January 1, 2006

AFTER a few too many flutes of Champagne and a long night in a haze of crowded bars, another round of drinks may be the last thing running through hangover-clouded minds this morning. But once the fog clears, at least one neighborhood fixture in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, is hoping for a second look. The bar, at Court Street and Fourth Place and now known as P. J. Hanley's, opened in 1881, selling stiff drinks to workingmen who wanted to get drunk fast. For its first century, and a couple of decades more, even as the faces changed, the broad-shouldered toughness of the docks nearby was a constant. But with demographic changes and a new owner at the helm, the old bar finds itself in a tricky and unfamiliar position: It must attract new customers, ideally without driving away the old ones.

IT was months before the cameras were set to roll on one of 20th Century Fox's most ambitious projects for 2005, a $140 million historic epic about the Crusades by the director Ridley Scott. And still there was no one to play the leading role of Balian. Mr. Scott had at first envisioned Russell Crowe, the scowling, muscled star of his ''Gladiator'' hit, to play the role of a blacksmith and reluctant Crusader in the Holy Land. But Mr. Crowe had other projects on his slate, and would not alter them to fit the director's timetable.

Bobby Grier, first black player

It may seem corny, but Faye Marie Trapani, 28, a second-year M.B.A. student at Baruch College in New York, says she is proud of her school's slogan: The American Dream Still Works. She sees its evidence in the people she encounters at the Executive-Student Partnership, a mentoring program that matches Baruch alumni with students seeking jobs. ''A lot of them came from nothing; they were poor kids from the city, who couldn't afford tuition,'' Ms. Trapani said.

JUST north of this city, you can climb to the top of a bluff overlooking part of the dark concrete barrier that is slowly snaking its way northward along the West Bank. For now, it stops abruptly in a cloud of construction dust at a makeshift checkpoint a few hundred yards from here. But at dusk, its future path is outlined by a necklace of lights. Following routes traveled by Israelis, the lights turn eastward, to trace the contours of barren hills before coiling tightly around the Kochav Yaakov settlement. The surrounding territory, inhabited by Palestinians, is enveloped in darkness.

Pharmacists warn that beneficiaries of new government-subsidized Medicare drug plan may initially experience delays and frustration as program begins today; problems may include lack of plastic identification cards, people inadvertently assigned to plans far from their homes and participants unaware that participation may cause their automatic ejection from their health maintenance organization; new coverage is available to all 42 million Medicare beneficiaries regardless of their incomes; photos; chart (L)

SAME stuff, different year. That's one way to look at 2005, the fourth consecutive year in which corporate chicanery loomed large. But while business titans' transgressions may have lacked creativity last year -- there was the usual hubris, greed and accounting tricks to prop up stock prices -- at least the cast of ''Scandalot 2005'' involved a few new characters.

YOUR real estate broker can find you the right home, the right buyer, the right mortgage broker, the right contractor and the right architect. But how about Mr. or Ms. Right? Ali Kleeblatt would say yes. Her real estate agent, David Dubin of the Corcoran Group, introduced Ms. Kleeblatt, a 30-year-old psychologist, to her future fiancé, Brad Hoenig, in the spring of 2004.

BYRON BELL strode into the apartment, an architect with a mission. Sticking out of his bulging black nylon bag on rollers -- was he thinking of moving in? -- were several rolls of yellow tracing paper, one of which he would unfurl and place over a floor plan of the eight-room West Side apartment that he had enlarged from an online real estate listing. But first he took a lightning-fast tour, during which he spent most of his time peering out windows, and checking out which walls were structurally vital. He then got down on his hands and knees in the living room and started making bold lines in ink on the tissue paper.

Dylan Lauren, daughter of fashion leader Ralph Lauren and co-founder of Dylan's Candy Bar, describes her vision beyond candy store to include candy-inspired clothing, housewares and spa products; holds that continued expansion of store locations and products have kept brand from being profitable at this point; suggests that her vision may be rebellion from lavish and conservative style of her up-bringing; photos (L)

WHEN New York's transit union voted to strike in the wee hours of Dec. 20, an anxious city learned the news from a boyish-looking 28-year-old reporter named Bobby Cuza, who was working out of the Grand Hyatt, in a cramped conference room strewn with cameras, battery chargers, half-empty boxes of cookies, and dozing technicians. The other reporters in the media encampment were generally better equipped; most of them had laptops, and Channel 4 even had a little snack buffet. But at 1:28 that groggy Tuesday morning, it was Mr. Cuza, a reporter for NY1 News, the city's round-the-clock local cable channel, who broke the strike story, thanks to tips he had gotten from sources inside the union.

Andrew Ross Sorkin annual DealBook column on merger deals that succeeded or failed in 2005; Carl Icahn's campaign against Time Warner; Edgar Bronfman Jr's purchase of Warner Music; Kirk Kerkorian's unsuccessful bid for stake in General Motors; Merrill Lynch's performance in Procter & Gamble acquisition of Gillette; Boston Scientific's hostile bid for Guidant; MCI chief executive Michael Capellas's sale to Verizon; Goldman Sachs' deals involving New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago, Refco and Cnooc and Unocal; photos (M)