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At L.I. Overpass, New Rules Are Announced for Truckers

A truck struck an overpass on the Southern State Parkway in Long Island in 2007.New York State Dept. of Transportation A truck struck an overpass on the Southern State Parkway in Long Island in 2007.

Tractor-trailers and other commercial vehicles are prohibited from using parkways in New York, like the Jackie Robinson Parkway in Brooklyn and Queens and the Saw Mill River Parkway in Westchester County.

But inadequate GPS units sometimes lead truck drivers astray and onto these roads, causing accidents when trucks cannot fit beneath bridges â€" a problem that has persisted for years despite advances in technology.

On Monday, Senator Charles E. Scumer and federal officials announced new federal standards for GPS technology in the trucking industry at a news conference at the Eagle Avenue overpass of Long Island’s Southern State Parkway. The bridge has been struck at least 27 times by trucks that should not have been on the road, Mr. Schumer said.

“Eighty percent of all the trucks that get stuck under bridges are a result of using the wrong GPS,” Mr. Schumer said in a phone interview. Last year, there were 58 reported bridge strikes in New York City, according to the city’s Transportation Department.

The federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will now issue official recommendations for GPS systems approved for use in commercial trucks. The professional-level devices take a vehicle’s height, weight and contents into account and direct drivers away from prohibited roads, while consumer devices do not have that capability, Mr. Schumer said. The professional devices are more expensive, he acknowledged, but they will save truckers and taxpayers money in the long run by preventing damage to vehicles and infrastructure and by preventing traffic jams.

People renewing or applying for commercial driver’s licenses will also be required to take GPS training, Mr. Schumer said.

A 2011 report by the State Department of Transportation found that the most common city locations for over-height truck accidents included the F.D.R. Drive, which accounted for 87 percent of those incidents in Manhattan; the Belt Parkway, the site of 70 percent of Brooklyn’s total; and the Hutchinson River Parkway, where 60 percent of such Bronx collisions occurred.

The Westchester Avenue overpass of the Hutchinson River Parkway and the F.D.R.’s junction with the Gracie Mansion Tunnel at 88th Street are particularly notoriou stretches, the report said. The problem also extends to the Hudson Valley, where 855 over-height truck accidents occurred from 1993 to 2011, and Long Island, which had 341 such accidents over the same period.

“In the Northeast, we’re particularly susceptible to this because many of the highways were built before trucks were a main mode of transportation,” Mr. Schumer said. “Many of them were built for recreational purposes, by Robert Moses and others.”



Republican State Senators Indicate New Openness to Raising Minimum Wage

ALBANY - Republicans in the State Senate, who have resisted a push by Democrats to raise the state’s minimum wage, said on Monday that they were open to including a wage increase in the state budget proposal that lawmakers are negotiating.

The Senate’s majority coalition, made up of Republicans and an independent faction of Democrats, floated the idea of gradually increasing the wage to an unspecified amount from $7.25 per hour over the next three years.

The Senate has been the chief roadblock for raising the minimum wage, which has been a top priority for Democrats for more than a year. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, included a measure in his budget proposal that would increase the wage to $8.75 per hour, and the Democratic-controlled State Assembly passed a bill last week that would raise the wage to $9 per hour and tie it to inflation.

Republicans in the Senate, whose members make up the bulk of the coalition that controls the chamber, have resisted the proposals. They have argued that raising the minimum wage could hurt the state’s economy and spur employers to cut low-paying jobs.

But on Monday, the majority coalition raised the idea of a gradual increase, though it did not provide specifics. The proposal was included as part of the Senate’s budget resolution â€" essentially a blueprint that lays out the chamber’s priorities heading into the final stage of negotiations over the state’s new spending plan â€" that lawmakers adopted on Monday.

“What I said in our budget resolution is that I would consider it, along with other business tax credits and incentives,” the leader of the Senate Republicans, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, told reporters after meeting with Mr. Cuomo and other legislative leaders. “I still think for a number of individuals, especially the young, that it could mean higher unemp! loyment.”

The other leader of the Senate majority coalition, Jeffrey D. Klein, an independent Democrat from the Bronx, was considerably more optimistic. He said the inclusion of the wage proposal in the Senate’s budget resolution “absolutely” made him more confident that some version of a minimum-wage increase would be included in the budget that lawmakers adopt.

“We clearly have a lot of numbers, and I think it’s incumbent upon us now to consider what that perfect number is for minimum wage workers around the state,” Mr. Klein said.

Mr. Cuomo, speaking to reporters at a meeting with his cabinet, described the Senate’s move as “a sign of progress.”

“That means they are willing to discuss it in the budget,” he said. “Now the problem is we all have different minimum wage numbers. So that’s what has to be reconciled.”

Other Democrats, however, were not enthusiastic about the Senate’s proposal. A spokesman for the Senate Democrats, Mike Murphy, descrbed the proposal as “not real,” citing the lack of details in the budget resolution. He called on the Republicans to drop their objections and allow Democrats â€" who have a numerical majority in the Senate â€" to vote immediately on a minimum-wage increase.

The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, was also unimpressed by the Senate’s proposal.

“The fact is, there’s no substance to it,” he said. “They don’t tell you what it is. They don’t tell you whether there’s indexing or not. So we really have no clue as to what they did.”

Lawmakers are required to approve a budget by April 1. This year, they are seeking to finish their work by March 21 in order to avoid conflicting with the observance of Passover and Easter.



City Announces New Goal for Public Housing Repairs, but With Big Caveat

The New York City Housing Authority said on Monday that it had made substantial strides in catching up on repairs at its buildings, fulfilling 73,000 work orders since January.

That leaves the agency with about 350,000 repairs to go, officials said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has blamed cuts in federal funding over the last decade for much of the backlog in maintenance orders among the city’s 178,000 public housing apartments.

The reductions have led the city to cut staffing for its aging public housing stock and left the authority with $6 billion in unmet capital needs and deteriorating conditions, city officials said.

In January, the mayor and the authority’s chairman, John B. Rhea, announced steps to speed up work orders for tenants, who sometimes have to wait two years to see a carpenter.

The authority directed $40 million toward tackling the backlog, including hiring more than 400 workers for repair jobs. It also said it would improve hw it manages scheduling and communication so that workers have the materials they need when conducting repairs and do not waste time on additional travel.

At a news conference on Monday, housing officials said they hoped to winnow down the backlog to about 100,000 pending orders by the end of the year. (The agency gets an average of 50,000 repair requests a week.)

That means getting closer to the goal of no more than a 24-hour wait for emergency repairs like a leaking roof, one week for minor maintenance and two weeks for skilled work, like fixing a cabinet door.

But officials cautioned that the repair timetable was threatened by the across-the-board cuts in federal spending that took effect this month after President Obama and Republican lawmakers failed to reach a budget agreement.

The federal housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, has warned that the spending cuts, known as sequestration, would force public housing authorities throughout the country to defer maintenance and capi! tal repairs.

New York City officials said that up to $150 million in federal aid was at stake.

“The reality is, as goes Washington, so goes Nycha,” Mr. Rhea said, using the acronym for his agency. “There will be pain associated with it.”



A Slip-Up Is Just One Difference Between English and Spanish Videos for Quinn

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, is a granddaughter of Irish immigrants, according to a splashy video released Sunday officially announcing her mayoral campaign.

But not according to the original Spanish-language version.

That video, which was also released on Sunday, called her a bisnieta, or great-granddaughter.

When alerted to the discrepancy, Josh Isay, a campaign consultant whose firm, SKD Knickerbocker, and Mark Guma produced both ads, said that there had been an error in translation, and that a corrected version would be available later Monday.

Minor though it may have been, the error illustrates a complication in appealing to Latino voters in Spanish. And this year, the stakes are especially high, since al of the mayoral candidates are aggressively courting the city’s growing Latino population, which could make up 20 percent of the electorate.

For the most part, Ms. Quinn’s Spanish-language video hews to the same outline as the English-language one: a biographical opening followed by her record as the Council speaker and finishing with her top priorities if she is elected mayor.

But there are notable differences. For one thing, the English video clocks in at over five minutes and features Ms. Quinn addressing the camera at length, and sometimes emotionally, especially when talking about her mother, who died of cancer when Ms. Quinn was 16.

The Spanish one, by contrast, is only 98 seconds. And it is much less personal and in large part is narrated by a man. That is because Ms. Quinn does not speak Spanish, and has no desire, she has said in the past, to utter a few phrases in a way that two of her Democratic rivals, Bill de Blasio, the public advocate! , and John C. Liu, the comptroller, did at a recent forum.

There is less immediacy in the Spanish video, too: the narrator never specifically mentions that Ms. Quinn began her campaign on Sunday with a “walk and talk” tour of the five boroughs.

And it’s telling that Ms. Quinn’s Spanish ad highlights several quotations from El Diario while the English one quotes often from The New York Times and other English-language publications. As a result, the Spanish video has the feel of a political ad that could run on television, anytime between now and November.

There are also subtle differences in emphasis, if not content.

In the English-language video, her top goals, she says, are middle-class housing, child care, good public schools, safe neighborhoods and jobs in all five boroughs. The Spanish-language one lists jobs as No. 1, followed by education, crime and housing.

As for immigrant roots, Ms. Quinn, in the English version, doesn’t talk about her Irish heritage, as the randdaughter of immigrants, until the 3:15 mark. But all it takes is four seconds for the narrator in the Spanish version to describe her, erroneously, as a great-granddaughter.



Palindrome Prize Winners Announced in Oregon

The first annual Symmys awards, honoring achievement in the creation of palindromes, were handed out on Sunday in Portland, Ore. The panel of celebrity judges included the singer Weird Al Yankovic and Will Shortz, The New York Times crossword editor.

Jon Agee won in the short palindrome category, for the following:

An igloo costs a lot, Ed!

Amen. One made to last! So cool, Gina!

Martin Clear won the award for long palindromes, a category whose length requirement makes comprehensibility even more difficult. The winning entry:

“Traci, to regard nine men in drag,” Eric (in a play or an ironic art spot) warned, “I am not so bad.”

“I’d never even seen knees … never even did a Boston maiden raw,” tops Traci, “nor in a royal panic. I regard nine men in drag â€" erotic art.”

Mr. Clear also won the poetry ctegory, tying for first place with Anne Tenna.

The word unit category â€" in which the entire words, not the individual letters, must read the same forward and backward â€" had the most satisfyingly coherent finalists. Aric Maddux won for his entry: “You swallow pills for anxious days and nights, and days, anxious for pills, swallow you.” John Connett took second place: “Fishing for excuses No need. You need no excuses for fishing.”

Many of the contestants are veterans of the craft. Mr. Agee, for instance, is the author of four books of palindromes. But the Symmys site says that Mr. Maddux’s winning entry was “the first palindrome he ever wrote.”



Live Video: Bloomberg Discusses Ruling on Sugary Drink Regulation

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is scheduled to speak live from City Hall at 5:30 p.m. about a judge’s ruling that invalidated New York City’s ban on large sugary drinks, one day before it was to go into effect.



A Slip-Up Is Just One Difference Between English and Spanish Videos for Quinn

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, is a granddaughter of Irish immigrants, according to a splashy video released Sunday officially announcing her mayoral campaign.

But not according to the original Spanish-language version.

That video, which was also released on Sunday, called her a bisnieta, or great-granddaughter.

When alerted to the discrepancy, Josh Isay, a campaign consultant whose firm, SKD Knickerbocker, and Mark Guma produced both ads, said that there had been an error in translation, and that a corrected version would be available later Monday.

Minor though it may have been, the error illustrates a complication in appealing to Latino voters in Spanish. And this year, the stakes are especially high, since allof the mayoral candidates are aggressively courting the city’s growing Latino population, which could make up 20 percent of the electorate.

For the most part, Ms. Quinn’s Spanish-language video hews to the same outline as the English-language one: a biographical opening followed by her record as the Council speaker and finishing with her top priorities if she is elected mayor.

But there are notable differences. For one thing, the English video clocks in at over five minutes and features Ms. Quinn addressing the camera at length, and sometimes emotionally, especially when talking about her mother, who died of cancer when Ms. Quinn was 16.

The Spanish one, by contrast, is only 98 seconds. And it is much less personal and in large part is narrated by a man. That is because Ms. Quinn does not speak Spanish, and has no desire, she has said in the past, to utter a few phrases in a way that two of her Democratic rivals, Bill de Blasio, the public advocate,! and John C. Liu, the comptroller, did at a recent forum.

There is less immediacy in the Spanish video, too: the narrator never specifically mentions that Ms. Quinn began her campaign on Sunday with a “walk and talk” tour of the five boroughs.

And it’s telling that Ms. Quinn’s Spanish ad highlights several quotations from El Diario while the English one quotes often from The New York Times and other English-language publications. As a result, the Spanish video has the feel of a political ad that could run on television, anytime between now and November.

There are also subtle differences in emphasis, if not content.

In the English-language video, her top goals, she says, are middle-class housing, child care, good public schools, safe neighborhoods and jobs in all five boroughs. The Spanish-language one lists jobs as No. 1, followed by education, crime and housing.

As for immigrant roots, Ms. Quinn, in the English version, doesn’t talk about her Irish heritage, as the ganddaughter of immigrants, until the 3:15 mark. But all it takes is four seconds for the narrator in the Spanish version to describe her, erroneously, as a great-granddaughter.



Connecticut School’s Production of ‘Sweeney Todd’ Sparks Protest

Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in the 2005 Broadway revival of Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in the 2005 Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd.”

School officials in Woodbridge, Conn., are bracing for a protest on Monday evening over Amity Regional High School’s spring musical, the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler show “Sweeney Todd,” which some local residents are denouncing as too dark and violent for teenagers in the drama program. The protesters also invoked the December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in nearby Newtown as a reason to oppose “Sweeney Todd,” a Tony Award-winning musical about a London barber driven to murderous rage and a shopkeeper who turns the corpses into pies.

“Amity High School students are assigned and taught to perform the horrific acts of gruesome murder, cannibalism, rape, suicide, etc.,” wrote one of the protesters, Laura Carroll, on a community blog on Friday. “Our children and communities are still going through the effects of the Sandy Hook massacre. What is Amity’s message to these children Amity High School is supporting violence in our community.”

The local schools superintendent, John Brady, said in a telephone interview on Monday that he and the high school principal were standing behind the “Sweeney Todd” production, which is scheduled to begin performances on April 5.

“As far as I know this protest is about three or four individuals! , who made their feelings known on the blog Monday morning, and unfortunately made the decision to link our production to Newtown,” Mr. Brady said. “We are doing the high school edition of ‘Sweeney Todd,’ which is one of the most produced shows at high schools in the country, and which has some of the lyrics and scenes toned down from the Broadway version. This is a suitable show for Amity High School.”

Ms. Carroll could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday; efforts to reach her through the blog administrator were also unsuccessful.

The protest is expected to unfold on Monday during the public comment portion of a regularly scheduled meeting of the district school board. The musical itself is not on the agenda and no vote is expected to be taken, Mr. Brady said.

A few supporters of the production will be at the board meeting to speak if necessary, including Howard Sherman, a theater consultant and former executive director of the nonprofit American Theater Wing, who i also an alumnus of Amity Regional High School. Mr. Sherman said he decided to rent a car and drive up to Connecticut once he heard about the planned protest, in order to support the drama program, “Sweeney Todd,” and the value of allowing students to tackle challenging work.

“This is an issue I see happening more and more, these cases where teachers and schools come under harsh pressure from a few people in the community who do not like the choice of a play or a musical for reasons that don’t have to do with education or the arts,” Mr. Sherman said by telephone as he drove to Connecticut.

Mr. Sondheim did not immediately reply on Monday to a phone message seeking comment.



Connecticut School’s Production of ‘Sweeney Todd’ Sparks Protest

Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in the 2005 Broadway revival of Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in the 2005 Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd.”

School officials in Woodbridge, Conn., are bracing for a protest on Monday evening over Amity Regional High School’s spring musical, the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler show “Sweeney Todd,” which some local residents are denouncing as too dark and violent for teenagers in the drama program. The protesters also invoked the December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in nearby Newtown as a reason to oppose “Sweeney Todd,” a Tony Award-winning musical about a London barber driven to murderous rage and a shopkeeper who turns the corpses into pies.

“Amity High School students are assigned and taught to perform the horrific acts of gruesome murder, cannibalism, rape, suicide, etc.,” wrote one of the protesters, Laura Carroll, on a community blog on Friday. “Our children and communities are still going through the effects of the Sandy Hook massacre. What is Amity’s message to these children Amity High School is supporting violence in our community.”

The local schools superintendent, John Brady, said in a telephone interview on Monday that he and the high school principal were standing behind the “Sweeney Todd” production, which is scheduled to begin performances on April 5.

“As far as I know this protest is about three or four individuals! , who made their feelings known on the blog Monday morning, and unfortunately made the decision to link our production to Newtown,” Mr. Brady said. “We are doing the high school edition of ‘Sweeney Todd,’ which is one of the most produced shows at high schools in the country, and which has some of the lyrics and scenes toned down from the Broadway version. This is a suitable show for Amity High School.”

Ms. Carroll could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday; efforts to reach her through the blog administrator were also unsuccessful.

The protest is expected to unfold on Monday during the public comment portion of a regularly scheduled meeting of the district school board. The musical itself is not on the agenda and no vote is expected to be taken, Mr. Brady said.

A few supporters of the production will be at the board meeting to speak if necessary, including Howard Sherman, a theater consultant and former executive director of the nonprofit American Theater Wing, who i also an alumnus of Amity Regional High School. Mr. Sherman said he decided to rent a car and drive up to Connecticut once he heard about the planned protest, in order to support the drama program, “Sweeney Todd,” and the value of allowing students to tackle challenging work.

“This is an issue I see happening more and more, these cases where teachers and schools come under harsh pressure from a few people in the community who do not like the choice of a play or a musical for reasons that don’t have to do with education or the arts,” Mr. Sherman said by telephone as he drove to Connecticut.

Mr. Sondheim did not immediately reply on Monday to a phone message seeking comment.



Ai Weiwei Is Making a Rock Album

Ai Weiwei.Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Ai Weiwei.

When Chinese authorities jailed the dissident sculptor Ai Weiwei for 81 days in 2011, they may have created a monster, of sorts: now Mr. Ai has announced that he is recording a heavy metal album, and he has traced the roots of his interest in music to his incarceration, when his guards asked him to sing, and he realized that he knew only Chinese revolutionary songs.

“After I came out, I realized I had never really listened to music or sung,” he said in an interview with The Guardian, “so I decided to make an album. I knew so many artists nd musicians and they were really supportive.”

Mr. Ai will be collaborating on the project with the idiosyncratic Chinese rock musician Zuoxiao Zuzhou. He also said he would seek advice from Elton John. Last year, Mr. John angered the Chinese government by dedicating a concert in Beijing to Mr. Ai, and in February, Mr. Ai reciprocated by creating a video clip, “Love Is in My Blood,” for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

The album, Mr. Ai told Reuters, would be called “Shen Qu,” or “Divine Comedy,” after Dante, and would include songs about the blind rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng as well as a track called “The Great Firewall of China,” about the Chinese Government’s blocking of Web sites it considers dangerous.

Mr. Ai is planning to create his own cover art, as well as a video for the project.



Cheers and Fears: Audience Reactions at SXSW

A scene from TriStar A scene from “Evil Dead.”

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Watching genre films and comedies with a South by Southwest audience makes a strong case for the power of the theatrical experience and the value of its preservation. The crowds in Austin dive into festival films with enthusiasm and vigor, which makes them ideal for filmmakers eager to see how their films play to genre-loving fans, giving some indication of how the films might be met by audiences around the country.

The most high-profile horror example of that in this year’s festival is “Evil Dead,” from the director Fede Alvarez. This remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror/comedy is set fora wide release April 12. It had its world premiere in Austin on Friday night. Some attendees were buzzing before the screening with different comments. Why remake a classic What has this director done before Why is it taking so long for the screening to start But whatever concerns the audience had at the Paramount Theater dissipated when the lights went down.

The film’s high-energy and operatically violent prologue set the tone for the evening and had the audience bursting into cheers by the time the opening title displayed on the screen. As the blood kept letting and limbs kept flying, viewers kept celebrating. Sitting next to the mother of one of the actors, I wondered what she was thinking while watching her son’s character get stabbed, beaten and pelted with nails from a nail gun. But it seemed clear what many of the other audience members were thinking: awesome.

Ken Marino in Alex Lombardi Ken Marino in “Milo.”

Two other films screened at the festival on Sunday provoked vivid crowd reactions. First there was the world premiere of “Milo,” Jacob Vaughan’s offbeat horror/comedy starring Ken Marino as Duncan, a man with a demon creature living in his intestines. When things get stressful, the creature emerges and wreaks havoc on those causing problems in Duncan’s life. The audience, which included distributors and some of the cast and crew, settled into the movie’s tone and chuckled plentifully. A team of respected comedy actors in supporting roles, including Patrick Warburton, Stephen Root and Kumail Nanjiani, help increase the laugh quotient. It’s the kind of movie that could go either way with an audience, but the crowd went for it more frequently than not.

Taylor Glascock/Lionsgate A scene from “You’re Next.”

Then came “You’re Next,” a home-invasion horror film from the director Adam Wingard and the writer Simon Barrett. Introducing the screening, Mr. Wingard stressed his interest in making a movie that was meant to be seen with an audience. The film contains the kinds of thrills and shifts in tone that seek to keep the audience guessing (and flinching). The biggest crowd response was to the performance of the Australian actress Sharni Vinson, whose character goes into full-on action-star survivalist mode when the narrative heats up. Her willingness and ability to fight back powerfully, and through hardcore means, elicited frequent applause. The film also contains plenty! of humor! and some of its dialogue drew big laughs. Lionsgate is hoping for as lively a response when it releases the film later this year.



Free Festival to Offer Plays With New York Themes

Plays with New York themes written by John Patrick Shanley, Amiri Baraka, Edward Albee, Lorraine Hansberry and more than a dozen others, will be featured in a free festival of readings and panel discussions led by members of Labyrinth Theater Company from March 18-24, the organization has announced.

The NewYorkNewYork Festival, which will be held at the Bank Street Theater, is scheduled to begin with a reading of Israel Horovitz’s 1968 play “The Indian Wants the Bronx” followed by a talk moderated by Mr. Horovitz about the rise of Off Broadway theater in the late 1960s. Subsequent nights will showcase readings of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “In Arabia, We’ll All Be Kings,” Mr. Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” and Mr. Baraka’s “Dutchman;” each writer will lead a post-show discussion as well.

Then, beginning at 7 p.m. on March 22, a 48-hour marathon of around-the-clock readings will start. Labyrinth company members, gues artists, and members of the audience will be cast in each play, which will also include works by James Baldwin, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Lonergan, and Eugene O’Neill. Tickets will be available on a first-come-first-served basis before each reading.

Founded in 1992, Labyrinth emerged as an Off Broadway force in the 2000s in large part because of acclaimed plays by Mr. Guirgis (“Our Lady of 121st Street”) and the leadership of its co-artistic directors at the time, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Oritz. More recently Labyrinth productions have been on a smaller scale and received mixed reviews; the company is now looking for new leaders to replace its current artistic directors: Mr. Guirgis, the costume designer Mimi O’Donnell and the actor Yul Vazquez.



Bolshoi Theater Director Says Mastermind of Attack Still to Be Found

The web of intrigue around Russia’s Bolshoi Theater continued to grow over the weekend after Anatoly Iksanov, the theater’s general director, told Russian television that he doesn’t believe that the mastermind behind the January acid attack on Sergei Filin, the ballet company’s artistic director, has been found.

“He was pushed â€" the entire collective is certain of this,” Mr. Iksanov told “Vesti Nedeli,” a weekly current affairs program broadcast on Sunday night, of Pavel Dmitrichenko, the Bolshoi Ballet soloist who was arrested last week on charges of ordering the attack on Mr. Filin. “That’s why he’s not the actual instigator that he’s being made out to be. He is one of the perpetrators. There is a mastermind, and the investigation ust find this person.”

Two other men have been arrested, one for carrying out the attack and the other as his accomplice.

Mr. Filin’s lawyer, Tatyana Stukalova, told the Interfax news agency on Monday that Mr. Filin shares Mr. Iksanov’s doubts and speculated that the dancer is, for now, “covering for this ‘mastermind.’”

“From the outset we were of the opinion, we understand full well, that it had nothing to do with Anzhelina Vorontsova, that there is a mastermind,” Ms. Stukalova told the news agency, referring to Mr. Dmitrichenko’s girlfriend, a promising ballerina.

Reports continue to come out in the Russian media about a meeting of the Bolshoi troupe with investigators last Thursday at which dancers expressed concern about Mr. Dmitrichenko’s arrest and Ms. Vorontsova is said to have spoken and asked the troupe to support him.

Bolshoi management has made no secret of its disdain for Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a star dancer who is Ms. Vorontsova’s teach! er, but a chief police investigator told “Vesti Nedeli” that he is not a suspect.



Bolshoi Theater Director Says Mastermind of Attack Still to Be Found

The web of intrigue around Russia’s Bolshoi Theater continued to grow over the weekend after Anatoly Iksanov, the theater’s general director, told Russian television that he doesn’t believe that the mastermind behind the January acid attack on Sergei Filin, the ballet company’s artistic director, has been found.

“He was pushed â€" the entire collective is certain of this,” Mr. Iksanov told “Vesti Nedeli,” a weekly current affairs program broadcast on Sunday night, of Pavel Dmitrichenko, the Bolshoi Ballet soloist who was arrested last week on charges of ordering the attack on Mr. Filin. “That’s why he’s not the actual instigator that he’s being made out to be. He is one of the perpetrators. There is a mastermind, and the investigation ust find this person.”

Two other men have been arrested, one for carrying out the attack and the other as his accomplice.

Mr. Filin’s lawyer, Tatyana Stukalova, told the Interfax news agency on Monday that Mr. Filin shares Mr. Iksanov’s doubts and speculated that the dancer is, for now, “covering for this ‘mastermind.’”

“From the outset we were of the opinion, we understand full well, that it had nothing to do with Anzhelina Vorontsova, that there is a mastermind,” Ms. Stukalova told the news agency, referring to Mr. Dmitrichenko’s girlfriend, a promising ballerina.

Reports continue to come out in the Russian media about a meeting of the Bolshoi troupe with investigators last Thursday at which dancers expressed concern about Mr. Dmitrichenko’s arrest and Ms. Vorontsova is said to have spoken and asked the troupe to support him.

Bolshoi management has made no secret of its disdain for Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a star dancer who is Ms. Vorontsova’s teach! er, but a chief police investigator told “Vesti Nedeli” that he is not a suspect.



Bieber and Rihanna Cancel Shows

It may be that the promoters of Justin Bieber’s two scheduled concerts in Portugal this week were overly ambitious: the Web page for the Pavilhao Atlantico in Lisbon, where Mr. Bieber was scheduled to perform tonight and Tuesday, limits ticket purchases to six per customer.

Though the first concert will go on as planned, the hall has posted a note on its site saying that “due to unforeseen circumstances, Justin Bieber was forced to cancel the second performance in Portugal.” And several newspapers in Portugal and England, as well as the TMZ Web site, have reported that the show was canceled because of disappointing ticket sales.

The cancellation is the latest disappointment in what hs been a tough month for the 19-year old singer. An altercation at a London club, where he was to celebrate his birthday on March 1, led Mr. Bieber to describe the day on Twitter as his “worst birthday.” Last Monday, three days later, he turned up two hours late for a concert at the 02 Arena in London, and later apologized to his fans (and their irate parents), blaming his lateness on technical difficulties.

He collapsed onstage with breathing difficulties during his Thursday evening show, also at the 02, and was hospitalized briefly. And he! got into a shouting match with photographers as he left the hospital on Friday.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bieber refused to comment on the cancellation or the reports of poor ticket sales.

Another superstar cancellation, Rihanna’s decision to drop out of her Sunday evening concert in Boston, came with a doctor’s note. Having kicked off the American leg of her Diamonds tour - her first tour in about a year - with a sold-out show on Friday evening in Buffalo, she developed laryngitis and withdrew from the Boston show on her doctor’s advice, a statement from her promoter, Live Nation, said.

Rihanna has posted two expressions of regret on Twitter. “BOSTON this is the hardest thing for me to deal with!” she wrote in one. “I feel like we’ve been waiting on this day forever, and I’m hurt that I letyou down.” In the second, she wrote: “I hate disappointing people that never ever let me down!! I’m so embarrassed about this!”

Live Nation has said that the Boston show would be rescheduled.



London Theater Journal: Well-Seated Performers

Rowan Atkinson as St. John Quartermaine.Nobby Clark Rowan Atkinson as St. John Quartermaine.

LONDON â€" Rupert Everett and Rowan Atkinson are very good at sitting. This is more challenging and less boring than it sounds. I, for example, sat for nearly five hours watching these actors sitting in different West End revivals one day recently. But I seriously doubt that anyone focusing on me, or on any of my fellow audience members, during those hours would have been held in thrall.

That’s because Mr. Everett, appearing as Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s “Judas Kiss” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and Mr. Atkinson, who plays the title role in Simon Gray’s “Quartermane’s Terms” at Wyndham’s Theater, find the dynamic in seeming inactivity. Though their characters only rarely budge from the furniture that they claim as their fixed corners in a heaving world, you could scarcely call either a couch potato. That’s true even when the plays around them lean toward stolidity.

Of course these performers sit to different effects and different ends. For Mr. Everett’s Wilde, seen before and after his imprisonment for acts of “gross indecency,” immobility might be described as an esthetic and, even more, a moral choice. His refusal to budge - from the chairs of a comfortably appointed London hotel room in the first act and a squalid room in Naples in the second - is a refusal to enter or acknowledge a world he feels is unpardonably vulgar, hypocritical and cruel.

Mr. Atkinson’s St. John Quartermaine â€" a dim instructor at a school teaching English to foreigners in Cambridge, England in the early 1960’s - is making no such statement and no s! uch choice. St. John sits doggedly in the school’s faculty lounge, even at times when he’s supposed to be teaching, because he has nowhere else to go. Yet unlike Hare’s fatalistic Wilde, St. John sits in hope - of conversation, an invitation, an offer of friendship. He sometimes brings to mind a tweedy Lady of Shallott, vainly awaiting deliverance.

That Mr. Everett and Mr. Atkinson manage to convey these respective psychologies so heartbreakingly, and with such little extravagance of gesture, is a testament to talents not necessarily associated with them. Mr. Everett made his name playing men of supple, smoldering grace and beauty (Noel Coward’s “Vortex” on stage, Christopher Marlowe in the film “Shakespeare in Love”). Mr. Atkinson is best known for the broad, kinetic comedy of “The Black Adder” and “Mr. Bean” series.

There is little that’s physically graceful about Mr. Everett in “The Judas Kiss,” directed by Neil Armfield (“Exit the King” on Broadway). You can understand why he chooses to move as little as possible, aside from the reasons he claims of esthetic languor.

Rupert Everett.Antoine Antoniol/Getty Images Rupert Everett.

Padded into doughy corpulence, Mr. Everett’s Oscar stumbles when he tries to walk in the first act, as he is trying to decide whether to flee London or stay and be arrested by police, which his petulant young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas (known as Bosie, ! played by! Freddie Fox), would prefer. In the second act, in exile in Italy after his imprisonment, he can barely walk at all.

Mr. Everett’s Oscar is more conspicuously vulnerable and less monumentally noble than that of Liam Neeson, who created the part on Broadway in 1998. This is a more ambivalent portrait of an aesthete, with Wilde as a prisoner of his poses as well as his principles, and it enriches the drama. So does the masterly use of lighting (by Rick Fisher) to convey the sense of time passing, entrapping and eroding.

But the play still suffers from declamatory windiness, especially in the second act. And there seems to be little point in letting Bosie the betrayer state his case at such explicit length, since we’ve written him off as a rotter from the moment we first see him.

Mr. Fox makes as much of the part as he can, and looks very fit naked; and Cal MacAnnch, who keeps his clothes on, is very good as Wilde’s steadfast, humble friend, Robert Ross. Mr. Everett does his best and deepest work to date here, letting the holes in Wilde’s silken webs of words emerge both surprisingly and naturally. I am unlikely to forget this Oscar, seated at a table, erupting into tears over a lobster he finds he has no appetite for.

St. John Quartermaine is not the crying kind. As played by Mr. Atkinson in Richard Eyre’s broadly drawn revival of Gray’s 1981 comedy of melancholy, he hardly seems to know what he feels, except a sort of vague ache of solitude and a vaguer awareness of his own incompetence. So there he sits, in the faculty lounge of the Cull-Loomis School, trying to remember how and when to smile and nod as his colleagues pour out confidences and grievances.

From le!   ft, Mr. A!   tkinson, Felicity Montagu, Will Keen and Conleth Hill.Nobby Clark From left, Mr. Atkinson, Felicity Montagu, Will Keen and Conleth Hill.

These days, I suspect, poor St. John might well be diagnosed as having early-stage Alzheimer’s. But for the play’s purposes, he’s the ultimate example of the human urge and inability to connect and communicate with others. Mr. Atkinson’s performance artfully takes the character one step further, in suggesting that St. John doesn’t even communicate with himself. Even attempting to rhythmically tap his thigh with his hand, the two body parts never quite meet.

I was surprised to see in the audience more children and young adolescents that I would have expected for an evening performance of a play about middle-aged malaise. I suppose they had come to see Mr. Bean. And unlike Mr. Everett, Mr. Atkinson still looks like himself here - that is to say, like Mr. Bean.

And Mr. Atkinson is quitefunny on occasion in “Quartermaine’s Terms,” especially when he breaks out into a barking laugh that sounds like a dolphin at mealtime. In this case, though, he gently pushes his character onto - if not across â€" the line that divides farce from tragedy. Like most good magicians, he achieves his magical transformations while scarcely seeming to move at all.



Electronic Arts Addresses Anger Over SimCity

The creators of the new SimCity computer game stopped short of giving the troubled game an all-clear on Sunday night, but the period of near-inoperability appeared close to an end.

“Our players have been able to connect to their cities in the game for nearly eight million hours of gameplay time, and we’ve reduced game crashes by 92 percent from Day 1,” Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of the Electronic Arts development studio Maxis, said in an online statement.

This new city-building game went on sale in the early hours last Tuesday, but its requirement that the game run only while connected to the Internet ran afoul of EA-run servers that were immediately clogged. Gamers were locked out of playing the latest in what was ostensibly a single-player series because of EA’s unusual online-lways requirement.

Ms. Bradshaw said on Sunday that maintenance on existing servers and the addition of several had allowed many more players to join the game. First-hand attempts to log in by The New York Times succeeded starting on Sunday after several days of connection errors.

On Friday, in another online statement, Ms. Bradshaw apologized for the game’s debut. She attempted to quell fan rage with an apology for failing to have sufficient server capacity â€" “that was dumb” â€" and with the offer of a free EA PC game to anyone who purchases SimCity before next Monday. In a brief e-mail interview, Ms. Bradshaw said that the genesis of the problem was that “simply put, we underestimated the surge in customers we had right at launch and the demand that the game would have on our servers once in the wild.”

EA stock rose during the week of SimCity’s introduction, investors apparently unsw! ayed by the game’s woes or confident in EA’s ability to get past them. How long fans will hold a grudge is another story.



Electronic Arts Addresses Anger Over SimCity

The creators of the new SimCity computer game stopped short of giving the troubled game an all-clear on Sunday night, but the period of near-inoperability appeared close to an end.

“Our players have been able to connect to their cities in the game for nearly eight million hours of gameplay time, and we’ve reduced game crashes by 92 percent from Day 1,” Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of the Electronic Arts development studio Maxis, said in an online statement.

This new city-building game went on sale in the early hours last Tuesday, but its requirement that the game run only while connected to the Internet ran afoul of EA-run servers that were immediately clogged. Gamers were locked out of playing the latest in what was ostensibly a single-player series because of EA’s unusual online-lways requirement.

Ms. Bradshaw said on Sunday that maintenance on existing servers and the addition of several had allowed many more players to join the game. First-hand attempts to log in by The New York Times succeeded starting on Sunday after several days of connection errors.

On Friday, in another online statement, Ms. Bradshaw apologized for the game’s debut. She attempted to quell fan rage with an apology for failing to have sufficient server capacity â€" “that was dumb” â€" and with the offer of a free EA PC game to anyone who purchases SimCity before next Monday. In a brief e-mail interview, Ms. Bradshaw said that the genesis of the problem was that “simply put, we underestimated the surge in customers we had right at launch and the demand that the game would have on our servers once in the wild.”

EA stock rose during the week of SimCity’s introduction, investors apparently unsw! ayed by the game’s woes or confident in EA’s ability to get past them. How long fans will hold a grudge is another story.



London Theater Journal: Well-Seated Performers

Rowan Atkinson as St. John Quartermaine.Nobby Clark Rowan Atkinson as St. John Quartermaine.

LONDON â€" Rupert Everett and Rowan Atkinson are very good at sitting. This is more challenging and less boring than it sounds. I, for example, sat for nearly five hours watching these actors sitting in different West End revivals one day recently. But I seriously doubt that anyone focusing on me, or on any of my fellow audience members, during those hours would have been held in thrall.

That’s because Mr. Everett, appearing as Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s “Judas Kiss” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and Mr. Atkinson, who plays the title role in Simon Gray’s “Quartermane’s Terms” at Wyndham’s Theater, find the dynamic in seeming inactivity. Though their characters only rarely budge from the furniture that they claim as their fixed corners in a heaving world, you could scarcely call either a couch potato. That’s true even when the plays around them lean toward stolidity.

Of course these performers sit to different effects and different ends. For Mr. Everett’s Wilde, seen before and after his imprisonment for acts of “gross indecency,” immobility might be described as an esthetic and, even more, a moral choice. His refusal to budge - from the chairs of a comfortably appointed London hotel room in the first act and a squalid room in Naples in the second - is a refusal to enter or acknowledge a world he feels is unpardonably vulgar, hypocritical and cruel.

Mr. Atkinson’s St. John Quartermaine â€" a dim instructor at a school teaching English to foreigners in Cambridge, England in the early 1960’s - is making no such statement and no s! uch choice. St. John sits doggedly in the school’s faculty lounge, even at times when he’s supposed to be teaching, because he has nowhere else to go. Yet unlike Hare’s fatalistic Wilde, St. John sits in hope - of conversation, an invitation, an offer of friendship. He sometimes brings to mind a tweedy Lady of Shallott, vainly awaiting deliverance.

That Mr. Everett and Mr. Atkinson manage to convey these respective psychologies so heartbreakingly, and with such little extravagance of gesture, is a testament to talents not necessarily associated with them. Mr. Everett made his name playing men of supple, smoldering grace and beauty (Noel Coward’s “Vortex” on stage, Christopher Marlowe in the film “Shakespeare in Love”). Mr. Atkinson is best known for the broad, kinetic comedy of “The Black Adder” and “Mr. Bean” series.

There is little that’s physically graceful about Mr. Everett in “The Judas Kiss,” directed by Neil Armfield (“Exit the King” on Broadway). You can understand why he chooses to move as little as possible, aside from the reasons he claims of esthetic languor.

Rupert Everett.Antoine Antoniol/Getty Images Rupert Everett.

Padded into doughy corpulence, Mr. Everett’s Oscar stumbles when he tries to walk in the first act, as he is trying to decide whether to flee London or stay and be arrested by police, which his petulant young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas (known as Bosie, ! played by! Freddie Fox), would prefer. In the second act, in exile in Italy after his imprisonment, he can barely walk at all.

Mr. Everett’s Oscar is more conspicuously vulnerable and less monumentally noble than that of Liam Neeson, who created the part on Broadway in 1998. This is a more ambivalent portrait of an aesthete, with Wilde as a prisoner of his poses as well as his principles, and it enriches the drama. So does the masterly use of lighting (by Rick Fisher) to convey the sense of time passing, entrapping and eroding.

But the play still suffers from declamatory windiness, especially in the second act. And there seems to be little point in letting Bosie the betrayer state his case at such explicit length, since we’ve written him off as a rotter from the moment we first see him.

Mr. Fox makes as much of the part as he can, and looks very fit naked; and Cal MacAnnch, who keeps his clothes on, is very good as Wilde’s steadfast, humble friend, Robert Ross. Mr. Everett does his best and deepest work to date here, letting the holes in Wilde’s silken webs of words emerge both surprisingly and naturally. I am unlikely to forget this Oscar, seated at a table, erupting into tears over a lobster he finds he has no appetite for.

St. John Quartermaine is not the crying kind. As played by Mr. Atkinson in Richard Eyre’s broadly drawn revival of Gray’s 1981 comedy of melancholy, he hardly seems to know what he feels, except a sort of vague ache of solitude and a vaguer awareness of his own incompetence. So there he sits, in the faculty lounge of the Cull-Loomis School, trying to remember how and when to smile and nod as his colleagues pour out confidences and grievances.

From le!   ft, Mr. A!   tkinson, Felicity Montagu, Will Keen and Conleth Hill.Nobby Clark From left, Mr. Atkinson, Felicity Montagu, Will Keen and Conleth Hill.

These days, I suspect, poor St. John might well be diagnosed as having early-stage Alzheimer’s. But for the play’s purposes, he’s the ultimate example of the human urge and inability to connect and communicate with others. Mr. Atkinson’s performance artfully takes the character one step further, in suggesting that St. John doesn’t even communicate with himself. Even attempting to rhythmically tap his thigh with his hand, the two body parts never quite meet.

I was surprised to see in the audience more children and young adolescents that I would have expected for an evening performance of a play about middle-aged malaise. I suppose they had come to see Mr. Bean. And unlike Mr. Everett, Mr. Atkinson still looks like himself here - that is to say, like Mr. Bean.

And Mr. Atkinson is quitefunny on occasion in “Quartermaine’s Terms,” especially when he breaks out into a barking laugh that sounds like a dolphin at mealtime. In this case, though, he gently pushes his character onto - if not across â€" the line that divides farce from tragedy. Like most good magicians, he achieves his magical transformations while scarcely seeming to move at all.



Walters Says There Are ‘No Plans’ for Hasselbeck to Leave ‘The View’

In a bid to tamp down talk about changes at “The View,” Barbara Walters said on Monday that “we have no plans” for Elisabeth Hasselbeck to leave the long-running ABC talk show.

But she left some wiggle room in her statement, which was delivered at the beginning of Monday’s episode, several days after another member of “The View,” Joy Behar, said she had decided to leave. At that time several publications, including TVNewser.com and Us Weekly, reported that Ms. Hasselbeck was also expected to exit at the end of the season. Us Weekly quoted an unidentified source who said that Ms. Hasselbeck, often the show’s lone conservative voice, was being removed because “she was too extreme and right wing,” to the dismay of viewers.

Such a suggestion is dangerous for “The View.” Ms. Walters, who both co-hosts and produces the show, denied itsaccuracy on Monday, saying, “We love Elisabeth” and “We value and appreciate her point of view.” She said Ms. Hasselback “helps give this show perspective and balance” and added, “We have no plans for Elisabeth to leave this show.” But co-hosts can choose to leave, Ms. Walters pointed out â€" leaving the door open for Ms. Hasselbeck.

“Right now, the only person who cannot leave this show is me,” Ms. Walters added, implicitly denying online speculation that she might also be thinking about departing.



Your Guide to New York’s Soda Ban

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's ban on large bottles of sugary drinks - including soda, bubble tea and more - will go into effect on Tuesday.Spencer Platt/Getty Images Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s ban on large bottles of sugary drinks - including soda, bubble tea and more - will go into effect on Tuesday.

It has incited protests and lawsuits, inflamed public debate and inspired other cities to develop anti-soda tactics of their own. Dozens showed up at a Board of Health meeting in July to request changes to the proposal.

But for all the hand-wringing, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s much-derided ban on the sale of large sugary drinks, unveiled in May, will go into effect on Tuesday exactly as the city proposed.

The city argues that the measure, which forbids the sale ofsugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in restaurants, movie theaters and other food-service establishments, will help combat the spread of obesity. But giant cups of soda are not the only beverages on the hit list. Here is a Q. and A. on the ban:

Q.

How will it work

A.

At its most basic â€" and there are plenty of complications â€" the new rules mean that food-service establishments in New York City will not be able to sell sodas and other sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces. Customers may buy as many refills as they want.

Q.

What places are excluded

A.

Large drink containers will still be available at convenience stores and grocery stores â€" in other words, places that are not regulated by the city’s health department. Places that receive regular health inspections from the city, including street vendors, bowling alleys and restaura! nts, will all have to abide by the ban. The convenience store 7-Eleven will not, so the Big Gulp will live on.

Q.

What drinks are covered

A.

The new rules are known as the “soda ban,” but many other sugary drinks will be affected: fruit-juice drinks including lemonade, sports drinks like Gatorade, energy drinks, slushies, fruit smoothies, and coffee- and tea-based sweetened drinks. Bubble teas are affected, as are presweetened iced coffees and teas, and possibly even the famous papaya juice at the city’s hot-dog-and-fruit-juice outlets. Of course, there are a few caveats.

Q.

What caveats

A.

For one, drinks that are more than 50 percent milk (or milk substitute) are exempt from the regulations because the city considers milk a valuable source of nutrition â€" especially compared with soda, which is considered to contain empty calories. Any establishment trying to preserve its drins under the milk exception must prove its milk content. So far, Starbucks’s pumpkin spice lattes and machiattos are exempt; no word yet on Frappucinos.

Q.

What’s the definition of a sugary drink

A.

The city defines it as a nonalcoholic beverage that is less than 50 percent milk and has been presweetened by the manufacturer or the vendor with sugar or another caloric sweetener, like high fructose corn syrup, honey or agave nectar. To qualify, the beverage must cross a certain caloric threshold: 25 calories per 8 ounces.

Q.

What else isn’t affected

A.

Milkshakes and lattes are safe, because of the milk exception; so are drinks that fall under the caloric threshold, like diet sodas. Fruit smoothies and juices that contain only fruit and fruit juice, with no added sweeteners, are also exempt.

Q.

What about beer growlers

A.

A! lcoholic beverages are safe, no matter the size. But that does not mean alcohol drinkers will be completely unaffected: because nightclubs are subject to the regulations, those who can afford bottle service will find that the carafes of sweet mixers like tonic and cranberry juice can no longer be served alongside the Grey Goose.

Q.

What about coffee

A.

Plain old coffee can be sold in any size as long as it is not presweetened. Baristas can add around three to five teaspoons of sugar to larger cups of coffee before handing them to the customer, depending on the size. After that, customers can add as much sugar as they want. Different coffee shops are approaching the rules in different ways; some chains, like Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s, will ask customers to add their own sugar and flavored syrups.

Q.

Are there any less obvious effects

A.

Domino’s and other pizza joints will no onger be able to offer the two-liter bottles of soda that are a staple of children’s birthday parties and pizza dinners. Nor will they be able to deliver large soda containers. (But two-liter containers can still be bought at grocery stores.)

Q.

How will the ban be enforced

A.

Health inspectors can issue violations carrying fines of $200. But the city will not start levying fines until June, after a three-month grace period to allow vendors to adjust to the new rules.

Q.

Is it permanent

A.

That remains to be seen. The beverage industry has filed a lawsuit over the legality of the mayor’s ban, but the court has not yet ruled.



With a New Web Site, Betting on Brooklyn

Will New Yorkers pay for a new Web site offering detailed coverage of Brooklyn And will a new Web site offering detailed coverage of Brooklyn pay New Yorkers

These questions can’t be answered yet, but they have been posed appealingly in the online prospectus for Bklynr (pronounced “Brooklyner”), a subscription-only Web site that says it will publish three new in-depth articles every two weeks, beginning April 4. It is the creation of three Columbia Spectator alumni: Thomas Rhiel, 24, who lives in Fort Greene; Raphael Pope-Sussman, 25, who comes from Park Slope but now lives in Crown Hights; and Ben Cotton, 24, of the West Village. (The West Village)

“Neither Ben nor I went into journalism,” Mr. Rhiel said. “He’s a McKinsey consultant and I’m now a ‘user education specialist’ at Google, on the Docs and Drive team. Raf’s at Law360, a legal wire service, which is journalism-like, but it doesn’t quite scratch the itch. All three of us were looking for a passion project related to journalism, and now Bklynr’s it.”

Among the contributors who have already signed on is Alexandria Symonds, 24, the online editor of Interview magazine, who lives on the Lower East Side. (The Lower East Side) As an example of the kind of article Bklynr readers might expect, Mr. Rhiel offered Ms. Symonds’s 2011 report on the phenomenon of “authentrification” â€" in which high-priced new commercial establishments take on the aesthetic trappings of the industrial or modest businesses they’re displacing.

Other contributors include Zach Meyer, 22, an illustrator, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant; Naima Green, 23, a photographer, of Bronxville (Bronxville); and Julia Halperin, 23, a writer and the news editor of Art + Auction, who lives on Union Square. (Union Square)

The subscription rate of $2 a month works out to 33 cents an article. That drops a nickel, to 28 cents, with a yearlong, $20 subscription.

Incredibly enough, Bklynr plans to pay for work. “Thomas and Raphael have a very specific and well-developed payment plan for their contributors,” Ms. Symonds said.

“I’m used to being paid more than Bklynr was able to reasonably promise at first, and I imagine that’s probably true of at least several of my fellow contributors as well,” she added. “The primary draw for me â€" and, I would imagine, for them â€" is the chance to write pieces about which I’m really passionate, and to work on those pieces on an in-! depth lev! el with talented, thoughtful editors who aren’t overextended by a glut of content. That’s getting harder and harder to find.”



Author of ‘Michael Haneke’ Twitter Account Reveals Himself

The real Michael Haneke in 2012.Vincent Kessler/Reuters The real Michael Haneke in 2012.

While there is still plenty of time for the real Michael Haneke to become a master of social media, the creator of a satirical Twitter account that (sort of) imitated that Academy Award-winning filmmaker of “Amour” will not be carrying on the comedic impersonation well into his autumn years.

Benjamin Lee, a 28-year-old journalist and writer from London, identified himself as the author of the popular @Michael_Haneke Twitter account, which had gained an online following by mixing the highbrow cinematic milieu of the real-life Mr. Haneke with the excitable voice of what sounded like an Internet-savvy if spelling-impaired teenager./p>

In a post leading up to Mr. Haneke’s Oscar victory for “Amour” as best foreign-language film his online doppelganger wrote that the movie had become “my highst grossn film in usa!!1! i stil think americun pie is highr in its grossnuss but wot do i kno lol #teamhaneke.” During the Academy Awards ceremony the fake Haneke wrote that the bear from Werner Herzog’s film “Grizzly Man” would “totuly tayk that ted in a fite. gona giv him a call lol.”

But over the weekend a post on the @Michael_Haneke account stated there would be “no Amour lols.” In an interview with The Guardian, Mr. Lee, deputy editor of the style and culture site ShortList.com, said that he had created the Twitter account “out of total respect and admiration for Haneke and his films.”

Mr. Lee added: “I never meant to insult him in any way and I think the popularity of the tweets proves it wasn’t malicious. I love his films, but always wished he’d show a lighter side. It was out of this fanciful idea that the parody tweets were born, but I never expected them to catch on the way they have.”



At 64 Percent, Cuomo’s Favorability Rating Marks a New Low

Gov. Andrew M. CuomoFred R. Conrad/The New York Times Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo

Heading into this year’s budget negotiations, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo remains popular with New York voters, but he is no longer drawing the sky-high ratings that he enjoyed for most of his first two years in office, according to a poll released Monday by Siena College.

Sixty-four percent of voters said they had a favorable view of Mr. Cuomo, compared with 30 percent who had an unfavorable view, the poll found. That result would be enviable for most elected officials, but for Mr. Cuomo, it marks his lowest favorabilityrating as governor.

As measured by Siena pollsters, Mr. Cuomo’s standing with voters has dipped modestly but steadily for three months in a row - suggesting, at least in part, a backlash to his push to enact restrictive new gun laws following the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December.

“By mortal standards, his ratings are terrific,” said Steven A. Greenberg, a Siena pollster. “By Governor Cuomo’s standards, they’re the weakest they’ve been.”

Mr. Cuomo’s favorability rating declined eight percentage points from a poll released in December to the one released Monday, which was conducted from March 3 to 7.

The share of voters who said they would re-elect him in 2014 has fallen as well - to 54 percent from 62 percent in December.

“There’s no reason to hit the panic button,” Mr. Greenberg said. “This is a mini-trend. Will it reverse itself next month after we see the enactment of the budget Maybe, maybe not.”

Voters were also divided about what was motivating Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who is seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2016. Forty-nine percent agreed that he made decisions based on what he concluded was best for New Yorkers, while 47 percent said he took actions based on what he believed was best for his political career. A majority of independent voters - to whom Mr. Cuomo has sought to appeal - said they believed he made decisions in an effort to further his political ambitions.

Still, the poll backed up Mr. Cuomo’s assertion, repeated over the past few weeks, that people outraged over the state’s new gun laws represented a vocal minority, and that most New Yorkers did not share their views.

Sixty-one percent of voters across the state said they supported the laws, which include an expanded ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as measures to keep guns away from people with mental illnesses and toughen penalties for gun crimes. Fifty-six percent of voterssaid they opposed a push by some Republican state lawmakers, gun rights groups and upstate county legislatures to repeal the gun restrictions.

The poll also found significant support for one of the most hotly debated elements of Mr. Cuomo’s legislative agenda: a proposal that would shore up abortion protections in state law. Eighty percent of voters - including 72 percent of Roman Catholics and 64 percent of voters who identify themselves as politically conservative â€" said they supported the governor’s proposal.

The poll, which was conducted by telephone of 803 voters, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.



Cabdriver’s Book Club

Dear Diary:

I met with the author Will Schwalbe on a raw January afternoon at Café Cluny in the West Village to chat with him about his nonfiction book, “The End of Your Life Book Club.” In it, he establishes a book club for two to pass the time with his mother, Mary Anne, while she receives chemotherapy treatments for pancreatic cancer.

He advocates mini-book clubs, too, asking anyone, anywhere, what they are reading, especially cabdrivers.

“There are some highly intellectual cabbies in this city,” he said.

On the way back to Pennsylvania Station, I tested his theoy.

“What are you reading” I asked the wild-haired Greek driver, before he pulled away from the curb.

“What Are you kidding me I can’t believe you are asking me that question!” he said excitedly. Uh-oh, I thought.

“I am reading my own book; it’s called ‘Little Book of Revelation’ and it is about the Bible: my theories on the Judeo-Christian prophecies.”

His hands flew off the wheel and clapped together.

“Praise God! I can’t believe you asked me that question. Why did you” he asked, as we arrived at my destination.

I showed him Mr. Schwalbe’s book and said, “Because this author says I can start a book club with anyone, anywhere.”

He took the book, looked at the title, the spine, and said: “Yes, I know this book, and the publishing house (Knopf). It’s editor in chief is Sonny Mehta, right”

“Right!” I said, handing him the fare and an extra big tip.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail: diary@nytimes.com. Follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.



Cabdriver’s Book Club

Dear Diary:

I met with the author Will Schwalbe on a raw January afternoon at Café Cluny in the West Village to chat with him about his nonfiction book, “The End of Your Life Book Club.” In it, he establishes a book club for two to pass the time with his mother, Mary Anne, while she receives chemotherapy treatments for pancreatic cancer.

He advocates mini-book clubs, too, asking anyone, anywhere, what they are reading, especially cabdrivers.

“There are some highly intellectual cabbies in this city,” he said.

On the way back to Pennsylvania Station, I tested his theoy.

“What are you reading” I asked the wild-haired Greek driver, before he pulled away from the curb.

“What Are you kidding me I can’t believe you are asking me that question!” he said excitedly. Uh-oh, I thought.

“I am reading my own book; it’s called ‘Little Book of Revelation’ and it is about the Bible: my theories on the Judeo-Christian prophecies.”

His hands flew off the wheel and clapped together.

“Praise God! I can’t believe you asked me that question. Why did you” he asked, as we arrived at my destination.

I showed him Mr. Schwalbe’s book and said, “Because this author says I can start a book club with anyone, anywhere.”

He took the book, looked at the title, the spine, and said: “Yes, I know this book, and the publishing house (Knopf). It’s editor in chief is Sonny Mehta, right”

“Right!” I said, handing him the fare and an extra big tip.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail: diary@nytimes.com. Follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.