July 10, 2003

Ben Brantley reviews The Angel Project, director Deborah Warner's theater piece consisting of a mystical walking tour of New York, opening event of 2003 Lincoln Center Festival; photos (M)

Nike to Acquire Converse, Merging 2 Footwear Giants Nike, known for its shoes and its swoosh, has Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods on its corporate team. Now it is lining up yet another sports star. For $305 million, Nike is buying Converse, a century-old footwear company and maker of the celebrated ''Chuck Taylor All-Star'' shoe. The deal brings together one of the oldest names in athletic footwear with perhaps the world's most famous sports shoe brand. It also opens a chapter for the financially troubled Converse, which dominated the athletic footwear business for decades before stumbling into bankruptcy in the early 1990's. [Page C2.]

Online poker contributes to skill of players, including Chris Moneymaker, who, with no tournament experience, won $2.5 million in World Series of Poker; fees for online games are significantly lower and players are not deterred by physical elements such as smoke or distance; eliminating shuffling, dealing and chip counting make online games proceed faster, allowing players to work through thousands of games without distraction; list of online poker rooms noted; some players believe game-theory model used by computer, in which it is assumed that every player is using best strategy, do not compare to human competition; photos (L)

EVERY morning, Lawrence Halprin, the 87-year-old creator of evocative public places, grabs his hiking staff from the kitchen and ambles down a series of wooden steps that wend their way through a gnarled thicket of madrone and redwood trees. He plunges into the swimming pool, hewn from ancient rocks imported from China, then takes a different path back. It might be the one that snakes down the base of Mount Tamalpais to the outdoor dance deck he designed for his wife of 63 years, the choreographer Anna Halprin, or the one through a grove of old-growth redwoods whose mighty wrinkled girths he knows by heart. ''I like to wander around in a place like this,'' he said, wearing the beat-up hiking boots he wore to the White House in March to receive the National Medal of Arts from President Bush. ''So, I design for it.''

Korea Development Institute reduces its forecast for economic growth this year, to 3.1 percent from previous forecast of 4.2 percent (S)

French catering company Sodexho Alliance says revenue fell 7.8 percent, to 9.1 billin euros ($10.3 billion) in first nine months of its fiscal year (S)

South Korea's Shinhan Financial Group signs final agreement to buy government's entire 80 percent stake in Chohung Bank for 3.37 trillion won ($2.85 million) (S)

The Dance Theater of Harlem presented ''St. Louis Woman: A Blues Ballet,'' above, on Tuesday, the opening night of this year's Lincoln Center Festival, which also featured a play, ''The Angel Project,'' a mystical walking tour of New York, and Prokofiev's opera ''Semyon Kotko.'' Reviews by Anna Kisselgoff, Ben Brantley and Anthony Tommasini. The Arts, Page E1.

Tenet Healthcare says it is being formally investigated by Securities and Exchange Commission, adding growing list of investigations and lawsuits company is facing; receives subpoena for documents dating to May 31, 1997, related to certain payments made from Medicare and insurance companies as well as to company's financial disclosures; Tenet's stock has dropped steeply since last fall, when it said that much of its rapid profit growth in last couple of years came from 'outlier' payments, which Medicare makes for treatment of especially costly cases; SEC is apparently looking at whether Tenet executives misled investors by not informing them well enough that company's growth was closely tied to those payments, which some analysts have characterized as Medicare loophole (M)

Latest German fad is leasing out Frankfurt subway; American visitor can lease whole system for 99 years with upfront payment of about $100 million; officials from Frankfurt's public transportation authority will embark on road show to New York, where they will try to entice investors to lease subway and streetcar network; tax advantages of leasing huge fixed asset, which depreciates each year, more than offset upfront fees paid to city; John Hancock, Bank of America and Wachovia Bank are among American investors that have signed such overseas leases; photo (M)

Joyce Purnick column deplores feuding between Schools Chancellor Joel I Klein and Randi Weingarten, president of New York City teachers' union, over how much of a say union will have in Education Department's plans for improving schools (M)

Gen Tommy R Franks says violence and uncertainty in Iraq make it unlikely that troop levels will be reduced 'for the foreseeable future,' and Defense Sec Donald H Rumsfeld nearly doubles estimated military costs to $3.9 billion a month, figure that does not include reconstruction costs; Franks tells Senate Armed Services Committee that commanders in Iraq agree that size of current forces--145,000 troops--is appropriate for current situation; Rumsfeld has never laid out timetable for bringing American troops home, but Franks' acknowledgment of scope of long-term military commitment to Iraq is strongest indication yet that reconstruction effort requires continued deployment of large numbers of troops, and that undertaking carries hefty price tag; Rumsfeld is pressed by Senate committee to detail efforts to reach out to allies for contributions of troops to replace Americans; Franks says 35,000 Iraqi police officers have been hired and that plans call for training new Iraqi army of 12,000 within one year and 40,000 within three years; photo (L)