July 28, 2005

The last time Senator Charles E. Schumer tried prying answers out of John G. Roberts about his legal views was in 2003, when the Judiciary Committee held hearings on Mr. Roberts's nomination to the federal appeals court. Mr. Schumer did not get far.

MY husband, son and I were about to go for a bike ride. We had heart rate monitors. (We got them years ago.) And we had bicycle computers, little devices that track your speed, average speed, mileage, time and revolutions a minute. But now we were trying out the latest gadget for the data-driven workout -- power meters. These used sensors in the hub of the rear wheel to calculate how many watts of power we put out. They also gave us all the other data we might want -- heart rate, maximum heart rate, average heart rate, revolutions a minute, time, speed and average speed. And after a ride you can upload the data to a computer and see color-coded graphs of your performance. It's mesmerizing to see your power output. Stephen Madden, the editor in chief of Bicycling magazine, who assiduously uses a power meter himself, warned us not to get too obsessed.

Some things here remain timeless, like the robust opening day crowd that joined the track announcer Tom Durkin in the traditional first-race call of ''and they're off at Saratoga,'' and the field of classy 2-year-olds that ran for a rich purse in the feature. But the 137th meeting at Saratoga Race Course opened Wednesday at a time when a new management team is trying to prove that the New York Racing Association has reformed and is worthy of keeping its franchise to run what is considered one of the finest racing sites in the United States.

The City Council voted overwhelmingly yesterday to eliminate metered parking on Sundays, restoring to New Yorkers a treasured privilege whose loss has been much lamented in the two years since it was sacrificed to bring added revenue to the city's depleted treasury. The Council's decision touched off an unusually bitter debate with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who attacked the legislation as naked election-year pandering, and whose transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, told the Council in testimony yesterday that it had chosen to ''put both pedestrians and motorists at risk,'' a charge that infuriated many Council members.

Transportation Measure And Energy Bill Advance House and Senate negotiators cleared the way for major transportation legislation, and the finishing touches were put on an energy bill as Congress raced to wrap up for the summer. Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, said he would not try to force a vote in the next few days on a repeal of the estate tax. PAGE A22 Echinacea Fails Test on Colds Echinacea, the herbal supplement used by millions, neither prevented colds nor eased their symptoms in a large study. PAGE A18 Arrest in Reporter's Killing Pakistani intelligence agents arrested a suspect in the killing in 2002 of Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. PAGE A3 A Summer Boom on Broadway A crush of tourists and a strong selection of musicals have contributed to increases in box-office sales and theatergoers that are putting Broadway on track to set records for attendance and gross sales. THE ARTS, PAGE E1 Rumsfeld Prods Iraqi Leaders Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, visiting Iraq, pressed political leaders there to agree on a constitution quickly, and to exert more influence with Syria and Iran to force them to end support for the insurgency. PAGE A8 Dissent on Interrogations Military lawyers lodged dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had ample authority to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show. PAGE A21 Stem Cells, Eggs and Fertility Challenging long-held assumptions, a study suggests that women may have stem cells in their bone marrow that constantly replenish the ovaries with new eggs. PAGE A16