Polls show gap narrowing between Netanyahu, Livni

Israeli polls Friday showed a narrowing race between front-runner Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, giving Livni a chance at an upset victory just days before Tuesday's national election.

One poll shows Netanyahu's hawkish Likud party winning 27 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament. Livni's centrist Kadima party gets 25.

But the poll shows that voters clearly prefer hard-line parties, giving them 66 seats in parliament, compared with only 54 for centrist, dovish and Arab parties. That means Netanyahu has far better chances of cobbling together a governing coalition after the election.

The poll said 15 percent of …

Costa Rica's Poll continues medal assault

INDIANAPOLIS Costa Rican swimmer Silvia Poll, an unknown beforethe 10th Pan American Games, served notice she could be a force tocontend with at next summer's Olympics.

Poll, 16, swept to her third gold medal Tuesday, taking the100-meter backstroke in a Pan Am record-breaking time of 1:02.18, ahalf-second better than the existing mark. The silver and bronzemedal winners were Holly Green and Michelle Donahue of the UnitedStates.

Poll earlier won the 100-meter freestyle in a Pan Am record timeof 56.1 and also the 200-meter freestyle, becoming the first swimmerat the Games to take multiple gold.

Poll, born in Nicaragua of German parents, also helped pull …

Shiite Militiamen Kill 4 Police Officers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militiamen loyal to an anti-American cleric re-emerged Monday in the southern city of Amarah, hunting down and killing four policemen from a rival militia in a brutal Shiite-on-Shiite settling of scores.

The Iraqi army set up a few roadblocks but did not interfere in the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters after police fled the streets. The latest attacks came despite a public call by al-Sadr to halt the tribal vendetta, suggesting that splinter groups were developing within his militia.

The spread of revenge killings among Shiites in their southern heartland has opened a new and ominous front as American forces struggle to control insurgent …

Education Management shares rise in IPO debut

Education Management Corp. shares soared almost 25 percent Friday in their debut in an initial public offering after being priced at the low end of their proposed range.

The stock jumped $4.48, or 24.9 percent, to $22.48 by midday on volume of almost 5 million shares.

On Thursday night, shares were priced at $18 a share, at the bottom of the company's proposed range of $18 to $20.

Many education stocks have seen gains in the past two years as the tough economy drives more Americans to bulk up their resumes. This is the third for-profit higher education IPO since November, following online educators Grand Canyon Education Inc. in November and …

Knee may bench Baines 2 months

KANSAS CITY, Mo. Finally admitting Harold Baines has a new kneeinjury, the White Sox sent their All-Star right fielder home lastnight.

Dr. James Boscardin will examine Baines today. It is not knownhow long Baines will be out, but it could be two months.

"I'd rather get looked at than go through a whole year of whatI'm going through now," said Baines, who hasn't recovered fully fromhis arthroscopic knee surgery last October. "I couldn't have playedyesterday (Tuesday)."

Despite the Sox' public optimism, it appears Baines will have tobe placed on the 15-day disabled list, perhaps retroactive to Tuesday. That wouldleave him ineligible to play until at …

Nancy Holt

Nancy Holt

MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH ART GALLERY

Standing tall in black aluminum at twenty feet, Nancy Holt's monumental outdoor sculpture Solar Rotary, 1995, comprises a swirling design that casts tribal tattoo-like shadows on a plaza's grounds at the University of South Florida, Tampa. Beneath the work (which I remember fondly from when I was a teen) and the typically oppressive midday sun is a bench, cradling one of the most interesting objects to be found in the area - a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite, discovered in Miami-Dade County. Holt's long-standing interest in astronomical themes, so overt in this example, seemed to loom large in an excellent survey of her early …

Henryk Mandelbaum, Auschwitz survivor forced to strip fellow Jews, dies at 85

Henryk Mandelbaum, who was forced by the Nazis to strip fellow Jews of valuables and gold teeth after they were gassed at Auschwitz, died on Tuesday, a historian said. He was 85.

Mandelbaum died at a hospital in the southern Polish city of Bytom several days after undergoing heart surgery, said Igor Bartosik, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum who has co-written an upcoming book on Mandelbaum.

Bartosik said he did not know the exact cause of death, and hospital officials refused to comment.

Mandelbaum was Poland's last surviving member of a Sonderkommando _ groups of Jewish prisoners forced to handle the bodies of fellow Jews who were …