The sole exception, rivals complain, are blood-and-guts stories, which tend to get more expansive treatment.

Kiribati's rivals have complained, but there is no international agency or procedure preventing a move of the date line.

As a practical matter, rivals complained, they could not make inroads because manufacturers would be paying double the price to use a rival system on some machines.

For all of Ameritech's free-market talk, rivals complain that the company has been balking about negotiating on several important issues.

A rival, SurfWatch, has complained, and rightly so.

The rivals, which began competing with Nasdaq in 1998, have complained that Nasdaq's new system would create a new and anticompetitive marketplace.

But rivals complained that the terms they offered in initial discussions were unusually harsh.

And Microsoft stocked the stores with so many copies that some rivals complained of a brief worldwide shortage of 3.5-inch diskettes.

But rivals complain that the mammoth new airline plays hardball.

The combination causes rivals at publicly traded investment banks to complain that they and WestLB are not on a level playing field.