Handshake

THE BRITISH government has rejected advice from its Olympic team's top doctor that athletes should not shake hands at the London Games to avoid germs that could make them sick. Government health advisers seemed perplexed by the guidelines, put forth yesterday, which Olympic hopefuls derided as "rude" and "pointless. " By the end of the day, the British Olympic Association had softened its stance. Yes, the athletes will be able to greet the 10,000 visiting Olympians and hundreds of dignitaries with handshakes.

The gunman didn't give his victim a fair shake. After shaking hands with John James Jr., 19, of Chester, Lamont Overby, 24, of Capitol Street near Wharton, pulled out a gun and shot him five times on Reed Street near 20th on Aug. 27, 1996, said Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron. The prosecutor suggested that the motive for the brutal South Philadelphia murder might have been robbery. But Cameron didn't have to prove the reason behind the killing. He had an eyewitness.

I was at Catholic Mass, and the moment had come: the peace handshake. A clutch of uncertainty seized me. Do I really want to shake hands today? I mean, I'm for peace, but I thought that's exactly what I wouldn't have if I shook hands. It wasn't that I am antisocial or aloof. You see, it was the height of the flu-and-virus season, and all around me people were coughing their heads off, sniffling, blowing their noses, and to shake hands with these folks meant gambling on catching something.

Two of the top fighters in the city, cruiserweight Nate Miller and welterweight Rodney Moore, have switched promoters, going from J. Russell Peltz to Don King. "They felt they could do better with Don," said Al Braverman, a spokesman for King. Braverman would not disclose how much money the two fighters would receive under their new promoter. "Peltz just had handshake deals with the fighters," Braverman said. "He wasn't smart enough to have signed contracts with them.

Inviting Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat to Washington to witness the signing of a declaration of principles for Israeli-Palestinian peace was a huge risk, but not for the obvious reasons. The biggest threat was not terrorism, but the real possibility that such a meeting would arouse a backlash from ordinary Palestinians and Israelis. Many feared peace was happening too soon, before two peoples with a hundred-year history of war were ready to absorb it. The idea of a handshake between Mr. Arafat, long vilified by Israelis as an arch terrorist, and Mr. Rabin, who has crushed the Palestinian uprising against occupation, is shocking to many Jews and Arabs.

The heroics of a 14-year-old Plymouth Meeting boy in defusing another teen's plans for a Columbine-like school assault culminated in a presidential handshake yesterday. Lew Bennett III was one of about a dozen people selected to greet President Bush as he exited Air Force One at Philadelphia International Airport. "The president wanted to thank him for doing the right thing," said White House spokesman Alex Conant. Bush was here for a private fund-raiser in Bryn Mawr at the home of John M. Templeton expected to raise $500,000 for GOP candidates.

Philadelphia Sheriff John D. Green has been handing out government work, some of it to his friends and political supporters, without bids or written contracts. Over the last decade, the payments to these companies have totaled millions of dollars. Green awarded the work based on what his office calls "verbal agreements. " This is legal - but it flies in the face of the rules most government offices follow, and the standards typically used in private business. The handshake agreements are the latest questionable practice to come to light in a department that has been criticized in recent years for flawed bookkeeping and inadequate fiscal controls.

SIGNS OF WELCOME are painted on the grass as students at Glassboro High School prepare for President Reagan's visit Thursday. Reagan will deliver the keynote speech at graduation ceremonies, giving each graduate a handshake and a diploma, and then will address the community.

Pat Croce, as hyper as he usually is, is willing to wait. To wait for whenever chairman Ed Snider is ready to talk about a new contract for Croce, the 76ers president. "Ed Snider will do what's right, I'm very confident about waiting until he is ready to do it," Croce said before last night's game against Cleveland. "When he's comfortable, I'll be comfortable. " Croce felt compelled to meet with reporters after an Inquirer report indicated there could be a rift somewhere among Croce, Snider and coach Larry Brown.

In just four weeks, graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School would be released from the tender embrace of ivy into the sweaty vise of business. It was time to mind their manners. It was time to bring back, by popular demand, for the fourth year in a row, none other than Letitia Baldrige. (Friends call her Tish, but if you have read any of her three books on manners you would know to refer to her as Mrs. Baldrige until she instructed you to do otherwise.) Baldrige, social secretary to the Kennedy White House, etiquette heir to Amy Vanderbilt and author of Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners, was here Tuesday between appearances in somber boardrooms and on CBS's sob-a-rama Capitol as part of Wharton's Executive Lifestyle Series.

New Jersey's scathing audit of the Delaware River Port Authority unearthed a way of doing business retro enough for a Mad Men episode stripped of its wit, style, and cigarettes. There's precious little glamour in the audit's depressing depiction of pals and pols burning through millions in public money behind closed doors. Tacky patronage perks such as $2,000 in tickets to a "Gypsy Melodies Gala" (imagine the outfits) look like a steal compared to other "wasteful and inappropriate spending" that state Comptroller A. Matthew Boxer outlined Thursday.

INSIDE the booze industry, there's a lot of talk about "recruiting" newbie drinkers to try more complex spirits. What these insiders mean is that they're hoping to grab young drinkers whose juvenile palates now gravitate toward, say, whipped-cream vodka, and persuade them to try the stuff people euphemistically say is "an acquired taste. " Certain drinking "holidays" now take the form of informal Booze Recruitment Drives. Think of all the tequila talk around Cinco de Mayo, for instance.

THE BRITISH government has rejected advice from its Olympic team's top doctor that athletes should not shake hands at the London Games to avoid germs that could make them sick. Government health advisers seemed perplexed by the guidelines, put forth yesterday, which Olympic hopefuls derided as "rude" and "pointless. " By the end of the day, the British Olympic Association had softened its stance. Yes, the athletes will be able to greet the 10,000 visiting Olympians and hundreds of dignitaries with handshakes.

Former linemates and still good friends, Jason Pominville and Danny Briere shook hands after the Flyers-Sabres regular-season game eight days ago and told one another they probably wouldn't be speaking for a while because they'd be busy with the playoffs. "Then we ended up playing each other, so the next time we speak it'll probably be at the handshake," Pominville said Friday after the Sabres worked out in preparation for Saturday's Game 2 of a first-round series against the Flyers.

Thumbs up To Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who once again proved why he's the smartest man in the NFL. With the 33-year-old Randy Moss in the final year of his contract, Belichick decided that the seven-time Pro Bowl wide receiver's declining play - he's got just nine catches in the first four games - and his increasingly bad attitude over the team's disinterest in giving him a new deal, were sufficient reasons to trade him to the desperate Vikings....

It was an awkward moment. The rookie quarterback was to meet the franchise quarterback for the first time. A few weeks earlier, the Eagles had used their top draft pick to take the rookie, a move that "shocked" the starter. But here they were: Kevin Kolb, understandably nervous, and Donovan McNabb, introducing himself with his trademark sarcasm. "The very first time I met him he called me 'The Future,' like right off the bat," Kolb said. "So I was like, 'Aw, man,' because I didn't know anything about Donovan.

When Gov. Christie asked state Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver to join him in a "handshake of resolve and friendship" yesterday, the new legislative leaders paused for a split-second before standing up to accept. In the world of political theater, such details typically are scripted and well-rehearsed. But the request during Christie's inaugural speech came as a surprise, Sweeney and Oliver said. The gesture was intended to signal a new era of bipartisanship in Trenton, as Christie, like other governors before him, seeks to find a way to work with a Legislature controlled by the opposing party.

They are U.S. military men and women just weeks from deployment to war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. So they are trained to expect the unexpected. But yesterday? Well, nothing had prepared them for what they saw. Their buses pulled up shortly before noon to a catering hall in Cherry Hill, where nearly 200 troops from the Army, Air Force, and Navy expected a simple Thanksgiving Day lunch. What awaited them had tears spilling from Army public affairs Spec. Christina Dion's eyes before she even had stepped off her bus. "Wow!"

For nine years, middle school director Russell Shaw has greeted and bidden farewell to each of his 160 charges with a cheerful smile and firm handshake. Now, in a concession to this season of swine flu discontent, he has replaced the potentially germy clasping of palms with fist bumps and occasional elbow taps. Shaw's broad smile, of course, remains. "Some have added their own choreography," he said before dismissal earlier this month at Abington Friends School in Jenkintown.

Justin Wineburgh likes to say he built his entertainment-law practice at Cozen O'Connor "one handshake at a time. " He diligently studied the trade press, tracked the movement of executives, had lunch and drinks with Hollywood power brokers, and over the years, learned the business. But the tipping point came in 2003 and 2004, when he defended makers of the film The Ring in a Los Angeles lawsuit brought by another film company alleging it alone had the right to make the picture.