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.