Miracle

N EW ORLEANS-Warren Buffett leads a troop of officials, reporters and a guy with a boom mike into the just-finished new apartment. Five years ago, after the levees failed, this area was 10 feet underwater. Now, on this bitterly cold morning early in March, it is a construction zone ringed by chain-link fences, and one of the richest men in America wanders around what will eventually be some family's home. Model furnishings have been placed just so. The smell of new is still in the rooms.

- Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger has flown his final flight. The pilot who landed a US Airways plane safely on the Hudson River last January said Wednesday he is retiring after 30 years and plans to spend some of his time pressing for more flight safety. "My message going forward is that I want to remind everyone in the aviation industry - especially those who manage aviation companies and those who regulate aviation - that we owe it to our passengers to keep learning how to do it better," he said at a news conference shortly after his last flight landed at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

Edna Jonkoniec from Clinton, Maine, was looking for a recipe for making meatloaf that was rolled jelly-roll style. She said the roll also contained potatoes, cheese and other ingredients. She lost the recipe in a move some years ago and wanted to be able to make it again for her family. Carol Owen from Havre de Grace sent in a recipe she had that sounded very much like what Jonkoniec was in search of. It is fairly easy to make as long as you allow time for the loaf to chill before attempting to slice it. When I tested it, I used store-bought mashed potatoes, which was a big time-saver.

- Their game, their gold - but the Olympic hockey finale between Canada and the United States belonged to history before the roars triggered by Sidney Crosby's overtime goal had faded by so much as a decibel Sunday. Crosby, whose silence the past two games had led an entire nation to brood, took a pass from Jarome Iginla and rifled a shot through the legs of U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller 7 minutes, 40 seconds into overtime, giving Canada a 3-2 victory in the last event of perhaps the last Olympic tournament that will include NHL players.

Dont Blame the Cat finished a length ahead of late-charging Regal Warrior to win the $70,000 Miracle Wood Stakes at Laurel Park on Saturday. Trained by Hagerstown native Rick Dutrow and ridden by Erick Rodriquez , Dont Blame the Cat got his second straight victory at Laurel. Now 3-for-4 lifetime, the son of Catienus finished the seven-furlong race in 1 minute, 23.22 seconds, beating out Regal Warrior, a 47-1 long shot, and Cole T. Dont Blame the Cat paid $4.60 and topped a $122.

The first leg of the Magna 5 wager takes place today, with 12 3-year-olds racing in the $70,000 Miracle Wood Stakes at Laurel Park. Four winners of the seven-furlong race have gone on to start in a Triple Crown race, including Sweetnorthernsaint (2006), who was the betting favorite in the Kentucky Derby and finished second in the Preakness. Turf Melody, with Sheldon Russell riding, is the 3-1 morning-line favorite. He is trained by Graham Motion . Also running are Dont Blame the Cat (7-2)

Wearing uniforms that honored the Olympic champion 1960 U.S. hockey team and deploying a lineup that included the son of a player from the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" squad, the current U.S. Olympic team made some history of its own Sunday. In an exhilarating game that often went end to end without giving fans a moment's pause to do more than gasp, the Americans punished Canada goalie Martin Brodeur for his puckhandling mistakes and rode a two-goal, one-assist performance by Brian Rafalski to a 5-3 winat a jam-packed Canada Hockey Place.

This week's anniversary of President Barack Obama's stimulus package has provided yet another episode of that never-ending TV series: "Extreme Partisanship, Washington Edition." Democrats have hailed the spending as the country's economic savior, and Republicans mock it for failing to stop job losses while adding $862 billion to the deficit. The truth is less exciting. What the stimulus has provided was a modest and temporary cushion against the economic downturn. Administration claims that the effort will have saved or created 3.5 million jobs in its two-year window are, as most economists have concluded, on target.

The man behind Hampden's West 34th Street winter electric carnival began testing his lights in July. "There's never enough Christmas," said Robert Hosier, who was the first to string lights across 34th Street in 1982. Today, thousands of visitors flock to gaze at the high-kilowatt spectacle, which will flash on tonight. On Friday, Hosier darted from porch to pole, alley to skylight, checking on wires and searching for troublesome blown bulbs. "It was rough standing up on that roof today," he said of the winds that kicked up in the morning.