March 6, 2006

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named ''Crash'' the best film of the year Sunday, turning its back on ''Brokeback Mountain,'' a film about the love affair between two gay men, which had dominated virtually every other movie award in the run-up to the Oscars. Ang Lee, however, was the Academy Award for best director for ''Brokeback.''

MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN knows his way around a transaction. Sitting in his office on the 18th floor of 599 Lexington, he looks out on about four million square feet of real estate -- and owns four million more in the city beyond -- that attest to his acumen at buying and selling hard assets. But Mr. Zuckerman has ambitions that bricks and mortar cannot fulfill, so he also owns The Daily News, the paper with the biggest circulation within New York, as well as U.S. News and World Report, the struggling newsweekly. His willingness to finance good journalism has landed him on television, put him in the thick of policy debates and allowed him to bang the drum on behalf of the state of Israel.

Tiger Woods wins Ford Championship; photos (M)

The Chess Game of Enron In the chess game of the Enron case, federal prosecutors are wondering whether to call Andrew S. Fastow, the former chief financial officer, as a witness. Defense lawyers hope they do. BUSINESS DAY, PAGE C1 Potential Suspect in Killing The police were questioning a possible suspect in the killing of a graduate student, Imette St. Guillen. The man works at the bar where witnesses last saw the victim. PAGE B1 James Levine Cancels Tour A fall by the conductor James Levine at Symphony Hall in Boston as he was leaving the stage has apparently injured his shoulder and forced him to cancel his first tour as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His schedule at the Metropolitan Opera is also threatened. THE ARTS, PAGE E3 A Break From Mob Tradition At John A. Gotti's racketeering trial, a major departure from Mafia tradition has been the assertive presence of the Gotti women, waging a public relations war. PAGE B1 Top Tunes, Sung by Children Independent music labels like Razor and Tie have rushed to fill the pop charts with rerecorded versions of earlier hits, sung by children 8 to 12 years old. BUSINESS DAY, PAGE C1

The roof of the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, several stories above the limo drop-off on Hollywood Boulevard, probably offers the best possible view of what Isaac Mizrahi on Sunday night called ''the glamour vortex of the world.'' From that perch, the vista was of a 500-foot-long red carpet packed densely with celebrity caviar, and also a long view on the annual apotheosis of product placement, freebie-hustling and surface obsession that is the Oscars. Anybody who has ever been in downtown Los Angeles on Oscar day knows how easy it is to walk three blocks in any direction from the Kodak Theater and escape Hollywood's glamorous pull. The cultural gravity field that magnetizes a billion people in 100 countries, if one believes the hype, barely seems to affect many locals, who go out for lunch, hit the cash machine, get on with their lives.