December 8, 2005

David Pogue column on Sonyh's $1,000 R1 digital camera; photo (M)

General Motors is holding discussions with Kirk Kerkorian's investment firm Tracinda about board representation for his company; how many seats Tracinda is seeking is unclear; one seat most likely will go to Jerome B York, longtime adviser to Kerkorian and former chief financial officer of Chrysler Corp; GM is insisting that Kerkorian agree that he will not increase his stake in company before it agrees to board representation (M)

Violence on the Final Day of Egypt's Election Egyptians fled tear gas fired by policemen at a voting site in Zagazig. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood gained parliamentary seats, raising the question whether political success will moderate its image. Page A18. New Plan to Rebuild Iraq President Bush said the strategy for reconstruction was shifting to smaller projects, while he conceded that early efforts had been riddled with mistakes. The shift in rebuilding is already drawing Iraqis from the insurgency, he said. PAGE A22 A Winter Coat of Chocolate Mallomars, unavailable during the warmer months, are back on supermarket shelves. Connoisseurs are overjoyed. PAGE B1 U.S. Resists Emissions Curbs The Bush administration has maintained its opposition to new targets for cutting emissions linked to global warming. PAGE A3 House Votes to Block Tax Rise The House passed a bill that would block an increase in the alternative minimum tax for one year at a cost of $30 billion. PAGE A33 Ethics Refresher Suggested J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, raised the prospect of ethics training for lawmakers. PAGE A30

EVER since the water rose over Andrea Harris's white bungalow on Elmer Street during Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Harris has been keeping a scrapbook. It holds three daily prayers, news clippings, the business cards of people who have helped her and angry letters to those who have not -- including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she said took two months to deliver trailers. Until then, she and her neighbors lived in tents. Now her scrapbook is filling with new worries. At a town meeting Nov. 30, Ms. Harris, 43, and her neighbors had gotten their first glimpse of new plans for Biloxi, developed by a state commission organized by Gov. Haley Barbour and a group of architects known as the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Bruce S Sherman, co-founder of Private Capital Management, is driving force behind Knight Ridder's decision to put itself up for auction; at time when Wall Street views newspapers as ailing industry, Sherman has made $4 billion bet that newspapers will survive Internet onslaught; Sherman's clients own large chunks of nine newspaper companies, including 19 percent of Knight Ridder, 15 percent of New York Times Co and 7 percent of Gannett, among others; Sherman will get better sense of whether his huge investment is prescient or wrongheaded at end of week, when expressions of interest in Knight Ridder come due; Sherman's track record has been stellar, but Private Capital's performance was down by 0.06 percent at end of September, depressed in part by newspaper companies, with all nine of them showing declines; shares in six of those companies have fallen at least 14 percent this year; graph; photos (M)