September 17, 2005

A new analysis of voting in Tuesday's Democratic mayoral primary that was released last night showed Fernando Ferrer, who finished first, gaining just enough votes to prevent a runoff with the runner-up, Congressman Anthony D. Weiner. Earlier in the day, Mr. Weiner filed notice with the city's Board of Elections that he would decline to appear on the ballot for such a contest, whether or not Mr. Ferrer finishes with the 40 percent required to avert a runoff.

Stan and Gloria Wakefield are no fools. They built their three-bedroom house 12 years ago in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., an oceanside resort community dotted with golf courses and picturesque inland waterways. The real estate market in the area, near Jacksonville, took off and the house, overlooking lagoons, rose in value to nearly $1 million. ''This house has appreciated almost obscenely, '' said Mr. Wakefield, a retired naval intelligence officer. What the Wakefields did next should scare real estate agents everywhere.

The cellphone, which already plays music, sends and receives e-mail and takes pictures, is adding a steamier offering: pornography. With the advent of advanced cellular networks that deliver full-motion video from the Internet -- and the latest wave of phones featuring larger screens with bright color -- the pornography industry is eyeing the cellphone, like the videocassette recorder before it, as a lucrative new vehicle for distribution.

''If there is a hell I will be there for eternity.'' So reads a passage in the six-page ''suicide note and confession'' written by Daniel E. Marino, chief financial officer of the Bayou Group, a hedge fund firm in Stamford, Conn., that was accused by federal prosecutors on Sept. 1 of conducting a $300 million fraud. The note, whose contents were confirmed by two officials who have seen it, answers in sometimes gripping detail the questions that have consumed Bayou's investors since the fund's problems exploded into view one month ago.

The Palmetto Apartments, a cluster of two-story buildings where 120 low-income families lived before Hurricane Katrina, is a grim sight. By now, the water, which had been more than six feet deep in the buildings, has retreated. Left behind are battered walls, mud-caked rooms, warped wood floors and mold climbing toward the ceilings. The grounds, still swampy, smell like a fetid barnyard. The term dead loss comes to mind. But to Quentin Dastugue, the chief executive of a large New Orleans real estate company that owns, manages or leases more than a dozen major properties in the city -- including pricey condominiums at the edge of the French Quarter and downtown luxury real estate space -- reviving this badly damaged affordable housing project is a priority.