Federal Deposit Insurance Corp brokers sale of Puerto Rican banks Eurobank, R-G Premier Bank and Westernbank; banks respectively are bought by Oriental Financial Group, Scotiabank of Canada, and Banco Popular (M) ------------ Paul Sullivan Wealth Matters column discusses home security systems; photo (M) ------------ Bucks blog on patients e-mailing doctors with medical questions (S) ------------ Floyd Norris Off the Charts column observes that for first time in 40 years, more people during 2007-9 downturn thought their own financial situation was going to get worse than thought it would improve; cites Conference Board chart of data from 1967 to 2010, which shows how Americans expected their income to fare in next six months (M) ------------ Nate Chinen reviews concert by drummer Tomas Fujiwara and his band, Hook Up, at Jazz Gallery; photos (M) ------------ Jason Zinoman reviews production of Crystal Skillman play The Vigil or the Guided Cradle, directed by John Hurley; photo (M) ------------ Brandon Victor Dixon, lead in Off Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys, will play Ray Charles in coming Broadway show Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical; photo (S) ------------ Greek government, racing to secure financial aid and avoid debt default, agrees to austerity measures totaling 24 billion euros ($32 billion) that will include cutting some workers' pay and some public sector jobs as well as opening up parts of economy; photos (M) ------------ Gia Kourlas reviews performance of Puro Deseo, newest work by choreographer Luciana Achugar, at Kitchen; photo (M) ------------ CBS crime show The Mentalist garners largest prime time overnight ratings (S) ------------ US Court of Appeals in New York vacates lower court order to enjoin publication of novel by Swedish writer Fredrik Colting described as sequel to J D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (S) ------------ Tony Administration Committee votes to allow scores of Enron, Fences and The Royal Family to be eligible for nominations in best score category; photo (S) ------------ Alastair Macaulay reviews gala opening of New York City Ballet season featuring two new ballets by choreographers Benjamin Millepied and Alexei Ratmansky; photos (M) ------------ Cyclist Lance Armstrong finishes fifth in third stage of Tour of the Gila to help his teammate Levi Leipheimer maintain his overall lead (S) ------------ George Vecsey Sports of The Times column on running of 136th Kentucky Derby; holds that this year's Derby could be memorable for wrong reasons, with weather forecasts predicting heavy rains; photo (M) ------------ New York Mets defeat Philadelphia Phillies, 9-1; photo (M) ------------ The Rail column profiles jockey Garrett Gomez, who will ride morning-line favorite Lookin at Lucky in 136th Kentucky Derby; 20-horse derby field is listed (M) ------------ Samuel G Freedman On Religion column on Diane Ravitch, whose book The Death and Life of the Great American School System offers recommendations for improving public school system based on Roman Catholic Education system (M) ------------ Former employees of St Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village gather on premises to pay respects on official day of institution's shutdown; hospital, which operated for 61 years, was plagued by financial difficulties and effected by changing neighborhood demographics; photos (M) ------------ Hunts Point Journal: Tony Rivera works as car chaser, or car hustler, on Hunts Point Avenue in Bronx, flagging down cars with broken windows or other problems in attempt to send business to repair shop that employs him; Rivera claims to have invented occupation; photo (M) ------------ Susan Dominus Big City column profiles Harry Wieder, gay, Jewish dwarf from Queens who was advocate for gay rights among other social issues; Weider was killed by taxi while crossing street in East Village where he resided; photos (M) ------------ Linda Greenhouse Op-Ed article opposes Supreme Court's decision to hear California's appeal of US appeals court ruling that struck down state law imposing fine of up to $1,000 for sale or rental of violent video games to minors; contends that Supreme Court's intervention seems so gratuitous that she finds it hard to shake concern that some justices may think that social engineering of this sort may do some good (M) ------------ Letters from Rep Kathy Castor, Sue Libenson and Paul McKenney comment on oil spill in Gulf of Mexico; Castor contends that this disastrous event should alter Obama administration's plan to bring oil rigs closer to Florida's coastline ------------ Letters from Theodore Ruthizer, Anthony D Romero, Jay N Feldman, Elizabeth Skelton and Chung-Wha Hong respond to April 26 article and Kris W Kobach April 29 Op-Ed about Arizona's new immigration law; drawing ------------ Editorial criticizes Bishop Lawrence E Brandt of Greensburg, Pa, for punishing nuns who supported health care reform; holds that Sisters of St Joseph showed courage and compassion when they spoke out for reform, and it makes no sense to thwart their efforts to recruit young women to become nuns ------------ Editorial, in Failed State series, urges New York State Legislature to pass law creating nonpartisan, independent redistricting commission; holds that Assemblyman Michael Gianaris has been pushing for nonpartisan redistricting commission, but his bill is moving too slowly through Assembly; contends that old corrupt redistricting system needs to go ------------ Editorial criticizes BP and Obama administration for not moving aggressively and swiftly to plug leaking oil well in Gulf of Mexico; holds that we now face huge disaster whose consequences might have been minimized with swifter action ------------ Florida Gov Charlie Crist has angered Democrats and Republicans with his decision to run for Senate as independent; he is latest in string of established Republicans who have found themselves pushed to side by more conservative candidates; Congress has been home to plenty of party-switchers over years, with label of turncoat frequently giving way to that of Mr Chairman; photo (M) ------------ Heavy winds and stormy seas have driven oil spill closer to Louisiana coast; government and BP officials continue frenzied effort to throttle gushing oil well before it can do widespread damage; Gov Bob Riley declares state of emergency for Alabama, Gov Charlie Crist of Florida does same for several counties and Gov Bobby Jindal activates Louisiana's National Guard; map; photo (M) ------------ About 1,000 unemployed fishermen pack elementary school gymnasium in Venice, La, hoping to receive training in how to clean up oil spill in Gulf of Mexico that may wipe out their industry; they are seeking employment with BP, company blamed for spill and responsible for cleanup; photos (M) ------------ Gov Jan Brewer signs follow-on bill approved by Arizona legislators that makes revisions to state's sweeping law against illegal immigration; says changes should quell concerns that measure will lead to racial profiling; her photo (M) ------------ Hayat Khalil Hassan Nazar Heji may be most grateful citizen of Qatar; she is blind woman from conservative Muslim country whose government paid for her to go to US, learn English, earn PhD and then return home to serve as director of Al Noor Institute for Visually Impaired; Heji has dedicated her life to molding how she, and then other blind people, are seen; it is custom in Qatar for young people to marry very close relatives; main causes of blindness in Qatar are premature birth and genetic disorders, passed along within families; photo (M) ------------ Maria Pinto, one of Michelle Obama's favorite designers, closes her boutique in Chicago and announces that she is going out of business; acknowledges making startup mistakes in areas like financial management and operations; opened boutique in August 2008, capitalizing on wave of enthusiasm for her work, as displayed mostly by Mrs Obama on campaign trail; even high profile support of brand, priced in hundreds and thousands of dollars, could not save it from reality of Great Recession; photos (M) ------------ Solicitor Gen Elena Kagan and Federal Appeals Court Judge Merrick B Garland are front-runners for spot on Supreme Court; Kagan has glittering resume, but it lacks one qualification that every member of current Supreme Court possesses: past judicial service; possibility that she will be nominated has ignited debate over what scholars call 'the norm of prior judicial experience'; it has been almost 40 years since nominee who had not been judge was appointed to Supreme Court: last two were William H Rehnquist and Lewis F Powell Jr, both of whom joined court in 1972; graph shows that share of Supreme Court justices coming from federal courts has climbed to 100 percent in recent years; Kagan photos (M) ------------ Outline for immigration overhaul unveiled by Democratic senators lays down new starting point for national debate: tough immigration enforcement; it also reveals how politics have shifted on contentious issue; enforcement would be more far-reaching than anything proposed by Pres George W Bush's administration; it begins with zero tolerance for immigrants trying to enter country illegally, by tightening border enforcement and by barring them from taking jobs in US; proposal was presented by Sen Majority leader Harry Reid and Sens Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez, Dianne Feinstein and Richard J Durbin; no Republican signed on to it; photo (M) ------------ CHICAGO -- Fashion and politics are seasonal and unpredictable, yet the two came together quite well here for the hometown designer Maria Pinto and Michelle Obama, whose first memorable bursts onto the national scene were often in Pinto creations. Remember the purple sheath Mrs. Obama wore the night of the fist bump heard round the world? The teal number at the Democratic National Convention? Or the red dress she wore to meet the Bushes on their way out of the White House? Maria Pinto all, designed right here where both women were born and raised and, over the course of one remarkable election, became stars. So when Ms. Pinto abruptly put up a ''closeout sale'' sign in the window of her West Loop boutique and announced that she was folding her fashion business, Chicago -- and Pinto devotees all over -- reacted with disbelief: What in sartorial heaven happened? ''I pushed as far as I could,'' Ms. Pinto, 53, said in her first lengthy interview since the demise of her store and wholesale operations in mid-February. Just back from a month's break in Barcelona, she pointed to the strain that a sour economy had placed on her business just as it was expanding and gaining major traction beyond a loyal Chicago following. But Ms. Pinto acknowledged having made some typical startup mistakes in building her brand, in areas like financial management and operations. After 16 years of designing out of a somewhat anonymous atelier, she opened the boutique, named after herself, in August 2008, capitalizing on a wave of enthusiasm for her work, as displayed mostly by Mrs. Obama on the campaign trail. She also increased her wholesale operations and had been maintaining a showroom in New York. While Mrs. Obama diversified her style after becoming first lady (she has been drawn to high-end designers like Jason Wu and Narciso Rodriguez, as well as brands like J. Crew), she still sported Maria Pinto every now and then. But even high-profile support of the brand, priced in the hundreds and thousands of dollars, could not save it from the reality of the Great Recession. The real problems started right after the introduction of the spring 2010 line in New York last September, Ms. Pinto said. ''They loved the line,'' she said. ''I was like, where are the orders? O.K., this is not a good sign.'' Pinto was carried at stores like Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue and Takashimaya -- a store whose New York location will soon be closing its doors, another victim of the recession. ''She's such a highly regarded talent,'' said Anne Brouwer of McMillan Doolittle, a Chicago firm that specializes in retail analysis. ''It was certainly a really difficult time to open.'' Still, fashion watchers said her style helped define a moment. ''As a fan of the first lady's, I was discovering Michelle Obama's style influence, and Maria Pinto was part of that story from the very beginning,'' said Mary Tomer, creator of Mrs-O.org, a blog devoted to Mrs. Obama's clothes. But Mrs. Obama chose from the conservative end of Ms. Pinto's collections, which also included pieces like leather jeans, dresses of sassy feathers and kangaroo jackets. There is so much more the designer wishes she could have been known for. ''Yes, it was heartbreaking and very sad,'' Ms. Pinto said of the last few months. ''The good news is that my creativity goes with me anywhere I go.'' For now, it will go into yoga, gardening, painting -- and a lot of soul-searching. PHOTOS: Michelle Obama in a Pinto dress at a June 2008 rally. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID BANKS/ASSOCIATED PRESS) (A1); Michelle Obama and the president-elect visiting the Bushes at the White House in November 2008. Mrs. Obama wore a red dress created by a hometown designer, Maria Pinto, below, who is shown at her recently closed boutique in Chicago. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A3) ------------ CORRECTION APPENDED Federal regulators brokered the sale of three troubled lenders in Puerto Rico late Friday in an effort to fix the commonwealth's broken banking system. After months of anticipation, officials from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized and then immediately sold the banks -- Eurobank, R-G Premier Bank and Westernbank -- which have been devastated by the region's sluggish real estate market and a deep economic recession. Banco Popular, Puerto Rico's biggest bank, picked up the bulk of Westernbank's assets and deposits at a discounted price. R-G Premier was bought by Scotiabank of Canada, and Eurobank was acquired by the Oriental Financial Group. Those deals were made for slight premiums over the value of their deposits. Officials from the F.D.I.C. and the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions in Puerto Rico spent much of Friday trying to get out the message that depositors at all three troubled banks were protected. News of regulators' takeover plans leaked earlier in the week as bids came due for an F.D.I.C.-run auction. The brokered deals were part of the government's effort to strengthen Puerto Rico's banking system by forcing consolidation, while weaning those lenders from high-cost deposits they obtain from the mainland to make loans. The acquired banks hold about one-quarter of Puerto Rico's assets and deposits. Regulators feared that closing one separately from the others would set off bank runs on the island's other lenders. Banco Popular, with its purchase of Westernbank, now holds more than 31 percent of the region's deposits. That level of consolidation required special permission from the Federal Reserve Board before that deal could be completed. All of the buyers already operated in Puerto Rico and received loss-sharing agreements that made the F.D.I.C liable for the bulk of future losses associated with the purchased banks. The agency projects the effort to cost its insurance fund about $5.3 billion, $500 million less than it had anticipated. The F.D.I.C. will also make a financing program available to the bidders for up to five years, allowing them to replace expensive brokered deposits with low-cost funds supplied by the government. Officials said the program was necessary to protect the insurance fund, but said they had no plans to expand it to other transactions. In addition, regulators closed four banks on the mainland on Friday evening, bringing the total number of failures this year to 64. F.D.I.C. officials said that they still expected to shutter more banks this year than the 140 banks that failed in 2009, although they noted that the pace of closings was slowing. ''We are seeing signs of improvement,'' Sheila C. Bair, the agency's chairwoman, told reporters by phone on Friday. In Puerto Rico, high unemployment, plummeting property values and gaping fiscal deficits have worsened the island's ailing economy and added new urgency to the efforts to shore up its banks. As their losses piled up, nearly all local lenders pulled back on lending. Several banks in Puerto Rico, including Banco Popular and Oriental Financial, are healthier today after raising new capital in anticipation of the government-assisted deals. The consolidation effort, meanwhile, should bolster their financial prospects by reducing competition. Still, federal officials and analysts said a broader economic recovery for Puerto Rico could take years. ''We think this will improve the health of the banking sector and improve its capacity to provide credit,'' Ms. Bair said. Correction: May 4, 2010, Tuesday This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An article on Saturday about the federally brokered sale of three troubled lenders in Puerto Rico misstated the sovereign status of Puerto Rico. It is a self-governing commonwealth of the United States, not a territory. ------------ CORRECTION APPENDED A wonderful, little-known song that leaps out of the biographical revue ''Sondheim on Sondheim'' is a taunting show tune, ''Now You Know,'' from the 1981 musical ''Merrily We Roll Along.'' One of that revue's six numbers from ''Merrily,'' it encapsulates Stephen Sondheim's skeptical worldview as tartly as anything the composer has written. ''I mean, big surprise: people love you and tell you lies/Bricks can fall out of clear blue skies,'' Leslie Kritzer sings with chipper, smart-aleck zest. Her character from ''Merrily,'' Mary Flynn, is a tough cookie and best friend of the embattled songwriting team at the show's center. ''It's called flowers wilt/It's called apples rot,/It's called thieves get rich and saints get shot,'' she continues. Even God, who is seldom glimpsed in the Sondheim universe, makes a fleeting appearance, only to be dismissed as a disappointment who ''doesn't answer prayers a lot.'' That song's solution to despair is to grit your teeth and soldier on: ''It's called count to 10/It's called burn your bridges, start again.'' The only palliative to the bitterness of experience is a therapeutic imperative: ''Now you grow.'' ''Now You Know'' is a high point of ''Sondheim on Sondheim,'' the biographical anthology of his songs, conceived and directed by James Lapine for the Roundabout Theater Company at Studio 54. The show, which also stars Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams, Tom Wopat, Norm Lewis, Euan Morton, Erin Mackey and Matthew Scott, blends performances of Sondheim songs, famous and obscure, with interview footage in which the composer, who recently turned 80, discusses his life and creative process. Mr. Sondheim may be the last great songwriter, in a lineage that runs from Jerome Kern through the Gershwins to Leonard Bernstein, who pushed the Broadway musical from a brash, vaudevillian entertainment into a loftier realm. But of all of them, Mr. Sondheim went the furthest in deconstructing and reinventing a populist art form as a highbrow version of itself. Mr. Sondheim's music examines the entire pre-1960s tradition, from Gilbert and Sullivan and Viennese operetta, through the Gershwins' satires, Cole Porter's burlesque musicals and beyond. The pastiche songs of ''Follies,'' particularly, recycle the styles of classic show tunes, matching or outdoing their antecedents in quality while subverting their escapism. His competitive relationship with the past, a kind of serial patricide, culminated with the ''murder'' of his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II. In this revue's videotaped interviews, Mr. Sondheim goes out of his way to praise Hammerstein for teaching him the craft of writing lyrics. But if you compare the two, the inescapable fact emerges that Mr. Sondheim's lyrics programmatically repudiate his mentor's optimistic, inspirational ideology. Hammerstein's lyrics are synonymous with America's post-World War II ''Father Knows Best'' ethos of moral rectitude, in which confident breadwinners and their perfect little wives are busy multiplying and building a safe new world of peace and freedom. The basic building block of this sanctuary of hope and optimism is a happily married couple who fall in love at first sight and march blissfully, hand-in-hand, into the sunset. The climactic song in Mr. Sondheim's ''Company,'' ''Being Alive,'' magnificently sung by Mr. Lewis in this revue, replaces the anticipation of happily ever after voiced in the Rodgers and Hammerstein ballad ''Some Enchanted Evening'' with fear and trembling. Instead of a cozy, familial bond, intimacy with another person is portrayed as a terrifying prospect that involves: Someone to need you too much, Someone to know you too well, Someone to pull you up short And put you through hell. For all his songs' universality, the Sondheim philosophy is specific and exclusive. Directed toward his own class -- an urbane, well-educated, culturally cosmopolitan gentry -- his lyrics define what might be called the Manhattan sensibility: humanist, proudly intellectual, psychologically sophisticated, hyper-articulate, liberal, Jewish and disenchanted. The closest Mr. Sondheim has come to being multicultural was in the 1976 musical ''Pacific Overtures.'' Set in 19th-century Japan, the musical has songs that propose an intriguing East-West hybrid, part Broadway and part Asian. The Sondheim cynicism didn't come out of the blue. Expressions of wised-up disillusion, like ''Now You Know,'' have Broadway ancestors in the lyrics of E. Y. Harburg, Ira Gershwin and even George M. Cohan. But it was Mr. Sondheim's 1970 show, ''Company,'' that codified the Manhattan sensibility -- a radically unsentimental, emotionally realistic honesty that found its pop-record equivalents in Paul Simon in New York, and in Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman on the West Coast. The origins of that attitude included confessional poetry and the rise of psychoanalysis as a kind of alternative religion, both of which provided Mr. Sondheim with the self-scrutinizing language to put in the mouths of his introspective characters. Simultaneously, the moon-June-spoon ideal of eternal romantic love began its steady decline as the principal subject of popular songs. Advancing technology also played a major role in the transition from optimism to ambivalence. The birth-control pill, which helped propel the second wave of feminism, and rock 'n' roll's hedonistic ethic and amplification both undermined Hammerstein's patriarchal sentimentality and toughened the sound of pop. At the same time, the mystique of psychoanalysis superseded the more simplistic self-help doctrine of ''The Power of Positive Thinking'' as the culture's spiritual panacea. If you could reach deep enough into your repressed memories, it was argued, you could exorcize your demons. In his relentless demolition operation, Mr. Sondheim ultimately embraced the Manhattan sensibility's demonic extreme -- murderous, misanthropic rage -- with ''Sweeney Todd'' (1979). But where do you go once you've had your anti-hero proclaim, ''We all deserve to die!'' After ''Merrily,'' a summing up of his generation's growing pains, told in reverse, Mr. Sondheim's search for meaning and connection to the future began in earnest with ''Sunday in the Park With George'' (1984) and continued with ''Into the Woods'' (1987). Both exalted the creation of ''children and art'' as a refutation of the nihilism of ''Sweeney Todd'' and as a self-conscious, morally high-minded investment in humanity. Grudgingly and on his own terms Mr. Sondheim even affirmed Hammerstein's belief in true love with ''Passion'' (1994). But as usual with him, there was a catch: the love being conjured might also be described as pathologically obsessed. The one human connection Mr. Sondheim has always celebrated unambiguously and without strain is friendship. Its most eloquent expression is found in another song from ''Merrily,'' ''Old Friends'': Time goes by Everything else keeps changing You and I We get continued next week. The relaxed, swinging tune that evokes a cocktail singalong has the same bittersweet ache as the lyrics that culminate with a toast: ''Here's to us! Who's like us? Damn few!'' This is intimacy without fear. In most cases, however, the relationship of music and lyrics in Mr. Sondheim's songs expresses a core ambivalence. As his words explore the complicated, often harsh truths about life and relationships, his swelling ballads convey an unalloyed romantic yearning in the harmonic language of Puccini. With the Freudian mystique of the 1960s and '70s on the wane, and the language of psychotherapy reduced to the banal pop scripture of reality television, the Age of Sondheim may be fading. An emerging technological view of humanity and its discontents that largely bypasses the post-Freudian model proposes an unsettling new ideal of the human being as a perfectible machine that through cloning is theoretically immortal. Antidepressants and performance-enhancing drugs, from steroids to mental stimulants to Viagra, are modifying human behavior. Replaceable body parts, plastic surgery and gender re-assignment are undermining the traditional idea of the individual as a being with a singular identity and destiny. Hand-held devices have turned us into robotic mobile power stations continually transmitting and receiving information in computer language that has seeped into pop songs. These developments are profoundly antithetical to the dream of sadly civilized enlightenment evoked by Mr. Sondheim's songs. In this emerging world, the truth of existence is rooted more in quantifiable physical reality than in ideas and emotions. Musically it is embodied in hard digital beats and in performances staged as competitive sports events. As we lunge into the 21st century, there is no next Stephen Sondheim waiting to step into the master's shoes and perpetuate the tradition that he carried to its pinnacle. There is only new and different in a largely unimaginable future in which we are simultaneously more and less human than in the pre-digital age. Like it or not, and however we do it, now we grow. ''Sondheim on Sondheim'' continues through June 13 at Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, Manhattan; (212) 719-1300, roundabouttheater.org/index.html Correction: May 4, 2010, Tuesday This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: A music column on Saturday about Stephen Sondheim and the ''Sondheim on Sondheim'' revue, at Studio 54, misstated part of a lyric from the song ''Old Friends.'' It is ''You and I/We get continued next week,'' not ''You and I/We can continue next week.'' PHOTOS: Stephen Sondheim in 1985. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE J. SHERMAN/NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ARCHIVES)(C1); The biographical revue ''Sondheim on Sondheim'' stars, from left: Leslie Kritzer, Norm Lewis, Erin Mackey, Barbara Cook, Matthew Scott, Vanessa Williams, Tom Wopat and Euan Morton. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES)(C7) ------------ CORRECTION APPENDED NEW ORLEANS -- Officials in the Obama administration began for the first time Friday to publicly chastise BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, calling the oil company's current resources inadequate to stop what is unfolding into an environmental catastrophe. As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast, fears continued to grow that the leak from the seabed oil well could spiral out of control. One official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a widely distributed warning on Friday, said the oil flow could grow from the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day to ''an order of magnitude higher than that.'' The increased level of concern was reflected in the sharp new criticism by federal officials of BP for not stopping the leak and cleaning up the spill before it reached land, something the company's officials had said was possible earlier in the week. ''It is clear that after several unsuccessful attempts to secure the source of the leak, it is time for BP to supplement their current mobilization as the slick of oil moves toward shore,'' Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said pointedly, as the government announced steps to supplement its response with people and equipment from the Defense Department. Geoffrey S. Morrell, deputy assistant secretary of defense, said in a statement that the government would hold BP accountable for the cost of the department's deployment, which as of Friday night included the Louisiana National Guard to help clean up coastal areas once the oil comes ashore. BP officials said they did everything possible, and a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP, which was leasing the drilling rig that exploded in flames on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead. The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was ''a spill of national significance,'' and then set up a second command center in Mobile. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day. The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Ms. Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful. By Friday afternoon, she said, the Defense Department had agreed to send two large military transport planes to spray chemicals that can disperse the oil while it is still in the Gulf. Officials initially seemed to underestimate the threat of a leak, just as BP did last year when it told the government such an event was highly unlikely. Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the chief Coast Guard official in charge of the response, said on April 22, after the rig sank, that the oil that was on the surface appeared to be merely residual oil from the fire, though she said it was unclear what was going on underwater. The day after, officials said that it appeared the well's blowout preventer had kicked in and that there did not seem to be any oil leaking from the well, though they cautioned it was not a guarantee. BP officials, even after the oil leak was confirmed by using remote-controlled robots, expressed confidence that the leak was slow enough, and steps taken out in the Gulf of Mexico aggressive enough, that the oil would never reach the coast. (The NOAA document on a potentially far larger leak, first obtained by The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala., was described by an agency spokesman as simply a possibility raised by a staff member, not an official prediction.) Some oil industry critics questioned whether the federal government is too reliant on oil companies to manage the response to major spills, leaving the government unable to evaluate if the response is robust enough. ''Here you have the company that is responsible for the accident leading the response to the crisis,'' said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program. ''There is a problem here, and the consequence is clear.'' But it is still the government, in this case the Coast Guard, that has the final say. A law passed a year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster makes ''each responsible party for a vessel or a facility from which oil is discharged'' liable for cleaning up a spill. But oversight of the cleanup is designated to the Coast Guard, with advice from other federal agencies. Rear Adm. Robert C. North, retired, who was commander of the Coast Guard's Eighth District from 1994 to 1996, said that decisions in these situations are made collectively, but that the buck essentially stops with the federal coordinator -- in this case, Admiral Landry. ''The federal on-scene coordinator is kind of the one individual to say, 'I think we need to do more' or 'That's adequate,' '' he said. If the government determines that the responsible party is not up to the job, it can federalize the spill, running the cleanup operations without the private company but billing it for the cost. This is a last resort, however. In this case, Admiral North said, the oil companies have more technology and expertise than the government. ''It doesn't appear that federalizing it would bring in any more resources,'' he said. Officials from BP and the federal government have repeatedly said they had prepared for the worst, even though a plan filed last year with the government said it was highly unlikely that a spill or leak would ever result from the Deep Horizon rig. ''There are not much additional available resources in the world to fight this thing offshore,'' said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, in an interview. ''We've basically thrown everything we have at it.'' Mr. Suttles said BP's efforts did not change after it was disclosed Wednesday night that the leak was estimated at 5,000 barrels a day, five times larger than initial estimates had suggested. He said BP, which is spending roughly $6 million a day and will likely spend far more when oil reaches land, had already been mobilizing for a far larger spill. However, he did not deny that BP initially thought the slick could be stopped before it reached the coastline. ''In the early days, the belief was that we probably could have contained it offshore,'' Mr. Suttles said. ''Unfortunately, since the event began we haven't had that much good weather.'' The first weekend after the sinking of the rig, choppy seas brought the cleanup to a near halt, and made more complicated tactics like controlled burns impossible. But even after the weather cleared -- and just a few days before officials began acknowledging the likelihood of landfall -- Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, expressed confidence the spill could be contained. Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said Friday that he agreed the situation was catastrophic and could continue to unfold for up to three months, but he said he remained satisfied with his team's response, saying that even if it had initially known that the leak was 5,000 barrels a day, the response would have been the same. ''While it may not have been visible to the public, from the very start, we have been working this very hard,'' he said. Within a matter of hours of the report of the explosion, the Coast Guard had dispatched three cutters, four helicopters and a plane to the scene, helping to save 90 workers, including three critically injured ones who were sent by helicopter for emergency care. ''We have never tried so many different methods for a large spill on the surface as we have during this, and I have been doing oil spill response for 30 years,'' Admiral Allen said. Correction: May 4, 2010, Tuesday This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An article on Saturday about the response by BP America and the federal government to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico misstated a provision in a pollution law passed a year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. The law, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, stipulates that ''each responsible party for a vessel or a facility from which oil is discharged'' is liable for cleanup costs. It does not state that the owner of a rig or a vessel is automatically responsible for the costs. An article on Sunday about an oil tax fund that helps pay for damages from oil spills repeated the error about the cleanup costs and it misstated part of the name of a federal agency responsible for coastal and deep ocean waters. It is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, not the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. PHOTO: A Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research crew Friday in Fort Jackson, La., with an oil-covered northern gannet found offshore. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANN HEISENFELT/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY) ------------ A deputy was found wounded in a shootout with suspected drug smugglers after a desert search. Pinal County sheriff's Lt. Tamatha Villar says the deputy suffered a superficial wound to his abdomen after being shot with an AK-47 assault rifle Friday. Lieutenant Villar said the deputy found bales of marijuana in the desert and then encountered five suspected illegal immigrants, two armed with rifles, and was shot. ------------ NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo was greeted like the state Democratic Party's star attraction at the start of a conference here on Friday organized by rural county leaders, but he still is not ready to say what office he is running for. In fact, Mr. Cuomo may not formally announce his bid for governor for another few weeks, as he continues to eschew public talk of politics while privately laying the groundwork for his candidacy. . But his 15-minute speech to a crowd of several hundred attendees at the Democratic Rural Conference, the first major event of the primary season, contained many of the ingredients of a stump speech for an aspiring governor. He spoke about the budget, falling tax revenue and the overabundance of state agencies, but made his sharpest comments about corruption. ''We have to clean up the disgrace that is the legislative process, we have to clean up the gridlock, we have to clean up the dysfunction,'' Mr. Cuomo said. ''This is a government that has violated the public trust and betrayed the public trust, and government is nothing without the public trust.'' ''In this Democratic Party,'' he added, ''there is no place for government corruption, period.'' His comments represented some of his harshest criticism of a state government entirely controlled by fellow Democrats, some of whom are under investigation by his own office. But Mr. Cuomo's unwillingness to discuss his own candidacy made for an interesting night of political theater. In his speech, Gov. David A. Paterson, who dropped out of the race earlier this year, said: ''There is a very exceptional leader who has a rare combination of skills. He is dynamic, he is articulate, he is perceptive, courageous and outspoken, and I am hoping he will run for governor this year, and his name is -- '' The governor, never one to miss a laugh line, paused for effect. ''Well, he'll speak for himself,'' he said. County leaders expressed tolerance at the unusual situation. ''We're just going to ride this out and wait for him to declare,'' said Lorie Longhany, the chairwoman of the Genesee County Democratic Committee. ''Because there isn't any other Democratic candidate that's talked about running for governor, or at least any other candidate really on the radar, I don't think it's going to make a lot of difference.'' Gaye Chapman, chairwoman of the Wayne County Democratic Committee, said, ''It's very different, I don't know how else to express it.'' ''If he were an unknown it would matter,'' she added. ''If we had a super Republican candidate already announced and we didn't have anyone famous, it would hurt, but not with Andrew Cuomo.'' Mr. Cuomo was also on the mind of about 21 supporters of Carl P. Paladino, a Buffalo developer and a Republican candidate for governor; they held placards outside the Crowne Plaza hotel as Democrats gathered inside, with messages like one telling Mr. Cuomo to ''get lost.'' The conference is composed of 47 of the state's 62 counties, and the vote is not weighted -- each county is accorded 10 votes, no matter the population. The outcome can sometimes be an early indication of the party's inclination in the primary and sometimes not. The last time Mr. Cuomo ran for governor, in 2002, he narrowly beat H. Carl McCall in the rural conference' straw poll but ended up withdrawing from the primary contest after it became clear Mr. McCall would prevail. In 2006, Mr. Cuomo prevailed again in the straw poll, that time in a crowded field for attorney general, an early sign of his career resuscitation. This time around, even though he has not declared his intentions, he faces no opposition. The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, also has no declared opposition within the party, leaving the attorney general's race as the main action of the conference. The race to succeed Mr. Cuomo is a crowded one, with at least five candidates vying to replace him and more expected. An early favorite here is Eric Dinallo, a former deputy in the attorney general's office under Eliot Spitzer who also served as Insurance Department superintendent under Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Paterson. Mr. Dinallo was the first to enter the race last summer and won endorsements from 20 upstate county chairmen and chairwomen after proposing to deploy more state lawyers to rural counties. A victory for him here would enhance his standing. Mr. Dinallo is running his first campaign, and is still seen as something of a dark horse compared to more seasoned politicians, including Kathleen Rice, the Nassau County district attorney. County officials also said Sean Coffey, a wealthy trial lawyer from Manhattan, had been actively courting support, while there was limited enthusiasm for two downstate legislators, Senator Eric T. Schneiderman and Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky. ''Dinallo has definitely been out there working it,'' said Dan Rivera, the party chairman in Niagara County. ''He definitely got out early, but I have to say that the Coffey crew has been out there as well.'' PHOTO: Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo at an event in Niagara Falls on Friday; he has not yet announced a run for governor. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES RAJOTTE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ Kathleen Kelly Cregan left her home in rural Ireland early on a March morning in 2005, embarking on a journey she thought would end up surprising and delighting her husband. Ms. Cregan flew to the United States to get a face-lift from Dr. Michael E. Sachs, a media-friendly plastic surgeon. To hide the surprise, she told her husband, Liam Cregan, that she was going to a business course in Dublin. Ms. Cregan's decision, it would turn out, ended in pain for her husband -- pain that was only aggravated on Friday. Hours after her surgery in New York, Ms. Cregan went into cardiac arrest and eventually died on St. Patrick's Day. Her family sued Dr. Sachs, as well as an anesthesiologist and a nurse who were part of the medical team, for malpractice in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The malpractice, the plaintiffs claimed, led to Ms. Cregan's wrongful death. Dr. Sachs's case was settled for $2.1 million last month. The one involving the nurse, Susan L. Alonzo-Francisco, was settled for $1 million on Friday. But the anesthesiologist, Dr. Madhavarao Subbaro, proceeded with his case, and late Friday afternoon, a six-member jury cleared him of responsibility in Ms. Cregan's death. Jurors, who began deliberating on Friday morning, did not know of Ms. Alonzo-Francisco's settlement, so they delivered verdicts exonerating her of responsibility as well. The settlement, however, will stand. Thomas A. Moore, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, was incredulous after the verdict was read. ''Thirty-five years, never seen a more shocking verdict,'' Mr. Moore said as he left the courtroom. ''This is the saddest ending.'' Although his clients won $3.1 million, Mr. Moore said the verdict ''leaves the end result at least bittersweet.'' Mr. Cregan stood next to Mr. Moore and declined to comment. But Mr. Moore said Mr. Cregan had told him that ''what he heard in this courtroom over the last two weeks convinced him beyond question his wife died needlessly.'' Mr. Moore said he planned to fight the jury's decision in a post-trial motion, arguing that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. As he left the courthouse, Dr. Subbaro said, ''Thank God we had a very intelligent jury.'' Michael Morris, the lawyer for Dr. Subbaro, said, ''Justice was rendered.'' The Cregans are from a farm just outside Limerick, and the trial played big in their country. Reporters from The Times in Ireland and an Irish news station were in court on Friday. The story has been read as a cautionary tale in Ireland. An opinion piece published in 2007 in The Sunday Tribune that advocated for the regulation of the country's cosmetic surgery industry said that no one in Ireland had ever died of cosmetic surgery. But it cited Ms. Cregan's case as a potential tragic outcome. Ms. Cregan found out about Dr. Sachs after reading an article about him in The Sunday Independent of Ireland, her family said. The article described him as ''a leading cosmetic and facial reconstruction surgeon'' in the United States, with a ''highly confidential client list.'' The article did not mention that Dr. Sachs had settled more than 30 malpractice lawsuits. But he was known as a master of generating publicity, even appearing on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' twice in the early 1990s. Dr. Sachs surrendered his license to practice medicine in 2008. During the trial, Mr. Moore said Ms. Cregan collapsed the morning after the surgery in a clinic bathroom when a blood clot that he said had formed overnight passed from her pharynx to her trachea, causing breathing problems and cardiac arrest that resulted in brain damage. Mr. Moore argued that Dr. Subbaro had erred in several ways, starting with a decision to depart the clinic after the surgery, leaving Ms. Cregan in the care of a nurse who Mr. Moore said did not know how to use an endotracheal tube in the event that the patient had difficulty breathing. Dr. Subbaro should have known there could be post-surgical bleeding, Mr. Moore said. But Mr. Morris portrayed his client as a dedicated physician who discharged his duties responsibly and could not be held liable for complications that emerged hours after a successful surgery. Mr. Moore blamed Ms. Alonzo-Francisco for failing to call 911 in a timely fashion. The jury did find in some instances that Ms. Alonzo-Francisco and Dr. Subbaro had failed in their professional duties, but ruled that those failures did not play a substantial role in Ms. Cregan's death. Mr. Moore said he believed the jury failed to make sense of the fact that there could be multiple mistakes that led to her death, and wondered whether Dr. Sachs was lurking in their minds. Jurors were not told of Dr. Sachs's earlier settlement in the case. Indeed, one juror said that thoughts of Dr. Sachs were present during their decision-making. ''We kept wondering, where's Sachs?'' the juror, Kevin Espy, 30, said. ''We really wished we knew more about Dr. Sachs.'' Mr. Espy said he felt ''horrible for the Cregans.'' ''We knew that something went wrong,'' he said. ''But the way the charges were worded, we couldn't say it was because of them.'' PHOTO: Kathleen Kelly Cregan died after plastic surgery in 2005. ------------ It was a requiem not just for a hospital, but also for a vanishing part of Greenwich Village history -- for an institution that tended to countless skinned knees and heart attacks, as well as once-in-a-lifetime disasters from the sinking of the Titanic to the toppling of the World Trade Center. Over the last few weeks and months, as St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan teetered into bankruptcy, many of its 3,500 employees were laid off. But about 1,500 of them returned to the red brick hospital building on West 12th Street on Friday for one last time, to say goodbye. They gathered first for a noon Mass -- held in the chapel but broadcast to overflow crowds -- where a longtime hospital housekeeper sang and a psychiatric nurse danced, like a Jules Feiffer drawing come to life, in a spectral white dress and ballet slippers. After praising the Lord, they passed the barbecue sauce, trading stories, hugs and a few tears over hot dogs, hamburgers and coleslaw in the cafeteria. The hospital officially shut its doors at 8 a.m. Friday when it stopped taking even walk-in emergency room patients. As if to make the point crystal clear, the emergency room entrance was boarded up, the bare plywood covered by a poster that looked like a tombstone printed with the hospital's name and the years of its birth and death: 1849-2010. The last patients left in the hospital complex, built for more than 700, were 18 people in the Pax Christi Hospice, who have been allowed to remain. ''It's a sisterhood, it's a family, it's a great place to work, for many of us,'' Mary McGinn, a nurse and vice president of patient flow, said after the Mass. She broke down and cried as she described how she had come to St. Vincent's to work as a 21-year-old and stayed there to witness the crime and drug casualties of the 1970s, the mystifying and terrifying AIDS plague of the '80s and '90s and the terrorist attack of 2001. The hospital represented more than a job. Ms. McGinn gave birth to her three children there and later took them to the emergency room when they had sports injuries. Her husband, Timothy, learned there that he had pancreatic cancer. Despite the boarded-up ambulance bay, many St. Vincent's employees seemed to be in shock. ''Someone should investigate,'' one man said, chasing a reporter down the hall. But Sister Miriam Kevin Phillips, known as Sister Kevin, a nurse and a nun with the Sisters of Charity, which founded the hospital, gave a less sinister explanation for the demise of St. Vincent's, which leaves New York City without a single Catholic general hospital in a city once full of them. St. Vincent's was inexorably defeated, she said, by its devotion to the poor and by the transformation of the Village from a home for immigrants and the working class to a neighborhood filled with wealthy people who were drawn to more prestigious academic medical centers. She had seen it with her own eyes, as a lifelong Village resident, and as a nurse and later senior vice president for mission at St. Vincent's. ''As the population changed, the type of patient who came into St. Vincent's changed too,'' Sister Kevin said. The exodus of Village residents to other hospitals is backed up by State Health Department data, which show that before the closing, the 11 nearest zip codes accounted for only 37 percent of St. Vincent's patients. When the Titanic sank, Sister Kevin said, the Sisters of Charity wired the rescue ship, the Carpathia, that St. Vincent's ambulances would be waiting at the dock, but would take only passengers from steerage. They knew, she said, that the rich passengers would be taken care of. Like almost everyone saying goodbye, Sister Kevin said that St. Vincent's had shaped her life. Living on West 13th Street as a teenager, she admired the nurses in their crisp uniforms and determined to become one of them. PHOTOS: The Rev. James R. O'Connell celebrated a farewell Mass Friday for the employees of St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RUBY WASHINGTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES); Former employees of St. Vincent's gathered Friday at the hospital for a final goodbye. Many left personal notes on a sign. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RUBY WASHINGTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ The outline for an immigration overhaul unveiled by Democratic senators this week lays down a new starting point for any national debate: tough immigration enforcement. But perhaps more significantly it reveals how politics have shifted on the contentious issue. The enforcement would be more far-reaching than anything in place now -- or anything proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush. It begins with ''zero tolerance'' for immigrants trying to enter the country illegally, by tightening border enforcement and by barring them from taking jobs in the United States. ''It shows how far the Democrats have moved in terms of tougher and tougher enforcement,'' said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies immigration. ''Across the board you see language that would be very comfortable in a proposal written by Republicans.'' The move to a more security-minded consensus comes as the Democrats and their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, face a challenging midterm election season. Democrats have joined Republicans in seeking to avoid the mistakes of 1986, when the last major overhaul gave amnesty to more than three million illegal immigrants, but enforcement provisions were largely left out of the final legislation. The proposal's prospects of coming up in the Senate this year appear dim, after a tough immigration law in Arizona further polarized the national debate and President Obama said this week that the time might not be right. Yet the outline, with many game-changing measures that would broadly redesign the system bringing immigrants to this country, is likely to be the centerpiece of the immigration discussion this year, lawmakers and advocates said, whether or not it comes to the floor of the Senate. The ''conceptual proposal,'' as the senators called it, is an outline, not a draft of legislation. No Republican signed on to it, not even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who worked for months with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, shaping sections of a potential bill. Mr. Graham, in a statement with Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, dismissed the blueprint, saying it ''promises everything to everyone.'' Senator John Cornyn of Texas, another border state Republican, said the timing of the outline ''suggests that politics rather than policy is driving the train,'' since it comes just before nationwide rallies on Saturday by advocate groups demanding progress from Mr. Obama on the immigration overhaul. The blueprint, written primarily by Mr. Schumer, includes a proposal for a Social Security card containing a biometric chip that all workers, including American citizens, would have to present to an employer when being hired. The proposal was presented by Mr. Schumer, Mr. Reid, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Dianne Feinstein of California and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois. Employers would be responsible for monitoring the immigration status of potential hires much more closely than they do now. Every employer would be required to use a new verification system, including a scanner at every business to confirm the validity of the Social Security cards of job applicants. Conservatives, while supporting stronger enforcement, have long opposed national identity cards, or making the Social Security card a de facto one. Mr. Cornyn said the ''emphasis on border enforcement was certainly encouraging,'' but, he said, Congress should not wait for the whole package to pass before financing new border security measures. As part of the enforcement system, the outline calls for a national system to register births and deaths, to eliminate the fraudulent use by immigrants of documents of people who have died. It would establish a system to monitor the departure of all immigrants as well as their entry into the country. If immigrants failed to leave when their visas expired, the immigration authorities would be required to deport them quickly. Immigration officials have said that creating an exit system would be a vast task that could take many years to complete. The proposal opens the door wider than ever before to high-skilled immigrants. It would offer permanent-resident status, with a document known as a green card, to every foreigner with an advanced degree in science or technology from an American university. It would make it much easier for foreign students in the sciences to stay in the United States after they graduate, and eliminate numerical restrictions that have kept highly educated immigrants from India and China waiting for many years before becoming residents. The outline would make it possible for the spouses and other close relatives of legal green-card holders to come immediately to the United States, reuniting many thousands of families and eliminating a wait that now stretches to eight years. It would create a commission to monitor labor markets and determine when the supply of foreign workers should be raised or lowered. Mr. Schumer ''made an effort to fix every piece of the system that doesn't work right,'' said Paul Donnelly, an advocate for legal immigrants. Also for the first time, the Democrats' proposal would recognize same-sex relationships in allowing immigration. In exchange for more enforcement, the proposal offers a relatively simple path to legal status for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. They would register, admit their legal violation and pay penalties and back taxes up front. Then they would remain on provisional status for eight years. On Friday, different sides were weighing in. Roman Catholic bishops embraced the framework but strongly opposed the benefits for same-sex couples. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said the proposal was ''heavily framed around enforcement.'' PHOTO: People with ''Youth United for Justice'' prepared Friday to march to City Hall in Oakland, Calif. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES) (A9) ------------ WASHINGTON -- Fifteen months after President Obama took office promising to kick-start the Middle East peace process, the United States finally plans to open talks between Israel and the Palestinians. But the two parties will not be in the same room, many experts agree that the chances of a breakthrough are minuscule, and some say the whole exercise is simply a warm-up before Mr. Obama puts forward his own proposals for ending decades of conflict. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed that next week, the United States would start indirect talks, in which the administration's special envoy, George J. Mitchell, would ferry proposals between the Israelis and the Palestinians. ''Ultimately, we want to see the parties in direct negotiations and working out all the difficult issues that they must,'' Mrs. Clinton said to reporters at the State Department, after meeting with Kuwait's deputy prime minister, Muhammad al-Sabah. ''They've been close a few times before.'' Mr. Sabah said he expected Arab states to support the talks, despite Israel's announcement in March of plans to build new Jewish housing in East Jerusalem. The announcement opened a rift between Israel and the United States and temporarily derailed the peace process. The Arab League is expected to endorse the decision of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to return to the bargaining table, when the organization meets on Saturday in Cairo. Mr. Abbas's change of heart, administration officials said, came after reassurances from the United States, including a letter from Mr. Obama prodding the Palestinian leader to re-enter talks with Israel. Separately, these officials said, Mr. Mitchell's deputy, David Hale, indicated to the Palestinians that if Israel proceeded with the construction of 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, the United States would abstain from, rather than veto, a resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning the move. American officials also said that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had promised the United States that Israel would not proceed with this project, though he had repeatedly refused to declare a halt to building in East Jerusalem. Such rancor and mutual suspicion hardly bodes well for the talks, experts said. But the administration believes there is still an opportunity for the two sides to feel each other out on final-status issues like the borders of a future Palestinian state, the control of Jerusalem, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees -- issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators for years. For veterans of the peace process, the prospect of Mr. Mitchell's shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, illustrates just how much ground has been lost in the past eight years. ''We're going from the future way back to the past,'' said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator who is an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. ''Trust between the Israelis and the Palestinians has been shattered.'' On the other hand, he said, indirect talks will not raise expectations, always a dangerous thing in the Middle East. And the shuttle diplomacy may help answer critical questions, like whether Mr. Netanyahu is even in a position to reach an agreement, given his governing coalition. ''One way or the other, we're going to get to American ideas,'' said Martin S. Indyk, another former negotiator, who is now at the Brookings Institution. ''It's much better if they come out of a process where we've listened to both sides and figured out what their minimum demands are.'' Mr. Indyk said he worried about the talks being disrupted, either by a terrorist attack or by a decision by Jerusalem authorities to build housing in East Jerusalem. Israel and the United States have been warily eyeing Syria, which the Israeli government accused of transferring Scud missiles to the militant group Hezbollah. Beyond all these hurdles, some analysts say a fundamental rethinking of Middle East peacemaking is needed, given the strength of Israel and the weakened, divided nature of the Palestinian Authority. ''There is a fundamental asymmetry between the parties, and unless we acknowledge that, we'll be stuck,'' said Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. ------------ Across the Country, a Close Vote on a Bill BOSTON -- The Democratic-controlled House in Massachusetts came unexpectedly close to passing a measure this week that would have barred illegal immigrants from receiving state and federal benefits in the state. In the end, the bill failed 75-82, but that was much tighter than the tally on a similar measure last year, which lost by a lopsided 40-118. The difference, both proponents and political analysts say: Arizona. This year's proposal would have required any resident alien receiving benefits to be verified first as legal by a federal database. The measure was championed by State Representative Jeff Perry, a Republican, who is running for the Congressional seat being vacated by Bill Delahunt, a Democrat. It had the backing of high-profile political figures, including two candidates for governor -- Tim Cahill, the state treasurer who is running as an independent, and Charles Baker, the Republican. ''It suggests the dangerous growth of anti-immigration hysteria from Arizona,'' said Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, who said the measure was unnecessary because undocumented immigrants were not eligible for benefits anyway. ''It was pure political showboating,'' she said. Hundreds of people in New England are expected to join the nationwide protests against the Arizona law on Saturday, with rallies planned from Portland, Me., to Providence, R.I. About 450,000 immigrants have come to Massachusetts over the last decade. Between 150,000 and 170,000 are estimated to be here illegally, and state and city resources across the state are scarce. Mr. Perry said the unexpected support for the bill was partly because of concern over costs for their benefits. Without the Arizona legislation, the Massachusetts measure most likely would not have come to the floor right now and it certainly would not have done so well. But the vote shows how immigration is simmering just beneath the surface as a political issue here. Republicans are trying to use it as a cudgel against vulnerable Democrats in the state. Democrats want Congress to do something fast -- to get it off their plates before November. Demographers say that immigrants to New England have generally moved to the bigger urban areas rather than more rural regions, although there are pockets of Somalis in Lewiston, Me., and Brazilians on Cape Cod. One particular immigrant in South Boston has drawn national attention: President Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, has been living in public housing and is still fighting a deportation order from 2006. She appeared in court in February seeking to have that order overturned; her supporters argue that she would be in danger if she returned to her native Kenya because of her relationship to Mr. Obama, who is the son of her half-brother. President Obama has not intervened in the case. KATHARINE Q. SEELYE Political Considerations and Practical Ones HOUSTON -- On most subjects, it's hard to find a politician in the country more conservative than Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, but when it comes to Arizona's new immigration law, you find the gun-toting, Obama-bashing, regulation-slashing, state-rights-touting governor walking a fine line. ''I fully recognize and support a state's right and obligation to protect its citizens,'' Mr. Perry, a Republican, said in a statement, ''but I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona, and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas.'' One of those concerns, Mr. Perry went on, was that the local police and sheriffs would end up spending too much time corralling illegal immigrants and would neglect to catch criminals and keep the public safe. But he also blamed the federal government for not securing the border and repeated his stance that no immigration reform should be passed until the border is secured. That is a common position among Republican officeholders here, including Senator John Cornyn. They all portray the Arizona bill as a result of the state's frustration with the failure in Washington to seal the border. But Mr. Perry's real concern may be as much political as it is practical. Statewide officials in Texas, especially Republicans, have a hard time getting elected without Hispanic voters. Yet, Republicans still need to keep white conservatives, their base, happy. Mr. Perry has taken steps to increase the number of state police officers and cameras along the border. But he also has come out against ending the basing of citizenship on being born on American soil, opposed the border fence and favors a guest-worker program. JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Divided Opinions Around the Midwest CHICAGO -- In the Midwest's larger cities, protests against the Arizona law have cropped up, leaders of immigrant rights groups and the Democratic governor of Illinois have railed against it, and at least one mayor, Chris Coleman of St. Paul, announced that city workers could no longer travel to Arizona on city business. Mr. Coleman said the law will ''create a culture where racial profiling is acceptable, and will create a dangerous wedge between police officers and the communities they serve.'' He said he was also writing letters to the Democratic and Republican national committees to urge them not to choose Phoenix as a site for national conventions in 2012. And he wondered aloud what his own grandmother would have felt like, had there been ''a similar anti-Irish law.'' At least one Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota announced support for the measure (calling it a ''wonderful first step''), and the question was swiftly becoming a must-answer matter for debates, forums, interviews -- despite its potential political fallout on either side. ''My peers are going to have to answer this question,'' said Bob Vander Plaats, a Republican candidate for governor of Iowa, who has already offered his take: As governor, he would encourage a similar law in Iowa. ''The people in Iowa, the people in Arizona, people around the country are taking a look at the federal government and thinking that they have been completely inept with the handling of this issue,'' Mr. Vander Plaats said, adding that politicians' answers to the Arizona question ''probably say more about the candidates' stances on other issues, not just illegal immigration.'' MONICA DAVEY Cheap Labor a Factor in Rural Economies SEATTLE -- In Idaho, a measure that would require employers to electronically verify the legal immigration status of people they hire has yet to make headway in the state's Republican-controlled Legislature. ''It would just seem logical, as conservative as Idaho is supposed to be, that it would embrace this type of legislation,'' said State Senator Mike Jorgenson, a Republican who sponsored the bill. ''But the fact of the matter is this is not a party issue, Republican versus Democrat, as much as it is a cheap labor issue.'' Mr. Jorgenson, who is from Hayden Lake in northern Idaho, said some of the state's large agricultural industries, led by dairy farmers, have opposed the bill. Since 2000, Idaho's Hispanic population has grown by about 50 percent, according to Census data. Although Idaho is far more conservative than the states to its west, Washington and Oregon, all three share some broad characteristics. They are made up of vast rural and relatively conservative areas and large, more liberal cities. In Washington, commissioners in King County, which includes Seattle, voted 5 to 4 in November to adopt a ''don't ask'' ordinance that prohibits county agencies from allowing immigration status to affect the services they provide to people. The ordinance formalized a policy that had been in practice for years by agencies including the Office of the Sheriff and the Public Health Department. Earlier this month, at a large immigration rally in Seattle's Pioneer Square, the King County executive, Dow Constantine, a Democrat who was elected last fall, told those present, ''Wherever you began your day, wherever you began your life, you are welcome here in King County.'' WILLIAM YARDLEY Outrage in Schools, and Campaign Fodder DENVER -- The Denver Public Schools' superintendent, Tom Boasberg, announced on Thursday a ban on travel to Arizona for all district employees on district-sponsored trips. ''This legislation is an assault on human dignity and our core values,'' Mr. Boasberg said in a statement on the system's Web site. ''We will not put our employees at risk of the arbitrary and potentially discriminatory harassment that can now occur in Arizona as a result of this reprehensible identity-document legislation.'' In the race for governor of Colorado, immigration is back on the table -- if a little short on specifics. The leading Republican candidate, Scott McInnis, said in a radio interview this week that he would support a bill ''very similar'' to Arizona's if elected, without saying exactly what that might mean. His likely opponent, John Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver and a Democrat, was circumspect in the other direction. ''Arizona's law is troubling,'' Mr. Hickenlooper said in a statement. ''But I am not surprised states are trying to address immigration policy, because Congress hasn't.'' In Utah, the speaker of the State House of Representatives, David Clark, a Republican, said he expected there would be a very similar bill to Arizona's up for consideration in the Legislature next year. The Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau has received two or three inquiries so far, a spokeswoman said, from groups who might be rethinking Arizona for their business meetings. ''We're not actively soliciting business that might be lost from Arizona,'' said the spokeswoman, Carrina Junge. ''Right now, we're just kind of waiting to see what happens.'' And students from as many as 20 schools in Denver, from middle school to college, were walking out of class Friday afternoon for a rally at the State Capitol against the Arizona measure. KIRK JOHNSON PHOTOS: State Representative Jeff Perry; Gov. Rick Perry; Mayor Chris Coleman; County Executive Dow Constantine; Mayor John Hickenlooper GRAPHIC: A New Crop of State Immigration Laws: In the absence of federal legislation, states have enacted their own immigration laws. In the first three months of 2010 alone, more than 1,100 bills and resolutions related to immigrants and refugees were introduced in state legislatures across the country. (Source: Immigrant Policy Project, National Conference of State Legislatures) ------------ In the fierce closing debate over health care reform, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops charged that the legislation didn't do enough to restrict insurance coverage of abortions. Many Catholic nuns and the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals, looked at the same bill and concluded that it would have no effect on abortion financing. They signed a letter urging its passage, saying the reform was ''life-affirming'' and consistent with Catholic values. Now one bishop is punishing the nuns who supported reform. Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt of Greensburg, Pa., has decreed that ''any religious community'' that signed the letter would be forbidden to use the diocese's offices, parishes or newspaper to promote programs that encourage young people to consider the religious life. That was precisely what the Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, Pa., whose leadership team signed the letter, were asking Bishop Brandt's parishes to help promote. Many of the sisters -- who specialize in health care, social services and education -- work in hospitals, hospices and nursing homes as administrators, nurses and therapists. In an age of declining vocations, they are trying to encourage young women to join their ranks. Bishop Brandt accuses the nuns of taking ''a public stance in opposition to the church's teaching on human life.'' The nuns did not challenge the church's doctrine of life from conception to natural death. They saw the bill as a powerfully positive step, because it provided health insurance to millions of people without it, and hundreds of millions of dollars for the care of pregnant women. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden showed courage and compassion when they spoke out for reform. It makes no sense at all to try to punish them or thwart their efforts to find new sisters who would care for the sick and dying and lead exemplary Catholic lives. ------------ Professional medical societies play an enormously influential role in determining how medicine is practiced, but their activities and financing are a mystery. Outsiders can't tell how independent the societies are from the companies that supply much of their financing. So it was welcome news that the umbrella organization for specialty groups has adopted a new code of conduct that seeks to limit industry's ability to influence professional judgments. But it was disappointing that it does not make a clean break from industry money. The new code was adopted by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, representing more than 30 specialty groups, on April 17. More than a dozen members, including the American College of Cardiology and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have adopted it, but a majority have yet to respond. The code's main weakness is the lack of any effort to wean the societies from their dependence on money from the makers of drugs, biological medicines and medical devices. There have been complaints in recent years that some societies conduct educational programs that feel more like marketing sessions for products or issue practice guidelines that push their members to use treatments favored by their industrial benefactors. Last year, a group of experts proposed that such societies should quickly restrict industry support to no more than 25 percent of their operating budgets and work toward a virtually complete ban on industry money. The new code does not make even a nod to a ban. Instead, it tries to prevent the industry support from biasing a society's professional activities and judgments. The code seems strong in decreeing that the top leaders of medical societies and the top editors of their journals have no direct financial relationships with companies during their time in office. But it goes only part way in protecting the integrity of medical practice guidelines that help doctors decide what treatments or tests to use. Industry could no longer help pay for developing the guidelines or their initial dissemination, but it could pay for further distribution. The chairpersons and most members of panels developing such guidelines would have to be free of conflicts of interest. Why not require that of all panel members? The code also allows companies to help finance ''continuing medical education'' programs that most doctors must take to retain their licenses -- provided the societies, not the companies, pick the topics, speakers and content. The code should have completely eliminated industry financing and found other resources or required doctors to pay the full cost of their continuing education. ------------ The number of students qualifying for gifted kindergarten programs in New York City public school districts rose by 10 percent this year, and those qualifying for the elite citywide program jumped by a third, raising the possibility that parents and their children have begun to master an admission process that was retooled three years ago. According to figures released Friday by the Department of Education, the spike in students eligible for gifted programs occurred despite a 16 percent drop in the number who took the exams. The city described the decrease as a ''leveling off'' after an increase in test-takers last year, which they attributed to a publicity campaign. Of the 12,454 who took the test this winter, 3,542 scored at the 90th percentile or above, up from 3,231 the year before, qualifying them for one of the 70 gifted kindergarten programs spread through the city's school districts. But the most striking increase occurred in the number of children scoring at or above the 97th percentile: 1,788, up from 1,345 last year. Those students qualify for one of the five citywide gifted programs, which have only about 300 seats in all, meaning the competition for them this year will be even fiercer. Already, the bar for admission to at least one of the citywide programs, the Anderson School on the Upper West Side, has been raised to the 99th percentile for most of its 50 seats. Almost 300 parents whose children scored that high attended recent daytime tours. Anna Lewiston of the Upper East Side was determined to send her daughter, Lena, to Anderson but was told that the girl's 97th-percentile score would not make the cut. Lena will go to a private school. ''It's really too much pressure for preschoolers,'' Ms. Lewiston said of the test. Another citywide program, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry in Gravesend, allowed 540 parents on tours before turning others away. The principal, Donna Taylor, said she noticed growing anxiety among them when they saw the odds of getting one of her 56 slots. ''It's heartbreaking,'' she said. Children who are not selected for citywide programs are eligible for district-based gifted programs; students may also enroll in regular kindergarten classes at their neighborhood schools. The cause of the higher passing rates was not clear, but increased preparation might have been a factor. Hundreds of parents hired tutors or bought commercial test preparation materials before taking this year's test, a mixture of the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, a reasoning exam, and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment. At the Perry School, a preschool in the West Village, children spent an hour a day in a ''think tank program'' designed to expose them to the reasoning and materials they would see during the test. They also had professional tutoring. Of the five students who took the gifted exam, ''we got two 99s, a 98, and two 97s,'' said Dawn Ifrah, the founder. Bright Kids NYC, the tutoring company that worked with those children, reported that 80 percent of the 120 children for whom it had results had scored over the 90th percentile, and 60 children had scored in the 99th. Department of Education officials acknowledged that preparation may have played a role but said they were confident that most children who passed belonged in accelerated classes. They added that the city was trying to increase the number of full-day preschools in poor, black and Hispanic neighborhoods, which are underrepresented in the gifted programs. Anna Commitante, who heads the gifted and talented program, said the city ''may very well think about something different'' after next year, when its contract with testing companies expires. But officials later said no policy change was under consideration. Susan K. Johnsen, the president of the Association for the Gifted, a division of the Council for Exceptional Children, recommends the use of many measures to assess giftedness, like observation, recommendations and student work, not simply tests. ''Any test is susceptible to test preparation, and that's why you start to invalidate those assessments,'' Dr. Johnsen said. The increase in high-scoring students was concentrated in the middle- and upper-middle-class districts of Manhattan and Queens. In the Bronx, fewer students qualified this year. In District 3, which includes the Upper West Side, 455 children, a full 47 percent of those who took the test, scored at or over the 90th percentile, and 250 scored at or over the 97th, compared with 218 last year. In Manhattan's District 2, 44 percent of the test-takers qualified, and 341 pupils got top scores, a 42 percent increase. In the past, the city's 32 school districts used diverse criteria for gifted admission, but the city made the test the sole factor in 2008, in part to address allegations of favoritism and the overrepresentation of white children in the programs. Yet nearly 70 percent of students in the programs are white or Asian, the reverse of the racial composition of the school system as a whole. ------------ President Obama has ordered a freeze on new offshore drilling leases as well as a ''thorough review'' into what is almost sure to be the worst oil spill in this country's history -- exceeding in size and environmental damage the calamitous Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. There are many avenues to pursue. Here are two: the oil company's response, and Mr. Obama's. The company, BP, seems to have been slow to ask for help, and, on Friday, both federal and state officials accused it of not moving aggressively or swiftly enough. Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative. A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country's richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush's hapless response to Hurricane Katrina. Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving. The timetable is damning. The blowout occurred on April 20. In short order, fire broke out on the rig, taking 11 lives, the rig collapsed and oil began leaking at a rate of 40,000 gallons a day. BP tried but failed to plug the well. Even so, BP appears to have remained confident that it could handle the situation with private resources (as did the administration) until Wednesday night, when, at a hastily called news conference, the Coast Guard quintupled its estimate of the leak to 5,000 barrels, or more than 200,000 gallons a day. Only then did the administration move into high gear. In addition to a series of media events designed to convey urgency -- including a Rose Garden appearance by the president -- the administration ordered the Air Force to help with chemical spraying of the oil slick and the Navy to help lay down oil-resistant booms. It dispatched every cabinet officer with the remotest interest in the disaster to a command center in Louisiana and set up a second command post to manage potential coastal damage in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. There are, of course, other questions to be asked. We do not know what caused the blowout or the fire, or why the valves that are supposed to shut off the oil flow in an emergency did not work. We do not know whether there were other steps BP -- and Transocean, the rig's owner and operator -- could have taken to prevent the blowout, and what steps, including new technologies, that can be taken to prevent such accidents in the future. What we do know is that we now face a huge disaster whose consequences might have been minimized with swifter action. ------------ WASHINGTON -- In the spring of 2001, at a boisterous annual banquet of The Harvard Law Review, a 40-year-old professor named Elena Kagan introduced the main speaker. ''Merrick,'' she said, and then she corrected herself with self-mocking sarcasm. ''Oh, excuse me, Judge Garland. I knew him before he acquired the title. I mean, not that I'm envious of the title or anything, I just knew him before he got it.'' Ms. Kagan's own judicial nomination had just died in the Senate. Almost a decade later, Judge Merrick B. Garland and Ms. Kagan, who is now United States solicitor general, are again sharing a sort of stage, as front-runners for a spot on the Supreme Court. Now, as then, a notable difference between them is that only he is a judge, a notion Ms. Kagan gnawed at throughout her lighthearted remarks. ''Think about this,'' she said, according to the text she provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year in connection with her confirmation hearings to become solicitor general. ''Suppose I had been nominated to the D.C. Circuit in 1995, and Merrick had been nominated when I was, in 1999. Then maybe Merrick would have come to Harvard as a visiting professor, I would be sitting on the bench, he would be toastmaster, and I would be principal speaker at this banquet.'' ''But then,'' Ms. Kagan added, ''your toastmaster wouldn't be so funny.'' Ms. Kagan has a glittering resume. But it lacks the one qualification that every member of the current Supreme Court possesses: past judicial service. The possibility that she will be nominated has ignited a debate over what scholars call ''the norm of prior judicial experience.'' Most of the candidates said to be under consideration are judges. In addition to Judge Garland, President Obama is looking at Judges Diane P. Wood and Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago; Judge Sidney R. Thomas of the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco; Justice Carlos R. Moreno of the California Supreme Court; and former Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears of the Georgia Supreme Court. But a few candidates have never served on the bench, including, in addition to Ms. Kagan, Martha Minow, who succeeded her as dean of Harvard Law School; Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan; and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. It has been almost 40 years since a nominee who had not been a judge was appointed to the Supreme Court; the last two were William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell Jr., both of whom joined the court in 1972. In remarks at the University of Arizona's law school last year, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. reflected on how much had changed, and what it might mean. ''When Justice Rehnquist went on the court, a minority of the justices had been former federal judges,'' Chief Justice Roberts said. ''Today, for the first time in its history, every member of the court was a federal court of appeals judge before joining the court -- a more legal perspective and less of a policy perspective.'' The homogeneity of the current Supreme Court is not limited to prior federal judicial service. The court is also heavily tilted toward the Ivy League, the East Coast and work in government and the academy rather than private practice. That narrow set of experiences, shared by Ms. Kagan and some of the other candidates, may tend to limit the justices' collective outlook and cut them off from the real-world concerns of ordinary people. But it is possible to achieve that same isolation without being a judge. Ms. Kagan's 1999 nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Bill Clinton never received a confirmation hearing in the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans. Such stalled nominations are not unusual. Democrats blocked the nomination of Miguel Estrada, a prominent conservative, to the District of Columbia Circuit in 2003. And the Senate never voted on President George Bush's nomination of Chief Justice Roberts, then a Washington lawyer, to that court in 1992, when he was 37. William Treanor, the dean of Fordham Law School, said the fact that Ms. Kagan was nominated to a federal appeals court when she was just 39 spoke volumes about her promise as a judge. ''It indicated,'' he said, ''that she was considered to be incredibly smart, creative, hardworking and just a very good lawyer.'' After Ms. Kagan's nomination to the District of Columbia Circuit failed, President George W. Bush in 2003 appointed Mr. Roberts to the seat she would have occupied. Two years and 49 opinions later, President Bush elevated Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court. He was, as Ms. Kagan is today, 50 years old. Except for Chief Justice Roberts's judicial experience, he and Ms. Kagan have had strikingly similar careers. Both attended Harvard Law School, served on the law review there, worked as law clerks for prominent appeals court judges and Supreme Court justices, were lawyers in the White House counsel's office and in leading Washington law firms, and argued important cases in the Supreme Court. The open question, then, is whether even a relatively brief spell on an appeals court adds an important dimension to a candidate's experience. At her confirmation hearing for solicitor general last year, Ms. Kagan was questioned about what some senators suggested were her thin credentials even for the job of representing the federal government in the Supreme Court. ''As a physician, I don't send patients to the professors at the university unless they're the expert in the field who have actually practiced rather than just talked,'' Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, told Ms. Kagan, who at that point had never argued in any appeals court. ''I wonder how you respond to the criticism of this wonderful resume you have but yet you have never been a justice, and you have never actually been a litigant?'' Mr. Coburn asked. Ms. Kagan said she would bring to the job a lifetime of legal study and strong analytic skills. She added: ''I think I bring up some of the communications skills that has made me, I'm just going to say, a famously excellent teacher.'' In 2001, in her remarks at the Harvard banquet, Ms. Kagan gently mocked some of Judge Garland's judicial opinions. One, she said, was an ''eight-page analysis of the definition of the word 'meeting' '' as used in a federal law. The upshot of the opinion, she said, was that the challenged interpretation of the word ''is permissible because the Supreme Court already said it was.'' Ms. Kagan said she took some comfort from that decision and others like it. ''Sometimes people ask me: Do you feel bad that your nomination was left hanging up there, that you never had a chance to be a D.C. Circuit judge?'' she said. ''And, you know, if truth be told, sometimes I do,'' she went on. ''But I've come up with a really good way of making those feelings go away. What I do is pick up another D.C. Circuit opinion.'' PHOTOS: Elena Kagan (A1); Elena Kagan, United States solicitor general, is a front-runner for the Supreme Court who has never served on the bench. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES ) (A3) GRAPHS: In the Supreme Court, Less Variety in Experience: In recent years, the share of Supreme Court justices coming from federal courts at the time of their appointments has climbed to 100 percent. (Source: Lee Epstein, Northwestern University School of Law) (A3) ------------ While we've been distracted by Tea Party antics, the government's efforts to sack Goldman Sachs and the tawdry drama of John Edwards and his baby's mama, a rash of states has rushed to restrict access to abortion. Two weeks ago, the governor of Nebraska signed a law that banned most abortions after 20 weeks on the theory that that's when the fetus can feel pain. But as Caitlin Borgmann, a City University of New York law professor, wrote in The Los Angeles Times, ''There is nothing approaching a scientific consensus on fetal pain at 20 weeks' gestation.'' On Wednesday, Mississippi's Legislature sent a bill to the governor that forbids public financing of abortions. The prohibition stands even in cases of severe birth defects. Tuesday, the Oklahoma Legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto to pass two abortion laws. One requires women, even those seeking to end a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, to have an ultrasound and have the fetus described to them. The other prevents mothers from suing doctors who withhold information about fetal birth defects. And on Friday, the Florida Legislature passed a bill also requiring all women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound. Even if the women don't want to see the image, the doctor must still describe it to them. It is a striking series of laws, enacted mostly by men, that seek legal control over women's bodies. I happen to agree with Representative Janet Long of Florida, who said on Friday that you should ''stand down if you don't have ovaries.'' Proponents hope that some of these measures will force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, public opinion is inching in their direction. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Friday found that the percentage of people who think that the Supreme Court is too liberal is at its highest since they began asking the question, as is the percentage of people who say that if Roe v. Wade were to come before the court again, the next justice should vote to overturn it. They're not the majority, but it's still not good. It might be tempting to think of this as a temporary blip -- a conservative swing during tough times, but that would be shortsighted. There is a long-range trend of public opposition coming from unexpected quarters. According to a Gallup report released on Wednesday, the percentage of college-educated people who favor legal abortion under any circumstances has been dropping since the early 1990s and has now reached a new low. And while the largest overall drop was among men over 65, it was closely followed by a drop among women under 30. This shifting landscape is ripe for a row over Roe. It's coming. With luck, President Obama will nominate a warrior to the court. Preferably one who also agrees with Representative Long. GRAPHS:Changing Views On Abortion and the Court (Source: Washington Post/ABC News poll ------------ In Albany, as the saying goes, politicians pick their voters, not the other way around. Politically driven redistricting -- or gerrymandering -- is one of the main reasons why despite the corruption, laziness and incompetence that are rife in the New York Senate and Assembly, the corrupt, lazy and incompetent keep getting re-elected. The time to fix this is now. The 2010 census is well under way, and the new electoral maps will be drawn up before the 2012 elections. Long before that, the Legislature needs to pass a law creating a nonpartisan, independent redistricting commission -- one that will finally wring out the narrow party politics and self-interest. You will not be surprised to hear that resistance to the idea among Albany's incumbents is fierce. Still there are small signs of progress. A group led by former Mayor Ed Koch has already gotten all of the top declared candidates for governor to pledge to veto any redistricting plan that isn't drawn up fairly by an independent commission. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo -- whose ambitions for the governorship are no secret -- also wrote a letter to Mr. Koch promising that ''should I become a candidate,'' he would veto any gerrymandered maps. Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, has long been pushing for a nonpartisan redistricting commission. He finally has a partner in Senator David Valesky, a Democrat of Syracuse. Mr. Valesky appears to be getting support from other Senate Democrats. The Gianaris bill, now moving too slowly through the Assembly, would preclude legislators or politicians or their spouses or lobbyists from serving on the redistricting commission. Members would be selected indirectly. Officials and political leaders would choose a nominating committee that would then create a list of 40 potential commissioners. Then, elected state leaders would be expected to pick a qualified, nonpartisan commission of 11 members. The bill would explicitly charge the commission with creating fair, legal and pass-the-smell-test Congressional and legislative districts. That means that all districts should have equal numbers of people. The areas should be compact and contiguous (none of the current teapot shapes or coffee blots). Communities of interest and pre-existing boundaries like county lines should be recognized, and minority representation is crucial. The districts should be drawn to encourage, not stifle, political competition. The Legislature would still have to approve the maps. But with a transparent redistricting process and fairly drawn districts, politicians will have a much harder time hijacking the effort. The New York Public Interest Research Group reports that in 2008 more than half of the state's 212 legislators were re-elected with more than 80 percent of their district's votes. In 57 districts, the incumbents ran unopposed. That may be good news for the Albany crowd. It is a disaster for New York's voters. The old corrupt redistricting system needs to go. ------------ Convinced that the deteriorating budget situation in Albany leaves it no other choice, the Bloomberg administration plans to close as many as a quarter of the city's more than 300 senior centers by July 1, with Manhattan being hardest hit. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the commissioner of the Department for the Aging, said in an interview on Thursday that 50 senior centers would definitely be closed -- selected largely on the basis of three criteria: the fewest meals served, the fewest hours open and the most maintenance or management problems. She also said another 25 centers would be notified soon that they could be closed on July 1 if the city received less money from Albany than it currently anticipates. Ms. Barrios-Paoli declined to identify the 50 centers, saying only that Manhattan would potentially lose a dozen, because it already had the greatest concentration of centers, and that Staten Island, since it had the fewest centers, would lose less than five. ''I'm trying to depoliticize this, because I want people to feel this was a fair process,'' she said. ''What we tried to do was make sure no borough was unduly penalized, and we tried to be as sensitive as possible.'' People briefed on the plan, though, said that the areas that were most likely to be affected included Harlem and the Lower East Side. Ms. Barrios-Paoli is now waiting for final approval from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg -- who generally cedes decision-making authority to leaders of city agencies -- perhaps as soon as next week. Her goal, she said, was to send letters to the senior centers on May 15, ''to give them at least 30 days to get ready to close.'' The decision illustrates how the quagmire in Albany -- the state budget is now a month late, with no action foreseeable -- is already taking a toll on core city services. But the closures carry significant political risk for Mr. Bloomberg, since seniors are a powerful and vocal constituency, and the centers, which provide meals, programs and companionship, are mandatory campaign stops for all candidates. Advocates for seniors, bracing for the worst, urged the administration to exercise caution. ''I think it's premature to begin the process of closing senior centers because of Albany's problems, because we don't know the ending yet,'' said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services, which represents 200 nonprofit agencies. ''You can't reopen a center once it's closed.'' City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, the chairwoman of the Committee on Aging, bemoaned the emotional toll from the potential loss of so many senior centers. ''It's not just about a meal,'' she said. ''These centers are second homes to isolated seniors. Many of these seniors sit at the same table, with the same friends, and there's a lasting bond that develops that can't be measured.'' Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, questioned the motives of the administration, noting that Mr. Bloomberg tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to overhaul the city's senior centers two years ago with a proposal to streamline operations and evaluate centers based on performance measures. The Bloomberg administration plan to be unveiled in the coming days aims to close 32 centers that serve fewer than 30 meals a day; the citywide average is 90. Of those 32, Ms. Barrios-Paoli said, 13 are now operating part-time -- meaning that they are open less than five days a week, or are open less than five hours a day. Another seven part-time senior centers serving more than 30 meals will also be closed, as will another 11 plagued by substandard facilities or poor management, based on the city's assessment of their performance. Ms. Barrios-Paoli said she considered geography (so seniors would not have that far to travel to find another center) and religion (she spared a few kosher senior centers that might otherwise have been closed). As an example, she said she would not close the senior centers on City Island and Roosevelt Island, because of their locations. She also said that the city would provide shuttle service to transport people affected by closures to other nearby senior centers. Still, she acknowledged that the closures would be a shock: never have so many centers been scheduled to close at one time. ''It's painful to do, but it's something that may rejuvenate the system,'' Ms. Barrios-Paoli said. The city's decision stems in large part from Gov. David A. Paterson's proposal to alter an arcane budget formula that would redirect $25 million in federal money traditionally reserved for senior centers toward state programs to combat domestic violence and elder abuse. The governor's proposal would slash financing for the city's senior centers by nearly 30 percent. And Ms. Barrios-Paoli said that since she had already made other budget cuts, she did not want to cut the budget for services for the neediest seniors (like home-delivered meals). She said that the senior centers -- which cost about $100,000 each a year to operate -- were the only option. ''I don't want to minimize the need, but they are mobile, and they have more of a support network,'' Ms. Barrios-Paoli said about the 30,000 New Yorkers who visit senior centers each day. Even though no one knows which centers are slated to be closed, some people who use them have already begun to express anxiety. At the Drew Hamilton Community Services Center in Harlem, several people described the meals and services there as lifelines and said they hoped that the center would remain open. Others, though, were more cynical. ''This is expected, excuse me for saying,'' said Julia Smith, who worked as a paraprofessional at the city's Board of Education. ''I'm 80 years old, and I've seen how money works in this community. The first thing they do is target senior citizen centers. Ever since Bloomberg was re-elected, we have heard rumors about this place closing.'' PHOTO: Harry Smalls at the Drew Hamilton Community Services Center. Several people said its meals and services were lifelines. (PHOTOGRAPH BYDAVID GOLDMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ ''Yo, auto glass! Auto glass! I got it!'' a man named Tony Rivera cried. Mr. Rivera was standing on Hunts Point Avenue, in the land of car repair shops. He is among the men who brave the traffic in front of the stores that employ them, trying to reel in customers. These men are called car chasers or car hustlers, and they watch for shattered windows or other telltale signs of car problems as prospective customers cruise by, and then flag them down. Sometimes they even chase the cars and buttonhole the drivers, negotiating with them as they check prices by cellphone with their bosses. Mr. Rivera and his two dozen or so counterparts -- there are similar operators in the city's other auto-repair precincts -- earn a few hundred dollars a week. On Hunts Point Avenue, at least, the competition can seem frantic, reminiscent of a bazaar. The car hustlers know that in this poor and working-class neighborhood, many drivers are looking strictly for the best price. A similar economic calculus drives the hustlers themselves. ''I'm out here in snowstorms, I'm out here in rain,'' said Mr. Rivera, 41, who works for Hunts Point Auto Sales and Service. ''It's a job, man. It's a job. I got to do it to pay my bills.'' The other day, someone drove by in a 1990 Lexus LS 400 with a punched-out rear window that was covered, slapdash, with a yellow bed sheet. Mr. Rivera flagged the driver down, and after consulting by cellphone with a store manager, quoted a price of $175. The driver insisted on $150, then agreed to $175, but soon drove off when the window he was offered was tinted blue, not brown. Mr. Rivera is a compact man with richly tattooed arms whose outfit on this recent spring day included Dolce &Gabbana sunglasses and a cellphone holster decorated with a Yankees emblem. He said he earned $350 a week and, on a good day, lured about 10 customers to his boss's store. ''I only do this because the other jobs out there you only get $250,'' he said. Another car hustler, a young man with a two-foot ponytail who would give his name only as Jose, said he got paid $10 for every car he brought in to his store, Brother Auto Glass and Used Parts. In good weeks, he said, he can make $500. Jimmy Donnelly, one of the owners of Mr. Rivera's shop, described Mr. Rivera as ''a watchdog'' who made sure that other car chasers were not stealing his customers. ''I never had anybody standing on the corner before, pulling,'' he said, using another term for car chasing. ''But all the money I spent on advertising, in the Yellow Pages and on a Web site, was being sucked up by these other guys.'' According to Mr. Rivera, he invented the occupation. When he was a student at Hunts Peninsula Intermediate School 74, he said, a classmate's father let him work part time at Cubita Glass, on nearby Garrison Street. One day, Mr. Rivera was striding along clamorous Bruckner Boulevard and spotted a car with a broken window. He persuaded the driver to go to Cubita Glass. ''I took him back to the shop and my friend's father was happy,'' Mr. Rivera said. ''He said go back and get another customer.'' Mr. Rivera soon spotted another car with broken windows, then another, 15 in total, until the owner assigned him to stand along Bruckner for good. ''That was my steady job,'' Mr. Rivera recalled. ''My friends in school would make fun of me, but I was the only kid with money.'' In those days, most car-repair shops depended on loyal customers and saw no need for car chasers. But Mr. Rivera, echoing Mr. Donnelly's point, said that when newer shops began hiring chasers, the older shops felt they needed to keep up. Mr. Rivera said he had worked for several shops during his chaser career and warned that the work could be dangerous, recalling one hustler who a dozen years ago was struck in the leg by a car. ''A hustler can't just be a hustler -- you got to have experience,'' he said. ''The owner won't just hire anybody. They got to hear about you.'' His 48-year-old half-brother Jose Concepcion, known around the neighborhood as Speedy, has done the same job for 20 years for a glass shop cater-corner to Mr. Rivera's. Mr. Concepcion, a father of four, boasts that he is the better hustler because he has never gotten a ticket. (The police occasionally write tickets for car chasers.) The art to good hustling, Mr. Concepcion added, is being able to distinguish between a merely open window and one that has been punched out (the diamondlike glint at the window's rim is the giveaway). Mr. Rivera, who has a 22-year-old daughter, is the son of a man who came to New York from Puerto Rico and spent much of his life in prison. Mr. Rivera is consequently proud of what he has accomplished -- like the fact that he can afford to drive a 2007 Nissan Sentra and that he has a steady girlfriend who works at a local steel manufacturer. As Mr. Rivera told his story, a Nissan Quest with a broken directional light passed by. He proceeded to schmooze with the driver in Spanish, interrupting to call a parts store. Ultimately, the driver headed to another shop, in search of something cheaper. ''You see how people don't want to spend the money,'' Mr. Rivera said. Mr. Rivera, waxing philosophical as he puffed on a cigarette, said he worried that business might be slowing because, with the recession and the rising price of glass, drivers were not fixing their windows as often. ''I've been here all my life and I've seen the good and the bad,'' he said. ''Soon people are going to start riding bikes, like in China.'' PHOTO: Tony Rivera shouts ''Auto glass! I got it!'' as he stands on Hunts Point Avenue, trying to attract customers to a car-repair shop. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ WASHINGTON -- There's a world of difference between the impact of an oil spill and a deadly hurricane. And the White House hopes it stays that way. As President Obama stepped up his administration's response to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, ordering a moratorium on new offshore drilling leases and dispatching cabinet secretaries and cargo planes to the region, the White House is also trying to avert the kind of political damage inflicted on former President George W. Bush by his administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. In contrast with his treatment of the Massey Energy Company, which operates the West Virginia mine where 29 miners recently died in an explosion, Mr. Obama has not directed any tough rhetoric in public against BP, the British oil giant that was leasing the oil rig that exploded 11 days ago. Nor has he struck any tones of outrage on behalf of Gulf Coast residents and businesses affected by the spill. But administration officials said privately that there was increased frustration with BP's response, and the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, pointedly refused to say whether the White House had confidence in the company's handling of the spill. Mr. Obama, for his part, vowed, for the second time in two days, that his administration would respond aggressively to the oil spill. He maintained that he continued to ''believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security,'' addressing concerns about whether the administration would stick with its plan to increase drilling in the gulf. But administration officials left open the possibility that they might reconsider the decision to expand offshore drilling if conditions in the gulf worsened. Mr. Gibbs said there would be ''an extensive environmental review before deciding'' on issuing new drilling leases. The fact that Mr. Obama has no plans to visit the Gulf Coast in the next few days has already raised the eyebrows of some administration critics, in particular as it relates to the president's plans this weekend. He is scheduled to attend the high-wattage, celebrity-studded White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night, which CNN has been promising, in hourly promos, that it will broadcast live starting at 7 p.m. with dispatches from the red carpet. For Mr. Obama, the potential political fallout ''is going to be aggravated by the fact that the president traditionally gives a humorous speech,'' said Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University. ''There you are in Washington with celebrities and the media while wildlife and fishermen are doused in oil? That's not going to do much for the White House or for the press, for that matter.'' White House officials said the president's weekend plans remained on track. He will fly to Michigan on Saturday morning to speak at the commencement of the University of Michigan, and will then return to Washington for the dinner. Aides add that Mr. Obama could use his remarks at the dinner to highlight the plight of gulf residents, fishermen and wildlife. ''I think that given the serious nature of the problems that we face as a country, you could say that about any event on any day,'' Mr. Gibbs said in an interview, responding to suggestions that the president's attendance at the correspondents dinner might look unseemly while an environmental calamity was under way. Natural disasters provide great opportunities, or great peril, for presidents. President Bush's slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, magnified by his now-infamous ''You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie'' praise of his FEMA director, Michael Brown, cemented an impression that his administration failed to act with enough urgency to address the suffering of tens of thousands of people. The widening environmental calamity in the gulf is the first time Mr. Obama has confronted a domestic disaster. Complicating the White House response is the fact that the spill occurred just a month after the president announced he was expanding offshore drilling. Officials note that a key difference between the spill and Hurricane Katrina is the pace of the onslaught of the disaster. While the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast in a fury, the oil has -- literally -- crept to the shores of the gulf. While the eventual harm from the leak could outstrip that of the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, that will not be known for weeks, if not months. While characterizing the Obama administration's response to the spill as intense, Bill Eichbaum of the World Wildlife Fund said the disaster showed that the expansion plans were a bad idea. ''This spill in the gulf is like having a heart attack in New York City,'' he said. ''Everything is there that you need to fix it. If you have a spill in the Arctic, it's like having a heart attack on the North Pole. There's nothing there to help you fix it.'' PHOTO: President Obama made a statement on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the economy on Friday in the Rose Garden. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ ROBERT, La. -- Heavy winds and stormy seas drove a spreading oil spill closer to the marshlands and reefs of the Louisiana coast on Friday, and government and BP officials continued a frenzied effort to throttle a gushing oil well before it could do widespread damage. The Coast Guard said its aerial observations could not verify sporadic local reports of an oozing slick beginning to come ashore and coating some birds, but officials said it was only a matter of days before the slick would hit several gulf states. Gov. Bob Riley declared a state of emergency for Alabama, Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida did the same for several Panhandle counties and Gov. Bobby Jindal activated Louisiana's National Guard to fight the spill. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lisa Jackson, flew over the spill and met with Doug Suttles, BP's exploration and production chief operating officer. Their presence reflected the mounting worries in Washington that a major environmental disaster could be unfolding. ''We still have a long ways to go, and we don't know exactly where we are going,'' Mr. Salazar said. ''Today the situation is still a dangerous one.'' Ms. Jackson said that the accident ''has evolved into an environmental challenge of the first order'' and that she would remain in the area for at least the next two days. The Deepwater Horizon rig that was leased by BP is now 5,000 feet underwater and the well is leaking about 200,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf from pipes 40 miles offshore. The rig was overwhelmed by an apparent blowout on April 20, killing 11 workers and critically injuring three more, and sank two days later. It could take three months for BP to drill relief wells to stop the leak. While acknowledging that recent BP efforts had failed, Mr. Suttles said the company was preparing a new method to shut down the leaking pipeline. Submarinelike robots will try to block the leaking line with shears known as annular rams, an exceedingly delicate operation in deep waters. ''You will see me doing cartwheels if that works,'' Mr. Suttles said, adding that the technique ''has the potential to either stop or substantially reduce the flow of oil.'' Without a quick fix, the environmental damage will almost certainly be the worst ever from drilling in the gulf, where hundreds of rigs and a maze of pipelines have long coexisted with a sensitive ecological system. Pelicans, river otters and migrating birds rely on the gulf coastline's barrier marshes and sandy islands for food and nesting. An oily sheen began oozing close to the Mississippi River Delta area late Thursday night, while thicker oil a few miles out threatened all day to reach the shore. Stormy winds and high tides threatened to push the spill into the lakes and wetland inlets of southeast Louisiana through the weekend and eastward to neighboring Mississippi and as far as the Florida Panhandle over the next five days. The Coast Guard has warned that bad weather may hamper the efforts of crews to skim oil from the surface or burn it off at least over the weekend. Waves may also wash over booms that are designed to halt the spill before it reaches the coast, particularly the Chandeleur Islands, which are part of a national wildlife refuge. BP, Transocean and other companies involved in the construction, equipping and managing of the rig are already facing a flood of lawsuits. At least two commercial shrimping companies have filed suit, alleging the livelihood of their workers is in jeopardy. Brent Coon, a Texas lawyer who sued on behalf of victims of the BP Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 that left 15 dead, has also filed suit for an injured worker aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which is sunken on the gulf floor. ''The losses are already tremendous,'' said Mike Papantonio, a Florida lawyer who is filing multiple class-action lawsuits on behalf of shrimpers, oystermen and fisheries across the gulf against BP, Transocean and Halliburton. PHOTO: Ronald Darensburg of Louisiana wanted to fish, he said, before the oil came in. A well was leaking about 200,000 gallons a day. (PHOTOGRAPH BY NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES) MAP: Priority boom location (Sources: U.S. Coast Guard; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) ------------ International FORMER PAKISTANI OFFICIAL FOUND DEAD IN TRIBAL AREA A former intelligence officer with connections to militant groups was found dead in the western tribal area of Pakistan. He was kidnapped by militants a month ago, and was believed to have been killed because he was a negotiator in a mosque siege three years ago. PAGE A4 PUTIN SUGGESTS A MERGER Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suggested merging Ukraine's national energy company with the Russian gas giant Gazprom, a move that, if approved by Ukraine, would put Ukraine's strategic network of gas pipelines under Moscow's control. PAGE A4 BRITISH RACE IN FINAL STAGE Six days before British voters go to the polls, the three main party leaders raced toward the finish. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is struggling to recapture the momentum from his Conservative and Liberal Democratic rivals. PAGE A6 CHINESE ACTIVIST DISAPPEARS Gao Zhisheng, a prominent human-rights lawyer who resurfaced in March after a 13-month disappearance at the hands of Chinese security agents, has again vanished, his friends said, after failing to return to his apartment on April 20. PAGE A6 Thai Protesters Storm Hospital A6 Inquiry Into Killing of 3 Afghans A7 Indirect Mideast Talks to Start A7 Obituaries AVIGDOR ARIKHA, 81 An internationally renowned Israeli painter, Mr. Arikha's work captured both the haunting beauty and the looming menace of the everyday objects around him, a vision informed in no small part by his experience as a Holocaust survivor. PAGE D8 National CRIMINAL INQUIRY BEGINS IN MINE BLAST THAT KILLED 29 The F.B.I. has interviewed more than 20 employees of Massey Energy in a criminal investigation of the explosion that killed 29 miners last month in West Virginia, according to two officials from the federal mine safety agency and the Department of Justice. PAGE A12 INDEPENDENT DRAWS SCORN The two major parties wagged their finger in unison at Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida for ditching the Republican Party to make an independent Senate bid. But if he wins, both parties may end up courting Mr. Crist, rather than sniping at him. News Analysis by Jeff Zeleny. PAGE A12 GENETIC DISCRIMINATION SUIT This week a Connecticut woman filed one of the first complaints claiming illegal dismissal under a new federal law that prohibits employers from considering someone's genetic background in firing, hiring or promotions. PAGE A12 BASEBALL AND IMMIGRATION Major League Baseball's players union said it opposed Arizona's new immigration law and raised concerns about how foreign-born players, who make up about a quarter of league rosters, and their families would be affected. PAGE A9 Archbishop to Protest Arizona A9 New York DODD CANCELS APPEARANCE AT WALL STREET FUND-RAISER Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a leader of Congressional efforts to crack down on Wall Street abuses, announced that he was canceling his appearance at a fund-raiser for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York hosted by financial industry executives. PAGE A14 Business RESCUE FOR GREECE NEARS, INCLUDING BITTER MEDICINE Racing to secure financial aid and avoid a default on its debt, the Greek government has agreed to austerity measures totaling about $32 billion. They include cutting some workers' pay and some public sector jobs, Greek officials said. PAGE B1 CUTS COMPLETE AT ABC NEWS ABC News has completed one of the most drastic rounds of budget cutbacks at a television news operation in decades, affecting roughly a quarter of the staff. The cutbacks promise to change ABC News both on and off camera. PAGE B2 CHINESE RULES STIR CONCERN China is expected to issue regulations requiring technology companies to disclose proprietary information in order to sell some products to government agencies, raising concerns that technologies could be given to Chinese competitors. PAGE B3 PROFIT IS UP AT BARCLAYS Barclays reported its profit rose 29 percent in the first quarter, helped by its investment banking business and fewer bad loans. But some investors were disappointed at the pace of growth at the securities unit, the biggest contributor to Barclays' earnings. PAGE B4 Shares Close Down Sharply B4 Chevron's Profit Doubles B7 Arts DISNEY USES CLIFFHANGER TO MARKET 'TOY STORY 3' Walt Disney Studios is teasing young adults. The studio is offering free screenings of ''Toy Story 3,'' showing everything but the ending. Disney hopes the unusual previews will create buzz among the 18- to 24-year-olds who grew up with the ''Toy Story'' franchise. PAGE C1 Sports AFTER 22 SEASONS IN N.F.L., GIANTS PUNTER SAYS ENOUGH Jeff Feagles, the 44-year-old Giants punter and the oldest active player in the National Football League, announced his retirement after a record 352 consecutive games. He leaves a legacy as a maestro of directional punting. PAGE D1 Woods Misses 6th Cut of Career D1 Op-ed CHARLES M. BLOW PAGE A19 LINDA GREENHOUSE PAGE A19 ------------ If he wanted your attention, he would hit you in the shin with his crutch. Sometimes he'd aim a little higher. MARVIN WASSERMAN, on Harry Wieder, an East Village activist who was killed by a taxi. [A13] ------------ A day after protesters rallied against Arizona's new illegal immigration law outside Wrigley Field in Chicago, Major League Baseball thrust itself into the national debate. The law permits police officers who have ''reasonable suspicion'' that a person may be in the United States illegally to demand proof of legal residency. The baseball players' union said it opposed the law and raised concerns about how foreign-born players, who make up about a quarter of major league rosters, and their families would be affected. Half of the league's 30 teams have spring training facilities in Arizona, and the All-Star Game is scheduled to be played at the Arizona Diamondbacks' stadium in Phoenix next year. ''We hope that the law is repealed or modified promptly,'' Michael Weiner, head of the players' union, said in a statement. ''If the current law goes into effect, the M.L.B.P.A. will consider additional steps necessary to protect the rights and interests of our members.'' The owner of the Diamondbacks, meanwhile, criticized the federal government as not addressing the immigration issue. ''We are certainly well aware of the struggles our state has due to federal inaction on illegal immigration,'' said the owner, Ken Kendrick, who has expressed opposition to the new law. Mr. Kendrick said the response to the law had affected businesses in the state. ''Unfortunately,'' he said, ''this whole situation is sad and disappointing for all of us who are associated with the Arizona Diamondbacks.'' On Thursday, dozens of people protested at Wrigley Field during a Cubs-Diamondbacks game. ------------ WASHINGTON -- Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a leader of Congressional efforts to crack down on Wall Street abuses, announced abruptly on Friday that he was canceling a planned appearance at a fund-raiser attended by financial industry executives in Manhattan next week. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, however, said she would attend the fund-raiser. The event on Monday night, which is intended to help her fortify her financial position as she runs for election this fall, is being held as the Senate considers Mr. Dodd's legislation to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory system. Mr. Dodd's decision occurred after several newspapers ran unflattering storiesreporting that he and Ms. Gillibrand would attend the Park Avenue event. In a statement, Mr. Dodd's communications director, Bryan DeAngelis, said the senator must remain in Washington next week to manage floor debate on the bill. Mr. Dodd, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate banking committee, is the chief sponsor of the legislation. ''Monday's event was scheduled before we knew when Dodd's Wall Street reform bill would come to floor,'' Mr. DeAngelis said. Mr. Dodd, who is not seeking re-election, agreed to attend the event weeks ago as a show of support for Ms. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat. The fund-raiser will be held at the home of Ralph Schlosstein, the president and chief executive officer of Evercore Partners, the boutique investment bank; and his wife, Jane Hartley, a prominent Democratic donor. The guests from the world of finance will include Roger Altman, a former Treasury Department official and founder of Evercore; David Topper, vice chairman of J. P. Morgan's investment banking division; Richard Beattie, a Wall Street lawyer; and Charles Myers, a senior managing director at Evercore. Matt Canter, a spokesman for Ms. Gillibrand, said there was no connection between the fund-raiser and the work he said the senator was doing in Washington to revamp financial regulations. ''Senator Gillibrand's strong support for comprehensive financial reform proves there is zero conflict,'' Mr. Canter said. ''She has worked as hard as anyone to create rules of the road to ensure we never again experience a financial crisis due to too much risk in the system, institutions that were too big to fail and a lack of proper oversight and accountability.'' He insisted that it was an event organized by prominent Democratic donors, not the Wall Street crowd. ''It is not an industry event,'' he said. Normally, the kind of reception being held on Ms. Gillibrand's behalf would not draw much attention. But it underscores the complicated relationship that Democrats in Washington have with Wall Street. The financial industry has provided Democrats with millions of dollars in campaign contributions in recent years, helping them establish and maintain majorities in both chambers of Congress. Ms. Gillibrand has collected nearly $700,000 from the financial industry since 2005, while Mr. Dodd has raised nearly $1.3 million from the industry in that period, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. But Democrats are keenly aware that being too closely associated with the titans of Wall Street could be politically damaging as Americans face economic hardship and esteem plummets for financial institutions. Even Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a longtime defender of the financial industry who has been the top recipient of campaign donations from Wall Street executives, has thrown his support behind new restrictions on the industry. Ms. Gillibrand, as a member of Congress representing a conservative rural district in upstate New York, voted against an emergency spending package that provided billions of dollars in federal aid to ailing financial institutions. But since being appointed to fill the seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton last year, she has reached out to financial industry executives and refrained from the kind of anti-Wall Street rhetoric used by liberals in her party. Ms. Gillibrand supports Mr. Dodd's bill, which calls for a broad overhaul of the financial regulatory system. The legislation would allow the federal government to close failing financial institutions, impose new rules on hedge funds and the complex instruments that led to the crisis on Wall Street and create a consumer protection bureau to crack down on predatory lending and other abuses. As chairman of the banking committee, Mr. Dodd has had a close relationship with executives in the financial industry. He has also found himself in the midst of several controversies stemming from his ties to the industry. PHOTOS: Kirsten E. Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate last year. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RUBY WASHINGTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES); Christopher J. Dodd said a fund-raiser was scheduled before he knew that a bill on Wall Street was to come to the Senate floor. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ If ''Good Morning America'' or ''World News'' look any different in the coming weeks, it might be because ABC News is employing nearly 400 fewer people. Earlier this week, ABC News, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, largely completed one of the most drastic rounds of budget cutbacks at a television news operation in decades, affecting roughly a quarter of the staff. The cutbacks promise to change ABC both on- and off-camera. For some employees, like the longtime Los Angeles correspondent Brian Rooney, Friday was their last day. Mr. Rooney said his contract expired at ''exactly the moment when they needed to shed an enormous amount from the payroll.'' In an e-mail message, he compared it to ''standing looking straight up when the bomb dropped.'' Personally, he said, the next step is scary. ''I'm 58 years old with a wife, two daughters in school and a little dog who likes to be fed. They have cut me loose into the worst economy in my lifetime,'' he said. The business of news is a particularly ugly one these days, and news outlets across the country have trimmed their staffs. But it is exceedingly rare for a newspaper or a network to shed a quarter of its employees all at once, as ABC has done. For viewers, the effects will be felt on the individual broadcasts, like ''World News with Diane Sawyer,'' which lost two of its six senior staff members to buyouts. They will not be replaced. In the future, more segments will be reported, filmed and edited by jacks-of-all-trades, called digital journalists, internally. They may lack the polish that a traditional four-person crew can provide, but they are much less expensive. Sometimes two of the digital journalists will team up for reports. ''We are now, as a work force, becoming much more flexible,'' said Jon Banner, the executive producer of ''World News.'' David Westin, the ABC News president, said that Mr. Banner was having each of his producers trained as digital journalists. But he emphasized that there was still a place for veteran videographers and editors at ABC. Other changes may be more subtle to viewers. More interviews will happen via Skype, rather than an expensive satellite truck. Prime-time shows will rely more heavily on freelance employees. More assignments will be made from a centralized office in New York, rather than by far-flung bureaus, because some of those bureaus have been severely downsized. Buyouts were announced in February as the prospect of layoffs loomed, and Mr. Westin made no secret of the fact that they would result in a leaner, smaller organization, a bid for survival in a crowded media landscape. More than 300 employees were approved for buyout packages. An unknown number were laid off. A person with knowledge of the cutbacks said 22 staff employees were laid off on Tuesday in a final round of cuts, but ABC would not disclose the numbers. Morale is very low, according to some of the dozen ABC News staff members who agreed to be interviewed for this article. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by ABC to speak publicly. People are ''walking around like they've been punched in the gut,'' one of the employees said, referring to people still with jobs. Mr. Westin acknowledged in an interview on Friday that ''this is a difficult time for everybody at ABC News, not least for the people who are leaving.'' ''At the same time, we really are looking forward to the future,'' he said. Inside ABC News, it is widely believed that the cutbacks were mandated by Disney. The cuts came shortly after CBS News, one of the other three network news divisions, lost about 70 staff members. The third division, NBC, is in a much better financial position because it has a cable news arm, MSNBC. Amid the buyout and layoff process, there has been widespread speculation about a potential pairing between ABC News and the Bloomberg TV cable channel. The two already share some content. Mr. Westin said ABC regularly talks to Bloomberg and another partner, the BBC, ''about whether there are ways we can expand'' their relationships, but ''there's no major change that's imminent.'' Richard Gizbert, a former ABC correspondent who now is host of a weekly media criticism show on Al Jazeera English, said the extent of the cutbacks stunned some former ABC employees. He noted that ABC's London bureau, which is responsible for covering Europe and Africa and which employed about 100 people in the early 1990s, had already suffered a series of cuts over the years, and will soon employ barely a dozen people. ''Yet there's no fewer broadcasts,'' Mr. Gizbert noted. (Mr. Gizbert's contract was not renewed by ABC in 2004, and he lost a lawsuit against the network in 2006.) Already, some bureaus, like Los Angeles, have been reduced significantly. Along with Mr. Rooney, other departing correspondents include Betsy Stark, Lisa Fletcher and Laura Marquez. But ABC executives sharply disagreed with suggestions that the news division was throwing up its hands. ''The entire news industry is at a crossroads right now,'' Mr. Westin said. In ABC's case, rather than simply reducing headcount, ''this is, 'Let's redefine jobs and what people do and what their skills are.' '' But to Mr. Rooney, the title of digital journalist is ''really a code for cheaper and less professional.'' ''Good television news is expensive to do,'' he wrote. ''The shorter the deadline, the more people and equipment it takes. In the western states in particular, it would be very challenging for one or two people to shoot, write, edit and feed a breaking news story by 3:30 in the afternoon. Wildfires tend to happen in places where there is no cellphone coverage and no Starbucks with free Wi-Fi.'' Despite his skepticism about the digital journalist strategy, Mr. Rooney said he believed that Mr. Westin was ''trying to save ABC News.'' ''I hope they succeed,'' he said, ''although I like to think they will have a harder time doing it without me.'' PHOTOS: David Westin, president of ABC News, said this was ''a difficult time for everybody'' involved. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON DeCROW/ASSOCIATED PRESS); Brian Rooney, an ABC reporter in Los Angeles, was let go. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CRAIG SJODIN/ABC) ------------ AUDIO Interviews with former employees of St. Vincent's Hospital Center, the Greenwich Village hospital that just officially closed. nytimes.com/nyregion ------------ Two former Brooklyn residents have been charged with conspiring to provide Al Qaeda with computer advice and other assistance, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors identified the men as Wesam El-Hanafi, 33, an American citizen, and Sabirhan Hasanoff, 34, a dual citizen of the United States and Australia. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the men had ''conspired to modernize Al Qaeda by providing computer systems expertise'' and other services. His office said the investigation was continuing; a spokeswoman, Yusill Scribner, added that there were ''no allegations of an active plot.'' The indictment charged that the two men had assisted Al Qaeda since at least November 2007. Mr. El-Hanafi, it said, went to Yemen in 2008, ''where he met with two members of Al Qaeda who instructed him on operational security measures and directed him to perform tasks'' for the group. In Yemen, he also swore an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda, the indictment said. Mr. El-Hanafi later bought a subscription to a software program that ''enabled him to communicate securely with others over the Internet,'' prosecutors charged. Each man was charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Each could face 15 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors said. The indictment also cited an unidentified co-conspirator, listed only as CC-1. In late 2007, CC-1 paid $50,000 to Mr. Hasanoff, and later had a discussion with both men ''about joining Al Qaeda,'' the indictment said. Mr. El-Hanafi also directed CC-1 to perform tasks for the terrorist group, it added. In April 2009, Mr. El-Hanafi bought seven Casio digital watches over the Internet, and had them shipped to his home in Brooklyn, the indictment says. The indictment did not elaborate, but in past cases, such watches have been used in connection with improvised explosive devices. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, ''This case's nexus to New York City serves as another reminder that we remain vigilant to the possibility of supporters of Al Qaeda returning to New York.'' Both men were ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge in Alexandria, Va., and will be brought to Manhattan for further proceedings, prosecutors said. Mr. El-Hanafi's lawyer, Victor Knapp, said his client had been in Dubai with his family, but when they tried to return to the United States a few months ago, Mr. El-Hanafi was blocked and told that he was on a no-fly list. Mr. Knapp said his client was trying to return voluntarily, and then was arrested there a few days ago. ''I welcome the fact that he's back now,'' Mr. Knapp said. ''I can see him face to face, and we can talk about what's going on here.'' Mr. Hasanoff's lawyer, Anthony L. Ricco, said his client had also been arrested in Dubai and brought back to face charges. Mr. Ricco said he was optimistic that once Mr. Hasanoff was in New York, he would be able to obtain his release on bail. ''I don't think there are any allegations he's a continuing threat to the community,'' Mr. Ricco said. ------------ After one of her two sisters was found to have breast cancer, Pamela Fink rushed to have a genetic test to see whether she had a predisposition for such cancer, and the answer came back yes. Soon her other sister also contracted breast cancer and had chemotherapy and a mastectomy. Alarmed by these developments, Ms. Fink, a 39-year-old mother of two who lives in Fairfield, Conn., decided to have a preventive double mastectomy, fearing that she would also contract breast cancer and might die from it. When she returned from surgery, she said, her company started giving her fewer responsibilities, then demoted her and ultimately fired her. This week she filed one of the first complaints claiming illegal dismissal under a new federal law that prohibits employers from considering someone's genetic background in firing, hiring or promotions. ''Getting laid off really added insult to injury,'' said Ms. Fink, who was director of public relations for MXenergy, a natural gas and electricity supplier based in Stamford. ''I know that having that surgery was life-saving for me and important for my children and also important for my employer because it meant I was not going to get sick.'' The complaint that Ms. Fink filed this week with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission raises new questions about when and whether employers can fire or demote employees when they learn the employees' genetic information. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 prohibits companies and health insurers from requiring genetic testing, asking for genetic information or using it against employees. Peggy R. Mastroianni, the commission's associate legal counsel, said most of the 80 complaints filed since the genetic law took effect five months ago seemed to involve cases in which employers had improperly acquired or disclosed genetic information. But Ms. Fink's case alleges a more serious offense: an improper firing because of it. Her lawyers say that if she loses her case, it could discourage other workers from going for genetic testing about particular illnesses and from having surgery in response to such testing -- steps that are good for their health. Derede McAlpin, a spokeswoman for MXenergy, said, ''As a matter of policy, we do not comment on personnel matters.'' But she added, ''We are confident that when the facts are revealed, the company's actions will be seen in a different light and will be seen as being warranted.'' Ms. Fink worked for MXenergy for more than four years. Confident that she had a good relationship with her supervisors, she informed them that she had a genetic marker for breast cancer and that she felt she needed surgery. ''She disclosed this to her employer, she had preventative surgery, and that was the primary catalyst for her being fired,'' said her lawyer, Gary Phelan. ''Not only is that genetic information, but it's action taken based on that information.'' Ms. Fink said that she had excellent performance reviews -- ''has done an exemplary job working to keep C.E.O. exposed in a positive light,'' one review said -- and that her supervisor told her that if she had to lay off everyone in the marketing department, Ms. Fink would be the only person she kept. ''It's a very intense company that requires 24/7 accessibility,'' Ms. Fink said. ''I always felt I had gone above and beyond and been available, but maybe this thing with the gene testing made them think I wasn't going to be accessible to them.'' Sharon F. Terry, chairwoman of the Coalition for Genetic Fairness, a group that pushed to enact the genetic information law, said Ms. Fink's case was the first brought under the law to become public. PHOTO: Pamela Fink of Fairfield, Conn., says MXenergy illegally fired her based on a test showing a predisposition for breast cancer. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUGLAS HEALEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS) ------------ Reaching far beyond the walls of City Hall, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday appointed Stephen Goldsmith, a former mayor of Indianapolis and a management guru at Harvard University, to the powerful post of deputy mayor for operations. The selection of such a high-profile outsider seemed to confirm Mr. Bloomberg's determination to shake up his cabinet, which is known as close knit and long serving, in a third term fraught with budget woes and an emboldened political opposition. Mr. Goldsmith, 63, has never lived in New York City, and conceded that ''I don't know nearly enough'' about it. But, he said, ''I know a lot about how to run a government.'' In his new job, Mr. Goldsmith will serve as the mayor's No. 2 in city government, overseeing about a dozen agencies -- including the Police, Fire, Transportation and Sanitation Departments -- that deliver the services by which most New Yorkers measure the effectiveness of their government. As mayor of Indianapolis from 1992 to 1999, Mr. Goldsmith, an understated personality with a surprisingly fast-talking style, emerged as a national leader in the movement to introduce corporate-style accountability and cost-cutting into government bureaucracy. It was the same quest that Mr. Bloomberg adopted in his 2001 campaign for mayor. In what was considered a daring experiment, Mr. Goldsmith cut $100 million from the Indianapolis budget by forcing city agencies to bid against private corporations for contracts for about 50 services -- even filling potholes. ''Bureaucratic monopolies are bad for taxpayers and bad for public employees,'' he wrote in an Op-Ed article published in The New York Times in 2001. Big-city mayors flocked to study his work -- Indianapolis set aside a special day for 30 urban experts to visit him at one time -- and he became an informal adviser to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. ''He, more than anyone else, sets the tone for the new mayors of the 1990s,'' said Fred Siegel, a visiting professor at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, who wrote a biography of Mr. Giuliani. ''He was the first to talk about how you could make city government work better.'' A fiscally conservative Republican and an adviser to George W. Bush during his 2000 campaign for president, Mr. Goldsmith will be in a position to overhaul how city services are delivered, budgets are drafted and municipal labor contracts are settled in New York, areas that could put him on a collision course with the city's restive and politically powerful unions. Aides to the mayor said Mr. Goldsmith was an ideal choice for a third term that was likely to be defined by budget cuts. Through much of his second term, Mr. Bloomberg benefited from a roaring economy that underwrote economic development and generous raises for city workers. Next year, however, the city faces a nearly $5 billion budget deficit and potentially thousands of layoffs. At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg must contend with a City Council speaker, a public advocate and a comptroller who harbor mayoral ambitions. Mr. Bloomberg has been eyeing Mr. Goldsmith since he learned that Edward Skyler, who held the deputy mayor position since 2007, planned to take a job in the private sector. In late March, Mr. Bloomberg and two of his deputies, Patricia. E. Harris and Kevin Sheekey, met with Mr. Goldsmith to discuss the position in his office at Harvard, where he is a professor at the Kennedy School of Government, aides to the mayor said. Mr. Bloomberg explained that he wanted to infuse his final four years as mayor with big ideas and small experiments. Mr. Goldsmith, who had just completed a book about government innovation, joked that he had devoted far more of his writing to New York City than he had expected because of the mayor's focus on experimentation. A few weeks later, Mr. Goldsmith interviewed with the mayor again, at City Hall, and met with his staff members. ''It seemed to me an irresistible opportunity -- not one I was looking for -- when I received the mayor's phone call,'' Mr. Goldsmith said at a news conference announcing his appointment at City Hall. Mr. Bloomberg said, ''Lots of people talk about reinventing government; I think it's fair to say Steve has actually done that.'' Mr. Goldsmith is working on a voluntary basis until June 1, giving him time to end any business dealings that might create a conflict of interest with his work at City Hall. As deputy mayor, he will earn $213,000 a year. He lives in Washington but said he would soon begin house hunting in New York City. Asked if he would entertain running for office in New York, Mr. Goldsmith replied emphatically, ''No, and no.'' Mr. Bloomberg, who broke his pledge to serve only two terms by undoing term limits in 2008, noted wryly, ''I said that, too.'' PHOTO: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's selection of Stephen Goldsmith, left, seemed to indicate a determination to shake up his cabinet in a third term fraught with budget woes. (PHOTOGRAPH BY YANA PASKOVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ Tens of thousands of people thronged the main square of the capital, Tirana, on Friday, vowing to stay there until the government allowed a partial recount of an election the opposition says involved vote-rigging. The conservative Democrats, led by Prime Minister Sali Berisha, narrowly won the June 28 general election, but the opposition Socialists have been boycotting Parliament for months, demanding the recount of ballots in several districts. The government has called that demand illegal. ------------ A special court convicted Senator Charles Pasqua, left, a onetime close ally of Jacques Chirac, on Friday on a corruption charge stemming from his tenure as interior minister in the early 1990s. Mr. Pasqua, 83, received a one-year suspended prison sentence for embezzlement of public funds in a case linked to the sale of police equipment abroad; he was acquitted on corruption charges in two other cases. He had been convicted in October for influence peddling in connection with illegal arms sales to Angola in the 1990s, a decision he has appealed. Mr. Chirac is to stand trial in November on charges that he embezzled public funds as mayor of Paris, before he became president in 1993. PHOTO ------------ The Schwarzenegger administration lost a legal fight to end oversight of California's prison health care system. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday that a federal judge could continue with a court-appointed receiver to improve inmate medical care. The appeals court also dismissed the administration's request to stop the receiver's construction plans to add medical beds. California has been trying to end the oversight largely because of the growing costs. ------------ The Supreme Court has rejected a motion to modify an amnesty law so that officials accused of human-rights abuses under Brazil's military dictatorship would have to stand trial. The Brazilian Bar Association had proposed that people who committed torture should be excluded from the 1979 Amnesty Law, which pardoned civilians and military personnel for crimes committed under the dictatorship. The court voted 7 to 2 against the motion Thursday. Most justices said the law should remain as is because it had been approved by society as a whole, including the bar association, armed forces and political exiles. Unlike Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, Brazil never prosecuted members of the armed forces for rights abuses committed during the country's military rule. ------------ The top judge on Texas's highest criminal appeals court has been fined $100,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission for not fully reporting her income and property holdings. The fine against Judge Sharon Keller of the Court of Criminal Appeals is the largest ever imposed by the commission. Judge Keller's sworn personal income statements for 2007 and 2008 did not include properties valued at more than $2 million and other income totaling about $183,000. She is facing five charges of judicial misconduct for refusing to accept a late appeal from a twice-convicted killer in September 2007. ------------ The Government Accountability Office says a computer system needed to finish the 2010 census may not be up to the job. Robert Goldenkoff, the office's strategic issues director, said Friday before a Congressional hearing in Los Angeles that the Paper Based Operations Control System had not demonstrated the ability to meet peak requirements as it sought to count residents who did not return census forms by mail. Robert Groves, the census director, said the problems stemmed from a late change from a handheld device system to the paper-based system. ------------ Shanghai kicked off the 2010 World Expo on Friday evening with an extravagant opening ceremony and fireworks show and a pledge to be more open and inclusive. The two-hour performance at the new $270 million Expo Culture Center ended with a spectacular outdoor multimedia show punctuated by a parade of hundreds of national flags carried by boats along the city's Huangpu River. The city has spent $45 billion, more than Beijing spent on the 2008 Olympics, to put on what it says will be the biggest Expo ever, and a showcase of China's new economic might. Organizers are expecting 70 million visitors during the six-month-long Expo, mostly from neighboring provinces. ------------ A federal judge denied a motion on Friday to subpoena President Obama to testify at the corruption trial for former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich. Judge James B. Zagel of Federal District Court said Mr. Blagojevich's lawyers had not proved that Mr. Obama's testimony would be significant. The lawyers had claimed that the president could provide insight into the accusation that Mr. Blagojevich tried to sell or trade the Senate seat once held by Mr. Obama. ------------ The Roman Catholic Church in India has proposed a zero-tolerance policy on sexual abuse complaints against priests, a spokesman said Friday. In a meeting this week, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India drafted a code that included reporting incidents of sexual abuse to the police, and defrocking and expelling priests found guilty of abuse, said the conference spokesman, Babu Joseph Karakombil. ''The Catholic Church will take extreme measures and will not hesitate to act on allegations of sexual abuse made against any priest,'' he said. ''We will have zero tolerance with regard to abuse of children in institutions run by the church.'' The new guidelines will be in place by June after discussions in dioceses across India. ------------ The Kansas House came two votes short of overriding Gov. Mark Parkinson's veto of a bill regarding late-term abortions Friday. Republican supporters of the measure said they would move to reconsider the override on Monday. The measure would require doctors to give the state more details about abortions performed after the 21st week of pregnancy and involving fetuses considered viable. It would also allow patients or family members to sue doctors if they had evidence that an abortion had violated state law. ------------ Immigration agents arrested 596 immigrants who they said had criminal records in a three-day operation in the southeast and Puerto Rico, calling it their biggest sweep to date in that region. The immigrants included Jose Oscar Avalo Molina, from El Salvador, who was arrested in Florida; he had served a 20-year murder sentence. John Morton, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said many of the immigrants had eluded deportation when they were released from prison after serving criminal sentences. ------------ South Sudan's army said that armed men attacked one of its bases in Jonglei State on Friday, killing at least eight soldiers. A spokesman for the south's army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, said it had captured five of the attackers, who said they were working under orders of Gen. George Athor, a defeated candidate for governor of Jonglei, an oil-producing region. General Athor, a senior officer in the south's army, denied involvement in the attack, saying soldiers in the base had mutinied after receiving orders to arrest him. ------------ HOUSTON -- Three Houston police officers caused an international incident last weekend when they followed a Chinese diplomat into a parking garage at the Chinese Consulate and arrested him, injuring him in the process, the authorities said. Mayor Annise Parker said late Thursday that the officers had been restricted to desk duty while the police and the State Department investigated the arrest. The officers have said they were unaware the building the diplomat had entered was a consulate and off limits to them. The arrest took place Saturday night. The diplomat, Yu Boren, the deputy consul general, was treated at a hospital for minor injuries to his neck and head. His wife, who was riding with him and also has a position at the consulate, was not injured, a spokesman for the consulate, Wang Peijun, said. ''They are both at work now,'' Mr. Wang said Friday. In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry lodged a formal complaint with the United States over the arrest of Mr. Yu, noting that the police had violated international treaties by following Mr. Yu onto the consulate's grounds. The United States responded with a promise to investigate the episode quickly and fully. ''The department takes this incident very seriously and has been in touch with the Chinese Embassy about what occurred,'' a spokeswoman at the State Department, Nicole Thompson, said. The police department declined to release any details about the arrest of Mr. Yu. The mayor's office identified the officers as Timothy J. Riley II, Quang Tran and Victor Olivares. A local CBS television station, KTRK, reported on Thursday that the officers had followed Mr. Yu because his car was missing its rear license plate. ------------ Within the 242 pages of Diane Ravitch's lightning rod of a book, ''The Death and Life of the Great American School System,'' there appear exactly three references to Catholic education. Which makes sense, given that Ms. Ravitch is addressing and deploring recent efforts to reform public schools with extensive testing and increasing privatization. Yet what subtly informs both her critique and her recommendations for improving public schools is, in significant measure, her long study of and admiration for Roman Catholic education, especially in serving low-income black and Hispanic students. In that respect, Ms. Ravitch and her book offer evidence of how some public-education scholars and reformers have been learning from what Catholic education is doing right. What one might call the Catholic-school model is perhaps the most unappreciated influence on the nation's public-education debate. ''If you're serious about education reform, you have to pay attention to what Catholic schools are doing,'' said Joseph P. Viteritti, a professor of public policy at Hunter College who has edited four books with Ms. Ravitch. ''The fact of the matter is that they've been educating urban kids better than they're being educated elsewhere.'' When Ms. Ravitch assails the emphasis on standardized testing, particularly under the No Child Left Behind law, and when she exhorts schools to use a content-rich core curriculum and emphasize character and build ties to parents and neighborhoods, she is, without overtly saying so, extolling the essential traits of Catholic education. The message, in turn, may be reaching a larger audience than ever through the book. With 50,000 copies in print, ''The Death and Life of the Great American School System'' has put Ms. Ravitch on The New York Times best-seller list for the first time in her 36-year, 24-book career as an author on education history and policy. Part of the buzz has to do with the perception -- actually, the misperception -- that Ms. Ravitch has disavowed her previous dogma. While she does admit to ''having fallen for the latest panaceas and miracle cures,'' like charter schools and the No Child law, she also espouses positions that have been in her educational platform for decades. And many of them reflect the influence of Catholic education. That influence decidedly did not come as a matriculant. Ms. Ravitch, who is Jewish, attended public school in Houston. She had already written a masterly history of public education in New York City (''The Great School Wars'') and battled against the educational left wing before starting to take notice of Catholic schools in the early 1980s. Her interest was initially piqued by the work of James S. Coleman, a sociologist of education and fellow apostate. Despite his roots in civil rights liberalism, Coleman began arguing in the 1970s and early 1980s that segregation alone could not explain the achievement gap between black and white students. His research into various types of high schools -- tens of thousands of students' records -- convinced him that the same kind of poor, inner-city black student performed markedly better in a Catholic school than in a public one. In books like ''High School Achievement'' and ''Public and Private High Schools,'' Coleman particularly singled out Catholic schools for their core curriculum that embodied the ''common school ideal'' and for the ''social capital'' they built by involving parents and parishioners. Ultimately, Coleman gave Ms. Ravitch all of his data, so she could inspect it herself. Not only did she concur with his conclusions, but she began to visit urban Catholic schools on her own, from Brooklyn to London. ''They reminded me of my own public schooling in the 1950s,'' Ms. Ravitch recalled in an interview this week. ''The halls were quiet. It was orderly. And there was this commitment from the teachers.'' More than nostalgia, though, commended the schools to Ms. Ravitch. On the one flank, they never gave over to the obsession with standardized tests. On the other, they never conceded their curriculum to progressive trends like whole language, constructivist math and relativistic history. As a result, black and Hispanic students in Catholic schools did not necessarily score higher than those in public schools on standardized tests like the SAT, but they were far more likely to take rigorous classes, graduate on time and attend college. At a personal level, Ms. Ravitch paid tuition for two students at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn under the Student Sponsor Partners program. She even talked Suze Orman into picking up the bill for eight girls at St. Joseph High School in Brooklyn. In terms of policy, Ms. Ravitch had her dalliance with the concept of giving publicly financed vouchers to low-income students. The idea was that they could attend private schools, including Catholic ones, rather than being consigned to abysmal public schools in their neighborhoods. By now, vouchers qualify as yet another intellectual romance gone sour for Ms. Ravitch. The track record in Milwaukee, which has had vouchers and a school-choice program for upward of a decade, has shown her no substantial improvement for low-income, nonwhite students. Her criticism of charter schools, though, arises partly from a desire to protect Catholic ones. Already reeling from a shortage of priests and members of religious orders as teachers, already losing enrollment because of rising tuition and falling aid from parishes, urban Catholic schools face direct competition from charters, which as public entities are free. ''Where charter schools are expanding, Catholic schools are dying,'' Ms. Ravitch said. ''But charter schools can't do the same things. The Catholic schools have a well-established record of being effective, and they're being replaced by schools that have no track record.'' ------------ Sometimes, in election season, I have the feeling that the entire audience at political events is made up of teachers. O.K., maybe an exaggeration. Democratic political events. And you do see people from other unions, although, unlike the teachers, they tend to come in large buses and wear identical T-shirts. And there will be students, as long as the event in question takes place in a university gymnasium. But the teachers -- good citizens who are always worried about what the government will do to them next -- win the political participation prize. During the presidential race, the line in Barack Obama's speech about how standardized tests should not ''come at the expense of music or art or physical education or science'' often got more applause than getting out of Iraq. All of this takes us to Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist announced Thursday that he was going to leave the Republican Party and run for the United States Senate as an independent. This happened at a rally where most of the attendees appeared to be teachers. It was, by the way, a terrible rally. It was smallish and disorganized, as befits a candidate whose Republican staff members were in the process of quitting. Crist's speech was brief, yet there was plenty of room for lines like ''I love my country. I love the fact that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave.'' He made it clear that he was running as an outsider, which would make him one of the rare breed of governor-outsiders. This seems only fair since his opponents -- a former speaker of the State House and a four-term congressman whose district was previously held by his mother -- are running as outsiders, too. As the whole world now knows, Crist expected he would become the Republican Senate nominee until Marco Rubio, a youthful conservative with Tea Party ties, ran rings around him in the primary race. So there he was in a park in St. Petersburg, a brand-new independent, talking about the home of the brave and introducing his family. Crist seems to have a lot of relatives, who should come in handy now that there's no campaign staff. And there were the teachers, waving signs and attempting to follow one of the governor's sisters in a cheer, despite the extreme lameness of ''Crist! Crist! Crist!'' as a political war cry. They are exceedingly, intensely, grateful to the governor for vetoing a bill that would have tied their pay, employment and even certification to the performance of their students on standardized tests. ''Governor Crist has earned a whole lot of friends within the teaching profession,'' said Andy Ford, the president of the Florida Education Association. Can I digress, people, and say that while it's important to make teachers accountable, telling them their jobs could hinge on their students' grades on one test is a terrible idea? The women and men who go into teaching tend, as a group, to be both extremely dedicated and extremely risk-averse. The stability of their profession is a very important part of its draw. You do not want to make this an anything-can-happen occupation, unless you are prepared to compensate them like hedge fund traders. It's a terrible time for American teachers -- almost every school district is facing monster budget cuts, and a number of politicians have tried to make them the villain in the story. (New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, recently accused them of using their students as ''drug mules'' to convey information on school budget votes.) If Crist defeats Rubio with the teachers' support, it will certainly help them push back. But nothing is simple in Florida. If the teachers decide to endorse Crist, it will hurt Democrat Kendrick Meek, a longtime ally who hopes to be the first African-American elected to statewide office in Florida. Meek, who took over his district the year his mother, Representative Carrie Meek, retired, has enough problems already. For one thing, no one outside Miami seems to know who he is. For another, a billionaire named Jeff Greene has just announced he is prepared to ''spend whatever it takes'' to grab the Democratic nomination for himself. It does not seem terribly likely that Florida voters are yearning for a man who made his maxi-fortune betting that real estate prices would drop. But, still, no candidate likes being stuck with a rogue billionaire. Every election season, Florida seems to find a new way to be the center of attention, and the education angle makes this race more important than its effect on the Senate vote count. Meanwhile, all this anxiety cannot possibly be good for classroom performance. Keep an eye on Florida. And give the next teacher you see a smile, or an apple. ------------ AS a boy, I lived in Sheik Jarrah, a wealthy Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Annexed by Israel in 1967 and now the subject of a conflict over property claims, my former home has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong between the Israelis and Palestinians over the last six decades. Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem's mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed. As a result, ''The battle line in Israel's war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,'' writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. ''Is that the line, at last, where Israel's decline will be halted?'' I hope so. My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides. At the time Sheik Jarrah was a sleepy suburb, a half-mile north of Damascus Gate. One of my playmates was Dani Bahar, the son of a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish-German refugee from Nazi Europe. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, such interfaith marriages were uncommon, but accepted. Another neighbor was Katy Antonius, the widow of George Antonius, an Arab historian who argued that Palestine should become a binational, secular state. The Sheik Jarrah of my youth is gone; Mandelbaum Gate was razed by Israeli bulldozers right after the Six-Day War in 1967 that united Jerusalem. But the city remains virtually divided. Few Jewish Israelis venture into Sheik Jarrah and the other largely Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and few Palestinians go to the ''New City.'' Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent -- although much of the world doesn't recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. ''Jerusalem is not a settlement,'' he recently told an audience in Washington. Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters. In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel's founding. The Palestinians have stubbornly refused to pay any rent to these ''absentee'' Israeli landlords for nearly 43 years; until recently, their presence was nevertheless tolerated. But under Mr. Netanyahu, a concerted effort has been made to evict these Palestinians and replace them with Israelis. This poses an interesting question. If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can't Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem? I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they'd be back in a few weeks. Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. ''He was a Jewish Turk,'' Dr. Kalbian said, ''who had come to Israel in 1948.'' The man claimed he had bought the house from the ''authorities.'' That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them -- but only if they had not fled to countries then considered ''hostile,'' like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss. The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah. If Israel wishes to remain largely Jewish and democratic, then it must soon withdraw from all of the occupied territories and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. And if not, it should at least let the Kalbians go home again. ------------ Prohibition ended 77 years ago, yet Americans have still not kicked the habit of trying to fix social problems by banning things. Half a century ago, the target was true-crime novels and magazines, those filled with ''pictures or stories of criminal deeds of bloodshed, lust, or crime,'' in the words of a New York statute that made it a crime to print, sell or even to give away such matter. Nineteen other states had similar laws. The Supreme Court declared in 1948 that the statutes violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, prompting a passionate dissent from Justice Felix Frankfurter. The former Harvard Law School professor complained that the majority was thwarting the states' effort ''to solve what is perhaps the most persistent, intractable, elusive and demanding of all problems in society -- the problem of crime and, more particularly, of its prevention.'' The notion that reading a novel or magazine could turn a decent citizen into a criminal -- or that banning one could make the streets safer -- sounds preposterous today. So does the more recent effort by Nassau County, N.Y., to ban the sale to minors of trading cards depicting notorious criminals, an ordinance that the federal appeals court in New York declared unconstitutional in 1997. The latest threat to public safety and morals, evidently, is the video game. Bans on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors are popping up all over the country -- eight states so far, along with several local laws. Every one that has been challenged in court has been declared unconstitutional. So it was baffling this week to find the Supreme Court weighing in where it doesn't appear to be needed. The court typically takes up only those questions that have produced contradictory rulings in the lower courts; a ''conflict in the circuits'' is the primary marker of a case the justices deem worthy of their attention. Yet the justices have agreed to hear California's appeal of a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that struck down a state law imposing a fine of up to $1,000 for the sale or rental of a ''violent video game'' to a person under the age of 18. The 2005 statute defines ''violent video game'' as one that ''appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors;'' offends community standards; and lacks ''serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.'' This definition mirrors the way the Supreme Court defines obscenity, a category of expression deemed to lack First Amendment protection. But obscenity, as a legal category, always has a sexual component. California is asking the Supreme Court for a new carve-out from the First Amendment, for depictions of violence when made available to minors. The state ''is asking us to boldly go where no court has ever gone before,'' the Ninth Circuit panel observed. Maybe the Supreme Court accepted the case, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, simply in order to kill the state's stunningly broad theory in the cradle. The Roberts court has been highly protective of free speech (too much so, according to critics of the recent campaign finance decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which invalidated limits on corporate political speech). And just last week, in United States v. Stevens, the court voted 8 to 1 on First Amendment grounds to strike down a federal law that criminalized ''crush videos'' and other commercial depictions of animal cruelty. Or maybe the justices want to spare other courts the need to keep reviewing and declaring unconstitutional an endless assortment of violent-video bans. If so, they could hardly do better than simply to adopt the opinion that Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit wrote in 2001, invalidating an Indianapolis violent-video ordinance. It's hard to top the Odyssey or the Divine Comedy for gruesome depictions of torture and mayhem, Judge Posner said, adding that shielding modern children from violent imagery ''would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.'' Whatever its motive, the Supreme Court's intervention at this point seems so gratuitous that I find it hard to shake the concern that some justices may actually think that social engineering of this sort may actually do some good. If so, let's hope that the history-minded conservatives check their history before signing on to this latest fad. Correction: In preparing my column on Tuesday, on Arizona's new immigration law, I downloaded the text of S.B. 1070 from the State Legislature's Web site. But it turned out not to be the version that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law. The version she signed omitted the trespassing section I referred to. I regret the error. My belief that the law is morally and legally problematic is unchanged. ------------ The home builder D. R. Horton reported a quarterly profit and a sharp increase in orders on Friday, surprising Wall Street and sending shares up across the sector. Horton, whose shares touched a nearly two-year high, extended a trend of improving results from home builders. The company, the second-largest home builder in the country, constructs ready-to-sell homes. That enabled it to capture any increase in demand fueled by the tax credit. Orders rose more than analysts expected as Horton exploited urgency on the part of buyers rushing to meet the tax credit deadline. Orders are an important leading indicator for home builders, as contracts signed in one quarter often do not close until the next. Pulte, which became the country's largest builder after its acquisition of Centex, is expected to report results next week. Horton reported a net income of $11.4 million, or 4 cents a share, reversing a year-earlier loss of $108.6 million, or 34 cents a share. It was second consecutive profitable quarter after almost three years of losses. The results topped Wall Street's expectations, as analysts had forecast a loss of 1 cent a share, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 15.7 percent, to $896.8 million. Relatively conservative builders, who prefer to wait until they have a buyer before building, were at a disadvantage this quarter because builders must deliver homes by June 30 to qualify them for the tax credit. For instance, the Ryland Group posted a 13.4 percent drop in orders when it reported results on Wednesday and shares fell about 4 percent the next day. Horton's shares were up 3.2 percent to $14.69. ------------ As cleanup crews struggled Friday to cope with the massive oil slick from a leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, dozens of engineers and technicians ensconced in a Houston office building were still trying to solve the mystery of how to shut down the well after a week of brainstorming and failed efforts. They have continued to focus their attention on a 40-foot stack of heavy equipment 5,000 feet below the surface of the gulf -- and several hundred miles from Houston. Known as a blowout preventer, or B.O.P., the steel-framed stack of valves, rams, housings, tanks and hydraulic tubing, painted industrial yellow and sitting atop the well in the murky water, is at the root of the disaster. When an explosion and fire crippled the deepwater drilling rig on April 20, workers threw a switch to activate the blowout preventer, which is designed to seal the well quickly in the event of a burst of pressure. It did not work, and a failsafe switch on the device also failed to function. Since then, the group of experts in deep-sea oil operations has been working out of a BP office, grappling with the intractable puzzle of how to activate the device. ''It's a mystery, a huge Apollo 13-type mystery,'' as to why the blowout preventer did not work, said a person familiar with the efforts to activate it, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject. Like Apollo-program engineers, who 40 years ago (and also in Houston) cobbled together a long-distance fix to save the crippled spacecraft and its crew, these experts are trying something far beyond routine: shutting down an underwater out-of-control well by remote control. And at a mile below the surface, the work site might as well be halfway to the moon. The effort involves a half-dozen remotely operated robotic submersibles hovering around the blowout preventer, along with surface support ships. The submersibles, designed for drilling work, are equipped with video cameras and tools like wire cutters and ''hot stabs,'' metal connectors that can plug into hydraulic systems in an effort to operate them. So far the efforts have not been successful. ''They seem to be having hydraulic issues,'' said the person familiar with the effort. He likened the scene in Houston to a skunk works, with specialists from BP as well as Cameron, which manufactured the blowout preventer, and Transocean, which owned and operated it as part of the drilling operation, working in shifts around the clock. Different groups will brainstorm and come up with new sets of procedures to be tried and then watch on video monitors as the submersibles carry out the work. At a news conference Friday, Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said that experts from other companies and from the military had been asked to go to Houston to contribute to the effort. Despite the lack of success, BP officials have vowed to continue, because shutting off the flow at the wellhead is the quickest solution to stopping the leak, now estimated at about 200,000 gallons a day. An alternative, installing a containment chamber over the leaks and pumping the oil to the surface, will not be ready for at least several weeks and has never been tried at such depths. And a permanent solution, drilling a relief well that can be used to plug the damaged well with cement, will take several months. Drilling is expected to begin Saturday. ''Until we run out of options to try to stop the flow of oil at the blowout preventer, we won't stop,'' Mr. Suttles said at a news conference earlier in the week. The blowout preventer, which is 16 feet wide, sits on the seabed between the well and the pipe that carries oil to the surface, the riser. The drilling pipe, which comes down from the rig through the riser, is usually about half a foot in diameter and is surrounded inside the well by a larger pipe that forms the permanent casing for the finished well. Each blowout preventer is configured for a given well. This one has five hydraulic rams. Some are designed to seal the well by clamping around the drill pipe, sealing the space between it and the casing. At least one of these has a variable bore, meaning it can be used with pipes of different diameters. Another of the rams, called a shear ram and often used as a last resort, is meant to seal the well by shearing off the drill pipe. A sixth element, a mushroom-shaped device called an annular preventer, uses hydraulics to press an elastic material around the pipe to seal it. The blowout preventer also has systems for testing the various rams; a BP official said earlier in the week that the device had been tested 10 days before the accident. The person familiar with the Houston operation said that the videos showed there was no evidence of external damage to the blowout preventer from the accident. But the working parts of the valves and rams are out of view. One possibility is that the internal workings were damaged in the accident. Another is that the pipe inside is bent -- a result of the collapse of the riser after the accident -- and the rams cannot make a tight seal. There have been conflicting reports as to whether the blowout preventer worked partially -- perhaps crimping one of the pipes rather than shearing it. This might occur, said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, if the ram encountered a joint between two lengths of drill pipe. At these threaded joints the steel is thicker and harder than elsewhere along the pipe. But blowout preventers are usually designed for such contingencies, Mr. McCormack said. ''They put enough different rams on there,'' he said. Mr. McCormack also raised the possibility that the leak was coming from outside the well casing, the larger pipe that is permanently installed in the well. The drilling crews were putting cement between the casing and the well hole when the accident occurred. Perhaps, Mr. McCormack said, the cement had not cured sufficiently when there was a burst of pressure. Mr. Suttles declined to comment about the cement issue at the news conference Friday. He noted that the federal government and BP were conducting investigations. ''Through good time and as quickly as possible, we will find the cause,'' he said. PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD) GRAPHIC: Three Efforts to Supress the Flow of Oil (Sources: BP; United States Coast Guard; American Petroleum Institute; J. Kim Vandiver, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) ------------ The former Newsweek publisher Greg Osberg was named publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer's parent company after creditors won an auction to buy the business in bankruptcy. Mr. Osberg, 52, will also be chief executive of Philadelphia Newspapers, owner of The Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, pending approval of the sale in bankruptcy court. ------------ Lyondell Chemical said on Friday that it had exited bankruptcy after 16 months. Its debt load was reduced to about $5 billion from $24 billion. It was able to exit through financial backing from two private equity firms and the industrial holding company Access Industries. The new company, LyondellBasell Industries, will be based in the Netherlands and will trade in New York later this year. ------------ Lala, the online music service, will be shut down on May 31, five months after Apple bought the start-up. Apple is widely expected to use Lala's ''cloud'' technology to integrate a Web subscription service into its popular iTunes Music Store. A notice on Lala's Web site on Friday said it would issue refunds to users who had already paid for songs they had yet to download. ------------ MBIA can proceed with a lawsuit claiming that Countrywide Financial committed fraud in obtaining insurance on billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities, a judge ruled. MBIA's suit contends that Countrywide ''falsely represented'' to the insurer, and to trusts holding the securities, that Countrywide originated the mortgage loans in strict compliance with its underwriting standards. The insurer has covered more than $459 million of losses. ------------ General Motors said on Friday that the costs of closing a plant in Antwerp, Belgium, would run 400 million euros ($532 million). The costs would largely involve paying termination benefits covering 2,600 workers. It also said a search led by the Flemish government would be conducted until the end of September to try to sell the plant to an outside investor. ------------ The Chevron Corporation's quarterly profit more than doubled, beating forecasts, as a rise in oil prices offset lower refinery earnings. The oil company's chief financial officer, Patricia E. Yarrington, said on Friday that she saw some softening in the West Coast and Singapore refining markets going into the second quarter. ''You may still have some sloppiness in the market,'' she told analysts on a conference call, referring to how refining capacity under maintenance was coming back on line. Oil and gas production climbed to 2.78 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in the quarter, up 120,000 barrels a day. The company increased its output in the United States, Nigeria, Angola and at Tengiz in Kazakhstan. Chevron is aiming for average production of 2.73 million barrels a day for 2010, and said it would discuss this outlook further at the second-quarter earnings conference call in July. Chevron and other oil companies' offshore operations are coming under increased scrutiny because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico at a BP well. The White House said it would not open new regions to drilling until the cause of the disaster had been determined. Ms. Yarrington said Chevron, a major Gulf of Mexico producer, was assisting BP and the government, but that it was too early to say how the situation would play out. First-quarter profit rose to $4.55 billion, or $2.27 a share, from $1.84 billion, or 92 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 34 percent, to $46.7 billion. Excluding $175 million in charges for job cuts, the company earned $2.36 a share, easily topping the $1.94 that analysts had expected, according to the average on Thomson Reuters. The company's downstream, or refining and marketing business, posted profits of $82 million in the quarter, down from $136 million a year earlier, but far better than the $333 million loss the previous quarter. Most of the world's major private-sector oil companies reported stronger-than-expected profits this week, though the market leader Exxon Mobil was hurt by a weak refining performance and a charge for health reform costs. Shares of Chevron closed down 85 cents, to $81.44. ------------ MWENGA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- As his plane cut through the clouds above eastern Congo on Friday, John Holmes, the United Nations' top humanitarian official, looked down pensively at the miles and miles of thick forest covering one of the most chronically afflicted parts of Africa, if not the world. ''It's hard not to despair about Congo,'' he said. ''Widespread instability.'' ''Recurrent waves of fighting.'' ''160 women raped per week.'' ''Drunken or drugged state of combatants.'' These were the words of the usually dry situation reports that United Nations officials were poring over on Friday, before they had even stepped off the plane to begin a high-level assessment of the region. ''I've never seen people in a worse state than the people of D.R.C.,'' Mr. Holmes said. Eastern Congo is stuck in a rut of violence, and the United Nations is concerned that donors and Western governments are getting tired of the steady stream of bad news that spews out of this vast nation. Rebel groups continue to kill, rape and destabilize. The Congolese Army is still weak and often predatory. The national economy, which should be blossoming because of Congo's bounty of minerals, is still on its knees. On top of that, the Congolese government has recently begun agitating for the United Nations' 20,000 peacekeepers in Congo to leave, mostly because of domestic political calculations. To many United Nations officials, aid workers and Congolese, a hasty pullout would be a recipe for an even greater disaster. ''The situation could deteriorate further, that's what we fear,'' Mr. Holmes said. On Friday, it was clear even from a quick helicopter visit to this village nestled in a bowl of sweeping, green mountains, how desperate many people remain. Hundreds of families were lined up on a soccer field, baking in the heat, many of them wearing rags. Some had placed empty bowls on their heads, waiting for handouts of food because they had been driven from their land. ''The Hutus are still in the forest,'' said one woman, referring to a rebel group that was originally from neighboring Rwanda. ''We can't go to our farms; it's dangerous for women.'' When asked if she knew anyone who had been raped, she simply paused. ''Me,'' she said. ''Three men. About a year ago.'' United Nations officials call eastern Congo the rape capital of the world, and sexual violence seems to have become embedded in the culture. A recent study showed that it was not just the myriad armed groups haunting the hills who were preying upon women. The number of rapes by civilians has increased 17-fold in recent years. ''Sexual violence is as bad as ever,'' Mr. Holmes said. Another issue that is getting worse is aid groups' access to people in need. Because of the recent fragmentation of some rebel groups and an uptick in military operations, rebels are attacking aid workers more frequently, possibly for money, hampering the delivery of food, medicine and other critical supplies. In 2008, there were 108 security episodes involving humanitarian workers in the eastern Kivu provinces, the United Nations said. In 2009, that number shot up to 179. This year is on track to surpass that, and rebels recently kidnapped eight employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross, considered one of the most neutral aid organizations. After extensive negotiations that took about a week, the employees were released, a bit worn out but unharmed. ------------ KABUL, Afghanistan -- The French military took responsibility on Friday for killing four Afghan children during a missile strike in early April, and NATO said it was investigating allegations of a military convoy gunning down two Afghan women and a girl in southeastern Afghanistan. The reports underscore concern over rising civilian deaths caused by the American-led military coalition as troops step up operations across the country. Last June, the new NATO and American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, instituted guidelines credited with reducing civilian casualties caused by Western military forces. That downward trend has abruptly been reversed: In the first three months of 2010, at least 72 Afghan civilians were accidentally killed by troops, compared to about 30 killed in the same period last year, according to a NATO official in Kabul. The latest allegations of civilian deaths were in some dispute. On Friday, Afghan officials said international forces killed two Afghan women and a girl riding in a car in Zabul Province as they approached a military convoy stopped on the road to remove a buried bomb. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Kabul, Zemary Bashary, said ''foreign forces'' had killed the women in Zabul. Mohammed Jan Rasool Yar, a spokesman for the Zabul governor, said the Afghan authorities had not determined which military unit shot the women. He said the driver of the car, a man, was wounded and hospitalized. As troops defused the bomb, Mr. Yar said, a Toyota approached. They ''tried to stop them, but they did not stop,'' he said, and troops opened fire. But while a NATO spokesman in Kabul said early Saturday morning that one military convoy had fired warning shots at a civilian car, he said that the driver stopped and there were no casualties. The spokesman said that NATO forces were continuing to investigate the allegations of civilian casualties in Zabul, but that they had no confirmation of any involvement by NATO troops. Also on Friday, the French military said its own investigation found that its forces killed four children during a fight with insurgents on April 6 in Kapisa Province, north of Kabul. According to Rear Adm. Christophe Prazuck, a French military spokesman, French and Afghan forces were setting up a combat outpost when insurgents attacked in the Bedrau Valley. Forces at a checkpoint returned fire and drove them back, he said. As the militants regrouped, French observers spotted seven insurgents hidden behind a wall, and troops fired one antitank missile. Thirty minutes later, a civilian vehicle arrived at the checkpoint with four children, ages 10 to 15, said to have been wounded in the attack, and another child who had already died. Three of the wounded children died shortly thereafter. ''The children were near the insurgents and beneath a tree,'' Admiral Prazuck said. ''No civilian activity had been observed.'' A French military investigation concluded in recent days. No further investigation or punitive measures are planned, Admiral Prazuck said. Late Wednesday night, a relative of an Afghan member of Parliament was shot and killed during an operation involving NATO forces in Nangarhar Province, setting off angry demonstrations the following morning that blocked the main road to Kabul for an hour amid chants of ''Death to America.'' The lawmaker, Safia Sidiqi, said troops came to her house just before midnight. She was in Kabul at the time, but she said her brother had called her to say there were thieves outside the house. She said she had called the provincial police and was told that American troops were conducting an operation. ''They came to my house intentionally and killed one of my family members,'' she said. ''The Americans knew this was my house.'' NATO officials said troops from a joint NATO-Afghan force had killed ''one armed individual'' while pursuing a ''Taliban facilitator.'' In a statement, NATO said the man had been shot and killed after aiming his weapon at the troops and ignoring commands and hand signals to lower his gun. ------------ BEIJING -- China is expected to issue regulations on Saturday requiring technology companies to disclose proprietary information like data-encryption keys and underlying software code to sell a range of security-related digital technology products to government agencies, American industry officials said on Friday. But they said it remained unclear how vigorously Chinese officials would enforce the new rules, which already are watered down from a sweeping proposal first raised in 2007. Both the American and European technology industries have contended that the rules are unworkable and that they amount to trade protectionism. One concern is that the rules will allow the leak of crucial foreign technologies to Chinese competitors who are seeking to build a technology industry on a par with the West. The European Union's chief trade official, Karel De Gucht, said in a visit to Beijing this week that the rules had ''no real base in reality,'' and urged the Beijing government to overhaul them. The regulations, set to take effect on Friday, largely affect sales of network routers, smart cards, firewall software and other products involved in protecting digital data. They would require software and equipment from both Chinese and foreign companies to meet new technology standards before being certified for sale to government agencies. To be certified, companies apparently would have to give government-connected testing laboratories encryption algorithms, software source code and design specifications that, for many of the products, are regarded as sensitive trade secrets. In interviews, American industry officials argued that the rules not only sought details well beyond what was needed to certify the products, but that there were few safeguards to protect the proprietary information from outsiders. ''Even if you're not talking about the really sensitive stuff, it's not clear yet how product information will be protected or secured while it is running through the testing process,'' John Neuffer, a vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group based in Washington, said in a telephone interview. ''China asks for companies to go through testing labs that are essentially state-owned, government-owned,'' he said. ''That's the sensitive part.'' The regulations are part of a long-running argument between Western technology companies and the Chinese government over the West's access to Chinese markets. In the last month, China averted another dispute by rolling back a second plan aimed at giving Chinese companies an advantage in government technology purchases. But foreign companies still contend that the latest regulations will grant Chinese companies an unfair edge in government sales, a comparatively small but growing part of the market here. They also worry that the disclosure rules will enable Chinese competitors to copy Western technology. When the 2007 certification proposal was first introduced, some Chinese officials cast it as part of a broader campaign to help the nation's computer-technology companies gain ground against more advanced Western competitors. In negotiations, Chinese officials have argued that the United States imposes similar disclosure requirements on many advanced technologies. Mr. Neuffer and others said, however, that except for some military and national security technologies, American certification procedures are far less rigorous and are conducted in testing labs independent from the government. Other foreign critics have called the regulations an example of trade protectionism, in that they would set standards for selling goods to Chinese governments that Western companies find difficult to meet. Many Chinese technology companies have agreed to abide by the rules. In Beijing, an American industry expert who has negotiated with the Chinese government on the issue said that most American companies were likely to abandon sales to the Chinese government rather than turn over trade secrets. That expert declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the talks with the Chinese. American industry officials also have argued that the new rules would gut their technology exports, because few other nations would purchase technology whose essential security secrets had been shared with the Chinese government. Publicly, the United States government has taken a muted stance on the dispute. Nkenge Harmon, a spokeswoman for the United States trade representative in Washington, noted in a statement that the Chinese first planned to apply the rules to all technology purchases, but later scaled them back to apply only to purchases by local, provincial and national governments. ''We were pleased with that decision,'' her statement said. ''Since then, the U.S. has continued to ask China to follow global norms in this area, and we are continuing those discussions.'' ------------ An article on Thursday about a new immigration enforcement law in Arizona described incorrectly action by the Legislature to put in place new requirements for office seekers. The Arizona House has passed a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide documentation on their citizenship, age and residency. But the state does not have a new law requiring all political candidates to prove citizenship. (The sponsor of a Senate bill on presidential candidates said on Thursday that the measure was being shelved for now because of lack of Republican support.) ------------ An article on Page 46 this weekend about young people working in the Obama administration misspells the name of the New Hampshire city where two of them, Herbie Ziskend and Samantha Tubman, met. It is Keene, not Keane. ------------ NEW YORK An article in some copies last Saturday reported that Jeff Ragsdale, a 32-year-old computer consultant, had tried to make up with his girlfriend, Megan Brady, by wearing a sandwich board in Madison Square Park that apologized for being ''verbally abusive.'' Subsequently, questions were raised about whether this public lovers' quarrel had been staged. A closer look at whether it was a hoax can be found at nytimes.com/cityroom, which first reported the account. ------------ A picture caption on Friday with an article about the trial of a man accused of killing three young people in an attack at a Newark schoolyard in 2007 misidentified the judge in the case, Michael L. Ravin. He is the man at the left -- wearing robes -- not the man in a suit, second from left, shown conferring with Judge Ravin. ------------ An article and a picture caption on Wednesday about protests by students in New Jersey over cuts in state aid to education misidentified the county in which High Tech High School, one site of the protests, is located. It is in Hudson County, not Bergen. ------------ A picture caption on Friday with the Advertising column, about the growing popularity of New Jersey characters and culture in television shows and advertising, reversed the identifications of two stars of the Style Network show ''Jerseylicious'' and misspelled the given name of one of them in some copies. Olivia Blois Sharpe is at the right; Tracy -- not Tracey -- DiMarco is at the left. The column also misstated the number of episodes in a series, ''Jersey Couture,'' to be shown starting June 1 on the Oxygen cable channel. It is eight, not six. ------------ The listing of lottery results in some editions on Thursday misstated one of Wednesday's winning New York Lotto numbers. They are 1, 7, 15 -- not 16 -- 19, 49 and 50. The Bonus number was 25 and the Lotto Extra, 27. ------------ Schedule information on Wednesday with a music review of the Little Orchestra Society, at Alice Tully Hall, misstated the given name of the soprano who will perform at the orchestra's next concert, on June 2 at Zankel Hall. She is Julia Kogan, not Laura. ------------ DOHA, Qatar THERE are a lot of reasons she might be bitter. She went blind in fifth grade, just like that. One day she had vision, the next, sudden retinal detachment. And then a life of darkness. She was whisked off to London for surgery, which failed three times. She came home to a country that offered virtually no services for the blind. But Hayat Khalil Hassan Nazar Heji may be the most grateful citizen of Qatar. She is a blind woman from a conservative Muslim country whose government paid for her to go to the United States, learn English, earn a Ph.D. and then return home to serve as director of Al Noor Institute for the Visually Impaired. ''If you trust God and have a strong will, you can overcome any challenge,'' she said. ''There is nothing too difficult in life.'' Dr. Heji is a small 34-year-old woman, with tender hands, a gentle smile and clouded eyes that reveal nothing of the determination inside. Doctors never were able to tell her exactly what prompted her blindness, but she understood at an early age that she would never get her sight back. So while she could not see, she dedicated her life to molding how she, and then other blind people, are seen. ''People are different, and they have different ideas, and you can shape the way they come to think of you,'' she said. ''At the institute we try to instill this, in addition to academic abilities, in our students.'' There are 430 children at the Noor Institute from preschool through sixth grade. Older students, if capable, are mainstreamed into the regular school system. The school is in a walled courtyard that feels weathered and hidden off the main road in a neighborhood under construction. But inside, it's happy. The halls rattle with the sound of canes tapping around, and laughter. Lots of laughter. On a recent visit, an 11-year-old eased his way into the corner of the hall and then stood silently for a minute as though lost. He was hiding, and when his buddy walked by, he sprang forward, ''Surprise, Khalid!'' he shouted as they walked off, laughing, to class. But the school is also a reminder of the special challenges faced in Qatar. It is still the custom in Qatar for young people to marry very close relatives, including first cousins. The two main causes of blindness in Qatar are premature birth and genetic disorders, passed along within families. The result, Dr. Heji said, is that many families have multiple blind children. ''There are lots of families like that here,'' she said. In one sixth-grade class, Rashid was learning to make a straight line pushing pegs into a peg board. His teacher, Manar Fattouh, said that Rashid had five brothers and two sisters, all blind. The girl next to him, Wadha, was pushing putty through a mold. She had a sister in the school who was also blind. Dr. Heji did not want to discuss the issue in depth, partly out of respect for it as a local custom but also, it appeared, because she was clearly aware that first cousins' marrying is seen as taboo in most parts of the world outside of Africa and the Middle East. She said that her own parents were close relatives, though it was never determined if that was a factor in her blindness. ''There is an issue of heritage, but awareness is being raised in Qatar,'' Dr. Heji said. ''Everyone is talking about the negative effect of heritage.'' THERE are other special challenges to being blind in Doha. In practical terms, there are very few places to walk because the city is built to be navigated by cars. Culturally, Dr. Heji said, people will not allow dogs in their homes, so there is no opportunity for Seeing Eye dogs. Still, Dr. Heji said she learned at an early age that problems almost always have solutions. So she has her teachers take the students to the mall, or the airport, or even a convention hall, so they can learn to have control over their own space. ''We instill independence,'' she said. Dr. Heji, who is single, is the middle child of nine. She said that as a child she developed a cataract in one eye but that she could see until 1985, when she hit the fifth grade. Then, she said, the blindness just happened. Her father, Khalil Hassan Nazar, refused to lock her up at home, as many parents here do. He wanted her to continue her education, so he would read her books and lessons into a cassette recorder for her to use as study aids. In high school, she focused on literature and graduated 10th in her class. Her father then hired a special teacher to train her in Braille, and in 1994 she became a student at Qatar University, where she majored in Arabic. Four years later she graduated and went on to teach at Noor and to give ''lessons for parents of the students with blindness so they would be able to help their children to deal with homework and life.'' By most measures, that itself would have been a success story. But Dr. Heji said she was inspired by Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser al-Missned, a wife of the emir of Qatar, who encouraged her to continue with her studies. They met, she said, at her college graduation. WITH the blessing and the checkbook of the oil-and-gas-rich state, she flew to the United States in November 2000 to study English at the University of Pennsylvania. She was frightened and sad -- but determined. ''When you live abroad, you are physically there, but your heart is somewhere else,'' she said. ''Being away was not easy, but the way I thought about it was that I wanted to use this experience and education to serve my country and give back part of what I owe.'' In 2001 she entered graduate school at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She earned a master's degree in education two years later, and in 2007 graduated with a doctorate in educational leadership. Speaking to Dr. Heji can be like trying to slow down a high-speed train. She is focused, driven and always on message. There are no visual cues to interrupt her, to suggest it is time to pause, and it can be difficult to get a word in as she promotes her school, her cause. Noor Institute, she said, developed a special tool for helping teach Braille, a plastic box with buttons to push to make different letters and numbers. The school developed a special device for teaching math concepts, which she said are especially difficult for blind children to grasp. The school is also developing a vocational program, again with the idea of promoting independence. Dr. Heji does not hold herself up as a role model, and though obviously proud of her accomplishments, she insists that her success and independence are a tribute to the support of others, not to any special drive. ''Because of the support I received during my childhood, and the support I still receive today from my family and my country, I want to help other people in the same way people have always helped me,'' she wrote in a personal essay about her life. ''I have always been grateful to my family, my schools, my teachers, my instructors, and my country.'' PHOTO: AYAT KHALIL HASSAN NAZAR HEJI (PHOTOGRAPH BY SHAWN BALDWIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ As the May sweeps period got under way on Thursday night, CBS's crime show ''The Mentalist'' attracted the largest audience in prime time, 14.7 million viewers, at 10, according to Nielsen's estimates. CBS won the ratings race on the night over all, leading the 8 and 9 time slots as well with ''Survivor'' (12.6 million) and ''CSI'' (13.5 million). ABC was runner-up, garnering its best ratings at 9 for ''Grey's Anatomy'' (10.3 million). Fox finished in third place; NBC placed fourth. ------------ The industrialist David H. Koch has pledged ''at least $10 million'' to renovate the plaza and fountains in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Wall Street Journal reported. The fountains have been off for several years. In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Koch said that the plaza ''should be converted into a very attractive, parklike environment with seats and benches and plantings and that sort of thing.'' A Met spokesman, Harold Holzer, said that the museum was exploring different design possibilities for the plaza, including whether to reshape it to direct more traffic to the street-level entrance of the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education, which is used mostly for school groups and the disabled. ------------ A United States appeals court on Friday vacated a lower court's order to enjoin the publication of a novel described as a sequel to J. D. Salinger's ''Catcher in the Rye.'' The appeals court agreed with a district court's judgment that Salinger's lawyers would probably prevail on the merits but told that lower court to re-evaluate whether the injunction should be ordered. Last year lawyers for Salinger successfully argued that the sequel -- ''60 Years Later'' by the Swedish writer Fredrik Colting, using the pseudonym J. D. California -- represented an illegal violation of Salinger's copyrights. (Salinger died in January at 91.) In arguments presented to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, lawyers for Mr. Colting said that the injunction was an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech and conflicted with a unanimous 2006 Supreme Court decision that said a four-part test must be employed to determine if a patent has been violated before an injunction can be issued. In its decision, the appeals court did not rule on the prior restraint question and remanded the district court's injunction so that court could apply the four-part test. ------------ While many theatergoers associate composers' scores with musicals, the year's Tony Award for best score could go to a play, with productions of ''Enron'' (with Norbert Leo Butz, right), ''Fences'' and ''The Royal Family'' all eligible for nominations in that category. The Tony Administration Committee voted on Friday that the score of ''Enron,'' with music by Adam Cork and lyrics by Lucy Prebble, was eligible for best score, a category that has long been defined as music and/or lyrics created for theater, as opposed to another medium. That concept rules out the scores for the new Green Day musical, ''American Idiot,'' and the Afrobeat musical ''Fela!'' The committee decided that ''Idiot'' was not eligible because less than 50 percent of it was written for the Broadway production. The score for ''Fela!'' was ruled ineligible because much of its music is drawn from songs by its real-life main character, Fela Anikulapo Kuti. However, the original scores by Branford Marsalis for ''Fences'' and Maury Yeston for ''The Royal Family'' will be eligible for the best-score award, though both plays are revivals. Neither required votes by the committee because Mr. Marsalis and Mr. Yeston were listed in the shows' opening-night credits. PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ Brandon Victor Dixon, below, who received critical praise for his leading role in the Off Broadway musical ''The Scottsboro Boys'' this spring, will depart that production to play Ray Charles in the coming Broadway show ''Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical.'' ''Unchain My Heart,'' with a book by the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (''Topdog/Underdog''), is scheduled to begin preview performances on Oct. 8 at a to-be-named Shubert theater on Broadway, with an opening night of Nov. 7. The casting of Mr. Dixon means that ''The Scottsboro Boys'' will be seeking a new lead actor to play the key role of Haywood Patterson, one of the black men convicted in 1930s Alabama on false charges of raping two white women. PHOTO ------------ Swiss justice officials said on Friday that they did not require access to the sealed testimony of a prosecutor involved in the case against the director Roman Polanski, even though lawyers for the filmmaker have said the testimony was needed for the officials to rule on his possible extradition to the United States. On Thursday Mr. Polanski's American lawyers filed a motion in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking the sealed testimony of Roger Gunson, a retired deputy district attorney, about a sentencing plan devised by Judge Laurence J. Rittenband. Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl but fled the United States in 1978 before he could be sentenced by Judge Rittenband, who died in 1993. Mr. Polanski's lawyers said the testimony would show that the United States request for his extradition was based on false and incomplete information. But Folco Galli, a Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman, told The Associated Press that the sealed testimony was irrelevant because the United States and Switzerland ''have to work on the assumption that the facts in the extradition request are represented correctly.'' ------------ The tensions that have simmered at the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado since the resignation of its music director, David Zinman, on April 8, boiled over on Thursday, when the festival corporation delivered a vote of no confidence in the festival's president and chief executive, Alan Fletcher. This was the latest swing in the fortunes of Mr. Fletcher, who was fired by the executive committee of the board of trustees in October only to be rehired by the full board in November. The vote has no binding effect on the board, which controls hiring and firing. ''We will only know what the practical effects are later,'' RobLeBuhn, the board chairman, said. But one immediate effect is to poison further an already toxic atmosphere at the venerable institution -- with Tanglewood, one of the most prestigious combinations of summer music school and performance festival in the United States -- as it approaches its 61st season, which opens on July 1. ------------ In 45 minutes of almost nonstop bluster at the Nokia Theater on Thursday night, Lloyd Banks squeezed in one minute for another mode of persuasion: humility. In the last three months, he's returned from being a curio, a relic of the 50 Cent era of the mid-2000s, to a bona fide phenomenon, an unlikely twist attributable to ''Beamer, Benz or Bentley,'' one of the breakout rap hits of the year. But given that Mr. Banks hasn't had one of those in a few years, he knows better than to take it for granted. ''I am completely independent at this point,'' he said early in his set, painting himself as an underdog. Mr. Banks is the main protege of 50 Cent, the Queens rap star who's lately been in decline. But last year he announced that he was no longer signed to Interscope Records, which distributes 50 Cent's G-Unit Records imprint, though he remains attached to the G-Unit label. Especially in hip-hop, the role of the major label is decreasingly relevant, but for a rapper like Mr. Banks, accustomed to the old ways of success, reclaiming an up-by-his-bootstraps narrative must be alternately frustrating and invigorating. On Thursday he stuck with invigorated, muscling his way through old hits -- ''Warrior,'' ''Straight Outta Southside,'' ''On Fire'' -- and a few listless old nonhits, his voice as molasses-thick as ever. At one point he swapped his Hermes sneakers for a pair of black work boots: ''These joints cost about $1,300, but they slippery,'' he joked. ''Beamer, Benz or Bentley'' is classic Banks, a fusillade of dense, braggadocian internal rhymes: ''Beat it, I bet she'd let me/She been fiending since she met me''; and ''Press a button and I'm stunting, my roof look like it's ducking/ Meter go 200-something and my trunk do wonders bumping.'' In other words, Mr. Banks is a brainy and boastful rapper, which leads to some stratification in his audience, some there for the attitude, and some for the intricate punch lines. That might explain, in part, the rest of Thursday's scattershot bill: Jackie Chain, Cory Gunz and Reflection Eternal, three acts with no overlap point in their collective Venn diagram. Best was Jackie Chain, a half-white, half-Korean rapper from Huntsville, Ala., but who received the night's most hostile reception. What he might lack in lyrical acuity, though, he makes up for in personality: songs like ''Mack a Bitch'' and ''Rollin' '' are anthems waiting for audiences to recognize them. Cory Gunz, newly signed to Lil Wayne's Young Money Records, wasn't booed or greeted with middle fingers by the crowd, but his quick, nimble rhymes were largely charmless. Most vexing was Reflection Eternal, the reliable social-progressive duo of Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek, who five years ago probably would not have guessed that they'd be on a bill opening for Mr. Banks. Their set -- longer than Mr. Banks's -- felt like largely thankless work, the verses about Liberia and health care falling on uninterested ears. Older, more chipper songs -- ''Definition,'' ''Get By'' -- fared better, but not by enough to sandpaper down the dissonance. By the time Mr. Banks finally got around to ''Beamer, Benz or Bentley'' at the end of his set, several dozen associates had joined him onstage. While they'd been enthusiastic up until that point, when the first peal of that song's beat (produced by the comer Prime) dropped, they turned ecstatic. Mr. Banks wasn't even at his most electric, but it didn't matter: the room carried him. There was no Juelz Santana, whose manic verse is crucial to the song's success. No last-minute surprise appearance by the bossman 50 Cent. Just Mr. Banks, his muddled voice, that sinister beat and 10 tensed fingers, gripping tightly to the ladder so as not to fall back down. PHOTOS: Lloyd Banks: The rapper shared a moment with his fans at his Nokia Theater concert on Thursday.(C1); Lloyd Banks' fans were excited at his Nokia Theater concert on Thursday, above, but were far less receptive to the earlier performance by Jackie Chain, below. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (C7) ------------ PHOENIX -- About 200 college students, some who had waited as long as five hours, sat in a movie theater here watching one of the most hotly anticipated movies of the summer: ''Toy Story 3.'' But about 65 minutes into the film, just as Woody and Buzz were about to attempt an escape from their horrid new home (a day care center), the lights abruptly came on. ''No!'' shouted most of the crowd in unison. ''More!'' They had been warned. Walt Disney Studios, which will release this Pixar film on June 18, had billed the unusual free screening last month as a ''cliffhanger'' edition -- everything but the chase-sequence ending. The goal of the event, part of a 40-city tour that started in April and continues this month, with screenings at spots like New York University still to come, involved activating ''the Andyites.'' That is Disney's term for 18- to 24-year-old consumers -- typically not a big group for animated movies -- who grew up with the ''Toy Story'' franchise and Andy, the boy at its center. Today's college students were about 3 when the first ''Toy Story'' was released in 1995, and about 7 when the sequel arrived. ''Toy Story 3'' also has a natural tie-in, since it revolves around Andy's departure for college and what that means for the oddball inhabitants of his toy box. By reigniting these core fans -- and withholding the ending -- Disney hopes that they will not only buy tickets to opening weekend, but also bring their friends and chatter on Facebook and Twitter in the meantime about how much they liked the opening two-thirds of the film. ''Make sure to check out the full 3-D experience of 'Toy Story 3' when it hits theaters nationwide,'' an ad at the end of the screening said. ''The toys are depending on you.'' The ploy demonstrates how a recently overhauled Walt Disney Studios is thinking about marketing. Over the last six months the studio has fired a dozen executives -- including its marketing chief -- in a bid to take greater advantage of social media and rethink its approach to selling movies in general. Disney got the word out on Phoenix-area campuses by distributing fliers with a Web address that sent them to a Facebook page, which gave screening details and was equipped with a ''Toy Story'' video intended to push the nostalgia button. ''I love the combination of a classic marketing effort -- a flier with rip-off tabs -- and combining it with the most modern of connections, which is Facebook and the idea of viral content,'' said Rich Ross, Disney's studio chairman. Judging from the reaction in Phoenix, the gimmick worked -- although who's to say whether this bunch needs any prompting to turn out on opening weekend? ''I thought the cliffhanger idea was really cool, and I definitely want to see it more when it comes out now,'' said Ally Damazio, a 19-year-old math major at Arizona State University. Chloe Viton, an 18-year-old elementary education major, said her mind had been changed about ''Toy Story'' being just for kids. ''I was particularly sad about some of the original characters that were missing,'' she said, ''but other than that, I really had a lot of fun.'' She said she was ''so bummed'' about the abbreviated screening but now planned to see the whole film on opening weekend. Disney has definitely succeeded in getting college students to communicate on Twitter about the movie, although there has been negative reaction from some leery of being used for marketing purposes. ''As much as I would love to see 'Toy Story 3' tonight, I would NOT like to see a 'special cliffhanger edition.' Fail,'' wrote Ethan Young, 23. Only rarely do studios show unfinished bits of films to the public for fear of backlash, and longtime Hollywood marketers could not recall a studio's ever screening so large a chunk of a movie. Twentieth Century Fox last year showed about 15 minutes of ''Avatar'' at a specially ticketed event in Imax theaters around the world. DreamWorks Animation used 40-minute college screenings to create awareness for releases like ''Over the Hedge.'' The cliffhanger idea was a bit controversial within Disney. When it first came up, some at Pixar, including the director of ''Toy Story 3,'' Lee Unkrich, were cool to it. Early previews were fine, but they wanted to show the film finished. Still, John Lasseter, a co-founder of this boutique studio and now Disney Animation's chief creative officer, was intrigued and signed off on the plan. ''Today people in that age group are less concerned about 'finished' -- they love to see the process,'' said Mr. Ross, who coined the term ''Andyites.'' In all, the campaign will take aim at students from 84 colleges (''bring your ID!'') in 18 of the country's top 20 markets, with college towns like Austin, Tex., and Columbus, Ohio, thrown in. The studio had Tom Hanks (the voice of Woody) and Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear) tape a video explaining that the movie was ''not quite finished,'' which some students in Phoenix had a hard time believing. It was true enough at their April 21 screening. But Disney may have some explaining to do as the college tour rolls on. On Wednesday Mr. Unkrich tweeted: ''Just finished second to last day on Toy Story 3 sound mix. Tomorrow, the movie will be DONE.'' PHOTO: An abbreviated ''Toy Story 3'' screening drew fans in Tempe, Ariz., on April 21. The full film's release is set for June 18. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSHUA LOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(C6) ------------ WASHINGTON -- The F.B.I. has interviewed more than 20 employees of Massey Energy in a criminal investigation of the explosion that killed 29 of the company's miners last month in West Virginia, according to two officials from the federal mine safety agency and the Department of Justice. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was under way, said that more interviews were planned in the next couple of weeks. Spokesmen for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration and the F.B.I. declined to comment about their investigations. A statement released by Massey, which owns the Upper Big Branch mine, where the explosion occurred, said the company had no knowledge of criminal wrongdoing and was cooperating fully with the investigation. An Upper Big Branch miner who appeared before a federal grand jury within the past two weeks said investigators seemed especially interested in the mine's ventilation system, specifically whether certain air-lock doors and a storage shaft known as the glory hole were properly sealed to control the flow of clean and contaminated air. Both issues were raised in a New York Times article last month about Massey's safety practices. The miner, who asked for anonymity because he still worked for the Upper Big Branch mine and was not permitted to speak publicly, said he was contacted by federal prosecutors a week after the explosion, which mining experts believe was most likely caused by a dangerous buildup of methane and coal dust. The mine had been cited at least 44 times in the last two years for major methane violations. ------------ WASHINGTON -- An unlikely new tenant in the halls of the Federal Reserve would set out sweeping rules on a wide swath of consumer transactions, possibly making it one of the most powerful new federal agencies in a generation. The proposed agency is causing concern and confusion, however, among owners of small businesses -- drug stores, jewelers, pawnbrokers and car dealers -- who fear that by allowing any customers to buy on credit, their businesses could be subject to significant new regulations. While most of the headlines about the Senate's consideration of a financial regulation bill have concerned financial giants like Goldman Sachs and complex investments like synthetic collateralized debt obligations, the proposed Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, which is a major part of the legislation, is likely to be an intense battleground in coming weeks. Much of the bewilderment -- and therefore the argument -- stems from the imprecise nature of some of the proposed rules. The new agency would regulate financing provided by most car dealers, for example, but not by rent-to-own furniture vendors, according to the bill's advocates. Department stores with private-label credit cards would be covered; stores that let their customers pay in installments, without interest, would not, they say. A review of the consumer protection provisions, which account for 335 pages of the 1,565-page bill, shows that the intent of the legislation is not to cover Main Street businesses. But the ambiguity of some terms -- like the word ''significantly'' -- leaves the regulations open to a broad interpretation. Senate Democrats and Obama administration officials say nearly all nonfinancial businesses would be exempt from the new bureau's regulations, which would focus narrowly on consumer finance businesses. ''There are a large number of different types of companies across the country involved in the finance business, consumer finance business, that took advantage of the current system and left people with financial obligations they did not understand, could not afford, were not appropriate for them, and the damage of that was catastrophic,'' Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, said at a Senate hearing on Thursday. But Republicans and business groups have countered that the new agency's approach is scattershot rather than focused, and would stifle the ability of small Main Street businesses to offer credit to strapped customers. Rich Gallo, the owner of Office Outlet, an office products company in Indiana, Pa., said he regularly devised payment plans for his customers, and was concerned that the consumer agency would impose a new layer of regulation. Told that the bill's advocates say his business would probably not be covered by the bureau, Mr. Gallo remained skeptical. ''I just think that is the way our government seems to be going right now, to more regulation,'' he said. The bill also would cast a broad net, opponents say, over companies that had little to do with the housing crisis and subsequent recession -- a group known as nonbank financial companies, which includes such longtime Democratic targets as payday lenders, which make short-term loans at high interest rates. ''There is growing concern that in an effort to hold Wall Street accountable, this bill could catch the little guys up in the same net as the big banks,'' Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said earlier this week after the Senate agreed to begin debate on the bill, formally known as the Restoring American Financial Stability Act. With its ''ambiguous language,'' Mr. McConnell added, ''there is real concern that this bill could penalize anyone in this country who buys or sells something on an installment plan,'' potentially subjecting any merchant that offers credit that is subject to a finance charge or extends over more than four installments to the authority of the consumer bureau. The crux of the debate would appear to rest on the definition of ''significantly.'' Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the primary sponsor of the bill, points to a section that says the new bureau cannot regulate ''a merchant, retailer or seller of nonfinancial goods or services that is not engaged significantly in offering or providing consumer financial products or services.'' That might seem to rule out auto dealers, which, after all, are principally engaged in selling cars and trucks. But roughly four out of every five car loans are generated by the dealers themselves, according to the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, a Washington research group that says it believes dealers should be covered by the agency. The dealers set the interest rate, and the loan fees that they earn are a big contributor to their profits. That, Democrats say, makes most auto dealers enough of a financial company to fall under the new bureau. Some small-business owners support the creation of the consumer agency, saying they are not threatened. ''There is nothing onerous in these regulations,'' said Lewis Prince, the owner of Vintage Vinyl, a St. Louis music retailer who participated in a news conference Wednesday sponsored by senators who support much of the Dodd bill. Consumer protection ''can only help small business by providing the kind of stable financial environment in which small businesses can thrive,'' Mr. Prince said. Even as businesses say the bill might be too far-reaching, some consumer advocates fear that the bureau will be able only to write rules, not enforce them. The bill would give the bureau enforcement powers over ''larger participants'' in nonbank or nonmortgage lines of business, like payday lending. How to define ''larger'' is left up to regulators. Both sides seem to agree that the consumer agency has an ample amount of independence -- and maybe too much for some lawmakers. The bill states that the agency can demand that companies furnish information about ''the organization, business conduct, markets and activities of persons operating in the consumer financial services markets.'' The bill would require the Federal Reserve to turn over 10 percent of its operating budget each year to finance the agency. That would leave the new bureau with a budget of nearly $500 million -- 75 percent larger than the budget of the Federal Trade Commission, another agency that currently has consumer protection responsibilities. Whatever the new agency's powers, businesses and their advocates in the Senate are more concerned over who will be regulated. ''No one can deny that the language of the bill is ambiguous, that it lends itself to broad interpretation, so let's tighten it up,'' Mr. McConnell said. ''The authors of this bill may believe some of these concerns are misplaced. But they are going to have to prove it.'' PHOTO: Timothy F. Geithner, Treasury secretary, said consumers had been hurt by lack of regulation. (PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRY HAMBURG/ASSOCIATED PRESS) (B7) ------------ Plenty of actresses with good lungs and great legs have played Velma Kelly, the publicity-hungry killer in ''Chicago,'' now the longest-running revival in Broadway history. But Amra-Faye Wright, who has been in and out of the New York cast since 2006, will be the first to do the part in English on Broadway and then in Japanese overseas. Between high kicks and all those versions of ''All That Jazz,'' she has been learning Velma's lines and lyrics in a language she didn't know at all until a few months ago. She headed to Japan on Friday to begin rehearsals for the part in a production that will play in Tokyo and Hyogo. Ms. Wright, 49, who grew up in East London and South Africa, speaks English and Afrikaans, and a bit of Xhosa and Zulu, two African languages. During a career that has taken her around the world, she has sung in Italian, French and Korean. ''I didn't think learning Japanese would be as much of a task as everyone else around me, who said, 'Are you nuts?' '' she said. Tall and thin (of course) with spiky platinum blond hair, she chatted in her dressing room at the Ambassador Theater, where her latest Broadway run ended on Thursday. Ms. Wright turned out not to be so nuts. Starting in January, she picked up the language rather quickly with the help of a Japanese tutor and an iPod, on which she listened to the lines in Japanese. First she learned the part phonetically; then she began to work on sentence structure and vocabulary. Ultimately it became difficult to do both at once, given the tight timetable necessary for her Japanese opening, Ms. Wright said. ''I am now learning the language,'' she said, ''but I am afraid if someone started speaking Japanese to me in the street, I will be a little bit lost.'' Much of ''Chicago'' is written in Jazz Age slang and so was translated into ''casual'' Japanese. The language has both formal and informal levels, Ms. Wright explained. All in all, Ms. Wright has played Velma off and on for nine years, including in the West End of London and in Johannesburg. She visited Japan 18 years ago and immediately agreed when her agent told her late last year that the Japanese producers wanted to borrow her. ''I kind of have never said no to anything,'' said Ms. Wright, who came to this country at 18 as an exchange student, danced professionally and became a professional singer at 35. Like many Broadway musicals, ''Chicago'' has become popular in Japan. Sometimes it has been done in English, and sometimes in Japanese with an-all Japanese cast, said Ronnie Lee, the executive producer of Kyodo Tokyo Inc., the largest presenter of entertainment in Japan. Using a Velma from Broadway was a way to ''put a new spin on it,'' and bring in new audiences, Mr. Lee said. Yoshito Yamazaki, the president of Kyodo Tokyo, said he expected Ms. Wright's appearance to bring a kind of visual adrenaline to the production. ''A tall, blond, sexy Velma speaking Japanese -- now that's what I like about show business!'' he said in an e-mail message. When Ms. Wright began her Japanese studies, she had the iPod recording close at hand. ''I listened to it every day, two hours a day, religiously,'' she said. Now she faces four weeks of rehearsal with the Japanese cast before the show opens on June 4. ''Of course, I think the audience is going to be very sympathetic,'' she said. Asuka Morinaga, Ms. Wright's Japanese tutor, said her Japanese pronunciation and inflections were quite good, especially for a beginner. ''I'm very impressed,'' Ms. Morinaga said. ''The first day she remembered her lines in Japanese.'' On a recent afternoon the two women ran through Velma's lines on the empty stage at the Ambassador, where Ms. Wright was otherwise doing eight shows a week. Ms. Morinaga played all the other parts as they hopped from scene to scene. At this rehearsal they skipped the songs, though Ms. Wright will deliver Velma's brassy, blockbuster numbers, like ''I Can't Do It Alone,'' and ''When Velma Takes the Stand'' in Japanese too. She asked to repeat her lines several times and tried to get a better sense of the timing needed, in the absence of the music. ''I was doing a little bit of hesitation,'' Ms. Wright said to Ms. Morinaga. ''I wasn't sure where I should come in. Can we do it again?'' Ms. Wright will be one of two Broadway actors in the Japanese production. The other is Jennifer Dunne, who has played the Hungarian murderess Hunyak. That character, however, speaks only Hungarian in ''Chicago'' (and will in Japan as well). She does utter one line in English during the ''Cell Block Tango'' number -- ''Not guilty'' -- which she will deliver in Japanese this time. The foreign adventure will be short-lived. Perhaps broadened by her travels, Ms. Wright is expected back on Broadway as Velma in July. ''I hope to be a better actor,'' Ms. Wright said, ''because I will be discovering a whole new side of myself onstage.'' PHOTO: Amra-Faye Wright, left, who'll do the role of Velma Kelly in ''Chicago'' in Japanese, with her tutor, Asuka Morinaga. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ Being a gay, Jewish, nearly deaf and otherwise disabled dwarf from Queens has its advantages, and Harry Wieder used every one of them. Arm crutches, which he needed to walk, served double duty as clubs when he felt he wasn't being heard. ''If he wanted your attention, he would hit you in the shin with his crutch,'' said Marvin Wasserman, a longtime ally and occasional victim. ''Sometimes he'd aim a little higher.'' Mr. Wieder, who was buried Friday after being killed by a taxi at age 57, spent most waking hours of his adult life campaigning for gay rights, safe public housing, health care, access for the disabled and hundreds of local lefty candidates. He was determined that what he lacked in height he would deliver in volume: in lengthy e-mail messages to elected officials and in fiery disquisitions at public hearings or community board meetings. As his hearing failed more and more with each year, he would ask, ''Again, please? Again?'' of someone with an opposing view at some meeting, until that person was forced to raise his voice -- at which point Mr. Wieder naturally felt entitled to shout his own position back. Mr. Wieder, who lived in the East Village, made the rounds of New York City in his beat-up Buick Regal, which he drove with hand controls -- badly, some said, but generously, always offering rides to his compatriots (who would discover only upon the car's arrival that if they wanted to sit in the front seat, they would have to climb in from the back, thanks to a broken door). He sometimes attended seven or eight meetings in a day, even if he snored his way through one or two of them. His friends joked that he must have a clone -- ''but why would anyone clone someone that strange?'' Mr. Wasserman said. He was impossible; he was lovable, and determined to get the affection he was due. ''Petrelis, get on your knees and hug me,'' he used to say to his friend Michael Petrelis, a fellow gay activist. Affection, the casual commodity of most acquaintances, delivered in a passing air kiss, required, like everything else in Mr. Wieder's life, effort. He demanded it on his own terms, not those of the people from whom he wanted it. The only child of Holocaust survivors, Mr. Wieder hardly considered his own situation a hardship. He never complained, for example, about how difficult it was for him to walk, but it was, which is probably why, after a meeting of Community Board 3 on Tuesday night, he tried to cross Essex Street in the middle of the block. The passing cab abruptly ended a life with countless agendas still incomplete. At his funeral Friday in Forest Hills, Queens, friends and admirers, many in wheelchairs or on crutches, poured in, along with the elected officials whom he alternately harassed and supported, including Mark Green, Christine C. Quinn, Tom Duane and Scott M. Stringer. ''You weren't done talking to Harry until he was done talking to you,'' Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, recalled in a eulogy. ''Harry went out of his way to be devilish, and as we continue to struggle in his name, we need to maybe be a little more devilish ourselves.'' Outside, friends filled in the details: about the time Mr. Wieder showed up for a protest at Radio City Music Hall on Easter dressed as a bright pink bunny; the time he got one friend's attention with a bang of his crutches to inform her that he hated her newly bleached hair (he was right, she added); the time he drove himself to Key West to enjoy a vacation at a clothing-optional gay resort. Jasmine Jose, the wife of a home attendant who worked with Mr. Wieder for 15 years, recalled how, upon her invitation, he kept sneaking into her labor room during the birth of her first son, hiding behind the curtain and finding his way back each time nurses asked him to leave. She ended up having a Caesarean section, and Mr. Wieder sneaked in once more to keep her company after visiting hours ''so I wouldn't be alone,'' she said. Mr. Wieder was the consummate old-school New Yorker -- an overstepper, an overeater and an oversharer, about his opinions certainly, but also about his various unrequited crushes on hot waiters in the neighborhood. ''I think one thing one had to admire in Harry was that he was so frankly himself,'' said Andrew Solomon, a writer who interviewed him for a book he is writing about families raising children who are different.. ''He felt all those things about disguised identity that were typical of German Jews after the war -- that pretending you were something you weren't was actually not armor at all.'' Charlotte Wieder, Mr. Wieder's 86-year-old mother, who rarely went more than a week without seeing her son, slowly walked out of the funeral home into the sun using a walker, her white hair elegant, her eyes dry. Her European accent still strong, she said she could not take any responsibility for all that her son had accomplished -- if anything, she said, she felt guilty perhaps that she had tried to rein him in, out of concern for his health. ''In spite of my very strong feeling to protect him,'' she said, ''I could not hold back his good.'' PHOTOS: Harry Wieder, above at lower right, at a 2007 news conference calling for wheelchair access seven days a week to the James A. Farley Post Office. Top, his graveside service. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL A. HARRIS; KIRSTEN LUCE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ In his first interview since walking away from NBC's ''Tonight Show,'' a funny but pointed Conan O'Brien tells ''60 Minutes'' on Sunday night that he believes that he was not given a fair chance to prove that he could succeed and that money may have been the reason NBC decided to bring Jay Leno back to late-night television. The CBS correspondent Steve Kroft spent most of a day at Mr. O'Brien's home in Los Angeles exploring the turbulent -- and, for Mr. O'Brien, traumatic -- events that led up to his exit in January from the network he had worked for during his entire 17-year career as a television performer. Mr. O'Brien's wife, Liza, is also interviewed in a segment that Mr. Kroft said was likely to run several minutes beyond the usual 12-minute limit for its reports. ''We just got so much from Conan,'' Mr. Kroft said in a telephone interview. He added that the report, which will also include highlights from Mr. O'Brien's current live tour, contains some ''lighthearted moments,'' though Mr. O'Brien speaks directly about the sting of losing a show that he had dreamed of hosting. Mr. O'Brien granted the interview under the provision that it could not be broadcast until after May 1, because in his departure agreement with NBC he was prohibited from appearing on television or any other form of media until after that date. In the interview Mr. Kroft presses Mr. O'Brien about his view of Mr. Leno's move to return to late-night television, and Mr. O'Brien implicitly criticizes his former NBC colleague for reversing his previous position that he was giving up ''The Tonight Show.'' ''If I had surrendered 'The Tonight Show' and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well,'' Mr. O'Brien says, referring to Mr. Leno's on-the-air hand-off to Mr. O'Brien last May, ''and then, six months later ...'' Mr. O'Brien adds, referring to Mr. Leno's willingness to return to the series. ''But that's me, you know,'' Mr. O'Brien says. ''Everyone's got their own, you know, way of doing things.'' At times Mr. O'Brien seems to hold back, acknowledging that he signed an agreement that he not disparage either Mr. Leno or network executives. When asked if he believed that Mr. Leno might have lobbied to regain the show, Mr. O'Brien says simply, ''I don't know,'' but adds: ''We're all adults. We don't take orders from the government.'' More tellingly, he says of Mr. Leno's decision to come back to the show: ''He went and took that show back, and I think, in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know -- I know me, I wouldn't have done that.'' Later in the interview, Mr. O'Brien notes, ''I sleep well at night.'' When Mr. Kroft suggests that he got a raw deal, Mr. O'Brien says: ''No, I didn't. I'm fine. It just didn't work out.'' But when Mr. Kroft points out that Mr. Leno has said that they both got a raw deal through NBC's maneuverings, Mr. O'Brien questions that and notes that Mr. Leno wound up back on ''The Tonight Show.'' Another late-night star, David Letterman, made the same point in an appearance Friday on ''Live With Regis and Kelly,'' saying (in a falsetto version of Mr. Leno's voice) that it was only Mr. O'Brien who a bad break because ''he got canceled,'' and Mr. Leno got ''The Tonight Show'' back. As he has in many recent instances on his own show on CBS, Mr. Letterman noted how much he enjoyed the conflict at NBC and poked fun at Mr. Leno, explaining that while all the comics who first hung around with Mr. Leno in the 1970s found him to be ''so compelling and so good,'' he said, ''there was another side of Jay where he's a bit of a knockwurst.'' In the ''60 Minutes'' interview Mr. O'Brien is far more serious -- and careful -- in his comments about Mr. Leno When Mr. Kroft asks if he believes that Mr. Leno did something less than honorable, Mr. O'Brien hesitates and then says, ''I can't answer that.'' That nonanswer seems to be rooted in the nondisparagement agreement, as Mr. Kroft notes. Jokingly, Mr. O'Brien says he has to be aware of that agreement and, indeed, ''I have one in my wallet.'' Neither Mr. Leno nor the NBC chief executive, Jeff Zucker, has called him since the upheaval, Mr. O'Brien says. Not that he is surprised, he adds, because he would not expect them to sit around and ''sing old Irish fight songs -- I don't think they know any.'' But he does try to counter one point NBC has made since his departure: that his ''Tonight Show'' was in line to lose money. Not only does he not believe that, Mr. O'Brien states, but also, ''It's really not possible.'' PHOTO: Steve Kroft, left, and Conan O'Brien during their television interview, which will be shown on ''60 Minutes'' Sunday night. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CBS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS) ------------ IWAWA ISLAND, Rwanda -- A few months ago, Gasigwa Gakunzi was hanging around a ramshackle house where poor children pay to watch television when the Rwandan police arrested him for loitering. The next thing he knew, he said, he was taken away from his family and carted off to this remote island in the middle of Lake Kivu. Gasigwa, 14, now spends his days learning patriotic songs and how to march like a soldier. At night, he sleeps in a huge sheet-metal shed with hundreds of men and boys packed mattress to mattress. ''Please call my father,'' he whispered. ''He has no idea where I am.'' Nearly 900 beggars, homeless people and suspected petty thieves, including dozens of children, have recently been rounded up from the nation's neatly swept streets and sent -- without trial or a court appearance -- to this little-known outpost. They will spend up to three years here being ''rehabilitated,'' learning skills like bricklaying, hairdressing and motorcycle maintenance. It is one of the country's newest self-improvement projects, and it seems a fitting symbol for what many political analysts and human rights groups say Rwanda has become: orderly but repressive. Under President Paul Kagame, this country, which exploded in ethnic bloodshed 16 years ago, is now one of the safest, cleanest and least corrupt nations on the continent. The capital, Kigali, is not ringed by sprawling slums, and carjackings -- a deadly problem in many African cities -- are virtually unheard of here. The roads are smoothly paved; there is national health insurance; neighborhoods hold monthly cleanups; the computer network is among the best in the region; and the public fountains are full of water, not weeds. All of this has been accomplished in one of the world's poorest countries. But while the nation continues to be praised as a darling of the foreign aid world and something of a central African utopia, it is increasingly intolerant of political dissent, or sometimes even dialogue, and bubbling with bottled-up tensions. Recent grenade attacks in Kigali and a shake-up in the army showed that even one of the cornerstones of the new Rwandan state -- personal security -- might be in danger. ''Kagame's strategy for stability is a dangerous, long-term gamble,'' said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ''By stymieing a political opposition, an independent press or a critical civil society -- in short, by not allowing democratic institutions to form -- Kagame is leaving people little to identify with but their ethnic group.'' With less than four months to go before national elections, few of the major opposition parties have been allowed to register. Some opposition supporters have been attacked inside government offices; others have been jailed. Several prominent government officials who recently broke ranks with Mr. Kagame defected to other African nations, saying they feared for their lives. The BBC local-language radio service was shut down for a time because the Rwandan government did not like the way it was talking about the genocide of 1994. That dark period, when death squads from the Hutu majority massacred hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis, as well as moderate Hutus, remains the touchiest subject of all. In the past three years, Rwandan officials have prosecuted more than 2,000 people, including political rivals, teachers and students, for espousing ''genocide ideology'' or ''divisionism.'' Mr. Kagame and his disciplined military quickly restored order after the genocide, and this stability has been the foundation for Rwanda's remarkable comeback. The foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, says that after all Rwanda has been through, the government has to remain vigilant about ethnic divisions. ''Rwanda will not allow any politician, political party, any individual, to tamper with the reconciliation and unity in Rwanda,'' she said in an interview. Instigators of violence have been prosecuted for divisionism, but so have people trying to discuss the country's past or its current direction. Critics contend that the government wields Orwellian-sounding laws that are intentionally vague to stifle any inkling of opposition. Even programs like the one on Iwawa Island, which the government says will give street people a second chance, are not exactly what they seem. As a boatload of officials recently glided onto shore, one police commissioner gestured to the birds, the trees and the young men with uniformly shaved heads fetching water and said, ''Welcome to our Hawaii.'' But on the mainland, people describe it as an Alcatraz. ''We call it the island of no return,'' said Esperance Uwizeyimana, a homeless mother of four. None of the vocational training programs had started by mid-March. Protais Mitali, the youth minister, insisted there were no street children here, just adults. Yet squeezed in with the men were many adolescents like Gasigwa, and employees confided that several dozen boys were incarcerated here. ''This isn't a good place for children,'' one employee said in hushed tones because the minister was nearby. ''They could get abused.'' Rwandan officials are prickly about complaints. President Kagame lashed out at foreign critics this month, saying, ''Who should be giving lessons to Rwanda's 11 million people about what is good for them?'' He called opposition leaders ''hooligans'' and said Rwandans were ''as free, as happy, as proud of themselves, as they have never been in their lives.'' Several leading opposition figures, like Victoire Ingabire, say it is impossible to challenge the government, arguing that it is controlled by a cabal of Tutsis who were refugees in Uganda before the genocide and now unfairly dominate the economy. Mrs. Ingabire, a Hutu, was an accountant living in the Netherlands until she returned in January to run for president. Today, she lives in a new housing development called Vision 2020 Estate; her sturdy, two-story brick town house is indistinguishable from dozens of others, except for the guards out front. ''There's no space to talk about what happened in our country,'' said Mrs. Ingabire, who has been charged with genocide ideology, being a ''divisionist'' and collaborating with rebels. It is not just Hutu politicians who feel persecuted. Charles Kabanda used to be a leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi-dominated ruling party, but split with it in the late 1990s, he said, because ''they were ruthless.'' He recently worked with the Green Party, but said it had been repeatedly blocked from competing in the elections. Government officials said the Green Party failed to meet requirements like getting 200 valid signatures from all over Rwanda. Mr. Kabanda simply shook his head. '' 'Enemy, enemy, enemy' -- that's what they call anyone who thinks differently,'' he said. ''This government's record is dreadful. It's only you, the international community, who is showering them with flowering praise.'' PHOTOS: Hundred of young adults and minors suspected of petty crimes have been rounded up and sent to an island in Lake Kivu. (A1); The men and boys confined to Iwawa Island awaited the arrival of a government minister. The government says they will be ''rehabilitated'' and learn skills.; At the camp, a young boy, left, rubbed an anti-mosquito bath on his face to avoid malaria. The sleeping area, right, is a large sheetmetal shed with hundreds of mattresses packed in. Video and additional photos from Iwawa Island: nytimes.com/world. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEHAD NGA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A7) MAPS: Hundreds have been sent to Iwawa Island without trial. (A7) ------------ Bowing to pressure from community groups upset by the noise of whirring rotors, city officials have banned most types of helicopter sightseeing flights leaving from Manhattan. The new rules, which went into effect this week, prohibit tourist flights from swooping over Central Park, the Empire State Building and all of Brooklyn. They are restricted to flying over water, with one exception: tours that hover over Yankee Stadium in the Bronx are still allowed, said David Lombino, a spokesman for the city's Economic Development Corporation. The agreement between officials of the development corporation and the helicopter operators eliminates the short tours that were the most profitable offerings. Those quick spins, which lasted four to eight minutes and cost as much as $130 per passenger, accounted for nearly one-fifth of the sightseeing traffic at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. The downtown heliport, at the edge of the financial district in the East River, is one of three commercial heliports in Manhattan, but the only one that serves sightseers. On April 1, the heliport at the west end of 30th Street stopped accepting tourist flights as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by community advocates who had complained about noise and odors filling the Hudson River Park. Similar complaints had flooded the city's 311 phone line from residents of Lower Manhattan and neighborhoods along the Brooklyn waterfront after most of the tourist traffic shifted to the downtown heliport. That heliport is owned by the city and operated by Saker Aviation Services, a financially troubled company whose board of directors includes Alvin Trenk, whose family has operated the West 30th Street Heliport for many years. From now on, excursions taking off from downtown must head south toward the harbor, keeping as far as they can from the new Brooklyn Bridge Park across the river, then up the Hudson to 79th Street or on to the stadium, before turning south back down the river. ''Our goal was to keep them over water as much as possible,'' Mr. Lombino said of the sightseeing flights. ''We needed to make a concession for them to be able to fly over part of Manhattan to do their Yankee Stadium tour.'' Mr. Lombino said the development corporation officials sought to balance the demand for restrictions on the flights with the city's desire to keep the business, which he said employs more than 300 people and takes in about $45 million a year. The city also will start fielding the noise complaints to 311, instead of forwarding them on to the development corporation. The 311 receptionists will catalog the data and time of the complaints and request descriptions of the offending helicopters to help determine whether the new rules are being violated, Mr. Lombino said. Elected officials welcomed the agreement as a way to quell the uproar over the helicopters' emissions. ''These regulations are a good initial step to mitigating the shake, rattle and rumble of excessive helicopter traffic over Brooklyn,'' said Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president. They were less popular with tour operators. ''Is it exactly what we want? Of course not,'' said Jeff Smith, a pilot who is chairman of the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, which represents the operators. But Mr. Smith, who described the short tours that have been banned as ''our absolute biggest money makers,'' said the operators had been making concessions for decades. ''If you look at our record, we have a 30-year history of doing things just like this,'' he said. This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. ------------ The half-gauze, half-iron French band Alcest is also about half real, more a re-enacted dream than a group. It's primarily the work of one person, Neige, who sings and plays guitar. The drums on the two Alcest albums are played by a musician named Winterhalter, but let's not get distracted there. They sound like drums played to a songwriter's specifications. This semi-isolated, control-freak situation isn't unusual for black-metal musicians, who tend conceptually toward permanent ebb tide, erasing emotion and leaving little breathing room amid their ritual excesses of misanthropy, distortion, dissonance and beats per minute. There's a continuing, kind of fascinating, kind of boring discussion about whether real black metal should or can be performed at all, but Neige, who started out in the genre, has gotten around the issue by moving into hybrids. As his name would imply -- it means snow in French -- Neige sees colors other than black. Over the last nine years, since Alcest's first demo tape was released, he has transformed the group into a lovely, slow-motion pop band. At the Studio at Webster Hall on Thursday, where Alcest played its first New York show in its first American tour, Neige didn't sing at all. He left the vocals to Zero, the touring band's second guitar player, who sang the French lyrics weakly. (Neige had lost his voice, which is what happens to singers who perform very little and then go on a two-month tour; he also played some of the set sitting down.) Rounding out the touring version of Alcest were Fursy Teyssier on bass and Winterhalter on drums. The music was full of sweet, consonant harmonies and high, clear vocals, with heavy-gauge guitar chords and drums at turtle speed. Neige has talked about Alcest's music as a representation of a ''fairy land,'' a place with ''colors, forms and sounds that do not exist here.'' In other words, a place where black metal's compositional laws don't apply. Though the singing on Thursday was hopeless, the drumming said it all. Occasionally Winterhalter broke into black-metal pummeling for 16 bars, then got back to long stretches of drowsy, funereal groove. And the set's best moments, both from Alcest's new album, ''Ecailles de Lune'' (''Scales of the Moon'' ) (Prophecy Productions) were rhythm-related: ''Solar Song,'' played in an elegant six-beat rhythm, and the title track, where Winterhalter found an airier, more syncopated version of black metal's unreasonably fast two-beat thrash. Alcest comes pretty close to something that actually does exist: the excellent ambient metal band Jesu, or, to go back further, My Bloody Valentine. It's a version of what's been called shoegaze for the last 20 years, with shifted parameters: it's both more rugged and, somehow, more guileless. (The terms ''bootgaze'' and blackwave'' have already been suggested for the sound.) The music doesn't change much, and grew tiring after an hour on Thursday, but it's an easily graspable, quickly seductive idea: incongruence in sound, having it both ways and making it work. PHOTO: Alcest :The band, with Neige, center, and Fursy Teyssier, right, at the Studio at Webster Hall. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN HARKIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ A few torturers are sitting around in the 1500s, talking shop. The wily veteran, Balto (Vinnie Penna), preaches the virtue of an iron contraption, while his assistant, Aldo (Travis York), wide-eyed and bursting with ideas, wants to try out a new hook, earning a chortle. ''Old school,'' Balto says, using some rather surprising 16th-century slang. Sitting quietly nearby is an Italian interrogator, Ippolito (a severe Christian Rummel), with some decidedly new-school ideas. He believes that the best way to get information is not to abuse people physically but to keep them awake by using the threat of a spike angled at the groin. Make them so desperate for sleep that they will betray themselves. The discussion about the art of torture in ''The Vigil or the Guided Cradle'' may be anachronistic and tonally wobbly (is the play supposed to be funny?), but it has possibilities. The morality and effectiveness of torture are topical subjects, and Crystal Skillman's play takes great pains to connect present-day torture techniques with the barbaric methods of the 16th century by juxtaposing them. In this muddled drama's other narrative, connected loosely, an American tourist in Prague (Susan Louise O'Connor), meets a translator (Dion Mucciacito, whose bearish figure proves effective here), whose intentions are unclear. Ms. O'Connor, a charismatic stalwart of the downtown scene, strains to imbue her role with quirk and vulnerability, but her effortful turn only draws attention to the thinness of her character. The two story lines take sudden and unearned twists, the kind of things that you find in Hollywood thrillers. Characters under attack pause for no reason. Cold-blooded types soften up abruptly. John Hurley's sloppy production remains undercooked. Ms. Skillman presents a fertile subject and then just lets it sit there. There isn't much to grapple with or debate, outside of the plausibility of the plot. In a way, the playwright has accomplished something impressive. It's not easy to make a play about torture seem irrelevant. ''The Vigil or the Guided Cradle'' runs through next Saturday at the Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Avenue, near Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (212) 352-3101, bricktheater.com. PHOTO: The Vigil or the Guided Cradle: Joseph Mathers, left, and Christian Rummel at the Brick Theater. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES DAVID JACKSON) ------------ The drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. Over the last five years he has established a busy profile on the experimental end of the jazz spectrum, where such perspective is vital; before that he was a cast member of ''Stomp,'' the polymorphously percussive Off Broadway show. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint. He also has a steady band, the Hook Up, that illuminates the strength of his approach. First convened a couple of years ago, it's a gathering of sharp young improvisers who separately share some history with Mr. Fujiwara: the tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, the trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, the guitarist Mary Halvorson and the bassist Danton Boller. Their output at the Jazz Gallery on Thursday night was insightful, invigorating, hard to put a finger on. The first set consisted of music by Mr. Fujiwara, most of it drawn from ''Actionspeak'' (482), his accomplished debut, due out in September. Its aesthetic points toward Wayne Shorter, particularly his writing for the Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s: sleek, enigmatic post-bop, more suggestive than demonstrative. Mr. Fujiwara's playing conveyed some of what Tony Williams was up to in that band, starting with a conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope. (Like Williams, he spent years studying under Alan Dawson, who was a revered percussion teacher in Boston.) This was music with a history, smartly informed and firmly moored. Yet its basic feeling was contemporary. Mr. Fujiwara composes with a modern ear and an episodic approach: his tunes begin in one place and end someplace else, mutating in stages along the way. ''Opal'' started as an odd-metered calypso, plunged into a walking swing, then assumed a murkier pulse, with each section springing from some startled logic. ''Should I Do'' employed a rolling funk groove, over which trumpet and tenor played a stutter-syncopated line -- Mr. Fujiwara has attributed that cadence, loosely, to a famous verse by the rapper AZ -- before simmering down to ballad dimensions. The soloists, especially Mr. Settles and Mr. Finlayson, made powerful impressions without upsetting the collective impact of the group. To that end, the linchpin was Ms. Halvorson, a guitarist of prickly proficiency, whose chordal accompaniment felt exactingly off-kilter, useful in its unpredictability. She did the same thing in her improvising: on a new piece, ''Four Hours,'' her use of distortion felt purely exploratory, as if she were troubling the waters to see what bubbled up. As the horns bleated tersely behind her, Mr. Fujiwara met her more than halfway. PHOTOS: Tomas Fujiwara and the Hook Up: Above, from left, Mr. Fujiwara with Jonathan Finlayson and Brian Settles at the Jazz Gallery on Thursday. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHELLE V. AGINS/THE NEW YORK TIMES ) ------------ When the Obamas released their 2009 income tax returns a few weeks ago, we itemized their charitable contributions on our Bucks personal finance blog. Some readers praised their choices and some criticized them, which was predictable. But a few others got into a far more interesting debate. Some people wondered whether the first couple should have given more money away than the 6 percent of their adjusted gross income that they did dole out, though people did credit the couple for redirecting to charity all of the $1.4 million the president was awarded for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Others noted that George and Laura Bush gave away a much higher percentage of their income in 2007: 18 percent. To my mind, though, looking solely at income misses the bigger picture. If we're going to try to set standards that might offer guidance for us all, shouldn't we look not just at what people earn but what they have? Once you do, it suggests a whole new way of thinking about what to give and a couple of ways to donate higher amounts more easily. Americans gave away 2.2 percent of their personal disposable income to nonprofit groups of various sorts in 2008, according to Giving USA, an annual report on philanthropy. Of the $229 billion that individuals donated that year, about half went to religious institutions. Given our support for houses of worship, it seems reasonable to ask how much the various holy books would have us give. Perhaps the best-known prescription for giving is the Mormon practice of tithing, where members give 10 percent of their income to the church each year. The concept of tithing appears in several places in the Bible, including the book of Genesis, where Jacob promises to give a 10th of what he receives back to God. In Deuteronomy, meanwhile, there is the commandment to tithe ''all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.'' The year-by-year yield does indeed sound like an ancient agrarian version of what we now think of as annual income. Muslims, however, take a different approach, according to Omid Safi, a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina. In Islam, there is a required charitable contribution known as Zakat, but instead of tapping income, the Koran specifies a donation of one-fortieth (2.5 percent) of one's accumulated wealth each year. I think the Koran has it right, and the financial planner Brent Kessel helps explain why in his book ''It's Not About the Money.'' He offers the example of a person with $10 million in land that generates no income and $5,000 in monthly pensions and then cites a chef who earns $180,000, but has no savings. Shouldn't the land baron be giving away more each year? Mr. Kessel suggests a baseline standard of 10 percent of income or 1 percent of net worth, whatever is greater. Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton who argued forcefully for devoting more individual resources to ending global poverty in his book ''The Life You Can Save,'' raised concerns that some assets were illiquid or unavailable until later in life. Instead, Mr. Singer proposes a progressive scale based on income. Once it hits six figures and beyond, he says you should give away higher and higher percentages of each incremental dollar earned. What if your income is low and your assets are few? I'd try to value your time at an hourly rate, tally up any volunteer work you do and put that toward your quota. If you find these figures somewhat arbitrary, you can try a qualitative approach as well. Gary Anderson, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, suggests looking to the letters that Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest and poet, wrote in the 19th century to Robert Bridges, a fellow poet who was not a believer. ''He advised Hopkins that if he wanted to become familiar with the nature of Christian belief, to begin by giving alms and giving to the point of personal inconvenience, so that something that you wanted to do, you wouldn't be able to do because you had given goods to the poor,'' Mr. Anderson said. ''It's not giving to the point of utter impoverishment, but it's not just giving pocket change either.'' That standard, however, can be tough to square with the national penchant for procrastination, waiting until the end of the year to make a bunch of donations in time for the tax deadline or because the holiday spirit has set in between Thanksgiving and the new year. Paying all at once could easily lead to feelings of personal inconvenience at levels far lower than people would feel if they instead gave in equal bits throughout the year. So how would you go about doing that? Many nonprofit groups are happy to bill your credit card, in effect, every month. Or you can set up automatic bill payments through your online banking system. Network for Good is a service that can funnel recurring donations to a variety of recipients, though there's generally a small fee involved. To my mind, however, an even better way to give would be through payroll deduction. It boggles the mind, frankly, that we can opt in to financial self-preservation through 401(k) and similar contributions, but generally cannot commit to selflessness through the same system. There are exceptions. Since 1978, I.B.M. employees have donated nearly $817 million through a custom-built payroll deduction system with 10,000 approved recipients. Employees can nominate new ones, and the company will add any registered nonprofit group to the list. Most companies aren't big enough to build something like that, though. That is why it would be nice if a company like Fidelity stepped in to offer a similar service to companies. Why Fidelity? It does a big business in administering employee benefits systems for companies and also has a separate entity, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, that offers donor-advised funds where you can take an immediate tax deduction for deposits that you will give away later. So why doesn't it link the two lines of business? The company said employers haven't asked for it. That said, the gift fund operation has already set up individual employee charitable giving accounts at a few companies that deposit corporate funds for workers to give away as they wish. United Way, however, has run campaigns through payroll deduction for years, which suggests that there are plenty of employers with at least some interest in making it easier for their employees to give money away.. Given how close we are to making this a widespread reality, I plan to knock on the door of my human resources department first thing Monday morning and ask that it find a way to let me and my colleagues give away money to whomever we choose through payroll deductions. I hope many of you will make the same request. PHOTO: A Sunday church offering. Americans gave away 2.2 percent of their personal disposable income, or $229 billion, to nonprofit groups in 2008, about half of it to religious institutions. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS) (B4) ------------ Three additional rows of stage seats were set up to accommodate the overflow audience at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night for the Chopin recital by the master pianist Maurizio Pollini. This was the second of three programs that he is presenting to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth. Mr. Pollini, 68, has long perplexed some listeners, who can find his playing curiously cool and intellectual. There were typically baffling qualities to some of his performances here. Still, that he is a master was indisputably clear during Chopin's Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor. Mr. Pollini captured the choppy turbulence of the first movement while articulating the knotty inner voices with eerie clarity. The scherzo's main section has seldom sounded so demonic and chilly. He brought severe beauty and an inexorable tread to the funeral march. And the ghostly finale was astonishing. This short movement, which unfurls as an onrushing and twisting single line (in octaves), has been likened to ominous winds rustling over a grave after the funeral march. Mr. Pollini played this strange music with an uncanny feeling for the milky colorings, weird harmonies and twisting passagework. Here was Chopin, it seemed, anticipating the modernist piano etudes of Ligeti. My reservations about Mr. Pollini have never been about the supposed emotional coolness of his playing. I admire the absence of sentimentality, and Chopin, so often played with cloying expressivity, can benefit from Mr. Pollini's approach. A Pollini performance may be mystifying, with his penchant for abrupt tempo shifts and deliberately murky textures. Still, it always seems motivated by a searching, profoundly musical reading of a score, as in his Fantasy in F minor here. He brought haunting restraint to the subdued opening theme, with its slow-march gait. Yet as he often does, Mr. Pollini sometimes anticipated phrases, jumping ahead a bit, as if impatient. As always, this came across not as a lapse but as a deliberate choice. Most pianists would do the opposite: take an extra moment to let a phrase sink in with a slight dramatic pause before moving to the next. But Mr. Pollini had a larger conceptual take on the piece. In the end, what he was striving for came through. This episodic fantasy for once really sounded fantastical. Yet somehow the architectural shape and organic sweep of the music emerged. Here was another enigmatic, and engrossing, Pollini performance. He opened with magisterial accounts of Two Nocturnes (Op. 48), and brought out elements of elegiac lyricism and halting rhythmic gait in Four Mazurkas (Op. 30). He gave a commanding performance of Chopin's stormy Polonaise in F sharp minor, with its melancholic, mazurkalike middle section, and brought steely intensity to the famous Polonaise in A flat. Having conceived the program as an entity, Mr. Pollini seemed reluctant to play an encore at first. But the ovation went on, and he obliged with a formidable work, Chopin's Scherzo in B flat minor, played with bracing energy and brilliance. The final concert in Maurizio Pollini's series of Chopin recitals is on May 9 at Carnegie Hall; (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org. PHOTO: Maurizio Pollini: The pianist at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, in the second of three Chopin programs.(PHOTOGRAPH BY HIROYUKI ITO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ MOSCOW -- Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday suggested merging Ukraine's national energy company with the Russian gas giant Gazprom, a move that, if approved in Kiev, would put Ukraine's strategic network of gas pipelines under Moscow's control. Mr. Putin shocked many -- including, apparently, his Ukrainian counterpart -- by announcing the proposal at a news conference after talks in the Russian resort city of Sochi. The Ukrainian prime minister, Mykola Azarov, said through a spokesman that the idea of a merger had not come up in their meetings, and that Mr. Putin had ''expressed it in an impromptu way.'' Mr. Putin's idea is an audacious one politically, coming just two months after Ukraine elected a new president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, who vowed to increase cooperation with Russia. Emotions are still raw in Ukraine over a deal Mr. Yanukovich negotiated with Moscow to extend the lease on a Russian naval base on the Crimean Peninsula for 25 years, and a Tuesday vote on the issue in Parliament deteriorated into a melee. Russia is heavily dependent on Ukrainian pipelines, which carry about 80 percent of its natural gas exports to Europe, and it has long coveted a greater degree of control over them. If the deal were to go through, Gazprom would effectively swallow the Ukrainian company, Naftogaz, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib Capital, an investment bank. ''In any merger, Gazprom would dominate -- it would be seen as a complete Russian takeover over of the Ukrainian gas system,'' Mr. Weafer said. If it came up for legislative approval, he added, what happened during the vote on the naval base ''would look like a kindergarten party by comparison.'' Mr. Weafer called Mr. Putin's suggestion a ''nonstarter,'' but he said Mr. Putin could be laying the groundwork for the more politically viable approach of forming a joint venture that would control the Ukrainian pipeline system. ''He's probably trying out the extreme, knowing full well it would provoke a strong reaction inside Ukraine,'' he said. And that it did, in a country still split between its Europe-leaning west and Russia-leaning east. Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who lost to Mr. Yanukovich in a bitterly fought presidential race, said the merger proposal ''could be seen as a joke'' but warned of ''a large-scale plan to liquidate independent Ukraine.'' She predicted the ''full absorption of Ukraine by Russia,'' and blamed Mr. Yanukovich for ceding too easily to Russia's will. ''You can sculpt whatever you want out of plasticine Yanukovich,'' she said, according to a statement posted on her party's Web site. Mr. Yanukovich, a former Communist apparatchik who ran on a platform of closer ties to Moscow, has closed a series of agreements with the Kremlin since taking office, culminating Tuesday in the vote allowing Russia to extend its lease on the naval base. Russia, in return, agreed to cut the price of its natural gas by 30 percent -- at a cost to Russia of at least $30 billion, Mr. Weafer said -- and went on to waive a $2 billion fine it could have levied on Ukraine for purchasing less gas than was included in a contract signed in January. The deals come at a critical time for Ukraine, whose economy has contracted precipitously in the downturn, with demand from industrial customers down by 50 percent during the first three months of the year compared with 2009. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin's spokesman, dismissed the notion that Gazprom would take over the smaller company, saying the proposal would create a new legal entity. He said that Ukraine was interested in finding a co-owner for Naftogaz, and that Russia sought to ''receive a guaranteed route for the fulfillment of its obligations to customers in Western Europe.'' He also said, in comments carried by RIA Novosti, that it was too early to speculate on a possible asset swap. The two countries' energy ministers will meet with the companies' top officials to discuss the proposal in mid-May. If the merger idea goes forward, it would reflect a regional trend that has emerged during the financial crisis, as Western banks pulled out of the region and former Soviet states turned to Moscow for capital and business ties. During his comments in Sochi, Mr. Putin underlined the material support Russia has given Ukraine's economy. ''Thanks to the gas discount -- I said this at the meeting with my colleagues -- our neighbors will be able to invest more than $40 billion in their national economy over the next 10 years,'' he said, in remarks carried on Russian television. The Russian proposal would also have implications for Europe, which has been paralyzed by winter stoppages in natural gas deliveries as Ukraine and Russia clashed over payments. The European Commission is likely to take a dim view of a merger because it would hamper efforts to draw Ukraine into its sphere of influence and away from Russia's orbit. Europe has heaped much of the blame for gas stoppages on Gazprom and the Kremlin. But it was unclear on Friday whether the commission had the means to intervene, or stymie, the Russian proposal. Part of the deal mooted by Mr. Putin involved lending Ukraine $500 million -- a fact European Union officials are most likely to find galling, since they helped secure loans for Ukraine last year so it could pay its gas bills to Russia. Mr. Weafer said, though, that Europe might sign onto a joint venture plan, which would give Russia some equity in the pipeline system. Russia could then help modernize Ukraine's pipeline system and use it to carry Central Asian gas into Europe. That arrangement, he added, could deal a death blow to Nabucco, a proposed pipeline that would transport Central Asian gas through Turkey into Austria, allowing Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. As Ukraine considers Russia's proposals, he noted, Moscow is pledging substantial sums. ''They are getting what they want,'' he said. ''But they are paying for it.'' PHOTO: A section of a gas pipeline that is operated by a company that is part of Naftogaz, Ukraine's national energy company. (PHOTOGRAPH B JOHN GUILLEMIN/BLOOMBERG NEWS) ------------ PEOPLE may be surprised to learn that when they most need their security system to protect their house, they oftentimes cannot rely on it. Jackie Ostrander discovered that when a storm knocked out power to her home in Greenwich, Conn., for a week in March -- too long for her backup battery to keep going. And it took her security company three weeks to restart her system. ''I asked, 'Are we going to get a credit for this?' We weren't,'' she said of her company, Protection One. ''When they came out, I asked, 'Are you going to charge me for this call?' They didn't, but they did charge me $100 for a battery.'' Jonathan Marvin, director of business solutions for Protection One, said, ''We could have done better.'' There are about 36 million security systems in the United States, half of them in homes. Revenue for the industry was $28.2 billion in 2009, according to the Installation Business Report, an annual security industry survey. So a lot of people apparently think their homes are going to be impervious to burglars. But even when the systems are working properly, the police response times can be slow. Stan Martin, executive director of the Security Industry Alarm Coalition, acknowledged as much. He said that in big cities like New York, Atlanta and Chicago, police could take 30 to 45 minutes to respond, while in smaller towns the best that could be hoped for was six to eight minutes. Given that those times are in addition to the two minutes it takes for the alarm to register at the monitoring station and the operator to call you, the thief and your jewelry could be long gone. Mr. Martin also attributed part of the slow response to the high number of false alarms -- an estimated 80 percent of alarm calls -- and partly to the low priority of burglaries. To combat false alarms, many police departments charge after the first or second one, he said. In Stamford, Conn., for instance, the cost is $75. Yet these fines are often levied when a police car just drives past your house, not even pulling in the driveway, let alone walking around the property. So if you are one of the millions of Americans paying a monthly monitoring fee of $25 to nearly $100, what are you getting for your money? It turns out you get many things beyond securing your home -- like providing an alert in a fire and keeping an eye on your children's comings and goings. WHY HAVE AN ALARM? If no one is going to show up when your house is broken into, why bother paying the monthly fee? One reason is that insurance companies offer discounts for security systems. The percentage varies depending on the sophistication of the system. The Insurance Information Institute says the average discount is 15 to 20 percent. On our homeowner's policy, the discount savings amounted to $221.93 a year. A study released last year by the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University found that the real value of security systems was that they protected entire neighborhoods. The study, which focused on Newark from 2001 to 2005, found that residential break-ins decreased as the density of alarms in an area increased. In other words, the more people paying that monthly monitoring fee on your street, the more likely a burglar is not going to take a chance that a police officer is right around the corner. DO ALARMS DETER CRIME? When so-called smash-and-grab thieves do strike a home with an alarm system, they are more likely to leave quickly. On its Web site, the Electronic Security Association says that the average loss on a home with a system is $3,266, compared to $5,343 for a home without one. Nearly $2,100 is nothing to sniff at -- unless your years of monthly monitoring fees exceed that. ''The point of a security system is to reduce loss,'' said Mike Miller, president of the security association. ''It may be that instead of losing your TV, you could have lost a lot more.'' Mr. Martin said that most thieves wander neighborhoods looking for an easy entry point, like an open window. Your security system would have told you to close that window when you tried to turn it on. Wealthier people, though, need another layer of protection since burglaries to their homes are not as opportunistic. Chances are the person who steals your Picasso when you are away did not happen upon your house by chance. Christopher Falkenberg, president of Insite Security, which provides security for Martha Stewart's homes, said prominent people needed levels of security beyond what alarms could provide. ''Alarms are not sophisticated,'' he said, adding that basic monitoring panels have not changed in decades. ''That said, you have to have one or you're definitely going to be targeted. But your expectation can't be that installing an alarm will be your end-all and be-all.'' Upgrading to the level of personalized protection that a firm like Insite provides is not cheap: its monthly rate starts at $7,000. From an insurance point of view, this is where the discounts start to increase. ''We recommend a layered approach so you are going to build out from a security system,'' said Rich Standring, risk services manager for the East Coast for Fireman's Fund. ''The one shortcoming of a security system is you have to turn it on.'' BEYOND SECURITY While keeping burglars out of your house is the foundation of any security system, the monitoring service can include fire alarms, heat sensors and other features. Robin Lampe, a spokeswoman for Protection One, said the company's systems offered additional ways to monitor your home. The system can tell when someone has entered or left a house and when a person is trying to open a liquor or gun cabinet. It can also send video clips of who has entered a house or even a specific room -- a great tool for parents eager to see what their children are up to. But in every instance, the security system is only as good as the operator responding to the alert. Jonathan Crystal, who advises customers on their security needs as an executive vice president for Frank Crystal &Company, said he was traveling and got a call from his monitoring company telling him that the smoke alarm was going off in his home. He knew his baby sitter was there and asked the operator if she had spoken to her. ''I asked the woman if everyone was O.K.,'' Mr. Crystal said, ''But she said she hadn't asked, because the person who answered was not authorized on the account.'' Mr. Crystal, who would not let me name the security company in print, said he was completely exasperated and ended up switching to a local company, Scarsdale Security. ''They didn't change my system at all, but they provide remote monitoring and they're excellent,'' he said. ''They give me peace of mind. I got no peace of mind from'' the national service. While paying a monthly monitoring fee may make little financial sense, finding a service that provides you peace of mind is invaluable. PHOTO: Jonathan Crystal said he switched his security system to a local company after poor service from a national provider. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RUBY WASHINGTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ At the start of Luciana Achugar's newest work, ''Puro Deseo,'' the Kitchen is transformed into a starless, moonless sky -- so pitch-black, in fact, that it's impossible to see your fingers inches from your nose. Perhaps all dances should begin with such a forceful purification of the eyes and mind, but it isn't soothing; in ''Puro Deseo,'' which began performances on Thursday evening, Ms. Achugar's rendition of the night was hardly tender. The work, her most sophisticated to date, is at once stripped down and, for the first half at least, amplified by an uncanny theatricality that fluctuates between gothic horror and the primal, moving body. While she has frequently choreographed for women, conjuring a communal atmosphere of feminine mystique, ''Puro Deseo'' signifies a departure, frankly welcome: Ms. Achugar performs with Michael Mahalchick, her longtime collaborator and dramaturge. They are equals. Their relationship is eerily symbiotic, aided to great effect by Madeline Best's lighting, which casts sinister shadows on the back walls and floors of the space, and Walter Dundervill's extravagant black costumes, which evoke the Middle Ages with a nimble, modern touch of today's draping and layering. The elements work in tandem to transform a black-box theater into a castle (from the balcony to the dungeon). Ms. Achugar, at first wearing a voluminous cloak-dress, glides across the floor in a diagonal line and, like a wind-up specter in a Japanese horror film, turns her huge eyes to face the audience, before rustling backward along the same path. Mr. Mahalchick, his body sprawled on the floor, is even more mysterious. During a series of fleeting blackouts, he inches closer to the audience in creepy increments; the theater echoes with the sound of rattling chains. Mr. Mahalchick, a hulking man with a fleshy vulnerability, raises an arm as his fingers -- held in the shape of a loose claw -- quiver ever so slightly. (Disconcertingly, it's like watching a film become blurry.) As the dance progresses, Ms. Achugar, stripped to a black shirt and patterned tights, mirrors her partner's monstrous, flinty grace. But as the cinematic fragments become more whole through the performers' chanting and repetitive movements, the dance wavers. At just under an hour, ''Puro Deseo'' seems rushed. If Ms. Achugar's wish, as she has said, is to cast a spell on the audience by revealing the mysteries of the body, she needs more time to weave her magic; she needs to go deeper. Luciana Achugar continues through Sunday at the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 255-5793, Ext. 11; thekitchen.org. PHOTO: Puro Deseo: Luciana Achugar, right, and Michael Mahalchick performing Ms. Achugar's new work at the Kitchen (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) ------------ At the Long Island Spring Regional, held from April 20 through last Sunday in Smithtown, N.Y., the winners of the two-session Stratified Pairs on Saturday were Jeff Aker of Briarcliff, N.Y., and Barry Rigal of Manhattan. They finished 2 match points (out of 432) ahead of Michael Gore and Steven Zlotnick of New York. Third, less than half a match point behind, were Michael Lipkin of New York and Alex Perlin of Metuchen, N.J. The diagramed deal from the first session was interesting because of the premium on overtricks in pair events. In the auction, West's double was negative, showing four hearts (and perhaps five or six if his hand was not strong enough for a two-heart response). Rigal (North) made a pre-emptive raise to three spades, promising four-card support and some 4 to 6 high-card points. (With 7 to 9 points, he would have advanced with three diamonds, the jump cue-bid being called a mixed raise. With 10-plus points, he would have cue-bid two diamonds.) When three spades was passed back to West, he should have doubled again. With 10 high-card points, he knew his side had the balance of power. He should not have surrendered so easily. And after this value-showing double, East would have bid four diamonds. Aker and Rigal seemed booked for a good result because four diamonds would have failed by only one trick, East losing one spade, one diamond and two clubs. So four diamonds doubled and down one would have given North-South plus 100. Since three spades was unbeatable (declarer losing at most two hearts, one diamond and one club), plus 140 looked good. But plus 170 would be even better. To get the overtrick, though, South had to find West with the club king and to squeeze West in hearts and clubs. But he also needed East not to shift to clubs, when West would surely cover an honor with an honor, killing the squeeze. East had to be left with easy exit cards. West led a trump to Aker's ace. East took the next trick with his heart eight and shifted to the diamond ten. When South played low, West overtook with his jack to lead a second trump. Declarer won and ducked another heart to East, who continued with a diamond to South's ace. This was the position: Declarer carefully led the club jack. West thought he had a problem. He believed that if South had J-10-x of clubs, covering would cost a club trick. But that would not have been true. Suppose East could have won with the club queen and continued with the heart ace. Declarer would have ruffed and cashed the rest of his trumps to squeeze West between the heart king and club king. However, when West did not cover, South played a spade to dummy's ten, trumped a heart in his hand and ran the spades, catching West in a heart-club squeeze. Plus 170 provided 5.5 match points out of 8. Plus 140, the result if West had covered the club jack with his king, would have been worth only 4 match points. If all other results had been the same, Aker and Rigal would have squeaked home by half a match point. When you do not want an opponent to cover an honor with an honor, lead the bottom of your touching honors. DIAGRAMS ------------ LONDON -- Six days before British voters go to the polls, Britain's three main party leaders raced toward the finish on Friday, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown struggling to recapture the sense of momentum now buoying his Conservative and Liberal Democratic rivals. Mr. Brown, who was widely seen as giving a lackluster performance during Thursday's third and final prime ministerial debate, promised to ''try harder, work longer and dig deeper'' ahead of the election next Thursday. In the monthlong contest, the three major parties have each hovered around 30 percent in opinion polls. None has achieved a breakaway that would secure a majority in the House of Commons and render moot the issue that has dominated much of the campaign: whether the Conservatives or Mr. Brown's Labour Party would be more likely to attract the Liberal Democrats' support to form a government if voters returned a hung Parliament for the first time in more than 35 years. Since the first debate two weeks ago, the Conservatives have consistently led the narrow spread in the polls, with the surging Liberal Democrats in second, and Labour, the party that has governed Britain since 1997, consistently rated third. That pattern showed up again after Thursday night's debate in Birmingham, with an array of surveys showing that David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was rated as having done best, with Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats second and Mr. Brown last. Some commentators suggested that Mr. Cameron had potentially put the Conservatives on a path to pulling away in the campaign's final days and sealing a Conservative victory that had seemed a strong possibility before Mr. Clegg's strong debate performances propelled the Liberal Democrats into the heart of the contest. But achieving the margin that Conservatives would need over the two other parties for a slim majority still seemed like a daunting challenge for Mr. Cameron, and as all three leaders resumed their campaigns on Friday they said the contest remained open. Mr. Cameron, campaigning in Derby, near Birmingham in the English Midlands, said that millions of people, from an electorate of about 47 million, were ''still making up their minds.'' Mr. Clegg, speaking to students in Leicester, east of Birmingham, told the BBC his party was ''going for gold in getting the greatest number of people voting for the Liberal Democrats.'' He added, ''I think this election campaign is now boiling down to a simple choice -- a two-horse race between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats.'' His reference to votes, not seats, seemed significant, since it acknowledged tacitly that the wide dispersion of Liberal Democrat support across the country might mean that his party would get disproportionately fewer seats in an election that was contested on a constituency-by-constituency basis. Voting experts say that in a close three-way finish, the Liberal Democrats could theoretically come in second in the popular vote and secure fewer than 100 of the 650 Commons seats, with Labour finishing third and still winning 250 to 300 seats, as many or more than the Conservatives. Mr. Brown, speaking in Hockley, south of Birmingham, sounded somewhat valedictory, after 48 hours that knocked his campaign sideways. ''The time for debates has finished and the time for decision has come,'' he said. ''We will continue to fight for the future of this country until the very last second of this election campaign.'' He compared his task to that of Eric Liddell, the Scottish athlete who overcame daunting challenges to run to a gold medal in the 400-meter race in the 1924 Olympic Games, a feat chronicled in the movie ''Chariots of Fire.'' On Wednesday, the prime minister, unaware a broadcaster's lapel microphone was live, told a Labour aide in his campaign car that a Labour voter in the old mill town of Rochdale was ''bigoted'' for pressing him during a street exchange on Britain's record-high levels of immigration. Mr. Brown sought to limit the damage from the gaffe by apologizing personally to the 65-year-old widow involved and proclaimed himself ''mortified,'' then began his remarks at Thursday's debate by saying, ''There's a lot to this job, and as you saw yesterday, I don't get all of it right.'' But he appeared pallid and exhausted during the debate, and stumbled more than once in a trademark recitation, criticized as wonkish by many commentators, of economic figures and government support programs for Britain's most vulnerable people. One possible sign that Labour sees its campaign as being in deepening trouble came when Tony Blair joined the campaign for the first time in three weeks in Harrow, a neighborhood in northwest London. Mr. Blair was prime minister for 10 of the 13 years Labour has been in power, until he was pushed into resignation by party pressures orchestrated by Mr. Brown in 2007. Insider accounts of Mr. Blair's years at Downing Street have traced an often acrimonious relationship between the two men during Mr. Blair's premiership, when Mr. Brown, as chancellor of the Exchequer, set himself up at times as almost a rival head of government. Mr. Blair, whose role in supporting the United States invasion of Iraq has damaged his standing among some Labour members, has further alienated the party's left wing by accumulating a personal fortune that has been estimated at $50 million since he left office in 2007. He made much of the money from speeches and from bank consultancies in the United States and Arab states in the Persian Gulf. In his two campaign appearances, he has shown up deeply tanned, relaxed and congenial, a far cry from Mr. Brown. But on Friday, he was eager to express his support. ''It's a tough job being prime minister, I know,'' Mr. Blair said, adding that Labour had ''every chance of succeeding'' in the campaign's final days. He predicted voters would focus more on policies and less on personalities, the latter an area where polls and voter reactions around the country suggest that Mr. Clegg and Mr. Cameron score strongly over Mr. Brown. Told that Mr. Blair was back on the hustings supporting Mr. Brown, Mr. Cameron used the moment to press his campaign argument that Labour has ruined Britain's economy. ''It's great to have him back in the country,'' he said, referring to Mr. Blair. ''He's one of the few people who can actually afford a Labour government.'' PHOTO: Gordon Brown in Birmingham, England, on Friday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SUZANNE PLUNKETT/REUTERS) ------------ THROUGH recession after recession over the last four decades, Americans remained more optimistic than pessimistic about their own futures, even when they grew very worried about the overall economy. But that ended during the 2007-9 downturn. More people thought their own financial situation was going to get worse than thought it would improve. The Conference Board has been asking consumers the same questions since 1967 as it compiles its consumer confidence index. Three of the questions deal with forecasts of what will change over the next six months, but they differ in perspective. One asks whether the person expects business conditions to improve, stay the same or worsen. Another asks whether the person thinks employment with grow, stay about the same or shrink. Both of those questions seek an assessment of the overall economy, and at the bottom of recessions there has usually been a lot of gloom. The recent recession was, as seen by those questions, similar to other deep recessions in the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The third question, which is shown on the accompanying chart, is fundamentally different. It does not ask how the economy will do. It asks how the specific person expects to fare. In six months, does the respondent expect his or her own family's income to be higher, lower or about the same? Until this downturn, the number of people expecting things to get better for themselves had always exceeded the number expecting lower incomes. But at the low point in this cycle, in February and March of last year when the financial system seemed most vulnerable, fewer than 8 percent of respondents expected their income to get better, while almost a quarter thought their incomes were set to decline. The chart shows the difference between those two groups, ignoring the percentage, always large, that expects things to stay about the same. The pessimism shown by those responses has declined since then, but not gone away. In April, the Conference Board reported this week, about one person in 10 expected his or her family's income to improve, while about one in six expected family income to go down. As can be seen from the chart, good times in recent years have produced less net optimism than in previous cycles, while bad times have brought more pessimism. On its face, such a result would seem to indicate Americans are losing their optimism, but it may not be as simple as that. In this cycle, unlike earlier ones, many workers were forced to take pay cuts, at least on a temporary basis. So it became reasonable to expect lower income, even for some who did not expect to lose their jobs. Still, the decline in expectations regarding their own incomes is another indication of how much this recession scared people -- and that some of the fright remains. CHART: The Depths of Pessimism: Percentage of Americans expecting their family's income to rise over next six months, less percentage expecting a decline. (Source: Conference Board) ------------ BANGKOK -- A major hospital in Bangkok evacuated hundreds of its patients on Friday and shut down all but emergency services after scores of antigovernment protesters pushed their way inside and roamed the halls in what they said was a hunt for soldiers who might be hiding there. The men, who have been camping nearby, withdrew empty-handed, and protest leaders quickly apologized, distancing themselves from the raid, which was an embarrassment to a movement that portrays itself as nonviolent. Dr. Adisorn Patradul, director of King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, said almost all of its 500 patients were either discharged or transferred to other hospitals. By evening, the hospital was dark and silent except for one emergency room. ''On behalf of all leaders, I apologize to the public and to Chulalongkorn Hospital,'' said Weng Tojirakarn, a protest leader who is a doctor. ''The situation got out of control. It is not our policy to obstruct hospital operations.'' The protesters, known as red shirts, have been demonstrating for weeks, taking over a section of the city center in an occupation they say is aimed at forcing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to resign and hold a new election. The prime minister took quick advantage of the protest leaders' embarrassment over the hospital raid, saying, ''It's not necessary for me to condemn it since Thai society and the world community have already done that.'' Hospital staff members said that about 150 men barged into the building on Thursday night. A nurse on duty at the emergency room on Friday said police officers who were stationed near the hospital had made no move to stop the men. ''We were so scared,'' said a doctor, speaking in a whisper because he was not authorized to discuss the incident. ''There were so many of them, and they just stormed in,'' he said. ''The nurses began to cry. I didn't know what to do because we were outnumbered. What could we do?'' It was not clear whether the intrusion was sanctioned by protest leaders, whether the leaders were divided over tactics or whether they were not in full control of rank-and-file protesters. Many of the protesters are young men armed with bamboo staves, rocks and slingshots that shoot marbles and metal pellets. By evening the young men had mostly pulled back across the road from the hospital, where they have been camped for weeks behind barriers of tires and sharpened sticks, some parts of which they say they have doused with gasoline to be lighted in case of an attack. Some, however, continued to wander just outside the hospital gates, occasionally mingling with the police, who were eating and reading newspapers. An injured man arrived at the closed main gate propped on the back of a motorcycle; the police directed him to the emergency room at the back of the hospital. The hospital raid, and other recent events, complicated the task of protest leaders of portraying themselves as nonviolent democracy campaigners. On April 10, 25 people were killed and hundreds wounded in a battle between armed protesters and security forces. Last week one person was killed when five grenades were fired into a downtown street. And on Thursday one soldier was killed and 18 people were wounded when protesters marched on a barricade operated by soldiers and the police, leading the security forces to fire rubber bullets and live ammunition. The recent violence has fed a sense among many middle-class Bangkok residents that the protesters are a destructive force. This week, the sanitation department said it would no longer collect garbage in the area, where thousands of people sleep on mats, after the protesters tried to commandeer four garbage trucks to use as barriers. Facing growing impatience among those who oppose the protests, Mr. Abhisit has repeatedly defended his stated policy of waiting the demonstrators out. ''We will do our best,'' he said recently. ''I know everyone wants this to end quickly. The public must be firm and patient.'' PHOTO: A monk in Bangkok took pictures on Friday of a barricade near a hospital that was stormed by antigovernment protesters the night before. They said they thought soldiers were hiding there. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PEDRO UGARTE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES) ------------ ISLAMABAD -- A former Pakistani intelligence officer with deep connections to the Taliban and Al Qaeda was found dead in the western tribal area of Pakistan on Friday, after being kidnapped by militants a month ago. The body of the former officer, Khalid Khawaja, was found on a road between the towns of Mir Ali and Miranshah in the militant-controlled North Waziristan area, Pakistani news outlets reported. He had been shot in the head and the torso, according to Pakistani television, which broadcast a photograph of what appeared to be Mr. Khawaja's body. His son, Osama Khalid, confirmed the death. The killing of Mr. Khawaja, 58, highlights just how complex the snarl of militant networks has become along Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. Mr. Khawaja, a fast-talking former air force officer, had long been a link between the Pakistani military and militant networks in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the United States was funneling money to the networks to fight the Soviets there. But as years passed, militants once under the control of the Pakistani state began to turn on it, forming a dangerous patchwork of tribal, ethnic and sectarian alliances. It appeared to be Mr. Khawaja's role as a negotiator in a battle between Pakistan's military and a militant mosque in Islamabad in 2007 that got him into trouble. The siege enraged militants all over Pakistan and was the turning point for many groups, including Jaish-e-Muhammad, a group based in Punjab Province that split, with half moving to Taliban-controlled Waziristan and declaring war on the state. A religious leader familiar with the kidnapping said the militants, who called themselves the Asian Tigers, were part of the Jaish-e-Muhammad splinter group. Pakistani television reported that a note had been left with his body, stating that he had been killed because he had sided with the government in the siege of the mosque. Reports stated that the militants spoke Punjabi. Mr. Khawaja was believed to have persuaded one of the militant leaders to sneak out in a burqa to allow the military to arrest him. A video of Mr. Khawaja in captivity showed him in a red cap looking grim, speaking in Urdu and saying that he had been a spy for the United States and Pakistan. An earlier report stated that he had claimed to be on a negotiating mission for the state. A spokesman for Pakistan's intelligence agency, known by its initials, ISI, denied that Mr. Khawaja had gone to the area on the agency's behalf. A Western diplomat in Islamabad said this week that state sponsorship would have been highly unlikely. Pakistan did not cut ties with militants until after 2001, though it was unclear how long Mr. Khawaja remained associated with the military. He surfaced in 2002, in the case of the killing of Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, to whom he reportedly gave militant contacts. He was adamantly anti-American, and an outspoken opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though he did not have a law degree, he was a self-appointed member of the defense team for the five Americans who were detained last year on suspicions of seeking to wage jihad in Afghanistan. ''We don't like Americans,'' he declared in his house in Islamabad in December. ''Our government is in their hands, and there is a mess because of it.'' He deplored a situation in which the United States was not ''judged for its bombs,'' and said that suicide bombers ''carry a message -- of injustice, revenge, and belief,'' which had built up because society had ignored them. He claimed to be housing an Arab family whose father had been killed in Afghanistan. ''He was fond of martyrdom,'' Mr. Khawaja's son said. ''And now he is lucky because he has it.'' ------------ BEIJING -- Gao Zhisheng, a prominent human rights lawyer whose 13-month disappearance at the hands of Chinese security agents stirred an international outcry until he resurfaced in March, has again vanished, his friends said Friday. Associates said Mr. Gao failed to return to a Beijing apartment on April 20 after spending more than a week in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region in western China, where he had been visiting his father-in-law. Mr. Gao telephoned his father-in-law as his plane left Urumqi, saying he would call upon his arrival in Beijing, they said. That appeared to be his last contact with the outside world. Li Heping, another Beijing human rights lawyer and a close friend, said he had visited Mr. Gao's apartment repeatedly, but had not found him. ''No one had been there for a while,'' said Mr. Li, who last went to the apartment on Thursday. ''I have no idea who to call, or who has taken him.'' Others said they were sure that the government had again removed him from public view and that the authorities' earlier decision to allow him to resurface briefly had been a ploy to try to demonstrate to the outside world that he had not been mistreated. ''Now we understand that the freedom was arranged by the authorities just for a show,'' Jiang Tianyong, a Beijing lawyer and rights activist, said by telephone. ''He is missing again; he is still under their control. We must continue to pay attention to his case.'' An official of Amnesty International said Friday that the organization was ''seriously concerned'' for Mr. Gao's safety. ''It's a matter of serious concern when he loses contact with his family and friends,'' the organization's deputy director for Asia and Pacific programs, Catherine Baber, said in a telephone interview from London. Mr. Gao, whose outspoken approach has made him a contentious figure, is one of the nation's best-known activists. He has also been a ceaseless gadfly to Chinese authorities. In the early 2000s he earned international attention, and the government's enmity, for his legal work on behalf of marginalized citizens, including members of underground Christian churches and practitioners of Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that Chinese authorities say is an antigovernment cabal. After Mr. Gao sent letters to President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, accusing the government of persecuting Falun Gong members, he was stripped of his law license and sentenced to prison in late 2006 on charges of inciting subversion. After being released, Mr. Gao said he had been tortured, adding that he had also been warned that discussing his torture publicly would result in his death. China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, denied those claims at a news conference in March. ''There is no such thing as him being tortured,'' he said. Mr. Gao and his family were under constant surveillance and harassment after his release. Early last year his wife and two children escaped from China, eventually gaining asylum in the United States. Mr. Gao disappeared shortly afterward. Despite pleas from the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, he was not seen again until he appeared in March at a Buddhist monastery in northern China. In a telephone interview then with The New York Times, he said he had given up his work as a human rights defender and merely sought ''to calm down and lead a quiet life.'' He refused to say whether he had suffered mistreatment while in captivity. In an April 7 interview with The Associated Press, he said simply, ''I don't have the capacity to persevere.'' But The South China Morning Post, based in Hong Kong, which first reported Mr. Gao's disappearance on Friday, said in an article that he had been ''quite outspoken'' during an April 6 interview in his Beijing apartment, despite the near certainty that security agents were recording his conversation. But the article said he had asked that details of his treatment by the authorities while in captivity not be made public. ''If this is reported,'' he was quoted as saying, ''I'll disappear again.'' ------------ I get that primary care doctors are busy. And I understand, as a study we featured in Thursday's paper points out, that they do lots of things -- like reading lab results and consulting with specialists -- that they don't get paid for. Fine. So let me pay, then. I'd gladly pay our family doctors a flat annual fee (does $50 seem reasonable?) in exchange for an e-mail address and a promise that they would respond that same day with answers to our questions. I know that some doctors already answer e-mail message for free, which is nice of them. But my sense is that this is a tiny minority of practitioners. Meanwhile, the phone tag that currently goes on is tiresome for everyone. E-mail is so much more efficient. So what is stopping this from happening? Malpractice fears? A concern that hypochondriacs will abuse the privilege? A lack of creative thinking? If you work in a doctor's office or are a physician yourself, please weigh in with a comment below. This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. ------------ At a boutique hotel near the exclusive shops and hangouts of New York's meatpacking district, a bellman, polite and formal in the classic uniform of burgundy trimmed in gold, pushed open a rich wood door for a guest the other day. Beyond it was a carefully designed space with luxury touches: high-thread-count cotton sheets, large flat-screen television, bathrobe and spa sandals. ''Your presidential suite,'' the bellman announced. Except that this was the Jane, a restored residential hotel rising over the West Side Highway, and the ''presidential suite'' was one of its standard single rooms. Reminiscent of a high-class train cabin, it was tiny: all of 50 square feet, just big enough for a custom-made twin bed and a shelf. And at $89 a night, no one was complaining. ''It's like having a virtual Manhattan apartment,'' said Peter Griesar, 41, a regular guest, noting that the rough cost of a month's stay -- $2,670 -- was not a bad deal for a West Village address. ''The price is right, the neighborhood's great, and who spends time in a hotel room in New York anyway?'' In a city where space is at such a premium that bragging rights are measured in square feet, small is getting big. An expanding clutch of hotels like the Jane offer cramped sleeping quarters on the cheap, often with shared bathrooms and bunk beds, to budget-minded travelers seeking a dash of style along with their savings. There is the Pod, which opened three years ago with 345 rooms averaging 100 square feet. The hotel, on East 51st Street, has been such a success, said Richard Born, one of the owners, who is also a partner in the Jane, that he is planning a second Pod in Manhattan. The British chain Yotel, known for sleek capsules that travelers rent by the hour at European airports, is opening its first center-city hotel on West 42nd Street next year. In a nod to the American love of large, executives said, its 669 rooms will be bigger than usual, though still tight: 170 square feet rather than 108. ''In the old days, the bigger the space in a hotel, the more luxury you had,'' said Simon Woodroffe, the chain's founder. ''But very, very rich people stay in reasonably small spaces on luxury yachts, and very, very rich people travel in extremely small spaces on Learjets.'' Pocket lodgings have long been a staple in Asia and Europe. And boutique hotels in New York have been luring guests to good-looking but less-than-spacious rooms since 1984, when the Morgans hotel opened, promising affordable luxury, contemporary design and a lobby that doubled as a social destination. ''Why would Cher stay on 37th and Madison in a 200-square-foot hotel room with bad plumbing?'' Mr. Born said of the hotel, which was started by the club impresarios Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell. ''Because she was Steve's friend and Steve created a cool environment.'' But these new hotels are even smaller, almost like chic youth hostels, said Lalia Rach, dean of the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University. The emphasis on style over space -- one way to make the economics work for a budget hotel in an expensive urban center, Dr. Rach said -- appeals to out-of-towners who want to feel like New Yorkers, right down to fleeing a shoebox to experience the city's culture and nightlife. ''This is attractive to a very large market,'' she said, referring to travelers ages 16 to 30. ''They want to live the destination, not live the hotel.'' At the same time, the theory goes, these hotels need to be destinations for the locals -- or at least to feel as if they could be -- for guests to sense that they are tapping into the real New York. So Yotel, whose futuristic rooms feature purple mood lighting and private monsoon showers, plans to turn part of its fourth floor over to a restaurant, bar and 20,000-square-foot outdoor patio. Room Mate Grace, on West 45th Street, originally the QT, has a swimming pool with a bar in the lobby. The Ace, on West 29th Street, attracts such an artsy throng that its lobby can resemble a nightlife mini-mall, with list-toting men guarding entrances to the hotel and the various eating and drinking spaces inside. Alex Calderwood, who opened the Ace last year, said he conceived the lobby as a living room for the neighborhood where guests and New Yorkers could mingle. Perhaps no place embodies that spirit more than the Jane, where guests can, by design, overhear a long-term tenant placing bets over a pay phone in the hallway, brush their teeth with others in the communal bathrooms, or drink and dine with West Village locals downstairs at Cafe Gitane or the lobby bar. The hotel, which plans to expand its hangout spaces with an outdoor patio and a rooftop bar, is designed with an artfully distressed, Old World Eastern opulence; a stuffed monkey in a fez hovers over each end of the bar. A lounge known as the Ballroom is temporarily closed, but in its heyday, the waiting line stretched down the block, annoying the real New Yorkers living nearby. At busy times, some people would take a room for the night just to gain entry, said Sean MacPherson, a co-owner. On a recent weeknight, the lobby bar played host to a small crowd of mostly New Yorkers as Laurence Passera, a photographer from London who declined to give his age, took advantage of the lull. A regular guest, he said he loved the single berths. ''I even had a girl up there,'' Mr. Passera said. ''Fantastic.'' Uptown, the Pod has created a world of its own. Decorated with a cheerful minimalism -- think Ikea meets Devo -- the emphasis is on D.I.Y.: there is no restaurant or bar, but guests can bring in their own refreshments and congregate in the lobby, patio or rooftop garden. They can also use the hotel's free WiFi and blog to connect for shared rides from the airport and drinks, meals and shopping in town. (''My friend and I are coming over to NYC from Brazil on April 10th and we'll be there for a whole week,'' read a recent message from Two Brazilian Dudes in the Big Apple.) The entry-level rooms include stainless steel sinks and lights over the door, like those on an airplane, indicating when the bathrooms down the hall are free. The hotel attracts a mix of tourists, many from Europe, ranging from high school groups to middle-age couples on shopping vacations. One sunny morning, Harald Widemann, 52, and his son, Dennis, 22, of Hamburg, Germany, were on the roof, taking in the sweeping view. They are both 6-foot-4 but had no complaints about their pint-size room with twin bunk beds, even after their stay was extended for a few days by the Icelandic volcano ash. ''I wanted to have a decent hotel with at least a minimum of comfort but not with too much space,'' the elder Mr. Widemann said. ''I don't need 20 or 30 or 40 square meters'' -- the equivalent of 215 to 430 square feet -- ''when I'm using the room only for sleeping.'' Still, he said, when he visits with his wife, he will have to stay at the Hudson, near Columbus Circle where rooms start at a knee-skinning 136 square feet. ''I need a bigger room for her luggage,'' he said. PHOTOS: Kyler Brown of Austin, Tex., in his pocket-size hotel room at the Jane in the West Village on Friday. Rates start at $89 a night. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1); Benjamin Pate of Washington checking in at the Jane, which was designed with an artfully distressed opulence.(PHOTOGRAPH BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES) ; The lobby of the Pod, on East 51st Street. The hotel has been so successful, its owners are planning a second one in Manhattan. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JENNIFER S. ALTMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES); PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES JOSHUA BRIGHT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A17) CHART: Close Quarters: A Guide to Some of the Smallest Lodgings (A17) ------------ A new rule to protect airline passengers from being held on a plane on the tarmac for too long went into effect Thursday. The rule, issued by the Department of Transportation, was announced in December after a series of cases on various airlines left passengers stranded on the tarmac for hours. Airlines now face fines of up to $27,500 per passenger when a plane sits on the tarmac for more than two hours without providing food or water or more than three hours without giving passengers the option of getting off the plane. The rule applies to domestic flights only. Read more This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. ------------ ATHENS -- Racing to secure financial aid and avoid a debt default, the Greek government has agreed to austerity measures totaling 24 billion euros (about $32 billion) that will include cutting some workers' pay and some public sector jobs as well as opening up parts of the economy, Greek officials said Friday. A letter of intent with the International Monetary Fund was mostly complete, according to one government official, who declined to be identified because of the confidential nature of the discussions. A deal could be announced by Sunday, this official said. As unions denounced the cost-cutting measures and pledged to take to the streets over the weekend and go on strike on Wednesday, Prime Minister George Papandreou said Greece must quickly adopt the international aid plan. ''Today, the top priority is the survival of the nation,'' he told Parliament on Friday. ''This is the red line.'' The euro gained against the dollar for a third day, rising to $1.3312, as fears that Greece's turmoil could spread in Europe were surpassed by relief that a bailout was imminent. The details of the plan have been settled in negotiations here with officials of the European Union, the I.M.F. and the European Central Bank. Greek officials close to the discussions said the deal would include as much as 130 billion euros in aid over the next three years at reasonable interest rates. In return, the I.M.F. asked Greece to cut public sector spending by 8 billion euros in the 14 months after the plan was adopted. Economists called that provision crucial because past reform programs by the government have relied too much on overly optimistic assumptions about the collection of unpaid taxes. Union and government officials said Greece had also pledged to raise its value-added tax to 25 percent, to freeze civil servants' wages and to eliminate public sector bonuses amounting to two months' pay. They said the government intended to increase taxes on fuel, tobacco and alcohol. Among the most significant features of the plan, a Greek government official said, would be a measure making it easier for the government to lay off some of the many thousands of public sector workers, whose low levels of productivity and high wages are a big contributor to Greece's debt problem. Until now, the government has not been able to lay off civil servants, whose employment rights are in effect constitutionally guaranteed. Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment. Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes -- where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000 -- and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe. Some analysts fear the austerity measures could push Greece into a deeper and prolonged recession and spur widespread social unrest. But Yiannis Stournaras, a leading economist and former economic adviser to the ruling socialist party, said a majority of Greeks had lost the will to rebel. After years of profligate spending, he argued, Greece is being forced to make changes that would improve its competitiveness in the longer term. ''In any other situation the reaction would be fierce, but while the Greek people are angry, there will not be a widespread revolt because they realize that the alternative is for the country to go bankrupt. We have no other choice.'' As Greek television stations reported on the aid plan, European leaders sought to reassure jittery markets, dismissing calls by some economists for Greece to restructure its debt. Amadeu Altafaj, a spokesman for Olli Rehn, the European Union's monetary affairs commissioner, said European officials were engaged in what he described as ''fire brigading'' to ensure stability ''on the Greek front.'' There would be ''no restructuring of the debt,'' he said. That's ''not even part of the debate in Athens.'' He insisted that no discussions were taking place about whether other euro zone countries could have access to similar financial aid if needed. In recent days debt markets have come under pressure in Portugal and Spain. Meanwhile on Friday in Germany, where the government has equivocated for months, the finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, reiterated a pledge to take swift action to help Greece. Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a regional election in the country's most populous state, North Rhine Westphalia, on May 9. But Mr. Schauble, apparently alluding to what was at stake for the euro zone, indicated it was important to maintain the stability of the euro. ''Germany will take a major part in coming to the assistance of Greece,'' he said. ''Opposition groups will not block this. Given the mood in the public in Germany, everyone in politics knows that not being helpful is not a good argument to win regional elections.'' In Athens, where the prospect of a rescue has been greeted with a mix of relief and wounded pride, central bank data showed that business and household deposits at Greek banks fell for a third month in March, bringing total losses in the first quarter to 10.6 billion euros. Moody's Investors Service downgraded its credit ratings on nine Greek banks on Friday. Platon Monokroussos, an economist at EFG Eurobank, the nation's second-largest bank after the National Bank of Greece, said speculation that austerity measures would include new taxes on savings had caused some wealthy Greeks to move their funds to foreign banks and Cypriot units of Greek banks. But he said he expected the rescue package to calm fears and prevent a flight of funds. Earlier in the week, the finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, told Mega TV that the Greek government had pledged to guarantee deposits at banks. But some businesspeople said the credit squeeze was growing worse. Konstantinos Michalos, president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and the owner of a company exporting latex products, said businesses were being deprived of much-needed liquidity. He said his group's members were complaining that some foreign banks were refusing to accept credit guarantees from Greek banks, citing the economic instability. As more Greeks in rural areas took their deposits out of banks and put their savings under their mattresses, he said, home burglaries were on the rise. Despite all the financial concerns, many Greeks insisted that fears of economic collapse were exaggerated. Yiannis Batsos, 37, a lawyer, said he would not shift his money elsewhere in Europe. ''If people take their money out of banks, this will only make things worse,'' he said on a bustling street in central Athens, where dozens of Greeks sipped cappuccinos, seemingly unperturbed by the economic crisis. ''We Greeks are not the only ones in Europe who are in this mess.'' PHOTOS: A protester in chains outside the Greek Parliament building, rallying against austerity measures. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN KOLESIDIS/REUTERS) (B1); Teachers' union members at a rally this week in Athens. Their banner reads ''for the education, for Greece.'' Unions have denounced cost-cutting measures and pledged rallies and a strike. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES) (B6) ------------ The United States economy has expanded for three quarters in a row, the Commerce Department said on Friday, helped along by consumer spending. Now the question is, Will the jobs follow? The broadest measure of the overall economy grew at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, the Commerce Department reported. It had expanded 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.2 percent in the third quarter. While the expansion is welcome, it has not delivered the level of hiring needed to recover the ground lost during the recession. Speaking in the Rose Garden on Friday, President Obama acknowledged that many Americans might find little comfort in the numbers because '' 'you're hired' is the only economic news they're waiting to hear.'' Still, economists are hopeful that news of solid, continued growth may bolster business confidence and persuade more companies to expand. ''It's been a case of, when will they stop worrying and learn to love the boom?'' said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG, who added that many analysts and companies had underestimated the economic turnaround. After dragging their heels for many months, consumers were at last a major contributor to economic growth in the first quarter. Consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, a big gain from the 1.6 percent rate of the previous three months. Purchases of durable goods like cars led the way. Whether Americans might retrench for the long haul after seeing their homes lose value has been one of the biggest questions about the aftermath of the Great Recession. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy, and it usually drives growth during economic recoveries. Economists are hopeful that families will continue to pick up the pace of purchasing and make the recovery more sustainable, although consumers may remain cautious about spending given the tepid growth in job creation and personal income. Consumer sentiment dipped slightly in April, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index released on Friday. ''We haven't had consumer spending growth this strong in three years,'' said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. ''But the caveat is that with real disposable incomes not growing, this was all done through the saving rate. We cannot rely on consumers continually driving down their savings. They need income support from hiring.'' Small businesses say Americans are loosening up a little after a bewildering period of debt reduction and uncertainty. Nate Evans, who owns a pottery-making business with his wife, Hallie, in New Albin, Iowa, said sales in 2009 were the worst ever but that business was just starting to pick up. The Evanses sell their wares from their Allamakee Wood-Fired Pottery home studio as well as in galleries in nearby states, and at craft shows in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. ''I felt like the energy of the crowd was better,'' Mr. Evans said of the first fair this year, in Minnesota, adding that other craft sellers seemed to agree. ''Most of the people we talked to said it was better than last year. Hey, it's not great, but it's better than last year.'' Just as Americans stepped up their purchases of autos and other products in the first quarter, companies invested more in capital goods. Business purchases of equipment and software, for example, grew at an annual rate of 13.4 percent, building on a 19 percent increase in the final quarter of 2009. For the first time in two years, businesses started increasing their stockpiles of goods. This inventory growth accounted for about half of the expansion in the first quarter. In the previous quarter, about two-thirds of economic growth resulted from a decision by companies to draw down their inventories more slowly -- that is, not clearing their stockroom shelves so quickly but still not adding to them. Additional spending by companies ''is very good news, since it indicates businesses are feeling more confident about the expansion to start spending some of their cash,'' Mr. Gault said. ''If businesses are spending more on equipment, usually that would go along with more hiring, too.'' Federal government spending, including some remaining money from stimulus programs, grew at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent in the first quarter. But this was more than offset by continued cuts by state and local governments, whose spending decreased 3.8 percent. It was the third consecutive quarterly decline for state and local spending. ''Government spending contracted, for all the ballyhoo about stimulus,'' said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. ''This recovery is going to have to stand on the backs of private-sector demand, not on government demand, given all the current fiscal challenges.'' Modest expansion in business activity may not be enough to ease the lasting pain of the recession, many economists say. Hiring only recently began to materialize, with the economy adding 162,000 jobs in March, of which 48,000 were temporary Census-related positions. The economy had shed about eight million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Job growth hasn't been as strong as economic growth for several reasons, economists say. Businesses have found ways to make more with fewer resources, meaning that they have been able to meet additional demand for their products without bringing on many new workers. And companies are sitting on a tremendous amount of cash and appear unwilling to spend it. ''Companies may be reluctant to invest because there's an enormous amount of uncertainty ahead for them, not just in health care policy but tax policy,'' said Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. ''This isn't just about the sustainability of the recovery itself.'' Mr. Obama, in his remarks on Friday morning, rejected criticisms that his policies were bad for hiring by talking about tax cuts for small businesses, loans backed by the government and investments in areas like clean energy -- policies intended in part to encourage job creation. Even if hiring does finally start to grow at the same rate with demand, the economy is simply not growing fast enough to make a big dent in unemployment, economists say. The nation's gross domestic product -- a broad measure of goods and services produced in the country -- is far below its potential, according to projections of where the economy would have been had it followed its long-term trend. Output would need to grow at least 5 percent annually for several years to get back on track -- and perhaps what is more important, to stimulate enough job creation to employ the 15 million Americans already out of work and the 100,000 new workers joining the labor force each month. Right now, many economists expect the nation's output to expand 2.5 to 3.5 percent this year. ''Unless the pace of growth picks up significantly, we will see high unemployment rates for years to come,'' said Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Washington. PHOTOS: Hallie and Nate Evans, the owners of Allamakee Wood-Fired Pottery, at work in their home studio in New Albin, Iowa, while their 2-year-old son, Noah, plays. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY MANIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES); Shoppers outside Macy's in Manhattan. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B6) CHART: REAL ECONOMIC GROWTH: Annual rate of change in the gross domestic product, based on quarterly figures adjusted for inflation and seasonal fluctuations. (Source: Commerce Department) ------------ Wall Street ended the month on a down note Friday as shares struggled from the open. Fueling Friday's decline were the uncertainties surrounding the Greek debt crisis and downgrades of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. The bank's stock dropped 9.4 percent, to $145.20, a day after reports that the United States attorney's office in Manhattan had started a criminal investigation into the bank's trading. That sent other bank shares lower. ''The matters now facing Goldman perhaps would make investors approach banks with greater caution than otherwise,'' John Lanski, Moody's Capital Markets' chief economist, said. But, he added, it is hard to ''argue convincingly of a possible contagion effect'' of any new charges. ''But I think the problem with banks' stocks of late is more related to where financial reform is leading as opposed to the difficulties or the matter pertaining to Goldman Sachs,'' Mr. Lanski said. The Dow Jones industrial average settled at 11,008.61, down 158.71, or 1.4 percent. The Standard &Poor's 500-stock index was at 1,186.68, down 20.10, or 1.7 percent, and the Nasdaq was at 2,461.19, down 50.73, or 2 percent. For the week, the Dow declined 1.7 percent, the S.&P. fell 2.5 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 2.7 percent. Still, indexes finished the month higher. The Dow and the S.&P. both rose about 1.4 percent for the month. The major European markets also fell. The FTSE 100 in London dropped 1.2 percent, the DAX index in Frankfurt declined 0.2 percent, and the CAC-40 in Paris fell 0.6 percent. ''We have gone through episodes recently where the market thought that a resolution was close at hand,'' Mr. Lanski said, referring to the Greek debt crisis. ''There are definitely lingering concerns about another intensification of the Greek government debt crisis.'' Greek officials said the government had agreed to austerity measures totaling 24 billion euros (about $32 billion) that would include cutting some workers' pay and some public sector jobs as well as opening up parts of the economy. Details could be announced on Sunday. While the stream of earnings and economic indicators this week have suggested some improvement in the economy, the latest indicator fell just shy of expectations. The government said the overall economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter, but the expansion has still not brought jobs growth to levels compensating for recession losses. ''The equity market received no support from an as-expected first-quarter reading of G.D.P.,'' Mr. Lanski said. But, ''I would not blame the sell-off on a somewhat disappointing G.D.P. report.'' ''I think it is more because of worries over the European sovereign debt, he said, ''as well as the unknown final fate of financial reform legislation,'' which the Senate began debating on Thursday. ''That type of uncertainty is going to weigh more heavily on banks, and that seems to be the case today,'' Mr. Lanski said. Terry Morris, the senior vice president and senior equity manager for National Penn Investors Trust, said that the market had probably already factored in the G.D.P. report. ''I think it was already built in, so that it was somewhat of a nonevent,'' he said. ''It is going to take more to make this market keep going higher.'' Among other bank stocks, Morgan Stanley dropped 3.5 percent, JPMorgan Chase fell 3.2 percent and Citigroup 4.1 percent. The insurer Genworth Financial closed down 8.7 percent at $16.52, after posting a quarterly profit that fell short of estimates. Industrial and heavily traded information technology stocks were also lower. The chip maker Intel ended down 2.8 percent at $22.84. The utilities sector posted the most gains. The FPL Group was up 2.7 percent at $52.05, and NRG Energy was up 1.6 percent at $24.17. Bond prices rose on the day. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.65 percent, from 3.73 percent late Thursday. CHART: The Dow Minute by Minute: Position of the Dow Jones industrial average at 1-minute intervals yesterday. (Source: Bloomberg) ------------ LONDON -- Barclays reported on Friday that its profit rose 29 percent in the first quarter, helped by its investment banking business and fewer bad loans. But some investors were disappointed at the pace of growth at the securities unit, the biggest contributor to Barclays' earnings, and shares dropped 4.4 percent in London on Friday morning. ''Concerns regarding a slowing in the pace of improvement for the group's investment banking operations have hit the shares,'' Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said. The earnings announcement on Friday ''appears to be reminding investors that the road ahead will be bumpy.'' Profit rose to $:1.07 billion, or $1.65 billion, from $:826 million in the first three months of last year. Barclays Capital, the securities unit, reported that pretax profit rose 62 percent to $:1.47 billion, making it the most profitable business for Barclays. But the investment banking earnings followed strong results from rivals like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase last month. Barclays Capital, run by Barclays' president, Robert E. Diamond, received ''lower contributions from rates and commodities,'' which was offset by its credit businesses and emerging markets, the bank said. Impairment charges and money the bank set aside for loan defaults declined to $:1.51 billion from $:2.31 billion in the same period last year and from $:1.86 billion in the last the months of 2009. ''The improvement that we have seen in impairment reflects the signs of economic recovery now evident in many of the markets in which we operate,'' John Varley, the chief executive, said in a statement. Barclays invested in expanding its investment bank in Europe and Asia by hiring staff members after buying Lehman Brothers' operations in the United States. Chris Lucas, the chief financial officer, said on Friday that the bank set aside the same ratio of revenue for bonus payments as last year, but added that the exact level remuneration would only be decided toward the end of this year. The bank also said that its exposure to the Greek economic crisis was ''small'' and it did not expect the country's economic turmoil to pose ''a government bond risk'' for the bank. Barclays increased its risk-weighted assets by 8 percent to $:415 billion. ------------ NEW DELHI -- Worried about reports of Chinese hackers and spying, the Indian government has effectively barred local mobile phone operators from making deals with Chinese telecommunications manufacturers, according to the head of India's main cellular industry trade group. India is running a trade deficit with China and the issue could further strain relations between the two countries. In December, the Telecommunications Department quietly asked Indian mobile phone operators to suspend deals with foreign equipment companies, citing security concerns, Rajan S. Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, a trade group, said in an interview on Friday. This week the government told several mobile phone operators that proposed deals with Chinese companies could not go ahead right now, industry executives said. The government had told operators in December that it was worried that a foreign company could install spying software, and asked local operators to examine foreign manufacturers carefully, Mr. Mathews said. But in recent months, the Indian government has lifted the restriction on most foreign manufacturers; those that are not cleared are ''principally Chinese,'' he said. The Ministry of Home Affairs, which deals with domestic security in India, said on Friday that it could not comment on the issue. A spokesman for the Telecommunications Department, S. Prakash, acknowledged on Friday that the government had recently stepped up scrutiny of foreign equipment suppliers. But he said ''the government has not banned any particular equipment or manufacturer'' and decided ''on a case-by-case basis'' whether to allow deals to happen. ''This happens everywhere,'' Mr. Prakash said, because ''telecommunications devices are likely to get misused.'' A spokeswoman for a Chinese equipment industry trade group said Friday that her group had heard reports ''that India would ban importing telecom equipment from China for one or two months.'' The Indian government's behavior would violate World Trade Organization ''principles of 'national treatment' if they only ban importing equipment from China but continue importing from the United States and Europe,'' said Zhang Huiling, a spokeswoman for the China Chamber of Commerce of Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Projects. ''We will closely follow the latest development,'' she added. Foreign telecommunications equipment makers have been an integral part of India's fast-growing mobile phone industry, because India does not have any significant manufacturers of its own. Mr. Mathews said the government had decided to ''lock down all the barnyard doors,'' because of concerns about Chinese hackers. According to a report released last month by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a gang of computer hackers based in China conducted an extensive spying operation in India that began last year, obtaining sensitive information, including documents from the Ministry of Defense. Relations between India and China, the world's most populous nations, have been strained recently over border issues and India's trade imbalance with China. And India recently clamped down on the number of work visas allotted to foreign companies, a move regarded by some as being aimed at Chinese power companies that import laborers from home to build plants here. India's mobile phone industry is second only to China's in terms of subscribers, with 584 million at the end of March. More than 20 million new subscribers were added in March, and local phone operators are under pressure to add network capacity quickly. Indian mobile operators invested about $34 billion in networks and other capital expenses in the last fiscal year, the Indian telecommunications trade agency estimated. About 40 percent of that equipment came from China, where products cost about 20 percent less than those made by European providers like Nokia and Siemens. According to an executive with one of India's largest mobile operators, the government told the company this week that it could not go through with the purchase of equipment from UTStarcom, a company that is headquartered in California but which has most of its employees and managers in China. The government said some deals the company was planning were ''good to go, and these were not,'' said the executive, who declined to be identified because the government had not made its policy official. Mr. Prakash, of the Telecommunications Department, said he could not speak specifically about UTStarcom, but acknowledged ''that might have happened.'' Chinese companies, including Huawei Technologies and the ZTE Corporation, have ''actively participated'' in the construction of India's telecommunications network since 1999, the Chinese import-export group said in a statement on Friday. The two companies employ nearly 7,000 people in India, and 85 percent of those employees are Indian, the statement said. Indian mobile operators considering deals with foreign telecommunications manufacturers have been required since December to submit the details to the Telecommunications Department, which forwards the information to the Ministry of Home Affairs for security clearance, according to the cellular operators association. In a memo posted on its Web site on March 18, the Telecommunications Department clarified its security clearance rules, stating that the ''operation and maintenance of telecom networks should be entirely by Indian engineers'' and adding that the ''dependence on foreign engineers should be minimal'' within two years from a purchase. Indian telecommunications companies are also required to demand that foreign manufacturers transfer their technology to make ''critical'' equipment and software within three years of a sale, the memo said, concluding that any Indian company that did not enforce technology transfers would be subject to criminal prosecution. PHOTO: A ZTE Corporation assembly line in Shenzhen, China. Chinese mobile network products cost about 20 percent less than those of companies like Nokia and Siemens. (PHOTOGRAPH BY QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS) ------------ CORRECTION APPENDED BEIJING -- In the wake of a fourth horrific attack on Chinese schoolchildren -- this time by a crazed man who on Friday beat five toddlers with a hammer, then set himself on fire with two other children in his arms -- this shocked and bruised nation was of two distinctly different minds. On the Internet and in newspapers, people agonized over whether their tightly regimented society, a boiling caldron of change with no pressure valve to let off steam, was blowing its lid. In the halls of government, however, the emphasis was on preventing the steam from escaping at all. After the first attack, in which a man stabbed and killed eight children outside an elementary school in Fujian Province on March 23, the Internet and government media bubbled with outrage, and the state-run Xinhua news service issued a lengthy study of the loner who committed the crime. But on Friday, after three consecutive days of spontaneous and inexplicable assaults on children as young as 3, the media went silent. News of the latest attack, at the Shangzhuang Primary School in Shandong Province, vanished from the headlines on major Internet portals, replaced by an announcement that the government had assembled a team of 22 experts to help the education system set things right. Posts on social networking sites indicated the change in tone came from the Communist Party's central propaganda department, which directs and censors coverage of major news events. If it was a classic response, born of Leninist dogma that dictates that bad news be buried and the state's heroism trumpeted, it was still understandable after a week of what were apparently copycat crimes. But it brought little comfort to average citizens, who still wondered what in their society could generate such madness. Online, many of them focused on problems -- the growing rich-poor gap or the helplessness of average people in the face of power -- that are a backdrop to everyday life. In Taixing, the city in Jiangsu Province where a knife-wielding man stabbed 28 kindergarten students and three adults on Thursday, critically wounding at least five children, protesting parents took to the streets chanting, ''We want the truth! We want our babies back!'' ''The three killers wanted to get revenge on society,'' one person, Zhang Han, wrote in an Internet chat posting. ''They considered themselves as 'underprivileged,' and they chose an even more vulnerable group, children, to get revenge. Doubtless their own psychological problems played an indispensable role. But social inequality is obviously the catalyst.'' There likely is no single explanation for the assaults in Fujian, Shandong, Jiangsu and, on Wednesday, in Guangdong Province, where a 33-year-old former teacher stabbed 15 fourth-and fifth-graders. (In China, where access to guns is tightly controlled, knives are one weapon of choice in violent crimes.) Many Chinese might correctly note that their situation is hardly unique; the United States and other nations have also endured violent attacks on students. Yet some aspects of the assaults -- the alacrity with which they were copied by new assailants, to cite one example -- raised questions among some Chinese about whether something else was at work here. Curiously, the four attacks in March and April mirror a series of assaults in August and September 2004, in which students in four other schools and a day care center were attacked by knife-wielding men who stabbed dozens of children. One theme echoed in some Internet postings was the feeling by many Chinese citizens that they had little power in the face of authority, and few ways to right wrongs. One posting compared the attacks to a notorious rampage in July 2008 by a man who said he felt he had been wronged by the police. In a single attack in Shanghai, the man, Yang Jia, stabbed six police officers to death -- and he became a national hero by the time he was executed that November. One person who posted in a chat room pointed out that after the attack in March, a student wrote a letter to the assailant, saying, ''If you've got hatred, please go to kill the corrupted official.'' ''Isn't it shocking to hear such assertions come from a child?'' the poster wrote. ''But in fact, this is a collective perception shared by the entire society. That's why Yang Jia was hailed as a hero after killing innocent police.'' Stan Rosen, a University of Southern California political science professor who leads the university's East Asian Studies Center, noted that the Cultural Revolution under Mao was so violent in part because it unleashed the bottled rage of a society that had suffered famine, impoverishment and brutal rule -- and had no outlet for its grief. Mao's days are a distant memory now, and citizen protests, muckraking journalism and open discussion of social problems are accepted parts of Chinese life. But Martin K. Whyte, a Harvard University sociologist whose new book, ''Myth of the Social Volcano,'' parses the frustrations of average Chinese, said in an interview that a caldron of discontent still bubbled. That, he argued, is mostly because average citizens still feel they have no steam valve, and the government is still concerned about keeping the lid on. ''The system still very much tries to pretend everything is going fine,'' he said, ''and it still hushes things up when there are disturbances.'' Correction: April 30, 2010, Friday This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified the province where Leizhou is located. It is in Guangdong Province, not Shandong. An earlier version of this article also misstated the percentage of mentally ill people thought not to have received professional help in China. The correct figure is 91 percent, not 98 percent. PHOTOS: A guard at a school's entrance in Jiangsu Province on Friday, the day a man attacked students in Shandong Province. (PHOTOGRAPH BY REUTERS); The mother of a child who was wounded by a knife-wielding man in an attack on Thursday in Jiangsu Province. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER F. YUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS); A student who was wounded Wednesday in an attack in Guangdong Province, where 15 students were stabbed. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ASSOCIATED PRESS); Zheng Minsheng was sentenced to death in the March 23 killings of eight children in Fujian Province. The attack was the first of four recent ones. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHINA DAILY, VIA REUTERS) ------------ Have fine art, jewelry or other valuables in your home? If so, you probably know you should consider additional insurance for them, because basic homeowner's policies generally have limits on how much they'll cover, especially in the case of theft. There are two major forms of additional coverage for valuables. One is to insure items individually with their own additional floaters to your home insurance policy. The other is to buy broader blanket coverage for each category of valuables, say jewelry, art, wine or collectibles. With the more expensive first option, you need to schedule, or list, each item individually, while with the less expensive blanket coverage, you don't. So which is the better option?The insurance experts I spoke with agreed that despite the higher price of scheduling and the fact that it often requires appraisal of items, scheduling comes with a number of advantages. ''If you have very valuable items, it's better to have them listed,'' said J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. First, if something were to happen to your house, like a fire, scheduling could help you avoid arguments with your insurance company over what was in your house. Clearly, regardless of what type of homeowner's insurance you have, you should have an inventory and records of what's in your house along with proof of those items' value. If you didn't schedule the items in the policy, you'd have to present this proof to the insurance company. With scheduling, on the other hand, the proof would be right in your insurance contract, which forces you, in effect, to have your documentation in order ahead of time. ''You're going to pay a little more, but at least you have the peace of mind knowing there are not going to be disputes if you have a serious fire or hurricane or something destroys your property,'' Mr. Hunter said. Scheduling also has other advantages. Because you often have to get items appraised to get them scheduled, this approach helps ensure you get the right amount of coverage for an item. In addition, according to one insurance broker who works with wealthy individuals in the San Francisco Bay area, with scheduling, you get what's called ''mysterious disappearance'' coverage. As a result, you're covered if you lose an item -- for instance, if a diamond falls out of your engagement ring. In addition, according to the broker, if an item appreciates in value, such policies will also cover up to 50 percent over and above what you paid for the item. For these reasons, the broker said she recommends blanket coverage only for less expensive items like smaller pieces of jewelry. She urges scheduling for more valuable items, especially expensive jewelry one wears on a daily basis where the chance of loss is higher. Those who work in insurance, she said, often recommend blanket coverage because it's easier for them to handle and process. How do you insure your valuables and why? Do you prefer scheduling? Why or why not? This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. PHOTO: Items like jewelry often have to be insured with special policies. (PHOTOGRAPH BY YURIKO NAKAO/REUTERS) ------------ The College Board, in a new report, found that bachelor's degree recipients who graduated with the most student debt tended to be those who went to for-profit institutions or were independent -- meaning they generally did not get support from their parents. The findings in the report, ''Who Borrows Most? Bachelor's Degree Recipients with High Levels of Student Debt,'' released on Monday, were based on an analysis of government data about postsecondary student aid for students who received their bachelor's degrees in 2008, the most recent figures available. The report found that about two-thirds of college students graduated with debt. But the researchers specifically examined who had taken on the most debt, meaning the students who had borrowed more than $30,500 cumulatively for their degree. On average, the group studied had debt of $45,700. ''We just wanted to know who are these students with the greatest debt,'' said Patricia Steele, a co-author of the report and research consultant to the College Board. Researchers said the study had implications for public policy decisions regarding topics like student financial literacy and protection provisions for students in extreme high-debt situations. Among the report's major findings was that the frequency of high debt was twice as high among independent students as among dependent students. Independent students are generally older, married or orphans, among other characteristics. Twenty-four percent of independent students graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2008 had at least $30,500 of debt, the report found. Among dependent students, meanwhile, the researchers found that there was no statistically significant relationship between debt level and income. In addition, high debt is most common among students who graduated from for-profit institutions (think DeVry or other similar schools that have shareholders; private businesses; or schools that offer more vocational training). In addition, 65 percent of borrowers obtaining their degrees from such schools had an average of $11,300 in private debt on top of federal student loans. The private, nonfederal, loans tend to have higher interest rates and fewer repayment protections than federal loans. The highest concentration of nonfederal debt - where 70 percent of the debt is nonfederal -- is among dependent students from families with incomes of $100,000 or higher, the report found. Many of those students may never have applied for federal financial aid and, therefore, were not offered federal loans. The report also found that debt might be more prevalent among black degree recipients than those from other racial and ethnic groups, while dependent white and Asian degree recipients might have higher average private debt than black and Hispanic students. The report, however, did not look at whether students were having problems repaying their debt. Do the results surprise you? Why or why not? This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. ------------ Monologue | Friday night on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" on NBC: Boy, there's nothing but disasters in the news: Oil slicks in Louisiana; gridlock in Washington; the Dodgers in L.A. I tell you, this oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, boy, it just keeps getting worse and worse. They're now calling it the greatest threat to New Orleans since, I guess, George W. Bush was president. But the government sent all these resources to help clean up this massive oil spill. Do you know what they should send to soak up that oil? Italian bread. They sent specialists down there to start a controlled fire on the ocean to burn the oil off, which they say is helping. That's when you know things are bad, when the ocean on fire is an improvement. To give you an idea how bad an ecological disaster this is, today, the volcano in Iceland told BP Oil, "You win. We can't compete. You guys are so much better at this polluting thing." In an interview on "Oprah" yesterday, John Edwards' former mistress said she doesn't see herself as a home wrecker or a gold digger. You know, I agree. I think she's more like both. She does not see herself as a home wrecker. Well no, not compared to Countrywide Mortgage maybe. Arizona has passed the strictest immigration bill in history. It is so strict that police can now ask you for your papers if they see you coming out of El Pollo Loco. In fact, a lot of people are now boycotting Arizona products. Here's how stupid it is. People are now boycotting Arizona Iced Tea, which is actually made in New York City. This is true. It's not even made in Arizona. But that's irrelevant according to the boycott organizers -- Snapple. Time magazine has named Glenn Beck one of the hundred most influential people in the world. They also asked Sarah Palin, also a member of the top 100, to write an article praising Beck. So see that, two wrongs can make it on the right. Amy Winehouse being treated at a private clinic in London after she tripped and fell at her home on Saturday. She's going to be okay. Luckily her fall was broken when her head hit a giant mound of cocaine. * Leno: 'It's Scaring Everybody' * Leno: 'This Could Be Devastating' * Leno: 'They Could Be Very Angry' * Leno: 'One Embarrassing Moment' * Leno: 'Executives Were Shaking' ------------ Monologue | Friday night on "The Late Show With David Letterman" on CBS: Let's take a walk down memory lane. On this date in 1789, George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States. And by the way, as a footnote, he is the only president who has never blamed the troubles of this country on the previous administration. And then after George Washington was our president, the next president was George Washington's idiot son, George W. Washington. George W. Bush has his memoir coming out, and, also, his wife, the lovely Laura Bush, has her memoir coming out. Hers is entitled "Spoken From the Heart." The title of George's memoir is "Whoops." I had the pleasure, the privilege, and the honor to appear on the "Regis Lee and Kelly Lee Ripa" talk show. You have Regis, an older guy, with a spacey sidekick. It's like a Republican ticket, ladies and gentlemen! Big film opened this weekend -- "Nightmare on Elm Street" -- another remake, but it has been updated. The "Nightmare on Elm Street" is now foreclosures. * Letterman: 'A Blowfish in the Gulf' * Letterman: 'Heightened Powers of Observation' * Letterman: 'John McCain, Also an Immigrant' * Letterman: 'Honestly and Directly' * Letterman: 'Don't Worry About Him' ------------ 12:11 a.m. | Updated It was an evening of jokes about Representative John Boehner's tan, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s lack of restraint and the Fox News-MSNBC divide at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, a yearly convergence of policymakers, entertainers and the people who cover them. Nearly 3,000 people watched standup routines by Jay Leno, host of the "Tonight Show," and President Obama on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton. (Videos from C-Span.) Though most of the president's jokes did not directly relate to policy, one biting quip conveyed the tensions behind the newly reignited immigration battle. Mr. Obama noted Senator John McCain's recent assertion that he had never identified himself as a "maverick." "We all know what happens in Arizona when you don't have ID," Mr. Obama said. "Adios, amigos." But most of the president's jokes were gentler, often directed at himself. He joked about his drop in approval ratings, and in an apparent reference to the conspiracy theory that he was born in Kenya, he noted that his ratings were "still very high in the country of my birth." "The only person whose ratings fell more than mine last year is here tonight. Great to see you, Jay," he said to Mr. Leno. The 96-year-old event is one of the capital's most glamorous, complete with a red carpet and exclusive galas. While the gathering honors journalistic achievements and raises money for the association's scholarship fund, the boldface names in attendance tend to generate the most excitement. The likes of teen heartthrobs Justin Beiber and the Jonas Brothers mingled with Leon Panetta, the Central Intelligence Agency director. Kim Kardashian of reality show fame was in the room with Chris Matthews, a fixture of the original reality programming: the talking head panel. Twitter users characterized the event succinctly: "#nerdprom." Mr. Obama noted the presence of the Jonas Brothers, who can count Sasha and Malia Obama among their fans. But the First Father warned the band: "Two words: predator drones." "Speaking of tween heartthrobs, Scott Brown is here," the president continued. He lauded the new Republican senator from Massachusetts, who posed in an advanced state of dishabille in Cosmopolitan when he was younger, as a "politician in Washington with nothing to hide." Sarah Palin was a favorite target for Mr. Leno. But he did have a kind note: If she ever wins the presidency, he said, "it would be the first time a beauty queen could actually bring about world peace." The dinner is seen by many as an opportunity for politicians and reporters to put aside daily antagonisms, but that can be awkward as well. After a searing critique of President Bush by Stephen Colbert in 2006, organizers have pursued entertainers with less edge. "When you laugh, you indicate how you feel about something," said the comedian Bill Maher, explaining to reporters gathered on the red carpet why Washington figures make for a difficult audience. Levity can also be a risk during times of national crisis. Mr. Obama took a break from the humor toward the end of his set to be "mindful of the incredible struggles of those on the Gulf Coast" amid the oil spill, as well as of the "men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk every day for our safety and freedom." Mr. Obama continued his more serious tone in repeating an appeal he made to graduates of the University of Michigan during his commencement address earlier in the day, calling for people to broaden their sources of news, rather than filtering out outlets that don't share their individual perspectives. Michelle Obama helped present $132,000 in scholarships from the association to 18 students. The recipients of several journalism awards were honored: Ben Feller of The Associated Press and Jake Tapper of ABC News for deadline coverage, Mark Knoller of CBS news for sustained excellence and Suzanne Bohan and Sandy Kleffman of The Contra Costa Times for coverage of national or regional significance. ------------ I welcome your comments on my Sunday column, which defends the Catholic Church in ways that won't make the Vatican happy. It's a follow-up to a column of a couple of weeks ago talking about the two churches that leave me somewhat dizzied and bewildered, the old-boys club at the Vatican and the heroic one at the grassroots. Some readers objected that it's all one church, good and bad, and that the grassroots church is possible only because of support from the top. But the nuns and priests who are out in the field doing heroic work actually get remarkably little support from the Vatican or from church collections, and the divergence is immense. To me at least, and I can't claim to be a close observer, so much of the Vatican is about protocol and bureaucratic self-defense and ritual, while so many of the folks in the field just care about serving others. Father Michael may have been the worst-dressed priest I've ever seen - and the noblest. Critics of the church object for a different reason. As they see it, there may be some selfless nuns and priests out there, but at the end of the day they represent an institution that sanctifies male supremacy and that opposes condoms to fight AIDS. To me, that doesn't quite seem right. Many nuns and priests in Latin America and Africa don't really represent Vatican policy on, say, condoms but subvert it. Sometimes nuns and priests hand out condoms to keep parishioners alive. The Catholic Church truly is catholic, with a small c, in the sense of being broad and varied. In any case, please post your comments on the column. And, whatever your position, thanks for being respectful of other commenters. * Your Comments on Valentino's School * The Other Catholic Church * A Play About Darfur * A Couple of Updates, from Deworming to Sudan * Valentino and his School ------------ SUNDAY'S PUZZLE - Adding or removing letters from phrases always works better when there is some clever justification. Tthis week, we used SP-OUT to indicate removing SP. Today's FIX-A-TION works just as well. You fix a TION string to the end of eight common phrases to answer the clue. Seven of the eight work well, but I struggled with the very first one even after I was certain it must be correct. The problem is, I couldn't believe there was such a thing as a CONTRA VIOLA. It's certainly not common. Poking around on the Web was little help. It seems such an instrument may exist, perhaps used in Eastern European folk music. I was unable to find a photo. It turns out, though, that there is an organ stop called the contra viola, so that's enough. At 16 feet, it plays an octave below the 8-foot viola stop. There's a technical music clue at 57 Across. "Whole tone" defines STEP. It's an interval of two semitones, or two half-steps if you prefer. The first two notes of a major scale, say C to D, are a whole tone apart. Montemezzi isn't technical, but he's obscure. His L'amore dei tre re or The Love of Three Kings had its premiere in 1918 but hasn't made it to an opera house near me recently. The other theme answers work well. I especially like "Enthronement of a metalworker." I remember spending my baby-sitting income on a Smith-Corona. The "Detergent factory, e.g." is a SOAP OPERATION, but we can get technical here, too, if someone wants to comment on the difference between detergent and soap. "Party of nine" is ENNEAD. You'll sometimes see that word clued in reference to a baseball team, the Muses or the Supreme Court. I'm not up on my 19th-century Swedish writers. Esaias Tegner is known as the father of modern Swedish poetry. Thank goodness the crosses were all easy. That's right next to the most delicious clue of the day: "Family secret, perhaps" is RECIPE. As always, let me know what you think in the comments. Don't be shy. We all have more fun when you participate.Patrick returns tomorrow and there's a new Numberplay on Monday. See you in a week. * Odd One Out * Monumental Achievement * Whats-Its * Tee Time * After Word ------------ While some people went to an immigration reform rally in Union Square on Saturday because of a new law in Arizona or stalled legislation in Washington, Miriam Saquisil said she was there simply to keep her family together. Ms. Saquisil, 22, and her two sons, Jeremy, 5, and Pedro, 7 months, were born in New York and live in Brooklyn, but her fiance, Pedro Chuc, the children's father, does not have a green card. He came to this country 13 years ago from Guatemala. "Every time I go to work, I worry," said Mr. Chuc, 25, a carpenter. "Sometimes I get scared; I don't know if I'll come back home." He spoke as the couple's youngest son slept in his stroller in the 80-degree heat while Jeremy waved an Ecuadorean flag (Ms. Saquisil's family came from Ecuador). The rally and march were among dozens of demonstrations held around the country on Saturday. The original aim was to express frustration over the lack of progress on federal immigration legislation, but the recent passage in Arizona of a law making it a crime to be in the state without immigration papers added a greater sense of urgency. Although the "Boycott Arizona" buttons were the first to sell out at one table, most speakers focused on topics like legalization and jobs. After listening to several speakers and hip-hop performers, the crowd marched down Broadway to Foley Square, across the street from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Felix Ortiz, 25, standing with a day laborer advocacy group called Jornaleros Unidos, said he took construction work wherever he could find it. A typical full day's work, he added, netted him $80. And lately there has not been enough work to go around. "You don't make anything," he said in Spanish. Mr. Chuc said his journey to the United States began when he traveled to northern Mexico by bus from Guatemala and crossed the border. He walked for three days and three nights in the desert. He eventually arrived in Brooklyn to join his father. That was where, the couple said, they met six years ago. Ms. Saquisil said that if Mr. Chuc were ever forced to leave the country, she would move with him, even to Guatemala, so the family could stay together. "I'm not going to leave anyone alone," she said. "Hopefully, something changes." * Federal Plaza, Manhattan, 12:25 P.M. * Seeking Cultural Subtlety in 10 Questions * Lawyer Convicted of Visa Fraud * Database Tracks Immigration Court Crush * $3 Million Judgment in Immigration Fraud Case ------------ A new show focusing on nature in an urban environment, "Cityscape: Surveying the Urban Biotope," opens Sunday, May 2, at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, featuring work by 11 artists. The other day, as some of them were building their works on site, City Room dropped by. This is what we saw. * Stabbing the ground with a shovel, Katherine McLeod explained how she would bury a camera in the dirt. Ms. McLeod, wearing a New York Aquarium shirt betraying her previous life as a scientist and aquarium worker, said her work is at heart a selfish venture, satisfying her curiosity about animals. "I don't know the ins and outs of what earthworms do all day, and I want to know," she said. To find out, she was digging a hole. The buried camera will broadcast creepy-crawly images to park visitors on a monitor. Ms. McLeod has bolted another camera to a rock and sunk it in the East River, which runs along the border of the park. Ms. McLeod is from a scientific family and considered lab work herself, she said, before realizing, "It's much more fun if you can make your own scientific rules." As Ms. McLeod dug, another artist, Mark Lawrence Stafford, conducted an excavation of his own nearby, clearing a hole for a giant uprooted tree made of PVC pipe and 150 pounds of cords he had collected and braided through the years. "We don't really think of the end-of-life cycle, which is all the time faster and faster and faster," he said. Sitting near three 24-foot-long plywood pieces, Christine Howard Sandoval, described a rectangle-shaped structure, with cutouts stenciled from photos of demolished buildings. Inside the walls, viewers will see images of local forest plants, like oaks, maples and ferns. Ester Partegas was cutting and welding steel for her sculpture, fashioned as a giant barcode with beams pushing into the sky, chunks of steel in between "as if they were trees." Nearby, Lillian Gerson sat on a green workman's table, puzzling over measurements for a mock visitor information office, where she'll sit as "Connie," a park ranger dispensing information, which will be sometimes factual, sometimes not. "I really like wondering what's true and what's not true and wondering why you're even wondering that," she said. "Cityscape: Surveying the Urban Biotope" opens Sunday, May 2, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Socrates Scupture Park, 32-01 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City, Queens. The show will be up through August 1. * To See the Art, Just Stroll the Streets ------------ The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains a national database that rates sections of the nation's coastline from most fragile to most resilient. The idea is to help local governments set priorities on where to place booms in case of an oil spill. Rocky shorelines are considered resilient because natural wave action will clean them. Sheltered islets, nurseries to so much wildlife, are among the most delicate and deeply affected by oil. As everyone now knows, the oil spill along the Gulf Coast is aiming for those very areas. And as I report with my colleague Campbell Robertson from Louisiana, the coasts were already under pressure. The grasslands are sinking at a rate of about one football field an hour. That means animals already are being crowded into the remaining habitat. These pictures of pelican nests come from Poppy Tooker, a local who has been fishing the area for decades. These birds are near Grand Isle, an area not yet affected by the oil. But if the spill continues unabated and the currents move west, it could have a grave impact. * On our Radar: Outcry in the Gulf * Too Busy for Oil Awards * Ethanol from 'Energy Cane' (and Someday, Orange Peels) * On Patrol With the Reef Ranger * Can Condoms Help Save Polar Bears? ------------ DrawViswanathan Anand DrawVeselin TopalovReplay the game with analysisª For the first time in his title match with Viswanathan Anand of India, the defending world champion, Veselin Topalov, a Bulgarian, did not lose while playing Black. He also did not win as Game 6 ended in a draw. That preserved Anand's one point lead. The score is now 3.5 to 2.5 in the best-of-12 match. The match is being played in Sofia, Bulgaria, and has a prize fund of two million euros, or about $2.7 million. Anand had won Games 2 and 4, when he had White, posing a serious problem for Topalov when he had Black. In Game 6, Anand again chose the Catalan opening, as he had in the previous games. Topalov responded as he had in Game 2, when he got a good position, but erred later on. The game followed the same move order until the tenth move, when Anand deviated. That was not surprising. In championship matches, a player usually does not want to repeat the exact moves he played in previous games - even if they were successful - because he wants to keep his opponent guessing and off-balance. He also does not want to run into some new move that the opponent may have prepared since the earlier game. Anand's new move changed was not a thunder bolt. It merely changed the character of the game in some subtle ways, primarily by yielding the bishop pair to Topalov. Topalov adapted well to the new situation and achieved a good position. A few moves later, after a couple of exchanges, including both queens, an unusual position arose in which Anand had two knights and two rooks against two bishops and two rooks. Normally, such situations can be dangerous for the side with two knights as the bishops can cut through the position. But, in this game, Anand's knights were actually more active and more dangerous than Topalov's bishops. Topalov was never in any trouble, but he could not escape the annoying knights and eventually allowed Anand to exchange one of them for one of his bishops. Not long after, the game ended in a draw. Sunday is a rest day. The match resumes on Monday when Anand will again have White as the order of the colors is reversed for the second half of the match. * Anand Wins Again to Lead World Championship * Title Match Remains Tied After Game 3 Is Drawn * Anand Wins Game 2 to Square Title Match * Topalov Wins First Game of Title Match * Game 5 of Title Match Is Drawn; Anand Retains Lead ------------ The tech reporters and editors of the New York Times paused to read these articles: One in eight to cut cable or satellite TV in 2010 - CNNDamon Darlin says: The recession is over, but people cite cost as biggest reason to cut cable service. Twitter for Android: Robots like to share too - Twitter BlogClaire Cain Miller says: Twitter introduces an Android app to add to its new collection of mobile apps. Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline - eff.orgNick Bilton says: The Electronic Frontier Foundation shows that Facebook's privacy policy has been eroding for the past five years. HP's strategy chief on the Palm acquisition - tech.fortune.cnn.comDamon Darlin says: H.P. execs still revealing very little about their plans for Palm. * What We're Reading: Apple Leaks * What We're Reading: iPad's Price, EBay Thieves and Palm's Decline * Bits Scan: Facebook's Patent, Nokia's Woes and Phishing on Twitter * Five 2010 Predictions About Tech Companies * H.P. and Palm ? P.D.A. Powerhouses Unite ------------ Am I the only one who sees the resemblance? ------------ Christopher Hitchens will be delivering PEN's Fifth Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture on Sunday -- a last-minute substitute for Sherman Alexie, who unexpectedly canceled for personal reasons. Mr. Hitchens will speak on "Crucibles: Past and Present." A contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School, Mr. Hitchens is the author of "God Is Not Great." His next book, "Hitch-22: A Memoir," will be released this June. The lecture is at 6:30 p.m. in the Great Hall, Cooper Union, 7 East Seventh Street, New York. Tickets are $15 ($10 for PEN members) and available at the door or through www.smarttix.com[http://www.smarttix.com] (212-868-4444). ------------ Topics from the Southeast to the Gulf Coast to the Southwest will dominate the Sunday talk shows: The Florida Senate race, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Arizona's new immigration law. As President Obama heads to the Gulf region tomorrow, two administration officials will weigh in on the BP America oil rig leak. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salzar are on ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox. NBC's "Meet the Press" also interviews Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gov. Charlie Crist, who announced Thursday he would run in the Florida Senate race as an independent instead of a Republican. The conversation will then turn to immigration with two Democratic governors, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and Bill Richardson of New Mexico. The chairman of the House Republican Conference, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee join from the other side of the aisle. "FOX New Sunday" has Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard, and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio. Then, on CNN's "State of the Union" Mr. Rubio faces off against his former Republican primary rival, Governor Crist. CBS's "Face the Nation" interviews two Louisiana Democrats, Senator Mary Landrieu and Representative Charlie Melancon, as well as Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, and Representatives Luis Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, and former Representative J.D. Hayworth, the Arizona Republican running for Senate. Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, is on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers." And, finally, TV One's "Washington Watch" interviews Austan Goolsbee, who leads Mr. Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. * Sunday Breakfast Menu: April 4 * Sunday Breakfast Menu, March 14 ------------ Berkshire Hathaway has rebounded from last year's first-quarter loss and earned $3.6 billion as the economic recovery began and the conglomerate absorbed the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, The Associated Press reported on Saturday. Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire's chairman and chief executive, shared preliminary first-quarter results with shareholders Saturday at Berkshire's annual meeting. The full report will be released Friday. Last year's $1.5 billion loss included a $241 million loss on the sale of investments and a $1.9 billion charge from writing down a ConocoPhillips investment. The addition of Burlington Northern more than doubled Berkshire's regulated businesses unit income, to $555 million. The unit also includes utilities. Mr. Buffett said Berkshire's results showed the economy was improving because manufacturing and retail income grew 85 percent, to $477 million. Go to Article from The Associated Press via The New York Times>> Go to DealBook's Full Coverage of the Berkshire Hathaway 2010 Shareholders Meeting>> * Buffett's Bargain Shopping Spree * Pictures From the Berkshire Meeting * Burlington Northern Investors Approve Berkshire Deal * Berkshire Sells $8 Billion in Bonds * Berkshire Holders Approve 50-to-1 Stock Split ------------ For many, Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting is something like a Woodstock for capitalists. Thousands flock from around the globe to Omaha to listen to Berkshire's chief executive, Warren E. Buffett, expound on the world at large, and this year is no exception. DealBook has gathered some shots of the goings-on at the Berkshire meeting, including the lighter moments that Mr. Buffett is known to indulge in. (Chief among them, as always: playing his ukulele and snacking on frozen treats from Dairy Queen, one of his favorite repasts.) All photos below are credited to Rick Wilking/Reuters. Mr. Buffett takes a bite out of a Dairy Queen vanilla orange ice cream bar.Cartoon versions of Mr. Buffett and Berkshire's vice chairman, Charles Munger, take a ride on a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train cardboard sign at the annual meeting.Doris Buffett, Mr. Buffett's sister, examines a $595,000 diamond at Borsheim's, a jewelry retailer owned by Berkshire, on Friday.Mr. Buffett shows onlookers a model Burlington Northern train. Go to Full Coverage of Buffettpalooza 2010>> * Berkshire Posts $3.6 Billion 1st-Quarter Profit * Buffett's Bargain Shopping Spree * Burlington Northern Investors Approve Berkshire Deal * Berkshire Sells $8 Billion in Bonds * Berkshire Holders Approve 50-to-1 Stock Split ------------ SECOND SUNDAY PUZZLE - I mentioned in my previous post that solving is a personal experience. A lot depends on what you know. Brendan Emmett Quigley knows many things I don't, as I'm often reminded. He has a deep understanding of pop culture, and he's not afraid to fill the grid with questions like "1970s-'80s rock genre" and "1991 top 10 hit for Chris Isaak" and "Bygone N.Y.C. rock club." We've had that last one before. It was supposedly the birthplace of punk. Whose puzzle was it in? I'll give you one guess. No problem. We chip away at what we do know and make educated guesses on the rest. This, of course, is harder when they forget to fill in the black squares. I found this the most challenging diagramless in months, but your mileage will vary. It's still fair. That rock genre from the Age of Aquarius turns out to be HAIR METAL. I didn't know that before, but it makes sense from the time frame. I was lucky to remember that the "J.D. Salinger collection" was called NINE STORIES. You might recall titles like "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" or "For Esme -- with Love and Squalor." The "1960s civil rights org." is the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. BRANDI Chastain is the charismatic soccer player with that memorable winning penalty kick in the Women's World Cup final a decade ago. "Some bankers?" is a clever clue. Note the question mark. From here, you're on your own. Remember, as always, that diagramless puzzles take a little more work, so be patient. Use number logic and symmetry logic to help you out. Be more than usually willing to erase iffy answers. And you can always convert the file to a normal crossword in Across Lite if you truly give up or just want a standard puzzle to tackle. Not that B.E.Q. could ever write a standard puzzle. * Stop the Diagramless * The Diagramless Top 40 * Diagramless Desk Item * There Are Seven in a Diagramless * Diagramless Science Fiction Device ------------ On Friday I was on a panel at Bay Path College along with Somaly Mam, my friend and hero. Somaly is a Cambodian who was trafficked into a brothel as a little girl but managed to escape -- and then started an anti-trafficking organization to fight the brothels and help other girls escape. She has been extraordinarily courageous in keeping up the fight when the brothel-owners just want to kill her, and she seems so unbelievably poised when she speaks in English -- her fourth language -- before large audiences under a spotlight. But on Friday, I saw a reminder of how that past haunts her and anyone who went through such a trauma. To get to the stage, we took a freight elevator, and it was vaguely like a dark cage. That terrified Somaly, because it reminded her of the cages in which she had been punished and tortured when she was in the brothel. Many of the Cambodian brothels have underground rooms in which they beat and terrorize girls who are considered insufficiently cooperative. Just entering that elevator was enough to bring back those hideous memories of torture for Somaly, and it left her shaken and rattled. To me, that was a sobering reminder of just how traumatic those experiences are and how long-lasting the mental impact. Westerners who see the brothels in Cambodia or Malaysia or India or Pakistan see girls smiling and gesturing, and rarely appreciate the brutality that makes those operations work. To learn more about Somaly's heroic work, check out her website. But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that terrible abuses happen only on the other side of the world. Americans sometimes are willing to accept that girls are enslaved in Delhi, but can't imagine that it happens in New York. In truth, the abuses tend to be worse in Asia, but they certainly happen in America as well. My take is that the worst exploitation and mistreatment is often directed not at foreign women trafficked into the U.S. but rather at American teenage girls who flee abusive homes, end up at the bus station -- and then the only person there to "help" is a pimp. The Houston Chronicle has an article looking at a 13-year-old girl who was arrested for the crime of prostitution, while her pimp apparently wasn't even investigated. The article, by Dottie Lester, writes:Pending before the Texas Supreme Court is In the Matter of B.W., a case in which a 13-year-old child was found to have engaged in delinquent conduct for agreeing to have sex for money. She was found to be in need of rehabilitation and placed on probation for 18 months in the custody of juvenile probation officials. At the time B.W. was arrested by a Houston police officer, she was living with a "boyfriend" more than twice her age. According to briefs filed with the state Supreme Court, he was never investigated. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act states that any minor involved in commercial sex is a victim of trafficking and anyone prostituting a minor under 14 years of age can face a federal life sentence. To date, only B.W. has faced prosecution in this case. How is this possible? Alas, that happens far too often. There is a bizarre misperception that pimps are business partners of prostitutes, even though the pimps beat the girls, sometimes brand them with tattoos, and take every penny they earn. Yes, they sometimes manipulate the girls emotionally and pretend to be their boyfriends, but in no way is it a partnership. And the way to end this kind of exploitation is to arrest the pimps and throw them in prison, not to go after the girls as criminals. There's also some evidence that going after johns will help.So there we have it. Two reminders of human trafficking both far away and at home, and of the toll of modern slavery in the 21st century. * Your comments on the Poipet brothel column * Your comments on my Sunday column * Your comments on my slavery column * A Window Into Human Trafficking in Texas * Does Haiti's Earthquake Hurt Cambodia? ------------ The first question asked during Berkshire Hathaway's 2010 shareholder meeting was unsurprisingly about Goldman Sachs, which is under fire from the Securities and Exchange Commission for an alleged act of securities fraud. A bit more surprising is how strongly Berkshire's head, Warren E. Buffett, is defending the firm. (He told Bloomberg Television before the meeting that he backed Goldman's chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, "100 percent." Mr. Buffett said that he felt little sympathy for the firms the S.E.C. says were hurt by what the agency calls Goldman's lack of adequate disclosure. Of one firm, ABN Amro, Mr. Buffett said: "It's hard for me to get terribly sympathetic when a bank makes a dumb credit bet." What Mr. Buffett thinks about Goldman is something the investment community has been buzzing over for days. Berkshire has invested $5 billion in Goldman preferred shares, and Mr. Buffett is notoriously skeptical of Wall Street mores. One of the low points of Mr. Buffett's investing career is stepping in at Salomon Brothers when the firm was embroiled in a trading scandal: he had to temporarily assume Salomon's chairmanship and apologize to Congress. In the case of Goldman, however, Mr. Buffett and his chief lieutenant, Charles Munger, made it clear they're on the firm's side. Goldman and Berkshire have a long history, with Mr. Buffett relying on Goldman as his longtime investment bank. (He's has said that Byron D. Trott, a longtime Goldman banker who left to start his own shop, is one of the few Wall Street bankers he trusts.) According to DealBook's Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's one of three panelists asking questions at the meeting, Mr. Buffett essentially took Goldman's defense that everyone involved in the deal under scrutiny, Abacus, was a sophisticated investor fully capable of evaluating the risks in the subprime mortgage investment. Instead of needing to be told that a hedge fund manager who suggested which bonds should form the underpinnings of the Abacus collateralized debt obligation was also short the bonds, the investors should have relied on their own due diligence, Mr. Buffett said. "If I have to care who is on the other side of the trade, I shouldn't be insuring bonds," he said. Mr. Buffett added an implicit rebuke of a line of questioning raised by several senators during this week's Goldman hearings. An investment bank could very well be short the securities Berkshire is buying, and a buyer like Berkshire should be perfectly aware of that in any case. Mr. Munger added that were he on the S.E.C., he would not have voted to press charges. That isn't to say that Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger think Goldman is blameless here. Mr. Munger suggested that there was a difference between breaking the law and behaving unethically -- and that simply following the law shouldn't be the basis of a business's conduct. He added that many investment banks had taken on "scuzzy" customers that they shouldn't have. -- Michael J. de la Merced * Berkshire Execs Blame Turmoil on Bad Regulation * Buffett Says He Backs Goldman's Blankfein '100%' * Buffett's Bargain Shopping Spree * Buffett Assails Bank Tax and Praises Blankfein * Symetra Sets I.P.O. Terms, Buffett to Keep Shares ------------ 12:23 p.m. | Updated with many new contributions below. I've been catching up on my reading on deep-ocean drilling in trying to assess efforts to stanch what could be a months-long flow of oil from the pinprick in the Gulf of Mexico seafloor. The Economist has a superb history of deep-sea drilling (written before the drilling disaster) and Henry Fountain has written an excellent overview of the work aimed at capping the well that was uncorked by the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon rig. One naive, even dumb, question keeps coming to mind. Is it possible to seal such wells using unconventional means -- specifically controlled explosions? While covering the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, I wrote about some pretty exotic uses of explosives to attack buried targets. The Pentagon has all manner of powerful, but precise, munitions at its disposal, not to mention some of the brightest minds on the planet for gauging challenges involving hydraulics, geology and metallurgy. Given that President Obama has called on the Pentagon to help, I'm just wondering about ways to approach this deep-ocean leak by considering the basics, Feynman style. (9:12 p.m. | Updated Innocentive, the online clearinghouse for open innovation, has posted a call for solutions to the expanding environmental mess.) There are hundreds of talented oil-industry experts and government overseers working around the clock on this problem. Still, if the solution is left up to the industry, presumably it'll be hard to avoid a bias toward conventional efforts aimed at preserving the (sizable) investment in the well and away from any option that would seal it off but prevent its future use. (6:01 p.m. | Updated A Dot Earth reader noticed a newsletter report last year in which officials at Transocean, which owned the rig, said the company was having trouble with blowout preventers.) This is a "Grand Engineering Challenge" if ever there was one. Obviously you'd want to be sure an explosive solution didn't have the potential to exacerbate the leak. But with months of unabated oil flows coming, it seems worth asking the question, however naive. 1:19 p.m. | Updated An inventive neighbor, Sandy Saunders, just proposed a simple stopgap: Use an off-the-shelf large dome-like fabric structure over the seafloor zone with the leaks, with a hose to pump the accumulating buoyant oil to tankers. Here's an example. 1:48 p.m. | Updated The Harvard physicist Richard Wilson just emailed this note about an approach that capped a seabed well in 40 days: The problem is finding a 5-inch diameter pipe at the bottom of the seabed or below. One can get within 100 feet by dead reckoning. The method successfully used (in fixing the offshore well that caught fire off Brazil 10 years or so ago) was devised by a former student of mine, Dr. Arthur Kuckes. His company in Ithaca, N.Y., is "Vectormagnetics." (1) Drill a relief well as close as you can. Put Arthur's gadget down the pipe and send 20 amps of DC (possibly pulsed to code it) to run back to ground. (3) If the soil is uniform, there will be no longitudinal magnetic field in his device. (4) If there is an iron pipe nearby current will run to the iron pipe and change the magnetic field. (5) From this Artur deduces where the old oil well is, and pulls his equipment out and tells the relief well people how to adjust their drilling. (6) After perhaps 3 or 4 attempts, getting closer every time, the drill hits the old well and recovery commences. Brazil took 40 days. 2:07 p.m. | Updated Robert L. Hengel, an oil-industry engineer working at the interface of geology and engineering, sent this reaction: It's all about regaining control of the well, not preserving it. As you may have already discovered in your research, control means harnessing high pressure oil and gas to flow at a regulated rate or to be shut off completely. All wells must be controlled from their conception and through their productive life until they are plugged and abandoned (P&A). Control is maintained at the wellhead, a sophisticated valve assembly, which in the case of the Deepwater Horizon is stuck open and inoperable (loss of control). Regaining control can be accomplished either by restoring functionality to the existing wellhead or by drilling a relief well to penetrate the existing well, then plugging the well. With that said, an explosion would have to be of sufficient depth and magnitude to cause the well to cave in sufficiently to plug itself and stay plugged, or stay plugged long enough to drill the relief well. It will be interesting to see if the Department of Defense thinks they can do that. As the crisis deepens, I have to believe that BP is open to all suggestions which will stop their growing economic loss. May 2, 12:09 a.m. | Updated Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, sent this reaction, focused on the political context: Seafloor nuclear detonation is starting to sound surprisingly feasible and appropriate.... I never thought I would hear myself write that out loud. The environmental disaster unfolding before our eyes (close on the heels of coal mining disasters) has important long-term impacts in negative and positive ways on energy security, decarbonizing our energy systems, producing sufficiently abundant energy sources, maintaining economically robust energy prices, and protecting the environment. It's a complicated and slow-moving nightmare. Obama took a beating by environmentalists for pushing to open up offshore oil and gas production, and this disaster just exacerbates it; I wonder if the loss in credibility with environmentalists because of this spill is enough to substantially undermine future energy policy initiatives. At the same time, he gained credibility with oil and gas, and by not giving up on his pledges for offshore production, is increasing his industrial credibility, which might enhance his ability to enact future energy policy initiatives because he'll get less opposition from them downstream. This is all very fascinating. Obama looks like one of the losers in this, but in the end, I predict he'll be a winner because industry will "owe" him one, and environmentalists will come back around to support him. And, as we worry about offshore production, increased safety regulations might increase prices, which will make renewables more competitive. At the same time, bans on mountaintop removal mining will push coal producers underground, while underground mining will have steeper safety regulations, which will push the price of coal up, too. Consequently, renewables win again, too. Natural gas is also one of the winners because people see the oil spill on the news and blame oil, but are likely to forget natural gas' likely culpability in the original explosion, and therefore natural gas might emerge unscathed as the clean, "safe" and domestic fuel. Regardless, swift action is better than slow, decisive action. 12:06 p.m. | Updated Robert Bea at the University of California, Berkeley, noted some earlier uses of explosives to stop sub-sea blowouts: Luckily I have worked as a roughneck on several drill rigs and worked on some very large blowouts and spills (Bay Marchand, Mississippi, H2S well [large pdf], Santa Barbara, Piper Alpha, Petrobras P36) so I have some idea about what happened and is happening. Yes, explosives have been used to stop blowouts. To my knowledge, the Russians did this first. A shallow well is drilled to intersect the blowout well. Explosives are set in the bottom of the well next to the casing of the blowout well. The explosion collapses and seals the well. When I worked for Shell, we almost used this technique to stop the Mississippi H2S well blowout. This well produced one thirds of the U.S. production of H2S per day. Three cities had to be evacuated. 12:53 p.m. | Updated Kenneth Arnold, an engineer in Texas, sent this note: Right now the well is flowing at less than its full potential because of restricted access to the sea through the holes in the riser. These holes may cut out with time making the flow worse or they could plug with debris from the reservoir, lessening the flow. The first is more likely than the latter.An explosion would have to contain the flowing pressure of the reservoir without leakage. I think this is highly unlikely and an explosion can do more damage than help. * Leaked Memo Sees Bigger Oil Risk * Florida Democrat Seeks Offshore Oil Hiatus * Spill Response: Burn Baby Burn * Weighing Risks of Coastal Oil and Cleanups * The (Not So) Hidden Costs of Crude ------------ Ahead of Warren E. Buffett's Q.&A. with shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in Omaha, the biggest question on many people's minds was: how does the billionaire investor feel about Goldman Sachs? After all, Goldman has been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for Securities Fraud. And the Justice Department has begun a preliminary inquiry of its own. Since the S.E.C. filed suit against Goldman two weeks ago, the firm has lost $21 billion in market value. But in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Mr. Buffett -- who has $5 billion invested in Goldman -- said he backed the firm's chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, "100 percent." Here's more from Bloomberg:"He's done a great job running that firm," Buffett said today in Omaha, Nebraska in a Bloomberg Television interview before the shareholders meeting for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. "He's smart. He's high grade." Buffett became one of Goldman Sachs's most visible advocates amid public outrage over the bank's pay practices and conduct with customers. He backed Blankfein in January, saying the bank's leader since 2006 "has been the right man" for the job. Last month, Goldman Sachs was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and Blankfein, 55, was pilloried in Congress on April 27. The SEC said Goldman Sachs misled clients on the sale of assets tied to home loans as the housing market started to falter. The bank, which said the suit is unfounded, must weigh the risks of a legal battle against the benefits of a more immediate resolution as politicians vilify the firm as a symbol of the Wall Street excess that led to the collapse of the residential real estate market. Buffett said he will discuss the trade at the center of the regulator's suit later today at the meeting and "I will bet that of the 40,000 people in there, 39,900 of them have a misconception."Go to Article from Bloomberg News>> * Buffett's Bargain Shopping Spree * Buffett Assails Bank Tax and Praises Blankfein * Symetra Sets I.P.O. Terms, Buffett to Keep Shares * Buffett Said to Join Goldman Bid for Tax Credits * Warren Buffett Recalculates His Bets ------------ Good morning from Omaha! DealBook's Andrew Ross Sorkin is on the ground at the 2010 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, where Warren E. Buffett is expected to give his views on a wide array of topics. Among the issues he's expected to address are the state of the markets, Goldman Sachs's latest legal woes, and the proposed overhaul of financial regulation. (Follow the latest via Twitter below.) Andrew will be one of three journalists asking Mr. Buffett questions. Have something you want to ask the Oracle of Omaha? E-mail Andrew your question, or send him a Twitter message at @andrewrsorkin. * Buffett Says He Backs Goldman's Blankfein '100%' * Economy Is Improving Significantly, Buffett Says * Buffett Wants Grandfather Clause for Derivatives * Berkshire Buys Beer and Wine Distributor * Warren Buffett Rocks Out ------------ President Obama urged Congress Saturday to rewrite the rules governing campaign contributions in an effort to undo the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United case earlier this year. Warning of "potential corporate takeover of our elections" in his weekly national address, Mr. Obama called for a bill that would require companies, labor unions, trade associations and advocacy groups to reveal who is funding them and claim responsibility for any political advertisements they finance. "We've all seen groups with benign-seeming names sponsoring television commercials that make accusations and assertions designed to influence the public debate and sway voters' minds," Mr. Obama said, adding that Americans "have the right to know when some group like 'Citizens for a Better Future' is actually funded entirely by 'Corporations for Weaker Oversight.' " Mr. Obama has not been timid in doling out sharp criticism of the Court's decision, most notably during his State of the Union address. This is the second Saturday address he has devoted to the topic. Advisers told The Times's Sheryl Gay Stolberg that the issue has been on his mind as he prepares to nominate a new justice to the bench. (Speaking of the selection process, The Times's Adam Liptak looks at the possibility of Mr. Obama appointing someone who has never been a judge.) Mr. Obama was quick to align members opposed to the campaign finance bill Democrats introduced last week with big business. "Now, we can expect that these proposed changes will be met with heavy resistance from the special interests and their supporters in Congress," he said. G.O.P. Address: Election season is in full swing for Republicans. In the party's weekly address, Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan criticized all three of Mr. Obama's major legislative accomplishments -- the stimulus package, the health care law and the financial regulatory legislation now on the Senate floor -- the very bills that Democrats argue makes them the so-called "Results Party." "Washington's answer, 'trust us,' rings as hollow today as it did a year ago, and a year before that," Mr. Hoekstra said. [The address cannot be posted in video form here because of technical reasons.] "The one thing the American people wanted out of the 'stimulus' was jobs - it didn't happen.The one thing the American people wanted out of health care reform was lower costs - it didn't happen," he said, citing a government report that said health care costs would actually increase by .9 percent of Gross Domestic Product because the new law. "The American people want financial reforms that end the bailouts, don't kill jobs, and address the root causes of the financial crisis." Daily President: This morning, Mr. Obama delivers the commencement address at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Then, he returns to Washington to speak at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner -- Washington's most star-studded evening of the year. At some point in the next 48 hours, Mr. Obama will travel to the cite of a massive oil spill along the Gulf Coast. The Times's Helene Cooper notes that critics of the administration raised their eyebrows at Mr. Obama's weekend plans, which originally did not include a trip the region. Immigration Protests: Nationwide protesters will gather at rallies today to urge the government to pass a comprehensive immigration bill in the face of Arizona's tough new law. In Washington, demonstrators are congregating across from the White House at Lafayette Park demanding Mr. Obama to sign an executive order suspending future deportations until Congress passes immigration legislation. Not a single Republican has signed on to the blueprint Democrats unveiled earlier this week, saying the timing suggests that politics not policy are behind the renewed push, The Times's Julia Preston writes. Still, the language in the bill is far tougher than previous proposals and could be just as easily found in legislation authored by Republicans. Israel-Palestine Conflict: The United States will open a first round of diplomatic talks between Israelis and Palistinians next week -- called "proximity talks" because neither party will actually be in the same room -- in which the Obama administration's special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell, will ferry proposals back and forth between the two countries. In advance of the meeting, League of Arab States is expected to endorse the decision to return to the bargaining table, at a gathering today in Cairo. Embassy Tours: Thirty-five embassies around Washington will open their doors to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today * The Early Word: Immigration * The Early Word: Financial Fights * The Early Word: To the Floor? * The Early Word: Financial Forays * The Early Word: Wall Street Watch ------------ ... isn't nearly as severe as a casual reading of the news might suggest. Or more accurately: Spain's economy is a mess, with immense unemployment, but there has actually been remarkably little contagion so far from Greek concerns. It comes as a bit of a shock, actually, to discover that the interest rate on Spanish 10-years is only 4.03 percent; it's up about 25 basis points since Greece went pear-shaped, but that's not bad, considering. The point is that whatever else is going wrong -- and a lot is -- Spain is actually doing quite well in terms of maintaining fiscal credibility. ------------ As the debate over possible departures from the euro heats up, there seems to a lot of confusion over the possible uses of devaluation. The main argument I'm hearing goes like this: since Greece's debt is in euros, devaluing won't relieve the debt burden -- so it won't help. But that's missing the point. True, devaluation wouldn't reduce the debt burden. But it would reduce the macroeconomic costs of fiscal austerity. Think for a moment about Greece's predicament now, even if it were to default on its debt. It's running a huge primary deficit, so even if it were to stop paying any debt service it would be forced to slash spending and/or raise taxes, to the tune of 8 or 9 percent of GDP. This would have a massively contractionary effect on the Greek economy, leading to a surge in unemployment (and a further fall in revenues, making even more belt-tightening necessary). Now, if Greece had its own currency, it could try to offset this contraction with an expansionary monetary policy -- including a devaluation to gain export competitiveness. As long as it's in the euro, however, Greece can do nothing to limit the macroeconomic costs of fiscal contraction. And that's why a devaluation would help -- it wouldn't reduce the need for fiscal adjustment, but it would reduce the costs associated with fiscal adjustment. As I argued yesterday, this difference is an important reason why Britain, with a primary deficit as large as Greece's, isn't in anything like the same amount of trouble. Or to put it another way, exchange rate flexibility doesn't solve fiscal problems by itself -- but it makes solving such problems much easier. ------------ I was recently at Greene Acres Community Garden in Bedford-Stuyvesant, giving a group of enthusiastic gardeners a tour of edible weeds, when I couldn't help noticing a lovely patch of violets crouching along the edges of a soil bed. Like many of the city's flowering plants, including dandelions, cherry blossoms, and magnolias, wild violets appeared super-early this year. Though many folks were unaware that the violets were edible, this group of urban gardeners hungrily nibbled on the delicate flowers that I passed around. Violets, aka Viola sororia or papilionacea, can be found throughout the East Coast in fields and along roadsides, and across the five boroughs, in backyards, parking lots, and yes, even in former-brownstone plots of land now transformed into lush community gardens. Each spring, the delicate bluish-purple flowers emerge - shaped like butterflies on low-hanging heads, as if to conceal their white-and-orange-bearded center - on single stems among masses of heart-shaped leaves that uncurl fan-like from the center. Both leaves and flowers are edible, and make a fine addition to any salad. They can also, with sufficient care, be sugared and strewn atop a cake. Raw, the hearty greens have a slight peppery flavor, and can withstand even the heaviest-handed salad dressing pour, while the flowers are more nuanced. The first time I ate a violet blossom, it reminded me of the summer rain. The plant is high in Vitamin C, and I've seen references to it being beneficial for congestion, lung infections, skin irritations and even cancer. The flowers have a place in Greek mythology and literary symbolism, as the blossom that Zeus fed Io after turning her into a heifer to avoid Hera's wrath, and the flower referenced to in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" after poor Ophelia's drowning. Note: Violet rhizomes are poisonous, so avoid anything below the leaf-line. And beware of doppelgangers like dwarf or spring larkspur (Delphinium tricorne) and monkshood (Aconitum unicinatum), which have different shaped flowers that rise up multiply from a central stalk, and leaves shaped like they could be on a hemp flag. And no, your grandmother's African violets are not edible. Last year, I found violets growing in front of neighbors' stoops and friends' backyards in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, where they were flourishing in the full sun. I made a violet syrup to add to spring cocktails that my friends delighted in, but this time I thought I'd try my hand at sugaring the delicate blossom as a topping for a birthday cake. After gathering Viola sororia by the handful, I took them to the kitchen, where a 10-minute bath awaited them. I shook out a few trembling ants before gently pat-drying each blossom with a towel. Violets hang on individual stems so delicate they could be a line-drawing, and these proved to make fine handles as I painted the petals front-to-back with an egg-white wash, before giving the flower a little dunk in fine sugar. I opted for a spare look: more like a sugary highlight than a complete make-over. The results were instantly beautiful, but unfortunately for my cake, the flowers didn't make it past a day. The parts that weren't sugared shriveled up like sad grapes. Next time, I'll forget the flowery artifice and just dunk the whole blossom in. * Urban Forager | Wilds of the Rooftop * Urban Forager | Dandelion Wine? No, Jelly * Urban Forager | Don't Compost That Weed * Urban Forager | A Bitter Green Bouquet * Answers About Growing Indoor Plants, Part 3 ------------ Don't be fooled by the Chevelle screen-grab above: this week's classic ad features the 1964 Chevy Impala. The model has long been a favorite of lowrider aficionados like Marvin Shivnarain, profiled by Richard S. Chang in Sunday's Automobiles section. But well before its hydraulic renaissance, the Impala was Chevrolet's flagship sedan, with yearly sales of more than a million during the mid-1960s - including an all-time record of 1,074,925 units sold in 1965. Maybe Chevy didn't need much help from Madison Avenue, but this ad goes all-in regardless, introducing the full 1964 Chevrolet line of passenger cars: Corvette, Corvair, Chevy II, Chevelle (yes) and the full-size "Chevrolet Chevrolet," otherwise known as the Impala. And while its ode to the Impala's jet-smooth luxury may not be as catchy as "See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet," it still clocks in at more than two minutes - long enough to be pressed into a 45 and sold at Sam Goody. As the final few seconds of the clip suggest, Chevrolet was a ubiquitous television sponsor in the 1960s. This bonus ad, which appeared during a Chevy-sponsored episode of "Route 66," gives a seductive look the '64 Impala's interior. (Fuzzy dice not standard, it would appear.) * Golden Impala: A Case of Identity Theft * Beijing Auto Show: Chevrolet Volt MPV5 * New York Auto Show: 2011 Chevrolet Cruze * New York Auto Show: Test Driving the Chevy Volt * G.M. Previews the 40 M.P.G. 2011 Chevrolet Cruze Eco ------------ When we sent out the agenda for our annual gathering of open-book practitioners that will be held next week in St. Louis, we caused a bit of surprise and confusion with our choice for a keynote speaker. People keep calling us and asking, "Why Dick Gephardt?" Over the years, open-book management has certainly attracted interest from a variety of folks, from the anonymous director of a not-for-profit community theater to the likes of Warren Buffet. But I'll admit that we have rarely drawn interest from the world of politics, which is a shame. So, I understand why people might be asking that question. The answer is that Richard Gephardt, who served in the House of Representatives from 1977 until 2005 and ran for president in 1988 and 2004, has been a fan of open-book management for some time. In fact, his interest stems from his first visit to SRC in the 1980s. By that time, SRC had begun to be noticed for our operations, especially as they related to pro-worker practices, which Representative Gephardt had always supported. When he visited our facilities, though, he did more than just take the tour. He visited every department and actually talked to people. He showed that he truly cared what people were doing and why. It was also clear each time he returned that he was impressed with our approach, especially because it embraced the notions of transparency, open communications and employee ownership. In 1999, he wrote a book called, "An Even Better Place," in which he wrote about SRC and open-book management. He spent almost an entire chapter talking about how our society would benefit if everyone would start thinking more like owners. Open-book management, he wrote, "is an overall approach to corporate governance that treats the employees like co-owners of the business who have to make sacrifices and take on the burdens that any owner assumes. To put it another way, it treats workers like fellow-citizens in a democracy where everyone has a responsibility to participate in and contribute to a successful future." What's especially exciting these days about Mr. Gephardt's fondness for open-book management, however, is that after retiring from public life, he started a company called the Gephardt Group, a consulting firm based in Atlanta that focuses on "developing and promoting leading edge thought and best practices in the areas of labor management and labor relations." He has always been a fighter for the rights of workers and small businesses, and he's always understood the need for our country to maintain its manufacturing base as a way to create jobs. He has been criticized by some for his decision to leave politics for the for-profit world. He says he eventually decided that he could do more from the private sector to bring about the changes needed to keep America and its economy competitive. I saw this first hand because Mr. Gephardt asked me to be an adviser to his firm. And, in that capacity, I sat in on several meetings with his clients. One of the first visits I made with him was to Ford's headquarters in Detroit back in the fall of 2005. We went to make a presentation to the company's leadership team about open-book management. I distinctly remember the image of Mr. Gephardt leaning over the table and telling the Ford executives that to remain competitive in a global economy, they needed to make big changes -- the kind that can be brought about by opening the books and teaching everyone in the company financial literacy. It was clear to me, though, that the message fell on deaf ears. I remember feeling depressed as we entered the elevator after the meeting. My mood got worse as we descended. Every time the doors opened, the floors were dark and empty of people. It was clear that the company was downsizing right before our eyes. Not long after the meeting, however, Mr. Gephardt was asked to head up the search for new leadership at Ford, which led to the hiring of Alan Mulally as chief executive. More recently, Mr. Gephardt was asked to serve on the board of directors. Given how the company's fortunes have changed since that time, it will be interesting to see how things continue to evolve at Ford. I know, for instance, that he has been revisiting the idea of introducing principles like employee engagement, high-performance workplaces and business literacy with Mr. Mulally and the rest of Ford's executive team -- topics that could become bigger issues when the company negotiates a new contract with its union next year. That's also why I'm eager to hear what Mr. Gephardt has to say to the 120 or so companies that will be attending our gathering. We'll let you know. By the way, the PBS NewsHour did a segment on SRC the other night. It talks about the very same issues -- how to get your employees engaged. * Maybe Ford Does Have a Better Idea