Antigua

Bill Clinton slept here. He shopped a few blocks away. He had dinner around the corner and down the street. Everywhere I turned, it seemed, I saw fading photos of the former president smiling into the camera as he shook hands with a beaming proprietor. I could have been in Little Rock, Ark., instead of Antigua. It has been six years since Bill Clinton's visit, but his star still shines brightly in this Central American colonial city. He was the first U.S. president to visit Guatemala since Lyndon Johnson nearly 30 years earlier.

The United States vowed Wednesday to defend its ban on cross-border Internet gambling by appealing a World Trade Organization ruling that favored the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua. U.S. trade officials said it was highly unlikely that the U.S. would lift its ban even if it lost its appeal.

When next you dream of a Caribbean getaway, let your fantasies drift back to the year 1493 and to a small island with 365 beaches . . . one for every day of the year. It was in 1493 that Christopher Columbus made his second voyage to the New World he had discovered a year earlier. Sailing past an island one sunlit morning, he named it Santa Maria la Antigua to honor a miracle-working saint memorialized in the Seville Cathedral of Spain.

I glance out the back window of the cab crossing the threshold of the St. James's Club in Antigua and watch as the gates come down behind us. We are locked in for five days, trapped in paradise, trying not to feel too smug but hardly containing ourselves. With four teenagers giving us a run for our money this year, we have taken what little money is left and run for the Caribbean. Our goal, by the way, is to do nothing, something we have never done before.

The celebration is called Semana Santa -- Holy Week -- and no one in Latin America commemorates it the way the people of Antigua, Guatemala, do. Streets are lined with brightly colored carpets of flowers, and the air is heavy with the fragrance of incense. Larger-than-life statues of Jesus and various saints glide through the air on floats held aloft by battalions of worshipers. Thousands of people participate; thousands more watch.

Orlando "Hurricane" Antigua knows all about overcoming adversity. During his senior year of high school in New York, he and his family were homeless. Later, he played his first two seasons of college basketball at the University of Pittsburgh with a bullet lodged in his head, the result of a street shooting in which he was an innocent bystander.

Swoon was declared the winner of Friday's $37,000 feature race at Santa Anita because Antigua, the first horse to cross the finish line in the 1 1/8-mile turf event, was disqualified because of interference in the stretch. Antigua, ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye and carrying 116 pounds, finished fast to cross the finish line 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Swoon but was disqualified to third because of the interference with about an eighth of a mile to go. Antigua was timed in 1:48 1/5.

Hurricane Jose ripped roofs from houses, tore down a newly built church and flung debris through deserted streets Wednesday as it hit Antigua head-on and threatened a string of other Caribbean islands. Storm-weary islanders in neighboring St. Kitts, where a few homes remain roofless from last year's devastating hurricane season, braced themselves as Jose bore down packing 100-mph winds and drenching rain. "It's projected to move right across the Leeward Islands.

Nearly 18 months before the national shooting spree, sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad smuggled his teenage companion into America from this remote Caribbean island with forged documents identifying the boy as his firstborn son, according to Antiguan government documents and official accounts here Friday.

Eddie Johnson's second goal of the game in the 90th minute bailed out a shaky U.S. national team Friday, lifting it to a crucial 2-1 win over Antigua & Barbuda in a World Cup qualifier at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Grounds in Antigua. The U.S. entered the match needing a win and a tie in its final two games in the semifinal round of regional qualifying to assure itself of a spot in next year's CONCACAF final. The U.S. meets Guatemala on Tuesday in Kansas City, Kan., in its final game.