 At the Summer Olympics in Australia, Marion Jones is trying to do what no other woman has done: win five gold medals in track and field. But when the Games start on Friday, the spotlight will not fall solely on Jones. Australian athletes will be carrying the expectations of a sports-crazy populace, and little-known competitors will be catapulted into Olympic stardom. Today's special report looks at each Olympic sport. SECTION F  

SPECIAL TODAY -- SYDNEY 2000

New York Mets defeat Philadelphia Phillies, 3-0; photo (M)

Leiter Keeps His Focus And Gains The Victory

Ben Brantley reviews Richard II and Coriolanus, two plays, in repertory, by William Shakespeare, presented by Brooklyn Academy of Music; Jonathan Kent directs; Ralph Fiennes takes title role in both plays; photo (M)

Uneasy Leaders Whose Downfall Lay Within Themselves

Diane Johnson, in Writers on Writing series, discusses matter of themes in novels, and who should determine what they are, author or reader; photo (M)

Pesky Themes Will Emerge When You're Not Looking

Palestinian leadership assembly bows to international pressure, postponing declaration of statehood and recommitting to Middle East peace effort despite deeply deadlocked negotiations; casts decision as forward-thinking rather than as defensive step; adjourns for up to two months, entrusting statehood aspirations to Yasir Arafat and senior advisers; Israeli Prime Min Ehud Barak welcomes delay, but says he has no illusions about securing final peace agreement (M)

ASSEMBLY IN GAZA DEFERS DECLARING PALESTINIAN STATE

NBC's West Wing wins five awards, including best drama series, at annual Emmy presentation; HBO's Sopranos, which competed directly with West Wing in several categories, wins one Emmy: James Gandolfini as best actor; Sela Ward wins best actress award for ABC drama Once and Again; best comedy series is Will and Grace; best actor in comedy series is Michael J Fox in ABC's Spin City; best actress in comedy series is Patricia Heaton of CBS's Everybody Loves Raymond; other winners listed; photos (M)

'West Wing' Dominates Television's Big Night; NBC Drama Carries Off 5 Emmy Awards As Newer Shows Find Their Niche

 OPEC Agrees to Increase Production of Oil by 3%  Faced with mounting international pressure to drive down stubbornly high oil prices, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to increase its crude production by 800,000 barrels a day.    Just days before the OPEC meeting, the price of crude oil reached its highest levels since the Persian Gulf war before receding somewhat on Friday. OPEC members said they hope the 3 precent increase from current production will gradually push oil prices below $30 a barrel. [International, Section A.]    Human Genome Acquires Principia  Human Genome Sciences, a company that is developing drugs based on discovery of genes, said that it had acquired the privately held Principia Pharmaceutical for about $120 million in stock. Principia is developing a technology that could enhance the effectiveness of human proteins used as drugs. [C18.]

BUSINESS DIGEST

White House releases official photograph showing Rep Rick A Lazio enthusiastically shaking hand of Yasir Arafat during official visit to Middle East nearly two years ago; White House spokesman Joe Lockhart notes that Lazio has criticized Pres Clinton for shaking hands with Pres Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in New York Senate race, for kissing Arafat's wife in 1999; photo (M)

White House Enters Senate Race With Release of Photo of Lazio and Arafat

Governor Bush's Journey, 14th article in series on lives of presidential candidates, focuses on influence of father's legacy on his political career; Bush is loath to discuss manifold ways in which his life has been molded and prodded by father's and family's legacy; is extremely sensitive to questions relating to his political inheritance, notably over whether he is his own man; examination of his entire life suggests that almost everything he has achieved was in part because of his name and family connections, which opened doors that would otherwise have been closed; common theme runs through each stage of his life, namely, of hero worship of father leading to instinct to follow father's trail; many friends believe that, at some level, driving force of his career has been effort to honor father's legacy, or at least to please and emulate him, and that presidential bid is culmination of quest; photos (L)

A Father's Footsteps Echo Throughout a Son's Career

Firestone's tire debacle, which is now blamed for more than 150 deaths worldwide, is a story of missed hints, lost opportunities and unsolved mysteries; more than four years before Firestone gave Ford Motor Company or federal regulators any hint of problem with tires, company's engineers were alerted by State of Arizona that tires' threads tended to separate in hot weather; more than two years before company recalled tires, its financial staff was aware of mounting warranty claims; almost year ago most of Ford's management was told of deadly failures of tires on Ford Explorers overseas; little of information appears to have made it into hands of companies' safety experts, even while personal injury lawyers nationwide were sharing information about dozens of deaths involving Ford Explorers, which they kept from federal regulators; Firestone and Ford officials say they examined routine measurements of safety problems and concluded that all was well, even though each company had other data that, if checked, might have shown years ago that tires were highly defective (M)

Documents Portray Tire Debacle As a Story of Lost Opportunities

The White House stepped into Hillary Clinton's Senate race, releasing a photograph of Rick A. Lazio shaking Yasir Arafat's hand. Page B1.

Reverberating Handshake

Evidence strongly suggests that Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka are still using children in battle to win homeland for country Tamil minority, despite promise to UN to halt practice; Sri Lankan Army captures two 13-year-old girls, who give accounts of years with Tamil Tigers; photo; map (M)

Rebels Without a Childhood in Sri Lanka War

Irvington, NJ, Newark suburb, has become blight filled and crime ridden; high taxes and increased crime have caused township of 59,000 people to lose a tenth of its population since 1980 and 15 percent of its housing stock; photo; map (M)

The Town That Prosperity Forgot; Blighted, Broke and Crime-Ridden, Irvington Seems Helpless to Help Itself

Bob Knight is fired as basketball coach at Indiana University by president, Myles Brand, for 'uncivil, defiant and unacceptable' behavior; dismissal follows allegation by Kent Harvey, a student, that Knight recently assaulted him physically and verbally outside school's basketball arena; Brand admits severity of Knight's confrontation is in dispute, but cites other transgressions that violated zero-tolerance policy laid down on May 15 after board of trustees found he demonstrated pattern of inappropriate behavior and had embarrassed university; sanctions stemmed from investigation into allegation from former player Neil Reed that night choked him at 1997 practice, event caught on videtoape; photo (M)

Indiana's President Fires Coach Knight, Citing Bad Behavior

Tiger Woods wins Bell Canadian Open golf tournament; photo (M)

Woods Goes For Broke And Makes It

New York City police detectives used 38 laptop computers to track thousands of telephone calls between reputed mob figures, union officials they are accused of bribing and contractors charged with helping them siphon millions of dollars from construction projects around New York City; collected tens of thousands of financial records, conducted hundreds of surveillances, downloaded hard drives of 276 computers and subpoenaed so many documents that at one point they had to store them in 40-foot tractor-trailer; photo of Det Robert Callus, primary investigator in the four-year case (M)

Four Years of Police Work Yielded a Racketeering Indictment of 38

Foveon Co develops image-sensing computer chip capable of same resolution as Eastman Kodak's new chip, which can to capture digital images with resolution of 4,096 by 4,096 pixels per square inch, but Foveon says its technique could be much less expensive; clarity achieved with Foveon chip could begin to challenge expensive 4-by-5 film cameras made by companies like Hasselblad that are used by professional photographers; Foveon's founder, Carver Mead, a pioneer in chip industry, says he hopes to replace film camera; new technologies would have other applications as well; photo (M)

Low-Price, Highly Ambitious Digital Chip

Hewlett-Packard is in negotiations to acquire consulting unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers for as much as $20 billion; if deal is reached, it would reshape Hewlett-Packard into full-service computer hardware manufacturer and consulting services company; for PricewaterhouseCoopers, sale would finally sever its consulting arm from its accounting business, relationship Securities and Exchange Commission sees as having potential for conflict of interest between auditing and consulting units; deal would come after rash of similar separations of auditing and consulting units at other firms (M)

Hewlett-Packard May Seek Deal For Consultants

Vice Pres Al Gore and Sen Joseph I Lieberman say they will propose legislation or new regulatory authority allowing federal government to sanction entertainment industry if it continues marketing violent products to children; Gore says he will give industry six months to make changes, after which he and Lieberman will encourage Federal Trade Commission to move against industry by using power to prohibit false and deceptive advertising; position, while not new for Lieberman, is departure for Gore, who has always stopped short of suggesting government-imposed restrictions on media marketing; says care would have to be taken to ensure that any enforcement does not violate First Amendment protections; acknowledges there has been no constitutional tests of use of deceptive advertising laws to challenge marketing strategies, as opposed to advertising content; photo (M)

Gore Takes Tough Stand on Violent Entertainment

Interactive television may be heading into tens of millions of living rooms in next two years, prompting industry battle over who will lay claim to tens of billions of dollars in new revenue that interactive advertising is expected to yield; conflict has exploded into one of central disputes in government's review of America Online's proposed acquisition of Time Warner; combined AOL Time Warner would run television networks, own cable systems and control nearly half consumer market for Internet acccess; consumer groups and competitors fear company would be so powerful it could stifle other would-be providers of interactive television; America Online contends it is too early to worry about anyone dominating interactive television market, but rest of industry, including units of Time Warner, are already preparing for battle; photo (M)

AOL-Time Warner Rivals Preparing for Interactive TV Fight

Article in special section on 2000 Summer Olympic Games discusses Marion Jones of US seeking to become first woman to win five gold medals in track and field at same Olympics; photo (L)

At Long Last, Her Golden Moment

Marat Safin defeats Pete Sampras to win US Open men's singles tennis championship; team of Julie Halard-Decugis and Al Sugiyama wins women's doubles championship; Andy Roddick wins junior boys' singles championship; photo (M)

In the Final, Youth Serves

New York Giants defeat Philadelphia Eagles, 33-18; photo (M)

For the Giants, There's No Disputing the Facts on the Ground

 OPEC to Raise Production  Spokesmen said OPEC plans to increase production by 800,000 barrels a day, responding to pressure to drive down high oil prices. PAGE A10    Television's Big Night  At the Emmy Awards, ''The West Wing'' outdueled ''The Sopranos'' in several categories, including best drama. THE ARTS, PAGE E1

INSIDE

Government agrees to drop virtually its entire case against Wen Ho Lee, former Los Alamos scientist accused of stealing library of nuclear weapons secrets, in return for Lee's agreement to plead guilty to single charge that he improperly downloaded classified material onto unsecure computer; Lee will not pay fine, serve more time in prison or face probation; will cooperate with investigators looking into why he improperly downloaded massive amounts of data and what he did with seven missing computer tapes containing information; plea agreement is reached after government suffers string of courtroom defeats, after FBI agent recants testimony accusing Lee of deceptive behavior, and in face of deadline for government to hand over thousands of pages of classified documents about why it singled out Lee after investigation dating back to 1995; government officials say they were motivated in part to accept agreement out of fear that they may have been forced to disclose in open courtroom highly classified information about country's nuclear weapons program; photo (M)

U.S. TO REDUCE CASE AGAINST SCIENTIST TO A SINGLE CHARGE

Leandro Nicolás Bolmaro is an Argentine-Italian professional basketball player for Olimpia Milano of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA) and the EuroLeague. He also represents the senior Argentina national team.

Leandro Bolmaro, Argentine-Italian basketball player

Leandro_Bolmaro

Xavien "Zay" Kevonn Flowers is an American professional football wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Boston College Eagles and was selected by the Ravens in the first round of the 2023 NFL draft.

September 11, 2000

Headlines from September 11, 2000

SPECIAL TODAY -- SYDNEY 2000

Leiter Keeps His Focus And Gains The Victory

Uneasy Leaders Whose Downfall Lay Within Themselves

Pesky Themes Will Emerge When You're Not Looking

ASSEMBLY IN GAZA DEFERS DECLARING PALESTINIAN STATE

Billboard 200

Country Grammar

Oops!...I Did It Again

The Marshall Mathers LP

Now 4

Human Clay

Notable Births

Historical Context for September 11, 2000