January 10, 2006

US ski team criticizes 2006 Olympic hopeful Bode Miller for implying in an interview that he drank alcohol while competing; photos (M)

For drivers like David G. Leonard, E-ZPass used to be anything but easy. E-ZPass, a plastic transponder that is mounted to a car's windshield, lets motorists zip by highway tollbooths in several states, including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But Mr. Leonard, an actuary who makes frequent business trips to the New York area, is based in Ormond Beach, Fla. -- outside E-ZPass territory. So renting a car in Newark automatically meant spending a long time waiting to cross each bridge or to use a tollway.

Two suicide bombers carrying police identity cards walked up to an Interior Ministry checkpoint on Monday morning and blew themselves up hundreds of yards from a ceremony attended by the American ambassador, killing at least 18 police officers and wounding 25, officials said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place shortly before noon inside a secure zone shared by the city's Police Academy, where the ceremony was being held. Iraq's interior and defense ministers were also at the event, commemorating the formation of the Iraqi Police, but the officials, including the ambassador, were far enough away that the blast did not endanger them.

FIRST, a mea culpa is in order. We blew it in the days before the transit strike last month. We wrote worriedly then about how, for the first time in a long while, we had seen a few subway cars whose windows were covered with huge swirls of mindless graffiti. That account distorted reality. In fact, lots of subway cars are being scarred by this new barbarism, which some with sensibilities more refined than ours would have us believe qualifies as an urban art form.

Police reports and other public records published online on Sunday have raised substantial questions about the truth of numerous incidents depicted in James Frey's best-selling memoir, ''A Million Little Pieces.'' The book, originally published in 2003 by the Nan A. Talese imprint of Doubleday, soared to the top of the best-seller lists in the fall after it was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her television book club. Ms. Winfrey's enthusiastic endorsement helped the book to sell more than two million copies last year, making it the second-highest-selling book of 2005, behind only ''Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.'' ''A Million Little Pieces'' currently tops the New York Times paperback best-seller list; Mr. Frey's second book, ''My Friend Leonard,'' is on the paper's hardcover best-seller list.