Ecuador

Ecuador and England vaulted into the second round of the World Cup with wins yesterday, and host Germany also advanced without even having to play. Ecuador beat Costa Rica, 3-0, in Hamburg, Germany, a win that was enough to send both the South Americans and host Germany, which beat Poland 1-0 on Wednesday, into the knockout round. The two play for first place in Group A on Tuesday. Winless Costa Rica and Poland have been eliminated. Carlos Tenorio and Agustin Delgado each scored their second goals of the tournament for Ecuador, while Ivan Kaviedes added the game's third in injury time.

The Union prepared for Saturday's 4 p.m. Major League Soccer game against F.C. Dallas at Lincoln Financial Field with Tuesday's scrimmage at the Linc against Ecuador's national team. The result of the scrimmage was better than most of the games that have counted for the Union (1-5). A 90-minute scrimmage with good pace resulted in a 1-1 draw. Both teams took the game seriously. In fact, Ecuador, which didn't qualify for the World Cup, had to play a man down after Oswaldo Minda was issued a red card in the 80th minute.

Virtua-West Jersey pediatric urologists Mark Zaontz and Gregory Dean and neonatologist Mirye Kim recently traveled to Ecuador to treat impoverished children as part of the Healing the Children program. Healing the Children is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing medical care for children throughout the world. Through the program, medical professionals volunteer their time, financial resources and fund-raising skills to support each mission. Medical teams often go to developing countries to offer on-site treatment, surgery and training programs for local doctors and nurses.

The Union prepared for Saturday's 4 p.m. Major League Soccer game against F.C. Dallas at Lincoln Financial Field with Tuesday's scrimmage at the Linc against Ecuador's national team. The result of the scrimmage was better than most of the games that have counted for the Union (1-5). A 90-minute scrimmage with good pace resulted in a 1-1 draw. Both teams took the game seriously. In fact, Ecuador, which didn't qualify for the World Cup, had to play a man down after Oswaldo Minda was issued a red card in the 80th minute.

On Tuesday 19 members of the Buckingham Friends School community headed to the rain forests of Ecuador for a two-week hands-on research and development project. The project is part of the school's Joint Environmental Mission program, which fosters environmental awareness. Four teachers, 11 students and four parents are participating in the trip. After two days in Quito, the capital, the team will travel through the Andes Mountains to Jatun Sacha, a rain forest with a research base owned by Save the Rainforests Inc. The team also will visit a Quicha Indian village and Banos, a high-altitude forest in the Sangay National Park.

Jimmy Arias, winning a Davis Cup match for the first time in his career, gave the United States a first-round victory over host Ecuador yesterday in Guayaquil. Arias defeated Raul Viver, 6-3, 6-1, 6-4, in the decisive fifth match to send the Americans into the quarterfinal round. Earlier yesterday, Andres Gomez of Ecuador stopped Aaron Krickstein, 3-6, 7-5, 6-1, 7-5, to knot the best-of-five-matches competition at 2-2. For Arias, the victory was a welcome change. He lost to Gomez on Friday in the first-day singles, and he had lost in his only other Davis Cup appearance, against Sweden in a meaningless match in the 1984 final.

Brad Friedel made a diving save in the closing minutes as the United States played Ecuador to a scoreless tie last night in an exhibition game in Columbus, Ohio. Friedel stopped Edison Mendez's 20-yard drive to the lower left corner in the 86th minute. The U.S. team, which learned yesterday it will miss Chicago forward Josh Wolff for another six weeks because of a broken foot, played without most of its Major League Soccer-based players, relying on players with European clubs such as Friedel.

The haunting images from the medical mission to Guayaquil, Ecuador, remain fresh in their minds long after the airliner touched down at Philadelphia International Airport. Doctors and nurses from area hospitals recall seeing scores of children lined up for hours in the humid, 90-degree heat, hoping to be one of the lucky ones chosen for surgery. They remember the poverty of patients who had no change of clothes, no money to pay for treatment, and no place to sleep, except on the benches outside the Roberto Gilbert Hospital.

The cleat went into Preki Radosavljevic's head, just in back of his left ear, and he went down and stayed down. U.S. national soccer coach Steve Sampson got a substitute warming up to take over. But after getting his head wrapped with white bandage, Radosavljevic was back up and running around Memorial Stadium. It was going to take more than a gash to get him off the field. Officially, this was just a friendly game between the United States and Ecuador (and officially, Ecuador won, 1-0)

A wide body, and a long body. At Philadelphia International Airport, a Russian plane, reportedly the world's largest commercially flown plane, dwarfs (from left) Jack Haeflich, his son Michael Haeflich Sr. and his grandson Michael Jr. The plane will fly a 90-ton generator to Ecuador for a power plant. Jack Haeflich is executive vice president of Energy Services Inc. of Connecticut, which owns the generator.

Services have been set in Southington, Conn., for Lauryn E. Ossola, the 23-year-old Villanova University graduate who was fatally injured when she was hit by a car as she crossed Lancaster Avenue near Thomas Avenue in Bryn Mawr on Saturday, Oct. 22. A visitation was set from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, at the DellaVecchia Funeral Home, 211 Main St., Southington, before a Funeral Mass at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church, 99...

FRESH OFF his first win as U.S. Soccer's latest head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann and the Americans will go for their second tonight against Ecuador. It took four matches, but Klinsmann, named U.S. coach in August, earned his first win with a 1-0 victory over Honduras at the Sun Life Stadium in Miami on Saturday. Now the U.S. (5-6-3 overall) makes its first trip to Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J., to face Ecuador (7:30 p.m., ESPN2, Univision). Ecuador is the tiny South American nation where U.S. ace goalkeeper Tim Howard collected his first cap and where he earned his first international shutout.

A federal judge sitting in New York has found there is no evidence lawyers at the Center City firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf P.C. were aware of potentially fraudulent actions in a huge pollution lawsuit it financed that alleges that Chevron Corp. had despoiled vast stretches of the Amazon rain forest. However, the ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis requires the Kohn firm and other parties to turn over internal documents that Chevron contends may bolster its claim that opposing lawyers in Ecuador corruptly influenced the judiciary there.

U.S. expels envoy in retaliation WASHINGTON - The United States has expelled Ecuador's ambassador to Washington in retaliation for Ecuador's expulsion of the U.S. ambassador, a State Department spokesman said Thursday. Talks with Ecuador scheduled for June also have been suspended, Mark Toner said. Ecuador on Tuesday expelled U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges to protest allegations she made in a classified diplomatic cable to Washington - made public by the WikiLeaks website - that President Rafael Correa had knowingly appointed a corrupt police chief.

Lawsuits are flying in the bitter dispute over allegations that Chevron is responsible for polluting a Rhode Island-size swath of the Amazon rain forest in eastern Ecuador over more than 25 years of oil drilling and exploration. One of the law firms in the pollution case against Chevron, Patton Boggs of Washington, has sued the oil giant and its outside counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, accusing them of using threats, bogus litigation strategies, and attacks on its reputation to derail the case.

For all the polished rhetoric and decorous argumentation by very pricey lawyers, there was no disguising the bare-knuckle nature of the hearing Dec. 17 before U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois in Philadelphia. On its face, the issue was whether Philadelphia lawyer Joseph Kohn would disclose his most private communications in a lawsuit, filed in Ecuador, against energy giant Chevron. The suit alleges that Chevron bears responsibility for pollution in a wide swath of Amazon rain forest in eastern Ecuador, where Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, had oil-drilling operations.

The Union prepared for Saturday's 4 p.m. Major League Soccer game against F.C. Dallas at Lincoln Financial Field with Tuesday's scrimmage at the Linc against Ecuador's national team. The result of the scrimmage was better than most of the games that have counted for the Union (1-5). A 90-minute scrimmage with good pace resulted in a 1-1 draw. Both teams took the game seriously. In fact, Ecuador, which didn't qualify for the World Cup, had to play a man down after Oswaldo Minda was issued a red card in the 80th minute.

The Union prepared for Saturday's 4 p.m. Major League Soccer game against F.C. Dallas at Lincoln Financial Field with Tuesday's scrimmage at the Linc against Ecuador's national team. The result of the scrimmage was better than most of the games that have counted for the Union (1-5). A 90-minute scrimmage with good pace resulted in a 1-1 draw. Both teams took the game seriously. In fact, Ecuador, which didn't qualify for the World Cup, had to play a man down after Oswaldo Minda was issued a red card in the 80th minute.

Philadelphia is among 18 finalists the U.S. Soccer Bid Committee plans to submit to FIFA on Friday in hopes of hosting the World Cup in either 2018 or 2022. U.S. Soccer president and bid committee chair Sunil Gulati, in addition to executive director David Downs, managing director John Kristick and national team captain Carlos Bocanegra, will be among the group that will submit the bid book to soccer's world governing body during a formal ceremony at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.

Taking a yearlong break from tennis can revitalize a player physically and mentally. Advantage, Juan Escobar. If the respite comes during his high school years, the player could drop from rankings and become a relative unknown to some college recruiters. Deuce. It's May 9, late in the school year, late in the boys' tennis season, and late for a senior who hopes to get an NCAA Division I scholarship for the fall. But the state championships loom at month's end, and at least one Division I college coach is expected to be there.