October 8, 2005

A Brooklyn landlord found a dead woman stuffed inside a tenant's refrigerator early yesterday, the police said. In the same apartment, under a pile of laundry, investigators discovered a second dead woman, the police said. The police identified one of the women as Ashante Mitchell, 19 years old. They did not release the second woman's name but said she was 47.

THE King of the Sea reigns from the basement of one of those spooky Sunset Park warehouses off the Gowanus Expressway. Follow the rutted road, cross the abandoned train tracks, pass the long-closed strip club, and descend a flight of stairs for your audience with perhaps the humblest monarch in all of Brooklyn. No need to bow. And you may also address his highness as Mr. Tuna, or just Moshe. Moshe Freund.

Yankees Fall Again; Red Sox Fall Out The Los Angeles Angels drubbed the Yankees, 11-7, to take a two-games-to-one lead in their best-of-five playoff series. The Chicago White Sox, with stellar relief pitching by Orlando Hernández, left, completed a playoff sweep of the defending champion Boston Red Sox in a 5-3 victory at Fenway Park. SPORTSSATURDAY, PAGE D1 Ex-Presidents Raise Millions The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund has collected $108 million so far. But the two ex-presidents are not clear on where the money will go. PAGE A13 Zimbabwe Arrests Peddlers Against a backdrop of mounting economic collapse, the police in Zimbabwe say they have arrested nearly 15,000 street merchants. PAGE A3 Justice Candidate Withdraws President Bush's pick for the second-ranking position at the Justice Department abruptly withdrew his nomination. PAGE A12 35,000 Jobs Lost Last Month Although 35,000 jobs were lost in September, the modest drop seemed to underscore the economy's strength. BUSINESS DAY, PAGE C1 THIS WEEKEND T: Design The New York Times Style Magazine focuses on how to make the best use of space at home, from a cleverly organized New York studio apartment to a living room imagined by three different designers. Lament for a Lost City The great American cities of the early 20th century were built by architects, yes, but also by engineers. Their feats in New Orleans and elsewhere laid the foundation for urban visions that have been abandoned, Nicolai Ouroussoff writes. ARTS & LEISURE

Prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months thanks to a savage price war. Is this then the time to buy a photo printer for your home? After all, for about $200 you can get the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 8250 that in just 14 seconds spits out a photo that equals the quality of those coming back from the photo finisher in an hour. For the same price, Canon's iP6600D prints a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in 46 seconds, but also prints on both sides of dual-side photo paper.

Merck's defense in the second Vioxx lawsuit to reach trial sustained a serious blow yesterday when the New Jersey judge overseeing the case threw out testimony from the company's first witness and then shouted down a defense lawyer who tried to protest the decision. ''Sit down, Ms. Sullivan! Sit down!'' Judge Carol E. Higbee shouted at Diane Sullivan, a lawyer who represents Merck, after deciding to disallow the testimony given on Thursday by Dr. Briggs Morrison, a Merck scientist.

The haunting, gray skies over Fenway Park when Friday's game began matched the pensive mood of the Red Sox fans that flocked here in hopes that it would not be the final time. The Red Sox had to win to keep their season breathing, to have a chance of keeping the magic of 2004 alive for at least another day. But the magic faded for this fragile team and this immediately despondent city as the Chicago White Sox defeated Boston, 5-3, to sweep their American League division series in three games and march into the A.L. Championship Series. One year after the Red Sox won a World Series title and forever dulled the chants of ''1918,'' their hopes died against a team that is chasing its own ignominious past.

WHAT can you say about a baseball team that died? That it was exciting. And talented. And resourceful. That it beat the Angels and the Yankees and the Cardinals. But not the White Sox. That it was loved by an entire region. (With apologies to Erich Segal, the author of ''Love Story.'')

It seems nearly everyone was caught off guard the day John DeStefano Jr., the Democratic mayor of this city and a candidate for governor, said he wanted to allow thousands of illegal immigrants here to apply for new municipal identification cards. The reaction, from pleasant surprise and requests for applications to immediate outrage on radio talk shows, has been loud and persistent among those engaged with the increasingly tender issue of how illegal immigration is affecting smaller cities across the country. And for at least a little while from the mayor's office, there also seemed to be a reversal.

A vast industry of real estate middlemen has sprouted recently, riding the ups and downs of the mortgage market, and in many cases, accumulating great wealth in the process. Mortgage brokers, virtually nonexistent 25 years ago, now number 400,000 workers at more than 50,000 firms. They are scrappy entrepreneurs and sales representatives who match up borrowers and lenders on roughly 7 out of 10 mortgages. This year, they will collect some $33 billion from their share of an estimated $2.8 trillion in home mortgages.

A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history. A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to reach the United States within ''a few months or even weeks.''

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, whom the Bush administration tried but failed to remove from his job just months ago. The award was a vindication of a man and an agency long at odds with President Bush and his administration over how to confront Iraq and Iran. It could strengthen the agency's position as conflicts loom over preventing Iran from obtaining fuel it could use for nuclear weapons and disarming North Korea.

L'AFFAIRE Cyberonics began a week ago Tuesday. That evening, Cyberonics, a small Houston-based medical device maker, held an invitation-only educational program for psychiatrists. The company was in the process of introducing its new product, an implantable device for people who suffer from treatment-resistant depression. It was using the event, held simultaneously in 48 cities, to recruit psychiatrists to the cause. Just about everything about the new device, called the VNS Therapy System, is steeped in controversy. (VNS stands for vagus nerve stimulator.) The data about its effectiveness is muddy. The Food and Drug Administration initially declined to approve it for commercial use, then changed its mind and signed off on it in July. It is expensive -- about $15,000 -- and nobody knows whether health insurers will be willing to reimburse depression patients who want to try it. Or whether psychiatrists will support it. For Cyberonics, which has only one other product on the market (a similar device for epilepsy sufferers), it is a huge roll of the dice. If the VNS Therapy System fails in the marketplace, it will be a disaster for the company -- and its stock price.