.

That's drawn criticism from an environmental lobby group, the National Resources Defence Council, which says the industry and government-sponsored exhibits at the festival make no mention of the "devastating environmental consequences" the council says oil sands mining creates.

The survey was conducted by Vitale & Associates, who interviewed 1,000 people from June 13 to 15. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Sedley Alley, 50, was pronounced dead at 3:12 a.m. (0712 GMT)on Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in west Nashville. His execution was implemented after a federal appeals court panel lifted a stay grant.

Alley was convicted of raping and murdering 19-year-old Marine Suzanne Marie Colins near a U.S. Navy base north of Memphis in 1985.

He claimed during trial that he was not responsible for the murder as he had multiple personalities, but the jury convicted him of the crime in March 1987.

He recanted his confession in 2004 claiming he was innocent, which he said could be proved by DNA tests. This got him a reprieve from the scheduled execution on May 17 to seek court permission for testing.

However, his lawyers failed to persuade the courts to release crime-scene evidence for the testing.

The last Tennessee execution after the 1960 electric chair execution was carried out on a convicted child rapist and murderer in 2000.

"I think the fact that we're waiting until September will allow for plenty of dialogue and discussion to take place in terms of the state weighing in, social services providers providing us with some suggestions and then obviously the community," Hannemann said.

Hannemann's announcement also came the day before Gov. Linda Lingle is scheduled to hold a meeting tonight in Waianae to discuss homelessness along the Leeward Coast.

Linda Smith, the governor's senior policy adviser, said the Lingle administration is worried about city sweeps at parks and beaches in Waianae that could displace the homeless.

"Whether that will directly affect people who are residing in some of those parks and using them as shelters is too early to be able to say because we don't know the areas that the city plans to approach," Smith said. "But that is certainly one of our concerns."

Smith said although the Lingle administration was able to house many homeless who used to stay at Ala Moana park in a temporary shelter, Waianae might call for a different solution.

"That doesn't mean that the kind of lessons that we learn in the downtown area are appropriate for the people out in the Waianae Coast," she said.

The city first plans a $350,000 renovation of Waianae District Park, but the park will not be closed at night because there is no one currently living in that park.

The work will include repairs to the multipurpose building, painting and minor repairs to the gymnasium and outdoor play courts.

The city then will turn its attention to the three beach parks where the work will include painting and repairing the comfort stations, picnic tables and other buildings. Parking lot and beach roads and curbs will be repaired and re-striped. Workers will also do landscaping as well as painting and repairing of lifeguard towers and repairing sprinklers.

"We want to get back to what taxpayers would like to see with their dollars that our parks should be available for everyone and not just for one segment of the community," Hannemann said.

But Hannemann said that the situation on the Waianae Coast is "a very different situation with respect to many people having been there for many, many, many, many years, that we need to be cognizant of that."

Area residents also said the homeless situation is compounded by the fact that some of those living on the beach have relatives in neighboring communities.

"Our families already come to beach -- some of them live there already," said Waianae resident Maile Hallums.

"This is about the homeless," Hallums emphasized.

Kiki Paglioti, a 49-year-old mother of three, has been sleeping alone in a sea-rusted tent sheltered by mounds of sand in Nanakuli for about eight years. She said homeless people should not be blamed for broken bathrooms and sinks because they would never damage the only places where they can shower.

She said people camping at parks and beaches should be allowed to stay because they have nowhere else to go and are not harming anybody.

She said that since the city started closing Ala Moana Beach Park, more people have been moving to her area and inching closer to Farrington Highway.

"We used to have all the tents in front of the park. We would tell people to stay out of sight, out of mind," said Paglioti, who was evicted from a spacious home for not paying rent for three months while having problems with a boyfriend.

The man was taken to a hospital, Montoya said. His condition was not immediately known, and police did not identify him. No motive was disclosed.

"The system worked," said Elaine Sanchez, airport spokeswoman. "As soon as the breach occurred, the police were in place, and the system worked."

The man had been browsing alone in a Kid's Wear & Toys store for three or four minutes before snatching the child as he and his mother played with toy cars near the back of the store, said Blanca Gomez, a store employee.

"I turned around and saw him run. The lady, she was screaming, 'My baby, my baby!" said Gomez, adding that the man and the mother did not appear to know each other. "It was fast; it was scary."

The airport checkpoint was shut down for about 10 minutes, but there were no delays or interruptions of service at the airport, one of the nation's busiest, Sanchez said.

The shooting is believed to the first at an airport since two federal air marshals fatally shot a passenger at Miami International Airport in December. In that case, the man uttered bomb threats and tried to reboard a plane. It was later learned he had bipolar disorder.

Witnesses said the guard got into an argument with a visitor, 30-year-old Erik R. Beelman, over whose prior military service record was more veracious. The two men began pushing and shoving before throwing punches.

The guard, who Bryson said identified himself as Christopher Marlowe, then pulled out a .40 caliber handgun and shot Beelman once in the face.

Bryson said Marlowe was arrested and booked with aggravated battery. Meanwhile, Beelman was taken to a local hospital where he's listed in critical condition.