By TIM TALLEY

OKLAHOMA CITY  New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other potential independent presidential candidates are joining prominent Republican and Democratic centrists at a meeting that will consider the merits of a third-party bid for the White House.

The Jan. 7 event was organized by former Democratic senators David Boren and Sam Nunn, and about a dozen prominent figures are expected to participate, including Bloomberg, former Republican senator John Danforth of Missouri and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., each of whom has been mentioned as a possible independent candidate.

Boren said the meeting will serve as a form of “shock therapy” to the major-party candidates to stop bickering and provide Americans with a blueprint for bipartisanship in Washington. The event will be at the Norman campus of the University of Oklahoma, where he is president.

“We used to work together across party lines and we used to cooperate with each other,” Boren said of his relationships with current and former senators who plan to attend. “It is a message to the two parties: Please rise to the occasion. If you don’t, there is always a possibility out there of an independent.”

The meeting comes one day before the New Hampshire primary.

“We need statesmanship, not politics,” Boren said. “The meeting in itself implies there could be other possibilities” than a two-party contest.

Plans for the meeting were first reported by The Washington Post.

A Dec. 18 letter from Boren and Nunn to participants asserts that the political system is “at the least, badly bent and many are concluding that it is broken at a time where America must lead boldly at home and abroad. Partisan polarization is preventing us from uniting to meet the challenges that we must face if we are to prevent further erosion of America’s power of leadership and example.”

“As the letter says, we’ve literally become a house divided,” Boren said. “We really need a government of national unity.”

Bloomberg, once a Democrat, then a Republican and now an independent, has denied any interest in running for the presidency even while keeping speculation alive that he might.

Like the meeting’s organizers, the mayor has criticized the tone of the campaign as one of overbearing partisanship. He said last month the country “needs somebody that says, ‘I’m going to get the best from both parties.’”

Boren said some of the presidential candidates want to embrace a bipartisan platform but fear being attacked politically if they do so. “Many of the major issues are just not being addressed,” he said.

By RON HARRIS

As more details emerged about the chaos during a tiger’s attack of three young men at the San Francisco Zoo, family and friends mourned the teenager who was killed.

About 100 people gathered Saturday outside the San Jose home of Carlos Sousa Jr.’s grandmother for a vigil. Many held candles in cups and were silent as Sousa’s father stood on the doorstep in front of two enlarged photos of him and his son.

“I would like to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for coming here and honoring my son Carlos. My son Carlos was a very good boy” said Carlos Sousa Sr., choking back tears. “I can see that he had a lot of friends here. I want you all to remember the good things that he did and carry this with you in your hearts for as long as you can.”

A 350-pound Siberian tiger killed Sousa Jr. and seriously hurt two of his friends after escaping from its enclosure. Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23, were released from the hospital Saturday. The brothers suffered severe bite and claw wounds.

Police said Sousa Jr.’s neck was slashed while the teen tried to scare away the tiger after it attacked Kulbir Dhaliwal. Sousa, 17, died at the scene just before the zoo’s closing time on Christmas Day.

A funeral for Sousa is scheduled for Jan. 8 in San Jose.

Police radio transcripts revealed a chaotic scene at the San Francisco Zoo as zookeepers scrambled to locate and sedate the animal, and medics refused to enter until they knew they would be safe.

Zoo employees also initially questioned whether early reports of the attack were coming from a mentally unstable person, according to an 18-page log of communications from police dispatchers to officers and emergency responders at the scene.

According to the logs, zoo personnel initially told police that two men reporting the escaped tiger might be mentally disturbed and “making something up,” though one was bleeding from the back of the head.

Two minutes later, at 5:10 p.m., zoo employees reported that a tiger was loose and, at 5:13 p.m., the zoo was being evacuated and locked down as fire department responders arrived.

For several minutes, medics refused to enter the zoo until it had been secured. Meanwhile, zookeepers were trying to round up what they initially believed to be multiple tigers.

“Zoo personnel have the tiger in sight and are dealing with it,” reads a 5:17 p.m. note on the transcript.

The transcript does not indicate when police or emergency responders entered, but by 5:20 p.m. medics had located one victim with a large puncture hole to his neck. The tiger was still loose.

As medics attended to the victim, an officer spotted the tiger sitting down before it fled and began attacking another victim, according to the logs.

At 5:27 p.m., less than 20 minutes after the initial reports were made, the officers began firing, killing the tiger.

It was unclear whether letting police and medics into the zoo sooner would have altered the outcome of the attacks or subjected emergency responders to greater danger with a tiger on the loose.

It has become increasingly clear that the tiger climbed over the wall of its enclosure, which at just under 12 1/2 high was about 4 feet below the recommended minimum for U.S. zoos.

Zoo officials said the zoo would reopen Thursday.

In the wake of the attack, the Oakland Zoo across San Francisco Bay plans to raise the height of the walls surrounding its tiger enclosure.

The concrete wall and chain-link fence surrounding the two tigers range from 13 1/2 feet to 16 feet, and the zoo is deciding how much higher to raise the pen, said Oakland Zoo executive director Joel Parrott. Its tiger exhibit includes a female Bengal tiger weighing 230 pounds and a female Siberian-Bengal mix weighing 305 pounds.

WASHINGTON: Two multimillionaires in the presidential race — two ways to spend their money. Republican Mitt Romney has pumped more than $17 million of his own into his race; Democrat John Edwards, by law, can tap his fortune for no more than $50,000.

What a difference public financing makes.

Romney has chosen to bypass the taxpayer-financed presidential campaign fund, a move that lets him use his wealth without limitation. If he has put more of his money in during the past three months, his campaign isn’t saying. The public won’t find out until Jan. 31, when Romney must submit campaign finance reports to the Federal Election Commission.

Edwards has been certified to get $8.8 million in public funds, and he plans to collect. The step not only restricts his spending, it also prohibits him from dipping into his personal wealth. Meanwhile, his campaign is getting more than $2 million in help from labor-backed independent groups.

Presidential candidates and their allies are spending money like never before, and some candidates head into the New Year with big decisions ahead — to lend, to borrow, to accept millions in public matching funds.

Romney and Edwards are two bookends in the presidential election financing system. Their distinct approaches are both convenient and risky and they exemplify the evolution of a public financing system that is now seen as a resource of last resort.

Republican John McCain illustrates the dilemma. He has been certified to receive $5.8 million in matching funds but is keeping his options open. He has a $3 million line of credit, secured with future fundraising and the value of his mailing list. McCain can wait to see how he performs in the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8 before deciding whether he wants to collect the public funds or capture a surge of new donor money.

“Candidates are adopting whatever approach can get them the greatest amount of money,” said Anthony Corrado, an expert on political money at Colby College in Maine. “Romney is willing to tap into his personal fortune to remain competitive. Candidates like Edwards or McCain who don’t have resources to match the leading candidates can tap public money.”

Romney, a former venture capitalist, and his wife Ann have assets worth between $190 million and $250 million. Aides have said money will not be a problem for the Romney campaign. As of the end of September, he had lent his campaign $17.4 million and raised $44.8 million from donors.

Romney has been spending heavily on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire, lately averaging $1.5 million a week or more. Like other candidates, Romney has been focused on winning votes in the early contest states and has cut back from the frenetic fundraising pace all the candidates kept during the first nine months of the year.

But aides would not reveal whether he had tapped his fortune for more money during the last quarter of the year. By the time the campaign is required to make that information public, several key contests will have already occurred.

“We will have the resources to keep building our organization through these early contests and beyond,” Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said.

Edwards had raised $30 million by the end of September, significantly trailing rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. At that point, the campaign decided to seek public funds.

Under the presidential financing system, candidates get matching funds for every donor’s contribution of up $250. If they accept the money, they must abide by spending limits in each primary and caucus state as well as an overall cap on primary spending. Those restrictions have prompted most of the leading candidates to decide to forgo the public money.

Edwards has so far spent more than $5 million on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s also getting help from independent, mostly labor-financed groups that have drawn criticism from watchdog groups and from Obama. The groups, called “527″ organizations for the section of the IRS code that authorizes them, have been running ads supporting Edwards’ policies in Iowa during the closing days of the campaign there.

Edwards, who made his fortune as a trial lawyer with his wealth somewhere between $12.8 million and $60 million, has refused donations from political action committees and lobbyists and has cast himself as the candidate less connected to Washington special interests. But Obama and other critics say the 527 groups are simply special interests helping him in another guise. Though labor groups have supplied much of the financing, one of the donors is a 97-year-old heiress to the Mellon family fortune.

Edwards has offered a finely honed response, saying he opposes the 527 organizations, but is proud of having the support of unions.

“They’re not running any negative, no attack ads. This is just positive advertising,” he said of the groups Sunday on CBS. “But that aside, I think these 527s need to be banned. I didn’t want them running advertising, and I’ve continued to say that every time I’ve been asked. But I can’t stop these people. I don’t have control over them.”

McCain, though certified to receive his share of matching public money, doesn’t have to accept it and can technically wait until March, when the money would officially become available, to decide. To do that, however, he has to abide by the spending limits now.

That opens some options and closes others. McCain can use his existing funds, including the line of credit he obtained, to cover campaign costs through the New Hampshire primary. If he wins there, he would likely see a significant influx of new campaign money, forcing a reconsideration of whether he needs the public matching funds.

“We’ve stayed under the caps, so that if necessary, that we can” collect the public money, he said Sunday on ABC. “We bought all the media that’s necessary and all we can in New Hampshire.”

McCain can’t use the matching funds as collateral for his loans unless he decides to take it. His campaign lawyer, Trevor Potter, said the line of credit is not secured by the matching funds, but by the campaign’s fundraising mail list and the promise of future fundraising.

Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said banks typically look at a candidate’s fundraising history and require pledges from candidates that they will tap donors on that list to repay the loan, if necessary.

If McCain gets knocked out of the presidential contest, he would be allowed to shift his debt to his Senate election account. That would permit him to tap donors anew while occupying senior positions on influential Senate committees. His only restriction would be that he could not tell donors that the money was meant to retire his debt.

“It’s easier to take the higher risk financial strategies when you’re a sitting member of the Senate,” Corrado said. “You still have fundraising wherewithal.”

As they candidates fight for votes and against each other, financial decisions will ultimately determine how far they can go without some victories.

“For Romney the real trick at this point is if he loses Iowa and New Hampshire, then he has to decide, ‘OK, I will write a big check and see this through,’” Corrado said. “If McCain doesn’t win New Hampshire, do they take the public money to try to see it through. Two big decisions.”

By JUSTIN POPE

Gilbert Strang is a quiet man with a rare talent: helping others understand linear algebra. He’s written a half-dozen popular college textbooks, and for years a few hundred students at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been privileged to take his course.

Recently, with the growth of computer science, demand to understand linear algebra has surged. But so has the number of students Strang can teach.

An MIT initiative called “OpenCourseWare” makes virtually all the school’s courses available online for free — lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures. Strang’s Math 18.06 course is among the most popular, with visitors downloading his lectures more than 1.3 million times since June alone.

Strang’s classroom is the world.

In his Istanbul dormitory, Kemal Burcak Kaplan, an undergraduate at Bogazici University, downloads Strang’s lectures to try to boost his grade in a class there. Outside Calcutta, graduate student Sriram Chandrasekaran uses them to brush up on matrices for his engineering courses at the elite Indian Institute of Technology.

Many “students” are college teachers themselves, like Sheraz ali Khan at a small engineering institute in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Noorali Jiwaji, at the Open University of Tanzania. They use Strang and other MIT professors as guides in designing their own classes, and direct students to MIT’s courses for help.

Others are closer to MIT’s Cambridge, Mass., campus. Some are MIT students and alumni, while others have no connection at all — like Gus Whelan, a retiree on nearby Cape Cod, and Dustin Darcy, a 27-year-old video game programmer in Los Angeles who uses linear algebra regularly in his work.

“Rather than going through my old, dusty books,” Darcy said, “I thought I might as well go through it from the top and see if I learn something new.”

There has never been a more exciting time for the intellectually curious.

The world’s top universities have come late to the world of online education, but they’re arriving at last, creating an all-you-can eat online buffet of information.

And mostly, they are giving it away.

MIT’s initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.

As with many technology trends, new services and platforms are driving change. Last spring marked the debut of “iTunes U,” a section of Apple’s popular music and video downloading service now publicly hosting free material from 28 colleges. Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley recently announced it would be the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. Berkeley was already posting lectures, but YouTube has dramatically expanded their reach.

If there isn’t yet something for everyone, it’s only a matter of time. On iTunes, popular recent downloads include a climate change panel at Stanford, lectures on existentialism by Cal-Berkeley professor Hubert Dreyfus, and a performance of Mozart’s requiem by the Duke Chapel Choir. Berkeley’s offerings include 48 classes, from “Engineering Thermodynamics” to “Human Emotion.”

“It’s almost as good as being there,” said Whelan, the Massachusetts retiree, of the MIT classes he has sampled. “The only thing that’s lacking is the pressure.” He says he usually doesn’t do the homework assignments, but adds: “Now that I’m not in school, I don’t have to do that anymore.”

YouTube, iTunes, OpenCourseWare — none are the full college experience. You can’t raise your hand and ask a question. You can’t get a letter of recommendation.

And most importantly, almost everywhere, you can’t get credit or earn a degree.

That caveat, however, is what has made all this possible.

When the Internet emerged, experts predicted it would revolutionize higher education, cutting its tether to a college campus. Technology could help solve one of the fundamental challenges of the 21st century: providing a mass population with higher education at a time when a college degree was increasingly essential for economic success.

Today, the Internet has indeed transformed higher education. A multibillion-dollar industry, both for-profit and nonprofit, has sprung up offering online training and degrees. Figures from the Sloan Consortium, an online learning group, report about 3.5 million students are signed up for at least one online course — or about 20 percent of all students at degree-granting institutions.

But it hasn’t been as clear what role — if any — elite universities would play in what experts call the “massification” of higher education. Their finances are based on prestige, which means turning students away, not enrolling more. How could they teach the masses without diminishing the value of their degree?

But MIT’s 2001 debut of OpenCourseWare epitomized a key insight: Elite universities can separate their credential from their teaching — and give at least parts of their teaching away as a public service. They aren’t diminishing their reputations at all. In fact, they are expanding their reach and reputation.

It turns out there is extraordinary demand for bits and pieces of the education places like MIT provide, even without the diploma.

OpenCourseWare’s site gets more than 1 million hits per month, with translated versions getting 500,000 more. About 60 percent of users are outside the United States. About 15 percent are educators, and 30 percent students at other universities. About half have no university affiliation.

“I think the fundamental realization is that distance learning will solve the problem of access to certification, but there’s a larger problem, which is access to information,” says Steve Carson, director of external relations for the MIT initiative.

“If you’re going to work as a public health professional, you need the certification,” Carson says. “If you’re working in a community” — say, in Africa — “you don’t need the certification. You just need access to the information.”

About 7,200 miles from Cambridge, the Polytechnic of Namibia in is the kind of place eager to learn from MIT. Though barely a decade old, the school in the young African nation’s capital Windhoek, is poised to play a key role in the country’s development. It’s one of 84 sites in Africa where MIT has shipped its course materials on hard drives for institutions to store locally on their own networks. With bandwidth costing about 1,000 times its price in the United States, patching into OpenCourseWare over the Internet would crash the school’s fragile networks.

CIO Laurent Evrard says Polytechnic takes pride in standards on par with top global peers — he notes how U.S. exchange students get credit for work there — and says students like using OpenCourseWear to see how they stack up.

“Everybody here knows about MIT,” he says, though it doesn’t hurt that the school rector — its top official — is an alumnus.

On the opposite coast of southern Africa, Jiwaji says most of his Tanzanian students have never heard of MIT. Students use the courses “because it gives them a tool. They feel lost and they don’t have good books,” Jiwaji says. “They need a guide to help them.”

His distance university — with 30,000 registered students — has OpenCourseWare available at centers around the capital of Dar es Salaam. There, it gets an impressive 600 hits per day, mostly in management classes.

Though it’s found a wider audience, OpenCourseWare was originally intended for teachers. The idea wasn’t just to show off MIT’s geniuses but to share its innovative teaching methods. After examining an MIT course called “Machine Structures,” Khan, the Pakistani professor, redesigned his lab assignments for a computer science class to get students more involved, asking them to design and build their own microprocessors.

“It really encourages the students to discover and try something new,” he said. “Normally the stress here is on how things work, not on creating things of your own.”

MIT’s free offerings focus mostly on well-organized texts like syllabuses and readings, along with an expanding video lecture collection. Others, like Stanford and Bowdoin College in Maine, provide more polish, editing and features.

Berkeley, meanwhile, is focused less on bells and whistles than on ramping up its ability to roll out content with a system that automatically records and posts lectures. Berkeley’s eight YouTube courses drew 1.5 million downloads in the first month, said Ben Hubbard, co-manager of the webcast.berkeley program, and the school is being inundated with requests to post more.

“That’s why we’re so focused on automation,” he said. “Our motto is ‘Fiat Lux’ — ‘let there be light.’ We feel like this is a great way to let the light of Berkeley shine out on the world.”

A big obstacle is cost. Professors are reluctant to participate unless staff are provided to help with logistics. A major expense is video camera operators, unless schools can persuade lecturers to stand still at the lectern. MIT estimates OpenCourseWear costs a hefty $20,000 per course. Money from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation started the project, but from now on it will rely mostly on contributions from MIT’s budget and endowment, and from visitor donations.

But there are direct benefits. Small schools like Bowdoin can use iTunes to show prospective students the richness of their offerings. MIT reports half its incoming students have already checked out OpenCourseWare.

Meanwhile, half of MIT alumni use OpenCourseWare, too. And alumni who stay connected with the intellectual life at their alma maters are more likely to donate.

MIT and other schools also emphasize the services benefit their paying customers — the students. On-campus use at MIT and Berkeley spikes during exams, as students review lectures. Fears that technology would hurt class attendance have proved unfounded, at least at MIT, where 96 six percent of instructors reported no decline.

Will the free offerings of elite universities ever reduce demand for the full — and full-price — experience at places like MIT? Carson doubts it. Networking, late-night arguments over pizza, back-and-forth with professors — that’s where the real value lies, and even MIT’s technology may never catch up with that.

For teachers like Strang, his expanded reach is no more than a minor inconvenience — occasional e-mailed questions from “students.” And it’s a major reward.

“My life is in teaching,” he says. “To have a chance do that with a world audience is just wonderful.”

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Eminent: Mohanna says he will join ballot measure’s campaign

By Mary Lynne Vellinga

Even if the city of Sacramento wins a court battle to wrest a key part of the K Street Mall from property owner Moe Mohanna, it could lose the war on another front: the state ballot.

Mohanna has thrown his support behind an initiative headed for the June election that would forbid local governments in California from using eminent domain to buy property from one private owner and award it to another – exactly what the city is seeking to do on K Street.

“We’ll be spending a lot of money on that, and I’ll have a series of fundraisers in my buildings,” Mohanna said on Christmas Eve.

Mohanna has aligned himself with a coalition of anti-tax groups and property rights advocates led by the California Farm Bureau Federation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the force behind California’s landmark property tax cutting measure, Proposition 13.

Last month, the group submitted more than 1 million signatures to qualify its anti-eminent domain measure for the ballot.

Mohanna said he’ll be a champion of the statewide effort that he describes as a flesh and blood example of the heavy-handed use of eminent domain.

“I’ll be going to different cities, and talking about private property rights, and the taking of private property for private use,” Mohanna said.

“Today it is my buildings, tomorrow it is your home,” Mohanna said, adding that local governments might even “take every church and turn it into a Costco.”

On the other side of the debate stands Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo and other local officials in California who view eminent domain as a crucial tool for fighting urban decay in places like the K Street Mall.

Fargo said her constituents applauded the City Council’s unanimous vote to authorize eminent domain against Mohanna.

“People come up and say, ‘Good for you, K Street is such a public street, and it’s so tied up in people’s perception of downtown, that it’s just really a critical place for us,’ ” she said.

Fargo supports a rival initiative, which also has gathered more than enough signatures to qualify for the June ballot. Backed by the League of California Cities, the League of Conservation Voters and the California Redevelopment Association, it proposes more limited changes to current law.

The measure would prohibit local governments from using eminent domain to acquire owner-occupied homes and transfer them to a private developer. It would not affect the taking of commercial properties such as Mohanna’s.

“There’s some room and a need for some eminent domain reform to give homeowners some sense of security that they apparently don’t now feel,” said Fargo, who in September will start a term as president of the League of California Cities.

“In our city, we haven’t done a lot of that, but in some communities there has been a real concern. We’re hoping to get some reform done that people will think is meaningful, and will put this issue to rest.”

State law has long given cities – acting through their redevelopment agencies – the right to exercise eminent domain to acquire land in areas defined as “blighted.”

Sacramento used these powers to build the new Central Library in downtown Sacramento, as well as a new apartment complex that occupies a former hole in the ground at Ninth and J streets.

Outside downtown, the city used eminent domain to overhaul the crime-plagued Franklin Villa development – now renamed Phoenix Park.

On Dec. 18, the City Council authorized the use of eminent domain to acquire nine properties owned by Mohanna in the 700 and 800 blocks of K Street – an area with a high retail vacancy rate, crime, and gaps where buildings have been demolished.

The city plans to award the properties in the 700 block to Joe Zeiden, owner of the Z Gallerie furniture chain, so he can create a retail row in the historic buildings just outside the entrance to Downtown Plaza.

Mohanna had agreed to a voluntary property swap that would have left Zeiden in control of the 700 block, and him with the 800 block. But he has balked at completing it since a fire in one of his buildings last year resulted in the demolition of much of the 800 block.

It’s unclear what stage in the eminent domain process against Mohanna the city would have to reach to avoid the impact of the Howard Jarvis ballot measure, should it pass. Would simply filing the eminent domain case be enough? Or would the city need a final judgment in the entire case? The measure contains no language clarifying this question.

Marko Mlikotin, a spokesman for the coalition pushing the far-reaching ballot proposition, opined that possession of the properties is the key. If the city doesn’t gain possession of Mohanna’s properties before June, and the measure passes, it would not be able to move forward, Mlikotin said.

“They would be under pressure to seize the property prior to June,” Mlikotin said.

Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said it will likely take at least six months before a judge rules on the city’s right to force the properties’ sale. The city will likely go to court in January to start the process, he said.

An eminent domain case has two phases. First, a judge decides if a city has the right to acquire properties through eminent domain. Then a jury sets the price.

The law allows a city to take possession of a property while the value phase of the trial is ongoing. Doing so is a risk, however, because property owners have the right to appeal, which can add years to the process.

Pressure to scale back eminent domain power has been building since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision, Kelo v. City of New London, which found that the city of New London, Conn., was justified in demolishing houses owned by Susette Kelo and her neighbors for a commercial development.

On its face, the decision strengthened the hand of local governments. But it also ignited a backlash against the use of eminent domain, giving property rights advocates an issue to rally around.

It isn’t the first time the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has tried to persuade Californians to scale back eminent domain. In 2006, voters narrowly rejected Proposition 90, which was similar to the measure the group is now promoting.

Mlikotin said the new measure stands a better chance of passing because, unlike Proposition 90, it doesn’t require local governments to compensate property owners every time they adopt a regulation that could hurt property values.

Private polling shows public support for scaling back eminent domain powers, Mlikotin said. “With those results we felt comfortable going forward.”

The League of California Cities has highlighted what it says are deceptive provisions of the measure, including language that would abolish rent control.

By MURRAY GREIG

Tonight the Shaw Conference Centre plays host to the most famous boxer to switch his allegiance to mixed martial arts (MMA). But even the inimitable Eric (Butterbean) Esch will be relegated to also-ran status if and when the world’s best pound-for-pound puncher decides to follow suit.

According to ESPN.com, undisputed welterweight champ Floyd Mayweather Jr. is “seriously considering” a dip in the MMA pool in a deal masterminded by Mark Cuban, flamboyant owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association. Whether it’s a one-shot extravaganza or a multi-fight showcase remains to be seen.

HUGE PAYDAYS

A source told ESPN.com last week that Mayweather, who generated a record $3.25 million pay-per-view buys and more than $200 million in revenue in two superfights this year, recently met with Cuban about transferring his astonishing drawing power to MMA. For those two fights - a decision over Oscar De La Hoya in May and a KO over England’s Ricky Hatton earlier this month - Mayweather pocketed in the neighbourhood of $60 million.

That eclipses the combined total of every MMA purse, worldwide, over the past year.

“It’s definitely something he is interested in, and when Floyd makes his move, obviously it’s going to be a mega event,” the source told ESPN.com writers Dan Rafael and Marc Stein.

“We don’t have a timetable. Floyd is taking some time off, but he understands what is involved. You have to take time to go out and understand what you’re getting involved in, and he’s ready to do that. But it’s something he’s definitely interested in doing.”

Cuban, who joined Mayweather as a contestant on the reality television series Dancing With the Stars last season, carried the fighter’s championship belts into the ring before the KO victory over Hatton on Dec. 8.

In addition to sole ownership of the Mavericks, the billionaire’s diverse portfolio includes HDNet Fights, an MMA promotional company that airs its bouts on Cuban’s HDNet cable outlets.

If Mayweather makes the jump, he would be - by far - the biggest name to move to MMA. Former heavyweight contenders Ray Mercer and Frans Botha have had lukewarm success since making the switch, while two others - Tommy Morrison and Mike Tyson - are reportedly pursuing multi-fight deals to enter the cage. But Mayweather has more cachet than all the rest combined.

Still, I’d be both surprised and disappointed if all this turns out to be more than idle musing.

LEGACY ASSURED

Mayweather’s ring legacy is assured no matter what he decides to do, but MMA isn’t something that’s going to enhance it. On the contrary, all it can do is obfuscate his stature as the best boxer of his generation.

Turning to pro rasslin’ was the sad, final chapter in the careers of former heavyweight champions Joe Louis and Primo Carnera. Tyson could be headed down the same road. It would be a shame if Pretty Boy Floyd’s apparently insatiable thirst for fame and fortune - no matter what the motivation - derailed him into an equally ignominious sideshow.

WASHINGTON (Thomson Financial) - Sales of new homes in the US fell dramatically in November as the lack of mortgage availability and rising consumer pessimism led to the worst rate in more than twelve years.

The Commerce Department today reported that last month’s new home sales were down 9 pct to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 647,000 units, the lowest sales rate since 621,000 in April 1995.

Forecasters had expected a far less severe slowdown, to about 720,000 units.

‘This was obviously a stunningly weak report, particularly given the aggressive price-cutting that homebuilders have been implementing in order to try to reduce inventory,’ said MFR economist Joshua Shapiro.

The median price of a new home fell 0.4 pct from last November to 239,100 usd, although the median was actually up 4.2 pct from October. The median price figures can be shifted, however, by the shifting mix of homes — higher- or lower-priced — sold in any given month.

‘It appears quite clear at this juncture,’ said Joseph Brusuelas of IDEAglobal, ‘that the consumer has reached a psychological point where expectations of future price declines have become entrenched. We consider this to be eminently rational behaviour on the part of potential homeowners and until the new homes market observes a decline in the median price of homes and falling rates, there will be little incentive to step up purchasing activity.’

Builders managed to cut 1.8 pct off their inventory of new homes on the market, to 505,000 units. But at the slower sales rate that raised the inventory overhang to 9.3 months supply, a 5.7 pct increase.

Sales estimates for October, September and August were cut by a total of 50,000. The Commerce Department has a long-running pattern of downward revisions to the first and even second reports of each month’s sales.

Economists say it is because of methodological problems in the survey, which counts sale contract signings that do not always materialize later into actual sales. They expect the November report to follow the same pattern of downward revisions.

Sales in the US Midwest fell 27.6 pct last month. Northeast sales were off 19.3 pct and sales in the South were down 6.4 pct. Only the West showed an increase, with sales up 4.0 pct.

For the year, sales in all regions are down 34.4 pct.

By Roger Yu

Barron Hilton, son of the international hotel chain’s founder, said Wednesday that he will donate nearly all of his fortune to his family’s philanthropic foundation that supports housing for the homeless, safe water in developing countries and other causes worldwide.

Barron Hilton, 80, plans to donate to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation a total of nearly $2.3 billion at his death, including $1.2 billion in proceeds from two recent corporate deals and 97% of his other $1.1 billion in assets. Hilton said in a statement that his father, Conrad, left 97% of his wealth to the foundation, “and I am proud to follow my father’s example.”

He couldn’t be reached for further comment. But his publicist, Patrick Barry, said Barron Hilton will distribute to his heirs the remaining 3% of his personal estate. Hilton has eight children and numerous grandchildren, including granddaughter Paris Hilton, 26, a tabloid celebrity known for provocative photos, a reality TV show and a jail stint this year stemming from driving violations.

Barron Hilton’s philanthropic gifts were announced as part of his estate planning, Barry said. The contributions will include $900 million in proceeds from the November sale of Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Hilton Hotels to The Blackstone Group and $300 million of stock he holds in Harrah’s Entertainment, whose sale to private equity investors is pending. The proceeds are being placed in a trust and will be donated when Hilton dies.

Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, noted that Hilton’s gift represents one of the largest philanthropic contributions announced this year. “It’s a huge amount of money,” she said.

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Palmer said Hilton’s contribution is probably exceeded this year by only two other billionaires who passed away recently: Helen Walton, wife of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, and New York hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley.

Barron Hilton’s contributions will dramatically expand the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which currently has about $1.1 billion in assets.

Based on asset size, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is the 61st-largest U.S. foundation, according to the latest rankings by the Foundation Center, an organization that links philanthropic organizations and grant seekers. But it is not among the 100 largest foundations ranked by total giving, according to the center.

Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel in 1919 and sought to expand his chain globally.

He established the foundation in 1944. The foundation’s mission statement says it “seeks to alleviate the suffering of the world’s most disadvantaged, with a special emphasis on children and … the work of the Roman Catholic Sisters.”

Program areas include water and sanitation projects in developing countries, services for the blind, housing for the mentally ill homeless, early childhood development and substance-abuse prevention.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday that more than 3 million people will have to wait until February to get their tax refunds because of Congress’ late fix to the alternative minimum tax, according to an Associated Press report.

Congress put a one-year freeze on growth of the alternative minimum tax last week, shielding many middle- and upper-middle income taxpayers from first exposure to the tax. But Congress’ late action means the IRS won’t be able to start processing five AMT-related forms until February, delaying potential refunds for those people until that month, the AP reported.

Between 3 million and 4 million people filed in January 2007 using those forms, with many of those people expecting a refund, the report quoted the IRS as saying.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The battle for the Democratic presidential nomination remains a close-fought battle, with a new poll showing Barack Obama even with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows Obama, the Illinois senator, with the support of 32% of New Hampshire Democrats. Clinton had the support of 30%, making for a statistical dead heat. New Hampshire holds its Democratic and Republican primaries on Jan. 8.

The survey showed Obama making great strides since the fall. A September Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll showed him trailing the New York senator 35% to 16%.

In Iowa, the poll found that Clinton, Obama and John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and 2004 vice presidential nominee, were locked in a three-way statistical tie. The results echoed other surveys that show the candidates virtually deadlocked in Iowa, which kicks off the presidential contests with Democratic and Republican caucuses on Jan. 3.

The survey, however, found that Clinton may stand to benefit from the fallout surrounding the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The survey found that Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats, as well as Democrats around the country, see Clinton as better able to handle national security than Obama, the Times said.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona enjoys a similar advantage among Republican voters. The poll found that Republicans in New Hampshire and Iowa consider him the best qualified to deal with foreign affairs.

Meanwhile, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee holds a lead of 37% to 23% over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa, the poll found. Huckabee has seen support surge in recent weeks, displacing Romney, who had held a strong lead in Iowa for several months.