G.M. appears to have enough money in the fund to pay its more than 400,000 retirees their benefits for many years — a result of its conservative pension management.

G.M.’s Pension Fund Stays Afloat, Against the Odds

After complaints from residents, Santa Monica officers are breaking up unauthorized exercising on traffic medians.

Where the Traffic Median Is a No-Pilates Zone

Representative Charles B. Rangel worked to protect a tax shelter for a company whose chief executive was pledging $1 million to the representative’s fund-raising project.

The Congressman, the Donor and the Tax Break

Republican lobbyists are feeling the demand for their services plummet as Democrats ascend in Washington.

For Lobbyists, No Downturn, Just a Turnover

A poor global economy and plunging prices for coal and oil are upending plans to curb the use of fossil fuels.

Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy

In order to stave off dismantling his media empire, Sumner M. Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, may sell his movie-theater chain.

Redstone Weighs Sale of Theaters

The experience that Timothy F. Geithner, former head of the N.Y. Fed and current nominee for Treasury secretary, brings to the table can be looked at as an asset or a liability.

Where Was Geithner in Turmoil?

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury plan to announce a lending program Tuesday to jump-start frozen loan markets, administration officials said.

Obama and Bush Working to Calm Volatile Market

The government’s bailout of Citigroup could lead other banks to take bigger risks.

Saving Citi May Create More Fear

With shares of Berkshire Hathaway down 36 percent since Oct. 1, Warren E. Buffett said he would shed some light on his investments in the company’s next annual report.

Buffett to Offer Details on Derivatives

The Fed and the Treasury signaled that they would print as much money as needed to revive the banking system.

U.S. Details $800 Billion Loan Plans

Atlantic is the first major label to report getting a majority of its revenue from digital sales, not CDs.

Digital Sales Surpass CDs at Atlantic

The global downturn is reaching deep into the heart of the country’s once-rapid industrial transformation.

A Global Downturn Puts the Brakes on China’s Industry

An environmental organization has found high levels of 0f mercury in the blood and feathers of bald eagle chicks in the Catskill Park region of New York.

Bald Eagles in Catskills Show Increasing Mercury

The company said that children’s programming was no longer viable on network television, because of competition from cable channels.

Fox Ends Saturday-Morning Cartoons

The bailout plan for Citigroup is different from what was done in Switzerland for UBS, although its structure had advantages. Why didn’t Citigroup go down that road?

Bad Assets Don’t Just Disappear

The Atlantic Theater Company’s revival of the Martin McDonagh play “The Cripple of Inishmaan” will come to New York with its full Irish cast intact.

‘Inishmaan’ Revival Brings Irish Cast

The Public Theater’s much-anticipated production of “A Free Man of Color,” a new play by John Guare, right, won’t be mounted this season after all.

New Guare Play Is Postponed

Disney is offering free children’s tickets to its Broadway productions of “The Lion King,” “Mary Poppins” and “The Little Mermaid.”

Footnote

Ted Koppel’s production deal with the Discovery Channel is ending six months before his contract was to expire.

Koppel's Deal With Discovery Ends Early

ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” continued to dominate the ratings on Monday, earning an average audience of 21.3 million, according to Nielsen’s estimates. No other show on the night came close, a fact that lifted ABC to first place overall. CBS was runner-up, finishing No. 1 among adults 18 to 49, delivering the night’s top ratings in that age group with “Two and a Half Men” (which drew 14.9 million total viewers). CBS’s other comedies also fared well: “The Big Bang Theory” with 10.2 million, and “How I Met Your Mother” with 10 million. CBS’s “CSI: Miami,” at 14.1 million viewers, finished ahead of ABC’s “Boston Legal” (8.7 million) and NBC’s “My Own Worst Enemy” (4.2 million). NBC was third overall with “Chuck” (6.6 million) and “Heroes” (7.8 million).

Feeling Like Dancing

The musician Amy Winehouse, below, has sought treatment at a London clinic after suffering an adverse reaction to a medication, The Associated Press reported. Chris Goodman, a spokesman for Ms. Winehouse, told The Associated Press that Ms. Winehouse, 25, had been admitted on Sunday, but declined to identify the medication that caused the reaction. Ms. Winehouse, who has a history of drug problems, has been hospitalized several times this year: in June, she was admitted to a London clinic after collapsing at her home, and in July she was hospitalized, also for a reaction to medication. Her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, was recently released from prison and is now in a drug-rehabilitation program.

Winehouse in Hospital

Terry N. Christensen, the Hollywood lawyer who represented many studios and executives, was sentenced on Monday to three years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit wiretapping and aiding and abetting a wiretap, The Associated Press reported. In 2002 Mr. Christensen was representing the billionaire Kirk Kerkorian in a legal battle against Mr. Kerkorian’s ex-wife, Lisa Bonder Kerkorian. At that time, a jury found, Mr. Christensen hired the private investigator Anthony Pellicano to tap Ms. Bonder Kerkorian’s telephone illegally. Mr. Christensen remains free pending an appeal. In May Mr. Pellicano was found guilty of 76 charges related to racketeering and unlawful wiretaps, and is awaiting sentencing.

Lawyer Sentenced in Pellicano Case

There is an honorable tradition in opera of singers relying on a prompter to provide cues for words or entrances. But during rehearsals for the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” which opens on Friday night, the German tenor singing Tristan, Peter Seiffert, has been using a personal electronic prompter: an earpiece through which he can hear the cues directly. The only previous time a performer at the Met has used such a device came last season in a speaking role for the new production of Donizetti’s “Fille du Régiment.” Mr. Seiffert has sung several major Wagner roles to acclaim, including Tannhäuser for his Met debut in 2004. When he sang Tristan in Berlin two years ago he also used an earpiece. A Met official said yesterday that Mr. Seiffert was still deciding whether to use the earpiece on Friday, when the conductor Daniel Barenboim would be making his Met debut.

Plugging in a Tenor

In an eerie reversal of fortune, it is now better to be Axl Rose than to be any of his former Guns N’ Roses bandmates. On Tuesday the band Velvet Revolver, whose membership includes the Guns N’ Roses refugees Slash, above right, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, announced that it had parted ways with RCA Records, which had released its two studio albums; the band had asked in June to be released from its contract. Velvet Revolver also has no lead singer: in April it dismissed Scott Weiland, above left, of the Stone Temple Pilots. On Sunday Guns N’ Roses released the album “Chinese Democracy,” whose 17-year production process had contributed to the departure of Mr. Rose’s bandmates.

Velvet Revolver Leaves Its Record Label

Leonard George Goodwin CMG FRS was a British protozoologist noted for his work on testing the effectiveness of chemical compounds in treating tropical diseases. He was born in London to a shoe shop manager, and became interested in nature thanks to holidays spent with his grandfather, a gamekeeper, and his uncle, a pharmacist. He was educated at William Ellis School before being accepted into University College London to study botany and zoology. After graduating he went to the College of the Pharmaceutical Society and studied pharmacy, graduating in 1935. He became a demonstrator at the college under J H Burn and at his urging took further degrees in medicine and physiology.

Leonard Goodwin, British protozoologist (born 1915)

Leonard_Goodwin

Cyclonic Storm Nisha was a fairly weak but catastrophic tropical cyclone that struck Sri Lanka, and India which killed over 200. It was the ninth tropical cyclone of the 2008 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, and the seventh tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal that year.

Cyclone Nisha strikes northern Sri Lanka, killing 15 people and displacing 90,000 others while dealing the region the highest rainfall in nine decades.

November 25, 2008

Headlines from November 25, 2008

G.M.’s Pension Fund Stays Afloat, Against the Odds

Where the Traffic Median Is a No-Pilates Zone

The Congressman, the Donor and the Tax Break

For Lobbyists, No Downturn, Just a Turnover

Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy

Billboard 200

Twilight

Black Ice

High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Take It To The Limit

Funhouse

Notable Deaths

Historical Events

Historical Context for November 25, 2008