August 9, 2005

If influenza ever starts sweeping the globe, as many experts say it will, we will all be depending on Dr. Margaret F.C. Chan, the World Health Organization's new chief of pandemic influenza, to help stop it. Dr. Chan, chatty, affable and media savvy, first drew public attention when, as director of the Hong Kong health department, she boldly directed its response to two major disease outbreaks that threatened the world's health and economy.

Delphi chief executive Robert S Miller says company might seek bankruptcy protection if it does not considerably reduce its labor costs, development that could have severe consequences for industry and it workers; aims his comments at United Automobile Workers, company's largest labor union, and General Motors, its former parent; Delphi says it lost $338 million in second quarter compared with profit of $143 million year earlier; auto supplier Visteon, which was spun off from Ford Motor Co, says it lost $1.2 billion in most recent quarter compared with profit of $24 million in period year ago; photo (M)

The nation is in the grip of what looks like a terrifying melanoma epidemic: melanoma is being diagnosed at more than double the rate it was in 1986, increasing faster than any other major cancer. But why the numbers are increasing is a contentious subject, so touchy that one dermatologist called it ''the third rail of dermatology.''

An H.I.V.-positive man admitted yesterday that he tried to kill four police detectives by spitting saliva and blood in their faces at a Harlem police station in 2003, the authorities said. He also admitted to biting a psychiatric orderly a year later at a hospital where he was held after his arrest. Jury selection was to begin today in the trial of the man, Robert Murray, 32, but he abruptly accepted a plea deal, in which he agreed to admit his guilt in five counts of second-degree attempted murder, in exchange for a 13-year prison sentence.

Article on 1971 antiwar documentary Winter Soldier, which has been shown for decades on college campuses and which will have its first significant theatrical release in US beginning on August 12 at Film Society of Lincoln Center; photo (M)