December 30, 2005

It is not clear what prompted Selina Akther to move toward a window of her fifth-floor apartment in Queens, the police said. Her two children were sleeping and her husband was on a phone call to Bangladesh in another room, so they did not see the stray bullet that crashed through the closed window and hit her in her right eye, leaving her an unintended homicide victim. It was shortly before midnight on Wednesday when a man in the street below pulled the trigger of a 9-millimeter handgun at least five times, the police said. It was a rare violent occurrence in a precinct that encompasses the residential Briarwood neighborhood where Ms. Akther, who was 28, had lived with her family for more than two years.

Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column discusses 2005 year in sports (M)2

Tiger Woods turns 30 years old, and is eight majors away from tying Jack Nicklaus for most wins; photos (M)2

In theory, what happened to 14-year-old Sibongile in this hilly, crowded township outside Durban in November could not happen today -- at least, not legally. On a broiling Saturday morning, as more than a dozen women looked on, Sibongile joined 56 other Zulu girls outside a red-and-white striped tent. One by one, they lay on a straw mat beneath the tent; one by one, they received a cursory inspection of their genitals by a woman in a ceremonial beaded hat. As the inspector pronounced judgment on the state of each girl's hymen -- ''virgin,'' ''nice,'' ''perfect'' -- each departed to the excited trilling of the women who were observers.

THERE is a long-running game involving Wall Street and the Internal Revenue Service. Wall Street figures out ways for investors to get cash without paying taxes. The government eventually gets upset and changes the rules. Such rule changes do not especially bother Wall Street, because brokerage firms can then look for ways around the new rules.