Summary: According to authorities like Anthony Downs at the Brookings Institution, the author of ''Stuck in Traffic'' and ''Still Stuck in Traffic,'' a bumper-to-bumper crop of cars is a byproduct of the very prosperity, mobility, and individual flexibility modern citizens value: where traffic is at a standstill, it generally means business is humming.


Summary: President Bush said that tight controls had been imposed over the surveillance operation and that the program was reviewed every 45 days by top government officials, including at the Justice Department. Mr. Bush added that the review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president. He gave no indication of any internal dissent over the reauthorization.


Summary: A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. What is known is that in early 2004 the White House suspended parts of the program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the security agency on how the program was used. Among other things, it looked at how agency officials went about determining that they had probable cause to believe that people in the United States, including American citizens.


Summary: The officials said that Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general -- to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery. Some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.


Summary: The concerns prompted Andrew H. Card Jr. and Alberto R. Gonzales to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery. With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft, who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security, because they needed him for certification. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.


Summary: A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. Jeannie Mamo, said she could not discuss any aspect of the meeting or the internal debate surrounding it, but said that as the president has stated, the intelligence activities that have been under way to prevent future terrorist attacks have been approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department. President Bush, in acknowledging the existence of the program in a televised appearance two weeks ago, said that tight controls had been imposed over the surveillance operation and that the program was reviewed every 45 days by top government officials, including at the Justice Department.


Summary: President Vladimir V. Putin told Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, on Saturday to continue selling subsidized gas to Ukraine until the end of March if Ukraine agrees to pay market prices beginning in April. Mr. Putin's order, delivered on national television as Gazprom threatened to cut off gas exports for Ukraine beginning on Jan. 1, put Russia's president in the center of a dispute that has caused Europe to worry whether its gas supply will be disrupted in the January chill. The European Union, which has member states that rely on Gazprom for much of their gas supply, has called for a meeting of energy officials on Jan. 4. The call reflects worries that Europe's gas imports, much of which pass through Ukraine's pipelines, could be threatened.


Summary: President Vladimir V. Putin told Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, on Saturday to continue selling subsidized gas to Ukraine until the end of March if Ukraine agrees to pay market prices beginning in April. Mr. Putin's order, delivered on national television as Gazprom threatened to cut off gas exports for Ukraine beginning on Jan. 1, put Russia's president in the center of a dispute that has caused Europe to worry whether its gas supply will be disrupted in the January chill. Mr. Putin gave Ukraine until midnight Saturday to accept his terms. Mr. Putin's assertive entrance into the dispute affirmed who really controls Russia's sprawling energy sector.


Summary: Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, is the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.


Summary: Some suggested it was no coincidence that Mr. Delay's decision to resign and forgo a re-election bid came after the plea bargain last week by Tony Rudy, former deputy chief of staff to Mr. DeLay. Mr. Rudy is cooperating with federal investigators. Mr. Rudy pleaded guilty last week to conspiring to corrupt public officials.


Summary: Representative Tom DeLay's decision to resign his House seat came as federal prosecutors continued to investigate. Mr. DeLay is also under indictment in Texas on charges that he broke campaign finance laws, and he faced the prospect of an inquiry by the House ethics committee. In announcing that he would relinquish the House seat he built into a formidable power center, Mr. DeLay acknowledged that the criminal inquiries had exacted a toll on his election prospects and his will to remain in Congress.


Summary: In addition to Mr. Rudy, another former top DeLay aide, Michael Scanlon, has pleaded guilty in the corruption case and is cooperating with prosecutors.


Chubb Group of Insurance Companies
Chubb

Summary: The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, which caters to wealthy homeowners, said it had begun offering the coverage in Arizona, Colorado and Illinois. Chubb said it expected to find a strong market among owners of expensive homes, especially after months of headlines about the devastating flooding from Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast. Chubb said, it expects to be selling flood insurance in 15 states, including Florida. Chubb's approach is to continue to refuse coverage in the riskiest situations.


Summary: While the increased offer announced it is still short of the independent valuation, it signaled a retreat from Sears Holdings' announcement two weeks ago that it would not raise its bid and would cut dividends if it failed.


Summary: Finally, both a trial court and an appeals court upheld the Omers view that Ford had improperly siphoned off about three billion Canadian dollars from 1985 to 1995, when Ford Motor bought out the Canadian operation. Paul M. Pugh, the senior vice president for public investments at Omers said that it was not something that you could tell from the publicly reported financial information.


Summary: The two men, Ibrahim Turkmen and Akhil Sachdeva are plaintiffs in a pending class-action lawsuit known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft. They were among hundreds of immigrant detainees held in the Passaic jail for months after 9/11 before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported on visa violations. Mr. Turkmen said he could not come for his scheduled deposition because he was denied a visa by the Canadian government, without explanation.


Summary: Mr. John G. Rowland, has found that he was wrongly dismissed and must be rehired for a comparable position. Mr. Plofsky, who once called Mr. Rowland a liar in a speech to the Litchfield League of Women Voters, vehemently denied the accusations and said his firing was politically motivated. Some of the ethics commission's members, including its chairwoman, were appointed by Mr. Rowland.


Summary: The Legislature dissolved the State Ethics Commission last year and replaced it with the Office of State Ethics and a nine-member Citizens Ethics Advisory Board. The State Ethics Commission already has an executive director. The Review Board said that Mr. Plofsky must be reconfirmed to a comparable position and salary of about $120,000 per year, and must be compensated for 18 months of lost salary totaling about $180,000


Summary: The department and the company Health Star Plus, negotiated a longer-term contract, and its director, Dr. Mark J. Wade, of Saddle River, New Jersey, for several months without reaching an agreement, said the Juvenile Justice spokesman, Scott Trent. Dr. Wade said that his contract prevented him from talking to a reporter.


Summary: The department had been negotiating a longer-term contract renewal with the company, Health Star Plus, and its director, Dr. Mark J. Wade, of Saddle River, New Jersey, for several months without reaching an agreement, said Scott Trent, who is the spokesman Juvenile Justice. As the contract's expiration date came near, Juvenile Justice officials asked the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs public hospitals and provides emergency care to youths in city custody, to provide routine medical care if Health Star Plus pulled out. The 30-day contract extension is priced up to $350,000 for Health Star Plus, as said by Mr. Trent.


Juvenile Justice
Department of Juvenile Justice

Summary: A department spokeswoman said that the city's Department of Juvenile Justice and the New Jersey company provides medical care to more than 400 children those who are in trouble in the agency's custody and agreed to a 30-day contract extension.


Senate Judiciary Committee
Judiciary Committee
Senate

Summary: Conservative House Republicans bluntly warned their leaders against any immigration compromise that would allow temporary foreign workers and assailed a Senate proposal that would open the way for illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.Representative Bob Beauprez, who is a Colorado Republican said that his fear is that if they continue down this path that the Senate has established, that they will have created the biggest magnet ever. The bipartisan authors of a Senate plan that would combine new border protections with a temporary worker program and a process for illegal immigrants to qualify for residency and eventually citizenship said they thought they were gaining support as the Senate moved deeper into its immigration fight.


Summary: After 12 years of their life in prison, nearly 8 of them in Florence, Mr. Casso was calling the defense to clear the two defendants, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, even though he was the one who first accused them, back in 1994, of killing for the mob. In the private call, defense lawyers said he referred them to a letter he wrote this month to Mark Feldman, chief of the organized crime section for the United States attorney's office in Brooklyn, a letter in which he claimed responsibility for two murders and a kidnapping that the defendants have been charged with in this case.


Summary: Mr. Blum said in an interview, referring to the New York collectors that he saw it several years earlier at Gene and Barbara Schwartz's apartment and asked them if they would sell it to him.


Summary: The Museum of Modern Art acquired Andy Warhol's 32-panel of Campbell's Soup Cans from Irving Blum, the dealer, for $15 million, then one of the highest prices ever paid for a work of contemporary art. Mr. Blum, who has been auctioning many of his important Pop Art holdings in recent years, has owned this work since 1967. To wrest it away from its archrival, Sotheby's, Christie's had to give Mr. Blum a guarantee, at an undisclosed sum promised to a seller regardless of a sale's outcome.


Summary: ''Small Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot),'' an early hand-painted work from 1962, will be auctioned at Christie's sale of postwar and contemporary art. In 1997 François Pinault, the luxury goods magnate who owns Christie's decided to auction ''Big Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot),'' also from 1962. To wrest it away from its archrival, Sotheby's, Christie's had to give Mr. Blum a guarantee that an undisclosed sum promised to a seller regardless of a sale's outcome.


Summary: Brett Gorvy, a co-head of the postwar and contemporary art department at Christie's said Here he has lovingly painted the soup can, much as Cézanne would paint a still life.


Summary: The Museum of Modern Art acquired Andy Warhol's 32-panel of Campbell's Soup Cans from Irving Blum, the dealer, for $15 million, then one of the highest prices ever paid for a work of contemporary art. At the time, people assumed that Mr. Blum was all out of soup. Mr. Blum, who has been auctioning many of his important Pop Art holdings in recent years, has owned this work since 1967.


Summary: The Biovail Corporation, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, has sued SAC Capital Management, one of the most powerful hedge funds on Wall Street, accusing it of colluding with independent research providers to issue misleading reports to drive down the price of Biovail's stock. Biovail's true issue is the valuation that the public markets place on their common stock. Biovail reported quarterly earnings that were weaker than expected and its stock fall sharply. Biovail sees another force behind the decline in the stock: it accuses the hedge funds of conspiring with proclaimed independent research providers to create reports with the express purpose of battering its stock price.


Summary: The Biovail Corporation, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, has sued SAC Capital Management, one of the most powerful hedge funds on Wall Street, accusing it of colluding with independent research providers to issue misleading reports to drive down the price of Biovail's stock. Ed Tagliaferri, a spokesman for SAC, said that these allegations against SAC were outrageous and defamatory and SAC will defend itself and its investment practices vigorously. The complaint, which seeks damages of $4.6 billion, lists 22 defendants, including Steven A. Cohen, the founder of SAC; various of his affiliate funds and their employees.


Summary: The complaint, which seeks damages of $4.6 billion, lists 22 defendants, including Steven A. Cohen, the founder of SAC, Gradient, James Carr Bettis, founder and chief executive of Gradient and Donn Vickrey, founder and co-owner of Gradient, Mr. Maris of Banc of America Securities; and the Gerson Lehrman Group, a company based in New York that connects investors with experts in fields like pharmaceuticals. The lawsuit accuses the Gerson Lehrman Group and other defendants of paying two doctors in 2003 to give false information to reporters suggesting Biovail had set up a program to bribe them to prescribe a Biovail drug.


Summary: David Greenlaw, an economist at Morgan Stanley, said that when they were in an environment of pretty strong consumer demand and labor markets had tightened, they created the potential of some pass-through. He noted that the recent surge in oil and other energy prices was the biggest the nation had seen since the 1970's. Mr. Greenlaw and other economists said that the January figures were not completely reassuring because they were helped by one-time items like a 0.3 percent drop in doctor's fees, a rare and large decline that the government attributed to changes in the way Medicare reimburses physicians.


Summary: Sharp increases in energy and food costs pushed consumer prices higher last month, but prices of other goods and services rose more modestly, the government reported. The report appears to allay fears that the increase in energy prices from last year would speed inflation in the broader economy, but analysts said they suspected it might not be enough to dissuade Federal Reserve policy makers from raising interest rates at least once and maybe twice before stopping. But many economists and Fed policymakers are not so certain that the current trend will hold.


Summary: Ruth Halimi, Mr. Halimi's mother, told the Israeli daily Haaretz that if Ilan hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered. She also told the newspaper that the police told the family to ignore the gang's attempts to contact them.


Summary: The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, told French lawmakers, citing a statement by one of the men who kidnapped the victim, Ilan Halimi. The police found literature linking some suspects in the case to Palestinian and fundamentalist Muslim causes, but Mr. Sarkozy warned against blaming the country's Muslims.


Summary: Based on the prejudice that Jews have money, and then once they are kidnapped, the way they happily tortured them, shows the anti-Semitic element. President Jacques Chirac called Mr. Halimi's parents and assured them that full light would be shed on the circumstances. Mr. Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said they would attend a memorial service for Mr. Halimi on Thursday.


Summary: Katerina Harvati, a paleontologist at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said these advances can potentially lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of this critical time period in European prehistory. Dr. Harvati agreed that the new chronology suggested an earlier appearance of early modern human complex behaviors and an earlier Neanderthal extinction and also suggests a shorter coexistence interval of the two species.


Summary: Paul Mellars, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in England, wrote in an article in the journal Nature. Although other scientists have for several years been pondering the implications of the revised radiocarbon dating for archaeological research throughout the world, Dr. Mellars's description of the new techniques and their significance is the first comprehensive review of the subject in a major journal. Dr. Mellars concludes from the revised chronology that the overlap between Neanderthals and new arrivals must be shortened to about 6,000 years in Central and Northern Europe, perhaps only 1,000 to 2,000 years in regions like western France.


Summary: The government argued in its Supreme Court brief, that Congress had intended the postal exception to insulate the Postal Service from lawsuits for its performance of the quintessentially postal function of directly delivering the mail to a postal patron. But in his opinion for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy took a different approach. He noted that Congress had not immunized the Postal Service against suits from negligent handling of its delivery trucks, a potential liability that poses the same risks of frivolous litigation.


Kennedy
Anthony M. Kennedy
Justice Kennedy

Summary: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy took a different approach that transmission of mail included the ultimate act of delivering mail to a postal customer, the government argued in its Supreme Court brief, adding that Congress had intended the postal exception to insulate the Postal Service from lawsuits for its performance of the quintessentially postal function of directly delivering the mail to a postal patron. He added that since both those terms referred to failings in the postal obligation to deliver mail in a timely manner to the right address, it would be odd if negligent transmission swept far more broadly to include injuries like those alleged here injuries that happen to be caused by postal employees but involve neither failure to transmit mail nor damage to its contents.


Summary: The suit, brought by Barbara Dolan, was dismissed by two lower federal courts in Pennsylvania under what is known as the postal exception to the federal law that generally permits negligence suits against the government. The postal exception, one of 13 specific exemptions to the law, bars ''any claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.


United States Postal Service
Postal Service

Summary: The Supreme Court ruled that the Postal Service may be sued by people who trip over packages or other mail that letter carriers have carelessly left in their path. United States Postal Service, No. 04-848, was how broadly to read the exemption. Transmission of mail includes the ultimate act of delivering mail to a postal customer, the government argued in its Supreme Court brief, adding that Congress had intended the postal exception to insulate the Postal Service from lawsuits for its performance of the quintessentially postal function of directly delivering the mail to a postal patron.


Summary: John C. Malone was interested in capitalizing on Carl C. Icahn's planned proxy fight at Time Warner. The filing landed after a settlement between an investor group led by Mr. Icahn and Time Warner. In exchange for various concessions, including an increased share buyback and the appointment of two new independent directors, Mr. Icahn called off the planned proxy fight. Mr. Icahn and three hedge funds allied with him hold 3.3 percent.


Summary: John C. Malone, the media investor, applied to regulators to have a nonvoting 4 percent stake in Time Warner owned by his Liberty Media Corporation converted into voting shares a year ahead of schedule. In a news release, the company's incoming chief executive, Gregory B. Maffei, said the company was looking to participate actively in key shareholder votes and actions. But Mr. Malone had hoped to get voting control of his shares while the proxy challenge was still on. Liberty said it had applied to the Federal Trade Commission for the right to convert the shares ahead of a prohibition barring them from voting status until February 2007.


Summary: John C. Malone's tactics with Time Warner are reminiscent of the approach he took toward the News Corporation, another large media company that Liberty invested in. Liberty had been a nonvoting shareholder in that company, but Mr. Malone swapped his shares for an 18 percent voting stake in November 2004, causing a rift with his sometimes partner Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, who controls 29.5 percent of the company's votes.


Summary: Fitch Ratings downgraded Time Warner's bonds one notch, from BBB+ to BBB, because of the additional debt the company is expected to take on from its newly planned $20 billion share buyback and its acquisition of Adelphia Communications.


Summary: John C. Malone was interested in capitalizing on Carl C. Icahn's planned proxy fight at Time Warner, as well. Mr. Malone, the media investor, applied to regulators to have a nonvoting 4 percent stake in Time Warner. Time Warner also operates a large cable television business, approval of the deal was contingent on Mr. Malone's having no say over Time Warner's affairs for 10 years. Separately, Fitch Ratings downgraded Time Warner's bonds one notch, from BBB+ to BBB, because of the additional debt the company is expected to take on from its newly planned $20 billion share buyback and its acquisition of Adelphia Communications.


Summary: Liberty said it had applied to the Federal Trade Commission for the right to convert the shares ahead of a prohibition barring them from voting status until February 2007. Liberty could have made the same request of the trade commission at any point after the successor to TCI was sold to the Comcast Corporation in 2003 and Mr. Malone ceased to play a role in the company.


Summary: Today, casual games are found on major Internet portals like Yahoo, the MSN Zone of Microsoft and America Online, as well as special game sites like Pogo.com and RealArcade (www.realarcade.com). Yahoo Games (games.yahoo.com), for instance, provides a variety of ways to join up and converse with other players. Yahoo Games, Pogo.com and MSN Entertainment, among others, allow mobile phone users to download games onto their cellphones, usually paying $3 to $5, on the basis of each kilobyte received, to carriers like Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile.


Summary: In this climate of resistance to new music, the soprano Dawn Upshaw has created a major career by bucking the trend and staking out contemporary music, in ways that audiences seem to like. Taking a random sampling from Ms. Upshaw's calendar this season: Osvaldo Golijov's ''Ainadamar'' in Santa Fe, New York and London; Lukas Foss's ''Time Cycle'' with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; ''El Niño,'' by John Adams, in Los Angeles; Henri Dutilleux's ''Correspondances'' in Washington. What is distinctive about Ms. Upshaw's career is that she has managed to establish herself as a new-music specialist without the sense of marginalization that generally accompanies the term.


Summary: The three major networks have recently undergone drastic changes, but the downshift at CBS is perhaps the most striking. A sober-faced man in a suit and tie delivered the news with what Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, recently described as ''voice of God'' authority. All network newscasts open with teasers of the big stories to come, but on CBS, the reporters introduce themselves on camera alongside their summaries. CBS is testing a hybrid of both: a voice of God with backup singers.


Summary: Bob Schieffer said companionably to Jim that this is some pretty strong talk on Tuesday after the CBS correspondent Jim Axelrod described Washington's reaction to the Bush administration's plan to allow an Arab-owned company to manage six American ports.


Summary: Bob Schieffer said companionably on Tuesday that Jim, this was some pretty strong talk, after the CBS correspondent Jim Axelrod described Washington's reaction to the Bush administration's plan to allow an Arab-owned company to manage six American ports.


Summary: The news division tapped Mr. Schieffer, the veteran correspondent, as a temporary anchor almost a year ago and has yet to name a younger, flashier replacement (though rumors are rife that CBS is wooing Katie Couric of NBC for the job). Meanwhile, Mr. Schieffer has made a virtue of a necessity, balkanizing his newscast to showcase younger correspondents. Later in the broadcast, a chosen few are sometimes brought on the set for a friendly chat with Mr. Schieffer.


Summary: In the city's view, the exotic aerial gondolas, conceived by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, would further that plan. But Mr. Calatrava's sketch is really nothing more than a teaser to give the project some desperately needed cachet.


Summary: Testimony in the case is set to continue, and a decision is not expected until March 17, said Norman Siegel, one of the lawyers representing Captain Adams. Mr. Siegel said that Captain Adams did not need permission from the Police Department to appear on the show. Mr. Siegel, one of Captain Adams's lawyers, said that Captain Adams was speaking as accurately as he could on the television show.


Summary: Robert Scavone, executive vice president of P & O Ports North America, said that the company had made security a priority. He said it had hired Michael Stapleton Associates, which he described as a company run by former New York City police detectives, to protect the terminal and develop a security plan with the Coast Guard.


Summary: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signaled yesterday that the matter could lead the city to block the company from controlling the huge cruise terminal on the West Side. He later added that New York City's involvement was really on those docks that are on city shoreline, and so that was what he was worried about. In April 2004, Mr. Bloomberg announced that the city would commit $200 million to redeveloping the terminal on the West Side and a new one on the Brooklyn waterfront, as part of an agreement with Norwegian Cruise Lines and Carnival Corporation.


P & O Ports North America
P & O Web
P & O

Summary: P & O Ports North America, a unit of the British concern, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, has operated the terminal since January 1997 under a 10-year agreement with the city's Economic Development Corporation, which manages the city's waterfront properties and is largely under Mr. Bloomberg's control. In 2004, according to a P & O Web site, 845,778 passengers were recorded moving through the terminal. Robert Scavone, executive vice president of P & O Ports North America, said that the company had made security a priority.


Summary: Richard Shine, one of the researchers, said they had been studying the ecology of snakes near the aptly named city of Darwin for two decades when the toads began arriving, about 1,000 miles, as the toad hops, from the site of their original introduction. Dr. Shine said that these guys were actually racing across the landscape at a speed that just seemed absurd and that the only way to be in a front that is moving that fast is to be incredibly quick. He also added that wildlife managers should take heed of the findings, which were reported in Nature.


Summary: Gov. Jon S. Corzine's choices for various offices have met with praise so far, particularly the appointments of Stuart Rabner, a former federal prosecutor, as the chief counsel; Kevin M. Ryan, the state's child advocate, to run Department of Human Services, and Barry L. Zubrow, a former colleague of the governor's at Goldman Sachs, to become the new chairman of the embattled Schools Construction Corporation.


Summary: Mr. Corzine has not been spotted hobnobbing with legislators and lobbyists. Mr. Corzine's low-key approach to governing may come across as humdrum or even secretive. Veteran Republicans and Democrats who were interviewed in the last week, Mr. Corzine's no-nonsense style coupled with some of the appointments that he has made so far and he has been viewed as refreshing, sobering and even responsible.


Summary: Unlike the former governors Richard J. Codey and Mr. McGreevey, Gov. Jon S. Corzine has not shown much of an interest in cold-calling reporters to talk shop, or float trial balloons.


Summary: They're not coming in as a bunch of know-it-alls -- Whitman did it, McGreevey did it. Unlike the former governors Richard J. Codey and Mr. McGreevey, Mr. Corzine has not shown much of an interest in cold-calling reporters to talk shop, or float trial balloons.


Summary: Carl Golden, who was a spokesman for two Republican governors, Thomas H. Kean and Christie Whitman said Mr. Corzine has remained low-key, but I'm not offended by it.


Summary: One month into his term, Mr. Corzine has issued three executive orders, the lowest number over a comparable period since former Gov. Thomas H. Kean. He has issued 12 press releases, made four official statements, and scheduled 14 public events, in contrast to the 90-odd releases and appearances by James E.


Summary: Thomas H. Kean. has issued 12 press releases, made four official statements, and scheduled 14 public events, in contrast to the 90-odd releases and appearances by James E. McGreevey. Unlike the former governors Richard J. Codey and Mr. McGreevey, Mr. Corzine has not shown much of an interest in cold-calling reporters to talk shop or float trial balloons.


Summary: 12-year-old Raisa Skakun, was welcomed to America as a winner, with balloons at Kennedy International Airport, the hugs of long-lost relatives and a billionaire's pledge of financial support. Immigration officials had reconsidered her case, urged on by an outpouring of concern after Raisa's story was detailed in an article on Oct. 14 in The New York Times. Shy at first, Raisa, a slim, dark-haired girl, was soon chattering happily in Russian as she explored the two-bedroom public housing apartment in Coney Island where she will live with her grandmother and her 17-year-old half-brother, Alex Krylov.


Summary: Alexandra W. B. Malick, the wife of the filmmaker Terrence Malick who is better known as Ecky, enlisted supporters like Sean Penn, the actor, Max Palevsky, a billionaire philanthropist, and when nothing else seemed to work, appealed to one of her neighbors in Austin, Tex.: Karen Hughes, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy in the Bush administration. Ms. Malik put a copy of the article about Raisa in Ms. Hughes's mailbox.


Summary: At Mr. Cooper's suggestion, Raisa's case was added to the agenda last fall when Democrats in Congress questioned Julie L. Myers, President Bush's nominee who went on to head the immigration enforcement agency. Referring to the finding that some of the 1,465 cases approved in the last six years out of 6,718 applications had been denied before news media accounts brought Congressional intervention, Ms. Myers replied that she is troubled by the implication in the New York Times article that high-profile cases are treated differently.


Summary: B. Malick, the wife of the filmmaker Terrence Malick, is better known as Ecky, enlisted supporters like Sean Penn, the actor, Max Palevsky, a billionaire philanthropist. Mr. Malick flew to New York and arranged for Alex and his grandmother to meet Mr. Palevsky, 81, a computer industry pioneer, Hollywood film producer, campaign finance reform activist, and art collector, in his hotel suite Sherry-Netherland overlooking Central Park. Mr. Malick and Mr. Palevsky both signed affidavits of support.


Summary: B. Malick, the wife of the filmmaker Terrence Malick who is better known as Ecky, enlisted supporters like Sean Penn, the actor, Max Palevsky, a billionaire philanthropist, and when nothing else seemed to work, appealed to one of her neighbors in Austin, Tex.: Karen Hughes, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy in the Bush administration.


Summary: Malick, who flew to New York and arranged for Alex and his grandmother to meet Mr. Palevsky, 81, Hollywood film producer, campaign finance reform activist and art collector, in his hotel suite at the Sherry-Netherland Central Park. Malick was in Odessa, Ukraine, sharing the joy of what she calls 'rescuing Raisa'. At the orphanage there, Raisa slept in one of six bunk beds and sometimes went hungry so she could feed stray kittens. After skating in Central Park, eating in Times Square, and marveling at the Empire State Building , she slept in her grandmother's arms in Coney Island, beside the plump, purring cat she now calls her own.


Summary: Raisa's grandmother and adoptive mother, Larisa Bebeshko, 65, who flew to Ukraine as soon as travel arrangements could be made to bring Raisa home from the orphanage for destitute Jewish children where she has lived since she was 6, said that many people called in and tried to help. Others donated money, like a man in Chicago who wrote a $400 check to cover the fee for expedited handling of Ms. Bebeshko's citizenship application.


Summary: The former counsel to immigration services, Bo Cooper, helped redraft the petition. At Mr. Cooper's suggestion, Raisa's case was added to the agenda last fall when Democrats in Congress questioned Julie L. Myers, President Bush's nominee who went on to head the immigration enforcement agency.


Summary: Raisa, a slim, dark-haired girl,  lives in Coney Island with her grandmother and her 17-year-old half-brother, Alex Krylov. They were rescued by their grandparents, only to see the family broken up again by deaths, illness, and the twists and backlogs of a visa process that gave Alex a new chance in America but left Raisa orphaned and alone in Ukraine. Alex was 12 when he and his grandmother arrived in Brooklyn as refugees, determined to retrieve Raisa.


Summary: The major airlines using Heathrow as their London base are not shy about pointing out that both Eos and MaxJet are restricted under aviation treaties to Stansted. All of this is just fine with Gary Rogliano, the chief executive of MaxJet, which started what he calls ''middle-class'' all-business-class service between New York and London in November. Nevertheless, he said, MaxJet has signed deals with major banks and other companies that spend $10 million or more on international premium-class air travel and have decided to divert a portion of it to MaxJet.


Summary: Robin Hayes gets an argument from David Spurlock, the chief executive of Eos Airlines, a start-up all-business-class carrier that began flying between New York and London last fall. Mr. Spurlock said he and his staff had been working to sign up banks and investment firms for corporate discounts. Like Mr. Spurlock, Mr. Rogliano said he worked hard to drum up business originating in Britain.


Summary: First-class fares (about $12,000) account for a small portion of the premium trans-Atlantic market, and some of the major players, like Virgin Atlantic, do not even have first-class cabins. The posted round-trip fare is about $8,800, on top-shelf carriers like British Airways or Virgin Atlantic, and the less luxurious but still comfortable business classes of domestic airlines like American, United and Continental. Virgin has about 15 percent of the premium-class seats on that route.


Summary: The all-business-class airlines Eos and MaxJet. The airline uses Boeing 757 aircraft outfitted with 48 flat-bed seats in private pods that offer 21 square feet of space per passenger. Eos flies one round trip daily. Our customers can easily rebook another flight if they're, say, 20 minutes late getting to the airport. Eos recently announced its own loyalty program, Club 48, that awards mileage points for trips on other airlines.


Summary: Gary Rogliano, the chief executive of MaxJet, which started all-business-class service between New York and London, plans to add another route, Washington to London. Mr. Rogliano said he worked hard to drum up business originating in Britain. The airline, which Mr. Rogliano says will soon add nonstop service between the West Coast and London, flies Boeing 767 airliners equipped with 102 seats, all of them business class.


Summary: Robin Hayes, British Air's executive vice president for marketing in the Americas said they didn't intend to offer the least expensive business-class product; they intend to offer the best. On that, he gets an argument from David Spurlock, the chief executive of Eos Airlines, a start-up all-business-class carrier that began flying between New York and London last fall.


Summary: Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt, said that many read the list of people at high risk for developing complications from flu. He said that they didn't realize he could pass the infection for 24 hours before you develop symptoms, and for four or five days afterward. He noted that it was very surprising, but they knew from surveys that the myth that he could get flu from a flu shot persists, even among some health care workers, and they needed to be clearer about addressing that .


Summary: Dr. Thomas Talbot, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University, said if anything, they might have expected not to see a benefit at just 51 percent of employees immunized. He aksed if they could increase the rate to 80 percent or higher, as they hoped to, it would be reasonable to expect the death rate to drop even more.


Summary: Dr. Suzanne Bradley, an infectious disease specialist and geriatrician at the University of Michigan, said that they were talking about preventing hospitalization.


Summary: Todd Krieger, the company's manager for financial systems, said that Its old accounting software was not secure enough for SOX standards. But Mr. Krieger says the company hopes to recoup the expense by eliminating the waste of handling transactions in a casual way. He said that our executives did view it as something that could be beneficial.


Summary: John Hagerty, an analyst at AMR Research in Boston, said that smaller firms were not less complex than larger firms, just smaller. He added that they could learn a lot from the large companies that had come before them. It is already a SOX rule for public microcap companies to have outside directors and a financial expert on the audit committee. Mr. Hagerty said that the way you get people out of the process was to automate activities that used to be done manually.


Summary: Sarah A. Miller, chief regulatory counsel for the American Bankers Association, said that young companies that needed outside investments or loans would increasingly be held to those higher standards of financial reporting.


Summary: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed by Congress in 2002 after the Enron, Tyco and WorldCom accounting scandals, is becoming a blueprint for how private companies, nonprofit groups and even municipal governments can demonstrate the soundness of their financials.


Summary: Mr. Tillage said he welcomed the intrusive coaching, which will most likely come from Michael Dayton, a lead Kauffman coach who will give him frank advice on every aspect of his business. Mr. Dayton also said that his goal was to help Tillage, which now employs seven workers to build its capacity to deliver and develop strategies to find clients. He added that they would sit down with them, side by side.


Summary: Daryl Williams, the Kauffman Foundation's director of minority entrepreneurship said that they couldn't just go on with the original plan and ignore what was going on in New Orleans and the area around it. He further said when Katrina hit, people asked them about what they were going to do to help those entrepreneurs, but they had not thought about it. But Mr. Williams got in gear. After two more visits to the region, Mr. Williams went back to Kansas City and drew up the Katrina Urban Entrepreneur Partnership, borrowing from the core program but tailoring the new one to the needs of hurricane-affected small businesses.


Entrepreneur Partnership
Katrina Urban Entrepreneur
Katrina Urban Entrepreneur Partnership
Urban Entrepreneur Partnership

Summary: The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit group in Kansas City, Mo., dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship, joined with the National Urban League and other organizations with an endorsement from the White House to create the Urban Entrepreneur Partnership to give minority businesspeople advice and training needed to overcome financial and other obstacles. Just as the Entrepreneur Partnership was setting up one-stop small-business help centers in several cities, the southernmost being Atlanta, Hurricanes Katrina, and Rita devastated as many as 80,000 Gulf Coast businesses, many of them minority-owned companies. After two more visits to the region, Mr. Williams went back to Kansas City and drew up the Katrina Urban Entrepreneur Partnership, borrowing from the core program but tailoring the new one to the needs of hurricane-affected small businesses.


Summary: The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit group in Kansas City, Mo., dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship, joined with the National Urban League and other organizations with an endorsement from the White House to create the Urban Entrepreneur Partnership to give minority businesspeople advice and training needed to overcome financial and other obstacles. The Kauffman Foundation is to start the program this month, giving needy entrepreneurs intensive help to ensure that they get part of the cleanup and reconstruction work on the Gulf Coast. The Kauffman project also plans to connect minority entrepreneurs like Mr. Stewart with large established businesses that are not necessarily in the Gulf region but could help them form joint ventures and partnerships to bid on federal and private contracts.


Summary: They are trying to use the existing U.E.P. offices to find companies in their areas to pair up with businesses in New Orleans and the Gulf which have the experience and know-how, but who don't have the resources to be able to bid successfully on a contract. That is what Keith Tillage, of the Tillage Construction Company in Baton Rouge, La., hopes to do. Mr. Dayton, a former chief financial officer for a community development organization, said his goal was to help Tillage.


Summary: Just as the Entrepreneur Partnership was setting up one-stop small-business help centers in several cities, the southernmost being Atlanta, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated as many as 80,000 Gulf Coast businesses, many of them minority-owned companies.


Summary: Byron Stewart, 49, architectural firm, Byron J. Stewart & Associates, in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans, was flooded. His residence upstairs was undamaged, but Mr. Stewart had to start his 15-year-old business almost from scratch. Still, even though he has inquiries about architectural commissions, he said he was cautious because he wanted to create a business plan that would help him weather future economic downturns.


Summary: So we are trying to use the existing U.E.P. offices to find companies in their areas to pair up with businesses in New Orleans and the Gulf which have the experience and know-how, but who don't have the resources to be able to bid successfully on a contract.Thats  what Keith Tillage hopes to do. Mr. Tillage said he welcomed the intrusive  coaching, which will most likely come from Michael Dayton who will give him frank advice on every aspect of his business.


Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Kauffman Foundation


Summary: The government, backed by major environmental groups, federal and state regulators, and a bipartisan group of former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency, says that the theories of Mr. Rapanos and his fellow developer, June Carabell, would remove more than half of existing waterways perhaps as many as 99 percent, by one estimate from federal water pollution controls. Ms. Carabell applied for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and was rejected.


Summary: The government, backed by major environmental groups, federal and state regulators, and a bipartisan group of former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency, says that the theories of Mr. Rapanos and his fellow developer, June Carabell, would remove more than half of existing waterways perhaps as many as 99 percent, by one estimate from federal water pollution controls. Mr. Rapanos defied state regulators, who, acting with federal authority specifically delegated by the E.P.A., told him not to fill his wetland without a permit. That brief argues that it is the federal control over navigation that gives the E.P.A. and the corps authority over navigable waters and that unless their regulations directly prevent impediments to navigation unless, for example, they deal with issues like the level of river flows the issues fall to the states.


Summary: M. Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation, who represents one developer, John A. Rapanos, argues that the existing interpretation of the law infringes on the rights of states and individuals and impermissibly gives the federal government authority over any area. Mr. Rapanos defied state regulators, who, acting with federal authority specifically delegated by the E.P.A., told him not to fill his wetland without a permit. The wetlands owned by Mr. Rapanos and two others, in addition to the one where the shopping center was once planned, are as far as 20 miles from local rivers, but adjacent to ditches that drain into tributaries of those rivers.


Summary: Oral arguments in the cases the first before the new justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr.


Summary: The second was brought by a would-be condominium developer who applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to fill a wetland and was denied. Ms. Carabell applied for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and was rejected.


Summary: Objective is to open the archive, and we will continue to push. But that push has met a wall of legal and procedural objections from Charles Biedermann, the Red Cross official who has been director of the Tracing Service for two decades. Mr. Biedermann says  that  the archives to be opened, the treaty must be amended.


Summary: Edward O'Donnell, the special envoy for Holocaust Issues at the State Department said the U.S. government favors opening up all records on the Holocaust. It will be followed by a gathering in May of leading officials, including Mr. O'Donnell, who made clear he would like to see a resolution of the dispute then.


International Tracing Service
Tracing Service

Summary: Since the end of World War II the Tracing Service, operating as an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has used the files to help people trace the fates of relatives who disappeared into the murderous vortex of Nazi.


Summary: Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to the United States said the question needs to be addressed of who will be allowed to do what with this data and who will be legally responsible if somebody abuses this.


Summary: German government, having already paid out more than $80 billion in reparations, is concerned that questions of legal liability be thoroughly clarified before Bad Arolsen is opened up and its files made available elsewhere. But six decades after the war, it seems clear that opening up Bad Arolsen would play a critical role in filling in the details of the vile tapestry of Nazi crimes.


Summary: Sara Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which has been eager to secure copies of the files.


Summary: Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said she contacted NBC Universal about working out a deal to feature NBC clips. NBC Universal responded early this month with a notice asking YouTube to remove about 500 clips of NBC material from its site or face legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Julie Summersgill, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal, said the company meant no ill will toward fan sites but wanted to protect its copyrights.


Summary: As anyone with an Internet connection and a love of cupcakes can tell you, Lazy Sunday is a tongue-in-cheek rap video starring Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live. NBC first broadcast the video, a two-and-a-half-minute paean to New York's Magnolia Bakery and C. S. Lewis, on Dec. 17. Fans immediately began putting copies of the video online.


Summary: Julie Summersgill, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal, said the company meant no ill will toward fan sites .


Summary: As anyone with an Internet connection and a love of cupcakes can tell you, Lazy Sunday is a tongue-in-cheek rap video starring Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live. NBC first broadcast the video, a two-and-a-half-minute paean to New York's Magnolia Bakery, and C. S. Lewis, on Dec. 17. Fans immediately began putting copies of the video online.


Summary: Jim Coogan, president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a consultancy based in Santa Fe, was critical of Disney's decision, calling it something  he sees a lot from the e-commerce world.


Summary: MICKEY MOUSE'S next big role is e-commerce renegade.


Summary: Paul Gainer, vice president of Disney Shopping, a division of Disney Consumer Products. He said catalogs were simply not ringing the registers as loudly. But Mr. Gainer says 2006 is a much different selling environment online.


Disney Shopping
Disney Consumer Products
Disney.com
Disney
Walt Disney Company

Summary: In fiscal 2005, Disney's consumer products division, which includes stores, product licensing, catalog and the Internet, sold nearly $21 billion .


Summary: Donna L. Hoffman, professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University said that customers who shopped using a particular retailer's stores, catalogs and Web site spent 15 percent more with that company than those who shopped through just one of those three components. Catalogers have struggled to maintain costs amid rising postage and printing costs in the past year, she said.


Summary: The Walt Disney Company, an icon of mainstream America, will move against the grain of conventional business strategy when it stops distributing its catalog and instead embarks on a Web-only initiative. Disney spent $18 million to mail 30 million catalogs and half of them were sent in the holiday season. In fiscal 2005, Disney's consumer products division, which includes stores, product licensing, catalog, and the Internet, sold nearly $21 billion globally. The $18 million that went into the catalog division will instead be used to buy search-engine advertisements, improve the company's e-mail marketing campaigns and develop a more extensive roster of third-party sites, known in industry parlance as affiliates, to help refer buyers to Disney.com.


Summary: Elsa Misa Timbang shrieked as soon as she saw the swath of brown dirt completely covering what used to be her village. Ms. Timbang had just arrived from London, hoping to see more than a dozen relatives, including her parents, six brothers and sisters, and six nephews and nieces.


Summary: He has been in the House of Representatives for nearly a quarter-century and is known for his folksy ways and his common touch with the residents of Brooklyn.


Summary: Greg Tarpinian, executive director of the Change to Win Federation, a group that includes teamsters, carpenters, farmworkers, and Unite Here said that several large labor organizations were committed to defeating certain members of Congress who supported the bill.


Summary: In addition to the opposition from labor, another problem for Mr. Towns this year is his strained relationship with  Vito J. Lopez, the newly installed chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. For a time, Mr. Towns had a particularly close relationship with Mr. Lopez.


Summary: Last week, City Councilman Charles Barron announced his candidacy. Mr. Barron said that he's been missing in action.


Summary: As he runs for a 13th term, Edolphus Towns finds himself the target of determined efforts to end his career in Congress. People either have declared plans to challenge Mr. Towns or are close to doing so. But the candidates looking to challenge Mr. Towns for the Democratic nomination in the 10th Congressional District criticize him on other issues. He's absent for crucial votes and he's a disaster when it comes to speaking on national issues. In addition to the opposition from labor, another problem for Mr. Towns is his strained relationship with Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, the newly installed chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. Mr. Towns said he was not troubled by the prospect of a hard-fought campaign.


Summary: Two years ago, Sophia Schroeder had the best birthday of her life. She stood on frozen Lake Erie near a town on South Bass Island and she ate ice cream. Her father dragged her sled across the ice behind his snowmobile. Sophia said that it was her favorite birthday party ever and she is now 7.


Summary: Billy Market, president of the Miller Boat Line, a ferry company. The ferry costs $12, and that means less work for airplane pilots, who charge $80 to fly round-trips to the islands.


Summary: Jean Burgess, who is a bed-and-breakfast owner, has not rented a room all winter. Ms. Burgess said that the weather sure is screwy the last couple years.


Summary: Melodie Griffing-Taylor, who has helped run Griffing Airlines since 1962 said the weather changes have knocked a big hole out in the business. Ms. Griffing-Taylor said she does not believe in global warming.


Summary: George Leshkevich, a scientist who has studied Great Lakes ice for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, since 1973 said there's essentially no ice at all in Lake Erie. The unusually warm weather has upset the routine of hundreds of people who live year-round on islands in Lake Erie.


Summary: Richard Taylor, a physics professor retained by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to subject six of the paintings to computer-assisted analysis, discovered that the paintings may well be fakes at least, the drips lack Pollock's characteristic geometric pattern.


Summary: S.,'' might be Shakespeare's.


Summary: Previous year, 24 paintings were unveiled as previously unknown works by Jackson Pollock. Would the exposure of a hitherto successful forgery diminish Jackson Pollock's reputation as a unique creative genius, by demonstrating that his work is replicable? Meanwhile, Jackson Pollock may be chuckling in his grave if the object of Abstract Expressionist work is to embody the rebellious, the anarchic, the highly idiosyncratic if we embrace Pollock's work for its anti-figurative aesthetic may faux-Pollock not be quintessential Pollock?


Summary: Richard Taylor, a physics professor retained by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to subject six of the paintings to computer-assisted analysis, discovered that the paintings may well be fakes. That Richard Taylor's analysis can inform us of patterns generated by Pollock much of the time provides no guarantee that Pollock reproduced those patterns all of the time. But if the Pollock canon includes a forgery, it may be that Taylor's analysis provides a more objective mode of analysis than aesthetic appreciation.


Summary: The autopsy found that two bullets hit Officer Hernandez in the right side of his abdomen, while a third pierced the outside of his right leg, said Ellen S. Borakove, a spokeswoman for Charles S. Hirsch, the chief medical examiner.


Hernandez
Eric
Efrain Hernandez
Eric Hernandez

Summary: In a written statement, Mr. Johnson said the autopsy results, along with evidence of any injuries that may have come from the beating, would be presented to the grand jury for a final determination of charges. Officer Hernandez's father, whose name is Efrain Hernandez, said he felt that although the bullets might have killed his son, the chain reaction that led to his death began with the attack.


Summary: Three telecommunications entrepreneurs from Texas have joined with Space Adventures Ltd., the company that sent the first paying passengers to the International Space Station, to develop passenger spacecraft for suborbital flights. Space Adventures announced that it would build the spaceport in the emirate of Ras al Khaimah with an initial $30 million investment from its government. Eric C. Anderson, who is the president and chief executive of Space Adventures, said Singapore would soon announce spaceport plans of its own.


Summary: The vehicles would be designed by a Russian company, and the first ships could be ready before 2008, said one of the entrepreneurs, whose name is Hamid Ansari, who with his wife, Anousheh, and brother, Amir, helped finance the Ansari X Prize competition the one that resulted in the first privately funded human flight to the edge of space, in 2004.


Summary: Medtronic and Guidant recalled certain heart defibrillators, both companies provided new devices free and agreed to reimburse patients up to $2,500 in out-of-pocket expenses. The government and Medtronic have started talks to determine the producer's potential liabilities. Medtronic, the country's biggest producer of heart devices, said that the medical costs of a replacement operation were effectively offset by its provision of a free device. Both Medtronic and Guidant face scores of lawsuits, and Guidant is also under investigation by the Justice Department in connection with its handling of safety issues involving those devices. The plaintiffs' lawyers involved in Medtronic and Guidant cases said they believed that recent changes in federal law had opened the door for them to bring claims on Medicare's behalf.


Summary: Both Medtronic and Guidant face scores of lawsuits, and Guidant is also under investigation by the Justice Department in connection with its handling of safety issues involving those devices.


Summary: Larry Kessler, who is the director of the office of science and engineering laboratories at the Food and Drug Administration, said that agency had yet to decide whether such a electronic system would be mandatory or voluntary but that it expected to hold public hearings in several months.


Summary: Developing nations expressed anger at what they said was a United States-led effort to wrest power from them and give authority for bringing major change at the United Nations to the 15-member Security Council. Conflict burst into the open after John R. Bolton, the American ambassador to the United Nations, scheduled Security Council briefings on two volatile issues that many on the 191-member General Assembly believe are their responsibility and two United States congressmen wrote an accusatory letter to Ambassador Dumisani S. Kumalo of South Africa, head of the Group of 77, which represents 132 developing nations. Mr. Bolton, who is the president of the Security Council this month, set meetings next week on what the United Nations has been doing about charges of sexual exploitation by peacekeepers and an audit on waste approaching $300 million in the peacekeeping purchasing department.


Summary: Per F. Peterson, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley said that a major part of the logic behind the U.S. decision to forgo reprocessing is now perversely incorrect.


Summary: The energy secretary, Samuel W. Bodman, told a Senate committee last week that the administration's solution to energy problems was transformational technologies. There are also political problems that favor radical approaches like a new reprocessing plan.


Summary: After thirty years, President Bush has proposed a new version of reprocessing. On the other hand, by reintroducing reprocessing, President Bush is trying to develop a different source of fuel for reactors when the uranium they use is plentiful. But President Bush's approach to energy, ranging from fuel cells to ethanol to a new generation of nuclear reactors and reprocessing factories, is highly optimistic.


Summary: Senator Pete V. Domenici, who is the Republican of New Mexico and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, spoke warmly of the idea. He said it would help the United States regain leadership in the nuclear field. Mr. Domenici said that they stopped, and the world didn't.


Summary: As a naval officer, Jimmy Carter helped design nuclear reactors for submarines. But as president, Mr. Carter banned the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to extract material that would be useful in reactors and bombs. Mr. Carter's suspension prevented the production of potentially cheaper fuel.


Summary: Strong sales and lower unemployment will encourage the Federal Reserve to continue increasing its benchmark short-term interest rate when its policy makers which meet in March, some economists said. The economist named Ben S. Bernanke, who also happens to be the new Federal Reserve chairman, also suggested that short-term interest rates might be headed higher soon.


Summary: The Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident dominated public discourse on the current week, many people still found time to buy and sell everything from toasters to the generating stations needed to power them.


Summary: The company said they would consider a different capital and corporate structure for Time Warner Cable, suggesting a spinoff had not been ruled out. Under the agreement, Time Warner will repurchase $20 billion worth of its stock $15 billion this year and the rest in 2007.


Summary: The Interior Department estimates it will let energy companies take about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal lands without paying any royalties to the government.


Summary: John F. Cape, is Mr. Pataki's budget director. Legislative leaders have a dim view of Mr. Cape; the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, said last week that the budget division ought to go back to kindergarten and learn how to count. There are certainly wide differences between the $110.6 billion budget Mr. Pataki proposed and the budget that the Legislature agreed to. The Legislature said its budget totaled $112.4 billion, but Mr. Cape said it was between $114 billion and $115 billion.


Summary: E.J. McMahon, a budget expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute said that they are leaving the next governor with an exploding cigar.


Summary: Representative John Lewis, a former Freedom Rider who was beaten in Selma, Ala. Mr. Lewis's district, the Fifth Congressional, encompassing much of urban Atlanta, would look quite different had there been no action, he said, and he is certain that someone besides himself would have represented it for the last 20 years.


Summary: Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a former builder, acknowledges that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone achievement of the civil rights movement, was necessary in its day to register blacks and overturn decades of laws preventing them from voting. Mr. Westmoreland is one of many conservative Republicans who have serious problems with the law. Mr. Westmoreland said he intended to propose an amendment to the reauthorization bill that would make preclearance nationwide.


Summary: Jeanette Luhr, a TNS manager, said that the number of millionaire families rose to 7.1 million in 1999, who directed the survey, and then, after the Internet bubble burst, dropped steadily to 5.5 million within 2002. The ranks of millionaire households rose to 6.2 million in 2003 to 8.2 million in 2004, she said. Ms. Luhr again said that in most large counties, about one household in 12, or about 8.5 percent, was worth $1 million or more.


Summary: For Rajee Kumaran, Dubai was the city of dreams. But after five years, surviving in squalid conditions and barely making ends meet on less than $200 a month, Mr. Kumaran, 28, says his dream has long since faded. For years, workers like Mr. Kumaran have done whatever they could to get here, often paying thousands of dollars to unscrupulous recruiters for the chance to work. Mr. Kumaran, who earns 550 dirhams every month, or about $150, as a laborer, sends home almost half his earnings and lives on the equivalent of roughly $60 a month.


Summary: The hotel was part of the French-owned Meridien chain. In 1988 or 1989 managers at Palestine were not certain Le Meridien sold the hotel to a group of investors, with the Iraqi government taking a 51 percent stake.


Summary: Other members of Pfizer's compensation committee are Robert N. Burt, former chief executive of the FMC Corporation; Stanley O. Ikenberry, president emeritus of the University of Illinois; and George A. Lorch, chairman emeritus of Armstrong Holdings Inc.


Summary: Glass, Lewis & Company, which is the investment advisory firm, recommends that stockholders withhold votes from Dana G. Mead, chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation, who leads Pfizer's compensation committee.


Summary: Northern Trust is  a financial services company in Chicago, which owns 99 million Pfizer shares on behalf of its clients, but the company also holds the lucrative job of trustee for some of Pfizer's retirement plans. In 2004, the most recent year for which filings are available, Northern Trust received $490,000 in fees for its work as trustee of one Pfizer savings plan. Previous year, according to public filings, Northern Trust's mutual funds voted with Pfizer management on all matters, including director elections.


Summary: Microsoft offered on Wednesday to give rival software companies unlimited technical support to help them develop programs that work smoothly with the Windows operating system, the company's latest effort to comply with a European Commission order and avoid daily fines of up to 2 million euros ($2.4 million). Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said that they were committed to doing everything in our power to address the commission's concerns.


Summary: Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said that they are committed to do everything in their power to address the commission's concerns.


Summary: Jonathan Todd, a spokesman, said that while Microsoft's move was positive, rivals should not have to rely on help from Microsoft and that the technical documents it was ordered to draw up should be clear enough not to require technical support.


Summary: On Wednesday, Microsoft offered to give rival software companies unlimited technical support to help them develop programs that work smoothly with the Windows operating system, the company's latest effort to comply with a European Commission order and avoid daily fines of up to 2 million euros. The company previously offered to give rivals 500 hours of free technical support. The offer comes a week ahead of a hearing to determine whether Microsoft is complying with a March 2004 antitrust ruling that found it guilty of abusing the dominant position of Windows in the software market in Europe. According to the 2004 decision, Microsoft must disclose information about Windows to allow rivals to build server systems that work as well with Windows as Microsoft's own server software.


Summary: Mr. Eppolito, testimony showed, holed up in his garage beside a knife collection writing screenplays, while Mr. Caracappa tried his hand at selling George Foreman punching-bag machines through the home-shopping channel QVC.


Summary: In his fourth day on the stand, Mr. Kaplan described how, on the day of his arrest, a parade of 20 to 25 investigators from different agencies courted his cooperation. He never said a word that night at the Manhattan office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, adding that the scene was just the start of an eight-year attempt to win his cooperation against the two men, who, by that point, had left the Police Department and were living across the street from each other in Las Vegas.


Summary: The site of both trials is the drug trial and the current trial in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, which can sometimes feel as small as a village.


Summary: The federal trial of Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa veered from Brooklyn murder and Las Vegas lunacy to the poker game played by the authorities and turncoats when the trial's star witness told the jury of the immense pressure placed on him to cooperate against the two defendants. The two men are accused of working under Mr. Kaplan's direction while they were detectives to commit at least eight murders, seven of them for Anthony Casso, the No. 2 men in the Luchese crime family.


Summary: The two men are accused of working under Mr. Kaplan's direction while they were detectives to commit at least eight murders, seven of them for Anthony Casso, the No. 2 men in the Luchese crime family. A short, bald, myopic man, that he had never worried about his life, even when Mr. Casso, the gangster, put a contract on it, because he was skilled at diversionary driving.


Summary: Under questioning by Bruce Cutler, Mr. Eppolito said his former lawyer, Gerald Shargel, had laid down on the job and curried favor with the prosecutors to avoid an investigation into Mr. Shargel's conduct. Mr. Shargel himself turned up in court, saying in a hallway that Mr. Kaplan's accusations were ridiculous. So far, there have been two running themes at the trial literature and lawyers.


Summary: The death last March of that patient, a college student, set off a chain of events that would lead to the scrutiny of Guidant, the recalls of thousands of its devices, and some 145 lawsuits and investigations by the Food and Drug Administration and the Justice Department.


Summary: Dr. Myerburg said he met with top executives of Boston Scientific, who had flown out to Indianapolis to be briefed about his findings. Boston Scientific agreed to acquire Guidant for $27 billion. Boston Scientific said Dr. Myerburg's panel had made a number of excellent recommendations, some of which should benefit both Guidant and Boston Scientific. Dr. Myerburg said, Boston Scientific did not make commitments to adopt specific recommendations like the appointment of an outside medical panel to monitor device safety and advise Guidant about disclosures.


Summary: The Guidant Corporation may have gotten more than it bargained for when it appointed a panel last year to look into its practices after it came under scrutiny for its failure to publicize flaws in its heart devices. The 12-member panel not only urged the company to overhaul its disclosure process. At the time, Guidant executives were faced with the choice of recalling potentially defective heart defibrillators or allowing doctors to implant them. The panel appeared to reinforce its central finding that on patient safety issues, Guidant was a company driven by engineers, rather than doctors, and to underline the troubling consequences that can result. Guidant has said that it will adopt some of the measures proposed by the group, including appointing a company doctor charged with patient safety.


Dr. Myerburg
Robert J. Myerburg
Myerburg

Summary: The toughness of the report may reflect the person Guidant appointed to head the effort, Dr. Robert J. Myerburg, a professor of medicine at the University of Miami. Dr. Myerburg, 69, has been involved in some of the landmark studies supporting the critical value of defibrillators, electrical devices that sense and interrupt potentially fatal heart rhythms. Dr. Myerburg said that he and other physicians on the panel had an immediate realization when they began work: for years, device makers had not provided them with detailed data on defibrillator failure, and they, as doctors, had been so taken with the life-saving technology that they had never asked for that data.


Summary: A short, bald, myopic man, he told Edward Hayes, Mr. Caracappa's lawyer, that he had never worried about his life, even when Mr. Casso, the gangster, put a contract on it, because he was skilled at diversionary driving.


Summary: He also suggested that Mr. Shargel had an insurmountable conflict of interest at the drug trial, one that Mr. Bruce Cutler, Mr. Eppolito's lawyer sought to explore. He asked Mr. Kaplan if Mr. Shargel had had a familial relationship with a witness in the case, Mr. Kaplan said yes, Mr. Shargel's sister's stepdaughter had been going out with a witness at the trial. Mr. Cutler got Mr. Kaplan to admit that he had no remorse for all  the destruction he had caused, and to acknowledge that what he wants by testifying is a reduction in his sentence.


Summary: The federal trial of Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa veered from Brooklyn murder and Las Vegas lunacy to the poker game played by the authorities. The witness, Burton Kaplan, an aging marijuana dealer, testified that after his arrest in 1996 on drug and tax evasion charges, against Mr. Eppolito, 57, and Mr. Caracappa, 64. The two men are accused of working under Mr. Kaplan's direction while they were detectives to commit at least eight murders, seven of them for Anthony Casso, the No. 2 man in the Luchese crime family.


Summary: A police union official said that Officer Alfredo Toro, who shot Officer Hernandez, would like to attend Officer Hernandez's funeral.


Summary: Detective Ed Gardner, the general manager of the department's football team, on which Officer Hernandez, 24, was a running back, said he was planning something special for Officer Hernandez's family.


State Lobbying Commission
Lobbying Commission

Summary: This week, the state's Lobbying Commission disclosed that two rail companies, Canadian Pacific Railway, and the New York Susquehanna & Western Railway, had applied to take members of 17 different legislative committees and six state agencies, along with their families and staffs, by private train from Saratoga Springs to Montreal, and to provide breakfast and lunch along the way, as well as dinner in the Canadian city. It also comes as the Lobbying Commission's administrative staff has imposed a $75 a year gift limit, instead of allowing lobbyists to give legislators as many gifts worth $74.99 or less as they pleased.


Summary: The disclosure that the rail companies are aiming to pay for face time with most of the New York State Legislature could not come at a more awkward time, just as the political world is buzzing over the widening scandal surrounding the disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. At a meeting of the state Lobbying Commission, which oversees lobbyists and their clients, the executive director, David M. Grandeau, called it the kind of loophole that allows the Jack Abramoff's of the world to operate. But the commission is limited in what it can do.


Summary: At  Wednesday meeting of the state Lobbying Commission, which oversees lobbyists and their clients, the executive director, David M. Grandeau, called the kind of loophole that allows the Jack Abramoffs of the world to operate. But the commission is limited in what it can do.


Canadian Pacific Railway
Canadian Pacific

Summary: This week, the state's Lobbying Commission disclosed that two rail companies, Canadian Pacific Railway,  and the New York Susquehanna & Western Railway had applied to take members of 17 different legislative committees and six state agencies, along with their families and staffs, by private train from Saratoga Springs to Montreal, and to provide breakfast and lunch along the way, as well as dinner in the Canadian city. It's a commercial shipping company that owns rail lines in New York and Canada and has a $26 million partnership with the state to upgrade its line between Albany and Montreal as well as the infrastructure around it, like raising overpasses to allow larger rail cars.


Summary: The disclosure that the rail companies are aiming to pay for face time with most of the New York State Legislature could not come at a more awkward time, just as the political world is buzzing over the widening scandal surrounding the disgraced  lobbyist Jack Abramoff.


Summary: Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester district attorney, made her mark during 12 years in office as a zealous pursuer of sex offenders. She remains outspoken in supporting a law that would confine convicted sex felons civilly after their criminal sentences have ended. Ms. Pirro is running for state attorney general, raised questions about her record as a prosecutor, releasing an analysis of her conviction rate in sex crimes that he said belied her public stance. Ms. Pirro's record, cited a case in which a 29-year-old man who was indicted on several counts of rape, sexual abuse and stalking was allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges of child endangerment and public lewdness.


Summary: Andrea Tantaros, a spokesperson for Ms. Pirro did not dispute Mr. Brodsky's data, but she said the numbers did not tell the whole story. Tantaros also accused Mr. Brodsky of playing politics with the issue and making a desperate attempt to hide from his abysmal record on the issue. Mr. Brodsky recently voted in favor of a civil confinement bill, of which he was a co-sponsor after the bill had languished for years in the Democratic-controlled Assembly.


Summary: Mr. Brodsky said, those charged with a sex crime pleaded guilty to offenses other than sex crimes, ensuring that they would not be listed on the statewide sex offender registry meant to alert local law enforcement authorities and the public that a person convicted of a sex crime is in their midst. Mr. Brodsky, who is running against Andrew Cuomo, Mark Green and Denise O'Donnell, a former United States attorney ,said a civil confinement law, which lawmakers in Albany are now considering, would not solve the problem of sexual predators if prosecutors did not also make cases that lead to tough sentencing. Tantaros also accused him of playing politics with the issue and making a desperate attempt to hide from his abysmal record on the issue. Mr. Brodsky recently voted in favor of a civil confinement bill, after the bill had languished for years in the Democratic-controlled Assembly.


Summary: Emily Lloyd, the department's commissioner, said she would have preferred to resolve the sewage violation in some other way other than back in the courtroom, but she said she understood the court's position. Lloyd and  Christopher Ward, has made substantial improvements in management and communications, clearing up violations and imposing new standards and regulations.


New York City Department of Environmental Protection

Summary: New York City's Department of Environmental Protection admitted yesterday that its failure to maintain and repair backup generators at several sewage treatment plants violated environmental laws and caused the illegal discharge of 30 million gallons of untreated human waste into the East River during the 2003 blackout. The Department  is entrusted with performing critical functions for all the citizens, including the provision of drinking water and the prevention of water pollution as Mr. Garcia said in a statement. The department was put on probation and forced to submit to a court-mandated monitor in 2001 after a federal investigation found a renegade attitude among some workers in the upstate watershed who violated the  laws or treated them as mere nuisances.


Summary: In yesterday's proceeding in United States District Court in White Plains, officials admitted that backup power systems in two of the city's 14 sewage treatment plants that should have kicked in immediately after the lights went out in August 2003  not functioned properly.


Summary: Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney whose office has been investigating the department for more than five years, said the agency had failed to meet a basic responsibility of ensuring that the pumps were in good working order so they could be used in an emergency like the blackout, which knocked out power to 50 million people in the Northeastern United States. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is entrusted with performing critical functions for all the citizens including the provision of drinking water and the prevention of water pollution  according to Garcia.


United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court

Summary: A handful of property owners in New London, who have resisted having their property taken by eminent domain even after the United States Supreme Court ruled last year that the taking was legal, could be allowed to stay on their land  or at least very close to it  under a plan approved by the City Council. The city took the property in 2000 to make way for construction of the project, but it was paralyzed while property owners sued to keep their property and eventually took the case to the  Court.


Summary: The driver and passengers in the Taurus were returning home to Elizabeth, after finishing their shifts at a Houlihan's restaurant in Holmdel, New Jersey. The federal safety board said in its report that the  Department of Transportation had concluded that a median was not needed along that stretch of the highway.


Summary: For the last few days, two of the most powerful Republicans in the state, those are Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, have kept their growing feud below the surface, with neither saying unkind words about the other. Aides to the mayor say he is considering the move because he is increasingly frustrated by what he considers a refusal by his fellow Republicans in Albany to give the city its share of revenue.


Summary: Two of the most powerful Republicans in the state, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, have kept their growing feud below the surface. But that ended when Mr. Bruno said the mayor should know that bullies end up getting bloody noses. His remarks came two days after The New York Times reported that Mr. Bloomberg might support a Democratic bid to unseat a Republican state senator in Queens. Mr. Bruno, in his first public comments, said that anyone who suggested the city was getting the short shrift in Albany.


Summary: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, questioned the mayor's motivation, saying he might simply be getting back at Republicans who did not support his re-election. Mr. Silver said he hoped Mr. Bloomberg would begin to speak to his fellow Republicans in a sterner fashion.


Summary: For the last few days, two of the most powerful Republicans in the state, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the State Senate majority leader named Joseph L. Bruno, have kept their growing feud below the surface, with neither saying unkind words about the other. But that ended Tuesday when Mr. Bruno said the mayor should know that bullies end up getting bloody noses. His remarks came two days after The New York Times reported that Mr. Bloomberg might support a Democratic bid to unseat a Republican state senator in Queens an effort that, if successful, would weaken the Republican hold on the Senate.


Summary: Naral Pro-Choice New York countered in an e-mail message to the news media that President Bush is already pumping millions into abstinence programs that have been shown not to work. Tom Suozzi should know better and not join the Bush administration in putting taxpayer dollars into programs that fall short of what our teens need. The clash had political overtones, since Naral previously endorsed Eliot Spitzer as the state attorney general, and is considering endorsing him for governor. What drew Naral's criticism were two grants to a Protestant-affiliated group and an anti-abortion group, to promote abstinence.


Summary: The program of College Board's Advanced Placement program is taking on increased prominence in the national effort to ratchet up the rigor of American high school education, mentioned in President Bush's State of the Union message and embraced by individual states. According to the second annual report from the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program, about 60 percent of American high schools now offer Advanced Placement courses, and the average high school offers a choice of eight such courses. Gaston Caperton, the president of the board, a New York-based nonprofit organization said that the number of students participating in A.P. has more than doubled in 10 years, and today almost 15,000 U.S. schools offer A.P. courses.


Summary: The College Board's Advanced Placement program is taking on increased prominence in the national effort to ratchet up the rigor of American high school education, mentioned in President Bush's State of the Union message and embraced by individual states.


Summary: The College Board's Advanced Placement program is taking on increased prominence in the national effort to ratchet up the rigor of American high school education, mentioned in President Bush's State of the Union message and embraced by individual states. In his message, President Bush highlighted the need to prepare young Americans to be more competitive globally, proposed to expand incentives to quadruple the number of students taking A.P. science and math exams, to 1.5 million, within 2012.


Summary: The College Board's Advanced Placement program is taking on increased prominence in the national effort to ratchet up the rigor of American high school education, mentioned in President Bush's State of the Union message and embraced by individual states. According to the second annual report from the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program, about 60 percent of American high schools now offer Advanced Placement courses, and the average high school offers a choice of eight such courses. Gaston Caperton, the president of the board said that the number of students participating in A.P. has more than doubled in 10 years, and today almost 15,000 U.S. schools offer A.P. courses, a New York-based nonprofit organization.


Summary: The College Board's Advanced Placement program is taking on increased prominence in the national effort to ratchet up the rigor of American high school education, mentioned in President Bush's State of the Union message and embraced by individual states. According to the second annual report from the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program, about 60 percent of American high schools now offer Advanced Placement courses.


Summary: Gretchen Dykstra, is the president and chief executive of the memorial foundation who said that they hope that she tells the difficult story of Sept. 11 just as well. She said that Mr. Greenwald seemed ideally suited to the post, for which Ms. Dykstra said some 35 people applied and 8 were interviewed. he further said that she is a woman of real depth and thoughtfulness.


Summary: Seeking a leader to guide a much-disputed 9/11 museum into existence at ground zero, officials announced that they had settled on Alice M. Greenwald, an associate director for museum programs at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. In Ms. Greenwald, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation sought someone seasoned in addressing a highly charged chapter of history to plan the museum. Ms. Greenwald began working at the Holocaust Museum as a consultant in 1986. Ms. Greenwald said it was too soon to specify an operating budget, which will devote 65,000 square feet to exhibition space, compared with the Holocaust Museum's 36,000 square feet.


Summary: For several years, Kenji Matsuura, a biologist at Okayama University in Japan, has studied faux eggs, which he calls termite balls. But in a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Matsuura showed that the presence or absence of fungal balls had no effect on the eggs. He concludes that the mimicry is clearly parasitic behavior, advantageous for only one party.


Summary: Dr. Lee S. Cohen, the lead author on the study and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, emphasized that it was an observational study of women who were already taking the drugs and not a randomized trial. Two of the authors have consulted for pharmaceutical companies that make antidepressants or have accepted research money from them. According to the authors, these rates of relapse are similar to those of depressed women who are not pregnant and stop their medicine. Dr. Cohen of Massachusetts General also stressed weighing the risks and said that the data helped to refine the risk-benefit decision of doctors and patients.


Summary: Dr. Lee S. Cohen, is the lead author on the study and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, emphasized that this was an observational study of women who were already taking the drugs, and not a randomized trial. Two of the authors have consulted for pharmaceutical companies that make antidepressants or have accepted research money from them. According to the authors, these rates of relapse are similar to those of depressed women who are not pregnant and stop their medicine.


Summary: American Catholics raised in the years after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, church teaching has usually mixed orthodoxy with contemporary notions about the value of dialogue, self-exploration, and the full-fledged participation of women in society. Like other critics, Mr. Kunz said the changes seemed to reflect a growing impatience among church leaders with a generation raised on a collaborative and humanistic approach to church teaching favored after the Second Vatican Council.


Summary: Bishop William F. Murphy, writing in the diocesan newspaper, said the reorganization reflected an assessment of our strengths and weaknesses but stressed that it would not mean a major change in the content of what we offer, which is the teaching of the Church. Bishop Murphy said in his column, however, that the process of re-evaluation that led to the changes involved an almost year-long process that sought input from over 600 persons. Mr. Dolan, the diocesan spokesman, said that Bishop Murphy's changes of the doctrinal teaching administration had been made solely in reaction to his own mission to teach and spread the faith among a flock that is growing on Long Island mainly among Hispanic and Korean immigrants.


Summary: All but three of them are women either lay professionals, members of religious orders or secretaries and office managers, according to Phyllis Zagano, a senior research associate in the religion department at Hofstra University who specializes in the study of women in the Catholic church. Ms. Zagano said that what this looks like to him, from the outside, is that Bishop Murphy is not comfortable with women having a role in the teaching of church doctrine.


Summary: Timothy Kunz, a lay director of religious formation at St. Peter of Alcantara Church, said he viewed the restructuring as a paradigm shift toward the absolute and away from diversity and dialogue among church leaders within the diocese.  Like other critics, Mr. Kunz said the changes seemed to reflect a growing impatience among church leaders with a generation raised on a collaborative and humanistic approach to church teaching favored after the Second Vatican Council.


Summary: Sean P. Dolan, who is a spokesman for the diocese, said that while the number of women in the offices was large, it was premature to assume that women would not be fairly represented in the new system, a combined agency into which the departments would be folded, along with an adult education academy known as the Pastoral Formation Institute. Mr. Dolan said that there is no prejudice involved here whatsoever. He added that the workers let go could to apply for jobs in the new office.


Summary: Nikolina's mother, Zalibena Mehmeti, one of this city's Roma said that her limbs turned blue, and she was shaking, one of this city's Roma, often known as Gypsies. Roma rights groups say that up to 31 Roma have been killed by diseases brought on by lead poisoning, a problem that grew acute for them six and half years ago. That was when the United Nations mission that controls this province set up three refugee camps in the north part of the city for Roma who were displaced when ethnic Albanians took their homes across town at the end of the Kosovo war.


Summary: It was when the United Nations mission that controls this province set up three refugee camps in the north part of the city for Roma who were displaced when ethnic Albanians took their homes across town at the end of the Kosovo war in 1999. Soon after the Roma moved in, the United Nations realized that they were living on contaminated land. Several reports by the United Nations mission and the World Health Organization dating to 2000 recommended their immediate removal.


Summary: Nikolina Mehmeti looks like any healthy 3-year-old girl. She has big eyes, a coy smile and babbles to anyone ready to listen. But a year and a half ago her parents were worried about her life.


Summary: Even before last April's disastrous floods, the Meyers Grove neighborhood along the Neversink River wasn't exactly Malibu, just an unpretentious jumble of modest houses, trailers and bungalows, many of them converted from summer vacation cottages. Last year's flooding on the Delaware River and some of its tributaries, including the Neversink, may be a fleeting memory downstate, but for residents in Meyers Grove, along Rivers Edge Road down the road in nearby Huguenot and in dozens of other riverside towns and hamlets, it's no more past than Katrina is for residents of the Gulf Coast.


Congressional
Congressional Budget Office
Congress

Summary: Under current law, it will climb by one-third in two years, reaching $445 billion in 2007, as the new prescription drug program gets under way, as the Congressional Budget Office said.


Summary: In his upcoming budget next week, President Bush will propose substantial savings in Medicare, stepping up his efforts to rein in the growing costs of social insurance programs, administration officials and health care lobbyists as said on Friday. For the first time since taking office five years ago, they said, Mr. Bush will try to reduce projected Medicare payments to hospitals and other health care providers by billions of dollars for the next five years. In addition, they said, Mr. Bush intends to seek further increases in Medicare premiums for high-income people, beyond those already scheduled to take effect next year.


Summary: Jack Ashby, who is a research director at the commission said that they expect the recommendation to have no effect on hospitals' ability to furnish care to Medicare beneficiaries. But Richard J. Pollack is the executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, said the cutback could damage the quality of hospital care. He said already that two-thirds of hospitals lose money serving Medicare patients. Mr. Pollack said that at the same time cuts are being proposed, and said that demands on hospitals are increasing.


Summary: Justice Carol A. Beier wrote for the court that the type of information sought by the state here could hardly be more sensitive, or the potential harm to patient privacy posed by disclosure more substantial.


State Supreme Court
Kansas Supreme Court
United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court

Summary: After 22 weeks, in cases where the fetus would be viable outside the womb, abortions are allowed here only when continuation of the pregnancy will cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman. Mr. Kline has said he disagrees with the United States Supreme Court's explication that harm to the pregnant woman's mental health justifies such a procedure. But the State Supreme Court affirmed Friday that the mental health of the pregnant woman remains a consideration necessary to assure the constitutionality of the Kansas criminal abortion statute, a crucial point for the clinics in defending their doctors' decisions to do late-term abortions. The Supreme Court decision was announced as Mr. Kline was testifying in federal court here in a separate suit on the reporting requirements.


Summary: Peter Brownlie, who is the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, called it a victory for women's medical privacy. Mr. Brownlie said that they have said throughout that the attorney general is free to investigate us, and we stand by that.


Summary: The Kansas Supreme Court restricted an unusual and divisive investigation by Phill Kline who is an Attorney General into illegal abortions and child rape, ruling that the names and personal information of 90 women and girls must be removed from the records he is seeking from two abortion clinics. While granting most of the clinics' requests in a lawsuit seeking to keep the records private, the court did not prevent Mr. Kline from obtaining the records, leaving that decision to a lower court judge.