Racket

NEW YORK - "Vamos, chico!" Another winning forehand crashed off the racket of Rafael Nadal and he was screaming to himself over the applause. Then, as he often does, he clenched his fist as if it was wrapped around a 50-pound dumbbell, his bicep expanding to the size of a softball. "His biceps are bigger than my head," cracked fellow pro Andy Roddick a few days ago as he contemplated the rapid rise of the most photographed man in tennis. The game has known some oversized teenagers, but none who combined such a supreme gift for the game and an imposing physical presence as the 19-year-old prodigy from Mallorca, who has risen in one astonishing season to No. 2 in the world.

AN IDAHO county commissioner recently sued several agricultural companies, accusing them of racketeering for hiring illegal immigrants. New Hampshire police use trespassing laws to "intercept" undocumented immigrants. The Minutemen Project, a civilian undertaking of self-proclaimed border-watchers, is being enlisted in towns around the country. In ways big and small, private citizens, local governments and state law enforcement agencies are expressing frustration with the Bush administration and Congress for failing to reform the immigration system and control the nation's borders.

A marathon legal fight over protests outside abortion clinics will return to the Supreme Court for a third time, with the justices agreeing yesterday to revisit whether federal racketeering and extortion laws can be used to stop menacing blockades outside clinic entrances. The court agreed to hear what is now a 19-year-old case - the second abortion-related case on next term's calendar - as it finished its work for the summer with no public indication that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist plans to retire, as many predicted.

WASHINGTON -- By the time the last of J.J. Redick's seven three-pointers snapped the twine, the booing and chanting and unsavory remarks from the anti-Duke/anti-J.J. faction at MCI Center had all but stopped. In their place was a mass exhale of awe -- a muffled "Oooooh," every time Redick curled around another pick, caught and turned and shot from some impossible distance, a hapless North Carolina State defender a half step behind him, wrist cocked that ever-annoying split-second too long as he backpedaled downcourt.

The tobacco industry won a resounding victory yesterday when a federal appeals court barred the Justice Department from seeking forfeiture of $280 billion in allegedly ill-gotten gains as part of its fraud and racketeering case against the top cigarette makers. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the government may not seek "disgorgement" of illicit profits in civil suits filed under the racketeering statute known as RICO. The decision does not end the huge case - the government can still seek other sanctions - but it wipes out by far the most worrisome threat from the tobacco companies' point of view.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors alleged yesterday that the nation's tobacco companies colluded for half a century to addict Americans to nicotine in cigarettes that the industry knew caused cancer. Opening the largest civil racketeering trial ever, Justice Department attorneys used the cigarette companies' own internal documents to show how the industry set up sham research groups to counter medical evidence that smoking causes cancer and other diseases, even after industry scientists had secretly conceded the harmful effects on health.

When the Justice Department's massive lawsuit against the tobacco industry goes to trial today, the most striking aspect of the case might not be the whopping $280 billion in potential damages the government is seeking or its novel decision to pursue the cigarette makers under racketeering laws originally designed to bring down the Mafia. Instead, what stands out to observers on both sides of the nation's long-running tobacco wars is that the case has made it to trial at all. Brought late in President Bill Clinton's final term, the now five-year-old lawsuit was widely expected to face sudden death under a Republican administration.

PRESIDENT BUSH now has another trade controversy on his hands. The Commerce Department has imposed stiff anti-dumping tariffs on $1.2 billion in imports of Chinese-made wooden bedroom furniture. Since China now plays the bad guy role once filled by Japan, most Americans won't be inclined to protest. They should. Like the steel tariffs of two years ago, these import taxes ranging from 4.9 percent to 198 percent are designed to preserve a few thousand jobs in a threatened industry. If they succeed, it will be because they have imperiled thousands of jobs in other industries and have soaked the purchasing power of mostly lower-income furniture buyers.

PARIS - Outside, with the heat and humidity forcing two players to quit matches with cramps, Guillermo Coria, Carlos Moya, Tommy Robredo, Amelie Mauresmo and Lindsay Davenport were turning up the volume with their rackets. Inside, where Russian Marat Safin was fuming, it was even louder. "They just basically destroyed ... they tried to destroy the match," he began with a stutter as he tried to explain what compelled him to pull down his shorts and give the crowd a look at his underwear in the fourth set of his five-set win over Felix Mantilla.

Bob Baffert says the same thing every winter: Don't get excited until the Kentucky Derby contenders start racing 1 1/8 miles. If that's the case, then the fun begins Saturday with the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park in South Florida. The California-based Baffert knows his way along the Kentucky Derby trail. He has won three, and he uncovered another contender yesterday in Wimbledon, surprise winner of the Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans. The Louisiana Derby doesn't fit Baffert's criteria for a significant Kentucky Derby prep.