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Cultural Preservation Groups Ask Obama to Protect Syrian Heritage Sites

Worried about a possible strike against Syria, American and international cultural heritage organizations are urging President Obama to ensure the protection of that country’s archeological sites, among the oldest on earth, before taking military action.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, the United States Committee of the Blue Shield and other prominent groups asked the president to issue an executive order requiring federal agencies to “enter into agreements with any allies and any rebel forces” to safeguard such sites. Many date back 6,000 years to the Neolithic age, while others include clay and bronze artifacts, human skulls, and the ruins of habitations from the Roman, Hellenistic, Hittite, Byzantine and Babylonian periods.

The Blue Shield, created in 1954 during the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property During Armed Conflict, was conceived as a Red Cross of sorts for heritage sites.

“Syria is also the home to numerous religious groups whose religious sites, along with medieval and Ottoman structures, dot the Syrian landscape,” the groups said in the letter dated Sept. 10. “Syria’s museums, archives and libraries contain seminal and irreplaceable cultural remains ranging from ceramics to sculptures and from ancient cuneiform texts to Islamic manuscripts.”

The looting and destruction of Syria’s ancient treasures has been well documented since the January 2011 uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The Times in April reported that an internationally protected site at Ebla, in western Syria, featuring ancient tombs and 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets, had been garrisoned by rebels and raided by looters.

Unesco, the United Nation’s cultural arm, said recent satellite images show that sites in places like Aleppo have been torn apart by raiders and that thousands of Syrian artifacts are turning up on the black market. “The situation is catastrophic,” Unesco officials said in late August.

The Defense Department made the protection of cultural property part of its training of American forces after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago. Those efforts include war games that simulate battles on archaeological sites and decks of “cultural heritage awareness playing cards” that introduce soldiers to the fragile ruins and relics they may encounter.



An 86-Year-Old’s Head-to-Toe Makeover Is Complete

The Park Central Hotel, where Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Gleason once lived, has undergone a renovation.Brian Harkin for The New York Times The Park Central Hotel, where Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Gleason once lived, has undergone a renovation.

Don Fraser has a long-playing record â€" something people listened to before everything went digital â€" that was issued before Eddie Layton became the organist at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden in the 1960s. The album describes Layton as the “tireless star of the exquisite Mermaid Room” in the Park Central Hotel.

Mr. Fraser is the hotel’s general manager, and he has other keepsakes that convey its history. He knows it was home to the likes of Jackie Gleason and Eleanor Roosevelt. He knows, too, that it was home to a radio station, WPCH (named for Park Central Hotel), but the station had a problem reaching listeners. The neon sign on the roof interfered with the broadcast antenna.

And he has old menus from the hotel’s restaurant. One from October 1960 lists “Maine lobster cocktail” for $1.75 and a room service charge of 35 cents a person.

All of this came up because the hotel, on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street, has undergone a top-to-bottom renovation that he said was sensitive to the hotel’s long life. “We’ve been keeping to the historical footprint, with a spin, which is exciting,” Mr. Fraser said.

The hotel’s new look is the work of Jeffrey Beers International, an architecture and design firm. The renovation put the front desk front and center, which was possible because the lobby was shortened. In the guest rooms, the bathroom walls have been painted red and the porcelain tiles have been arranged in what the hotel described as “a piano-like pattern” as a playful homage to Carnegie Hall, diagonally across Seventh Avenue from the hotel.

An undated postcard shows a swimming pool at the hotel in what is now an event space. An undated postcard shows a swimming pool at the hotel in what is now an event space.

A new restaurant occupies a two-level space that had been broken up years ago, so the restaurant has a high ceiling with a mezzanine. That is reminiscent of the Mermaid Room, a onetime fixture at the Park Central that operated as a restaurant until about 9:30 p.m. and as a nightclub until closing time.

The renovation did not bring back the Mermaid Room’s most noticeable feature, the mermaids on the ceiling. In the 1950s they, or more precisely, their nakedness, prompted a complaint from Mrs. Roosevelt, who lived at the hotel from 1950 to 1953 and again in 1958.

The hotel’s response to her grievance was a cover-up. It gave the mermaids brassieres made from fishing nets.

The hotel has a new “grab and go” cafe serving sandwiches and coffee, and meeting rooms with newly exposed windows. (They had been covered with plasterboard for years.)

Mr. Fraser said the Park Central had not undergone a major makeover in nine years, a long time in the world of hotels. This has been a busy year for refurbishing hotels in New York. Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue shut down at the beginning of the year for renovations, and the New York Palace, on Madison Avenue overlooking St. Patrick’s Cathedral, is also getting a complete face-lift.

At the Park Central, the work was done without closing down. “A guest checked out at noon and we did the carpet in that room,” Mr. Fraser said.

The hotel opened in 1927 with 1,600 rooms. It was downsized to 1,450 rooms in the 1980s but remained the fifth-largest hotel in the city, according to Mr. Fraser. It was downsized again, to 950 rooms by 2004, and it now has 761.

That last drop in the room count was subtraction of the simplest kind: The rooms were taken away from the Park Central and allotted to a separate new, higher-priced hotel, WestHouse, that will use an entrance on West 55th Street. The WestHouse’s Web site says it will have 172 bedrooms and suites. The WestHouse is taking reservations for mid-November.

There is one other element of the Park Central’s past: The mob murders. Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who is said to have plotted to fix the 1919 World Series, was found shot to death in a third-floor room in 1928. The Park Central is also where the mob boss Albert Anastasia was assassinated in 1957 as he relaxed in a barber’s chair.

“The perfect crime,” Mr. Fraser said. “Never been solved.” He added that the barber shop, now a Starbucks coffee shop, closed soon after the shooting. The hotel’s owners at the time pushed the barber shop out, he said.

The Park Central's remodeled lobby. Brian Harkin for The New York Times The Park Central’s remodeled lobby.


Ariana Grande’s Debut Tops Album Chart

Ariana GrandeFrazer Harrison/Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande, the 20-year-old actress and singer who has been a star on the Nickelodeon shows “Victorious” and “Sam & Cat” and performed on Broadway, has arrived in the music world with a splash.

Her debut album, “Yours Truly” (Republic), opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart this week with 138,000 copies sold in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Ms. Grande is the first female artist in more than three years to reach No. 1 with a debut release, Billboard reported. The last to do so was Kesha with “Animal” in January 2010.

A string of new albums reached high on the chart, signifying the arrival of the fall market, when the music industry traditionally pushes out its highest-priority releases.

Tamar Braxton, a younger sister of Toni Braxton, opened at No. 2 with 114,000 sales of “Love & War” (Streamline/Epic); Nine Inch Nails’ “Hesitation Marks” (Columbia) bowed at No. 3 with 107,000 copies sold; and John Legend is in fourth place with 68,000 sales of “Love in the Future” (GOOD/Columbia), slightly more than Luke Bryan’s “Crash My Party” (Capitol Nashville), which has been in the upper rungs of the chart for a month and this week lands at No. 5.

Last week’s No. 1 album, “Hail to the King” (Warner Brothers) by Avenged Sevenfold, fell seven spots to No. 8 with 42,000 sales, a 74 percent decline. Big releases planned for the rest of the year include new albums by Lady Gaga, Eminem, Katy Perry, Celine Dion and Pearl Jam.



Renounced Ambition: David Schickler Talks About ‘The Dark Path’

David Schickler’s fiction first made a splash in 2000, when The New Yorker published his story “The Smoker,” which led to a collection called “Kissing in Manhattan.” His new book, “The Dark Path,” is a memoir about his desire as a young man to become a Catholic priest. The book recounts his struggle between serving God and being with women; between trying to communicate with a higher power and giving up out of frustration. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. Schickler discussed the demands of celibacy, his experience with the inappropriate behavior of a priest, why he prays and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

Why did you decide to write a memoir at this point in your career? Is it something you had always thought of doing while you were writing fiction?

A.

Whether I’m working on fiction or nonfiction, I have to feel obsession, dread and excitement to write a book. I just felt that my 18th to 25th years made a good, suspenseful story: a young man in love with God (the Catholic priesthood) on one hand and women on the other; a man torn between the two. I made big blunders in my prayer life, professional life and sex life in those years, and blunders are fun for readers to witness. Those were the seven years of my life that seemed about as colorful as anything I could dream up as fiction, so I wrote the truth and just structured it like a novel.

Q.

Do you have any regrets now about not becoming a Catholic priest?

A.

No. I have known some wonderful Catholic priests who honestly seem to have callings to celibacy and who seem impressively at peace with it. But for me to have become celibate for life would have been to become half-human.

Q.

You write of the special feeling you had about a wooded area during your childhood: “Sometimes I want someone else to see what I see. Other times I want to be the only one.” How much did or does spirituality mean to you as a private experience versus a communal one?

A.

The communal versus the private: I hope I’m not comparing my spiritual experiences to those of Christ’s too much when I say that I totally understand his bone-deep love of other people’s company but also his frequent need to get the hell away from everyone. Even if I just take Christ as a story character, I’m amazed at how generously attuned he always is to those around him (especially to their sufferings), while at the same time he always seems a man apart, a man aching to be alone in the literal desert and also the desert inside himself where only God can find him. That duality is a model for my daily spiritual life.

Q.

You were briefly touched in an inappropriate way by a priest when you were in college. Looking back, what role did that play in your crisis of faith?

A.

Yes, a priest I knew well grabbed my [rear] one time when I was in his apartment, and it was an upsetting breach of trust when he did. It would dishonor those who have been truly sexually abused by clergy for me to make too much of what happened to me (i.e., I wasn’t naked and his brief advance seemed more exploratory than downright predatory).

I can say this, though: it disturbed me most because when it happened I thought: There are no women in this room. Something intimate was on the verge of occurring, yet it seemed to be happening in a sterile vacuum, a space not meant for intimacy. In my experience a Catholic priest’s living quarters rarely feels like a home. It often feels like a way station or hotel room because it’s not really his. He doesn’t own it, the Church does, just as he doesn’t own his time, the Church does, just as (in the intimate sense) he doesn’t even own his own body: God does. Well, when that priest grabbed me, I suddenly and jarringly felt like I belonged somewhere else, with a woman, either in a bed with her, or maybe at a bar, leaning close to catch her laughter.

Q.

Were you worried about that priest being identifiable to certain readers?

A.

Not really. Out of respect, especially for the Jesuits, I changed that priest’s physical attributes and name and the nationality of his last name and everything I could think of. Even my closest friends from Georgetown wouldn’t necessarily know to whom I was referring.

Q.

Are you still in touch with any of the priests you knew when you were younger?

A.

Somewhat. The book is partially dedicated to Larry Wroblewski, a Jesuit who was my first, best writing teacher. He had an earthy sense of humor and he loved earthy, gripping fiction. He died years ago, but I still know several priests who share Larry’s grounded, genial take on life. True Jesuits are never pessimists, and I like them for that.

David SchicklerMartha Schickler David Schickler
Q.

How regularly do you attend church now?

A.

I go to Mass on Sundays and very occasionally during the week.

Q.

How do you approach religion with your two children? Would you be disappointed if they became nonbelievers? Relieved?

A.

My wife is a Protestant. Our two children go to Catholic grammar school. We all go to Mass together semi-regularly, though I myself go alone each week if we don’t go as a family.

I love and have too many friends who are very good people and who are Protestant, Jewish, agnostic (the whole gamut, really) for me to declare that I’d be disappointed if my children became nonbelievers as adults.

I mostly just play with them right now and love them and help them with homework, but when it comes to touching on religion, I try gently to share with them what I believe is one of the deepest truths of Christianity, which is that all of us live in poverty somehow, whether in actual physical need or emotional desolation or spiritual brokenness.

Q.

Do you still pray? And if you do, what function does it serve in your life?

A.

I pray daily. Prayer is my method for being as searingly frank with myself and with God as I possibly can be about my talents, loves, sins and shortcomings. But prayer for me is not about self-help or self-advancement. I don’t feel when I pray that I am improving. For me, prayer is just utter candor, the effort to start clean in your day and not lie to yourself, ever.



Abbado, Blaming Health Problem, Cancels Plans for Japan Concerts

Citing ill health, the Italian conductor Claudio Abbado has canceled plans to conduct a series of concerts in Japan this fall with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra â€" including one at an inflatable concert hall in Matsushima that was to be dedicated to a region recovering from the 2011 earthquake.

Mr. Abbado, who has led Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Vienna State Opera, and the Berlin Philharmonic, did not specify what the health problem was. In a statement he said that “I deeply regret that we have no choice but to cancel all our concerts in Tokyo due to reasons of my health.” He had cancer in 2000, and had to withdraw from a planned Carnegie Hall appearance in 2007.

The Lucerne Festival Orchestra will cancel the four concerts it had planned to play in October at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. The new mobile, inflatable concert hall in Matsushima â€" called the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova â€" will open at the end of September, but Mr. Abbado’s concert, planned for Oct. 12, will be canceled. The festival said that a new program would be announced.



Teatro Real Names New Artistic Director; Mortier to Step Down Immediately

MADRID -The opera house Teatro Real put an end on Wednesday to an unusually public and tense leadership dispute by replacing Gerard Mortier as its artistic director with Joan Matabosch.

While the Belgian-born Mr. Mortier was previously expected to remain in his position in Madrid until 2016, the Teatro Real said in a statement that Mr. Mortier would hand over the position “with immediate effect” to Mr. Matabosch, who has been the artistic director at Barcelona’s Liceu opera house since 1996.

The announcement brings to an abrupt close what had long been seen as a difficult relationship between Mr. Mortier and the executive committee of the Madrid opera house. It also comes only days after Mr. Mortier revealed that he was being treated for cancer, in an interview with Spanish newspaper El País. In the same interview he also criticized the Teatro Real’s management for trying to find a Spanish substitute rather than tapping into what he called the more talented pool of foreign directors.
Mr. Matabosch said in a phone interview that he was ready to take charge in Madrid soon, “but obviously I can’t leave the Liceu overnight so I will for some time probably combine somehow the two places, although that involves doing very different things.”

Mr. Matabosch said his goal at the Teatro Real would be “not to copy literally what Mortier has done, but it will be a project of continuity rather than trying to do the opposite and undermine the extraordinary legacy that he has left in Madrid.” He added: “I’m not one of his students but I absolutely admire Mortier and he has had a real influence on me.”
During a high-profile career that also involved running the Salzburg festival and the Paris Opera, Mr. Mortier established a reputation as a provocateur, who shook up traditional opera houses with daring stagings and contemporary works.
But even by his own standards of non-conformism, his criticism of the Teatro Real’s appointment process - including his assessment that “I don’t see any candidates in Spain” - clearly ruffled feathers within the Teatro Real’s establishment.

“The Teatro Real is a very peculiar place, very subject to political pressures, where one needs to move with a lot of caution,” said Carmelo Di Gennaro, a former deputy artistic director of the Teatro Real, ahead of Wednesday’s announcement. “That is something that Mortier never managed to do.”

Furthermore, Mr. Di Gennaro noted that the Teatro had a statutory obligation to promote Spanish artists and the country’s repertory. Instead, he argued, Mr. Mortier “started out by disregarding everything that had to do with Spain.”

Mr. Matabosch said: “Obviously the Teatro Real needs international singers of the highest level but as a Spanish state theater, it also must promote Spanish careers and talent. Making the two goals compatible is far from impossible.”

Mr. Mortier took charge of Madrid’s opera house in 2010, after resigning from his previous post at New York City Opera when the company slashed its budget to just over half of what Mr. Mortier had been promised.

But in Spain, he found himself confronted with a recession-hit economy that has also forced deep austerity cuts by the government, including slashing state subsidies to the Teatro Real by 33 percent this year.

“Mortier has always turned his back on the social and political reality of Spain,” said Mr. Reverter, a Spanish opera critic.

Mr. Mortier left Madrid a few months ago and is undergoing treatment in Germany. A spokeswoman for the Teatro Real, Graça Prata Ramos, said the Teatro wished him a full recovery.

Ms. Prata Ramos would not comment on Mr. Mortier’s recent remarks, but insisted that the succession process had started in June, before Mr. Mortier’s illness was known and “with his involvement.”



Anatomy of a Scene: Video of ‘Mother of George’

A new bride and an intimate conversation are the focus of this anatomy of a scene video. The Nigerian-born director Andrew Dosunmu narrates this scene from his film about a newly married West African immigrant living in Brooklyn. He discusses his choice of music for the scene and his images, shot by the cinematographer Bradford Young.



Annie Proulx Writes Libretto for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Opera

Over the years Annie Proulx has founded a small-town Vermont newspaper, written the Pulitzer prize-winning novel “The Shipping News” and seen her short story “Brokeback Mountain” become a highly-acclaimed film. Now she has tackled another, perhaps more unlikely, kind of writing: as an opera librettist.

Ms. Proulx has written the libretto for Charles Wuorinen’s long-awaited new opera of “Brokeback Mountain,” based on her story of the doomed love of two cowboys, which will have its world premiere Jan. 28 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Ms. Proulx said in a statement that one of her goals in writing it was “to preserve the dry and laconic western tone” of the story.

The collaboration took shape in Wyoming, where Ms. Proulx and Mr. Wuorinen began working together five years ago at an artist’s retreat. Mr. Wuorinen, who has received a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur grant, said in a statement that Ms. Proulx had produced a “splendidly concise and apposite libretto, in which Proulx, through her characteristically laconic style, conveys character and scene with great efficiency.”

The opera was originally commissioned by Gerard Mortier for New York City Opera, which he briefly led before leaving over concerns that it could no longer afford the kind of seasons he was promised. After he became the artistic director of the Teatro Real he decided to present the work there.



Toronto Video: Nicole Holofcener on ‘Enough Said’

TORONTO â€" A good amount of Nicole Holofcener can be found in a Nicole Holofcener movie. The writer and director, who has made five features, draws from personal thoughts and experiences to build her lived-in, reflective comedies. Her latest, “Enough Said,” which screened here at the Toronto International Film Festival this week and opens in theaters on Sept. 18, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as  a single mother whose daughter is going away to college. She begins dating a divorced father (James Gandolfini, in one of his final roles), who is also facing an empty nest. In this video, Ms. Holofcener discusses the themes of her film and the places from which her  ideas spring.



Virginia Names Scholar to New Mormon Studies Chair

Kathleen Flake, a scholar of early Mormonism, has been named the first occupant of a new chair in Mormon studies at the University of Virginia. The chair, named for the historian Richard Lyman Bushman and supported by a $3 million endowment from anonymous donors, is the first at a major public university, and the first in the East.

Ms. Flake, who previously taught at Vanderbilt University, is part of a new generation of scholars, many of them non-Mormon, who are looking at the Mormon experience in the broader context of American history and culture. Starting in the spring she will teach a course on newer American religious movements like Scientology, the Nation of Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (as the Mormon church is officially known), as well as a course on the many scriptural texts created in America, including many different versions of the Bible as well as Bible-like texts like the Book of Mormon.

She will also continue work on a study of 19th-century Mormon plural marriage, which she argues was part of a broader ritual system conveying reciprocal “priestly authority” on both men and women.

The creation of the chair at Virginia, which has one of the largest religious studies programs in the country but no affiliation with any seminary or church body, has been hailed as the latest sign of the mainstreaming of Mormon studies. But Ms. Flake, who is Mormon, said in an interview last year with the New York Times that the field still needed more scholars from outside the faith, especially those who were ready to analyze its spiritual substance seriously.

“There’s something really curious here that helps you understand not just Mormonism, but religion per se,” she said.



Building a New Tower

Dear Diary:

It is half-past six and I am sprint-walking down Seventh Avenue. I dash madly across it onto Bleecker, through a rivulet of Citi Bikes decorated with sluggish models and helmeted Midtown suits. Once across (unscathed!), my momentum is interrupted by the syrupy meander of a young couple, obviously from out of town. I am nearly angry until I catch their conversation: the boy is pointing at 1 World Trade Center.

“Surely you recognize that building?”

The girl shakes her head.

The boy says: “1 World Trade Center, nearly complete!”

To which the girl replies: “They built a new one?”

Where has she been for the past decade, I wonder, laughing.

I glance down Seventh Avenue: the traffic has picked up again, barreling south, and the daylight is by now leaping into the Hudson. The tower glistens against the gathering evening. I have stopped laughing.

Yes. We built a new one.

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



AMC’s ‘The Killing’ is Cancelled, Again

Choose whichever morbid metaphor you want, but there will be no further stays of execution for “The Killing,” the AMC crime drama that was canceled last year and revived in the spring has now been canceled a second, and likely final, time.

On a Tuesday night crowded with other news events, AMC said in a statement: “We have made the difficult decision not to move forward with a fourth season of ‘The Killing.’ We want to thank our great partners at Fox Television Studios, creator Veena Sud, an extraordinary cast and the dedicated fans who watched.”

“The Killing,” a moody police procedural adapted from the Danish series “Forbrydelsen” and starring Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman as Seattle detectives Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder, made a splashy debut in 2011, becoming notorious for a first-season finale that did not resolve the murder case at the center of its plot.

Its ratings declined during Season 2 (when the original murder mystery was finally tied up) and AMC said in July 2012 that it was canceling the show. But Fox Television Studios, which produced “The Killing,” said at that time that it would seek a new broadcast partner for the series.

The following January, it was announced that a new deal had been struck among the studio, AMC and Netflix, and that “The Killing” would return again in June.

The third season of “The Killing,” which added the actor Peter Sarsgaard (“Boys Don’t Cry”) to the cast as a death-row inmate, drew some admiring but unenthusiastic reviews. “The series is still suspenseful,” Alessandra Stanley wrote in The New York Times, “but the dread that once again follows Sarah through damp forests, deserted tenements and shadowy, rain-washed streets diminishes with overuse.” And ratings did not improve for the series, which drew about 1.4 million viewers for new episodes, about the same as it did in its second season.

In its own statement on Tuesday night, Fox Television Studios said, “While we would have loved to produce a fourth season for AMC, FTVS is immensely grateful to everyone involved with this moving series.”

“The Killing” is one of several signature dramas coming to an end at AMC. Though the network is continuing with “The Walking Dead,” its popular horror series, “Breaking Bad” will wrap up its storyline this month, and “Mad Men” is slated to conclude next year. Meanwhile, the network has struggled to find a substantial audience for “Low Winter Sun,” another crime series that had its premiere in August.



AMC’s ‘The Killing’ is Cancelled, Again

Choose whichever morbid metaphor you want, but there will be no further stays of execution for “The Killing,” the AMC crime drama that was canceled last year and revived in the spring has now been canceled a second, and likely final, time.

On a Tuesday night crowded with other news events, AMC said in a statement: “We have made the difficult decision not to move forward with a fourth season of ‘The Killing.’ We want to thank our great partners at Fox Television Studios, creator Veena Sud, an extraordinary cast and the dedicated fans who watched.”

“The Killing,” a moody police procedural adapted from the Danish series “Forbrydelsen” and starring Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman as Seattle detectives Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder, made a splashy debut in 2011, becoming notorious for a first-season finale that did not resolve the murder case at the center of its plot.

Its ratings declined during Season 2 (when the original murder mystery was finally tied up) and AMC said in July 2012 that it was canceling the show. But Fox Television Studios, which produced “The Killing,” said at that time that it would seek a new broadcast partner for the series.

The following January, it was announced that a new deal had been struck among the studio, AMC and Netflix, and that “The Killing” would return again in June.

The third season of “The Killing,” which added the actor Peter Sarsgaard (“Boys Don’t Cry”) to the cast as a death-row inmate, drew some admiring but unenthusiastic reviews. “The series is still suspenseful,” Alessandra Stanley wrote in The New York Times, “but the dread that once again follows Sarah through damp forests, deserted tenements and shadowy, rain-washed streets diminishes with overuse.” And ratings did not improve for the series, which drew about 1.4 million viewers for new episodes, about the same as it did in its second season.

In its own statement on Tuesday night, Fox Television Studios said, “While we would have loved to produce a fourth season for AMC, FTVS is immensely grateful to everyone involved with this moving series.”

“The Killing” is one of several signature dramas coming to an end at AMC. Though the network is continuing with “The Walking Dead,” its popular horror series, “Breaking Bad” will wrap up its storyline this month, and “Mad Men” is slated to conclude next year. Meanwhile, the network has struggled to find a substantial audience for “Low Winter Sun,” another crime series that had its premiere in August.



New York Today: Last Candidates Standing

It was Bill de Blasio's night.Todd Heisler/The New York Times It was Bill de Blasio’s night.

The first leg of a New York election that has been anything but predictable (just ask any pundit) is over.

Anthony D. Weiner and Eliot Spitzer will not cast off their scandals and return to public service.

Bill de Blasio, once a long-shot in the Democratic mayoral primary, won.

But it was not immediately clear whether he had avoided an Oct. 1 run-off with William C. Thompson Jr.

Joseph J. Lhota, the former transit chief and deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani, took the Republican primary.

So what happens now?

“The conventional wisdom,” said Jerry Skurnik, a longtime New York political consultant, “is that a run-off will benefit Lhota” by dividing Democrats until the end of the month.

Mr. Skurnik added: “But it’s also three more weeks of the Democrats sort of hogging the story, which gives him less time to get himself out there.”

Still, he pointed out that this most Democratic of cities has shown an inclination to vote Republican for mayor.

Both men will move to the center, he said.

And in their attacks, they may raise the specter of two mayors from the 1990’s.

Mr. de Blasio will call Mr. Lhota a Giuliani acolyte.

Mr. Lhota may respond that Mr. de Blasio represents a return to the days of David N. Dinkins.

Here’s what else you need to know to start your Wednesday.

WEATHER

Just as you were coveting fall, and eyeing your sweaters: it’ll be sunny with a high of 91 degrees, with a chance of rain in the afternoon.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Mass Transit: Click for latest M.T.A. status.

- Roads: Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect.

9/11 COMMEMORATION

- A reading of the names of victims of the 2001 and 1993 World Trade Center attacks begins at 8:39 a.m. at the National September 11 Memorial Plaza.

- Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Billy Joel join the F.D.N.Y. Motorcycle Club for a 7 a.m. tribute ride down the West Side Highway.

- Twin beams of light near the site of the attack â€" known officially as “Tribute in Light” â€" will shine from sunset until dawn. (The bulbs are each 7,000 watts.)

- The Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Queens Botanical Garden offer free admission all day.

- The West Point Concert Band performs at 1 p.m. at Trinity Church on Wall Street. [Free]

COMING UP TODAY

- Everyone loves a fort. Instead of making one with your duvet, try a tour of those in Central Park, at noon. [Free]

- If you are an orchid fan, or just enjoy their company, the Manhattan Orchid Society is holding its monthly social and meeting, starting at 6:15 p.m. in Midtown.

- The education historian and activist Diane Ravitch speaks about her new book, “Reign of Error,” and the threats facing public schools, at 6 p.m.

- For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Kenneth P. Thompson performed the rare feat of unseating an incumbent district attorney. He beat Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn, who had served six terms. [New York Times]

- The disgraced assemblyman Vito J. Lopez failed to resurrect his political career. [New York Times]

- There were snarls in voting across the city â€" including some that had to be overcome by  candidates themselves. [DNA Info]

- Observant Jewish drug-dealers in Brooklyn allegedly sent out mass texts informing their customers they would be working curtailed hours through the Jewish holidays. [New York Post]

- The stop-and-frisk police tactic has been a focus of the Democratic primary, and will endure as an issue until November. The Web site BKLYNER has an interactive article showing stops in 2012. [BKLYNER]

AND FINALLY…

Bill DeBlasio is 6-foot-5. Michael Bloomberg is, depending on whom you believe, either 5-foot-6 or 5-foot-10. That sets up the prospect, should Mr. DeBlasio win, of a lop-sided swearing-in ceremony.

We are, of course, above such humor. But if you insist on learning more, Gothamist has elaborated, complete with a photo mock-up.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.

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