Rather than let abandoned retail spaces look like pockets of poverty, landlords are renting the windows out to marketers for street-level advertising displays.

As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive

E-reader technology is making it easier to obtain and distribute copyrighted material on the Web for free.

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web

Community banks have hardly suffered in the credit crisis, in part because they prefer to be boring — and safe.

We’re Dull, Small Banks Say, but Have Profits

Workers at the men’s clothing maker Hartmarx are hoping to save their jobs by pressuring the bankrupt company’s main creditor to approve a sale that would keep the company alive.

Workers Pressure Bank to Keep Clothier’s U.S. Plants Open

Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, Rosie’s brother, who is gay, has been a tenacious leader on the issue.

Assemblyman Makes Gay Marriage Bill Personal

The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund may be depleted by 2017 and Social Security reserves gone by 2037, a new report from trustees says.

Recession Drains Social Security and Medicare

One of the largest fleets of ships ever gathered idles just off Singapore, marooned by the receding tide of global trade.

Cargo Ships Treading Water Off Singapore, Waiting for Work

The transcript from the crash in February that killed 50 people included a conversation that violated protocol.

Pilots Chatted in Moments Before Buffalo Crash

Over the past several days inside the armory’s vast drill hall, the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has been hard at work on one of his signature biomorphic sculptures.

Hey, Drill This! Park Avenue Armory Goes Sci-Fi

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has acquired what some scholars now say is the first painting made by Michelangelo.

By the Hand of a Very Young Master?

Cook-off mania has taken hold in New York, drawing in young, obsessive home cooks, sustainability enthusiasts and the odd professional or two.

In New York, the Taste of Victory

As the music industry adapts to a changed marketplace, the album is no longer simply a discrete collection of songs.

For Bands, Bonus Songs Become New Norm

Absinthe is legal again, and the romance of belle époque naughtiness must give way to what’s in the glass. The tasting panel sampled 20 bottles of the spirit.

Absinthes to Go Mad Over

President Obama picked the Broadway producer Rocco Landesman to lead the National Endowment for the Arts.

Producer Is Chosen to Lead Arts Endowment

Corporate food executives are turning to the concept of “local food” to sell products, embracing a broad interpretation of what eating locally means.

When ‘Local’ Makes It Big

From amphitheaters and aqueducts to sarcophagi and statuary left behind by the conquerors, a hunt for what was once Gaul reveals traces of Roman civilization throughout the countryside.

Roman France

In a soft market for autos, the carmaker is trying to wring more costs out of its already-lean manufacturing operations.

Toyota, Too, Is Looking to Cut Costs

Life seemed to be coasting along smoothly for Mary Blandy. The daughter of Francis Blandy, a well-known lawyer in Oxfordshire, England, Mary was all grown up by the mid-1740s and preparing to marry the love of her life, Capt. William Henry Cranstoun, who was descended from Scottish nobility. But the relationship hit a snag when Mary’s father discovered that Cranstoun had concealed his marriage to a Scottish woman named Anne Murray. Intent on securing the £10,000 dowry that Francis Blandy had advertised to any man who married Mary, Cranstoun decided to take matters into his own hands — or, more accurately, to entrust them to his lover.

The Early Days of Toxicology: Poisonous Powder

When it’s quickly sautéed, squid retains its saline plumpness and stays juicy and tender.

The Squid and the Shortcut

Because of an editing error, an article on April 25 about some migrants who are leaving Western Europe because of the economic downturn there misstated the surname of an immigrant who planned to leave Spain for his native Romania. He is Constantin Marius Mituletu, not Craiova. (Craiova is the name of his hometown in Romania.) Also because of an editing error, the article misstated the month in which Mr. Mituletu planned to return to Romania. It was April, not May.

Corrections

An article on Friday about the intersecting lives of Johanna Justin-Jinich, a Wesleyan University student fatally shot inside a campus bookstore, and Stephen P. Morgan, the man accused of killing her, included an erroneous location from a city official for the discovery of a computer belonging to Mr. Morgan, and misstated the location where his journal, which contained threats to Ms. Justin-Jinich and others, was found by the police. Both items were found in the basement of the bookstore  not in Mr. Morgan’s car, which was parked outside.

A Political Memo article on May 1, about President Obama’s fiscal policies and how they compare to policies during the Reagan years, misidentified the organization for which C. Eugene Steuerle works. He is vice president of the Peterson Foundation, a grant-making and advocacy group in New York. He is not a scholar at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, a separate research group in Washington. 

An article on Friday about a wildfire near Santa Barbara, Calif., misstated part of the name for a garden near the fire. It is the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, not Gardens. 

The Rooms feature in some editions on Thursday, about the turbine room at the Astoria generating station in Queens, referred incorrectly to the amount of power it produces. It has a maximum capacity of 1,300 megawatts  not 1,300 megawatts a day. (A megawatt measures the rate of energy generation; “megawatts per day” is not a valid unit for measuring power output.)

An article on Friday about the possibility that Cablevision Systems could spin off its Madison Square Garden business, which includes the Knicks, the Rangers and the MSG Network, referred incorrectly to the status of an antitrust lawsuit the company filed against the National Hockey League over control of the Rangers’ Web site. It was settled in March for undisclosed terms; it is not pending.

Antonio Vega Tallés was a Spanish pop singer-songwriter.

May 12, 2009

Headlines from May 12, 2009

As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web

We’re Dull, Small Banks Say, but Have Profits

Workers Pressure Bank to Keep Clothier’s U.S. Plants Open

Assemblyman Makes Gay Marriage Bill Personal

Billboard 200

Deeper Than Rap

Hannah Montana: The Movie

Sounds Of The Universe

Unstoppable

Asleep In The Bread Aisle

Notable Deaths

Historical Context for May 12, 2009