November 28, 2005

A Queens bakery worker was killed yesterday morning when a man whom his family described as a friend and former co-worker threw him into the path of an oncoming subway train during a fight, the police said. The killing occurred just before 5 a.m., several hours after the victim, Edison Guzman, 22, of Richmond Hill, had finished his shift at the bakery, his relatives said.

The Autobiography of Donovan The Hurdy Gurdy Man By Donovan Leitch. Illustrated. 287 pages. St. Martin's Press. $24.95. In his prime, the astral singer-songwriter Donovan appeared to take a serene view of show business and its cutthroat ways. Not anymore. Nowadays, Donovan would like you to know that he never received proper credit for Flower Power, World Music, New Age Music, the boxed-set album package, using LSD and the lyric ''Love, Love, Love'' before the Beatles did and playing folk-rock five months before Bob Dylan wielded an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

George Vecsey Sports of The Times column discusses New York Giants kicker Jay Feely, who apologized after missing three field-goal attempts in loss to Seattle Seahawks; photo (M)

Prospect of NBC Universal's acquisition of live-action film business of its longtime partner DreamWorks SKG prompts speculation about extent of Steven Spielberg's role in NBC Universal-owned Dream Works; insiders have privately called Spielberg's involvement an essential reason for any buyer's interest in DreamWorks; Spielberg has signaled that he wants to working with DreamWorks while remaining free to work with other studios; NBC Universal will also have to accept that when Spielberg works there, he will insist on pricing levels he has established in recent years; photos (M)

Kazushige Goto, research associate at Texas Advanced Computing Center at University of Texas in Austin, has become legend in world of supercomputing by single-handedly producing at his keyboard programs that run world's fastest computers and doing it faster than powerful automated systems and entire teams of software developers; value of his work goes far beyond setting speed records because Goto's programs can more efficiently solve complex linear equations, thus offering better solutions in virtually every computational science and engineering problem; photo (M)

The news that anonymous donors had promised the Yale School of Music $100 million came too late for Stephanie Teply, a violinist who graduated from the school with a master of music degree in 2003. The gift, announced this month, will enable the school to offer free tuition to all students starting next year. Ms. Teply, like almost half of the school's current roster of 211 students, had to take out sizable loans to finance her musical education. This year, tuition at the school costs $23,750. Ms. Teply, 27, who earned her bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University, has accumulated more than $60,000 in student loans, most of it for Yale.

John F. Regan had been out on bail for a year when a concerned photo clerk at the Walgreens on West Main Street called the police earlier this fall. ''He says, 'I'm getting all these pictures developed by this guy John Regan and they're of all these women,' '' said Sgt. Chris Corbett of the Waterbury police. ''He thought it was odd, because the pictures didn't add up. They were like surveillance photos. These are pictures of women getting out of their cars in a parking lot, going into a store, going into a bank.'' The clerk had another reason to be suspicious: He knew Mr. Regan's name and face.

The Gowanus Canal often stinks and is almost always spotted with slicks of oil. The streets alongside it are practically deserted, the silence broken by the rumble of concrete mixers and oil tankers or the screech of buzz saws. Graffiti abounds, and no one would use the word harmonious for the landscape, where ramshackle wood-frame and brick row houses are tucked higgledy-piggledy among factories, warehouses and two housing projects.

Trailers for the HBO film ''Yesterday'' are both true and totally misleading. Blurbs describing ''the transcendent power'' of one woman's ''courage and compassion'' conjure ''Oprah Winfrey Presents'' or worse, the movie ''Beaches.'' And while ''Yesterday'' is, in fact, a tribute to the transcendent power of one rural South African woman who confronts H.I.V. with courage and compassion, it is more than that. ''Yesterday'' is proof that even the saddest stories can be told simply, with intelligence and grace and without falling into mawkish bathos. It also happens to be beautifully made. The story rolls out like the endless dirt road that awaits its heroine on her circular trek between village and clinic. The vast African sky fills the screen, ending in the sculptured mountainscape of a remote horizon across the veld. The numinous beauty of that timeless, empty Eden is marred by only one thing: a string of rusty, sharp-toothed barbed wire that constricts the people within.

Service Employees International Union obtains majority support in one of biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting signatures of 5,000 Houston janitors; labor leaders see it as model, especially with experts saying unions face slow death unless they can organize private-sector workers; SEIU used several unusual tactics, including lining up support of religious leaders, pension funds and Houston Mayor Bill White; effort may embolden other unions to try to organize in South, although many companies will continue to fight unionization and many workers still shy away from unions; success comes as percentage of private-sector workers in unions is at 7.9 percent, lowest rate in more than century; some Houston business leaders oppose drive, saying it may hurt business with its pledge of higher wages; even if union is recognized, it faces hurdle in negotiating contract that delivers hoped-for improvement in wages and benefits; effort to unionize workers in 1980's in Houston by AFL-CIO recalled; photo (M)

Pittsburgh Steelers and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger prepare to face Indianapolis Colts; photos (M)2

Seattle Seahawks defeat New York Giants, 24-21, in overtime; photos (M)5