January 2, 2006

Columbus (Ohio) policA

It was his eyes. She was flipping through a newspaper, and suddenly his eyes were staring at her from a police photograph in the crime pages. Even before she read the headline, she felt shock. Then nausea. ''The way he came at me with that knife, I can't forget those eyes,'' she said, recalling the stranger who climbed through her Manhattan apartment window one night in late 1972 and raped her.

As Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. enters his final week of dress rehearsals for his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, participants say his performance has already made one thing clear: he will never be as polished and camera-ready as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was at his own hearings a few months ago. ''He is not going to be the well-manicured nominee,'' said one participant in the rehearsals, known as murder boards, at which Republican lawyers have played the roles of interrogating senators. ''That is not to say it is going to be worse. It is just going to be different.''

Ben Brantley Critic's Notebook on current London productions of Ibsen play Wild Duck, Tennessee Williams play Night of the Iguana, John Osborne and Anthony Creighton play Epitaph for George Dillon, Mike Leigh play Two Thousand Years and Howard Brenton play Paul; notes that fiery political plays that filled West End theaters during first years of Iraq war have given way to less literal-minded, more reflective dramas; photos (M)

The flat-panel televisions will be getting bigger, the MP3 players and cellphones will be getting smaller. And almost everything will be getting cheaper. But the biggest trend expected at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which begins this week in Las Vegas, is that these machines will be communicating with one another. The theme of this year's show might best be described as Convergence: This Time We Mean It.

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, or so goes the old saw. For decades, the famous and the infamous alike largely followed this advice. Even when subjects of news stories felt they had been misunderstood or badly treated, they were unlikely to take on reporters or publishers, believing that the power of the press gave the press the final word. The Internet, and especially the amplifying power of blogs, is changing that. Unhappy subjects discovered a decade ago that they could use their Web sites to correct the record or deconstruct articles to expose what they perceived as a journalist's bias or wrongheaded narration.

Calling all retailers: 2006 may finally be the year that consumers start buying goods with their cellphones. With people already spending billions on ring tones, wallpaper and games for their phones, analysts and retail executives say they believe it will not be much of a leap to get them to use their phones to buy shoes, books and laptops.

Alessandra Stanley reviews A&E TV reality series Rollergirls; photos (M)

The handsome Tudor-style home at 150 Edgars Lane, built for less than $10,000 in 1925 on a hillside in this Hudson River town, never seemed to change much through all of its previous owners. Each family updated the house, but in modest ways until Tom and Julie Hirschfeld came along. The Hirschfelds purchased the two-story house with its gabled roof and stucco-and-wood-beam exterior for $890,000 in the fall of 2002. Good schools, safe streets, a picturesque community, like-minded neighbors, a relatively short commute to New York -- all these drew the family, just as they drew the previous owners.

After the Deluge Highway 12 in Sonoma County was one of several in Northern California closed yesterday after a torrential storm. Southern California has been preparing for days for heavy rain that could set off mudslides. PAGE A8 Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine in Price Dispute After failing to agree on the price of natural gas in a political conflict, Russia cut off the supply to Ukraine. The dispute could affect European countries that get Russian natural gas through pipelines that cross Ukraine. PAGE A7 Bush Says He Didn't Mislead Defending an eavesdropping program, President Bush denied that he misled the public last year when he said that government wiretaps required court orders. PAGE A11 Giants to Face Panthers The Giants will play host to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday in the first round of the N.F.L. playoffs. The Jets ended their season with a victory over the Bills. SPORTSMONDAY The King of the Countdown Dick Clark returned to New Year's Eve. A Critic's Notebook by Virginia Heffernan. THE ARTS, PAGE E1 Take That, Reporters! News reporters find themselves under increasing scrutiny, as dissatisfied interview subjects take to the Internet through e-mail and especially the amplifying power of Web logs to correct the record or to make sure the story is told from their perspective. PAGE C1

Viewers of last April 25's episode of the CBS show ''Yes, Dear'' may have noticed a box of Club Crackers sitting on a living room coffee table, next to a plate of cheese. What they did not know was that the box did not really exist, at least not on the set. The Club Crackers box was inserted into the scene through virtual product placement, a process that uses computer graphics and digital editing to put products like potato chips, soda and shopping bags into television programs after the shows are filmed or taped.

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees. The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company, was told early in 2005 by the Pentagon to identify religious leaders who could help produce messages that would persuade Sunnis in violence-ridden Anbar Province to participate in national elections and reject the insurgency, according to a former employee.