In the early part of the millennium the cities of Leeds, Bristol, Bradford including Keighley and Nottingham all commanded headlines pertaining to street gangs and suffered their share of high-profile firearms murders.

Mr. Buchanan, the conservative columnist who is Mr. Bush's only Republican opponent, admits that the President has an enormous advantage from his incumbency, which enables him to command headlines and television time and draw big crowds.

He is still a player who commands headlines without ever swinging a bat, a hitter who keeps the wise fan planted in his seat in lieu of a hot dog run or a refrigerator break, just because of the long-ball possibilities.

But it was her pledge on Tuesday that she would produce an immediate tax cut that brought a gasp and then sustained applause from the inaugural audience and commanded headlines across the state today.

Countries emerging from conflict often command headlines, congressional interest, and rule-of-law funding: Bosnia and Sierra Leone in the nineties, Iraq and Afghanistan today.

So the new mayor's decision to go the other way - to acknowledge that Al Sharpton, like him or not, is an important force in this town, with a core of followers who cannot be ignored - commanded headlines before anything had even happened.

On Thursday, four days before the fifth anniversary of the attack, that tape was made public and broadcast on the news channel Al Jazeera, allowing Al Qaeda once again to command headlines, even as its leaders remain in hiding and its organization apparently has been fractured.

As revelations about prisoner abuse in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison commanded headlines in spring 2004, Iraqi blogger Ali posted the reflections of a physician friend who had treated inmates at the notorious jail.

Almost two decades after they last suited up for a game together in their trademark black socks, black shoes and baggy yellow shorts, Michigan's Fab Five still has the ability to command headlines.

But people involved in the talks said executives at AT&T were convinced that Mr. Allen could no longer remain silent on a topic that has commanded headlines in business news columns and magazines for three weeks.