March 3, 2006

Clyde Haberman NYC column examines controversy surrounding architect Richard Rogers, lead architect on Jacob K Javits Convention Center and Silvercup Studios in New York; says Lord Rogers has been forced to distance himself from pro-Palestinian organization Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, which called for economic boycott of Israel's construction industry, if he is to do business in New York (M)

When Ming Qiang Zhao felt ill last summer, he lay awake nights in the room he shared with other Chinese restaurant workers in Brooklyn. Though he had worked in New York for years, he had no doctor to call, no English to describe his growing uneasiness. Mr. Zhao, 50, had been successfully treated for nasal cancer in 2000 at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, which has served the immigrant poor since its founding in 1736. But the rules there had changed, and knowing that he would be asked for payment and that security guards would demand an ID, he had concluded that he could not go back.

Medicare said yes, but many patients and their doctors ended up saying no. To test whether federal health spending actually helps patients, Medicare has been requiring more and more of the nation's retirees to participate in clinical trials to measure the effectiveness of a growing range of treatments, before agreeing to pay for them. Now, the outcome of the first and most extensive Medicare trial yet indicates that the public, armed with the data developed, may make surprisingly conservative decisions.

AFTER pulling a widely publicized Houdini last year, Dave Chappelle has been popping up all over the place recently: ''Inside the Actors Studio,'' ''Oprah,'' a theater in Seattle for a gig and, now, Brooklyn's own Bedford-Stuyvesant for an exhilarating new film. ''Dave Chappelle's Block Party'' was shot in 2004, about eight months before Mr. Chappelle, now 32, abruptly left the sketch-comedy show, walking away from a deal worth $50 million and into a storm of publicity and innuendo. ''I wasn't crazy,'' Mr. Chappelle told Oprah Winfrey last month when he took the hot seat on her show. ''But it's incredibly stressful.'' No kidding. The performer left ''Chappelle's Show'' in a smog of rumor, some of which is still stinking up the Internet, where anonymous cowards offer conspiracy theories in the name of who knows what. Turning your back on big money apparently means one thing: you're nuts. But Mr. Chappelle looked and sounded profoundly sane on James Lipton's ''Inside the Actors Studio'' last month where, between cigarettes and jokes, he offered a mesmerizing, occasionally heart-melting glimpse into both the pressures of his fish-bowl existence and what it can mean for a black man when he makes white people laugh. Put another way, as he told Time magazine just weeks after splitting his show, ''I want to make sure I'm dancing and not shuffling.''

To hear him tell it, less than a year after his unceremonious departure from La Scala Opera in Milan, the Italian maestro Riccardo Muti is free at last and living his dreams. Certainly, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in three concerts at Carnegie Hall this weekend is not bad for starters. James R. Oestreich interviews the conductor on the eve of the performances, Page 3.