December 12, 2005

New York Giants defeat Philadelphia Eagles, 26-23, in overtime; photos (M)2

NBA's newly heightened attention to dress code is raising sales at high-priced clothing stores; photos (M)

As Time Warner nears a decision on a big alliance with Google or Microsoft for its America Online unit, Stephen M. Case, the co-founder of AOL, has spoken out against the plan, aligning himself with the thinking of the financier Carl C. Icahn, who has pushed for a breakup of Time Warner. Mr. Case, who recently resigned as a Time Warner director, wrote in an essay in The Washington Post on Sunday that ''although I played a key role in bringing AOL and Time Warner together six years ago, it's now my view that it would be best to 'undo' the merger by splitting Time Warner into several independent companies and allowing AOL to set off on its own path.''

Once Richard D. Parsons, the chairman of Time Warner, decided not to sell an ownership stake in America Online, he was faced with the potentially more difficult prospect of forging a relationship -- with either Google or Microsoft -- that would bolster AOL even as it competes head-on with its partner. The complexities of such an arrangement have kept executives of the three companies in intense negotiations for weeks, pushing a decision, which had been expected last week, to the middle of this week at the earliest, an executive briefed on the negotiations said.

Director Oliver Stone builds scale model of lower Manhattan in Los Angeles for filming of movie World Trade Center, which tells story of two police officers who were last rescue workers pulled from ground zero alive; some of footage is also shot in New York metropolitan area, and film is billed as uplifting story about everyday New Yorkers helping one another amid terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; photos (M)