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As the 500-year-old bell tower tolls, about 25 students from the University of Oxford cross a medieval cobblestone street. They duck under a stone archway and slip into a room named after T.S. Eliot, who studied here a century ago.

The students drop their backpacks and get ready for practice. They're here to hone their tongues. This week, an elite team of Oxford's six best tasters will battle the University of Cambridge to see which group has the most refined palate.

In the back of the Oxford practice room, the coach, Hanneke Wilson, is setting things up. She's published a book about wine. She oversees a wine cellar. And right now, she's struggling to uncork a few bottles.

"Corks can be very recalcitrant," she mutters to herself. Moments later, she succeeds and slips the bottles into cloth sleeves that disguise their labels.

Oxford and Cambridge have academic awards to see which school is smarter, and boat races to determine which is stronger. And for the past half-century, their blind wine tasting societies have held competitions. It's all part of an epic rivalry that dates back to the 13th century.

Now, these tasting teams are hoping to be recognized as an official sport.

As practice gets underway, wine is the only topic of conversation. Students list the regions they've visited: Bordeaux, Champagne, Alsace.

"I basically plan my holidays around vineyards," says Yee Chuin Lim, a master's student in development studies. Other students confess they do the same.

Soon the room is quiet and tense. One student makes his way around the long table, setting out wine glasses. Another student pours. Then, they start a sophisticated version of "guess the grape."

They study the color. They swirl the glass and take a big sniff. Eventually, they sip it and swish it, constantly jotting down what they notice. Finally, they spit it out; there is no drunkenness allowed. And, before the clock runs out, they guess.

Coach Wilson explains: "You get five points for the predominant grape variety, five for the country of origin, two points for the main viticulture region, three for the subdistrict, two for the vintage and then five points for your tasting note."

Basically, you need to know what grape, from when and from where — the more specific, the better. This means your tongue needs to have a database of wine. Plus, it helps to have a good working knowledge of agricultural practices and winemaking techniques.

"Wine tasting, as you will by now have realized, is very difficult," coach Wilson says.

Oxford's ultimate goal is, of course, beating Cambridge. Historically, Oxford has the edge, but Cambridge is the defending champion.

"It's very tense. People get jolly nervous. We go to the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London, so it's on neutral territory," Wilson says. "And the match happens in total silence."

Early in the morning on their big day, the team will head over to the train station. Ren Lim, a doctoral student in biophysics, has made this trip three times to represent Oxford. He says that on the train there is a scramble to find seats together. Then they pop open a bottle, cover the label and do a quick practice session right there.

"When you start dishing out glasses," Lim remembers, "you get funny looks."

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When people ask him about why he devotes so much time to blind wine tasting, Ren Lim says, "I still struggle to find why."

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It is fun and challenging, he admits. And of course, college kids will be college kids.

Remember how you have to spit out the wine after you taste it? Well, you spit into a black spittoon that students from the two teams are supposed to share. But Ren Lim says that when you've got a mouth full of wine, sometimes your archrival will "hog onto the spittoon and deprive you of the privilege to use it."

Coach Wilson says that in more than 20 years of coaching, she's noticed that "Cambridge always makes more noise slurping and spitting than we do. We think they do this to put us off our stride."

But there's one thing both of these teams agree on.

"We treat wine tasting as a sport," Wilson says. "We train for it, the way we train for a competitive sports match."

She says both Oxford and Cambridge have petitioned to become officially recognized as sports teams. After all, it worked for chess. But so far, the powers that be haven't been persuaded.

"They think that sport involves running around and kicking or hitting things. We disagree, but there you are," Wilson says with a sigh.

Still, other universities are catching on. Blind tasting has spread around the U.K., and it's even crossed the pond. Both Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania's business schools have teams, among others. They let spectators watch — and taste for themselves.

Here in Oxford, competitions still happen behind closed doors.

So do the practices. As this one winds down, the team captain calls on Mateusz Tarkowski to guess the last pair of red wines. Tarkowski studies computer science, and he's hoping to make Oxford's wine team.

"Cherries on the palate. Of course it's a dry wine," Tarkowski looks down at his notes. "I definitely thought it was Italian." Then, he decides to hazard a guess.

When the sock comes off, Tarkowski has guessed right — full marks. It's been a good practice.

As the presidential hopefuls chase after big donors, the Center for Responsive Politics brings us a quick look in the rearview mirror:

The 2014 congressional midterm elections cost $3.77 billion, the center says, making them (no surprise here) the most expensive midterms yet. CRP also reports that those dollars appeared to come from a smaller cadre of donors — 773,582, the center says. That's about 5 percent fewer than in the 2010 midterms.

CRP found that the average contribution swelled from $1,800 in 2010, to slightly more than $8,000 in 2014. That appears to reflect the growth of superPACs, political committees created by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other court decisions earlier in 2010. SuperPACs disclose their donors but have no contribution limits.

Another flourishing sector of politics is the 501c4 secret-money groups, which don't disclose their donors or, in many cases, their spending. Conservative groups accounted for 78 percent of the known spending by secret-money groups. (Secret-money groups must disclose some overtly partisan advertising and some field work.) Liberal groups led in the disclosed-money arena of superPACs, with 52 percent of the spending.

Overall, CRP found that Republican candidates, party committees and outside groups spent $1.77 billion, about $44 million more than Democrats.

Besides the donors to secret-money groups, CRP's data don't include the number of donors who gave $200 or less. Those smallest of small donors are exempt from federal disclosure law.

midterms 2014

superPACs

money

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Popular Mexican actress Lorena Rojas has died of cancer at age 44.

Rojas was born Seydi Lorena Rojas Gonzlez in Mexico City and got her big break in the 1990s with the telenovela Alcanzar Una Estrella. She later starred in Azul Tequila, El Cuerpo del Deseo and Pecados Ajenos. Her most recent telenovela was Rosario.

She also moved into films, such as Corazones Rotos, and stage in the musical Aventurera. Earlier this year, she'd put out a children's album called Hijos Del Sol, inspired by her daughter Luciana.

Rojas had been battling cancer since 2008. She died on Monday in Miami.

This time, they're through. Done. They're walking out the door on Friday.

Unless they aren't. Unless they renew their vows and their union grows ever closer.

That's basically where Greek officials and European finance ministers are in their complicated relationship. After years of possible-breakup drama, a real deadline will arrive Friday and the parties must decide: Are we in this thing together or not?

If Greece tells Europe, in effect: "Fine. Walk away. Russia will love us instead," then Europe — and the United States — may have a whole new set of economic and geopolitical problems to worry about.

There were hints Tuesday that Greece is moving toward saying: "Wait! Let's talk. I know we can work it out." Those positive rumors kept European financial markets calm — for now.

But economists say real stability will come only when the hints and rumors have been turned into a clear proposal.

This fraught relationship has been having its ups and downs for so long, you may have stopped paying attention. To help you catch up, here's a 1-2-3 recap, and a look-ahead to Friday:

1) Greece is a small country with a big problem; for years, it was spending too much. So the government had been borrowing a lot, and finally could not meet its debt obligations when the global recession hit.

2) But Greece is not a stand-alone country, free to default on debt or devalue its currency. It's part of the European Union, and uses the euro. Europeans did not want one of their members to tumble into financial chaos.

3) So in 2012, EU finance ministers helped cobble together a plan to bail out Greek debt in exchange for the country raising taxes while cutting wages, pensions, public investment and social security benefits.

With the bailout in place, Greece's economy started improving. But a lot of Greeks who had depended upon government pensions and paychecks were still suffering. In late January, voters elected a new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who opposed austerity.

The Two-Way

Talks Collapse, As Greece Rejects E.U. Bailout Deal

Parallels

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The Two-Way

Greece's Left-Wing Prime Minister Takes Charge

The timing of his election was, shall we say, awkward because on March 1, Greece's credit lines will expire.

Europe's finance ministers met Monday. They had hoped to come up with an extension of the bailout package — with its attached austerity strings.

Negotiations broke down. Afterwards, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told reporters: "In the history of the European Union, nothing good has ever come out of ultimatums."

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem kept holding firm, saying Athens must agree to more austerity and make the next move: "It's really up to the Greeks."

But there's little time left. Friday is the real deadline because national parliaments need time to ratify any deal before the Feb. 28 expiration of the existing bailout.

Speculation had been swirling that Greece might turn to Russia or China for help. That would be a bad outcome from the perspective of U.S. and European officials, who do not want Greece to: grow distant from Europe; pull out of the euro currency union; or default on its debts.

Any of that could shake up financial markets. There's been more than a hint of jitters in the banking sector: Greek banks reportedly have been losing deposits at the rate of 2 billion euros ($2.27 billion) a week.

IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm, issued an assessment Tuesday morning saying that failure to reach an agreement could cause turmoil in Greece, bringing "a re-emergence of wide-scale protests, riots and labour strikes, which would cause disruption to businesses."

But on Tuesday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal quoted an unnamed source saying Greece will try to escape such turmoil by asking for a temporary credit extension of up to six months. So maybe, once again, there will be no clear resolution, just another agreement to keep living together — for now.

Although most economists side with EU officials, some liberals don't. One example is U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont. He says Greece should stand its ground and European officials should allow Tsipras to do what Greek voters want.

Blocking him from reversing austerity would "make a sham of the recent democratic election held there," Sanders said in an essay.

Greek bailout

Greece

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