Big East men's basketball tournament could seed 10 teams in NCAA tournament, since all programs performed very well this season; diagram (M)

Big East May Break Record in N.C.A.A. Draw

The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.     Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has been their turf.  

Elite Troops Get Expanded Role on Intelligence

Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.      The agreement, hashed out in weeks of negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and Republicans critical of the program, dashes Democratic hopes of starting a full committee investigation because the proposal won the support of Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. The two, both Republicans, had threatened to support a fuller inquiry if the White House did not disclose more about the program to Congress.  

G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping

Shell Oil bought $32 million in residential properties to house employees, but most companies cannot afford to return.

Tough Hurdles for Companies in Move Back to New Orleans

Twelves women who make up Dames of Beef--also known as Dames du Boeuf--get together every few months to patronize New York City's vanishing old-school restaurants; favor places with sense of history and glamour, even if former is sketchy and latter has faded; dress the part, donning vintage cothing culled from years of diligent thrift shopping; range in age from mid-30's to late 40's; photos (L)

A Dining Circle Dresses Up and Savors a Bygone Era

NFL teams adjust player contracts in anticipation of salary cap deadline, which may come before NFL owners and players union reach agreement on new collective bargaining agreement; photo (M)

N.F.L. Salary-Cap Math: Deals Full of 'Funny Money'

Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests.

Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed

With his job seemingly hanging by a thread, Volkswagen's chief executive, Bernd Pischetsrieder, turned an annual news conference into a methodical defense of his tenure Tuesday, announcing plans to revive the lumbering company with zippy new cars and lower costs.     ''Why should I resign?'' Mr. Pischetsrieder said, when asked about a public rebuke delivered last week by the powerful chairman of Volkswagen's supervisory board, Ferdinand K. Piëch.  

VW's Chief, Under Fire, Fights Back

Staff members of the new pediatric AIDS clinic here are used to seeing sick children. But rarely had they seen one so ill as the silent, twig-thin youngster led in by his grandmother one hot morning in February.      The boy, Tsokotsa Lepheane, age 7, weighed 36 pounds. His hair was thin and patchy, his eyes dull. He stripped to his royal blue underpants slowly, with obvious effort, revealing emaciated limbs and a torso tattooed by a blotchy rash.  

Slowly, Africa Starts to Care for AIDS Children

 Gordon Parks, a Master Of the Camera, Is Dead  An influential photojournalist and the first black staff photographer for Life magazine, Gordon Parks was 93. With a creativity that encompassed filmmaking, writing books and even composing, he often focused on the black experience but was never limited to it. One of his most celebrated portraits, right, from 1942, which he called ''American Gothic,'' was shot after he had been refused service at a clothing store, a movie theater and a restaurant in Washington, D.C.   PAGE C16    Book Deal for Greenspan  Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has reportedly agreed to sell his memoir for more than $8.5 million, a deal that appears to give him the second-largest advance ever paid for a nonfiction book.   BUSINESS DAY, PAGE C1    Ambien and Traffic Arrests  Ambien, the best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel.   BUSINESS DAY, PAGE C1    DeLay Wins Texas Primary  Representative Tom DeLay, the former Republican leader in the House, easily defeated three challengers in the Texas primary for his House seat.   PAGE A20    Bombs Kill 15 in City Holy to Hindus  Apparently coordinated explosions in Varanasi, India, killed at least 15 people and injured a hundred, raising the familiar specter of sectarian violence. The first blast came as devotees gathered for evening prayer at a 16th-century temple; the second came 45 minutes later at the train station.   PAGE A10    Book Ties Bonds to Steroids  A new book says Barry Bonds became a devoted steroid user who was motivated to take performance-enhancing drugs by his jealousy over the attention that Mark McGwire received during his memorable home run chase with Sammy Sosa in 1998.   SPORTSWEDNESDAY, PAGE D1    Plan to Streamline the U.N.  Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed sweeping changes to streamline the United Nations' often chaotic procedures, professionalize training and seek contracts abroad for costly services that it now provides from New York.   PAGE A3    Entry of Refugees Delayed  About 9,500 Burmese refugees scheduled to be resettled in the United States from Thailand this year are in limbo because their indirect support for armed rebels opposed to their repressive government has put them in technical violation of an American antiterrorism law, the USA Patriot Act, government officials say.   PAGE A20

INSIDE

Gov George E Pataki and Mayor Michael R Bloomberg will announce recipients of more than $27 million in federal grants to 63 arts and civic organizations; grants will be funneled through Lower Manhattan Development Corp with goal of reviving cultural activity in downtown Manhattan; some downtown arts groups have repeatedly expressed frustration over time taken for corporation to make good on its 2002 pledge to help cultural institutions affected by Sept 11 terrorist attack; map (M)

Federal Grants Are Set to Aid Cultural Activity Downtown

THE downfall of the ''Goodfellas'' mafiosi started with the Lufthansa job at Kennedy Airport in New York. At the time, it was the largest cash robbery in history. ''Lufthansa should have been our ultimate score,'' Ray Liotta, playing the mobster Henry Hill, said in the movie. Instead, the movie gangsters called attention to themselves with flashy purchases like a hot-pink Cadillac and, as the police closed in, began killing each other.     But Henry Hill survived, in the movie and in real life. Less than a week after the robbery in December 1978, he was sitting in the Boston Garden watching a basketball game that he had helped fix. He had paid off two Boston College players to beat Harvard by less than the 12-point spread. Boston College won, 86-83, and Mr. Hill won his $15,000 bet.  

Sad Suspicions About Scores in Basketball

George Vecsey Sports of The Times column discusses latest allegations that San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds used steroids, which come as national teams play in World Baseball Classic (M)

Baseball's Dark Side Crowds the World Stage

Ken Smith, executive chef of Upperline in New Orleans, makes duck and andouille etouffee; recipe; photos (L)

Rhapsody in Roux: A New Orleans Classic

On Monday night, America's most popular reggae singer took the stage wearing a black hat and a long black coat, but it wasn't a costume. The singer is Matisyahu, a former hippie from White Plains. Once he followed Phish. Now he follows the teachings of Hasidic Judaism. And tons of fans follow him.      Monday's concert was the first of two sold-out shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom. And yesterday he released his major-label debut album, ''Youth'' (JDub/Or/Epic), which is all but certain to enter the pop charts near the top. The record is dull, and the concert was often worse.  

Dancehall With a Different Accent

Please welcome another first-class clairvoyant to the swelling ranks of those who dazzle by channeling dead celebrities on the stage and screen. Resurrecting that strange socialite-in-limbo known as ''Little'' Edie Beale in ''Grey Gardens,'' the irritatingly mixed blessing of a musical that opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, Christine Ebersole easily matches the achievements of this year's newly anointed Oscar winners Philip Seymour Hoffman (who played Truman Capote in ''Capote'') and Reese Witherspoon (June Carter Cash in ''Walk the Line'').     Like Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Witherspoon, Ms. Ebersole embodies a once living figure of, shall we say, distinctive style with a radiant conviction and finesse that turn surface mimicry into fine-grained portraiture. Anyone who has seen the 1975 Maysles brothers documentary that inspired this show will know that Ms. Ebersole looks, sounds, moves and (most important, for much of this show's audience) dresses with eerie exactitude like the real Edie Beale. (For the uninitiated, Edie Beale, a cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, achieved the notoriety that inspires cult worship when she was discovered in the early 1970's living in rancid squalor in the family mansion in East Hampton with her ancient mother.)  

Whatever Happened to Little Edie?

New York State regularly sends patients from mental hospitals to nursing homes, where it illegally houses hundreds of them without the care they need and often under conditions that approach imprisonment, according to legal groups designated by the state to represent the disabled.     Those groups said they would file a lawsuit today in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, accusing New York State of violating several federal laws and claiming that many of the mentally ill patients who have been moved from state psychiatric hospitals into the nursing homes should instead be back in their own neighborhoods, living independently but with government help.  

New York Puts Mental Patients in Homes Illegally, Groups Say

New York State legislators promote two bills that will require many businesses to provide health insurance for workers that lack it; move comes after similar legislation passed in Maryland that was aimed more narrowly at Wal-Mart, which has long been accused of offering meager benefits; similar bills are emerging in more than 20 states (M)

Wal-Mart Looms Over 2 Bills to Improve Worker Health Care

New York Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton is locking up some of Democratic Party's top fund-raisers, in move that party officials and strategists say seems intended to complicate efforts of potential rivals in 2008 presidential election; Clinton and advisers insist only focus is on re-election to Senate; money she is raising can be used after Senate re-election bid for presidential run; photos (M)

Clinton Says New York, but Money Hints at '08

 The Swamp The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise  By Michael Grunwald  Illustrated. 450 pages. Simon & Schuster. $27.       For at least a century and a half, the Everglades wrestled with an image problem. Today, looking at its endless acres of swaying sawgrass, Americans see precious wetlands, home to the egret and the orchid. But for earlier generations, the Everglades was simply a swamp, a mosquito-infested wasteland. ''The first and most abiding impression is the utter worthlessness to civilized man, in its present condition, of the entire region,'' wrote Buckingham Smith, a Harvard-educated lawyer and historian sent by the government to study the Everglades in the 1840's.  

Visionaries and Rascals in Florida's Wetlands

Though Tchaikovsky's ''Mazeppa'' is a staple of the Kirov Opera at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, it has made it only to the periphery of opera companies outside Russia. When the Kirov came to the Metropolitan Opera House in the spring of 1998 to present four Russian operas, ''Mazeppa,'' the least well known, proved a stunning revelation. Conducted by Valery Gergiev, Tchaikovsky's epic about the 17th-century Ukrainian separatist Ivan Mazeppa seemed an anguished, probing and noble work.      The Kirov's production was fairly basic: mostly painted flats and drops for sets but with vividly colorful and stylish costumes. It did not take much persuading from Mr. Gergiev for the Met to commit to presenting its own staging, a company premiere.  

From a Galaxy Far Far Away, Tchaikovsky's Ivan the Rebel

Report on tutoring companies, rushing to tap into money available under federal No Child Left Behind Law, assails companies for doling out gifts to students and hiring several workers with criminal backgrounds; finds some school officials improperly gave companies confidential information on schoolchildren that companies used to track down prospective students; report covers 2003-4 and 2004-5 school years and, while some issues have been addressed, complaints are still being received (M)

Report on Tutoring Firms Cites Problems in New York

Two large shareholders sued Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday, contending that a $21.4 million severance package for Carleton S. Fiorina, its former chief executive, violated the company's policy on executive compensation.     The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco by the pension funds of the Indiana Electrical Workers union and the Service Employees International Union, is the latest example of shareholders trying to limit executive compensation.  

Lawsuit Contests Pay Package Hewlett Gave to Former Chief

Dominican Republic defeats Venezuela, 11-5, in first round of World Baseball Classic; photo (M)

Dominicans Display Their Power and Their Passion

With a tendency to stare zombie-like and run into stationary objects, a new species of impaired motorist is hitting the roads: the Ambien driver.      Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug.  

March 8, 2006

Headlines from March 8, 2006

Big East May Break Record in N.C.A.A. Draw

Elite Troops Get Expanded Role on Intelligence

G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping

Tough Hurdles for Companies in Move Back to New Orleans

A Dining Circle Dresses Up and Savors a Bygone Era

Billboard 200

High School Musical

Kidz Bop 9

Curious George (Soundtrack)

The Breakthrough

Back To Bedlam

Historical Context for March 8, 2006