January 12, 2006

Winter, to put it politely, is not kind to Rochester. How many other cities, after all, are regularly in the running for the Golden Snowball, an annual award presented to the upstate city with the most snowfall? (Rochester, at 113 inches, was bested last winter only by Syracuse at 137.) ''It can be pretty bleak, let's be honest,'' said Anthony Bannon, director of George Eastman House, the renowned photography museum founded in the city in 1947. ''There are times when it feels like you don't see the sun for months.''

Villanova University men's basketball team defeats Rutgers University, 84-78, in overtime; photo (M)0

The federal Justice Department has threatened to sue New York State over its failure to modernize its voting system, saying New York ''is further behind'' every other state in complying with new guidelines stemming from the 2000 presidential election dispute. The state has yet to decide what kind of new voting machines it will certify, leaving many local elections boards in uncertainty as they try to modernize their voting systems in time for next fall's primary elections. And the state missed the Jan. 1 deadline for creating a statewide database of registered voters, as required by the federal Help America Vote Act.

NAOMI WATTS can work a slip like nobody's business, a gift she flaunts in the Peter Jackson remake of ''King Kong.'' As Ann Darrow, the movie's spirited heroine, Ms. Watts whirls and shimmies like an overheated windup toy before the mighty Kong, sheathed all the while in a sliver of silk and lace. She is but the latest in a long procession of big-screen temptresses -- think of Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Faye Dunaway -- to have brought out the beast in their leading men while slinking around in a slip. But despite its glamorous provenance, the slip's appeal in recent decades has remained primarily on film. Off screen it languished, so scarce as to border on extinct, worn mostly, if at all, by women of Ms. Taylor's vintage.

Birgit Nilsson, the Swedish soprano with a voice of impeccable trueness and impregnable stamina, died on Dec. 25 in Vastra Karup, the village where she was born, the Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported yesterday. She was 87. A funeral was held yesterday at a church in her town, the presiding vicar, Fredrik Westerlund, told The Associated Press.