May 15, 2005

As the Yankees began their six-game West Coast trip Friday, the hope among the players, coaches and Manager Joe Torre was that the team would be back at .500 by the time it returned home. Two days into the trip, the Yankees are on the verge of .500 after pounding the slumping Oakland Athletics, 15-6, Saturday night for their seventh consecutive victory. Tino Martinez hit his sixth homer in seven games and his eighth in 11 while driving in five runs. The Yankees (18-19) can reach .500 for the first time since April 13, when they were 4-4, if Randy Johnson can beat Oakland's Dan Haren on Sunday.

Hundreds Flee Violence Amid Uzbek Protests The president of Uzbekistan defended his government's crackdown on a violent uprising that engulfed an eastern city Friday, even as new protests broke out and hundreds of residents in the region fled to the country's border with Kyrgyzstan. He blamed Islamic extremists for the violence. PAGE 6 Going After Pensioners Lured by the promise of high interest rates, retirees are being persuaded to buy annuities, investments that usually lock up their money for decades and exact hefty fees for taking out cash sooner. SUNDAY BUSINESS Seeking the Unsurfed Wave With the beaches of California and Hawaii overcrowded, surfers are seeking new frontiers, spilling across Central America. Nicaragua is the latest destination, for those with patience and drive. Also, a forgotten English garden, and Boulder, Colo., where fitness and fun rule. TRAVEL Back on Track The Gotham Girls of New York are joining more than two dozen women's leagues across the nation in creating a retro-hip renaissance of roller derby. SUNDAY STYLES Rocking, but Not in a Chair The Rolling Stones may be aging rockers. But they are also active seniors, and in that respect are like millions of older people who are keeping busy. WEEK IN REVIEW

WHEN the Rolling Stones announced plans last week for another world tour, performing their 34-year-old hit ''Brown Sugar'' and other songs at a Manhattan news conference, it evoked the usual snickers about sexagenarians, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But while Mick Jagger, who will be 62 when the tour begins in August, and Keith Richards, who turns 62 in December, may be aging rockers, they are also something else: active seniors.

Mark Sundeen travel article on early April surfing trip to Las Salinas along Nicaragua's southwest coast; photos; map (L)

In the final minute of the third quarter, Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade dunked an offensive rebound with his right hand. He swung on the rim and let out a scream, a sign of his dominance over the Washington Wizards on their home court. This best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals series, which ended in four games after the Heat's 99-95 victory Saturday night, belonged to Wade -- from the opening tip of Game 1 to the two free throws he sank with seven seconds left to seal Game 4.

BEYOND BLACK By Hilary Mantel. 365 pp. A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt & Company. $26.

WHEN the time came to sell our roomy old house in New Jersey, with its stained-glass windows and towering oaks in the front yard, two nice young couples who had heard that the ''for sale'' sign would soon be posted wanted to see the place. That wasn't surprising: Montclair's a hot market. We'd barely begun the daunting process of shoveling out 20 years' worth of vintage report cards, semifunctional computers and stuffed animals left behind by a child who's now 23. We hadn't even decided which real estate broker to list with. But we told the early birds to come ahead.

Several of the nation's most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming. Their numbers are still small, but they represent growing cracks in what had been a virtually solid wall of opposition to nuclear power among most mainstream environmental groups. In the past few months, articles in publications like Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wired magazine have openly espoused nuclear power, angering other environmental advocates.

IN Oslo in the summer of 1993, a guitarist named Snorre Ruch -- part of Norway's emergent cult of black metal, extreme heavy metal with overtones of arson and suicide -- served as the accomplice to a gruesome murder in which a musician was stabbed more than 20 times in the back and head. Mr. Ruch drove the murderer from the scene and was later sentenced to eight years in prison, where his worldview apparently did not brighten much. (Sample lyrics from a post-prison album: ''Deep down in the black slime of this earth restless limbs are at work/Deep down beneath the dark tar of this land decrepit lungs crave air.'')

LESLIE SISSON was gaining on the pack. Ms. Sisson, a tiny brunette, bent low, rounding the curve at a 45-degree angle until she gathered enough speed to burst clean through the clot of legs, wheels and bulky padding that stood between her and the first skater. She whizzed by, a blur of orange with clenched fists and bared black mouth guard, earning one point for each of the five members of the opposite team she lapped during a two-minute period, or jam in roller derby lingo. Trying to block Ms. Sisson, several of her opponents hooked skates and tumbled, arms outstretched, across the rink and nearly into the laps of fans seated at trackside.

MAURICE CHEVALIER never gets old. Claudette Colbert never gets old. But a Morgan is born old. Yes, yes, it's a terrible thing to say about a brand-new sports car, and the Morgan Aero 8 Mk. II is as brand new as Morgans get. But you must understand, at Malvern Link in Worcestershire, England, ''old'' is a good thing. It evokes hand-built craftsmanship, well-considered tradition, the sorely missed integrity of vanished generations.

Reggie Miller's fireworks display had long since faded, and in an empty arena, the defending champion Pistons found themselves contemplating their next shot. The Pacers' 79-74 victory in Game 3 on Friday was slow, sloppy, physical and flawed, and it was punctuated by a dramatic Miller performance followed by an exchange of words -- simply put, a summary of the Pacers-Pistons rivalry.