A Boss's Accuser Is Arrested

This is why you cannot believe all sexual harassment complaints:

A former personal assistant who sued an investment firm chief for sexual harassment has been arrested on charges of using the executive’s credit card to charge tens of thousands of dollars in personal expenses. The assistant, Fatima Monahan, 36, of North Arlington, N.J., is charged with grand larceny.

She was accused of stealing more than $43,000 from Frederick Iseman, founder and managing partner of Caxton-Iseman Capital, a private equity investment firm. Ms. Monahan’s lawyer, Charles Ross, said “when the evidence is heard, it’ll be absolutely clear she did nothing wrong.”

Mr. Iseman said yesterday that Ms. Monahan’s claims were “baseless and dishonest, and were fabricated to distract attention from her own outrageous behavior.” Ms. Monahan pleaded not guilty at her arraignment yesterday in State Supreme Court.

She needs to be prosecuted for the phony sexual harassment charges. It is bad enough when someone is actually guilty of sexual harassment to get away with it, however, it is worse when an innocent person is accused of such a despicable act.

Two City Employees Charged With Soliciting Bribes

Two City Department of Transportation employees, including a high-ranking official earning $106,000 a year, were charged yesterday with soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a company handling bridge repairs.

In court documents, investigators said that in a series of secretly recorded meetings, the employees pledged to manipulate negotiations against the city’s interest and arranged to accept kickbacks.

The employees, Balram Chandiramani and Uday Shah, have been suspended without pay, investigators said. At a hearing in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, Judge Marilyn Dolan Go released the two men on $500,000 bail each, posted by their wives. Judge Go ordered them to stay in the New York area.

Though no formal indictments have been filed, prosecutors said the men could face 10-year prison sentences. Defense lawyers said they would plead not guilty.

Astor's Son Denies Charges In Court

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

Anthony D. Marshall, center, being escorted into court in Manhattan Tuesday for his arraignment on charges that he defrauded his ailing mother, the late socialite Brooke Astor, over a period of six years. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $100,000 bail. He also had to surrender his passport.

The 18-count indictment that was unsealed yesterday accused Mr. Marshall and one of his mother’s former lawyers, Francis X. Morrissey Jr., of numerous crimes over a six-year period, including persuading the frail and ailing Mrs. Astor to change her will so they could enrich themselves. Mr. Morrissey even stands accused of forging Mrs. Astor’s signature on an amendment to the will.

Elizabeth Loewy, an assistant district attorney, told Judge A. Kirke Bartley Jr. that Mr. Marshall “abused his position of trust to steal from” his ailing mother. She asked that Mr. Marshall provide a personal recognizance bond in the amount of $100,000 and surrender his passport, which he did.

Death Ruled 'Not Homicide' for Officer at 'Ground Zero'

New York City’s chief medical examiner has decided not to reclassify the death of a police officer who worked at ground zero as a homicide linked to the attack on the twin towers because the officer did not arrive at the site until Sept. 13, 2001.

The examiner’s decision appears to cast doubt on the future of thousands of cases involving sickened rescue and recovery workers whose relatives may in the future seek to have them included on the 9/11 victims’ list.

When the officer, James J. Godbee Jr., died in December 2004 at age 44, the medical examiner’s office listed the cause of death as sarcoidosis, a disease that scars the lungs and other organs. Although the death certificate did not link Officer Godbee’s disease to the days he spent at ground zero, the police pension fund did make that link later, granting the officer’s widow a line-of-duty pension.

Albany Bars Rent Rise For Thousands

A loophole in New York State’s rent regulations that would have led to sharp rent increases for thousands of tenants was closed last week by housing officials.

The rule allowed landlords withdrawing from government subsidy programs to immediately bring the rent in their apartments up to market rate by claiming that exiting the programs created a “unique and peculiar” circumstance.

Normally, such landlords are limited in how much they can adjust rents each year. Citing the exception, the owners of 23 buildings in New York City and Westchester and Nassau Counties had sought permission from the state to raise the rents to market levels in 4,400 units.

Medical Examiner Refuses To Bend On Ground Zero Case

Dr. Charles Hirsch's objectivity and independence is being questioned because of his review of a single autopsy — on the body of James Zadroga, 34, a New York City police detective who died in New Jersey last year. The Zadroga family had hoped he would agree with the Ocean County medical examiner’s finding that the detective’s death was linked to ground zero dust, which would add his name to the official list of victims of the 9/11 attack.

But last month Dr. Hirsch shocked the Zadroga family and others with his conclusion, “with certainty beyond doubt,” that the material in Detective Zadroga’s lungs was not dust from the trade center but ground up pills he had injected into his veins.

Dr. Hirsch’s determinations about Detective Zadroga sharply conflicted not only with the conclusions drawn in the Ocean County autopsy but with the findings of other experts. A former New York City medical examiner, Dr. Michael M. Baden, examined the autopsy slides and said he was convinced that trade center dust had killed Detective Zadroga. The Police Pension Board in 2004 linked Mr. Zadroga’s illness to the dust when it approved a disability pension for him. And the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund concluded in 2004 that he had been harmed by the dust and gave him a substantial monetary award.

Detective Zadroga was at ground zero in the weeks immediately after 9/11, though it is not clear exactly where he worked or how many hours he remained on the site. His medical records show that he was sickened by his work at ground zero

Kerik Loan Activity Brought To Light

Bernard B. Kerik fully repaid a $250,000 personal loan cited in his recent federal indictment days after city investigators began asking about it in 2005, according to people who have been briefed on the transaction.

Federal prosecutors have not alleged that anything about the loan itself was improper. But they charged in a 16-count indictment unsealed two weeks ago that Mr. Kerik had failed to disclose it to the federal government as required after the White House appointed him to train the Iraqi police in 2003.

The loan allegation was one of the few surprises in the indictment, which charged Mr. Kerik with tax evasion and fraud largely in connection with previously known financial transactions. In filing the charges, prosecutors with United States attorney’s office declined to identify a “wealthy Israeli industrialist” said to have financed the loan or to name the “Brooklyn businessman” said to have served as an intermediary in the transaction, referring to them only as John Doe No. 7 and John Doe No. 8.

L.I. Woman is Charged With Strangling Husband

A Long Island woman who was married in September to a man 21 years older, 8 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier was accused yesterday of strangling him with an electrical cord in their South Shore waterfront home while her 7-year-old daughter slept in an adjacent bedroom.

In a case that left investigators puzzling over mysteries of motive and method, though not of means, the Nassau County police charged the woman, Kelly Forbes, 29, with second-degree murder in the death of her husband, Michael Forbes, 50, in Merrick, N.Y., on Wednesday morning.

An electrical cord found at the scene was the apparent murder weapon, the police said. But the most obvious question — how could a 5-foot-5, 150-pound woman strangle her 6-foot-1, 250-pound husband? — was still under investigation, said Detective Sgt. Anthony Repalone, a police spokesman.

Union President Accused of Quashing School Aide's Bid

A dissident member of a school employees’ union local is accusing the local’s president, one of the most powerful union leaders in New York, of using that power to suppress her opposition.

The dissident, Anthony Ferina, a cafeteria monitor at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, wanted to run for the office of chairman of the local’s chapter of 14,000 school aides.

But he says he ran into a roadblock set up by Veronica Montgomery-Costa, the president of Local 372, which represents 27,000 school cafeteria workers, hall monitors and cafeteria monitors.

Ms. Montgomery-Costa also heads the executive board of District Council 37, an umbrella group of 56 New York City union locals — including Local 372 — that represent 121,000 municipal workers.

Eleven days before the election, Mr. Ferina said yesterday, the union leadership told him that he had been disqualified because the woman who had nominated him was not a union member. In a letter to Mr. Ferina, the head of the local’s election committee wrote that she had “failed to submit a completed membership application.”

Man Arrested in Killing of a Dentist

It was a crude device, a silencer fashioned from a plastic bleach bottle wrapped in duct tape and left behind among the leaves in a Queens playground where a 34-year-old orthodontist was shot and killed as his estranged wife and 4-year-old daughter looked on.

But the homemade silencer provided a crucial clue in the murder of Dr. Daniel Malakov, the police said yesterday, and led to an arrest that linked the killing to an extended family feud.

Fingerprints on the duct tape were matched to a man with a family tie to Dr. Malakov’s wife, Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, the police said. The original fingerprints had been taken when the man was arrested in 1994 for evading the fare at a Manhattan subway station.

On Sunday, New York City detectives traveled to Chamblee, Ga., a community of about 10,000 near Atlanta. With deputies of the DeKalb County sheriff’s office, they arrested the man, Mikhail Mallayev, 50, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who is related to a sister of Dr. Borukhova.

Gloomy Holiday Due to Broadway Strike

After strike talks between the Broadway producers’ league and the stagehands’ union unexpectedly broke down on Sunday night, the quick return to work that many had expected just hours earlier turned into a gloomy prospect of absent paychecks and huge losses during the lucrative holiday season.

Production staffs for the darkened Broadway shows gathered in meetings all day yesterday to map strategies. Last year, Thanksgiving week, one of the busiest on the Broadway calendar, brought in more than $23 million in ticket sales.

No more talks have been scheduled between the producers and the union, but there have been discussions about meeting on Sunday, in hopes of ending the strike before the even-more-lucrative Christmas week draws nearer.

The New York city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., estimated that the city was losing about $2 million per day because of the strike, in the direct loss of ticket sales and in the spillover effect of fewer dinner checks, hotel bills, rounds of drinks, taxi rides and souvenir purchases. But the League of American Theaters and Producers, which includes production costs and theater maintenance in its figure, says it believes a more accurate estimate is about $17 million per day.

The shock came suddenly on Sunday night, when league members and union officials, who had been talking all weekend to try to end the strike that has darkened most of Broadway since Nov. 10, left the Westin hotel without a settlement. The sticking point in the talks has been the league’s desire for looser work rules for members of the union.

Star Witness In 1990 Murder Case Vanishes

This much is known about Thomas Morales. He is known as Spanky on the street, and also goes by the name Jimmy Rodriguez. He is about 5-foot-8 and in his 40s, thin, wears an earring in his left ear and a mustache.

Thomas Morales was due to testify in court last week.

When he was 11 or 12, he met a younger boy named Joey Pillot, and they grew up to become members of a homicidal drug and extortion gang called C & C, which operated in the South Bronx.

This week, Mr. Morales is wanted as a witness in one of the more notorious and vexing trials of the last 20 years in New York, the murder of a bouncer at the Palladium nightclub on Nov. 23, 1990.

To call him the star witness might be underselling his role. The defense was hoping that he would steal the show by taking the witness stand and revealing that he and his childhood friend, Mr. Pillot, and not the defendant, David Lemus, were the gunmen in the shooting that led to the death of the bouncer, Marcus Peterson, all those years ago.

But, to the astonishment and consternation of all, Mr. Morales has vanished.

He was in court as recently as late October for pretrial hearings. Then last week he stopped answering his mail, and a telephone he used was disconnected just days after opening arguments in the Palladium trial.

Federal Government Takes 2nd. Look at Morial's Records

Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League and former Mayor of New Orleans is once again, under the federal governemtent's microscope in New Orleans. The Times Picayune reported the following news story:

In a sign that federal investigators are still interested in former Mayor Marc Morial, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office recently issued a second grand jury subpoena to the law firm that hired Morial after he left City Hall, seeking files showing the work performed for Morial's clients.

Chuck Adams, the managing partner for Adams and Reese, where Morial worked after leaving the mayor's office in 2002, confirmed that the firm has been gathering documents at the government's request.

"Several years ago, a subpoena was issued for records of Mr. Morial, and we cooperated fully at that point," Adams said. "I know the government believes there were some additional things they need. They have issued another subpoena, and we're cooperating fully with that one as well."

About five years ago, federal investigators launched a series of interconnected probes involving contracts awarded during Morial's eight years in office. The inquiries have yielded several high-profile convictions, including that of Morial's uncle, Glenn Haydel, who admitted to stealing from the Regional Transit Authority, and Morial confidant Stan "Pampy" Barre, who confessed to helping skim more than $1 million from a City Hall energy-efficiency contract.

Given the focus on Morial's administration, there has long been speculation regarding the feds' interest in the former mayor, although Letten and other federal officials have consistently discouraged such talk.

'Very long memory'

Three and a half years ago, Letten's office subpoenaed billing records for Morial's clients during his stint at Adams and Reese. The significance of the new subpoena is unclear. Letten said in a brief interview that Justice Department guidelines bar him from confirming or denying the existence of a subpoena. He declined to discuss what direction the federal investigation is taking.

James Bernazzani, the FBI's special agent in charge, likewise could not comment directly. Last week, in response to a reporter's inquiry about whether the government is still examining Morial, Bernazzani offered a cryptic answer: "The FBI has a very long memory."

For his part, Morial's lawyer Pat Fanning said he "cannot imagine" why prosecutors would be subpoenaing legal records. He characterized the latest subpoena, which he said he was not aware of until receiving a call from a reporter, as another "bewildering" turn in a senseless investigation.

"I cannot imagine why they would be subpoenaing Adams and Reese's records," he said. "I can't imagine they would think those lawyers over there are going to participate in a deal to help Marc get some illegal money. That's a big business over there.

"My read on all this is that somebody either at the FBI or the IRS got a bug up their ass and said, 'Let's send a subpoena over there.' I never have been able to figure out what they're investigating about Marc. I guess it's just the government being the government."

Shaun Clarke, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said the latest subpoena "suggests they are looking into whether the former mayor received some sort of deferred payback in the form of legal work after he left office. It may be the government thinks that in return for having steered contracts, Morial received legal work after leaving office."

Brought clients to law firm

Morial's stint at Adams and Reese, which has offices in nine cities, began shortly after he left the mayor's office in May 2002 and lasted about a year. In May 2003, Morial left the firm, and New Orleans, to become president of the National Urban League, a post he still holds.

He was hired to serve "of counsel" to the firm, an arrangement that is particularly common when politicians or well-known lawyers join a firm. Such celebrities typically serve as "rainmakers" who help bring new business to the firm rather than litigate cases.

Adams of Adams and Reese said that under the terms of the deal, Morial was essentially an "independent contractor" to the firm. Any clients he brought to the firm would have paid Adams and Reese; Morial was paid a flat salary, Adams said. When the contract was announced, both sides said Morial would be required to put in at least 30 hours of work a week for the firm.

As an independent contractor, Morial would not have been eligible to share in the firm's profits or receive benefits such as health insurance and participation in the 401(k) plan. Adams said the firm's contract with Morial was vetted by the state ethics commission and has been used as a template for similar deals.

Adams said he's not sure whether the firm has already produced all the records sought by the government. Responding to the subpoena took "some effort," he said -- among other things, the firm had to seek permission from Morial's clients to turn files over to the government.

There was "not a lot of very sensitive stuff" in the files turned over to the government, Adams said.

Adams said he could not discuss Morial's client list.

Warn the Public or Supervise the Doctor?

Days after a cluster of hepatitis cases in 2002 led health investigators to a clinic in Norman, Okla., the state’s chief epidemiologist held a news conference to urge anyone who had been a patient there to get tested immediately for blood-borne diseases. A nurse’s improper use of syringes was said to be the cause.

In contrast, when the New York State Health Department mailed out letters to 628 patients last week, telling them that they were at risk from a similar faulty use of syringes by Dr. Harvey Finkelstein, an anesthesiologist on Long Island, 34 months had passed since investigators identified Dr. Finkelstein’s office as the source of two hepatitis cases.

The delay, health officials said, was in part caused by prolonged negotiations between the doctor and the Health Department over access to his patient records — involving objections by him and his lawyers over which patients needed to be notified, and which were unlikely to have been exposed.

Experts said yesterday that the New York department’s handling of the case opened a window on a longstanding debate: Should doctors who create public health risks by using unsafe practices be treated any differently by the health department than, say, restaurant owners or hot dog vendors who do the same thing?

Dr. Finkelstein’s case was reviewed by the Office of Professional Medical Conduct. But the review took place about nine months after state health inspectors first learned that he was reusing syringes when he drew medication from multiple-use vials. Although a syringe is used on just one patient, the vials are used for many patients. Used for more than one vial, one patient’s contaminated syringe can contaminate the vials even though a new syringe is used for each patient.

By the time the review took place, Dr. Finkelstein had changed his methods to comply with standard practice, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The review board ruled that because he was currently in compliance there was no basis to discipline him.

Patients Were Not Told of Misuse of Syringe

State health officials notified 628 patients this week that they should be tested for hepatitis and H.I.V. infection because they were treated years ago by an anesthesiologist in Nassau County who used improper procedures for preventing the spread of blood-borne diseases.

The anesthesiologist, Dr. Harvey Finkelstein, of Plainview, first became the focus of a state health investigation in 2005 after two of his patients contracted hepatitis C. His name was reported by Newsday.

Yesterday, county and state officials traded blame over the 34-month delay in notifying the patients. At the same time, the incident led state health officials to seek a meeting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address an issue of drug packaging that was apparently at the heart of the problem.

In 2005, investigators found that, in violation of widely accepted practices recommended by the C.D.C., Dr. Finkelstein, 52, who specializes in pain management, was reusing syringes when drawing doses of medicine from vials that hold more than one dose.

He would use a new syringe for each patient. But when giving one patient more than one type of drug by injection, his practice of using the same syringe to draw medicine from more than one vial led to the potential contamination of the vials. The blood of a patient who was infected with hepatitis C could, by backing up through the syringe and entering the vials, infect another patient when the same vial of medicine was used again. This is what happened in at least one case, health officials said.

State health officials said yesterday they hoped to get the C.D.C.’s support in seeking the elimination of such multidose vials.

Any fix would come too late for Raymond Bookstaver, 49, a Hicksville mechanic who was one of two patients initially identified as having been infected by Dr. Finkelstein’s improper use of syringes.

New Plan to Remove Bad Teachers

The Bloomberg administration is beginning a drive to remove unsatisfactory teachers, hiring new teams of lawyers and consultants who will help principals build cases against tenured teachers who they believe are not up to the job. It is also urging principals to get rid of sub-par novices before they earn tenure.

At the center of the effort is a new Teacher Performance Unit of five lawyers, headed by a former prosecutor fresh from convicting a former private school principal who had a sexual relationship with a student.

A separate team of five consultants, including former principals, will work with principals to improve struggling teachers’ performance. In cases where the teachers fail to get better, the consultants will help amass the documentation necessary to oust them.

The plans, at a cost of $1 million a year, are described in a memo and an accompanying letter to principals from Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein. In the letter, he urged principals to help teachers improve but added, “When action must be taken, the disciplinary system for tenured teachers is so time-consuming and burdensome that what is already a stressful task becomes so onerous that relatively few principals are willing to tackle it. As a result, in a typical year only about one-hundredth of 1 percent of tenured teachers are removed for ineffective performance.

Ex-Publisher's Suit Plays a Giuliani/Kerik Angle

Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.

The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.

Ms. Regan makes the charge at the start of a 70-page filing that seeks $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corporation, after her project to publish a book with O. J. Simpson was abandoned amid a storm of protest.

In the civil complaint filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Ms. Regan says the company has long sought to promote Mr. Giuliani’s ambitions. But the lawsuit does not elaborate on that charge, identify the executive who she says pressured her to mislead investigators, or offer details to support her claim.

In fact, the allegation about the executive makes up a small part of a much broader array of claims about what she says was her improper removal from a job atop one of the more commercially successful book publishing operations.

A News Corporation spokeswoman who declined to be named said that the company saw no merit in the filing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani declined to comment.

Ms. Regan had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, ReganBooks, began work on his memoir, “The Lost Son.” In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers.

Mr. Kerik claimed in 2004 that he had withdrawn his nomination because of problems with the hiring of a nanny. He was indicted last week on federal tax fraud and other charges.

Spitzer's Aides' Statement is being Examined

The Albany County district attorney’s office, which has opened an inquiry into the possibility of perjury by Darren Dopp, a former top aide to Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is examining Mr. Dopp’s sworn statement denying having ordered surveillance of Senator Joseph L. Bruno’s travels, according to a person who has been briefed on the investigation.

The district attorney, P. David Soares, is also examining inconsistencies between statements made by Mr. Dopp and those made by William Howard, the governor’s former liaison to the State Police, the person said.

The discrepancies were referred to Mr. Soares’s office for possible criminal prosecution by the state’s Commission on Public Integrity, which is conducting its own review of efforts by Mr. Spitzer’s aides’ to discredit Mr. Bruno, the Senate majority leader.

The district attorney’s office is known to be considering various criminal charges, including perjury. Referring the case to his office is likely to delay into next year the proceedings of the commission, which enforces the state ethics law. That delay would be a political blow to Mr. Spitzer, who had hoped to put the investigations of his administration behind him by the start of his second year in office.

Congregation Writes Torah, With Help from a Scribe

Thousands of years old though it may be, the Torah began anew on a recent Sunday with Helen Margalith, 92 years old. She faced the congregation, then stared at the seeming immensity of a blank white sheet of unblemished parchment. A sofer, or scribe, sat by her side, holding a feather quill. She tentatively grasped it an inch above his hand.

"Hold it gently,” said the scribe, Neil H. Yerman, coaching her to write the first letter as they both held the quill. “Now down, toward me.” The ritually blessed black gall ink marked the page as she exerted pressure. “And again.”

It was done, then: the first letter of the Bible, Bet, in Hebrew. “Beautiful!” Mr. Yerman exclaimed. She beamed. Wild applause erupted from the 300 congregants who had gathered in witness.

Soon — after five other members of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue had also written letters — there appeared the six-letter Hebrew word often translated as “In the beginning”: the first word of the Torah.

Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of the synagogue, on West 68th Street in Manhattan, told the congregation that “our expectation is that every single one of us will participate in some way in drafting this Torah,” honoring the 613th and final commandment, in Deuteronomy, interpreted to mean that Jews must write a Torah.

The effort is rare in that Rabbi Hirsch hopes that as many as possible of the Reform temple’s 700 families — some 2,000 people, from children to the venerable Mrs. Margalith — will participate in the writing over the next year.

In a single stroke, those who join in the ambitious project are both honoring tradition and testing its bounds. Typically, the writing of a Torah has been left to a highly trained sofer, collaborating perhaps with a chosen few in the temple. For many centuries, the process has been a journey into an arcane and proscribed world of recondite rules and spiritual imperatives that are a mystery even to many devout Jews.

“We could just have hired a scribe to work on it in a studio, and present it to us, but that wouldn’t allow the community to participate in the values of Torah,” Rabbi Hirsch said.

William B. Helmreich, professor of sociology and Judaic studies at the City University Graduate Center in Manhattan, said, “It is unusual for an entire congregation to do that, though often people pay to have a letter or word inscribed.” Generally letters are left blank, or outlined, at the end of a new Torah. Honored persons, including donors, are helped by the scribe to fill them in.

The Torah scroll — which must be handwritten, and contains the books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament, from Genesis to Deuteronomy — is regarded by many not only as the word of God given to the Jewish people from Moses, but also as a living being, which is buried when it can no longer be used.

A new Torah must be copied letter by letter from a Torah template, called the Tikkun. There must be 304,805 letters, Mr. Yerman said, “not 304,806, or 304,804, and there can be no mistakes.”

For Orthodox Jews, allowing the congregation to participate in this way “would not be kosher, and would not have the sanctity of a Torah,” said Rabbi David L. Greenfield, founder of Vaad Mishmeret STaM, a rabbinical council in Brooklyn that has certified 7,000 scribes, including some 200 in New York City.

It is preferable that Torah writers not be children, women, or those who do not cover their heads or don’t honor the Sabbath, he said, adding, “A layman is not advised to touch it.”

But Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the Hebrew and Judaic studies department at New York University, said that “from the point of view of the Free Synagogue, it would be a legitimate Torah.” He added, “They regard it as kosher, so to them it is.”

And Arthur Green, rector of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School in Newton, Mass., said that “the perfection of having everyone participate is a kind of perfection that shouldn’t be ignored.”

Controversy is nothing new for a synagogue legendary for the independence of its founder, Rabbi Stephen Wise, who created a new congregation free of what he considered the censorship of synagogue boards, set up a congress to compete with the dominant American Jewish Committee, and created a competitor to the premier Reform seminary, the Hebrew Union College. (Hebrew Union merged with Rabbi Wise’s seminary after he died in 1949.)

“As the Talmud said, you have to be like a reed in the water,” said the 48-year-old Rabbi Hirsch, “flexible enough to move with the times, but not so flexible that you wind up floating down the river.”

Stagehands' Strike results in Broadway Shows' Cancellations

Most of Broadway was dark yesterday as stagehands went on strike over new work rules that producers have imposed or have been pushing during months of contentious negotiations.

The stagehands took their picket signs to the wet sidewalks about 10 a.m. after a meeting of Local One, their union, at the Westin New York hotel on West 43rd Street.

Twenty-seven Broadway shows, including “Wicked,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King,” were shuttered, starting with “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical,” which was to raise its curtain at 11 a.m. Eight shows playing in theaters that have separate contracts with the union remained open.

The work stoppage not only crippled a $939 million industry, but also slowed the Midtown universe: the bars, the restaurants, the hotels, the souvenir stores and the pedicabs that serve the people who buy Broadway tickets — more than 12 million of which were sold last year.

Personal Assistant Charged In Broker's Killing

A personal assistant was charged yesterday with using a piece of exercise equipment to fatally bludgeon her boss, Linda Stein, the former punk-rock manager turned real estate broker, in her Fifth Avenue penthouse, the authorities said.

The assistant, Natavia S. Lowery, 26, of Brooklyn, said she was driven to violence by the victim herself, who, she said, treated her poorly, “just kept yelling at her” and even made her ill by blowing marijuana smoke in her face, officials said.

Finally, Ms. Lowery told detectives, she bashed Ms. Stein six or seven times in the back of the head on Oct. 30 with what she called a yoga stick after Ms. Stein, 62, made a racially demeaning remark, other law enforcement officials said.

“Lowery, who had been Stein’s personal assistant for approximately four months, claimed that Stein had been verbally abusive to her,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference yesterday at 1 Police Plaza.

Does Kerik's Corruption Case Affect Giuliani?

The grand jury voted to indict Bernard Kerik on conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and substantive counts of wire and mail fraud, under a statute often used in corruption cases, according to people briefed on the vote. The panel also voted to charge him with lying on a mortgage application and his homeland security application and with several counts of tax fraud.

Democrats and rival campaigns are already looking at the indictment as a way to call Mr. Giuliani’s judgment into question, and to try to cloud his reputation in areas in which he is seen as strong: on fighting crime and corruption.

US Will Ask a Grand Jury to Indict Kerik

Federal prosecutors will ask a grand jury today to indict Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, on charges that include tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy counts, according to people who have been briefed on the case.

The grand jury, convening in Westchester County, has heard evidence about Mr. Kerik for about a year as part of a broad federal inquiry into a variety of issues, including his acceptance of $165,000 in renovations from a contractor who was seeking a city license.

Prosecutors are also seeking to charge Mr. Kerik, 52, with failing to report as income more than $200,000 in rent that they say was paid on his behalf to use a luxury Upper East Side apartment where he lived with his family around the time he left his city post, the people briefed on the case said.

Investigators have not suggested that Mr. Kerik’s benefactor, Steve Witkoff, a commercial real estate developer, was involved in any wrongdoing. If the grand jury approves an indictment, as expected, it will remain sealed until tomorrow, when Mr. Kerik would be arraigned in United States District Court in White Plains, N.Y.

Charges could complicate the presidential campaign of Mr. Kerik’s friend, patron and former business partner, Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, whose mentorship was partly responsible for Mr. Kerik’s sharp ascent into prominence. Mr. Giuliani declined to comment through a spokeswoman yesterday, but has said he is not worried about the impact such charges might have on his campaign.

Former Beatle linked to member of M.T.A.

It would seem improbable for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to be fodder for the British tabloids. But the London newspapers were in a tizzy yesterday with reports that Paul McCartney was having a romantic relationship with Nancy Shevell, who was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki to the authority’s board in 2001.

Mr. McCartney, the former Beatle, is getting divorced from his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney. Ms. Shevell is the chairwoman of the authority’s committee that oversees capital construction, planning and real estate. Most notably, she plays an important oversight role for the Second Avenue subway project, whose cost is estimated at $5 billion for its first phase.

While news reports noted that Ms. Shevell was married, her husband, Bruce A. Blakeman, a Republican lawyer and member of the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said in an e-mail message: “I am legally separated from Nancy. The separation is amicable and mutual.”

The Sun, a British tabloid, reported that Ms. Shevell, 47, and Mr. McCartney, 65, spent last weekend together in the Hamptons. It said they ate at an East Hampton restaurant on Friday, visited each other’s homes on Saturday, and embraced before breakfast at a cafe on Sunday.

There were similar articles in other British news media, including The Telegraph, a conservative broadsheet, and The Mirror, a tabloid.

Ms. Shevell, a graduate of Arizona State University, is a vice president of her family’s businesses, New England Motor Freight, of Elizabeth, N.J., and the Shevell Group of Companies. She is a breast cancer survivor. (Mr. McCartney’s first wife, Linda, died of breast cancer in 1998.)

Until recently, Ms. Shevell was known as Nancy Shevell Blakeman. Mr. Blakeman is also a Pataki appointee, having been named to the Port Authority in 2001. He is a partner at Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Greenberg, Formato & Einiger in Lake Success, N.Y., and was majority leader of the Nassau County Legislature from 1996 to 1999.

The Blakemans have given contributions to Governor Pataki and President Bush.

A woman who answered the phone yesterday at a Manhattan residence of the Blakemans said no one was available for comment. Paul Freundlich, a spokesman for Mr. McCartney, said in an e-mail message, “We don’t comment on Paul’s private and personal or business affairs.”

Mr. McCartney’s divorce from Heather Mills McCartney has been a messy and public affair. The couple announced their separation last year. In a televised interview widely distributed on the Internet, she said last week that she had contemplated suicide because of the negative public attention.

Mayor Calls Detective Hero but Adds to the Confusion

After a week of intense criticism, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg retreated yesterday from previous remarks and said a retired police detective who died at age 34 after working hundreds of hours at ground zero was indeed a hero.

The mayor appeared, however, to immediately set off more confusion, when after a meeting with Mr. Bloomberg, the detective’s father said he expected the city medical examiner to re-examine the case.

Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the chief medical examiner, concluded last month that the death of the detective, James Zadroga, in January 2006 was not connected to his work at the World Trade Center, and that material found in his lungs resulted not from inhaling toxic dust at ground zero, but from injecting ground-up prescription drugs.

That finding departed from previous medical assessments.

The mayor “said Hirsch may have made a mistake,” the family’s lawyer, Michael Barasch, told reporters after the half-hour private meeting in City Hall.

Mr. Barasch said Mr. Bloomberg said he would ask a deputy mayor “to have Hirsch reconsider his findings.”

At a news conference later, however, a top aide to Mr. Bloomberg sought emphatically to dispel any expectation that Mr. Bloomberg would ask Dr. Hirsch to rethink his findings.

Did Bloomberg Put His Foot in His Mouth?

Today, Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to meet with angry relatives of the detective, James Zadroga, to try to undo the damage he caused last week by saying he was not a hero. Although a New Jersey pathologist concluded in 2006 that Mr. Zadroga’s death was directly related to his hundreds of hours of work on the smoldering World Trade Center pile, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, rejected that finding. He concluded that misuse of prescription medication was the culprit.

Dr. Hirsch’s finding has come under attack from other experts, and Mr. Bloomberg’s remarks — in which he said that “science says this was not a hero” — came amid a spirited defense of a member of his administration. But facing, as he so often has, outrage and charges of insensitivity from a grieving family, Mr. Bloomberg quickly softened his stance, though stopping short of the apology the relatives demanded.

Whether Mr. Bloomberg, who has a terrier-like tendency to dig in on his positions, will apologize today remains to be seen. But it is clear that the proudly contrarian, politically incorrect, potty-mouthed guy from the Wall Street trading floor still lurks close to the surface. At a public school in Brooklyn on Tuesday, for instance, after answering questions from a group of third graders, Mr. Bloomberg warned of the need to “reduce the amount of crap that we put into the air.” (The children had by that time left the room.)

Daughter of Slain Man in Foster Care

A 4-year-old girl whose father was killed at a Queens playground last week was taken from her father’s relatives on Friday and placed in foster care, lawyers in the case said.

A lawyer for the girl’s mother, Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, said that the girl had accused her grandmother of hitting her, while the child’s legal advocate said that the grandmother had denied hitting the girl and that the basis for the removal was unclear.

The child, Michelle Malakov, had been in the custody of her father’s relatives since her father, Dr. Daniel Malakov, was shot to death last Sunday as he entered a playground in Forest Hills. The police have been investigating whether the shooting was linked to a custody battle between Dr. Malakov, an orthodontist, and Dr. Borukhova, a specialist in internal medicine.

Dr. Borukhova had had de facto custody of Michelle since leaving the family home with her in November 2003. But on Oct. 3, a State Supreme Court judge in Queens gave temporary custody to Dr. Malakov.

On Friday, during a visit with Michelle, Dr. Borukhova noticed that she was holding her left ear, said Florence M. Fass, Dr. Borukhova’s lawyer. Michelle said that her paternal grandmother, Malaka Malakov, had hit her, Ms. Fass said. Dr. Borukhova also noticed a bruise on the child’s left cheek, which the child also said had come from her grandmother’s striking her, Ms. Fass said.

Later in the day, Michelle was taken from the paternal grandparents and placed with a foster care agency, Ms. Fass said.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services declined to comment on the case yesterday. The child’s removal was reported yesterday in The Daily News.

David Schnall, the court-appointed legal advocate for the child, said there was conflicting information about whether there was a bruise and whether the child had indeed said her grandmother had hit her. The grandmother, he said, told him she would never hurt the child.

A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow in Family Court in Queens.

Bloomberg's Pay Raises for Union May Trouble the City After He Leaves

Amid the gloomy talk of subprime mortgage failures, tumbling profits on Wall Street and a cooling real estate market, one powerful force squeezing New York City’s budget has gone largely undiscussed: the sharply rising cost of municipal labor.

As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has moved to settle contracts extending past the end of his term in 2009, he has agreed to more generous pay raises for union after union, leading to expenses that stand to outpace revenue, especially toward the end of the city’s four-year spending plan.

In July, the city settled a retroactive contract with the police sergeants’ union that increased their pay by 27.5 percent over six years, bringing the maximum base salary to $94,962 at the end of the contract in 2011, up from $76,403. A week later, Mr. Bloomberg struck a deal to raise wages of sanitation workers 17 percent over four and a half years, bringing the maximum salary to $67,141 from $57,392. Last month, Mr. Bloomberg announced a similar increase over four years for the police detectives that would bring the maximum base pay for a first-grade detective to $109,002 from $93,176.

Those agreements, along with those made with the police captains’ and fire officers’ unions, will cost the city roughly $300 million in the last two years of the contracts and have helped establish a pattern for wage increases of 4 percent each year for city employees, with an additional 1.59 percent over two years for the uniformed services.

City officials have recently factored the higher salary projections into their spending plan for all employees, regardless of whether they have settled contracts.

That revised plan, submitted last week to the Financial Control Board, which oversees the city’s finances, anticipates that labor costs, rather than declining revenue, will become the driving force in widening deficits over the next four years.

According to the revised plan, a decline in tax collections will account for 60 percent of the expected $396 million contributing to a shortage this fiscal year, and new labor agreements will account for 23 percent. By 2011, however, the final year of the plan, tax revenue is expected to be responsible for 34 percent of the $2.5 billion swelling the deficit and labor responsible for 65 percent.

Earlier this week, Mr. Bloomberg instituted a citywide hiring freeze and directed agencies to devise spending cuts, the first time he has resorted to such actions since 2002, when the city was struggling with the economic effects of a recession and the 9/11 attack.

Several budget analysts praised Mr. Bloomberg’s move to trim costs as prudent, but warned that unions could come to expect at least a 4 percent raise each year, even as the budget squeeze tightens.

The mayor, said Doug Turetsky, a spokesman for the city’s Independent Budget Office, “deserves credit for anticipating that we’re going to need money further down the road.” But, he said, “That would appear to set the floor for negotiations in terms of how much is available at a higher place than it has been in the recent past.”

Since guiding the city out of the fiscal problems he faced upon taking office in 2002, Mr. Bloomberg has enjoyed flush times, and has been able to increase spending on popular items like additional library hours and tax cuts, while banking surpluses for the future.

But now, even as he seeks to burnish his image and may even test his popularity nationally, he may confront starker choices than any he has grappled with since those early days. It may be increasingly difficult to maintain the city’s work force, which provides the services and amenities Mr. Bloomberg says are so crucial.

If the economy gets much worse, said E. J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, “and they’re really in the hole, the only way to really save money is to reduce head count, unless the unions begin to make the kinds of concessions that they’ve never actually made.”

Since Mr. Bloomberg took office in 2002, city spending on wages and salaries, including pension and health care benefits, has grown to $32 billion from $27 billion, adjusted for inflation, with an average annual growth rate of 4 percent. Under his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, those costs increased to $26 billion from $23 billion, about a 2 percent annual increase.

Those costs are now expected to rise to almost $40 billion by 2011, nearly equivalent to the entire city budget in 2001.

City officials argue that they have flexibility in how they settle contracts; they can extract concessions like longer workdays or fewer holidays in exchange for higher wages, they say, or perhaps even put off longer-term agreements if they do not have the money to pay for them.

Some fiscal analysts say the city has locked itself into costly work agreements, in part by following a decades-old practice called pattern bargaining. Under that approach, if one union extracts an agreement for a salary increase, the city often extends the same increase to other unions when their contracts come up for negotiation.

The Bloomberg administration has vigorously defended the practice in arbitration, as it resists a push to give pay increases that are higher than those for other city workers to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest police union, representing 23,000 officers.

“It’s pretty expensive given the economic outlook,” said Charles Brecher, research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed policy group. Administration officials “have hoisted themselves on their own petard in that they’ve fought the P.B.A. by saying that there should be a strict pattern,” he said.

But city officials say they can manage the city’s finances better by settling contracts before they expire and for longer terms, as well as by factoring into the spending plan the established pattern across all unions, including those that have not agreed to terms, like District Council 37, with 99,000 members.

“In tough times we’ve been able to work with the unions to find collaborative methods for cost savings, but the reality is once you set the parameters, different unions are going to get similar amounts regardless,” said Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor who oversees both the budget and labor negotiations. “You have to deal with these expenses whether you put them in the financial plan now or later. Not including them at this point would be burying your head in the sand.”

Mayor Weighs Pupil Rewards of Free phone and Airtime

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he was considering a proposal to give some city students free cellphones and to reward high performance with free airtime, but emphasized that he had no intention of lifting the ban on cellphones in the schools.

“It’s something we’ll take a look at,” the mayor said of the proposal being pushed by Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist who joined the Education Department this year as chief equality officer. But, he added, “We have absolutely no intention whatsoever of letting students use cellphones” in schools. “That’s not what that proposal was all about.”

Dr. Fryer is also the architect of the city’s plan to pay cash to students in several dozen schools who do well on standardized tests, a step connected to the mayor’s broad antipoverty efforts that give families money as a reward for certain behavior. Dr. Fryer spoke of the cellphone plan during a lecture to his undergraduate economics class last month.

Mayor Bloomberg suggested that the plan would not necessarily collide with the ban, which has come under continued attack from parents and politicians in the city because the phones would not be used in schools.

Ex-FBI Agent's Murder Trial Fizzle, as does Chief Witness

Prosecutors said they would drop the murder case against a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor, a law enforcement official said yesterday, after a reporter upended the trial with taped interviews showing that their main witness, a gangster’s mistress, had changed her account and damaged her credibility.

The formal announcement is expected this morning in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where the former F.B.I. supervisor, Roy Lindley DeVecchio, 67, is charged with helping a Mafia informant commit four murders in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The lead prosecutor, Michael F. Vecchione, strongly hinted of his inclination yesterday morning in remarks addressed to Justice Gustin L. Reichbach, who is presiding over the nonjury trial.