November 26, 2005

Leesa Martin never considered President Bush a great leader, but she voted for him a year ago because she admired how he handled the terrorist attacks of 2001. Then came the past summer, when the death toll from the war in Iraq hit this state particularly hard: 16 marines from the same battalion killed in one week. She thought the federal government should have acted faster to help after Hurricane Katrina. She was baffled by the president's nomination of Harriet E. Miers, a woman she considered unqualified for the Supreme Court, and disappointed when he did not nominate another woman after Ms. Miers withdrew.

Texas University defeats Texas A&M University, 40-29; photo (M)/

At 12:05 a.m. yesterday, moments into the earliest store opening on the busiest shopping day of the year, the beleaguered employees at the CompUSA on 57th Street in Manhattan laid down some ground rules: no more pushing and no more grabbing deeply discounted merchandise out of the hands of other customers. ''Civilized! Civilized!'' implored one employee, as he dumped a cardboard box full of computer equipment into the outstretched hands of two dozen shoppers, who nevertheless lunged at one another to secure some of the limited supply of wireless adapters and Internet cards.

When Michelle Dubé, a golf instructor in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., finishes a lesson, she whips out her BlackBerry wireless device -- to schedule the next appointment, sure, but also to swipe the student's credit card for payment right there on the driving range. It takes only a few seconds, and it saves Ms. Dubé a trip to the bank to deposit a check or a fistful of cash. Plus, her clients like it. ''They're just surprised -- they're like, 'Wow, you're a techno-wizard,' '' she said.

US ski team prepares for World Cup season; photo (M)

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday appointed a task force of city officials to determine why a giant helium balloon swung wildly in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday -- knocking a light fixture onto two sisters -- and to examine whether safety procedures need to be revamped for future parades. The task force will work with Macy's ''to determine if proper procedures were followed'' and to recommend any changes that are needed, the mayor said. In its composition and purpose, the panel is nearly identical to one convened after a similar accident in 1997.

New York is adopting California's ambitious new regulations aimed at cutting automotive emissions of global warming gases, touching off a battle over rules that would sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions while forcing the auto industry to make vehicles more energy efficient over the next decade. The rules, passed this month by a unanimous vote of the State Environmental Board, are expected to be adopted across the Northeast and the West Coast. But the auto industry has already moved to block the rules in New York State, and plans to battle them in every other state that follows suit.

North Dakota University is center of infighting among those on campus and in community who want to do away with Indian mascot, nickname and imagery and those who want to retain it; photos (M)

New York Mets general manager Omar Minaya hopes off-season

After Tennessee tested its eighth-grade students in math this year, state officials at a jubilant news conference called the results a ''cause for celebration.'' Eighty-seven percent of students performed at or above the proficiency level. But when the federal government made public the findings of its own tests last month, the results were startlingly different: only 21 percent of Tennessee's eighth graders were considered proficient in math.

NIDHA MUBDI needed a kidney and Derek Ivery had one to spare. It was that simple, that complex. Now they lay in adjacent operating rooms, being prepped for a transcendent transfer of ownership. The two met three years ago at Queens College, and a platonic friendship developed. Mr. Ivery learned that Ms. Mubdi had prevailed in a battle with leukemia, but only after a bone marrow transplant and at the cost of her kidneys. Three times a week she endured a taxing dialysis treatment that would be part of her life for the rest of her life, unless she found a kidney donor.

A toxic 50-mile band of contaminated river water slowly washed through this frigid provincial capital on Friday, leaving schools and many businesses closed, forcing millions of people to spend a third straight day without running water and raising fears of a long-term environmental disaster. Yet a local newspaper seemed just as concerned about a disaster that did not happen. ''There Will Not Be an Earthquake in Harbin,'' promised a large front-page headline in The Modern Evening Times.