Lenarte Artesanato

The line of retired jerseys on the Franklin gymnasium wall begins with Jason Terry, then continues through Alvin Snow, Aaron Brooks, Lyndale Burleson and, most recently, Venoy Overton.

With each standout Franklin guard who leaves, another is ready to take his place.

“It’s been a bit of a tradition around here,” boys basketball coach Jason Kerr said. “It has been one great guard after another, passing it down to the next.”

Junior Peyton Siva followed the Quakers as a child and came to Franklin to be that next great guard. And with Overton now at the University of Washington, the line now moves on through the 5-foot-11 Siva.

“It’s very important,” Siva said, “to keep that tradition alive.”

The past two years, the Quakers relied on Overton to lead. Siva was comfortable in the background, swishing long-range jumpers and swiping passes.

Overton pushed Siva in practice, forcing him to find and fix the flaws in his game. Siva shined, and Franklin won the Class 4A title in 2006 and finished third in 2007.

In his freshman year, Siva averaged 13.2 points. He improved to 18.7 last season. In the Quakers’ semifinal loss to Ferris, Siva wowed the Tacoma Dome crowd with 35 points.

“It’s a snapshot of his talent,” Kerr said of that game. “But I don’t think points by themselves come anywhere near to describing what he’s capable of. You could let a Peyton Siva go every night and he could score 40 points a night. The question is, will that help his team win? I don’t think it will.”

Siva hasn’t been able to shake the memory of that semifinal defeat. The Quakers were so focused on winning the state championship, Siva said, they overlooked the semifinals.

“We had state on our minds,” he said.

Franklin should challenge for the state title again. The Quakers start the season ranked second - behind Ferris - by The Seattle Times.

Franklin received national hype when Ferris’ DeAngelo Casto, who scored 27 points against the Quakers last March, transferred to Franklin this fall. But in late October, he returned to Ferris, where he has been ruled ineligible at the district level because of transfer rules.

“There’s not a whole lot of conversation about it,” Kerr said.

Roosevelt coach Bart Brandenburg sees Franklin’s success boiling down to Siva, whom Brandenburg said is one of the state’s best players with the ball at the end of a game.

“He makes plays,” Brandenburg said. “He makes a steal, and within three seconds, he’s scored.

“But can he step in and be that leader guy? “If he can’t do that, there are teams out there that have as much talent as them.”

Kerr is in no hurry to rush him into a leadership role.

“For him to balance being our best player and being a good teammate is a difficult thing for anyone in that position,” Kerr said. “Right now, he’s doing it well.”

Tom Wyrwich: 206-515-5653 or twyrwich@seattletimes.com

Mercer Island students may be an hour and a half behind schedule next school year - but they won’t be running late.

A Wednesday late start, which would push all school start times back by 90 minutes on Wednesdays, has been proposed to replace the current early-release Monday. But the decision, made last spring by the School Board and former Superintendent Cyndy Simms, has sparked so many community concerns that the district is reconsidering its plan.

“I don’t think they [the School Board] anticipated this impact and level of interest on the part of parents,” said Toby Suhm, president of the Mercer Island PTA council.

About 1,200 parents and students have responded to an online survey about the changes, said Suhm, with concerns ranging from child care to after-school activities.

“It isn’t a done deal, and that’s the reason for the assessment of our community and the assessment of our impact,” said Interim Superintendent Gary Plano.

The online survey will close Nov. 30. Plano said he expects a final decision to be made at the Dec. 13 School Board meeting.

A chief concern for administrators was research on adolescent sleep needs that shows secondary students benefit from extra morning rest, Plano said. Giving teachers time to prepare for class activities was another factor, he said, with morning a better time to hold faculty meetings because part-time teachers often leave early in the day. Elementary teachers, however, argue that younger students are more alert and ready to learn in the early morning, said Mike Radow, Mercer Island Education Association president. Elementary parents worry about the availability of child care, he said.

Mercer Island’s three elementary schools begin at 9:15 a.m. With the late start schedule, class would start at 10:45 a.m. Middle school would begin at 9:55 a.m. and high school at 9:30 a.m.

Suhm said many high-school parents see the schedule switch as a positive change. But some, said Radow, are concerned that it could make participating in after-school activities more difficult.

“I think it encourages students to stay up later on Tuesday nights because they know they can sleep in the next day,” said Julia Ball, a 16-year-old Mercer Island High School junior. Issaquah instituted similar changes in 2002, with middle schools and high schools beginning two hours late each Wednesday to allow for teacher training and planning. Elementary schools have a two-hour early release that day.

Though the district recognizes the schedule can be difficult for parents, the extra time pays off in the classroom, said Sara Niegowski, an Issaquah School District spokeswoman.

“What you have to do is be really clear you’re using that time for good use; otherwise, it’s not worth the community disruption,” she said.

Transportation options for the proposed Mercer Island changes will be presented tomorrow night before the scheduled School Board meeting. The session is open to the community, but board members will not call for public participation.

It’s possible the late-start plan could be implemented at some Mercer Island schools while continuing the early-release schedule at others if feasible transportation options are proposed, Plano said.

“Potentially, the split schedule seems the obvious solution, but if we’re talking about a $1 million or $2 million impact, then I definitely think that would have an impact on people’s opinions and how we should proceed,” Suhm said.

Meghan Peters: 206-464-8305 or mpeters@seattletimes.com

CINCINNATI - NASCAR driver Aaron Fike understands where he was headed when he was arrested while using heroin in an amusement-park parking lot this summer.

“After four months of intense rehabilitation, I know that if it were not for my arrest, I would be dead,” he said. “At one point during my addiction, I stopped breathing and nearly died. Sooner or later, my luck would have run out.”

Fike’s remarks came in a rehab plan he wrote for a Warren County judge. The judge accepted Fike’s proposal to avoid jail by going to schools and racetracks to deliver an anti-drug message. Fike might find it harder to persuade NASCAR to let him race again.

Fike, 25, was eighth in the standings and in the running for Craftsman Truck Series rookie of the year when he was arrested with his fiancée in the Kings Island parking lot outside Cincinnati in July. Security officers said they observed what appeared to be suspicious activity in Fike’s sport-utility vehicle.

Mason police found bloody napkins, syringes, a spoon and black-tar heroin in the SUV. Fike and Cassandra Davidson were charged with possession of heroin, a felony, and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.

NASCAR suspended Fike indefinitely and Red Horse Racing replaced him in the No. 1 Toyota Tundra with veteran driver David Green.

“One day, I was a NASCAR race-car driver, with people asking me for my autograph, and the next day I was in handcuffs, lying on the floor of a jail cell, going through the absolute agony of heroin withdrawal,” Fike wrote in the proposal the judge accepted Nov. 6.

Fike told The Associated Press on Tuesday he began taking prescription painkillers about six years ago because of back injuries and a broken right wrist and gradually moved to oxycodone, commonly known under the brand name OxyContin.

While “hanging around the wrong environment,” Fike said he began using heroin in December.

“I was sporadic in my use. It wasn’t every day,” he said. “I made sure I was clean when I went to the track. But it was definitely consuming my life.”

Fike spent four days in jail after his arrest and entered drug treatment. He said he has beaten his addiction.

“I’m just grateful to be sober and to be alive,” he said.

Davidson was granted treatment rather than conviction and has gone through extensive rehab.

“She’s doing great,” Fike said.

Facing a possible one-year jail sentence if convicted of the felony, Fike and his lawyer, Charlie Rittgers, put together a proposal in which Fike promised to speak and pass out literature at schools, racetracks and other locales. The county prosecutor agreed to reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor, and Fike was sentenced to two years’ probation.

“From time to time, there is an opportunity - and this was one of them - to get the message out to young people about the dangers of drugs,” prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said. “I thought Aaron Fike was one of those people who could get the message out in a far more effective way than most of us ever could.”

Fike has returned to Illinois, where he grew up, and last week filed incorporation papers for his nonprofit “Racing Against Drugs.”

“It will be dedicated to helping others, particularly young people, to avoid the terrible mistake I have made,” Fike told the judge in his proposal.

Fike plans to set up an information tent at each NASCAR track and give motivational speeches on staying clean.

“My car owner has been very supportive of me,” Fike said.

Red Horse spokeswoman Jamie Maynard declined to comment on the possibility of Fike returning to the team until he is reinstated by NASCAR.

NASCAR has indicated it will go slowly in terms of reinstating Fike.

“It’s possible, but he’s got some work to do before we get there,” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said. “After he’s completed the legal process, he will have to undergo an evaluation by our substance-abuse experts and follow a prescribed program that they would set for him.”

OAK HARBOR, Wash. - Like parents fussing over their children on the first day of school, volunteers recently planted the rare golden paintbrush seedlings on Whidbey Island in hopes that their efforts will help restore the coastal prairies of Puget Sound.

Golden paintbrush once ranged from Willamette Valley in Oregon to Vancouver Island in B.C., but now it only grows in 11 places and has been considered in danger of extinction for 10 years. Forbes Point, where the volunteers gathered, had Whidbey Island’s largest population of golden paintbrush.

On a bluff above the surging sea, nine people, many volunteers with The Nature Conservancy, unloaded several flats, each filled with almost 100 paintbrush seedlings. Volunteers took on various tasks - punching holes in the thick grass and soil, laying out the seedlings and planting the tiny paintbrush starts, carefully pressing the rich loam around their roots.

If the seedlings survive, and research indicates many will, the 1- and 2-inch-tall starts will reach 12 inches. This coming spring and summer, brilliant golden leaves will emerge. Last week, volunteers braved cold wind and a little rain to give the little Castilleja levisectas, its Latin name, a new home at two sites on Whidbey Island.

“It’s just something that needs to be done, a little something that needs to be given back,” said Al Frasch, a retired high school math teacher who lives in Freeland resident and Conservancy volunteer.

The volunteers worked first at Forbes Point, and they then went to Smith Prairie in Ebey’s Landing Historical Reserve, near Coupeville. Smith’s Prairie is managed by the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, a Michigan-based Christian environmental group. The volunteers worked with biologists from the U.S. Navy and the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as two Conservancy employees.

The planting was part of an effort which includes six state and federal agencies, the Canadian government and at least five private, nonprofit conservation groups aimed at restoring the prairies in the Northwest and with them the threatened golden paintbrush.

Private groups, such as the conservancy, Au Sable and Whidbey Camano Land Trust, have either purchased acres of grassland or obtained conservation easements to prevent development of sections of the island’s coastal prairie. The conservation groups also work with the various agencies, including the Navy, to organize volunteer work parties.

For the Navy, monitoring the golden paintbrush within the Whidbey station’s boundaries is part of the military’s effort to ensure the agency complies with the Endangered Species Act. Civilian biologists regularly monitor species, such as the paintbrush, salmon, bald eagles and great blue herons.

For winter, the brilliant golden leaves that give the plant its name are gone. Only dry, brown seed pods and stems extending above delicate green shoots mark where the vivid plants bloomed this past summer.

While its reddish-orange cousins thrive all over the West, the golden paintbrush is on the verge of extinction, according to groups that seek to preserve the coastal grasslands of Whidbey. The golden paintbrush was first described in 1898 and was found in at least 30 sites in the Northwest’s coastal prairies.

The paintbrush benefited from the Northwest’s indigenous peoples’ practice of burning the grasslands to keep cedar and other species from crowding out camas and other plants they needed for food, said Peter Dunwiddie, a botanist and director of stewardship for the conservancy’s Washington chapter.

But when settlers of European descent arrived in the Northwest, the prairies were easier than the forests to clear for farming, Dunwiddie said. The loss of habitat is the most-accepted theory as to why the golden paintbrush numbers are low. Now browsing animals such as deer and rabbits are one threat to the plant’s recovery, as is development, he said.

Today, the golden paintbrush survives in only 11 places, including five sites on Whidbey and two in the San Juan Islands.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 plants are flowering at the remaining sites, Dunwiddie said.

Forbes Point at the naval station had the largest concentration of golden paintbrush on Whidbey Island in 1997, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials listed the golden paintbrush as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to the federal government.

For Fish and Wildlife to remove the golden paintbrush from the threatened species list, at least 1,000 plants must flower for at least five years in 20 sites, according to the federal recovery plan. The plant is also protected in Canada, where it is found in only two spots on Vancouver Island.

“This population has fluctuated quite a bit,” said Judy Lantor, a Fish and Wildlife biologist.

There are signs that the volunteers’ hard work planting seedlings is starting to pay off for the golden paintbrush.

At the land trust’s Nass Natural Area Preserve in the Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve, the number of flowering golden paintbrush has grown from 59 to several hundred over the past three years, Dunwiddie said.

Restoring the prairies often involves pulling up Scotch broom and cutting down young shrubs and trees. It also helps protect the habitat needed by camas and chocolate lilies that bloom in Whidbey’s coastal grasslands along with the golden paintbrush.

“If we can save these prairies, we can save other species that are delicate and rare, but are not listed (as endangered),” Dunwiddie said.

The quarter-acre stretch of land where the volunteers worked last week between the steep bluff overlooking Forbes Point and the nearby Navy housing bears only a slight resemblance to the prairie that might have been before settlers came to Whidbey.

Nonnative species have replaced the native grasses, Lantor said.

Noxious weeds such as blackberry brambles and thistles have attempted to encroach on the section of protected land. It’s fenced to protect the rare plants from trampling by passers-by and nibbling deer and rabbits.

The volunteers are no fair weather gardeners. Marion Jarisch, who with her husband, Mike Jarisch, volunteers each week in the prairies of the South Sound, passed out hand warmers. Most everyone was decked out in fleece and warm boots. A few volunteers wore warm, waterproof pants and jackets like those worn by sailors and fishermen. Working quickly, they planted about 800 seedlings in rows.

“It’s mostly fun,” said David Hepp, a Lake Forest Park resident and retired landscape architect. A regular volunteer, he said that work on the grasslands gives him a change of pace and view. “It’s different habitat. I live in the deep woods in north Seattle. These are different plants, different birds.”

Waiting for warmer weather isn’t an option. Research indicates that the paintbrush need about six weeks of cold weather to germinate, according to the St. Louis, Mo.-based Center for Plant Conservation.

Washington athletic director Todd Turner expressed nothing but sympathy Monday over the fate of Washington State football coach Bill Doba.

“I’m sorry about that - he’s such a good guy,” Turner said of Doba, who was fired Monday, two days after leading the Cougars to a win in the Apple Cup.

But the loser of that game, UW’s Tyrone Willingham, is apparently in no similar danger of losing his job.

Asked whether there was any doubt that Willingham would return next season, Turner said: “Not in my mind.”

Willingham is 11-24 in three seasons at Washington (Doba was 30-29 in five at WSU) and 6-20 in Pac-10 games with the Huskies heading to a game Saturday at Hawaii, which is 11-0.

Washington appeared to be making progress by winning two of its three games before the Apple Cup.

But that loss now has UW facing the possibility of losing nine games in two of Willingham’s three seasons - the Huskies had lost that many only three times previously: in 1969 (1-9), 1973 (2-9) and 2004 (1-10). The first two were Jim Owens teams and the latter was coached by Keith Gilbertson.

Willingham is also the first UW coach to have three consecutive losing seasons and is assured of finishing in last place (if not a tie for last) in the Pac-10 this season.

Turner said he and Willingham will meet early next week to assess the season and where the program goes from here. But he said the meeting is nothing different from the kind the two hold after every season. Asked whether there would be any more urgency this season, Turner said no because “there’s always a sense of urgency.”

Asked about the possibility of Willingham making staff changes, Turner said, “It would not be appropriate to talk about that.”

Willingham has said he will not discuss the future of his assistants publicly. However, during his radio show Monday night, he gave a hint that some changes could be afoot. When asked about the defense, which has struggled under coordinator Kent Baer, Willingham said, “My first commitment is to the football team. I will make all the right decisions that I think will put this football team in a position to win.”

After the Huskies lost to Arizona State in mid-October to fall to 2-4, Turner launched into a hearty defense of Willingham that ruffled some UW fans when he cited Oregon as a team that Washington needed to aspire to be resemble.

The week after the Arizona game, UW president Mark Emmert said he would join in the postseason evaluation of the program.

Willingham is in the third-year of a five-year contract that has a favorable buyout clause - he would be owed a lump-sum payment of $3 million were he to be fired before Jan. 3, 2008. It decreases to $1 million for each remaining year on the contract after that date. He makes a guaranteed $1.4 million per season.

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com

Washington athletic director Todd Turner expressed nothing but sympathy Monday over the fate of Washington State football coach Bill Doba.

“I’m sorry about that - he’s such a good guy,” Turner said of Doba, who was fired Monday, two days after leading the Cougars to a win in the Apple Cup.

But the loser of that game, UW’s Tyrone Willingham, is apparently in no similar danger of losing his job.

Asked whether there was any doubt that Willingham would return next season, Turner said: “Not in my mind.”

Willingham is 11-24 in three seasons at Washington (Doba was 30-29 in five at WSU) and 6-20 in Pac-10 games with the Huskies heading to a game Saturday at Hawaii, which is 11-0.

Washington appeared to be making progress by winning two of its three games before the Apple Cup.

But that loss now has UW facing the possibility of losing nine games in two of Willingham’s three seasons - the Huskies had lost that many only three times previously: in 1969 (1-9), 1973 (2-9) and 2004 (1-10). The first two were Jim Owens teams and the latter was coached by Keith Gilbertson.

Willingham is also the first UW coach to have three consecutive losing seasons and is assured of finishing in last place (if not a tie for last) in the Pac-10 this season.

Turner said he and Willingham will meet early next week to assess the season and where the program goes from here. But he said the meeting is nothing different from the kind the two hold after every season. Asked whether there would be any more urgency this season, Turner said no because “there’s always a sense of urgency.”

Asked about the possibility of Willingham making staff changes, Turner said, “It would not be appropriate to talk about that.”

Willingham has said he will not discuss the future of his assistants publicly. However, during his radio show Monday night, he gave a hint that some changes could be afoot. When asked about the defense, which has struggled under coordinator Kent Baer, Willingham said, “My first commitment is to the football team. I will make all the right decisions that I think will put this football team in a position to win.”

After the Huskies lost to Arizona State in mid-October to fall to 2-4, Turner launched into a hearty defense of Willingham that ruffled some UW fans when he cited Oregon as a team that Washington needed to aspire to be resemble.

The week after the Arizona game, UW president Mark Emmert said he would join in the postseason evaluation of the program.

Willingham is in the third-year of a five-year contract that has a favorable buyout clause - he would be owed a lump-sum payment of $3 million were he to be fired before Jan. 3, 2008. It decreases to $1 million for each remaining year on the contract after that date. He makes a guaranteed $1.4 million per season.

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com

Who’s rich? Who’s middle-class? How can you tell the difference? By the “upper class,” do we mean the yacht-club set, the ascot-wearing folks with lockjaw diction? Or does the upper class include all those harried, two-income suburban families who somehow burn through 200 grand a year and fret about orthodontist bills?

Class, always an awkward topic in the United States, made a cameo appearance at a recent candidates debate in Las Vegas.

Democratic presidential contenders Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton sparred over tax policy and quickly got entangled in the question of whether someone making more than $97,000 a year is middle-class or upper-class.

That’s upper-class, Obama said. Not necessarily, Clinton suggested.

Former Sen. John Edwards didn’t join in this particular discussion, but since his initial announcement almost a year ago in New Orleans, he has been the bluntest of all the candidates in describing a country divided between the haves and the have-nots.

Government statistics show that most households’ income has declined, in inflation-adjusted dollars, since 2000. Many workers’ jobs have been outsourced to other countries, even as a new class of tycoons, the managers of hedge funds, has found a way to pay only a 15 percent marginal tax rate.

Still, if there are political opportunities here for Democrats, there are also hazards. Candidates don’t want to lose votes by advocating a tax increase on the not-really-that-rich. The basic question: Who, exactly, can afford to pay more? Who is rich?

The tax question

Discussions about taxes usually have a class subtext. For instance, Republicans generally want to preserve or expand President Bush’s tax cuts, which lowered marginal rates across the board but gave the largest benefits in real dollars to the richest Americans.

The exchange between Obama and Clinton began when the senator from Illinois said he was open to adjusting the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax. That’s the tax that the government prefers to call a “contribution” to Social Security. Under current law, a worker pays a flat percentage (and employers match it) of wages up to $97,500. Wages beyond that aren’t taxed.

Clinton responded by saying that lifting the payroll tax would mean a trillion-dollar tax increase, adding that she did not want to “fix the problems of Social Security on the backs of middle-class families and seniors.”

Obama replied: “Understand that only 6 percent of Americans make more than $97,000 a year. So 6 percent is not the middle-class. It is the upper-class.”

Clinton: “It is absolutely the case that there are people who would find that burdensome. I represent firefighters. I represent school supervisors.”

Obama doesn’t want to lift the payroll cap entirely, according to one of his campaign’s senior advisers. Rather, Obama has said he would consider a “doughnut hole” arrangement, in which people would not have to pay any additional payroll tax until they had made at least $250,000 or $300,000. The adviser said of Obama: “He has always said that the people he expects to pay their fair share are households with income above $250,000.”

Clinton has cited that same figure, saying households with income above $250,000 can pay the marginal rates set in the 1990s when her husband was president. She would also give married couples with estates worth less than $7 million an exemption from the estate tax.

Tuition or horses?

As for how people see themselves, location is key.

Online calculators allow anyone to make an instant city-to-city cost-of-living comparison. One such Web site calculates that someone making $97,500 in Washington, D.C., could live just as comfortably on $67,846 in Ames, Iowa.

Median household income in America in 2006 was $48,201, which, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was in 1999.

Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University, thinks that the middle class in a major city includes people in households with incomes from $40,000 to $100,000. From there, up to $200,000, people are “upper-middle-class.” They all have difficult financial issues to contend with, from health-care costs to college tuition.

“Financial stress: That’s the key ingredient,” Wolff said.

People making $200,000 to $350,000, he says, could be considered rich, but they still have to slog to work every day. To be really rich, in Wolff’s scholarly judgment, you need not only an income upward of $350,000 a year - you also need at least $10 million in accumulated wealth.

“These are people who can basically live off their wealth and don’t have to work. You’re talking about the top half of 1 percent,” Wolff said.

Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said that no one knows the exact parameters of the middle class, but that in general they are defined by what he calls an “aspirational package.”

“The middle-class aspirations include a decent home in a good neighborhood with a good school, and the ability to save for college and to make sure that your children have the opportunities to put themselves on a path to match or exceed yours,” Bernstein said. “If you’re upper-class, you think about whether you want to move your horse from one barn to another barn.”

Robert Frank, who covers the rich as a full-time beat for The Wall Street Journal, said being rich comes with certain requirements:

“You have to have at least two homes,” Frank said. “You have to have a household staff of some kind, and/or a personal assistant. You send your kids to private schools. You give to charity and attend charitable events. And you travel. You travel globally. You go to Europe at least once a year, and perhaps Asia.”

Or even conquer gravity itself, he said.

“The new status symbol for the rich,” Frank said, “is going to space.”

Royal Philips Electronics will buy Genlyte Group for $2.7 billion, the world’s largest lighting maker said Monday.

Philips agreed to pay $95.50 - a 52 percent premium over Friday’s close - in a deal supported by management.

Genlyte’s shares climbed $31.80, or 50.7 percent, to close at $94.48 Monday.

Louisville, Ky.-based Genlyte makes fixtures for lights used mostly by companies.

Philips said the acquisition would strengthen its position in energy-efficient lighting, and will allow it to surpass rival General Electric as the largest lighting company in North America.

Theo van Deursen, head of Philips’ lighting division, said Genlyte’s distribution channels were more important to Philips than its manufacturing technology.

Philips has invested heavily in developing energy-saving bulbs, but has so far been more successful in Europe than in the United States in marketing them.

Dubai International

Investment firm buys stake in Sony

Dubai International Capital, an investment company owned by the ruler of the booming Persian Gulf city-state, has acquired a stake of undisclosed size in the Japanese electronics and media company Sony.

Sony’s U.S. shares rose 1.9 percent Monday after the announcement, gaining 93 cents to $50.01.

The purchase is the latest by Middle East investors who have become more aggressive in looking for investment opportunities overseas.

Northern Rock

Virgin Group accelerates talks

Northern Rock will hold accelerated takeover discussions with a consortium led by Virgin Group, the battered mortgage lender said Monday.

Virgin, which wants to rebrand Northern Rock as part of Virgin Money business, says its consortium would repay $22.7 billion of the $50 billion the Bank of England has loaned to Northern Rock on the completion of the transaction.

The remainder of the money would be paid “in due course,” Northern Rock said in an announcement to the London Stock Exchange.

The Virgin Consortium also promised additional funding facilities to support the business.

Virgin’s consortium includes W.L. Ross & Co., Toscafund Asset Management and First Eastern Investment.

Rio Tinto

Mining firm works to reject takeover

Australian mining company Rio Tinto outlined a conceptual plan to boost annual iron-ore output to 600 million metric tons and committed $2.4 billion to develop iron-ore deposits Monday, ahead of an investor briefing in London.

Rio Tinto is laying out new justifications for rejecting a $150 billion takeover bid from rival BHP Billiton that would create a global mining behemoth.

Chief Executive Tom Albanese said the full value of the company’s assets was yet to be reflected in the market.

Compiled from The Associated Press

South King County firefighters found a body inside a Des Moines house that was destroyed by fire early Monday.

The fire started in a rambler at 4:20 a.m. in the 1400 block of South 276th Street, said South King Fire and Rescue spokeswoman Donna Conner.

Four people lived at the house, and neighbors told firefighters they were all at home, Conner said. Three occupants were sent to hospitals with injuries from the blaze, and investigators found a fourth person dead inside the home, though they could not confirm it was the fourth resident.

The identification of the body will have to be done by the King County Medical Examiner, Conner said.

The fire also killed two dogs.

The cause of the fire had not been determined, Conner said. The home is considered a total loss.

- Seattle Times staff

Ana Haberman , Ingraham girls basketball

Haberman, a 5-foot-10 senior, poured in 30 points and had eight rebounds, four assists and three steals in a season-opening 61-58 loss to Mount Si. She hit 11 of 20 shots from the field and 10 of 11 free throws.

James Palmer , O’Dea football

Palmer, a senior linebacker, helped propel the Irish into the Class 3A state-championship game with a 50-yard fumble return for a touchdown just before halftime in a 27-17 semifinal win against Bellevue. The Wolverines led 10-7 and had just recovered a fumble on the kickoff when Palmer turned momentum O’Dea’s way for good.

O’Dea football team

The Irish, coached by Monte Kohler, improved to 13-0 with a victory over Bellevue to reach the championship game. It is their first appearance in the final since 2003.

Stars of the week are selected by The Seattle Times staff and published Tuesdays, but can be chosen only once each sports season. Nominations may be e-mailed by Sunday night to sports@seattletimes.com with name, school and accomplishments.