March 31, 2006

The board that writes accounting rules for American business is proposing a new method of reporting pension obligations that is likely to show that many companies have a lot more debt than was obvious before. In some cases, particularly at old industrial companies like automakers, the newly disclosed obligations are likely to be so large that they will wipe out the net worth of the company.

Education activists charge that New York State allocates education aid among 677 school districts using arcane mathematical formulas that are supposed to provide objectivity but are stew of political calculations; court has ruled that New York City children are being shortchanged and has directed state to develop plan to fix problem, but Legislature's expected budget does little to break from decades-old rules; diagram showing allocation of differing aid to similar school districts (M)

TRAVELERS come to the Florida Keys for the sun, the sand and the scenery of America gone Caribbean. They come for bone-fishing in the morning, margaritas at midday and sunset celebrations at dusk. And before it's time to depart, everybody wants a piece of Key lime pie. Never mind that most Key limes -- golf-ball-size and yellowish, in contrast to the larger, greener Persian lime -- are grown these days in Mexico. Or that first-rate Key lime pie can now be had in places like Brooklyn. A theme still hums through this island chain, audible to every tourist: ''I eat Key lime pie, therefore I am vacationing in the Keys.''

SITTING in the reading room of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, I was immediately struck by how little the concerns of writers had changed in the last century and a half. Among some correspondence written in 1865 by Charles Dodgson (a k a Lewis Carroll) are several letters to Macmillan, his publisher. Just as a contemporary novelist might anxiously send e-mails to her publishing house, Dodgson wrote to his editor, shortly before the publication of ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'': ''You have not yet answered my two questions: -- (1) When will the book be really out? (2) What newspapers etc. do you propose to send copies to?''

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

IT should come as no surprise that ''Basic Instinct 2,'' the long-gestating follow-up to Paul Verhoeven's 1992 blip on the zeitgeist screen, is a disaster of the highest or perhaps lowest order. It is also no surprise that this joyless calculation, which was directed by Michael Caton-Jones and possesses neither the first film's sleek wit nor its madness, is such a prime object lesson in the degradation that can face Hollywood actresses, especially those over 40. Acting always involves a degree of self-abasement, but just watching trash like this is degrading. Once again, Sharon Stone stars as Catherine Tramell, a mass-market crime novelist with a psyche as overheated as her prose style. Jacqueline Susann by way of Jeffrey Dahmer, Catherine the Not-So-Great has something of a black-widow complex, to judge by the body count she seemed to leave in her wake in the original flick.

Jill Carroll, the American reporter kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was freed Thursday, saying she had spent most of her time in a small room but had been well treated by her captors. Ms. Carroll, 28, was dropped off in a Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad at midday and walked into the nearby offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, dressed in a light-green head scarf and gray dress. From there, she was taken to the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad, where the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said she was in ''good health and good spirits.''

Gov George E Pataki of New York fails to strike deal with developer Larry A Silverstein to speed rebuilding at World Trade Center site because he is unable to convince Mayor Michael R Bloomberg and Gov Jon S Corzine of New Jersey that plan makes financial sense; both Bloomberg and Corzine say deal would have enriched developer at public expense while putting project itself in jeopardy; photo (M)

FANS of that beleaguered literary form, the memoir, can breathe a little more easily this morning. Lisa Kron's sparkling autobiographical play ''Well'' has arrived on Broadway, where it opened last night at the Longacre Theater, to restore the honor of a genre that was slipping into disgrace even before Oprah Winfrey ran James Frey through a shredder on national television. Like Mr. Frey, whose best-selling account of his struggles with addiction turned out to have a casual relationship with reality, Ms. Kron is obviously -- shall we say -- inventive when it comes to exploring her own past. The star, author and would-be main character of ''Well,'' Ms. Kron does not avoid the temptations of such now notorious artistic tools as composite characters, compressed events and even (can you imagine?) exaggeration to heighten dramatic and comic effect.

PITY the oppressed boss. Suddenly there is a wave of sympathy for overregulated corporate executives. Not only are some going to jail, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is making them pay large fines.

Mare Alehegn lay back nervously on the metal operating table, her heart visibly pounding beneath her sackcloth dress, and clenched her fists as the paramedic sliced into her eyelid. Repeated infections had scarred the undersides of her eyelids, causing them to contract and forcing her lashes in on her eyes. For years, each blink felt like thorns raking her eyeballs. She had plucked the hairs with crude tweezers, but the stubble grew back sharper still. The scratching, for Mrs. Alehegn, 42, and millions worldwide, gradually clouds the eyeball, dimming vision and, if left untreated, eventually leads to a life shrouded in darkness. This is late-stage trachoma, a neglected disease of neglected people, and a preventable one, but for a lack of the modest resources that could defeat it.

Blacks and other members of minorities of various ages are merging onto the digital information highway as never before.