March 7, 2006

George Vecsey Sports of The Times column criticizes New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for not supporting World Baseball Classic; photos (M)

Energy Department National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports that if every car or truck in America had ventilated seats that gas consumption could be reduced by 7.5 percent; drawing (S)

Some government researchers have come up with a new idea for improving fuel economy — the cool seat.

IVillage, an Internet company devoted to women, agreed yesterday to be acquired by NBC Universal for $600 million. The sale of iVillage, one of the last major publicly traded Internet companies based in New York, comes at a time when major media companies, recovering from their misadventures online in the Internet bubble of the late 1990's, have been acquiring online companies.

The young Egyptian professional could pass for any New York bachelor. Dressed in a crisp polo shirt and swathed in cologne, he races his Nissan Maxima through the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, late for a date with a tall brunette. At red lights, he fusses with his hair.

Brian Pickrell, a blogger, recently posted a note on his Web site attacking state legislation that would force Wal-Mart Stores to spend more on employee health insurance. ''All across the country, newspaper editorial boards -- no great friends of business -- are ripping the bills,'' he wrote. It was the kind of pro-Wal-Mart comment the giant retailer might write itself. And, in fact, it did.

Most of the indigenous languages of North America became extinct as Indians declined in number, dispersed and lost their cultural identity.

As the threat of full-scale sectarian strife looms, the American military is scrambling to try to weed out ethnic or religious partisans from the Iraqi security forces. The United States faces the possibility that it has been arming one side in a prospective civil war. Early on, Americans ceded operational control of the police to the Iraqi government. Now, the police forces are overseen at the highest levels by religious Shiite parties with militias, and reports of uniformed death squads have risen sharply in the past year.

Is bigger necessarily better when it comes to running a telecommunications company? Apparently AT&T thinks so in announcing plans to buy BellSouth, the primary phone and broadband provider in the Southeast, for $67 billion. Yet AT&T's ambitions on so grand a scale have raised questions about whether its strategy of gobbling up rivals has reached a point of diminishing returns.

Just a week after a potential production of the controversial British play ''My Name Is Rachel Corrie'' was delayed at the New York Theater Workshop because of political concerns, the Royal Court Theater in London said it was considering several other offers to take the play to New York. Ewan Thomson, a spokesman for the Royal Court, confirmed that officials there wanted to stage it in New York ''as soon as we possibly can'' and have talked to other producers. Mr. Thomson said the company was hoping to capitalize on the show's momentum from a coming run in London's West End, where it will play from March 28 to May 7, approximately the same dates it had been tentatively scheduled to run at New York Theater Workshop.

Carolina Hurricanes defeat New York Rangers, 2-1; photo (M)

Gov. Michael Rounds of South Dakota signed into law the nation's most sweeping state abortion ban on Monday, an intentional provocation meant to set up a direct legal challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. The law makes it a felony to perform any abortion except in a case of a pregnant woman's life being in jeopardy. Though the law is not scheduled to go into effect until July, officials working at the state's only abortion clinic, in Sioux Falls, where about 800 abortions take place each year, said they spent much of the day consoling women.