Summary: He served on the local school board, then was elected to the City Council in 1991, a job he loved and left only because of term limits.


Summary: Circle Line continues to support efforts to upgrade Pier A, and though we have seen the activity of a sightseeing business, we are not aware that it has received approval from appropriate agencies. Circle Line has the most to lose if Mr. Wachtel succeeds. Circle Line's longstanding contract to operate ferries to the statue and Ellis Island is scheduled to expire in less than a year and Mr. Wachtel has said he may bid for it.


Summary: Clarenbach said it's important to challenge the kids on the other end, too. She said that while the extra $90 million President Bush has budgeted this year for Advanced Placement math and science programs was good news, the need to do more K to 8 so more kids will be in a position to take the A.P. tests in high school.


Summary: The money will be doled out largely by the State of Louisiana; the role of any future New Orleans mayor will be strictly secondary.


Summary: Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the most politically polished of the lot, a veteran state legislator and the son of a former mayor and brother of a United States senator. Two of these three candidates are all but certain to meet in a May runoff, the field of 22 is testimony to post hurricane civic activism, but the other 19 are given little chance, and Mr. Landrieu thinks he will be one of them, precisely because of his biracial appeal. Mr. Landrieu, who is white, said in an interview last weekend said that he is the only candidate that has African-American and white support, in equal numbers, before castigating his two major opponents for representing narrower segments of the electorate.


Summary: After a month of testimony, the fourth Vioxx-related personal injury trial ended Monday with well-worn closing arguments from lawyers for Merck and for two men who say the company's drug Vioxx caused their heart attacks. Less than two years after Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market, and eight months after the first Vioxx case reached a verdict, litigation over the drug has settled into something of a groove. In this case, as in the earlier suits, lawyers for Merck insisted that the company fully disclosed Vioxx's potential dangers to regulators and the public. Merck stopped selling Vioxx in 2004 after a clinical trial showed that the drug caused more heart attacks and strokes than a placebo, but Merck says that the study did not reveal a difference in danger for patients who took the drug for less than 18 months.


Summary: Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of federal district court, who accepted the guilty plea, said that Mr. Rivkin's sentence would depend on how well he cooperated with prosecutors. He could be sentenced to as much as five years in prison for each count he admitted.


Summary: Just about everyone in baseball is to blame: the big league and minor league steroid users; the clean players who said nothing for too long; the players association leaders, Don Fehr and Gene Orza; and, of course, the baseball owners and Commissioner Bud Selig. That's why it seems farcical that Selig is only now opening an investigation into steroid use, an investigation prompted by a book, "Game of Shadows," that accuses Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants of using steroids. Selig himself was quoted in the same article, saying, if baseball has a problem, he must say candidly that they are not aware of it. In 1998, Mark McGwire acknowledged his use of androstenedione, a steroid precursor.


Summary: In the House, the Republican leadership intends to bring a plan to impose new restrictions on 527 groups to the floor next week to spur action in the Senate, where Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, a champion of the campaign finance bill that bears his name, is offering similar legislation. Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, an antitax group that has been sued by the election commission over the conduct of its 527 in a 2004 Senate race, unless and until they actually manage to repeal the First Amendment itself, we are going to find a way to give voice to the tens of thousands of people who share our views and want to have a voice in the political process. Veteran Democratic operatives just established a new group called Fresh Start for America, which is expected to engage in Senate races this year.


Summary: The Justice Department said yesterday that it had arrested an Iraqi-American translator from Michigan on bribery charges in the latest case involving accusations of corruption, which have become a steady accompaniment to the war in Iraq. The Justice Department said the translator, Faheem Mousa Salam, 27, of Livonia, Mich., probably acting as an intermediary for others who have not yet been identified, offered tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to people inside the Iraqi Interior Ministry for a contract to provide some $1 million in flak jackets and other equipment to an organization that trains Iraqi police officers.


Summary: The first witness, Harry Samit, an F.B.I. agent in Minnesota who questioned Zacarias Moussaoui at his arrest, firmly asserted that had he been given the truth they would have several new leads to investigate, and the plot might have been thwarted. Instead, he said, Mr. Moussaoui's answers sent investigators on a lost cause. Under cross-examination by Edward B. MacMahon Jr., a court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Moussaoui, Mr. Samit acknowledged that after the attacks he had written strongly worded reports saying his superiors had improperly blocked his efforts to investigate Mr. Moussaoui.


Summary: Zacarias Moussaoui in jail on Sept. 11, but prosecutors have argued that he deserves to be executed because he lied to investigators about what he knew of Al Qaeda plans to fly planes into buildings when he was arrested three weeks earlier on immigration violations. On Monday, defense lawyers are expected to offer a set of extraordinary trial exhibits, statements about Mr. Moussaoui by a handful of senior Qaeda officials gathered somewhere in the secret overseas detention centers that the C.I.A. maintains. For years, agents have expressed the view that Mr. Moussaoui knew little about what his Qaeda superiors wanted of him and had said that it was highly speculative whether more information would have deterred the attacks.


Summary: Liberal bloggers first pointed to previous comments by Ben Domenech, who recently called Coretta Scott King a communist.


Summary: L. Tammy Duckworth, a retired Army major who lost her legs in Iraq and has the backing of some of the Democratic Party's national leaders, declared victory on Wednesday in a close Congressional primary in suburban Chicago, setting up a carefully watched race for the seat of Representative Henry J. Hyde, a Republican who is retiring after 32 years.


Summary: Richard J. Codey, the president of the State Senate who got an up-close look at the state's budget dilemma as Mr. Corzine's predecessor, said that when Gov. Jon S. Corzine got in there, he realized that there's no easy answer and that he doesn't have any wiggle room there, because of all the decisions that were made before he got there. He said that he thinks the governor has presented himself as a thoughtful governor who's willing to take some hits to do the right thing, and he can't applaud him enough for it.


Summary: State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., a Republican from Union County who is running for the United States Senate this year, said that they're cutting the aid to schools and colleges and municipal aid, which results directly in people's property taxes going up.


Summary: George E. Pataki instituted a policy barring his appointees and commissioners from raising political donations and rebuked his hand-picked insurance superintendent, Howard D. Mills, for raising $15,000 last year. Mr. Pataki who appointed Mr. Mills to the insurance post after Mr. Mills tried unsuccessfully to unseat Senator Charles E. Schumer in 2004 said at a news conference here on Tuesday that he thought the renewed fund-raising was inappropriate, ''and we've made that plain to him. He said that they didn't believe that people in appointive office commissioners or others working for the state -- should be in a position of raising political funds, period.


Summary: According to Bloomberg News, less progress was made on a plan for a separate pipeline sought by Beijing to deliver oil to China from Siberia, though Russia's energy minister, Viktor B. Khristenko, said a feasibility study would be conducted.


Summary: Eric Kraus, an analyst at the Sovlink brokerage firm in Moscow, said that they are holding the carrot of plentiful Russian energy in front of the Chinese to encourage them to buy other goods, such as heavy industrials.


Summary: Sanofi-Aventis and its partner Bristol-Myers Squibb said late yesterday that they had tentatively settled a patent dispute involving Plavix, the anticlotting agent that is the world's second-best-selling drug. The settlement, which needs approval by the Federal Trade Commission, was considered a positive development for both Sanofi-Aventis, a French company, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is based in New York. In after-hours trading, shares of Bristol-Myers climbed $1.92, to $24.75.


Summary: Arriving on her first day as director of the Museum of Arts and Design 10 years ago, Holly Hotchner was greeted by an eviction notice, a bookkeeper who said the museum could not make payroll and a rat scurrying across the floor of her sub-basement office. The museum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this fall, was founded as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in a Victorian brownstone at 29 West 53rd Street by Aileen Osborn Webb, a leading crafts patron and benefactor. In 2002, the museum changed its name to the Museum of Arts and Design to better reflect its focus, which now includes architecture, fashion, interior design, technology and performing arts as well as crafts, art and design.


Summary: Virgin Atlantic, whose trans-Atlantic business-class service competes at the top of the premium-market niche with the business-class service at British Airways, said it would begin a fourth daily flight between Kennedy International and Heathrow on July 1.


Summary: The polls indicate that either of those two candidates would win in a race against Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester County district attorney, who is running on the Republican side.


Summary: It was pointed out that in statewide contests in New York, the early front-runners often falter, and count as examples Geraldine A. Ferraro's bid for the Senate in 1998 and Edward I. Koch's run for governor in 1982.


Summary: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report released yesterday that the risk from the tritium-contaminated water leaking from the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor is so small that it is unlikely to affect the health of plant workers or the public. In its report, the commission said it had not found any condition that indicates that occupational or public health and safety have been, or likely will be, affected by the current onsite groundwater contamination. The commission said it had reviewed, and did not dispute, an estimate by the plant owner, Entergy, that the largest direct exposure that a member of the public could receive from the leaking tritium was less than one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the maximum that the plant is allowed to cause by leaking liquids.


Summary: In the middle is Lockheed Martin, the Joint Strike Fighter's prime contractor.


Summary: Lord Drayson objected to a recent Pentagon decision to drop a Rolls-Royce-General Electric engine from the program and pointedly told the committee that his country was not even consulted on the decision. The Pentagon wants to make Pratt & Whitney the sole engine supplier for the warplane, a move it says would save $1.8 billion in near-term costs. The Pentagon's decision to drop the Rolls-Royce-General Electric engine has been criticized by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Service Committee.


Summary: The fighter program was also criticized by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, which concluded that the Pentagon should slow its spending on the jet until it was clear the aircraft would work properly.


Summary: Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is charged with helping to elect Republicans to Congress, called the plan a work in progress. Despite the apparent rift, the House proposal signals the leadership's determination to move ahead with some kind of lobbying legislation.


Summary: Two House Republicans, Representatives Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dan Lungren of California said they would introduce competing legislation that would avoid a ban by creating a preapproval process for private travel and require lawmakers to post records of such trips on the Internet. Mr. Flake suggested, private travel has indeed acquired a bad reputation in Washington, when Jack Abramoff, the former lobbyist, pleaded guilty to corruption charges and promised to cooperate with federal investigators. Mr. Flake also said the proposal put too much power in the hands of House committee chairmen and the leadership, who are responsible for approving the taxpayer-financed fact-finding trips.


Summary: Robert A. Homovich, the supervisor of the Town of Colchester, which includes Downsville and other small hamlets below the Pepacton Dam, lives with his wife, Shirley, as close to the dam as anyone. Shortly after the snowpack melt program ended, Mr. Homovich's basement was flooded from floor to ceiling. Now the Homoviches have joined other residents in a class-action lawsuit accusing the city of mismanaging its reservoir.


Summary: Emily Lloyd, the commissioner of the City Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the water system, stated that the reservoirs simply did not have the equipment needed to undertake flood control at a recent public meeting.


Summary: James C. Nicola, the workshop's artistic director, and Lynn Moffat, its managing director, insisted that they wanted only to postpone, not cancel, the show -- despite declarations by the authors and the Royal Court Theater. Ms. Moffat had seen the play in London and neither would say exactly who they spoke to before they decided to delay the show. Ms. Moffat said that she and Mr. Nicola took advice from members of their in-house artistic staff and colleagues. Given the sharply divided opinions of Ms. Moffat decided that the workshop might need to organize nightly post-show talk-backs to provide context as it had done with plays like Mr. Kushner's ''Homebody/Kabul.''


Summary: Members of a core group of lawmakers who raced over the past two weeks to find a compromise that could pass before Congress broke for recess said they were troubled by the outcome, which Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, attributed to trivial issues and partisan backbiting. He said that it is very disappointing, but he shares the determination of his colleague to go forward.


Summary: The United States and the European Union announced Friday that they would halt payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government but that aid would flow to Palestinians through the United Nations and other independent organizations. The European Union's foreign ministers were to meet Monday in Luxembourg to discuss how to carry out their cutoff, but a spokeswoman said on Friday that the outlines of what it would do were already clear. The European Union has been the Palestinian Authority's largest donor since the government was created under the 1993 Oslo peace accords.


Summary: The United States and the European Union announced Friday that they would cease payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government but that aid would flow to Palestinians through the United Nations and other independent organizations. The foreign ministers may try to funnel payments to individual ministries not under Hamas control. It has been warning since Hamas won Palestinian elections earlier this year that the Palestinian Authority would lose that aid unless the Hamas-led government renounced violence, recognized Israel and accept past peace agreements.


Summary: The United States and the European Union announced Friday that they would halt payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government but that aid would flow to Palestinians through the United Nations and other independent organizations. About $100 million would be redirected to the United Nations and other non-Palestinian groups to spend for basic human needs like food, health and schools.


HealthWell Foundation
Patient Access and HealthWell
HealthWell

Summary: Abby S. Meyers said that Lash and Covance have a strong incentive to run the Patient Access and HealthWell foundations in the interest of their corporate clients.


Summary: IT is close to half a century since Horst Fascher was the flyweight boxing champion of Germany, a gold medal prospect in the 1960 Rome Olympics and a young man who knew his way around this wealthy, rough-and-ready port city. Then one night, he got into a street fight with a sailor, who shoved him, and when Mr. Fascher hit back the sailor went down, hit his head, and a few hours later was dead. Mr. Fascher spent six months in jail, and was banned from boxing forever.


Summary: As manager of the brand new Star Club, Horst Fascher brought the Beatles to Hamburg in 1962, when the group was on the cusp of global fame. He is a figure at the very center of the 60's, not only in Hamburg but even in Vietnam, where, after the Star Club, he spent two years managing tours for performers entertaining American troops. The Beatles went to the Star Club a few times, providing Mr. Fascher with some of the stories he recounts in his book, like the time he caught John Lennon in the bathroom with a female fan.


Summary: The agreement between the coalition, Housing Here and Now, and the banks, Citigroup and New York Community Bank, under which the housing advocacy groups will use the banks' leverage as lenders to pressure landlords into repairing dilapidated buildings, represents a new weapon against landlords reluctant to make repairs. The loan portfolios of New York Community Bank and Citigroup together include more than 900 buildings and 66,000 units, according to Housing Here and Now. Using the records of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development and those of Housing Here and Now, the bank will consider past housing code violations, emergency repair liens and litigation.


Summary: The administration has argued strenuously against major changes to the review process, which is undertaken largely in secret by an interagency organization known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, that is led by the Treasury secretary. Under the review process, the committee performs a 30-day review of any deal that could pose a threat to national security. The deals the committee is now reviewing include Toshiba's $5.4 billion purchase of Westinghouse Electric. The committee is also expected to study the proposed $13.4 billion merger of Lucent Technologies with Alcatel of France.


Summary: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a Cuban-born American artist who died in 1996, has been chosen to represent the United States at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Mr. Gonzalez-Torres, who died of AIDS at 38, produced graceful Conceptual works with political and personal messages. Among his works going on view when the Biennale opens in June 2007 will be well-known pieces like his largest light string; a large paper stack from 1992; and a suite of 12 framed black-and-white photographs, an inventory of idealized men.


Summary: Among the bills introduced in the House, the most troublesome to business and Wall Street was introduced by Representative Duncan L. Hunter, the California Republican who heads the House Armed Services Committee.


Summary: Elaine Deane of the British Antique Dealers' Association said that they no longer see a great divide between the dealers and the auction houses. Ms. Deane said she hoped about 50 dealers would participate and that they are hoping furniture will become more popular.


Summary: According to Satmar leaders, Moses Teitelbaum has been hospitalized since Thursday and is on a respirator. One indication of the gravity of Rabbi Teitelbaum's condition is that the Satmars declared an official day of prayer for their leader yesterday, gathering in synagogues, schools and at the cemetery in Orange County where his predecessor is buried. Now the Satmars have two boards of rabbis, each claiming legitimacy.


Summary: Joel Weiss said that Aaron and Zalmen Teitelbaum, the feuding sons of Rabbi Teitelbaum, are both at their father's bedside, facing each other for the first time in several years. The bad blood goes back to 1999, when the grand rabbi chose Zalmen, his third son, to take over the sect's main congregation in Williamsburg. Zalmen's supporters claim that the move made Zalmen the de facto heir.


Summary: James P. Inman, executive director of the Cherokee County Development Board, which led the local drive to attract the new plant, said that the timeline that Duke gave us was that the application process would take three to five years. To attract Duke, county officials agreed to a package of financial incentives, pretty much the same combination of tax breaks offered by the other counties in North and South Carolina that were finalists for the plant. The prospective plant site is about a half-hour southeast of town, on 2,000 sloping acres beside the Broad River that Duke had previously considered for a nuclear plant, 30 years ago, before declining demand and increasing public anxiety about nuclear power caused them to drop the plan.


Summary: The energy companies are finding, especially in the small, struggling Southeastern towns like Gaffney where most of the plants are planned, that memories of those tragedies have faded and that local governments and residents, eager for jobs and tax revenues to replace vanished industries, are embracing them with enthusiasm. Henry B. Barron Jr., chief nuclear officer for Duke Power, which announced last month that it would apply to build its first new nuclear plant in three decades just outside Gaffney said that they were initially looking at 14 communities in the Southeast, and then they narrowed that down to four. The sites tend to be in rural counties whose hard-pressed small towns, like Gaffney, population 13,000, clutch at the chance for new jobs and tax revenue.


Summary: Bill Whelchel, working the main chair at Elmore's Barber Shop on Limestone Street, paused the clippers above his customer's half-sculptured crew cut to consider the question of atomic energy. Mr. Whelchel, 76 said that he's not worried at all about putting in a new nuclear power plant. Indeed, none of Mr. Whelchel's half-dozen customers said they had any problem whatsoever with the idea of a nuclear facility going up down the road.


Summary: Henry B. Barron Jr., chief nuclear officer for Duke Power, which announced last month that it would apply to build its first new nuclear plant in three decades just outside Gaffney, that they initially were looking at 14 communities in the Southeast, and then we narrowed that down to four.


Summary: The new legal strategy is an attempt to strengthen the hand of Gov. George E. Pataki, a lame duck serving his last year in office who watched as the Democrat-led Assembly and the Republican-led Senate joined forces to rebuff many of his initiatives in the budget, which they passed on time for the second year in a row, after two decades of late budgets.


Summary: The governor's press secretary, Michael Marr, declined to comment on the governor's plans.


Summary: A senior aide to the governor said on Sunday that Gov. George E. Pataki is preparing to block roughly $2 billion worth of spending and proposed tax cuts in the budget that the State Legislature passed last month, vetoing some items and declaring that several major programs were passed unconstitutionally. Mr. Pataki is threatening to take aim at several of the Legislature's top priorities, the aide said, including the property tax rebate checks that lawmakers hope to send out before they face re-election in November; the spending that the Legislature added for health care; and the tax credit it passed for most taxpayers with children. One held that the Legislature is sharply limited in how much it can alter a governor's budget proposals; a second held that executives do not have to enforce laws they deem illegal.


Summary: John E. McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said that he believed the bill would pass constitutional muster and that he could not believe the governor would seek to undo it. He said that they doubt very highly that the governor would deprive property owners from Long Island to Buffalo of much-needed property tax relief. He added that the Legislature had tried to comply with a court order requiring that more money be spent on New York City schools, to hire more faculty members for the state's colleges and to improve its health care programs.


Summary: Charles Carrier, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said he, too, believed that the budget was constitutional and that the Legislature had tried to comply with a court order requiring that more money be spent on New York City schools, to hire more faculty members for the state's colleges and to improve its health care programs. Mr. Carrier said that what's unfortunate is the total lack of leadership by the governor.


Summary: Gov. George E. Pataki is preparing to block roughly $2 billion worth of spending and proposed tax cuts in the budget that the State Legislature passed last month, vetoing some items and declaring that several major programs were passed unconstitutionally. The aide said that Mr. Pataki is threatening to take aim at several of the Legislature's top priorities, including the property tax rebate checks that lawmakers hope to send out before they face re-election in November; the spending that the Legislature added for health care; and the tax credit it passed for most taxpayers with children. The governor plans to argue that lawmakers illegally altered several major areas of his proposed $110.6 billion budget and that he is not bound to enforce parts of the budget that were unconstitutionally passed who was granted anonymity because budget negotiations are continuing between the governor and leaders of the Legislature.


Summary: The Mystic Aquarium has already shipped 120 fish to New Orleans, including 54 chocolate cichlids, 24 green severums and 36 blue acará, a pleco, a freshwater stingray and 4 pacus, a vegetarian relative of the piranha. Sending animals to help replenish the ailing aquarium was one way for Mystic Aquarium employees to pay back their colleagues in New Orleans for their help four years ago when Mystic was opening a new exhibit on animals that live in the swamps of the southeastern United States. Later this year Mystic Aquarium may ship a turtle, another pacu and a 10-pound lobster, depending on when their exhibits will be ready in New Orleans.


Summary: The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk is preparing a list of surplus animals, which includes sand tiger sharks and a large snapper, to offer New Orleans. John Lenzycki, the assistant curator of fishes at the Maritime Aquarium, said that what happened there is devastating to folks like them and it doesn't matter whether one works at that institution or not.


Aquarium of the Americas
Audubon Aquarium of the Americas

Summary: When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last summer, the resulting power failure and subsequent generator problem killed many of the 12,000 fish and animals at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. The Aquarium of the Americas sent shrimp and mosquito fish and offered suggestions about how to set up the exhibit, which resembled a science shack in the Louisiana bayou. At Norwalk, Mr. Lenzycki said he had offered the Aquarium of the Americas a 55-pound cubera snapper, an aggressive, fast-growing fish native to the Gulf of Mexico.


Summary: That President Bush authorized an aide to disclose classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons, as asserted in court papers, comes as no shock to official Washington. But the accusation that Mr. Bush, through Vice President Dick Cheney, authorized the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to fight back against critics of the war by discussing a classified prewar intelligence estimate comes at a particularly awkward time for the administration. For months, Mr. Bush and his top aides have campaigned against leaks of classified information as a danger to the nation and as criminal acts.


Summary: A Washington Post report on secret overseas jails run by the C.I.A. and a New York Times report on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency have led to criminal investigations, and scores of intelligence officers have been ordered to take polygraph tests. The prewar presentation to the United Nations by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, used N.S.A. intercepts of Iraqi military officers and satellite photos of Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons sites to make the case. In 1983, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan's United Nations ambassador, used dramatic N.S.A. recordings to denounce the Soviet Union for shooting down a South Korean civilian airliner.


Summary: A Washington Post report on secret overseas jails run by the C.I.A. and a New York Times report on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency have led to criminal investigations, and scores of intelligence officers have been ordered to take polygraph tests. Others picked up the theme, including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director.


Summary: Ronald W. Burkle has also gathered a flock of powerful friends from Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington that numbers former President Bill Clinton in its ranks. Mr. Burkle, a kingmaker in California political circles and a confidant of a former governor, Gray Davis, has also been a loyal supporter of Mr. Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, who both now have business relationships with him.


Summary: Ronald W. Burkle, one of California's richest men, has quietly amassed billions of dollars over the years. An unfolding federal investigation into possible extortion by a contributor to Page Six, The New York Post's popular and influential gossip page, has thrust Mr. Burkle, and the various gilded worlds he inhabits, into the national spotlight. Mr. Burkle is a supermarket mogul and financier who, unlike some tycoons who court gossip columnists, has always said he prefers to be let alone. Mr. Burkle began speculating in the stock market while still a teenager, completed high school early, and dropped out of dental school to return to the grocery store business. Mr. Burkle, a kingmaker in California political circles and a confidant of a former governor, Gray Davis, has also been a loyal supporter of Mr. Clinton.


Summary: An unfolding federal investigation into possible extortion by a contributor to Page Six, The New York Post's popular and influential gossip page, has thrust Mr. Burkle, and the various gilded worlds he inhabits, into the national spotlight. The Post responded with a letter asking Mr. Burkle to provide details on his complaints about the column.


Summary: To assuage concern about military work performed by a Lucent subsidiary, the merged company plans to put that unit, Bell Labs, under a separate board composed of American directors.


Summary: Still, the prospect of dual-use Macs sent Apple's stock -- already bolstered by robust sales of iPod music players up 10 percent the day of the announcement. One analyst forecast that allowing Macs to boot up Windows will double Apple's share of the education and home markets.


Summary: General Motors needs to raise cash because it lost $10.6 billion last year and faces large pension, health care, and severance obligations to its employees and retirees and those of Delphi, the auto parts maker it spun off in 1999. G.M. estimates its liability from the Delphi bankruptcy will be $5.5 billion to $12 billion, meaning that the G.M.A.C. sale may not be enough to cover it.


Summary: The jury awarded John McDarby $3 million and his wife, Irma, another $1.5 million. Mr. McDarby suffered a heart attack in 2004 after taking Vioxx.


Summary: Pilots at Delta Air Lines voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if the airline follows through with plans to invalidate its contract with their union and impose up to $325 million in pay and benefit cuts, including a further 18 percent wage reduction. Delta's pilots had already accepted a 32.5 percent wage cut as part of a $1 billion five-year package of concessions in 2004. Delta has said a strike would put it out of business.


Summary: Brushing aside concerns about national security and foreign ownership, Lucent Technologies agreed to be acquired by Alcatel, the French telecommunications gear maker, in a $13.4 billion merger.


Summary: After 15 years as a host of the Today show on NBC, Katie Couric agreed to become the primary anchor for the ''CBS Evening News,'' the first instance of an American television network's hiring a woman for the lead spot in its news department. CBS, which once dominated the network newscasts, slid to third place after Dan Rather succeeded Walter Cronkite.


Summary: It is free, but requires a newer Mac with an Intel microprocessor.


Verizon
Verizon Communications
Verizon Wireless

Summary: Seeking to concentrate more on the domestic United States market, Verizon Communications agreed to sell three Caribbean and Latin American businesses to two related Mexican phone companies for a total of $3.7 billion. Verizon sold its interests in phone companies in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Verizon could use the money it raises through this and other sales to help it buy the 45 percent of Verizon Wireless it does not own from the Vodafone Group in London, a deal that could cost up to $40 billion.


Summary: General Motors hustled to raise much-needed cash by selling assets, notably a majority stake in its financing arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, for $7.4 billion immediately G.M. also sold a 78 percent stake in the GMAC Commercial Holding Corporation, a real estate venture, for $1.5 billion in cash. G.M. estimates its liability from the Delphi bankruptcy will be $5.5 billion to $12 billion, meaning that the G.M.A.C. sale may not be enough to cover it.


Summary: After 15 years as a host of the ''Today'' show on NBC, Katie Couric agreed to become the primary anchor for the ''CBS Evening News,'' the first instance of an American television network's hiring a woman for the lead spot in its news department. Ms. Couric, 49, will assume the anchor position at CBS in September.


General Motors
General Motors Acceptance Corporation

Summary: General Motors hustled to raise much-needed cash by selling assets, notably a majority stake in its financing arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, for $7.4 billion immediately. G.M. also sold a 78 percent stake in the GMAC Commercial Holding Corporation, a real estate venture, for $1.5 billion in cash. G.M. estimates its liability from the Delphi bankruptcy will be $5.5 billion to $12 billion, meaning that the G.M.A.C. sale may not be enough to cover it.


Summary: CBS, which once dominated the network newscasts, slid to third place after Dan Rather succeeded Walter Cronkite. The audience rebounded somewhat after Mr. Rather left and Bob Schieffer took the anchor spot while CBS looked for a permanent replacement.


Summary: Apple Computer has long advocated that its customers and potential customers think differently. The pitch sought to lure them away from personal computers, but this week Apple took an entirely different tack and released software that would let its Macintosh computers use the dominant Windows operating system as well as Apple's own OS X operating system.


Summary: Lucent Technologies agreed to be acquired by Alcatel, the French telecommunications gear maker, in a $13.4 billion merger. The merger will create a French-American maker of telecommunications equipment, with revenue of $25 billion, 88,000 employees, and phone company customers across the world.


Judas
Judas Iscariot
Didymus Judas Thomas

Summary: Many of the gospels not included in the New Testament claim to offer secret teaching: Thus the Gospel of Thomas opens, ''These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down.'' The Gospel of Mary Magdalene reveals what Jesus showed Mary in a vision, and the Gospel of Judas claims to offer a spiritual mystery entrusted to Judas alone.


Summary: What in the Gospel of Judas, published this week by the National Geographic Society, goes back to Jesus' actual teaching, and how would we know? Many regarded these secret gospels not as radical alternatives to the New Testament Gospels, but as advanced-level teaching for those who had already received Jesus' basic message.


Summary: But now the Gospel of Judas like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and many others open up new perspectives on familiar gospel stories. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene reveals what Jesus showed Mary in a vision, and the Gospel of Judas claims to offer a spiritual mystery entrusted to Judas alone.


Summary: Many of these secret writings, however, were still read and revered by Christians 200 years later when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, an admirer of Irenaeus, wrote an Easter letter to Christians in Egypt. The 27 he named constitute the earliest known list of the New Testament canon, which Athanasius intended above all to be a guideline for books to be read publicly in church.


Summary: The Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism in America, appears close to having a new leader at a pivotal period when the movement is struggling with dwindling membership and the question of becoming more accommodating to gay Jews. The selection, which was first reported by The Jewish Forward on its Web site, could have broad ramifications even beyond Conservative Judaism. The seminary's longtime chancellor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who was seen as reluctant to change Conservative Judaism's position on homosexuals, announced that he would step down at the end of the school year, but the search for his successor has dragged on for months. Conservative Judaism, which was once the largest movement in American Judaism, has been in the throes of an identity crisis.


Summary: The Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism in America, appears close to having a new leader at a pivotal period when the movement is struggling with dwindling membership and the question of becoming more accommodating to gay Jews. The seminary's search committee has chosen an unusual candidate, Arnold Eisen, a Stanford University professor who is not a rabbi but is known as one of the country's leading scholars of modern Judaism. Because of the seminary's prominence, the next chancellor would play a profound role in determining the movement's ultimate decision on whether to end its prohibition on gay rabbis and same-sex unions. The seminary's longtime chancellor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who was seen as reluctant to change Conservative Judaism's position on homosexuals, announced that he would step down at the end of the school year.


Summary: The seminary's search committee has chosen an unusual candidate, Arnold Eisen, a Stanford University professor who is not a rabbi but is known as one of the country's leading scholars of modern Judaism. Dr. Eisen, a professor of Jewish culture and religion, did not return calls to his home and office yesterday, and officials at the seminary, which is in Morningside Heights, declined to say anything about the selection, which would still need to be confirmed by the seminary's board. Dr. Eisen's reputation as an intellectual and an expert on contemporary Judaism, Dr. Sarna said, would draw supporters across the theological spectrum and push the movement away from the infighting over Jewish law that has dogged it in recent years.


Summary: So from a legal perspective, both Mr. Baroni, who is also a law professor and Paul L. Tractenberg, a Rutgers law professor, said that it was unlikely that Mr. Corzine would prevail. But Mr. Tractenberg said that nothing was certain.


Summary: The significance of Mr. Corzine's move was not lost on anyone with a legislative, legal or an educational role in the long-running school-financing lawsuit, Abbott v Burke. At the behest of the court, the state must give 31 so-called Abbott districts, enough financial aid to bring them up to spending levels in the wealthiest districts. But now, with the state facing a deficit of more than $4 billion, Mr. Corzine, a liberal Democrat who took office in January, is asking the Abbott districts to essentially live by the same guidelines now hemming in suburban districts at least until a new school-financing formula can be created.


Summary: The significance of Mr. Corzine's move was not lost on anyone with a legislative, legal or educational role in the long-running school-financing lawsuit, Abbott v Burke. At the behest of the court, the state must give 31 so-called Abbott districts, enough financial aid to bring them up to spending levels in the wealthiest districts. But now, with the state facing a deficit of more than $4 billion, Mr. Corzine, a liberal Democrat who took office, is asking the Abbott districts to essentially live by the same guidelines now hemming in suburban districts at least until a new school-financing formula can be created.


Summary: Jon S. Corzine announced that he would ask the State Supreme Court to freeze financing for the poorest school districts because of budgetary constraints. But the significance of Mr. Corzine's move was not lost on anyone with a legislative, legal, or educational role in the long-running school-financing lawsuit. His budget calls for an increase in the sales tax, a new tax on hospital beds, and more than $2 billion in spending cuts. But in the wake of the Abbott brief filed by Attorney General Zulima V. Farber, Mr. Corzine was hailed by Republicans who have long criticized the Abbott system as being outdated, unfair, and in need of an overhaul. And the fact that the Corzine administration released the brief late Friday did not escape notice among supporters and detractors, as well.


Summary: Mary George, the principal of Our Lady of Sorrows School, woke up after a restless night in the guest bedroom of the friary next to her school. As she walked down the hallway, Mrs. George prayed to the Holy Spirit and St. Anne, her mother's namesake. The list of suggested changes included the shuttering of 31 parishes and 14 schools one of them being Mrs. George's school of 165 students on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Mrs. George, 50, got her chance at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday at the archdiocese's headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.


Summary: Rev. Ed Conway, a Capuchin priest who is the pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows, concluded that they needed to present hard facts to archdiocesan officials, not emotional pleas. Father Conway and Mrs. George called an emergency meeting for parents and community members and urged them to register their children for next year right away. At a meeting in the church rectory, Mrs. George, Father Conway, Mr. Martinez, Mr. Rivers, and Donna Kresel, a longtime teacher, plotted their strategy for the presentation.


Summary: The problem, said Edison Martinez, a teacher and former student at the school, is that many in the neighborhood who want to send their children cannot afford the tuition, which is $2,800 a year for parish members and $3,250 a year for those who are not. Since the archdiocese has put so much emphasis on changing demographics in its decisions, Mrs. George asked two teachers, Mr. Martinez and Justin Rivers, an English teacher, to research the makeup of the school neighborhood. Mr. Martinez explained a satellite map he had printed out from the Internet, highlighting the low-income housing projects around the school.


Summary: Govs. George Pataki and Jon Corzine and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have each been pulling in a different direction, the perfect way to go nowhere. Meanwhile, timing is crucial for Mr. Pataki, who is leaving office at the end of the year. Finally, Mr. Pataki's Freedom Tower seems in danger of evolving into a white elephant that nobody wants to lease, instead of a grand symbol of ground zero's rebirth.


Summary: George Pataki and Jon Corzine and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have each been pulling in a different direction, the perfect way to go nowhere. Mr. Corzine is said to be focusing on a better deal for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in its protracted negotiations with Mr. Silverstein. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Corzine are former business executives, which should only help the authority in its negotiations with the site's developer.


Summary: Mr. Bloomberg, who argues for more residential space in the area, wants to drastically cut back the developer Larry Silverstein's control over the site. And the newcomer to the debate, Mr. Corzine, is said to be focusing on a better deal for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in its protracted negotiations with Mr. Silverstein. They should make certain that Mr. Silverstein and the authority provide enough support and infrastructure to build the public space.


Summary: George Pataki and Jon Corzine and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have each been pulling in a different direction, the perfect way to go nowhere. Mr. Bloomberg, who argues for more residential space in the area, wants to drastically cut back the developer Larry Silverstein's control over the site. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Corzine are former business executives, which should only help the authority in its negotiations with the site's developer.


Summary: Govs. George Pataki and Jon Corzine and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have each been pulling in a different direction, the perfect way to go nowhere.


Summary: Mr. Faso said in an interview that the chairman, Stephen J. Minarik III, who has backed Mr. Weld, should have a neutral stance in this process and not attempt to rig it for one candidate who has never run before in New York State. Mr. Weld, a Long Island native, lived in Massachusetts for decades and was governor there from 1991 to 1997 before moving back to New York in 2000. Mr. Minarik said that he and Mr. Faso had their differences, but added that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who had publicly said that they might block a candidate from their ballot, Mr. Suozzi, to help another candidate, Mr. Spitzer.


Summary: Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democratic candidate for governor, met with a Republican nemesis, Thomas Golisano, in what Democrats described as a Spitzer attempt to woo Mr. Golisano after a disastrous meeting between the two men last summer. Mr. Golisano, a Rochester billionaire who ran for governor in 1994, 1998, and 2002, came close to undertaking the fourth campaign this year. Mr. Golisano announced that he would instead focus on supporting reform-minded candidates. He has also met with Kenneth Langone, a billionaire businessman who has been sued by Mr. Spitzer's office and is working to defeat him in the governor's race. Amid rumors of a Golisano-Langone financial effort to derail Mr. Spitzer with television commercials or other means, a détente between Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Golisano would carry political significance.


Summary: Mr. Golisano also met with Kenneth Langone, a billionaire businessman who has been sued by Mr. Spitzer's office and is working to defeat him in the governor's race. Amid rumors of a Golisano-Langone financial effort to derail Mr. Spitzer with television commercials or other means, a détente between Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Golisano would carry political significance.


Summary: In separate developments in the Republican race, Mr. Weld's stewardship of Decker College the bankrupt Kentucky trade school that he led for 10 months last year was thrust back into the campaign by several new claims that were filed in the school's bankruptcy proceedings. And Mr. Weld filed his own claim, seeking protection for some loans to the school that he had personally guaranteed. Meanwhile, another Republican candidate for governor, John Faso, charged that his own party chairman was trying to deny him a spot on the Sept. 12 primary ballot to help Mr. Weld.


Summary: And he is considering supporting candidates for the State Senate.


Summary: Thomas Golisano recently attended Sabres games with two candidates for governor, William F. Weld, a Republican, and Thomas R. Suozzi, a Democrat. One of the Democrats said that Mr. Golisano had come to believe that it would be very difficult to beat Mr. Spitzer, who holds big leads in fund-raising and in public opinion polls over Mr. Suozzi. Mr. Minarik said in a statement that he and Mr. Faso had their differences, but added that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who had publicly said that they might block a candidate from their ballot, Mr. Suozzi, to help another candidate, Mr. Spitzer.


Summary: Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democratic candidate for governor, met with a Republican nemesis, Thomas Golisano, in what Democrats described as a Spitzer attempt to woo Mr. Golisano. New York Democrats who were told about the meeting said that it was constructive and civil, unlike the earlier get-together, but that it was unclear whether Mr. Golisano had been deterred from using his political and financial clout to harm Mr. Spitzer's candidacy or otherwise influencing the race. One of the Democrats said that Mr. Golisano had come to believe that it would be very difficult to beat Mr. Spitzer, who holds big leads in fund-raising and in public opinion polls over Mr. Suozzi and the Republicans running for governor.


Michael R. Bloomberg
Bloomberg
Mayor Bloomberg

Summary: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is, supportive of the city's immigrants: they are 43 percent of its workforce. Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican endorsed Guillermo Linares's unsuccessful State Senate bid in the 2002 Democratic primary. Mr. Linares, 55, with the silver mustache and undulating hairline of an old-time matinee idol and a halting way of genteelly hammering home his point, is a former teacher, city councilman, and lifelong Democrat who was appointed to his position by Mr. Bloomberg in 2004.


Summary: Guillermo Linares grew up dirt poor in the Dominican Republic, came to New York City at age 15 knowing not a word of English, drove a taxi to pay for a college education, and believes he is the first Dominican to hold public office in the United States. Mr. Linares estimates that there are at least 500,000 illegal immigrants in New York City alone. Mr. Linares, 55, with the silver mustache and undulating hairline is a former teacher, city councilman, and lifelong Democrat who was appointed to his position by Mr. Bloomberg in 2004. He found a $15-a-week job in a bodega and struggled to finish high school. He became an American citizen during his sophomore year at City College, where he received B.A. and M.S. degrees and took a teaching job. He served on the local school board, then was elected to the City Council in 1991.


Summary: A spokesman for the United States Coast Guard, Petty Officer Mike Lutz, said yesterday that the Coast Guard had granted a permit to Waterway for excursion cruises to operate from Pier A beginning around April 14.


Summary: The operator, New York Waterway Tours, planned to start offering hourly harbor cruises. A schedule for the cruises appeared on Waterway's Web site and a trailer that would serve as a ticket office appeared at the edge of Battery Park. Pat Smith, a spokesman for New York Waterway Tours and its owners, declined to say whether the company would run the tours without the city's consent. Waterway filed an application with the Army Corps of Engineers last year seeking permission to anchor barges alongside the pier so that ferries could dock perpendicular to it.


Summary: The man behind the plan for the harbor cruises is William B. Wachtel, a Manhattan lawyer with designs on reviving the city-owned Pier A as a transportation center. He hopes it will serve as a hub for commuters traveling to and from New Jersey as well as tourists to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Mr. Wachtel controls Wings Point Associates, which is leasing the pier, and the BillyBey Ferry Company, which he created a year ago to bail out the struggling operator of the Waterway ferries.


Summary: There are fewer classes for gifted elementary and middle school children today than there were a decade ago, said Jane Clarenbach, public relations director of the National Association for Gifted Children. Ms. Clarenbach said the federal No Child Left Behind law was eroding support for gifted services. Passed in 2002, the law rates schools on how students perform on reading and math tests, pressuring districts to focus resources on students struggling to attain proficiency. Ms. Clarenbach said it's important to challenge the kids on the other end, too. She said that while the extra $90 million President Bush has budgeted this year for Advanced Placement math and science programs was good news, the need to do more K to 8 so more kids will be in a position to take the A.P. tests in high school.


Roberta Braverman
Ms. Braverman
Braverman

Summary: Roberta Braverman's fifth- and sixth-grade gifted classes at Hartford Upper Elementary had been planning their field trip to Ellis Island. Ms. Braverman had been teaching her famous language arts unit on immigration. Ms. Braverman is a perfect teacher for the gifted since she herself likes to do 12 things at once. She had spent the four previous days in Washington, on her annual lobbying trip for the New Jersey Association for Gifted Children.


Summary: Clarenbach said the federal No Child Left Behind law was eroding support for gifted services. Passed in 2002, the law rates schools on how students perform on reading and math tests, pressuring districts to focus resources on students struggling to attain proficiency.


Summary: Clarenbach said it's important to challenge the kids on the other end, too. She said that while the extra $90 million President Bush has budgeted this year for Advanced Placement math and science programs was good news, the need to do more K to 8 so more kids will be in a position to take the A.P. tests in high school. President Bush has eliminated the $9 million Javits Act, the only federal financing for elementary and middle school gifted programs.


Summary: Legislators have come under withering criticism for passing a budget last week that would more than double the new debt proposed over the next two years by Gov. George E. Pataki. Under Mr. Pataki's budget proposal, state-supported debt would rise to $51.6 billion by the fiscal year ending in March 2008, although lawmakers want to add nearly $5 billion to that amount. Mr. Pataki has also proposed extending New York's borrowing reach abroad. The Pataki administration and legislative leaders are negotiating their differences in the overall budget.


Summary: The purpose of the study, by Jean-Marc Amé and José Halloy of the Free University of Brussels and colleagues, was not to research the potential ascendancy of cockroaches. The behavior is based on very simple interactions among individual cockroaches, Dr. Halloy said. Such simple decision-making models may apply to other gregarious species like sheep or fish, Dr. Halloy said.


Summary: ''The decisions are going to be made elsewhere,'' said Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans.


Summary: Ron Forman, who remade the city's once-decrepit zoo, is head of the private, nonprofit Audubon Nature Institute and has for years been lionized by many white residents of Uptown. Mr. Forman is a rarity in New Orleans, a professional success who has not moved elsewhere. Mr. Forman, a businessman from a working-class background, is not making an explicit racial appeal. Mr. Forman named the city's elite private schools, acknowledging the room's racial homogeneity, then suggesting that not everyone in the city was as fortunate.


Summary: No candidate appears to be making a more explicit racial bid than the incumbent mayor, C. Ray Nagin, the one major black candidate in the jostling, Hurricane Katrina-inspired crowd. An unknown executive in 2002, elected largely through white support and for years the target of sharp criticism among blacks here as failing to favor black-owned companies, Mr. Nagin has been all but abandoned by the white businessmen who enthusiastically supported him the first time. As a result, he has remade himself as a black candidate, with his provocative speech. Mr. Nagin may well be able to count on a strong lift from racial solidarity.


Summary: Jim Carvin, his veteran campaign consultant, acknowledged that Mr. Nagin was counting on a moment of racial solidarity. Mr. Carvin, who has advised every successful New Orleans mayoral campaign since 1970. But the polarized election here is also partly a legacy of the storm's unequal damage, which caused greater suffering and displacement, proportionally, among blacks.


Summary: The past weekend C. Ray Nagin took part in a protest march over the election here led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, figures he has not previously been close to.


Summary: After a month of testimony, the fourth Vioxx-related personal injury trial ended Monday with well-worn closing arguments from lawyers for Merck and for two men who say the company's drug Vioxx caused their heart attacks. Less than two years after Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market, and eight months after the first Vioxx case reached a verdict, litigation over the drug has settled into something of a groove. Merck's stock, since falling to a nine-year low of $25.50 in October 2005, has risen almost 40 percent, as investors grow more confident that its Vioxx-related liabilities might total only a few billion dollars, instead of the $50 billion or more that some analysts had predicted last fall.


Summary: Judge Higbee is overseeing about 4,500 suits filed in New Jersey state courts against Merck, which is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J. The plaintiffs, John McDarby, 77, and Thomas Cona, 60, say that they suffered heart attacks as a result of taking Vioxx. Records indicate Mr. Cona did not receive prescriptions for that full period, but he says he was given samples by doctors for the time not covered by prescriptions. Ms. Jones also argued that Mr. Cona had not proved that he took Vioxx and that his heart attack had been so mild that he had not suffered any permanent damage from it.


Summary: In the previous trials, testimony that the plaintiffs took the drug for shorter periods was a crucial element in Merck's defense in addition, the lead plaintiffs' lawyer is W. Mark Lanier, who defeated Merck last year in the first Vioxx lawsuit to reach a jury. Mr. Lanier brought his Texas twang, trademark humor and showmanship to his closing, telling the jury that the case should be called "Desperate Executives," a corporate version of the television show "Desperate Housewives." Even before Merck began testing Vioxx, Mr. Lanier said, company scientists were concerned that the drug might cause heart attacks by increasing the propensity of the blood to clot.


Summary: Judge Higbee is overseeing about 4,500 suits filed in New Jersey state courts against Merck, which is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J. The plaintiffs, John McDarby, 77, and Thomas Cona, 60, say that they suffered heart attacks as a result of taking Vioxx. As for Mr. McDarby, he would have been at a very high risk for a heart attack even if he had never taken Vioxx, Ms. Jones said.


Summary: In her closing argument, Christy Jones, Merck's lead lawyer, told jurors that Merck had properly researched Vioxx's potential heart risks. After a clinical trial in 2001 showed that the number of heart attacks among patients taking Vioxx was five times that among those taking naproxen, an older pain reliever, Merck disclosed the trial's findings to both doctors and the Food and Drug Administration, Ms. Jones said. She also argued that Thomas Cona had not proved that he took Vioxx and that his heart attack had been so mild that he had not suffered any permanent damage from it.


Summary: Dean Pearson, who works at the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the United States Forest Service, said the fly had not halted the spread of knapweed. In a report in Ecology Letters, however, Dr. Pearson reports that the introduced fly has changed the ecosystem's dynamics. Mice numbers have tripled because of this food supply, said Dr. Pearson, and with them hantavirus, a viral infection is spread by urine and droppings.


Summary: Svata Louda, a professor of biology at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, referring to Dean Pearson's study, said that what Dean has found is frivolous and that they don't know what they're doing when they mess up natural systems. A major worry is that the introduced enemy will drift off target. Dr. Louda has studied the thistle flowerhead weevil that was imported from France and Italy in the 1970's to control a weed called the musk thistle, which spread across grazing land.


Summary: Svata Louda, a professor of biology at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, referring to Dr. Dean Pearson's study, said that what Dean has found is frivolous.


Summary: Shiite leaders have responded to Washington's pleas for inclusiveness with bristling hostility, personally vilifying Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and criticizing American military operations in the kind of harsh language previously heard only from Sunni leaders.


Summary: Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari is unable to form a broadly inclusive government and has made no serious effort to rein in police death squads. Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, the radically anti-American cleric and militia leader, has maneuvered himself into the position of kingmaker by providing decisive support for Mr. Jaafari's candidacy to remain prime minister. It was chilling to read Edward Wong's interview with the Iraqi prime minister in The Times last week, during which Mr. Jaafari sat in the palace where he now makes his home, complained about the Americans and predicted that the sectarian militias that are currently terrorizing Iraqi civilians could be incorporated into the army and police.


Mukhtaran Bibi
'' Mukhtar
Mukhtar Mai
Mukhtar

Summary: The author doesn't know whether journalists felt it around the young Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., but around Mukhtar Mai he senses the presence of greatness. Mukhtar, who also goes by the name Mukhtaran Bibi, is the young peasant woman, she doesn't know exactly how old she is, who three years ago was gang-raped on order of a local tribal council. Instead of killing herself, as was expected of any self-respecting woman, she prosecuted her attackers, used compensation money to start schools, and started a nationwide revolution to empower women.


Summary: The author's last two columns recounted the story of Aisha Parveen, a young Pakistani who escaped from the brothel in which she had been imprisoned for six years. The courts were threatening to send her back to the brothel owner, who planned to kill her. The police have dropped all charges against Ms. Parveen, and instead they have arrested the brothel owner on charges of kidnapping her and attempting to murder her.


Summary: The author doesn't know whether journalists felt it around the young Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., but around Mukhtar Mai he sense the presence of greatness.


Summary: Caterpillar, the heavy-equipment maker, went through years of ugly conflict with the United Automobile Workers union during the 1990's, only to emerge a stronger company for employees and shareholders alike. An equally intriguing question is whether the U.A.W. has any sense of its own part in this mad tango. You can't blame a union for getting whatever it can for its workers, but imagine if, a generation ago, the U.A.W. had sought and accepted an actual ownership stake in G.M. instead of untenably high wages and costly benefits.


Summary: Giving new meaning to the term labor-management cooperation, union leaders and General Motors executives joined forces years ago. Bringing G.M. to its knees is a big job, after all, and neither side could have done it alone. G.M. signed labor agreements over the years that left the company paying a remarkable $74 an hour, including benefits and retiree costs, for its domestic factory workers.


Skilling
Mr. Skilling
Jeffrey K. Skilling

Summary: Prosecutors in the trial of two former Enron chief executives, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, rested their case after eight weeks of testimony by 22 witnesses before a federal court jury in Houston. As soon as the government finished presenting evidence, Judge Simeon T. Lake of federal district court dropped 3 of the 31 counts against Mr. Skilling and one of the seven counts against Mr. Lay. Defense lawyers are scheduled to open their case on Monday, and they have said they plan to have both Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling testify.


Federal Open Markets Committee
Fed
Federal Reserve

Summary: The Fed has raised rates at each of the last 15 meetings of its policy-setting Federal Open Markets Committee, stretching back to June 2004, when the rate was bottomed out at 1 percent. Some investors had hoped that the Fed would now pause, particularly since the economy grew at an anemic annual rate of only 1.7 percent in the last three months of 2005.


Summary: The Apple Corps music publishing company of the Beatles sued Apple Computer for the third time since 1980, accusing the computer maker of infringing on its trademark. Specifically, Apple Corps said Apple Computer violated a 1991 agreement between the companies when it started its iTunes online music service. The Apples had settled earlier disputes over the rights to their names by agreeing that Apple Computer would stay out of the music business.


Summary: An anxious standoff loomed over the automobile industry as the Delphi Corporation filed papers in federal bankruptcy court yesterday seeking to unilaterally impose wage and benefit cuts on its 34,000 hourly workers. Seeking the unilateral cuts sets up a confrontation with Delphi's two big unions. But the biggest effect would be felt at General Motors, which spun off Delphi as a separate company in 1999 and still relies on it for many of its parts.


Summary: Wally Joyner, who broke in at about the same time as McGwire, Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro and others, revealed last fall that in the spring of 1998, he came face to face with a choice: Use steroids, or fall behind and perhaps out of the game. Joyner's offensive numbers were falling while those of his peers were exploding, even as they entered their 30's. So Joyner tried steroids, taking them twice before flushing the rest of the pills down a toilet.


Summary: Ma Weidu, owner and founder of Guanfu, China's first private museum of classic and antique art, in Beijing, said that smuggling was at its peak between the 1980's and mid-1990's, but now it's relatively subdued.


Summary: Gov. George E. Pataki budget director, John F. Cape, took a harder line in an interview, saying he was concerned about the structure of the complex bonding deal that would authorize $11.2 billion for school construction in New York City. Mr. Cape said that he's more concerned with the method than the amount, adding that a $1.8 billion component of the deal, which would issue bonds for school construction aid through the state's Dormitory Authority, would be a new precedent in terms of state debt management.


Summary: Gov. George E. Pataki and his budget director said in interviews on Thursday that they had reservations about the two central initiatives of the Legislature's budget, calling a nearly $1.8 billion property tax cut package unconstitutional and saying a bonding deal for New York City schools would set a bad precedent in the use of state debt. Mr. Pataki echoed concerns, saying that although he supported giving the city that amount of school construction aid, they just have to look at the technical structure of it to make sure it's appropriate, that it doesn't jeopardize the state's credit or in any way violate or run afoul of our historic debt-reform legislation they passed a few years back. Legislative leaders and their top aides, who have been particularly critical of John F. Cape, said the state had devised similar state bond deals recently.


Summary: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said in an interview said that the C.F.E. case is unprecedented, referring to the court orders for school financing resulting from suits brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.


Summary: John F. Cape said he's more concerned with the method than the amount, adding that a $1.8 billion component of the deal, which would issue bonds for school construction aid through the state's Dormitory Authority, would be a new precedent in terms of state debt management.


Summary: Gov. George E. Pataki and his budget director said in interviews on Thursday that they had reservations about the two central initiatives of the Legislature's budget, calling a nearly $1.8 billion property tax cut package unconstitutional and saying a bonding deal for New York City schools would set a bad precedent in the use of state debt. Making his first public remarks on a budget deal the Legislature reached Tuesday night, he said that he hopes that they can reach an agreement consensually with the Assembly and Senate to bring down their spending and to protect the state's finances but if not, then he obviously have the constitutional power to exercise vetoes. They continue to skirmish over even the size of the Legislature's budget, with Mr. Cape saying it was as high as $115 billion, not $112.4 billion to $113.4 billion the Legislature claimed.


Summary: Despite the current dip in 527 activity, some new ones are being established, including one opposing Senator Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican in a tough re-election race in Pennsylvania.


Summary: Representative John A. Boehner's Democratic counterpart, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, denounced the effort, saying that Republicans could draw unlimited money from wealthy corporations and trade associations that used their own nonprofit arms to wage issue campaigns.


Summary: The House majority leader, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, told reporters on Thursday, referring to a bill co-sponsored by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin that he thinks that this leaves a gaping loophole in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill and that it needs to be fixed.


Summary: Tony Massaro, executive vice president for political affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said his group relied on its 501c(4) status because it could push directly for the election of specific candidates right up to Election Day, since the group takes no union or corporate money. Were it a 527, the advertisements would have to skirt that issue and strike a fuzzier theme of urging voters to contact candidates about their positions on divisive issues, a gimmick that Mr. Massaro said comported with the law but left the public cold. Mr. Massaro, who said his organization would spend $3 million to $5 million and was already working on behalf of Democratic Senate candidates in Florida, Pennsylvania and Washington said that voters get frustrated by that game.


Summary: In the House, the Republican leadership intends to bring a plan to impose new restrictions on 527 groups to the floor next week to spur action in the Senate, where Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, a champion of the campaign finance bill that bears his name, is offering similar legislation.


Summary: Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, said that their 527 is dormant. He said his group would predominantly operate as a conventional political action committee, allowing it to more freely mix explicit political support and issue advocacy in a way that Mr. Pariser described as squeaky clean. MoveOn.org might be moving on from its 527, but Congress is not. He suggested the effort to clamp down on 527 groups could enhance the influence of his organization because it would have the financial means to mount aggressive campaigns while potential competing groups would be handcuffed.


Summary: The House majority leader, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, told reporters on Thursday, referring to a bill co-sponsored by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said that he thinks this leaves a gaping loophole in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill.


Summary: To many Republicans, the liberal activist organization MoveOn.org is a political boogeyman that they hope to chase off with new restrictions on so-called 527 groups. Like other major groups planning to inject themselves aggressively into the midterm elections through advertisements, voter drives and issue fights, MoveOn.org has already figured out what it thinks is a better, and less controversial, way to spend its millions. While Swift Boats drew the spotlight, the liberal philanthropist George Soros nearly single-handedly redefined the scope of campaign finance by contributing millions to progressive groups like MoveOn.


Summary: In the race for governor, a new Quinnipiac University poll showed Attorney General Eliot Spitzer far ahead of his rival for the Democratic nomination, Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive.


Summary: Among Republican candidates, former Assemblyman John Faso showed a notable gain and polled slightly better than his two opponents, William F. Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, and Randy A. Daniels, the former New York secretary of state.


Summary: The turnaround reflects what a messy political season it has been for New York Republicans: Their two major candidates for the Senate quit last year because of gaffes and a lack of political support, and Stephen J. Minarik III is trying to slow the bleeding by embracing John Spencer, who has strong conservative support.


Summary: One Republican candidate, Kathleen Troia McFarland, fits that profile, she entered the race late and has been hamstrung after news coverage of her voting record, her résumé and her recent comment that the Clinton campaign was spying on her. Mr. Spencer, a former Yonkers mayor, hailed the endorsement, and his aides said it was a blow to Ms. McFarland, a former official in the Reagan Pentagon.


Summary: Former Assemblyman John Faso showed a notable gain and polled slightly better than his two opponents, William F. Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, and Randy A. Daniels, the former New York secretary of state.


Summary: Kathleen Troia McFarland's spokesman, William O'Reilly, said Stephen J. Minarik III preferred Mr. Spencer's style of campaigning. Mr. O'Reilly said that they believe that Mr. Spencer's attack-dog strategy will drive even more voters, especially female voters, into Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's arms.


Summary: John Spencer, a Republican who hopes to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton this year, yesterday picked up the endorsement of the chairman of the state Republican Party, Stephen J. Minarik III, who just months ago was writing him off as a second-tier candidate. The turnaround reflects what a messy political season it has been for New York Republicans: Their two major candidates for the Senate quit last year because of gaffes and a lack of political support, and Mr. Minarik is trying to slow the bleeding by embracing Mr. Spencer, who has strong conservative support. After Jeanine F. Pirro, whom Mr. Minarik initially preferred, dropped out in December, he began praising Mr. Spencer, partly as an overture to Mr. Spencer's allies in the Conservative Party of New York, whose votes would be crucial in statewide and legislative races.


Summary: After Jeanine F. Pirro dropped out in December, Stephen J. Minarik III began praising John Spencer, partly as an overture to Mr. Spencer's allies in the Conservative Party of New York, whose votes would be crucial in statewide and legislative races.


Summary: In the race for governor, a new Quinnipiac University poll showed Attorney General Eliot Spitzer far ahead of his rival for the Democratic nomination, Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive. Mr. Suozzi gained six percentage points since a Quinnipiac poll in mid-January, but Mr. Spitzer still leads 69 percent to 14 percent, even though Mr. Suozzi has spent nearly $3 million on television commercials this month. Both Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Suozzi were well ahead of the three Republicans in head-to-head matchups in the Quinnipiac poll.


Summary: John Spencer, a Republican who hopes to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton this year, yesterday picked up the endorsement of the chairman of the state Republican Party, Stephen J. Minarik III, who just months ago was writing him off as a second-tier candidate.


Summary: Stephen J. Minarik III initially preferred Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester County district attorney. After she dropped out in December, he began praising John Spencer, partly as an overture to Mr. Spencer's allies in the Conservative Party of New York, whose votes would be crucial in statewide and legislative races. Reminded that he viewed Mr. Spencer coolly not long ago, Mr. Minarik said that Jeanine's not running in this race anymore, John's the candidate now.


Summary: John Spencer, a Republican who hopes to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton this year, yesterday picked up the endorsement of the chairman of the state Republican Party, Stephen J. Minarik III, who just months ago was writing him off as a second-tier candidate. The turnaround reflects what a messy political season it has been for New York Republicans: Their two major candidates for the Senate quit last year because of gaffes and a lack of political support, and Mr. Minarik is trying to slow the bleeding by embracing Mr. Spencer, who has strong conservative support.


Summary: The governor made a show of canceling school construction projects in key lawmakers' districts, turned up the heat on his fellow Republicans in the State Senate, and even let his aides suggest that he would support a challenger to one of the city's four remaining Republican senators, Serphin R. Maltese of Queens. Praising Governor Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, he said that all three of them have done more for this city than the press really gives them credit for. Senator Maltese said he had not heard from the mayor since the deal. He said that he hasn't heard from him, but it may be that he has a long list of people to thank.


Summary: The budget agreement, which Gov. George E. Pataki has yet to accept, would authorize $11.2 billion in borrowing to further Mr. Bloomberg's plans to build or lease 76 new school buildings, upgrade science labs and make other improvements to existing schools, and embark on a stepped-up program of repairs and maintenance for the city's aging public schools.


Summary: The state's Dormitory Authority will borrow $2.6 billion, sending $1.8 billion to the city and $800 million to the rest of the state.


Summary: The budget accord that lawmakers reached here on Tuesday night will let Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg move forward with what city officials are calling the most ambitious school construction program in the city's history. The budget agreement, which Gov. George E. Pataki has yet to accept, would authorize $11.2 billion in borrowing to further Mr. Bloomberg's plans to build or lease 76 new school buildings, upgrade science labs and make other improvements to existing schools, and embark on a stepped-up program of repairs and maintenance for the city's aging public schools. The mayor made the tactical decision this year to push for the construction money, reasoning that the city was unlikely to get the $4.7 billion to $5.63 billion in extra school operating aid that the courts have said the city is owed.


Summary: The museum said the loan from Christo Michailidis was a conflict of interest for her because she was doing business with him on the Getty's behalf. Without indicating where the information came from, Peter Watson testified Wednesday that Mr. Michailidis and Robin Symes were attending a dinner at the villa given by Shelby White and Leon Levy, American antiquities collectors who were clients of Mr. Symes.


Summary: In more than four hours of testimony, Peter Watson, a British investigative journalist who is a witness for the prosecution, detailed what he said was Robin Symes's elaborate use of offshore companies and warehouses to buy and sell ancient artworks. During Marion True's tenure, the Getty bought millions of dollars' worth of antiquities from Mr. Symes, and Mr. Watson suggested in his testimony that the two became social friends. Without indicating where the information came from, Mr. Watson testified Wednesday that Christo Michailidis and Mr. Symes were attending a dinner at the villa given by Shelby White and Leon Levy, American antiquities collectors who were clients of Mr. Symes.


Summary: That testimony seemed to conflict with earlier published accounts, in which Ms. True acknowledged accepting a second $400,000 loan in 1996 from two American collectors, Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, so she could pay off the first. The Los Angeles Times reported the existence of the Fleischman loan, which the Getty also characterized as a conflict of interest for Ms. True. Antiquities donated by the Fleischmans form the core of the Getty's antiquities collection.


Summary: During Ms. True's tenure, the Getty bought millions of dollars' worth of antiquities from Mr. Symes, and Mr. Watson suggested in his testimony that the two became social friends. Ms. True resigned from the Getty last fall after the museum said she had failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house transaction in violation of Getty policy. Antiquities donated by the Fleischmans form the core of the Getty's antiquities collection.


Summary: The testimony seemed to conflict with earlier published accounts, in which Ms. True acknowledged accepting a second $400,000 loan in 1996 from two American collectors, Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, so she could pay off the first.


Summary: The activities of Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer who has done business with many of the world's top collectors, came into sharp focus on Wednesday at the trial of Marion True, a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Robert Hecht, an American dealer. During Ms. True's tenure, the Getty bought millions of dollars' worth of antiquities from Mr. Symes, and Peter Watson suggested in his testimony that the two became social friends.


Summary: In a case that has had wide repercussions for museum collecting, Ms. True and Mr. Robert Hecht, an American dealer are charged with trafficking in objects that officials here contend were illegally removed from Italian soil. Ms. True, Mr. Hecht, and Giacomo Medici, an Italian art dealer and co-defendant in the case, who has already been convicted.


Summary: The activities of Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer who has done business with many of the world's top collectors, came into sharp focus on Wednesday at the trial of Marion True, a former curator at the J Paul Getty Museum. Ms. True and Mr. Hecht are charged with trafficking in objects that officials here contend were illegally removed from Italian soil. During Ms. True's tenure, the Getty bought millions of dollars worth of antiquities from Mr. Symes, and Mr. Watson suggested in his testimony that the two became social friends. Ms. True resigned from the Getty last fall after the museum said she had failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house transaction in violation of Getty policy.


Summary: The activities of Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer who has done business with many of the world's top collectors, came into sharp focus at the trial of Marion True, a former curator at the J Paul Getty Museum. Mr. Symes has not been charged in the case, but Italian prosecutors have been investigating his ties to Ms. True. Without indicating where the information came from, Mr. Watson testified that Mr. Michailidis and Mr. Symes were attending a dinner at the villa given by Shelby White and Leon Levy, American antiquities collectors who were clients of Mr. Symes. In 2001, Mr. Michailidis's family began legal proceedings against Mr. Symes in an effort to reclaim what they argued was his half share of the men's business.


Summary: Exit stairs in the memorial could accommodate as many as 8,000 people, said Carl F. Krebs, a partner in Davis Brody Bond, the architectural firm working on the details of the memorial design, though the actual number of visitors in the memorial at any moment is not expected to exceed 2,000, with 3,000 more expected in the memorial museum. Mr. Krebs said that the memorial would nonetheless meet the more stringent standards.


Summary: Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who is coordinating the review of the plans by the Buildings, Fire, and Police Departments said that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is working on the memorial with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, had been cooperative in sharing information and responsive in addressing concerns.


Summary: Advisers to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization led by two relatives of 9/11 victims, say that the plan for long transfer corridors between the exit doors and stairwells leading up to street level might prompt some visitors, particularly if they were disabled or out of shape, to reverse course and try to get to the wide ramps in the central memorial hall, creating a potentially disastrous bottleneck. The Skyscraper Safety Campaign was founded by Sally Regenhard, whose son, Christian, a probationary firefighter, died on Sept. 11, 2001. Another technical adviser to the campaign, Jake Pauls, a consultant in building codes and public safety in Silver Spring, Md., raised concern about the hallways that will confront many visitors once they are past the exit doors.


Summary: Advisers to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization led by two relatives of 9/11 victims, say that the plan for long transfer corridors between the exit doors and stairwells leading up to street level might prompt some visitors, particularly if they were disabled or out of shape, to reverse course and try to get to the wide ramps in the central memorial hall, creating a potentially disastrous bottleneck. The issue will almost certainly come up today in a hearing called by City Councilman Alan J. Gerson of Lower Manhattan. Although the Council has no authority over ground zero, Mr. Gerson said he was convening the session to get a number of issues involving the memorial out in the open, including questions about the emergency exits.


Port Authority of New York
Port Authority

Summary: Mr. Doctoroff did say that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is working on the memorial with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, had been cooperative in sharing information and responsive in addressing concerns. The Port Authority has seen enough that its chief engineer, Francis J. Lombardi, could say that they are confident that the code has been met. Although the Port Authority is not bound by local codes, it declared in a 2004 agreement with New York City that it will comply with all applicable building code requirements for all construction work to be performed by the Port Authority or any of its net lessees at the trade center site, which would include the memorial foundation.


Summary: Mr. Doctoroff did say that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is working on the memorial with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, had been cooperative in sharing information and responsive in addressing concerns.


Summary: Less than a year ago, security concerns expressed by the New York Police Department forced a redesign of the Freedom Tower, immediately north of the memorial, delaying the project by months.


Summary: Among the first to be led away in handcuffs were two former presidents of the Newark Municipal Council, convicted of pocketing bribes from a towing company. They were followed by the Newark police director, who had dipped into the municipal coffers for vacations to Bermuda and gifts, and Mayor Sharpe James's chief of staff, who had squirreled away thousands of dollars in kickbacks at the home he shared with his mistress.


Summary: Another former prosecutor, Larry R. C. Stephen, who oversaw corruption inquiries in the United States attorney's office in Newark from 1994 to 1998, said graft flourished under Mr. James's tenure.


Summary: But as hard as it tried, issuing hundreds of subpoenas and sending swarms of federal agents into city government buildings, the United States attorney's office in Newark was never able to bring an indictment against the ultimate target, Mr. James himself. It was not just the convictions of other officials that raised prosecutors' suspicions about Mayor Sharpe James, who announced that he would not seek re-election to a sixth term as mayor, saying he wants to concentrate on his other position as a state senator. Mr. James and his lawyers repeatedly said that he had done nothing wrong and suggested that prosecutors were conducting a racially motivated vendetta against him.


Summary: The bill, introduced on March 16 by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, would essentially make the amendments permanent.


Summary: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg bluntly told a Congressional panel that an awful piece of legislation before the House of Representatives would cripple the city's ability to combat gun trafficking. The mayor has made taking on the gun industry a central theme of his second term and has repeatedly used his bully pulpit to draw national attention to the issue. Mr. Bloomberg told the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security that illegal guns were used in 300 of the 540 homicides in the city last year, and that 82 percent of the guns used in crimes in the city were bought outside the state. Mr. Bloomberg presented letters of support from the mayors of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Philadelphia, as well as from Joseph J. Vince Jr., a former chief of crime-gun analysis at the firearms bureau.


House Judiciary Committee
House of Representatives
House

Summary: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg bluntly told a Congressional panel that an awful piece of legislation before the House of Representatives would cripple the city's ability to combat gun trafficking. The mayor's testimony, before members of the House Judiciary Committee, was unusual not only for its vivid language but also because Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican, was testifying at the request of the Democratic minority on the panel.


Summary: On Capitol Hill, Mr. Bolten, who worked in the White House Congressional liaison office of Mr. Bush's father, regularly stepped in as this administration's deal closer.


Bolten
Josh
Joshua B. Bolten
Joshua Brewster Bolten

Summary: Joshua B. Bolten, the incoming White House chief of staff, would appear to have the insider credentials and ability to soothe Congress that the White House desperately needs. As White House budget director, he amused his 500-member staff by renaming his weekend rock band Deficit Attention Disorder for a performance at the Office of Management and Budget. But the question is whether Mr. Bolten is the man to right a listing presidency and whether his skills, instincts, and access to Mr. Bush are enough to overcome public anger over the war in Iraq and the growing questions in Washington about the competence of the West Wing staff. As deputy chief of staff, Mr. Bolten scheduled the president's almost daily 45 minutes of domestic ''policy time'' in the Oval Office, and determined what issue was discussed, who was invited, and in large part how it could be sold on Capitol Hill.


Summary: Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee.


Summary: Cesar V. Conda, Vice President Dick Cheney's former top economic policy aide who worked closely with Mr. Bolten said Josh would have a calendar up in his office, where he would, in consultation with everybody else, map out when the president would be briefed on an issue, then tie it to events on the Hill and major announcements. Mr. Conda was referring to Mr. Bolten's replacement, now the White House counsel.


Summary: Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said that the White House staff lacked passion and urgency.  Mr. Thune said, he probably will do a better job of reaching out to Congress.


Summary: They said Mr. Bolten, the influential but publicly invisible White House deputy chief of staff in Mr. Bush's first term, would help formulate and drive legislation in a way that Andrew H. Card Jr., the outgoing chief of staff, did not.


Ventura
Jose Julio Ventura
Lucila Ventura

Summary: Ms. Ventura told the judge that her father, Jose Julio Ventura, 44, had abused her since she was 11 and had sexually assaulted her since she was 14, according to her lawyer, Jeffrey Jablonski. DNA tests have shown that Mr. Ventura was the father of her two children. Mr. Jablonski said Mr. Ventura had threatened his daughter to keep quiet about her pregnancies and the sexual assaults by threatening to kill her mother.


Summary: Ms. Ventura told the judge that her father, Jose Julio Ventura, 44, had abused her since she was 11 and had sexually assaulted her since she was 14, according to her lawyer, Jeffrey Jablonski. Mr. Jablonski said Mr. Ventura had threatened his daughter to keep quiet about her pregnancies and the sexual assaults by threatening to kill her mother. Ms. Ventura also said that she gave birth to both children one in late summer of 2003, the other in September of last year on the toilet in her apartment, according to Mr. Jablonski.


Summary: A teenager admitted in court that she tried to kill her newborn son by throwing him down an air shaft in her West New York apartment building and said that two years earlier, her father killed another newborn by tossing her down the same air shaft. Under a deal with prosecutors, the teenager, Lucila Ventura, 18, an immigrant from El Salvador who is mildly retarded, pleaded guilty in State Superior Court here to reckless manslaughter in the death of the baby girl, admitting her involvement in the crime while also implicating her father.


Summary: A 56-year-old man with a 20-year-old secret told for the first time how, in 1986, he dug a five-foot-deep hole and, dumped in a dead man he believed that two detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, had just helped kill. Mr. Franzone told the jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that he watched one day as Mr. Eppolito's cousin and a man who looked like Mr. Caracappa marched their victim toward a garage then came out without him. They took him to the lot, where the witness said he saw Mr. Eppolito in a parked car as Mr. Santora and Mr. Caracappa led the jeweler to the garage, from which he never returned.


Summary: Mr. Peter Franzone was testifying at the detectives' trial, in which they stand accused of killing Israel Greenwald and seven other men for the mob. Though he said he never knew the name of the man he helped to bury, prosecutors say it was Mr. Greenwald, a Long Island jeweler who made the mistake of crossing Burton Kaplan, a criminal mastermind with whom he had a deal to sell stolen Treasury bills. When the deal went bad, the government says, Mr. Kaplan hired the two detectives and Mr. Santora to dispose of Mr. Greenwald for $30,000. They took him to the lot, where the witness said he saw Mr. Eppolito in a parked car as Mr. Santora and Mr. Caracappa led the jeweler to the garage, from which he never returned.


Summary: Minutes later, he said, the cousin, Frank Santora Jr., handed him a shovel, made him dig a grave, then forced him to push the dead man in and then pour lime and wet cement atop the body. When the deal went bad, the government says, Mr. Kaplan hired the two detectives and Mr. Santora to dispose of Mr. Greenwald for $30,000. Within minutes, the witness said, Mr. Santora led him, too, to the garage, where he saw the dead man. Removing a pair of spade-tipped wooden shovels from the trunk of his white Cadillac, Mr. Santora forced Mr. Franzone to bury the jeweler in the dirt.


Summary: A 56-year-old man with a 20-year-old secret told it in public for the first time how, in 1986, he dug a five-foot-deep hole, dumped in a dead man he believed that two detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, had just helped kill. Mr. Franzone told the jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that he watched as Mr. Eppolito's cousin and Mr. Caracappa marched their victim toward a garage then came out without him. They took him to the lot, where the witness said he saw Mr. Eppolito in a parked car as Mr. Santora and someone in a trench coat who looked like Mr. Caracappa led the jeweler to the garage, from which he never returned.


Summary: Minutes later, he said, the cousin, Frank Santora Jr., handed him a shovel, made him dig a grave, then forced him to push the dead man in and then pour lime and wet cement atop the body. Mr. Franzone said, Frankie told him to help him bury the body and if he didn't help him then he would kill him and his family.


Summary: The man with the secret was Peter Franzone, a sixth-grade dropout, who testified at the detectives' trial that the worst things he had done before that day took a car that did not belong to him and steal $65. Mr. Franzone told the jury in Federal District Court that he watched as Mr. Eppolito's cousin and Mr. Caracappa march their victim toward a garage on Nostrand Avenue near a collision shop he owned, then come out without him. Beyond this experience, Mr. Franzone presented himself as a regular guy, a working man who left his city job with 17 years' worth of unused vacation time. Though he said he never knew the name of the man he helped to bury, prosecutors say it was Mr. Greenwald, a Long Island jeweler. Mr. Franzone was already a friend of Mr. Santora's, having worked on his Oldsmobile at the collision shop.


Summary: ''There is no substitute for having someone who lived here or served time here or worked here,'' said George Durgerian, a park ranger on Alcatraz.