Blotter

Losing Touch
? Norway's Rune Gjeldnes and Torry Larsen, who are skiing from Russia to Canada via the North Pole, and Jo Le Guen of France, who's rowing across the Pacific. They'll soon lose their primary means of contact with the rest of the world when investors pull the plug on the bankrupt Iridium's satellite phone system, which had been used by adventure travelers to phone home from remote locales.

Signed

? Martina Navratilova, to an endorsement deal with Subaru, her first national ad campaign. Said Martina, who's openly gay, "If I'd been quiet about [my sexual orientation], I would have had ads long before this."

?Former Raiders quarterback Todd Marinovich, by the L.A. Avengers of the Arena Football League. Was this what dad Marv had in mind when he groomed his son from infancy to become a pro passer?

Freaked
?Eduardo Chimello, general manager of top Brazilian soccer club Flamengo, after his players were served poppy-seed rolls on a team flight. Fearful of a mass drug-test failure—poppy seeds are said to cause false positives—Chimello ordered flight attendants to replace the offending rolls with unseeded ones.

Renamed
?Marin Zdravkov, 36, of Sofia, Bulgaria, who officially changed his handle to Manchester United in honor of his favorite soccer club.

Booted
?In the privates, a male streaker at a Cambridge-Oxford women's rugby match, by the referee. The lad invaded the pitch wearing only a Cambridge scarf and escaped through the crowd after the ref's free kick.