Yemen's northern leaders, battling rivals in the south since May 5, have rejected any UN role in the crisis on the grounds it is an internal affair.

Battling rivals like "A Chorus Line" and "Fiddler on the Roof," it has broken the box-office records of small houses from Waterbury, Conn., to Concord, Calif.

Some editors and writers at each of the magazines believe their very survival is at stake as they battle such new rivals as cable television news, national newspapers and a growing number of specialty magazines.

Now some analysts say these executives may have underestimated the costs of building their empires and battling deep-pocketed rivals like Rupert Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting and the former telephone monopolies on the Continent.

Robbins chose Whitman because "in the mid-1990s, in many ways Alexandra Robbins was these students, rushing through the same hallways, cramming anxiously for tests in the same classrooms, battling rivals on the same varsity fields."

On November 5, the Chiefs traveled to the Edward Jones Dome to battle their intrastate and interleague rivals, the St. Louis Rams.

As a result, the Japanese financial system is populated by a number of behemoths, which have been fattened by Japan's capital surpluses but which have never had to battle foreign rivals on a level playing field.

It is the home of Derrick Walker Motorsports, a team that is battling rivals that have more than triple its budget and manpower.

Early this year, he quietly reappeared to reclaim his businesses, and in an interview last week he said he had since been battling rivals for his liquor enterprise whose connections reach into the high levels of the current and former administrations.

The deal is the latest collaboration between newspaper companies and Web sites to form partnerships to battle other rivals.