February 13, 2005

New York City health officials make first public report of rare and potentially more aggressive new strain of HIV; experts worry that combination of resistance to nearly all anti-retroviral drugs and swift progression to full-fledged AIDS could signal new, more menacing kind of infection; officials have long warned that people have developed false sense that AIDS no longer poses significant threat since development of anti-retroviral drugs in 1990's; scientists say that more testing is necessary to be certain about extent of threat; photos (M)

Coping column about discussion with 13 privileged, socially precocious teenagers about drug habits at their private schools (M)

Alcor Life Extension Foundation, small nonprofit company in Scottsdale, Ariz, has 67 bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen and awaiting medical breakthroughs that will enable them to be thawed and treated for whatever killed them; head and trunk of Ted Williams is most famous 'patient'; Alcor executives are convinced that cryonics will catch on someday and are stepping up marketing; nearly all future frozens buy life insurance policies to cover their fees and designate company as beneficiary; photos (L)

Gretchen Morgenson column deplores lack of interest among institutional investors in devising fair method of distributing $225 million in fund established by Computer Associates International to compensate shareholders harmed by accounting improprieties at company (M)

Pico Iyer reviews book In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue; photos (M)