August 13, 2005

First Lt. Taysha Deaton of the Louisiana National Guard went to war expecting a gritty yearlong deployment of sand, heat and duress, but ended up spending her nights in a king-size bed beneath imported sheets and a fluffy down comforter. She bought the bed from a departing soldier to replace the twin-size metal frame that came with her air-conditioned trailer on this base in western Baghdad. She also acquired a refrigerator, television, cellphone, microwave oven, boom box and DVD player, and signed up for a high-speed Internet connection.

Faced with a court order and unyielding demands from the families of victims, the city of New York yesterday opened part of its archive of records from Sept. 11, releasing a digital avalanche of oral histories, dispatchers' tapes and phone logs so vast that they took up 23 compact discs. For the first time, about 200 accounts of emergency medical technicians, paramedics and their supervisors were made public, revealing new dimensions of a day and an emergency response that had already seemed familiar.

In his three years running Time Warner, Richard D. Parsons has already faced down tougher challenges than Carl C. Icahn, the former corporate raider who now toils as a corporate crusader. Yet a nascent plan by Mr. Icahn to rally shareholders and push for more drastic changes at Time Warner puts Mr. Parson's management and political skills to the test, and raises the question of what he should do differently, if anything, to get investors excited about the company's listless stock. Can Mr. Parsons solve the puzzle of how to restore investor excitement in not just his own company but an entire industry that is out of favor?

Could they have been subliminal harbingers of the city's slenderizing campaign? Is it just coincidence that in the summer that New York City went to war against trans fats, a new generation of ''Walk/Don't Walk'' icons began appearing around Columbus Circle with a noticeably skinnier walking man and an almost emaciated red hand?

Two faces of a franchise are broken. Mike Cameron, the life of the Mets' clubhouse, had surgery Friday night to repair multiple facial fractures. Carlos Beltran, the future of the Mets' organization, has a less severe facial fracture. They each had a concussion and spent the day at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif.