May 31, 2005

IT is taken for granted in New York that if you need government action for a big project, you can count on little happening until maybe your grandchildren are on Social Security. If then. Like many statements, this one is accurate only in part. Often, nothing is built even when the project is small.

IF the National League East championship were decided this season in a round-robin tournament, with the division's five teams playing only among themselves, they might not determine a winner. Sure, the Atlanta Braves would probably win, just as they win every year no matter who plays whom, but an interesting dynamic is at work in the division. In the intradivision games played in the first two months of the season, different teams have established advantages over other teams.

IT is taken for granted in New York that if you need government action for a big project, you can count on little happening until maybe your grandchildren are on Social Security. If then. Like many statements, this one is accurate only in part. Often, nothing is built even when the project is small.

Pope Benedict XVI endorses call by Italian bishops for boycott of referendum in Italy on medically assisted fertility; referendum seeks to overturn key provisions in most restrictive law on medically assisted fertility in Europe; law, passed last year, bans donations of sperm and eggs, defines life as beginning at conception, and allows fertility treatment only to married heterosexual couples; effort to roll back many provisions is shaping up as important battleground for Roman Catholic Church, energized by new pope with strong views on social issues; many in Italy, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, support law and church's engagement to protect it; others worry that church is making disturbing intrusion into politics; photos (M)

Voice Claiming to Be Zarqawi's Calls Wounds Minor In a 17-minute audio message addressed to Osama bin Laden, a man claiming to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the United States' most wanted man in Iraq, said that his wounds were slight and that he was still in Iraq. PAGE A9 Girl, 11, Killed; Girl, 9, Held An argument over a ball at a Brooklyn apartment led a 9-year-old girl to take a steak knife and fatally stab another girl, who was 11, the police said, adding that no one in the New York Police Department could remember anyone so young being implicated in such an act. PAGE B1 Tasmanian Devils in Danger Tasmanian devils may be headed for extinction in the wild because of a mysterious malady that has killed nearly half of these marsupials, which are found only in Tasmania. SCIENCE TIMES, PAGE F1 More Details in Terror Case Eight days before their arrests on a conspiracy charge, a doctor and a musician went to an apartment in the Bronx and swore allegiance to Al Qaeda, according to papers unsealed in federal court. PAGE B1 Super 8 Blues Want to send experimental filmmakers to the barricades? Then take their Super 8 Kodachrome away. After Kodak announced it would stop making the film, aficionados began trying to save it. THE ARTS, PAGE E1 The Science of Crazy in Love For the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of a phenomenon that can look for all the world like mental illness: new love. SCIENCE TIMES, PAGE F1