LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune Nick Palos, 9 (center), led his friends in a warm-up exercise before they played flag football last week at Azalea Recreation Center.

At the Azalea Recreation Center in City Heights, every season has its youth sport – basketball in the winter, soccer in the spring, baseball in the summer and flag football in the fall. At the Allied Gardens/Benjamin Branch Library, students from three nearby schools are regulars, and a group of seniors meets weekly to discuss mystery books.

WASHINGTON – Prospects dimmed yesterday for the $25 billion bailout that U.S. automakers say they desperately need to get through a bleak and dangerous December. Though all sides agree that Detroit's Big Three automakers are in peril, battered by the economic meltdown that has choked their sales and frozen loans, the White House and congressional Democrats are headed for stalemate over how much government money should go toward helping them.

Chula Vista and the Port of San Diego were reeling yesterday after Gaylord Entertainment dropped plans for a 32-acre resort, another disappointment in 35 years of failed attempts to develop the city's waterfront. In separate afternoon meetings with the Port District and the city, Gaylord Senior Vice President Bennett Westbrook said the regulatory and financial hurdles were deal-breakers.

WASHINGTON – A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws.

SAN FRANCISCO – Retailers and manufacturers have a gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that won't result in lacerations and stab wounds. The companies, including Amazon.com, Sony, Microsoft and Best Buy, have begun to create alternatives to the infuriating plastic “clamshell” packages and complicated twist ties that make products such as electronics and toys almost impossible for mere mortals to open without power tools.