Free Republic

In the airline industry's dark months after the September 2001 attacks, the federal government, banks, aircraft lenders and others came forward to help, giving the wounded companies plenty of leeway in the face of extraordinary circumstances. But three years later, the benevolence is gone. In a form of tough love that is quickly spreading, these same backers are putting the clamps on the still-troubled airlines, particularly those operating under bankruptcy protection. The backers are giving chief executives at United Airlines, US Airways and ATA Airlines their marching orders: enforce strict timetables, conserve cash, reduce spending and eliminate jobs - or...

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 14 - Five artificial-turf paintball fields were laid out like giant green dominoes in the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot here: a setting befitting a sport that aspires to grandeur but that is as yet a funky outsider. But long before you could see the players, goggled and masked and carrying sophisticated militaristic toys, you could hear the chaotic splatting, a joyous flatulence made by hundreds of men, and a handful of women, plastering one another with pink and yellow gobs of goo. An estimated seven million paintballs were being shot by players from the United States, Canada,...