Blotter

Permitted
By a federal judge in Seattle, the practice of forcing judoists to bow to a portrait of Jigoro Kano, the sport's founder, before bouts. Some judoists had fought the rule, saying it violated their freedom of religion.

Available
For purchase on eBay, six 2002 Olympic torches. After running a leg, a flame-bearer can buy his torch for $335 from the SLOC. Torches have reached $4,000.

Troubled
By former Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog's speech at the Triple A Iowa Cubs FanFest, the team's owner, Michael Gartner. Herzog, discussing baseball's hiring practices, said, "The people that are really getting it stuck to them are guys like this guy here because he isn't a minority," and gestured toward Iowa manager Bruce Kimm, who is Caucasian. Gartner said, "It was embarrassing." Herzog later apologized.

Barred
From involvement in youth sports for eight years, Earley Robinson, 30, of Elyria, Ohio, who admitted to a county judge that he had whipped with a belt two dozen naked eight-to 10-year-old boys as they stood in a shower at a football camp where Robinson coached last summer.

Angry
At Disney and its new movie Snow Dogs, the Miami-based Sled Dog Action Coalition. The group, which also objects to the Iditarod musher race on which the film is based, complains that Dogs ignores the painful, sometimes fatal, training that the huskies endure.

Fired
By Australia's Channel 7, reporter Nicki Voss partly because, during an interview with swimmer Ian Thorpe, she noted his size 17 shoe and asked whether "it was true what they say about men with big feet." Thorpe reportedly called the network to complain, leading to Voss's dismissal. Voss argued the firing was unfair, and her lawyers have reached an undisclosed agreement with the station.