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NEW YORK - “The Sopranos” will definitely be taken out next year, the show’s creator said, though he can’t say it won’t hit the big screen at some point.
“It may be that in two or three or four years I could be sitting around and get an idea for a really great ‘Sopranos’ movie,” David Chase told The New York Times in a joint interview with James Gandolfini, star of the HBO series. “I don’t think that will happen. But if one morning somebody woke up and said this would make a really good, concise, contained ‘Sopranos’ story, I wouldn’t rule that out.”
Chase, also the series’ executive producer, and Gandolfini reflected on the show and the trajectory of its central character, mobster Tony Soprano, in an article appearing in Sunday’s editions.
Gandolfini’s character never crossed the line into killing family members, except to spare a cousin a worse death by enemies.
“I think there’s a place Tony knows that if he goes to, he’s not coming back, and that’s the place,” Gandolfini said. “If you start killing family members, what’s next?”
The newest 12-episode season will begin March 12. The Emmy-winning show, which began airing in 1999, is to wrap up with eight episodes starting next January.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will conduct a highly unusual second review of potential security risks in a business deal it previously approved for a United Arab Emirates-based company to take over significant operations at six leading U.S. ports.
ADVERTISEMENT The new, 45-day investigation is aimed at averting an impending political showdown as Congress returned to Washington on Monday from a weeklong break.
“We think this is a good middle ground that has been found,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who helped negotiate the plan, quickly recommended that lawmakers wait for the outcome before acting on legislation to delay or block the deal. Frist, R-Tenn., said he expects oversight hearings to continue this week.
In six pages of legal documents sent Sunday to the White House, Dubai-based DP World offered to submit to a second, broader investigation of its plans to run shipping terminals in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.
The Treasury Department, which governs the U.S. review panel, said it would accept DP World’s extraordinary offer once the company formally filed its request for one. It said the same government panel will reconsider the deal that it earlier had agreed unanimously posed no national security concerns.
Some senators, led by Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said they still intend to introduce legislation Monday to block the deal pending a 45-day review and to require congressional approval before DP World can conduct business in the United States. Under existing law, Congress effectively has no role considering deals.
Bush has pledged to veto any measure blocking the deal. “The president’s position remains the same,” McClellan said. After the review, it will be up to Bush to decide whether the deal takes effect.
Schumer said Monday he is skeptical of the review panel’s ability to evaluate the deal, saying the panel has been more focused on economic development rather than national security.
“The bottom line is this group did a very cursory review” when it approved the deal, Schumer said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I’m a little dubious of this review, but let’s wait, let’s see the report and see what they say.”
Still, the administration’s announcement means the White House likely won’t face a broader revolt this week by fellow Republicans. A united GOP can assert that its leaders — in Congress and at the White House — have taken additional steps to protect national security.
DP World’s offer was highly unusual. The secretive U.S. committee that considers security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry has conducted such full-blown investigations only about two dozen times among the more than 1,500 international deals it has reviewed.
The company said that during the renewed scrutiny, or until May 1, a London-based executive who is a British citizen would have authority over DP World’s U.S. operations. It pledged that Dubai executives would not control or influence company business in the U.S., but said it was entitled to all profits during the period. It also said it will appoint an American to be its chief security officer in the United States.
“We hope that voluntarily agreeing to further scrutiny demonstrates our commitment to our long-standing relationship with the United States,” said Edward H. Bilkey, the company’s chief operating officer.
President Bush has personally defended his administration’s earlier approval of DP World’s proposal to buy London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. It was not immediately clear whether the re-examination by the same U.S. officials would produce a different outcome.
“The transaction was closely scrutinized by the appropriate national security and intelligence officials, and important safeguards are in place,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Sunday.
In the administration’s earlier review, completed Jan. 17, DP World agreed to cooperate with law enforcement investigations and disclose many private business records on demand by U.S. agents. The government panel unanimously approved the deal after an ordinary 30-day review, during which U.S. intelligence agencies reported they found no derogatory information about DP World in their files.
In its legal papers, DP World said it would abide by the outcome of the pending review but indicated it could sue if the results were any different.
A chief critic of the ports deal, Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the company appeared to invite the more thorough investigation sought by many lawmakers. King, R-N.Y., said the proposal should be enough to delay immediate efforts in Congress to block the deal.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni Arabs are ready to end their boycott of talks to form a new Iraqi government if rival Shiites return mosques seized in last week’s sectarian attacks and meet other unspecified demands, a top Sunni figure said Monday.

That prompted the U.S. State Department to praise the Sunni leadership for “looking to get back into the game, full strength.”
“That’s to be welcomed,” deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.
Meanwhile,
Iraq’ name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web’ name=c3> Iraq’s interior minister told ABC News that he believes American journalist Jill Carroll is alive and will be released, even though the Sunday deadline set by her kidnappers had passed.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr also said he knew who abducted the 28-year-old journalist last month.
“We know his name and address, and we are following up on him as well as the Americans,” he said. “I think she is still alive.”
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” Monday that he spoke with Jabr about Carroll’s plight.
“We are doing all that we can to help bring about a release and will persist with that,” Khalilzad said.
Carroll, a freelancer working for The Christian Science Monitor, was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad and was last seen on a videotape broadcast Feb. 10 by a Kuwaiti television station, Al-Rai. The station said the kidnappers threatened to kill her unless the United States met unspecified demands by Sunday.
In Germany, the government denied a New York Times report that its intelligence service had passed information about
Saddam Hussein’ name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web’ name=c3> Saddam Hussein’s plans for defending Baghdad to the United States a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Times said a German intelligence officer supplied the information to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2003.
“This account is wrong,” German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said. “The Federal Intelligence Service and, therefore, also the government, had until now no knowledge of such a plan.”
In continuing violence, four mortar rounds exploded Monday in a Shiite neighborhood, killing four and wounding 16, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said. U.S. helicopters fired on three houses 15 miles west of Samarra and arrested 10 people, Iraqi police said.
It was unclear whether the raid was linked to Wednesday’s bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, triggering the wave of reprisal attacks that shook the nation last week.
The Sunnis boycotted the talks Thursday after the Askariya shrine bombing sparked attacks against Sunni mosques in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere. The walkout and Sunni-Shiite clashes threatened U.S. plans to establish a unity government capable of luring Sunnis away from the insurgency and raised doubts about U.S. plans to begin withdrawing some of its 138,000 soldiers this year.
Adnan al-Dulaimi, whose Iraqi Accordance Front spearheaded the Sunni boycott, said the Sunnis have not decided to return to the talks but are “intent on participating” in a new government.
“The situation is tense and within the next two days, we expect the situation to improve and then we will have talks,” he told The Associated Press. “We haven’t ended our suspension completely but we are on the way to end it.”
He said there were “some conditions” that must be met first, chief among them the return of mosques still occupied by Shiite militants in Baghdad and Salman Pak. Al-Dulaimi did not mention the other demands, but some Sunni politicians have insisted on replacing Shiite police with Sunni soldiers in heavily Sunni areas.
In Washington, Ereli brushed aside the conditions set by the Sunnis, saying: “The conditions are less important than the fact that there are good-faith discussions going on about resuming full-bore talks on a national unity government.”
Four people were killed Monday when several shells exploded near the Nasir Market in the mostly Shiite Shula area of western Baghdad, police said.
Otherwise, the city was generally peaceful Monday — the first day without extended curfews or a ban on private vehicles since the crisis erupted, pushing the nation to the brink of civil war.
Four bodies — blindfolded and handcuffed — were found Monday in Dora, a Baghdad neighborhood where a mortar barrage the night before killed 16 people and wounded 53. Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded in an ambush Monday in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of the capital, officials said.
The U.S. military said an American soldier had died from non-combat related injuries suffered Friday north of Baghdad. The statement did not elaborate. Three soldiers were killed Sunday in combat in the capital.
Their deaths brought to at least 2,291 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.
Four people were killed in a pair of shootings Monday in Baqouba, the Diyala provincial capital. The day before, gunmen killed two youths playing soccer in Baqouba and wounded five.
Although sectarian violence has receded since the attacks last week, tensions remain high between majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis. Shiites dominate ranks of the government security forces and most of the insurgents are Sunnis.
More than 60 Shiite families fled their homes in predominantly Sunni areas west and north of Baghdad after receiving threats, said Shiite legislator Jalaladin al-Saghir and Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Jalil Khallaf.
Sunni and Shiite religious leaders have called for unity and an end to attacks on each other’s mosques