With speculation running rampant that Tiger Woods has left the Mississippi sex rehab facility where he’s reportedly been seeking treatment, one of the questions on everyone’s mind is: When will Woods return to golf?

“At this point, I don’t even think Tiger knows when he’s coming back,” said veteran golf writer Art Spander, who spoke with Woods the weekend before his infamous Thanksgiving car crash that made world headlines.

One venue where Woods might re-emerge is the Accenture Match Play Championship, a five-day competition in Marana, Arizona, that begins Wednesday, February 17. Woods has won the event, which is open to the world’s top 64 golfers, three times. And as the world’s No. 1-ranked player, he’s technically already entered to compete.

“We don’t know anything official yet, but wouldn’t that be nice?” Wade Dunagan, executive director of the big PGA event, told the Arizona Daily Star. “The main question is, ‘Do I know anything you don’t?’ The answer is no. We’re still in the dark. I can’t confirm or deny anything, because I don’t know.”

More games, more questions

If Woods, 34, does choose to bow out of the competition, he’ll need to do it no later than Monday, February 15, but some pundits are saying he’d probably choose to do it sometime over this weekend.

PGA Tour spokesman Chris Reimer called reports of the golfer’s return mere “speculation.”

Two other competitions where Woods could stage his return are the March 4-7 Honda Classic and the March 11-14 WGCCA Championship at Doral, both held in south Florida. At this point, it doesn’t appear that Woods has decided whether or not he’ll play either event. According to PGA rules, he can hold off notifying organizers of his intention to compete until the Friday before the tournament.

“We’d love to have him play here for his comeback,” said Caroline Kerrigan, spokeswoman for the WGCCA Championship at Doral Golf Resort. “I know this is one of his favorite courses, but I don’t have any word on whether or not he’s playing [our event].”

Will Tiger pass Jack?

In December, Jack Nicklaus, who owns the record of 18 major championships that Woods could eventually eclipse, told reporters he doesn’t “know the answer to what [Tiger] is going to do and what he is going to play. Certainly this year, where the majors are … he obviously loves Augusta, Pebble Beach and St. Andrews. He basically owns all three of those places. If Tiger is going to pass my record, I think this is a big year for him in that regard. If he doesn’t play this year, obviously the chore is going to be a little tougher.”

But, as Woods’s pal Roger Federer predicted in December: “Soon he’ll become the wonderful golfer that we know again.”

Storm could be the biggest for the nation’s capital in modern history

WASHINGTON - A blizzard battered the Mid-Atlantic region Saturday, with emergency crews struggling to keep pace with the heavy, wet snow that piled up on roadways, toppled trees and left thousands without electricity.

Most people seemed to be hunkered down at home early Saturday, out of the way of road crews. In downtown Washington, a few people ventured out to walk their dogs and clear away thigh-high snow from sidewalks. Plows and a few intrepid drivers cruised the snow-covered roads — a departure from the usual weekend traffic congestion.

Tihana and Jarrett Blanc were out walking their dog Hector in northwest Washington.

“Our car is stuck. We’re not even trying,” said Tihana, 36.

She said they were joking Friday about people preparing as though it were going to be Armageddon — referring to the hordes of shoppers who emptied stores of milk, bread, shovels, driveway salt and other supplies.

But even if all cards fall in NATO’s favor, conflict could persist for years

KABUL - A new and possibly decisive chapter of the Afghan war is unfolding. The U.S. is preparing a major attack on the Taliban, the militants are being squeezed in their Pakistani sanctuaries, and the Afghan government is trying to draw them into peace talks.

While “not prepared to say we’ve turned a corner,” the top U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, told reporters at a NATO meeting Thursday that he is more optimistic than last summer and now believes the situation is no longer deteriorating.

Much could still go wrong. Even if all the cards fall in NATO’s favor, the conflict will likely persist for years.

But the U.S. and its partners now have a better shot at blunting the growth of the Taliban, the austere Islamic movement that rebounded four years ago after being driven from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion after it refused to severe links to al-Qaida.

If NATO recaptures the momentum, it could encourage the militants in time to seek a political settlement, which U.S. officials believe is the only way to end the conflict.

Deploying Obama’s mission
For now, attention is focused on what will be the first big test of President Barack Obama’s surge — an assault by thousands of U.S. Marines and soldiers on Marjah, a southern Afghan city of 80,000 people and the hub of Taliban logistics. Aid teams are supposed to follow the troops to re-establish public services and government control in hopes of winning public support.

It will be the first major combat operation since Obama last December ordered 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, gambling on turning the tide of war. Other NATO countries added 7,000 more.

The Taliban, mindful that Obama also pledged to begin withdrawing U.S. forces in mid-2011, claim to be undaunted by the surge.

“The number of Taliban fighters is increasing day by day, not only in the south but in the north of Afghanistan as well,” says Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi. “It doesn’t matter if the Americans increase the number of soldiers, the Taliban will continue to pursue jihad,” he told The Associated Press.

Insurgent forces have grown steadily in Afghanistan — from fewer than 400 in 2004 to nearly 30,000, by NATO estimate.

But they are already feeling pressure. Village elders and former Taliban fighters tell the AP that many militants are returning from Pakistan because of stepped-up U.S. missile strikes there — one of which is believed to have killed the commander of the Pakistan Taliban — and Pakistan’s offensive last year against Taliban in South Waziristan near the Afghan border.

At least some of the returning fighters have expressed interest in government offers of reconciliation. And those who fight on may be easier to handle in Afghanistan, corralled against NATO firepower, rather than in Pakistan, where foreign troops are banned from ground combat operations and the main weapon is missiles fired from pilotless drones.

Uncertain future
For years, it has been hard to see any glimmer of hope amid rising casualties, roadside bombs and suicide attacks in a chaotic country with a centuries-old tradition of banishing foreign armies.

Last year, according to AP’s count, at least 499 U.S. and NATO service members died in Afghanistan, almost as many as in the previous two years combined, and U.S. officials warn of more bloodshed to come.

There’s still widespread skepticism that President Hamid Karzai, re-elected last year in a ballot marred by massive fraud on his behalf, will fulfill his promises to eliminate corruption, improve public services and thus blunt the Taliban’s appeal.

Taliban shadow governments now operate in nearly all the 34 provinces. Taliban courts mete out Islamic justice and settle village property disputes often faster — and many Afghans say more fairly — than the government’s own judiciary.

‘If you put on a meaningful portion size, it would scare a lot of people’

Seeking a new weapon in the fight against obesity, the Food and Drug Administration wants to encourage manufacturers to post vital nutritional information, including calorie counts, on the front of food packages.

The goal is to give people a jolt of reality before they reach for another handful of chips. But the urgency of the message could be muted by a longstanding problem: official serving sizes for many packaged foods are just too small. And that means the calorie counts that go with them are often misleading.

So to get ready for front-of-package nutrition labeling, the F.D.A. is now looking at bringing serving sizes for foods like chips, cookies, breakfast cereals and ice cream into line with how Americans really eat. Combined with more prominent labeling, the result could be a greater sense of public caution about unhealthy foods.

“If you put on a meaningful portion size, it would scare a lot of people,” said Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina. “They would see, ‘I’m going to get 300 calories from that, or 500 calories.’ ”

The problem is important because the standard serving size shown on a package determines all the other nutritional values on the label, including calorie counts. If the serving size is smaller than what people really eat, unless they study the label carefully they may think they are getting fewer calories or other nutrients than they are.

Confusion
And if manufacturers increasingly push key nutrition facts to the front of packages — as many have begun doing — the confusion could be magnified. Rather than helping fight obesity, it may simply add to the perplexity over what makes a healthful diet.

“If people don’t understand the serving, whatever number they get for fat or calories is misleading,” said William K. Hubbard, a former F.D.A. official who consulted with the agency last year.

Consider the humble chip: most potato or corn chip bags today show a one-ounce serving size, containing a tolerable 150 calories, or thereabouts. But only the most disciplined snacker will stop at an ounce. For some brands, like Tostitos Hint of Lime, that can be just six chips.

In the real world, many people might eat two or three times that, or more. Munch half a bag of Tostitos while watching the Super Bowl and you could take in about half the 2,000 calories an average person needs in a day.

“We are actively looking at serving size and evaluating what steps we need to take,” said Barbara O. Schneeman, director of the F.D.A. office that oversees nutrition labels. “Ultimately, the purpose of nutrition labeling is to help consumers make healthier choices, make improvements in their diet, and we want to make sure we achieve that goal.”

The push to re-evaluate serving size comes as the F.D.A. is considering ways to better convey nutrition facts to hurried consumers, in particular by posting key information on the front of packages. Officials say such labeling will be voluntary, but the agency may set rules to prevent companies from highlighting the good things about their products, like a lack of trans fats, while ignoring the bad, like a surfeit of unhealthy saturated fats.

On today’s food packages, many of the serving sizes puzzle even the experts.

For ice cream, the serving size is half a cup. For packaged muffins, it is often half a muffin. For cookies it is generally one ounce, equal to two Double Stuf Oreos. For most children’s breakfast cereals, a serving is three-quarters of a cup.

It is difficult to say exactly how much people eat, said Lisa R. Young, an adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University, but she said that research showed that the portions Americans serve themselves had been growing in recent years.

‘Inconsistent and unintuitive’
When it comes to cereal, she said, many children probably eat two cups or more.

Parents who glance at a box of Frosted Flakes and see that it contains 110 calories per serving may not realize that their children may be getting several times that amount each morning at breakfast.

“To consumers, the serving size appears to be inconsistent and unintuitive,” said Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak, senior director of health and wellness at the International Food Information Council Foundation. “They have trouble trusting it.”

They may also have trouble seeing it, where it usually appears in small type in the Nutrition Facts panel on food packages. In surveys conducted by the foundation, many more people say they look at the calorie number than at the serving size on which it is based.

Standard serving sizes were created by the F.D.A. in the early 1990s, partly to make it easier to compare the nutritional values of different products. Congress required that the serving sizes match what people actually ate. To determine that, the F.D.A. evaluated data from surveys of Americans’ eating habits taken in the 1970s and 1980s.

Some nutritionists say those surveys may be suspect, since people typically underestimate how much they eat. And there is general agreement that they are out of date.

Los Angeles prosecutors will file a criminal case against Michael Jackson’s doctor on Monday in connection with the singer’s death, officials say.

Dr Conrad Murray’s legal team says it expects him to be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

The announcement came shortly before the doctor had planned to surrender himself at a Los Angeles courthouse.

Details of charges will be officially released Monday, the LA district attorney’s office said.

Involuntary manslaughter occurs when a death is the indirect result of negligence or recklessness.

Jackson died at his Los Angeles home on 25 June aged 50. His death was ruled as homicide, mainly caused by the powerful anaesthetic Propofol.

Several drugs were found in Michael Jackson’s body

A cocktail of drugs - including sedatives Midazolam and Diazepam, the painkiller Lidocaine and the stimulant Ephedrine - were also detected in his body a coroner confirmed.

Dr Murray told police he had been giving Jackson Propofol as part of his treatment for insomnia, according to an affidavit made public in August.

But he has always maintained he did not prescribe nor administer anything that should have killed the singer.

The legal wrangling comes after several days of negotiations where his lawyers have tried to arrange for Dr Murray to surrender to prosecutors, in an attempt to avoid him being handcuffed and arrested.

“It seems ridiculous to us that it’s been dragging on this long”, Dr Murray’s defence team spokeswoman Miranda Sevcik was quoted as saying by AP.

“To us this is showmanship and we are just done”, she added.