October 29, 2005

After Nick Hartigan finished his freshman year at Brown University, he and two friends started a power-washing business to clean the wooden decks of homes in Washington and its suburbs. One of their first customers was the Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who learned Hartigan was studying political science and told him, according to Hartigan: ''It's gobbledygook. You need to study history.'' So, Hartigan said, he decided, ''O.K., I'm double-majoring in history.''

Back in the spring, amid relentless criticism that Wal-Mart Stores was failing to provide affordable health care to employees, executives at the company decided to take a detailed look at its benefits. Wal-Mart knew its health costs were spiraling upward out of control, said M. Susan Chambers, the senior executive who led the initiative, but it was surprised to discover that its critics had a point. Almost half of the children of employees were covered only by government social-service programs like Medicaid or had no insurance at all.

RELIEF ABOUT ROVE -- Republicans were relieved that Karl Rove, above, the president's top adviser, escaped indictment yesterday. PAGE A14 THE INSIDER -- I. Lewis Libby Jr. counseled others to be discreet, but did not always follow that advice. His exceptions may haunt him. PAGE A13 LOOKING FOR ANSWERS -- Among the unanswered questions: who told Robert D. Novak that Valerie Wilson was a C.I.A. operative, and was her exposure a crime? PAGE A13

THE operative word in Chicago these days is stunned. I'm speaking for myself, but I'm also speaking for fellow South Siders and fans who are stunned that the Chicago White Sox -- the Hitless Wonder White Sox of 1906, the Go-Go Sox of 1959 -- won the World Series. Stunned.

Maybe there was no good way for the cyclist Erin Mirabella to hear that the Olympic bronze medal she had treasured for the last 14 months would be taken away, but Mirabella could tell you one of the bad ways: to be called by a friend who read a story on a Web site. That was precisely how Mirabella found out late last week that the bronze medal for the points race at the Athens Olympics would be returned to Colombia's Maria-Luisa Calle Williams. This happened after the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the positive drug test that had disqualified Calle Williams after the race and bumped up Mirabella to third place.