September 28, 2000

United States upsets Cuba, 4-0, to win its first Olympic gold medal in baseball; Cuba wins silver and South Korea wins bronze; photos (M)

Plans are under way to build one, possibly two, subterranean pipelines to carry Arctic gas to North America's pipeline grid; $10 billion undertaking would take seven years and faces environmental problems and opposition from some conservation groups; for last three decades geologists have been mapping largest known untapped reserves of natural gas in Alaska and Northern Canada; until recently, with gas prices low, indigenous opposition high and environmental issues looming, energy companies have been unable to find way to build pipelines to send gas south; now, with wholesale prices for natural gas doubling in year, with Energy Dept forecasting that demand for natural gas in US will rise 40 percent in next two decades, and with native groups dropping their opposition as they see opportunities for royalties and jobs, push is on to tap Arctic reserves; map with proposed pipeline routes (L)

Manhattan apartment kitchen can be remodeled on restricted budget of $20,000; projects undertaken by four designers run from modest $5,000 redo to makeover that slightly topped budget because wall was demolished; photos; diagram; photos (M)

Mel and Patricia Ziegler, who launched and later sold Banana Republic, have a new and very different project, ZoZa, clothing company whose designs will be based on their domestic Zen power base; business will be on the Web at first, with the first store opening later in Mill Valley, Calif, where couple live; photos (M)

Students using Internet in college-search process hail online software that instantaneously provides lists of colleges tailored to their preferences and lets them compare schools; find college's own Web sites often provide in-depth look at academic departments and student clubs; complain that using free software often leads to deluge of mailings from schools and commercial entities to whom sites' commercial partners sell their registration data; table of college-search sites; drawing; photo (M)