September 6, 2005

The online game World of Warcraft has become such a success that it is now prompting a debate about whether it is helping or hurting the overall industry.

If anyone seemed an able candidate for the harrowing recovery work at ground zero, it was Firefighter Tom Kelly, a former marine and sandhog who had spent most of his 14-year career pulling people out of fires and accidents. But at the site, where he logged long hours, he rescued no one. A face, an arm, a leg, a scalp with hair, shoes with feet in them, a headless body. Those were some of the remains that Firefighter Kelly found, and in the months that followed, he said, they kept finding him.

Article on The Tender Bar, memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times reporter J R Moehringer about childhood in which he befriended habitues of Dickens, neighborhood bar in Manhasset, NY; photos (M)

Offers of help are pouring in from around world to musicians of Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in wake of Hurricane Katrina; other orchestras, mostly regional ones, have offered temporary jobs or prospect of auditions to players who have scattered around country; all but one of musicians had safely left city or were elsewhere for summer engagements when hurricane struck (M)

The fist-pumping specter of Jimmy Connors returned to the National Tennis Center as Andre Agassi and James Blake followed the trail into the final eight that Connors blazed on the hardcourts here with more sound, fury and difficulty in 1991. Agassi went first yesterday, absorbing two sets of free-swinging, big-serving brilliance from the unpredictable Xavier Malisse of Belgium before coming on strong in the fifth to win, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 4-6, 6-2.

TINIEST SURVIVORS -- Woman's Hospital of Baton Rouge was the clearinghouse for 121 babies rescued from Orleans and Jefferson Parishes last week. Nearly all of the babies were newborns and most were premature. The hospital had not established contact with parents of about 10 of them. PAGE A24 HOMECOMING -- Thousands took slow steps toward recovery, as residents of Jefferson Parish were allowed to return home and salvage what they could for the first time since Hurricane Katrina hit. Some found mold growing on the ceiling. Some had trees through their roofs, some no roofs at all. The lucky ones discovered nothing worse than a refrigerator full of rotting food. PAGE A21 FAMILY TO FAMILY -- In Cumming, Ga., the kindness of strangers allows one family of evacuees from Louisiana to find a safe harbor. PAGE A24 FACE FROM THE PAST -- As administration officials fanned out in the White House's campaign to deal with criticism that they had failed in managing the disaster, there was one unexpected face in their crowd: former President Bill Clinton. PAGE A25 POLICE TESTED -- The last week has meant nonstop rescue missions, shootouts and forays into shelters in response to gunshots and reports of rape for the New Orleans police force. And like most everyone in New Orleans, police officers have been traumatized by the loss of homes and family members. PAGE A21 GEOGRAPHY LESSONS -- The Netherlands built coastal defenses to control the sea. London has floodgates, below. Japan is erecting superlevees. Experts say the projects are worth studying. SCIENCE TIMES, PAGE F1

Michiko Kakutani reviews book Shalimar the Clown: A Novel by Salman Rushdie; photos (M)

Hurricane Katrina has been the big leveler in more than the physical sense. Small banks, big stores and international manufacturers were all hit, and all are trying to figure out how to help customers and employees. Like the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have scattered to temporary homes and shelters throughout the South, businesses are also part of the diaspora. With many phone lines and Internet connections down, and many roads still impassable, few companies have begun to assess the damage to their buildings and inventories. Nor have they accounted for all their employees. Still, they are coping. Those with headquarters in Katrina's path have sent executives to prearranged safe spots to manage the businesses from afar. Those with local stores or factories near the worst devastation are busing in specialists, volunteers and supplies. But, as the following three tales show, getting back to business is playing out in myriad ways.

The New Orleans Saints, whose season was thrown into chaos by Hurricane Katrina, will play their relocated home opener at Giants Stadium on Monday, Sept. 19, the N.F.L. announced Monday. The game will begin at 7:30 p.m. and be televised, with the Washington-Dallas game kicking off as scheduled at 9 p.m. The Saints-Giants game was originally scheduled to be played in New Orleans on Sept. 18 in what would have been the Saints' home opener, but the devastation caused by the hurricane has put the Saints on the road for the entire season. The team is training in San Antonio and does not know where the rest of its home games will be played, although it prefers to play at Louisiana State's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

The six-seater Cessna was flying low and slow along the Gulf Coast. Two coastal researchers, straining against their seatbelts, were leaning out a gaping hole where the port side door had been removed, photographing overwashed sand, piles of seagrass and new inlets, the marks left on the region's barrier islands by Hurricane Katrina. But then the plane banked sharply, and the researchers aimed their cameras landward, toward Waveland, Miss., or what was left of it.

As criticism raged over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush returned to the region yesterday, and Army engineers patched up two levees that had been breached by the storm and cautiously began pumping water out of New Orleans. Mr. Bush comforted victims in Poplarville, Miss., and Baton Rouge, La., but he found himself ensnared in a dispute with Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who learned of Mr. Bush's trip from news reports.

Article on immense popularity of World of Warcraft, massively multiplayer online game made by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine, Calif; photos; graph (M)