WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Thursday cleared BlackBerry and Samsung mobile devices for use on Defense Department networks, a step toward opening up the military to a wide variety of technology equipment makers while still ensuring communications security.

Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman, said the department cleared the use of BlackBerry 10 smart phones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets using its Enterprise Service 10 system, as well as Samsung's Android Knox.

"This is a significant step towards establishing a multi-vendor environment that supports a variety of state-of-the-art devices and operating systems," Pickart said in a statement.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday it also expected to clear Apple mobile devices using the iOS 6 system at some point in early May.

The move to open up Defense Department networks is expected to set the stage for an intensified struggle for Pentagon customers among BlackBerry devices, Apple's iPhones or iPads and units using Google's Android platform such as Samsung Electronics' phones.

The Pentagon currently has some 600,000 users of smart phones, computer tablets and other mobile devices. The department has 470,000 BlackBerry users, 41,000 Apple users and 8,700 people with Android devices. Most Apple and Android systems are in pilot or test programs.

The move to open up the networks to a broader array of mobile devices is part of a Pentagon effort to ensure the military has access to the latest communications technology without locking itself in to a particular equipment vendor.

To ensure security, mobile devices and operating systems go through a security review process approved by the Defense Information Systems Agency. Once their Security Technical Implementation Guide - or STIG - is reviewed and approved, the devices can be used on the network.

Pickart said the decision on Thursday did not result in product orders. But it will enable user groups within the Pentagon to purchase the devices most appropriate for their work as the need arises.

"We are pleased to add Blackberry 10 and the Samsung Knox version of Android to our family of mobile devices supporting the Department of Defense," he said. "We look forward to additional vendors also participating in this process."

(Reporting By David Alexander; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Eric Walsh)

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Some of the world's biggest fortunes were made and lost when the fall of the Soviet Union threw together a motley gang of brash young tycoons, hard-bitten oilmen and KGB veterans to scrabble for riches amidst the rubble of the Soviet oil industry.

"The iron curtain did not go down, Russians like to say, it went up," says Georgetown professor Thane Gustafson in "Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia", a drama of chance and personality which ultimately determined the fate of Russia's oil.

On that stage Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Communist youth leader trained as a scientist, created Russia's first modern corporation, then lost his fortune and his freedom to a resurgent Russian state led by Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Gustafson, a Georgetown professor who also heads Russian and Caspian energy research at industry consultancy IHS Cera, spoke with Reuters about the personalities and circumstances which shaped the fate of Russia's modern petrostate.

Q: How could chance play such a big part in the fate of such enormous wealth?

A: It has a lot to do with these things because things were so disrupted and strong personalities emerged. But even during the Putin years, because so much depends on the people in charge of various factions and interest groups, personality remains very fundamental.

Q: What did Putin have to work with when he became president upon Boris Yeltsin's resignation in 1999? How has he managed with the hand he was dealt?

A: He was, politically speaking, almost naked. Usually when a politician reaches that high an office he has been in business for decades, has an assemblage of allies, a favor bank he can draw on, a sense of who his friends and enemies are.

Putin didn't have any of those things. He had to form a team in very short order. He turned to people he had known and worked with, mainly from St Petersburg and largely from two groups of people - the former security people of St. Petersburg and the emerging business elite in St. Petersburg.

At an early stage he laid out a vision of state action for the rebuilding of Russian power and greatness in the world and first of all was the re-centralization of power and authority.

As far as the energy sector is concerned, clearly energy would be at the center of that thinking, simply because of the role that energy has always played as a source of revenue and a source of power.

Q: You knew Khodorkovsky as the CEO of the Yukos oil company (Russia's biggest oil company), before he was jailed for tax fraud. What do you remember most about him?

A: Although he was highly educated, he had a degree in chemical engineering from a leading institute in Moscow, at the same time he was completely untutored in conventional business skills and was completely new to the outside world. A brilliant man, no doubt, but he was reinventing the wheel as he went along, and there were some things he got brilliantly wrong. One thing was that he thought that he would get much more help from the West in his political battles at home than he got, than he could possibly get.

To a considerable extent the ability of Khodorkovsky to take over Yukos was the result of the weakness of the Soviet-era oilman who was previously in charge. So that too was a factor of personality.

Q: What was the role of chance and personality in the transformation of (state oil company) Rosneft into a national champion with BP as a shareholder, from a repository for third rate oil assets which could not find a buyer?

A: In 1998 there was a (financial) crisis, the Asian flu. In the wake of that nobody was buying oil companies, least of all worthless oil companies.

Then along came from Sakhalin this completely unknown man, like the stranger riding out of the West in the Western movies, except this man rode out of the east. "Oil man from Sakhalin takes over worthless oil company," that would have been the headline of the time.

But (former Rosneft CEO) Sergei Bogdanchikov was lucky and artful enough to make his case to Putin and to the Kremlin that they needed a national oil company, and to make himself the instrument of Putin's recentralization of the oil industry.

(Reporting by Melissa Akin)

The historical bestseller set in Henry VIII's court has already won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Costa Book Award. If she takes the Women's Prize, Mantel will become the first person to win all three of Britain's top literary prizes.

The shortlist for the 30,000-pound ($45,900) literary prize released on Tuesday also included two former winners: fellow Briton Zadie Smith for "NW" and American writer Barbara Kingsolver for "Flight Behaviour".

The other three books were "Where'd You Go Bernadette" by U.S. author Maria Semple, "May We Be Forgiven" from American A.M. Homes and "Life After Life" by Briton Kate Atkinson.

"The shortlist for 2013 represents six tremendous writers at the top of their game," chair of the judging panel Miranda Richardson said.

"Their individual novels are flawlessly presented, they contain a heady mix of ideas and without exception take the reader on a unique and deeply satisfying journey."

"Bring Up the Bodies" is the second book in Mantel's trilogy about Cromwell's rise to power. The other novels on the shortlist included Smith's look at characters in north London, a darkly comic novel about 21st century domesticity from Homes and Kingsolver's exploration of climate change and rural poverty in America's Appalachian region.

Atkinson's tale follows the turbulent events of the last century in Britain through the constantly reincarnating character of Ursula Todd. Semple sets her story in Seattle, where 15-year-old Bee searches for her missing, wealthy and erratic mother Bernadette Fox.

Set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote international fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible, the Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded annually for the best novel of the year written by a woman.

Any woman writing in English - whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter - is eligible.

The award ceremony will take place in London on June 5.

Previous winners besides Smith and Kingsolver include Madeline Miller for "The Song of Achilles" last year, Rose Tremain for "The Road Home" in 2008 and Lionel Shriver for "We Need to Talk About Kevin" in 2005.

($1 = 0.6531 British pounds)

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Pravin Char)

The 208-mile (335-km) trek to the South Pole will see Britain's Royal compete against teams from the United States and Commonwealth countries.

"As a member of the British team, I will have a brew (tea) on ready for you when you join us at the Pole," he said in a speech, referring to participants from other countries.

Harry took part in a 2011 expedition to the North Pole organized by the same charity. Describing qualities he said he admired in his fellow participants, he said: "Physical strength, endurance, a sense of comradeship, absolutely.

"But there's something else, something deeper than that. Something that continues to draw me back to this charity and these people time and again - and always will."

(Reporting By Costas Pitas; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

"We want to go back and we want to review every step that was taken," Obama told a White House news conference. "We want to leave no stone unturned. We want to see, is there in fact additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack."

The 90-day review is also a political pre-emptive strike as Republican lawmakers question whether the administration's law enforcement and intelligence agencies failed to share crucial counterterrorism information the same error blamed for missing the clues before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Some Republican lawmakers have already suggested forming a select committee to investigate the Boston bombings, just as they are calling for a similar committee to delve further into the militant attacks that killed four Americans last year in Benghazi, Libya.

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, said the review covers only the period before the Boston attack because the investigation of the bombings is still underway. Initiated earlier this week, it's being led by I. Charles McCullough III, the independent intelligence community inspector general. He is authorized to reach into any U.S. intelligence agency.

The effort includes inspectors general from the CIA, the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department.

In a letter dated Tuesday and signed by the four inspectors, the officials said they had initiated and coordinated an independent review into the government's handling of intelligence leading up to the bombings. They said in the letter, which was released to The Associated Press, that they would carry out the review in a way to make sure they do not interfere with any ongoing intelligence activities, criminal investigations and prosecutions related to the attacks.

Homeland Security Deputy Inspector General Charles K. Edwards said in a statement Tuesday that "it is vital that we determine all the facts ... and thereby provide the entire law enforcement community with lessons learned and valuable insights."

Questions will center on whether the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Department shared enough with each other about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings who died in an escape attempt. The Russian government had tipped off the FBI and the CIA about his possible links to militancy. His brother, Dzokhar, also a suspect, is in custody.

The intelligence community review does not preclude any other reviews by Congress.

Bradley Schreiber, a Homeland Security senior adviser during the Bush administration and a veteran of such processes, said the 90-day review the intelligence inspector general has started may not provide enough answers.

"The only way you are going to get a thorough review ... is to have an independent panel review the circumstances," Schreiber said. "You need a third party, presidential commission that has clear lines of authority to cross jurisdictional boundaries."

Turner said that Clapper believes the review will show his agencies shared information about the suspect appropriately, a sentiment echoed by Obama.

"Based on what I've seen so far, the FBI performed its duties, the Department of Homeland Security did what it was supposed to be doing," Obama said, describing how the FBI interviewed the elder Tsarnaev.

Obama called it "hard stuff" to stop terror attacks, especially ones by what he described as "self-radicalized individuals" who choose to kill and maim "because of whatever warped, twisted ideas they may have."

Tamerlan Tsarnaev first came to the attention of U.S. officials in early 2011, when Russia told the FBI that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. The FBI investigated them, and the Tsarnaevs' names were added to a Homeland Security Department database used to help screen people entering and leaving the U.S. But the FBI found nothing linking them to religious extremists or terrorists, and asked the Russians twice for more information to help with the investigation. The FBI never heard back and closed its investigation in June 2011.

In the fall of that year, the Russians reached out to the CIA with the same concerns. The CIA shared this with the FBI, and also asked that the names of Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, be entered into a massive government database of people with suspected terrorist ties. The FBI again reached out to Russia for more information, and never heard back.

When Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to and from Russia in 2012, his travel did not raise alarms because the FBI had closed its investigation into Tsarnaev a year earlier.

Members of Congress may not be satisfied with any Obama administration review.

"We should review what happened, be unafraid to follow the evidence, even if politically inconvenient, and make changes accordingly," Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, a member of the House intelligence committee, said in an email to The Associated Press. "The terrorists adapt, so must we."

A Democrat on the House committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., also a member of the House intelligence committee, said: "Just because the FBI didn't find derogatory information about the suspects doesn't mean it wasn't there to be found. But nor should we leap to a conclusion of malfeasance. Instead, this review may produce one important component of the 'lessons learned' from the attacks."

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Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier and on http://bigstory.ap.org/tags/kimberly-dozier

Officials in Seoul said 43 South Koreans would leave as soon as officials arranged vehicles to carry them across the border, but it wasn't immediately known when the wage negotiations would take place and the remaining seven South Koreans would return home.

The departure of the last South Koreans would empty out the complex, located just across the border in the North Korean town of Kaesong, for the first time since it opened in 2004 and possibly lead to the permanent closure of the last symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

Amid high tensions, North Korea suspended operations at Kaesong in early April, withdrawing all of its 53,000 workers and barring South Korean factory managers and trucks with supplies from entering the complex. It was the most significant action taken by North Korea as it sought to show its anger over South Korean-U.S. military drills and U.N. sanctions imposed over Pyongyang's February nuclear test, its third.

North Korea's accompanying torrent of warlike rhetoric included threats to launch nuclear strikes on the U.S., although it has recently shown some tentative signs of willingness to talk.

South Korea began withdrawing its remaining nationals from Kaesong on Saturday, citing a shortage of food and medicine for them, after North Korea rejected an offer to hold talks on the complex.

Kaesong, which combines South Korean knowhow and technology with cheap North Korean labor, is the last remaining cooperation project between the Koreas. The Korean Peninsula officially remains at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Other collaborative programs, including tours from South Korea to a scenic North Korean mountain, have been stalled in recent years because of confrontation between the rival Koreas.

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Kim reported from Seoul.

One of them sat in the corner of the locker room, a net around his neck, grinning away.

The Louisville Cardinals vowed to finish the job for Kevin Ware.

Boy, did they ever.

With their injured teammate cheering them on from the bench, Louisville capped its run through the NCAA tournament, coming back again from a 12-point deficit to beat Michigan 82-76 in the championship game Monday night.

"These are my brothers," said Ware, still getting around on crutches after a horrific injury in the regional final. "They got the job done. I'm so proud of them, so proud of them."

Ware is just getting started on what could be a yearlong recovery from a broken right leg, but he's already got something no one can take away a championship.

They even lowered the goal so he could take a turn with the scissors, helping cut down the net that wound up around his neck.

"It meant the world to me," Ware said. "I don't really have any other words to describe how I feel right now."

Pitino knows how it feels to win a championship, having guided Kentucky to a crown in 1996. Now, working right down the road from Lexington, he became the first coach to win titles at different schools.

"This team is one of the most together, toughest and hard-nosed teams," he said. "Being down never bothers us. They just come back."

It was quite a capper to perhaps the best week of Pitino's life.

Earlier Monday, he was introduced as a member of the latest Hall of Fame class. On Saturday, his horse won the Santa Anita Derby to set up a run for the roses in the Kentucky Derby. And last week his son got the coaching job at Minnesota.

What's next?

His first tattoo, apparently.

Pitino vowed to get inked up if his players won the championship. They intend to hold him to that promise.

"I have a couple of ideas," said Luke Hancock, who became the first backup in tournament history to be designated as most outstanding player. "He doesn't know what he's getting into."

"Our biggest motivation," Peyton Siva added, "was to get coach a tattoo."

Not a bad week for Louisville, either. The school has a chance to make it two national titles in 24 hours when the surprising women's team faces Connecticut on Tuesday night in the championship game at New Orleans.

On the eve of their big game, the women got together with hundreds of fans in a hotel lobby to cheer on the men.

"It's a great time to be a Cardinal," coach Jeff Walz said.

A great time, indeed. Hancock produced another huge game off the bench, scoring 22 points, and the Cardinals (35-5) lived up to their billing as the top overall seed in the men's tournament.

They sure had to work for it, though.

Louisville trailed Wichita State by a dozen in the second half before rallying for a 72-68 victory. This time, they fell behind by 12 in the first half, then unleashed a stunning spurt led by Hancock that wiped out the entire deficit before the break.

"I had the 13 toughest guys I've ever coached," Pitino said. "I'm just amazed they could accomplish everything we put out there."

No one was tougher than Hancock, who matched his season high after a 20-point effort in the semifinal victory over Wichita State. This time, he came off the bench to hit four straight 3-pointers in the first half after Michigan got a boost from an even more unlikely player.

Freshman Spike Albrecht made four straight from beyond the arc, too, blowing by his career high before halftime with 17 points. Coming in, Albrecht was averaging 1.8 points a game and had not scored more than seven all season.

Albrecht didn't do much in the second half, but Hancock finished what he started for Louisville. He made it 5-for-5 from long range when he hit his final 3 from the corner with 3:27 remaining to give the Cardinals their biggest lead, 76-66. Michigan wouldn't go away, but Hancock wrapped it up by making two free throws with 29 seconds left.

While Pitino shrugged off any attempt to make this about him, there was no doubt the Cardinals wanted to win a title for Ware.

Watching again from his seat at the end of the Louisville bench, his battered right leg propped up on a chair, Ware smiled and slapped hands with his teammates as they celebrated in the closing seconds, the victory coming just 30 miles from where he played his high school ball.

Ware's awful injury will forever be linked to this tournament. Against Duke, he landed awkwardly, snapped his leg and was left writhing on the floor with the bone sticking through the skin. On this night, he hobbled gingerly onto the court with the aid of crutches, basking in a sea of confetti and streamers.

This one belonged to him as much as anyone on the court.

Siva added 18 points for the Cardinals, who closed the season on a 16-game winning streak, and Chane Behanan chipped in with 15 points and 12 rebounds as Louisville slowly but surely closed out the Wolverines (31-8).

Michigan was in the title game for the first time since the Fab Five lost the second of two straight championship games in 1993. Players from that team, including Chris Webber, cheered on the latest group of young stars.

But, like the Fab Five, national player of the year Trey Burke and a squad with three freshman starters came up short in the last game of the season.

"A lot of people didn't expect us to get this far," said Burke, who led the Wolverines with 24 points. "A lot of people didn't expect us to get past the second round. We fought. We fought up to this point, but Louisville was the better team today, and they're deserving of the win."

The first half, in particular, might have been the most entertaining 20 minutes of the entire men's tournament.

Burke started out on fire for Michigan, hitting his first three shots and scoring seven points to match his output from the semifinal victory over Syracuse, when he made only 1-of-8 shots.

Albrecht took control when Burke picked up his second foul and had to go to the bench for the rest of the half. The kid whose nickname comes from his first pair of baseball spikes showed he's a pretty good hoops player, knocking down one 3-pointer after another to send the Wolverines to a double-digit lead.

When Albrecht blew by Tim Henderson with a brilliant hesitation move, Michigan led 33-21 and Louisville was forced to call timeout. The freshman was mobbed on the Michigan bench, as if the Wolverines had already won the national title, with one teammate waving a towel in tribute.

Not so fast. Not against Louisville.

The Cardinals came back one more time.

"We needed a rally and we've been doing it for a couple of games straight, being down," Hancock said. "We just had to wait and make our run."

Burke, who played only six minutes in the first half because of the foul trouble, did his best to give Michigan its first championship since 1989. But he couldn't do it alone. Albrecht was held scoreless after the break, and no one else posted more than 12 points for the Wolverines.

Still, it was quite a run for a fourth-seeded team that knocked off No. 1-seeded Kansas with the greatest comeback of the tournament, rallying from 14 points down in the second half to beat the Jayhawks in the round of 16.

But they came up against the ultimate comeback team in the final, a group that was intent on keeping the title in the bluegrass state after Kentucky won it all last season.

Louisville had already pulled off a stunning rally in the Big East championship game down by 16 in the second half, they won by 17 and another against Wichita State.

"I've had a lot of really good teams over the years, and some emotional locker rooms, and that was the most emotional we've ever had," Michigan coach John Beilein said. "We feel bad about it. There are some things we could have done better and get a win, but at the same time, Louisville is a terrific basketball team."

No wonder Ware was grinning from ear to ear.

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Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

But once youre pregnantor even just thinking about tryingyou may well wonder if the toxins we all absorb might have an effect on your fertility or on having a healthy baby. The truth is that because conventional medicine doesnt routinely test the body burden of chemicals we carry around all the time in our bodies, no one knows for sure how many we typically absorb. A small 2008 study of teenage girls, led by the Washigton, D.C.-baseddetected 16 hormone-altering chemicals from common beauty products. Every girl in the study tested positive for parabens, which are used as preservatives in cosmetics and have been linked to cancer and hormone disruption. These and other chemicals can be passed along to a child in utero.

Initial reporting indicated there was no enemy activity in the area where the plane went down, the NATO-led coalition said in a statement confirming the crash. Coalition personnel secured the site and were investigating the cause of the crash, NATO said.

The brief statement did not identify the nationalities of the victims, or say exactly where the crash occurred.

However, Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, deputy governor of the southern province of Zabul, said an aircraft belonging to foreign forces crashed Saturday afternoon in Shah Joy district. He confirmed the site had been surrounded by international forces.

The spring Taliban offensive, which is to begin on Sunday, comes as U.S.-backed efforts to try to reconcile the Islamic militant movement with the Afghan government have so far failed.

Insurgents already have stepped up attacks this spring as they try to position themselves for power ahead of national elections and the planned withdrawal of most U.S. and other foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said its security forces are prepared for Taliban's new campaign. "The Afghan National Army is ready to neutralize the offensive," the ministry said, adding that the soldiers now have the support and trust of many Afghans.

The Taliban's leadership vowed on Saturday that "every possible tactic will be utilized in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors" during its spring offensive.

In a sign of Taliban's determination to replace Afghanistan's government with one promoting a stricter interpretation of Islamic law, the insurgents named the new offensive after a legendary Muslim military commander, Khalid ibn al-Walid. Also known as the "Drawn Sword of God," he was a companion of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The Taliban threatened to infiltrate the Afghan security forces and conduct more attacks on Afghan policemen and soldiers as well as foreign troops. Such attacks threaten the strength of the Afghan forces as they work to take over responsibility from international troops. The latest one occurred in March, when a member of Afghanistan's government-backed village defense program shot and killed five of his colleagues in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan

April has already been the worst month for combat deaths so far this year. According to an Associated Press tally, 257 people including civilians, Afghan security forces and foreign troops have been killed in violence around the nation. During that time 217 insurgents have died.

Last year during the month of April, 179 civilians, foreign troops and Afghan security forces were killed and 268 insurgents.

Still, U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said Wednesday that the security situation had improved across the country, with Afghan forces now leading 80 percent of all conventional operations.

As the traditional fighting season begins, the insurgents will face a combined Afghan force of 350,000 soldiers and police, he said.

"The insurgency can no longer use the justification that it is fighting foreign occupiers that message rings hollow," Dunford said in a statement.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Taliban late Friday freed nine civilian de-miners it had captured in the southern province of Kandahar after negotiations involving tribal elders, provincial spokesman Javeed Faisal said.

The Afghan men were being driven back from a mine field last Sunday when they were captured. Afghanistan has a legacy of land mines going back decades and remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

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AP writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

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Follow Thomas Wagner on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/tjpwagner.

Under terms of the agreement, the Cubs would also be able to increase the number of night games at Wrigley Field from 30 to 40 or nearly half the games played there each season. They would give Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts the ability to renovate the second-oldest park in the major leagues, boost business and perhaps make baseball's most infamous losers competitive again.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel hailed what the two sides called a "framework" agreement in a joint statement issued Sunday night, noting that it includes no taxpayer funding. That had been one of the original requests of the Ricketts family in a long-running renovation dispute that at times involved everything from cranky ballpark neighbors to ward politics and even the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama.

"This framework allows the Cubs to restore the Friendly Confines (of Wrigley) and pursue their economic goals, while respecting the rights and quality of life of its neighbors," Emanuel said.

Still uncertain was how the agreement will sit with owners of nearby buildings who provide rooftop views of the ball games under an agreement with the Cubs that goes back years. They have threatened to sue if the renovations obstruct their view, which they claim would drive them out of business.

On Monday, a spokesman for the rooftop owners said the group would have a statement later, but in the meantime referred the AP to the group's statement released earlier this month that says: "Any construction that interrupts the rooftop views will effectually drive them out of business and be challenged in a court of law."

The Cubs said the video screen they are proposing to build is 6,000 square feet, and would be built with "minimal impact on rooftops with whom (the) Cubs have an agreement." The current centerfield scoreboard is slightly more than 2,000 square feet; the Cubs also have plans to add a left-field sign of 1,000 square feet.

"Rooftop views are largely preserved," the team said in its announcement. "The Cubs have agreed to install only two signs in the outfield a videoboard in left field and a sign in right field. This is far less than our original desire for seven signs to help offset the cost of ballpark restoration."

The signs offer the team a chance to reach new advertising deals and pay for the overhaul, even if it might change the character of the historic park. The city and club said they hope the agreement would allow the Cubs to obtain necessary city approvals for the work by the end of the current season.

The Ricketts family, which bought the Cubs in 2009 for $845 million, initially sought tax funding for renovation plans. With that out in the new agreement, the owners will seek to open new revenue streams outside the stadium. Under the agreement, the Ricketts family would be allowed to build a 175-room hotel, a plaza, and an office building with retail space and a health club, and provide 1,000 "remote" parking spots that will be free and come with shuttle service.

"We are anxious to work with our community as we seek the approvals required to move the project forward," Ricketts said in the statement.

The site of Babe Ruth's "called shot" home run in the 1932 World Series and more heartbreak than Cubs fans would like to remember, Wrigley Field is younger only than Boston's Fenway Park in the majors.It has long been a treasured showplace for baseball purists night games were only added in 1988 but team officials for years have desperately wanted a true upgrade, saying it costs as much as $15 million a year just to keep up with basic repairs.

The ballpark has also played no small part in the lore of the team, as fans were reminded April 10 when someone delivered a goat's head in a box addressed to Ricketts. Neither the team nor the Chicago Police Department have talked about a possible motive for the strange delivery, but as every fan knows it was in the 1945 World Series when a tavern owner arrived at the park with his pet goat which had a ticket.

According to legend, the owner was told the goat smelled and was denied entry. The angry tavern owner then put the "Curse of the Billy Goat" on the Cubs and the team has not been back to the World Series since. The last World Series championship for the Cubs came in 1908 six years before Wrigley was built.

After failing to reach an agreement when Mayor Richard Daley was in office, the Ricketts family kept talking after Emanuel took office in 2011. But even presidential politics presented an obstacle for the plans at one point.

During the 2012 election, the patriarch of the Ricketts family, which created the TD Ameritrade brokerage firm, was considering a $10 million campaign against Obama that would refer to the racially incendiary sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at a Chicago church the president once attended. J. Joseph Ricketts dropped the proposal, but the episode brought a huge dose of unwanted bad press and angered Emanuel, Obama's former White House chief of staff.

In recent weeks, fans also had to deal with the unlikely specter of the Cubs leaving Chicago. With the talks bogged down, the mayor of nearby Rosemont piped up, saying the village located near O'Hare International Airport would be willing to let the Cubs have 25 acres free of charge to build a replica of Wrigley Field.

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Online:

Chicago Cubs: http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=chc