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Roughly 30 people were injured on Sunday as their PATH train in Hoboken, N.J., hit a rubberized barrier at the end of the line, said a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the line. A passenger aboard the train said that the first car crumpled part of the platform and hit three turnstiles before stopping. The train pulled into the station at normal cruising speed, almost as if the brakes were not being applied, said the passenger, Mahoud Metwali, a 26-year-old resident of Jersey City who had been returning from his job operating a food cart in Midtown Manhattan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tens of thousands of starry-eyed students apply to America's most exclusive colleges each fall and tens of thousands of hearts are broken each spring, much as they will be this week as graduating seniors hear from the Ivy League. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CORRECTION APPENDED EVEN in a city that celebrates unbridled ostentation, the sprawling estate at 139 Bassett Avenue in the seaside enclave of Mill Basin, Brooklyn, seems to redefine conspicuous consumption. The front yard is a gaudy stab at Versailles, with four-foot obelisks at each corner of the driveway, intricately tiled fountains and a series of steel sculptures that depict dolphins mid-dive, children at play and birds in flight. The 7,000-square-foot home, whose aesthetic is cruise-ship-meets-mob-mansion, has five terraces, a curved-glass elevator and an arcade room outfitted with gumball machines. On the second floor, there is what the residents call their ''ice cream room,'' furnished with an old-fashioned counter and soda fountain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mets are looking for buyers of at least 25 percent of the club, and at least one potential bidder may come bearing flowers. James F. McCann, the founder and chairman of 1-800-Flowers.com, is a lead investor in a group seeking to buy a piece of the team, according to two people with knowledge of the group's interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme collapsed, the owners of the Mets have insisted they were unwitting victims who, like thousands of other investors, lost millions of dollars at the hands of a devious swindler. Their most powerful evidence boiled down to this: The last statements they received before Madoff was arrested in December 2008 said they had hundreds of millions of dollars in their accounts, and then that money was just gone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New York State has long had a policy of countersuing patients who demand compensation for being injured in state psychiatric hospitals. The Office of Mental Health immediately bills them for the time they spend in the hospital, often stopping the case cold and making it nearly impossible for the patient to attract or keep a lawyer, a practice we explored in this article in December. The strategy was hugely effective at quashing claims, even ones borne of extreme tragedy. But to avoid any chance of a public outcry, it now appears that billing personnel were told to code certain cases - for instance, those involving the death or rape of psychiatric patients - differently, apparently to signal the need for special handling, according to an examination of state records turned over in response to a long-running lawsuit called Brown v. Stone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

He saved Central Park's Wollman Rink and has been vocal about wanting to reopen a restaurant at the Tavern on the Green site. Now it appears that Donald J. Trump, who hails from Queens, has given some thought to trying to bail out the embattled Mets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Saul Katz, the certified public accountant who in 1972 started Sterling Equities with his brother-in-law Fred Wilpon, almost never met a Bernard L. Madoff idea he did not like, according to a lawsuit brought by the trustee in the Madoff fraud. The Katz and Wilpon families, who own the Mets, had some 90 percent of their securities positions tied up in Madoff's brokerage for the nearly 25 years they did business with him. The greatest hope the families had of figuring out that Madoff was not someone worth gambling on may have been Peter S. Stamos, a businessman with a golden resume whom they recruited in June 2002 to diversify their holdings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A lawsuit brought by the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme contends that the owners of the Mets used the profits from their years of investing with Mr. Madoff to enhance their personal fortunes, enrich a number of family trusts and financially fuel their array of businesses -- all in the face of repeated warnings that Mr. Madoff's investment firm might have been a fraud. The lawsuit, unsealed in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan on Friday, says the owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, their families and their businesses ''made so much easy money from Madoff for so long'' that despite the many warnings -- from within their own inner circle, and by other investors and financial institutions -- they ''chose to simply look the other way.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is one of the enduring puzzles of the Madoff scandal: how so many sophisticated, even brilliant, investors were duped for so long. For the owners of the Mets, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, that question has in recent weeks become a very personal, even urgent, one. The trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme, Irving H. Picard, has sued the owners, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars -- in part, Picard contends, because the owners either knew or should have known that Madoff's investment operation was a potential fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For the owners of the Mets, their involvement with Bernard L. Madoff's giant investment fraud has been embarrassing and costly. They are being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars, and have been accused of having been, at minimum, willfully ignorant of what Madoff was up to. But for the owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, it is not the first time they have had their names and personal fortunes roughed up in a Ponzi scheme. An investment firm started by the two men had to pay back nearly $13 million two years ago when a hedge fund run by the scion of a wealthy New Orleans family collapsed in what was then regarded as one of Wall Street's more brazen frauds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fred Wilpon, who said Friday that he was looking to sell a minority stake in the Mets, has been talking to friends and business associates about it for several weeks. He has been unable to find any takers, which prompted him to cast the net wider, according to several sports bankers. Given the concentration of wealthy individuals and companies in New York, and the scarcity of professional teams for sale in the country's largest city, the Mets should find no shortage of potential suitors. A sale, though, depends on what the Mets are willing to sell and under what conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trustee representing the victims of Bernard L. Madoff's multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the owners of the Mets, alleging that they, as longtime and successful investors, knew or should have known Madoff was operating a fraud, according to two lawyers involved in the case. The trustee's lawsuit against the Mets takes aim at roughly 100 financial entities owned or controlled in part by the Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, and could imperil the assets held by the two men, an array of holdings that includes the baseball team, the regional cable sports network that televises its games, as well as commercial real estate holdings and investment funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encyclopedic in breadth but compact enough for the vest pocket of a 19th-century gentleman on the go, the book was an insider's guide to Manhattan, easily picked up at the newsstand before a night on the town, much the way tourists and local residents now consult a guidebook when they are in the mood for a memorable restaurant or meal. Only this palm-sized book, published in 1870 and long hidden away at the New-York Historical Society, did not confine its anonymous critique to the quality of wines or the ambience of the 150 establishments listed between its covers. Rather, it defined its role as delivering ''insight into the character and doings of people whose deeds are carefully screened from public view.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A college freshman who was accused of taking historic letters and artifacts in the six months that he worked in the library at Drew University pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of theft of a cultural object from a museum. The plea by William J. Scott was entered in federal court in Camden, N.J., before Judge Renee Marie Bumb of Federal District Court. Sentencing was set for April 15. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel J. Langevin was 35, mentally ill and broke. He had been living in psychiatric institutions on and off since his early 20s. A friend who visited him at the Rochester Psychiatric Center in February 1995 remembered that Mr. Langevin had pain in his jaw, eye and face that was not getting much attention from the staff. A week later, he was discovered unconscious, with a near-fatal infection spreading to his brain and other organs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unearthed in a college archive, the grainy black-and-white dramatization, made in 1958, tells the story of a bungled purchase order and a boss who wanted the guilty party's scalp. The company's managers faced a glaring choice: fire an inept clerk who had it coming anyway, or jeopardize the career of a highly valued executive who, in this instance, was the one who actually slipped up. After 15 minutes, the action stops and an interfaith panel of New Yorkers assembles like a Greek chorus to debate the issue on camera. Panelists are troubled by the idea of sacrificing the clerk to spare the executive's career, none more so than the soft-spoken moderator. He asks, ''Can a business survive if all the principals are looking out for themselves?'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael R. Bloomberg, in his successful bid to become mayor, sold himself as an expert manager, a businessman who had made a fortune in private industry. He has now named Cathleen P. Black, a magazine executive, to be the next chancellor of New York City's public schools. Why? ''Cathie Black is a superstar manager who has succeeded spectacularly in the private sector,'' Mayor Bloomberg said this month. ''She is brilliant, she is innovative, she is driven -- and there is virtually nobody who knows more about the needs of the 21st-century work force for which we need to prepare our kids.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In these hard times, New York's future governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, has made a point of standing alongside consumers who are down on their luck. As attorney general, he conducted a statewide crackdown on debt collectors who ran afoul of consumer protection laws, and his office encouraged consumers with their own tales of woe to contact it. ''Too often consumers find themselves in over their heads,'' reads one section of the attorney general's Web site. ''If you are one of those consumers, you may be feeling overwhelmed trying to make ends meet while paying off your bills. You may be experiencing calls from people demanding that you pay a certain debt.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The letter arrived in the New York State attorney general's office in late 2006 -- a desperate note from a woman in Yonkers with ovarian cancer. Her health insurer's reimbursements were so inexplicably low she was drowning in unexpected bills. Andrew M. Cuomo learned about the woman, Mary Reinbold Jerome, days later, soon after he was sworn in as the state's 64th attorney general, and he quickly saw that her predicament was part of a much larger problem: more than a dozen large health insurers were routinely using flawed data to shortchange consumers for reimbursements on out-of-network medical costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

He advised four presidents, twice served as a United States ambassador and had a tenured chair at Harvard, all before becoming a four-term senator from New York. Yet there was Daniel Patrick Moynihan on July 1, 1991, humbly laying on the charm in an effort to wheedle William Safire, a former colleague in the Nixon White House, into mentioning the word ''floccinaucinihilipilificationism'' in his columns for The New York Times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a quarter century, Jewish children have hungrily followed the kooky adventures of the Shpy, the adventurous hero of The Moshiach Times, a family-friendly magazine that is published six times a year in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. (Think Highlights, but Jewish.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- At 89, Al Jaffee still takes puckish pride in skewering the high and mighty, himself included. ''I had a thought yesterday,'' he announced within minutes of meeting a reporter at his summer home a few weeks ago. ''I must be a bigot,'' he said, ''because I hate bigots.'' His wife of 33 years, Joyce, understands the hazards of living with Mad magazine's longest-serving contributor, the inventor of ''Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the second of a two-part On the Records series examining the 2007 sale of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's former headquarters at 122 East 58th Street to a celebrity-studded Long Island synagogue. The $24 million deal has not gone as planned for either party. On Sunday, we looked at the transaction from the seller's side. Today, we look at the experience of the buyer. Rabbi Marc Schneier comes from a long line of prominent rabbis, stretching back 18 generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the well-preserved building at 122 East 58th Street was sold three years ago, its first change of ownership since it was built about 80 years ago, the deal ushered in new chapters for two institutions. For the seller, a genealogical group that had seen better days, the deal was a way to downsize operations and salt away a large amount of money for uncertain times ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baseball fans throughout the Northeast are eagerly anticipating the return of the Boston Red Sox to the Bronx this weekend to face their archrivals, the New York Yankees. Patrick Marchand has always lived, physically, somewhat in the middle of the two teams. Yet, spiritually, he is firmly in the Red Sox camp - and does not mind letting people know that in the other camp that is a big part of his life: Camp Mohawk, a girls' sleep-away camp in Cornwall, Conn., where he is the director. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MANCHESTER, Conn. -- They were burly men who supported their families with an all-American pursuit: getting kegs and cases of Budweiser from the warehouse to store shelves and saloons. Husbands and fathers, even a grandfather among them, they had collectively held their jobs for well over a century at a family-owned business that had been remarkably stable. They drove trucks and operated forklifts at Hartford Distributors here. A few of them were hanging on for a comfortable retirement, to be cushioned by substantial pensions. Some were still working to cover mortgages and college tuitions to come. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's one thing, in the heat of a campaign, to overlook a taxi receipt buried in the back of a wallet. But how does an elected official who has run several six-figure campaigns in New York fail to include her campaign's largest bill on expense reports filed at the time of her last race? Eleven bills totaling $101,963 have come back to haunt Helen Sears, a thrice-elected councilwoman from Queens who was defeated in September by Daniel P. Dromm in a three-way Democratic primary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two days after construction workers discovered the keel of a centuries-old wooden ship at the site of the new World Trade Center, New Yorkers continued to speculate about what might have caused the mysterious vessel to come to rest amid layers of landfill. Hundreds of readers weighed in about the ship on the City Room blog. Some fretted that it might have ferried human cargo. Others were convinced that it was a whaling ship. The whaling enthusiasts were confident asserted that a metal arc found on the keel, not far from some loose bricks, might have once belonged to a fire-powered fixture that helped sailors process blubber. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New York City's efforts to recoup taxpayer money it has awarded to candidates running for office have been hampered over the years by delays, legal fights, poor record-keeping and the plain defiance of some candidates determined not to give back extra campaign cash. But sometimes, it turns out, the city's inability to recover taxpayer dollars owes to rules that the city's lawmakers devised and approved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few cities are as generous as New York when it comes to matching political contributions raised by candidates for public office. In big election years, the city has given anywhere from $4 million to $42 million to candidates in an effort to limit the influence of special interests and level the playing field for candidates of modest means. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As college-bound seniors look forward to the dorm rooms they will call home next fall, it is a good bet that many have no idea just how steeped in history their future homes are. A search of archival records at several universities reveals how easy it is to share a little turf with Michelle Obama at Princeton or Anderson Cooper at Yale, if one is enterprising. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many ways, the opening of the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in East Harlem was a kind of miracle. It was founded by a single mother without a college degree, much experience in arts administration or any affiliation with the New York Archdiocese. But the woman, Christina Cox, had a deep passion for the project and a number of powerful friends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

They took their places in the wood-paneled courtroom, 58 people from 32 countries. They listened as a federal magistrate banged the gavel and said it was ''a wonderful day for the United States''-- the day they would become Americans. The magistrate talked about Thomas Jefferson and told the group that they could run for office -- only the presidency and the vice presidency were off limits, according to a tape recording of the proceedings in a Bridgeport, Conn., courtroom last year, on April 17. On her instructions, they raised their right hands and repeated the oath of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The acrid smell meant something was wrong, maybe dangerously wrong, and John Schneider, sitting at his superintendent's desk on Monday in an office building on West 40th Street, just off Times Square, immediately looked outside. Flames from an open manhole shot three stories into the air. The first thought in Mr. Schneider's mind was how to keep his tenants safe. His second thought: ''Kind of interesting, especially with what we had over the weekend,'' he recalled later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

AS they came and went -- major dignitaries and minor deities, old friends and pint-size new ones, people who left too soon and people who showed up unannounced -- Mark Twain recorded it all in a handsome brown guest book. Together, these turn-of-the-century tweets provide vivid snapshots of the final two years of a great writer's life, 1908 to 1910, a time when Twain traded in his Manhattan town house for a Connecticut estate he called Stormfield. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed against the City of New Haven by a black city firefighter who claimed that the scoring for a 2003 promotional exam cost him a chance to become a lieutenant. Senior Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. of the United States District Court in New Haven issued a brief ruling in the case of Firefighter Michael Briscoe and noted that he would later submit a memo explaining his reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The always quotable Mark Twain published millions of words in his 74-year lifetime, most quite delectable. But some of his last published statements, issued just days after his death a century ago this April 21, are the stuff that might make an author and former newsman like Twain want to scream, ''Get me rewrite!'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By the end of his life, Samuel Langhorne Clemens had achieved fame as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, a globe-trotting lecturer and, of course, the literary genius who wrote ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' and other works under the name Mark Twain. He was less well-known, but no less talented, as a literary critic. Proof of it has resided, mostly unnoticed, in a small library in Redding, Conn., where hundreds of his personal books have sat in obscurity for 100 years. They are filled with notes in his own cramped, scratchy handwriting. Irrepressible when he spotted something he did not like, but also impatient with good books that he thought could be better, he was often savage in his commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is the time each decade when America takes stock of itself and counts heads. Residents are asked to complete their census forms as of April 1 if they want to be counted. Getting busy New Yorkers to respond has never been easy. And for those who find the whole exercise depressing because the 2010 forms (pdf), unlike past census inquiries, seek only the drabbest details of our lives as Americans -- how many people live at that location, ages of all occupants and whether households rent or own -- here's a tip. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

William John Scott is a freshman at Drew University. He studies political science. He plays defense on the lacrosse team. He describes himself on Facebook as a night person who likes to party. But federal prosecutors say he is something else: a busy archives thief who stole famous letters written by a founder of the United Methodist Church and world leaders, including Abraham Lincoln and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The box that arrived in Philadelphia that day was the plain-looking sort typically used to transport dry goods. Just over 3 feet long, it was 2 feet 8 inches deep and not quite 2 feet wide. Written on the side were the words ''this side up with care.'' Safe to say, the recipient of the box was not fully prepared for what was inside: a 200-pound man named Henry Brown. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The letters, a total of 11, were written between 1951 and 1993, from one buddy, or ''Buddyroo,'' to another. In sharp and familiar prose, laced with humor and biting wit, the writer gives an intimate peek into his life and thoughts at precise moments in time. Read so many years later, they are filled with surprises. The recipient of the letters was E. Michael Mitchell, a Westport, Conn., commercial artist who had designed the jacket for a best-selling novel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The letters, a total of 11, were written between 1951 and 1993, from one buddy, or ''Buddyroo,'' to another. In sharp and familiar prose, laced with humor and biting wit, the writer gives an intimate peek into his life and thoughts at precise moments in time. Read so many years later, they are filled with surprises. The recipient of the letters was E. Michael Mitchell, a Westport, Conn., commercial artist who had designed the book jacket for a best-selling novel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New Yorkers can be quite creative when they want to put their affection into words. Some leave Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror. Some take out billboards in Times Square. Those still racking their brains for the perfect way to say ''I love you'' this Valentine's Day can take a cue from the memorable expressions of love left behind by famous New Yorkers. ''The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter,'' Mark Twain once wrote. ''The writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is a beige, 19-story building on the corner of Second Avenue. It was designed by Emery Roth and is considered one of the first luxury high-rises on the Upper East Side. But the building at 300 East 57th Street is also the last known New York address for J. D. Salinger before he catapulted himself into a life of seclusion in the New Hampshire woods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By all appearances, John Michael Farren and his wife, Mary Margaret Farren, had the life many can only dream about: a $4 million house in an affluent Connecticut suburb; two daughters; and high-powered legal careers, hers in the energy practice of Skadden, Arps, and his as a top aide in three Republican administrations along with a stint as general counsel of Xerox. But that facade shattered this week, shortly after Mrs. Farren had her husband served with divorce papers on Monday. By Thursday, their stately house in New Canaan had become a bloody crime scene, Mrs. Farren was hospitalized with a broken jaw, nose and other injuries, and Mr. Farren had been charged in Norwalk Superior Court with attempted murder. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Richard Blumenthal, the popular Connecticut attorney general, announced on Wednesday that he would seek the United States Senate seat being vacated by Christopher J. Dodd, suddenly altering the dynamic of an already volatile race. Mr. Blumenthal's move came just hours after Mr. Dodd, a fellow Democrat, ended his bid for re-election amid growing signs that his recent political troubles might cost the party a seat it has held for nearly half a century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

FOR a little more than a decade, the city has auctioned off rights to sell Christmas trees at locations managed by the Parks and Recreation Department. The program generated $144,959 in fees last year, 58 percent more than the year before. This year, the number of concession sites grew to 24 from 21. The parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, said he liked the concessions not just because of the revenue but also because ''in the middle of the winter they provide these little bowers of green and a pleasant smell on city streets.'' He added, ''It feels like a part of old New York.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is an enduring mystery of English literature: What secrets lie entombed in the thick scribbles that Charles Dickens made as he wrote, and rewrote, the 66 pages of ''A Christmas Carol'' in 1843? The manuscript of this classic holiday ghost story, written in six weeks to raise much-needed cash, is housed at the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan, where it bears all of Dickens's additions and subtractions in his own hand. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]