NEWSMAKERS

Justice prevails: Justice Thurgood Marshall has had a conversion. Making what he describes as “a change, forevermore--so help me,” the Supreme Court’s only black member has started using Afro-American when he writes an opinion that refers to a black person. Marshall, 81, had never developed the habit of using the word black, preferring to use the word Negro long after others abandoned it. He used black for the first time Monday in a six-page opinion.

* Special delivery: A woman from Hong Kong gave birth aboard a Japan Air Lines plane heading for Tokyo from Los Angeles, and both mother and son are fine, an airline official said. Lie Runqing, 35, went into labor about six hours after the Boeing 747 left Los Angeles, and a doctor aboard helped deliver the baby, according to the official.

* Hold the fries: Sonoma County north of San Francisco has a plan to make casting a ballot as easy as buying a fast-food burger. Election officials are opening a drive-through window so motorists can pull up, sign their names and drop off their marked ballots. The window will shorten the often long lines of early absentee voters filing into the elections office, said Deputy Registrar of Voters Janice Atkinson.

* Moose on the loose: A deer hunter killed a moose in Underwood, Iowa, after it wandered hundreds of miles from its natural habitat and startled farmers by ambling through cornfields. Michael Scott Wiggins was charged with shooting an animal out of season--Iowa has no moose season--and having a center-fire rifle in his possession while deer hunting during a muzzle-loading season.