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By William Harwood

5:30 PM, 12/21/07, Update: Hale hopeful near-term fix possible for ECO sensors; engineers tentatively cleared to remove suspect connector, plug

Engineers have been provisionally cleared to remove a suspect feed-through plug and an external connector from the shuttle Atlantis' external fuel tank for laboratory testing and a possible fix to eliminate intermittent electrical glitches with low-level engine-cutoff sensors.

In an interview today with CBS News, shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale said no final decisions have been made, but one leading candidate for a near-term repair is to possibly solder the external socket to the male pins in the pass-through connector to eliminate any open circuits in that part of the system when it is chilled to cryogenic temperatuures.

This scenario assumes the internal connector is sound and is not contributing to the problem. The internal connector cannot be modified unless repair crews enter the external tank, work that likely would require a roll back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

"The leading contender today is we will, starting next week, pull the through plug with the external connector, all in one piece, off (the tank), clip the wires and wire harness and send that whole assembly off to the lab for teardown and evaluation," he said.

"Then in parallel, we've got a (qualification) process that's going through a solder of the wires directly to the male pins of the pass through. And of course, you close all that out, splice your wires into the wire harness and plug it back in."

But that is simply one option under consideration. How the agency will actually proceed - and what that might mean in terms of an eventual launch date - will depend on what engineers find when they remove and examine the hardware.

The current "no-earlier-than" launch date is Jan. 10, but that target was announced before engineers had a good idea of what might be needed to fix the problem.

Of seven options presented to shuttle managers Wednesday, only two - simply replacing the external connector or swapping out the connector and the pass-through plug - lead to launch attempts in early to mid January. Replacing the external connector with a soldered pin-and-plug arrangement likely would result in additional delay.

But again, it's not yet clear how NASA will proceed.

Going into the weekend before the Christmas holiday, Hale said he had given the team "kind of a two-part guidance. If they can come to a consensus that we don't have to go into the tank taking these pieces out, then I basically told them to go ahead and do that. If they can't get to that and they need to go into the tank, then we need to have a management review before they do that because ... getting into a tank includes a fair amount of technical risk. So they're off working on those two things."

Engineers also are reviewing low-level engine cutoff - ECO - sensor problems in other rocket systems to learn about other possible approaches to the problem.

Lockheed Martin's Atlas-Centaur rockets "had some problems, Centaur (second stage) did, back in the early '90s and they have gone to not using the kind of pin-and-socket connectors that we use and actually soldering the wires through this kind of system," Hale said. "And then I've got a huge dump here from the NESC (NASA Engineering and Safety Center) on every other anomaly report they could find in the history of mankind, almost, on connector failures, particularly in the cryogenic experience.

"We've got problem reports with connectors from Los Alamos National Labs, the Ames Research Center, some ELV (unmanned rocket) problems, just all over the place, some of which sound like ours, some of which don't. So we're using that in our team to evaluate these things and say what can we learn from this history that's out there? So, that's going into the team that's working very hard to come up with a change."

Atlantis was grounded Dec. 6 and 9 when intermittent failures of ECO sensors at the base of the hydrogen tank occurred during fueling and later, draining. A fifth sensor, which indicates when the tank is 5 percent full, also malfunctioned when the tank was drained.

The wires that carry signals from all five sensors pass through the same connector in the wall of the external tank. The three-part connector features a pass-through fitting with male pins, embedded in glass, on both sides. Wires from the sensors inside the tank terminate in a female connector inside the tank that is plugged into the male pins of the pass-through. A similar female socket plugs into the pass-through on the outside of the tank.

Based on data collected during a fueling test Dec. 18, engineers believe the problem involves gaps in the external part of the connector that are occurring when the system is chilled to ultra-low temperatures. They believe the sensors themselves are healthy and that only two circuits are actually experiencing problems: ECO sensors 1 and 3.

"The feed-through plug is a male-male plug," Hale said. "If you think about it, each of the pins goes through this vitreous glass (in the wall of the tank) and then the connectors the wire harnesses terminate in are the female sockets.

"The guys reported yesterday ... they came back and said we're pretty sure that the ECO sensor 1 (problem) was on the outside but ECO sensor 3, we're king of indeterminate on. I haven't heard the results. It would really be nice if we could say with a high degree of confidence this is on the outside."

If the problem is, in fact, in the plug or external connector, repairs could be made at the launch pad. But if the problem involves the internal connector, engineers likely would have to go inside the tank and that, almost certainly, would require a rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

"If we go inside, that's going to complicate our lives," Hale said. "You've got to go into the tank and that probably is going to require a rollback.

"But there are a multiplicity of options. The thing I've got to do as a manager is kind of sit on my hands for a couple of days, let the technical guys slug it out and come forward with a recommendation and not try to keep pulling this plan up by the roots to see how it's doing."

The goal of Atlantis' flight is to deliver the European Space Agency's Columbus research module to the international space station. But problems with the systems used to keep the station's solar arrays properly pointed at the sun could force station planners to schedule a spacewalk to swap out a so-called beta gimbal assembly motor.

Depending on when such a spacewalk might be scheduled, Atlantis could face additional delays not related to the ECO sensor work. Asked if NASA might take advantage of any such delay to implement a more extensive ECO sensor fix, Hale said the near-term goal is to get Atlantis ready to fly as soon as possible.

"I don't think that's going to factor at all," Hale said. "My goal is to get back to a highly reliable system as soon as we can to be ready to fly as soon as we practically can and then if station has other considerations, then we'll talked about what makes sense. And I know they're working their problems."

But engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are assessing potential long-term fixes that might be implemented several flights downstream. But for the two tanks at the Kennedy Space Center - Atlantis' and a tank scheduled for launch with the shuttle Endeavour in February - some sort of interim fix appears more likely.

"We've got the short-term team, which is looking on the near-term flights, the two tanks effectively that we have at the Kennedy Space Center, what are we going to do near term in which you would go off and do some kind of quick change that would mitigate if not everything, most things.

"Then we've put together what we call the long-term team under one of the chief engineer people at Marshall Space Flight Center, who's looking at a three- to four-month longer term investigation and come back with what we should do for the long term. I'd like to eliminate it as an issue."

As for whether NASA must find and address the "root cause" of the problem before Atlantis flies, Hale said "it depends on what our fix is."

"If you go to a completely different class of fix, which is why I think everybody is so enamored of the solder (technique), then you could probably say you don't need to go to root cause, I just need to know where the problem was occurring and we took it out.

"If we find out, for example, soldering doesn't work - and there's some discussion about what happens to solder joints in cryogenic temperatures, do they break or degrade - if that doesn't work and we need to go back with a plug-type socket connector again, but a different strength or different assembly method, something of that nature, then you really need to go to root cause. And that takes a bit of time."

By BOB HERBERT

Christmastime is bonus time on Wall Street, and the Gucci set has been blessed with another record harvest.

Forget the turbulence in the financial markets and the subprime debacle. Forget the dark clouds of a possible recession. Bloomberg News tells us that the top securities firms are handing out nearly $38 billion in seasonal bonuses, the highest total ever.

But there’s a reason to temper the celebration, if only out of respect for an old friend who’s not doing too well. Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life-support.

I had a conversation the other day with Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He mentioned a poll of working families that had shown that their belief in that mythical dream that has sustained so many generations for so long is fading faster than sunlight on a December afternoon.

The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners for the Change to Win labor federation, found that only 16 percent of respondents believed that their children’s generation would be better off financially than their own. While some respondents believed that the next generation would fare roughly the same as this one, nearly 50 percent held the exceedingly gloomy view that today’s children would be “worse off” when the time comes for them to enter the world of work and raise their own families.

That absence of optimism is positively un-American.

“These are parents who cannot see where the jobs of the future are that will allow their kids to have a better life than they had,” said Mr. Stern. “And they’re not wrong. That’s the problem.”

Record bonuses on Wall Street at a time when ordinary working Americans are filled with anxiety about their economic future are signs that the trickle-down phenomenon that was supposed to have benefited everyone never happened.

The rich, boosted by the not-so-invisible hand of the corporate ideologues in government, have done astonishingly well in recent decades, while the rest of the population has tended to tread water economically, or drown.

A study released last month by the Pew Charitable Trusts noted that “for most Americans, seeing that one’s children are better off than oneself is the essence of living the American dream.” But for the past 40 years, men in their 30s, prime family-raising age, have found it difficult to outdistance their dads economically.

As the Pew study put it: “Earnings of men in their 30s have remained surprisingly flat over the past four decades.” Family incomes have improved during that time largely because of the wholesale entrance of women into the work force.

For the very wealthy, of course, it’s been a different story. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent rose 228 percent from 1979 through 2005.

What seems to be happening now is that working Americans, and that includes the middle class, have exhausted much of their capacity to tread water. Wives and mothers are already working. Mortgages have been refinanced and tremendous amounts of home equity drained. And families have taken on debt loads — for cars, for college tuition, for medical treatment — that would buckle the knees of the strongest pack animals.

According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, “American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living.” Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.

We’re running out of smoke and mirrors. The fundamental problem, the problem that is destroying the dream, is the extreme inequality pounded into the system by the corporate crowd and its handmaidens in government.

As Mr. Stern said: “To me, the issue in America is not a question of wealth or growth, it’s a question of distribution.”

When such an overwhelming portion of the economic benefits are skewed toward a tiny portion of the population — as has happened in the U.S. over the past few decades — it’s impossible for the society as a whole not to suffer.

Americans work extremely hard and are amazingly productive. But without the clout of a strong union movement, and arrayed against the mighty power of the corporations and the federal government, they don’t receive even a reasonably fair share of the economic benefits from their hard work or productivity.

Instead of celebrating bonuses this Christmas season, too many American workers are looking with dread toward 2008, worried about their rising levels of debt, or whether they will be able to hang on to a job with few or no benefits or how to tell their kids that they won’t be able to help with the cost of college.

It’s not the stuff of which dreams are made.

Gail Collins is off today.
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By MAUREEN DOWD

Once it was about Hillary, but now, of course, it’s about Bill.

Our ubiquitous ex-president is playing his favorite uxorious game, and it goes like this: Let’s create chaos and then get out of it together. You ride to my rescue or I ride to yours. We come within an inch of dying and then recapture the day by the skin of our teeth. While we’re killing ourselves, we blame everyone else. We’ll be heroes.

It worked for Bill and Hillary in ’92 and ’96. It didn’t work in the health care debacle. Will it work in Iowa and New Hampshire?

Just when I thought I was out, the Clintons pull me back into their conjugal psychodrama.

Inside the Bill gang and the Hillary gang, there is panic and perplexity. Is Bill a loyal spouse or a subconscious saboteur?

Should Hillaryland muzzle him? Give him a minder? Is he rusty? Or is he freelancing because he relishes his role as head of the party his wife is trying to take over?

“For the first time since the Marc Rich pardon,” said a friend of the Clintons, “Bill is seriously diminishing his personal standing with the people closest to him.”

Certainly Bill wants to repay Hill for those traumatic times when he had to hide behind her skirt. And certainly he feels that his legacy is tied to her. He suggests to Matt Bai in today’s Times Magazine that she can be F.D.R. to his Teddy Roosevelt, getting through the ideas that fell flat the first time.

Is Bill torn between resentment of being second fiddle and gratification that Hillary can be first banana only with his help? Their relationship has always been a co-dependence between his charm and her discipline. But what if, as some of her advisers suggest, she turned out to be a tougher leader, quicker to grasp foreign policy, less skittish about using military power and more inspirational abroad? What if she were to use his mistakes as a reverse blueprint, like W. did with his dad?

When Bill gets slit-eyed, red-faced and finger-wagging in defense of her, is he really defending himself, ego in full bloom, against aspersions that Obama and Edwards cast on Clintonian politics?

Maybe the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well.

“They’re not Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who had jealousy as the lifeblood of their marriage,” said one writer who has studied the pair. “The lifeblood of their marriage is crisis, coming to each other’s rescue.”

Bill is staying up late strategizing and recasting her message and speeches. But he’s off his game on the trail, making clumsy mistakes like his remark — bound to be shot down by Poppy Bush — that Hillary would send 41 and 42 around the world to restore prestige lost by 43.

Hillary advisers noted that when Bill was asked by a supporter in South Carolina what his wife’s No. 1 priority would be, he replied: C’est moi! “The first thing she intends to do is to send me ...” he began.

He got so agitated with Charlie Rose — ranting that reporters were “stenographers” for Obama — that his aides tried to stop the interview.

He also got in the way of her message with stretchers about opposing the Iraq war from the start, and — in a slap at Obama — deciding not to run in ’88 because he lacked experience. Truth is, he didn’t run for fear of bimbo eruptions.

While making a speech in Iowa, The Associated Press’s Ron Fournier reported, Bill used the word “I” 94 times in 10 minutes, while mentioning “Hillary” just seven times. At a London fund-raiser, one Hillaryite said, it took him nearly half an hour to mention her.

As the Arkansas journalist Max Brantley told the Billary biographer Sally Bedell Smith, “He’s always evangelizing for the church of Bill.”

It’s hard to feel sorry for Hillary because the very logic of her campaign leads right to Bill. When she speaks of her “experience,” she is referring not to the Senate but to the White House, thereby making her campaign a plebiscite on the ’90s.

Running this way, she is essentially asking people to like her if they liked him. Whether she knows it or not, this is a coattails strategy. It’s almost as if she’s offering herself to Clinton supporters as the solution to the problem of the 22nd Amendment.

Bill is a narcissist, but he’s also within his rights to think that she has invited him onstage. If she is his legacy, why should he muzzle himself? After all, you can’t ask Elvis to behave like Colonel Parker.

If voting for Obama is a roll of the dice, as Bill suggests, voting for Billary is a sure bet: an endless soap opera.

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES — Home owners across the nation are looking to county governments to reassess the values of their homes in the face of flattening and falling prices that have befallen scores of markets. Downward assessments, done at the request of homeowners or pre-emptively by government, appear to be most pronounced in areas where the housing market was exploding just a few years ago, or where economic conditions are poorest.

In Maricopa County, the largest in Arizona, a “large percentage” of the one million single-family home owners will see their houses reassessed at lower rates in February, said Keith Russell, the county assessor. In Phoenix, the largest city in the county, housing prices fell 8.8 percent over the last year, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index, which monitors the residential housing market.

Among the roughly 200,000 parcels in Lucas County, Ohio, 7,083 owners requested reassessments in 2007, about 10 times the yearly average, said Anita Lopez, the assessor, who ran for office on a campaign to adjust assessments.

“Citizens know the market is slow if not declining,” Ms. Lopez said, “and they are informed and feel comfortable in challenging their county values. People here can’t sell their homes, they have less money, and they don’t understand why the government is asking for more money in a declining housing market.”

Local governments, which rely heavily on property taxes, will have to find ways to replace lost revenue or face having to cut services, lay off staff members or delay projects. The possibility of those losses has alarmed officials in areas already facing large numbers of foreclosures and slumping sales, products, in part, of the mortgage credit crisis that has rippled through the country. [Sunday Business.]

“Government has been the beneficiary of increasing home prices,” said Relmond Van Daniker, the executive director of the Association of Government Accountants. “And now they are on the other side of that, and they will have to reduce expenses.”

While every state and local government has its own methods for assessing home values for tax purposes — some do it annually, some every five years, and everything in between — many counties are hearing from residents that they would like their homes reassessed, or have taken steps to bring the taxes down of their own volition.

While in some areas, a county or city is required to make whole any loss in revenues to schools, public education is a frequent beneficiary of property tax revenues. “They are obviously concerned,” Ms. Lopez said about her county’s school systems.

No one has aggregated the total number of counties reassessing home values, and many counties take at least a year to catch up to the marketplace. In some places where reassessments are rising, the numbers have yet to approach historical heights.

For example, in 2007 roughly 1,800 homeowners asked for reassessments in Los Angeles County, far above the average of about 500, yet far below the tens of thousands of homeowners in Los Angeles who looked for tax adjustments during some years of the downturn in the 1990s. But elected officials and property tax experts said that the numbers were notable and that they expected them to grow in 2008.

In San Bernardino County near Los Angeles, tens of thousands of owners of the 860,000 homes will have their assessments lowered in the coming year, said Bill Postmus, the assessor, rivaling the numbers during the California real estate crash of the 1990s.

“You should see more of this activity,” said Chris Hoene, director of policy and research at the National League of Cities. “It is mostly in areas most likely to be seeing some decline, like Southern California, Florida, and big cities in the Midwest,” rapid growth areas that are now seeing the other side of the curve.

The United States Conference of Mayors recently released a report showing that the value of taxable residential land had declined by $2.9 billion in California from 2005 to 2008 based on current tax rates, and by hundreds of millions of dollars in other major cities. “We are hearing a lot about this housing market change and its effect on city revenues every day,” Mr. Hoene said

Cities where home values have fallen the most are the obvious first place to look for residents clamoring for reassessments, but that is not always the case. Some states, like California, Michigan and Nevada, have statutory caps in property tax increases, which mean the market value of single family homes almost always exceeds the assessed tax values, except in a major downturn.

However, even in California, if a home buyer made his purchase during a market top in the last several years, he might be in the position of qualifying for lower assessed values. For instance, in Santa Clara County, where pricey Palo Alto and San Jose are located, 17,758 properties were reassessed downward for the 2007-2008 tax period, compared with the same period from 2000 to 2001, when the number was closer to 300.

“Obviously 2001 was the dot-com boom,” said Larry Stone, the Santa Clara assessor. “And the whole assessment role in my county was carried by a very hot residential market,” which has substantially cooled.

In his area, prices, and therefore values, remain strong in high end residential areas with great schools, Mr. Stone said. The coming reassessments are driven in large part in the lower and middle markets, especially the condo market, where the greatest part of the subprime lending problems have occurred.

Indeed, areas with high levels of foreclosures, vacant housing and a reduction in prices expect to see adjustments to the property taxes continue, which is bad news for local governments.

“Rising tax values are not usually a popular thing,” Mr. Hoene said , but homeowners tend to accept it, even begrudgingly, when they know the market value of their home is on the rise. “But the minute you think that your local government assessment practices are out of whack with what is happening in the market,” he said, “you will not accept it.”

By TIM WEINER

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.

“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said.

Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administration’s decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today.

The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush issued an order that effectively allowed the United States to hold suspects indefinitely without a hearing, a lawyer, or formal charges. In September 2006, Congress passed a law suspending habeas corpus for anyone deemed an “unlawful enemy combatant.”

But the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the right of American citizens to seek a writ of habeas corpus. This month the court heard arguments on whether about 300 foreigners held at Guantánamo Bay had the same rights. It is expected to rule by next summer.

Hoover’s plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of “The Foreign Relations of the United States,” a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War.

Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow.

So the bureau had arranged for “detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended” in those states, he wrote.

The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” his letter noted.

The only modern precedent for Hoover’s plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoover’s intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals.

Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.’s “security index” of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans “who might be dangerous” if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people.

Hoover’s July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs.

In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal.

By KATE HAMMER

Across the city, delis and bodegas are a familiar and vital part of the streetscape, modest places where customers can pick up necessities, a container of milk, a can of soup, a loaf of bread.

Amid the goods found in the stores, there is one thing that many owners and employees say they cannot do without: their cats. And it goes beyond cuddly companionship. These cats are workers, tireless and enthusiastic hunters of unwanted vermin, and they typically do a far better job than exterminators and poisons.

When a bodega cat is on the prowl, workers say, rats and mice vanish.

That is the case at a narrow corner store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where a gray long-haired tabby named Halloween goes on regular patrols when she is not lounging on a plaid bed tucked behind dusty rows of Schweppes ginger ale and empty cardboard boxes.

“In the morning she is lazy, it is her nap time,” said Urszula Jawor, 49, the deli’s manager, a Polish immigrant who smiled with motherly pride at Halloween, adding that the cat was named for the day she wandered in off the street and claimed the Bedford Avenue store as her home.

“But in the afternoon she is busy,” Ms. Jawor said. “She spends hours stalking the mice and the rats.”

To store owners, the services of cats are indispensable in a city where the rodent problem is serious enough to be documented in a still popular two-minute video clip on YouTube from late February (youtube.com/watch?v=su0U37w2tws) of rats running amok in a KFC/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village. Store-dwelling cats are so common that there is a Web site, workingclasscats.com, dedicated to telling their tales.

But as efficient as the cats may be, their presence in stores can lead to legal trouble. The city’s health code and state law forbid animals in places where food or beverages are sold for human consumption. Fines range from $300 for a first offense to $2,000 or higher for subsequent offenses.

“Any animal around food presents a food contamination threat,” said Robert M. Corrigan, a rodentologist and research scientist for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “And so that means anything from animal pieces and parts to hair and excrement could end up in food, and that alone, of course, is a violation of the health code.”

Mr. Corrigan did concede that some studies have shown that the smell of cats in an enclosed area will keep mice away. But he does not endorse cats as a form of pest control because, he explained, the bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites and nematodes carried by rats may infect humans by secondary transfer through a cat.

Still, many store owners keep cats despite the law, mainly because other options have failed and the fine for rodent feces is also $300. “It’s hard for bodega owners because they’re not supposed to have a cat, but they’re also not supposed to have rats,” said José Fernández, the president of the Bodega Association of the United States.

Luis Martinez, 42, has managed his brother’s grocery in East New York, Brooklyn, for two years. At first, despite weekly visits from an exterminator, the store’s inventory was ravaged constantly by nibbling vermin.

“Every night I had to put the bread in the freezer,” he said, pointing at shelves filled with bread and hamburger buns. “I was losing too much inventory. The chips and the Lipton soups all had holes in them.”

Then, last winter, a friend brought Mr. Martinez a marmalade kitten in need of a home. Mr. Martinez, who was skeptical of how one slinky kitten could fend off an army of hungry rats, set up a litter box in the back of the store, put down an old fleece jacket and named the kitten Junior.

Within two weeks, Mr. Martinez said, “a miracle.”

“Before you’d see giant rats running in off the streets into the store, but since Junior, no more,” he said.

Junior sometimes brings Mr. Martinez mouse carcasses as gifts, which he said bothers him less than the smell that permeates his store when the exterminator’s victims die and rot under a freezer.

In October, a health inspector fined Mr. Martinez $300 and warned him that if Junior was still there by the time of the next inspection he would be fined $2,000.

“He wants me to get rid of the cat, but the rats will take over if I do,” Mr. Martinez said. “I need the cat, and the cat needs a home.”

Because stores do not get advance notification of an inspection, Mr. Martinez is trying to keep Junior in his office as much as possible. Many bodega owners reason that a cat is less of a health threat than an army of nibbling rats. “If cats live in homes and apartments where people have food, a cat shouldn’t be a threat in a store if it’s well maintained,” Mr. Fernández said.

Some animal rescue groups, like the Spay and Neuter Intervention Project, support the legalization and regulation of store cats so that owners would be required to provide basic veterinary care and to spay or neuter their animals.

At a corner store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Andre Duran, one of the owners, said he had kept a cat for six years and had never been fined.

“That’s Oreo,” he said, as he lifted a tiny black cat with white paws into his arms and carried her like a football. “No one’s ever complained about cat hair in their sandwiches, and if she weren’t here, you bet there’d be bigger problems than hair.”

As a line formed at Mr. Duran’s cash register and he excused himself to take orders, Oreo’s ears perked up and she slunk away toward the back of the store. She was, perhaps, in pursuit of something.

By PETER S. GOODMAN

TWO years ago, when Eric Feichthaler was elected mayor of this palm-fringed, middle-class city, he figured on spending a lot of time at ribbon-cuttings. Tens of thousands of people had moved here in recent years, turning musty flatlands into a grid of ranch homes painted in vibrant Sun Belt hues: lime green, apricot and canary yellow.

Mr. Feichthaler was keen to build a new high school. He hoped to widen roads and extend the reach of the sewage system, limiting pollution from leaky septic tanks. He wanted to add parks.

Now, most of his visions have shrunk. The real estate frenzy that once filled public coffers with property taxes has over the last two years given way to a devastating bust. Rather than christening new facilities, the mayor finds himself picking through the wreckage of speculative excess and broken dreams.

Last month, the city eliminated 18 building inspector jobs and 20 other positions within its Department of Community Development. They were no longer needed because construction has all but ceased. The city recently hired a landscaping company to cut overgrown lawns surrounding hundreds of abandoned homes.

“People are underwater on their houses, and they have just left,” Mr. Feichthaler says. “That road widening may have to wait. It will be difficult to construct the high school. We know there are needs, but we are going to have to wait a little bit.”

Waiting, scrimping, taking stock: This is the vernacular of the moment for a nation reckoning with the leftovers of a real estate boom gone sour. From the dense suburbs of northern Virginia to communities arrayed across former farmland in California, these are the days of pullback: with real estate values falling, local governments are cutting services, eliminating staff and shelving projects.

Families seemingly disconnected from real estate bust are finding themselves sucked into its orbit, as neighbors lose their homes and the economy absorbs the strains of so much paper wealth wiped out so swiftly.

Southwestern Florida is in the midst of this gathering storm. It was here that housing prices multiplied first and most exuberantly, and here that the deterioration has unfolded most rapidly. As troubles spill from real estate and construction into other areas of life, this region offers what may be a foretaste of the economic pain awaiting other parts of the country.

Cape Coral is in Lee County, across the Caloosahatchee River from Fort Myers. In the county, a tidal wave of foreclosures is turning some neighborhoods into veritable ghost towns. The county school district recently scrapped plans to build seven new schools over the next two years. Real estate agents and construction workers are scrambling for other lines of work, and abandoning the area. As houses are relinquished to red ink and the elements, break-ins are skyrocketing, yet law enforcement is resigned to making do with existing staff.

“We’re all going to have to tighten the belt somehow,” says Robert Petrovich, Cape Coral’s chief of police.

FLORIDA real estate has long been synonymous with boom and bust, but the recent cycle has packed an unusual intensity. The Internet made it possible for people ensconced in snowy Minnesota to type “cheap waterfront property” into search engines and scroll through hundreds of ads for properties here. Cape Coral beckoned speculators, retirees and snowbirds with thousands of lots, all beyond winter’s reach.

Creative finance lubricated the developing boom, making it easy for buyers to take on more mortgage debt than they could otherwise handle, driving prices skyward. Each upward burst brought more investors — some from as far as California and Europe, real estate agents say.

Joe Carey was part of the speculative influx. An owner of rental property in Ohio, he visited Cape Coral in 2002 and found that he could buy undeveloped quarter-acre lots for as little as $10,000. Nearby, there were beaches, golf courses and access to the Caloosahatchee River, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

Builders were happy to arrange construction loans, then erect houses in as little as six months. Real estate agents promised to find buyers before the houses were even finished.

“All you needed was a pulse,” Mr. Carey said. “The price of dirt was going up. We took that leap of faith and put down $10,000.”

Backed by easily acquired construction loans, Mr. Carey’s investment allowed him to buy three lots and top off each with a new home. He flipped them immediately for about $175,000 each, he recalls. Then he bought more lots, confident that Cape Coral and Fort Myers — the county seat across the river — would continue to blossom. From 2000 to 2003, the population of the Cape Coral-Fort Myers metropolitan area grew to nearly 500,000 from 444,000, according to Moody’s Economy.com.

“Jobs were very plentiful,” Mr. Carey said. “The construction trade was up, stores were opening up, and doctors were coming in. It kind of built its own economy.”

By MARK BITTMAN

YOU want good food at a holiday cocktail party and you want to impress people? You don’t want a caterer, you refuse to heat up frozen food, and you want to show that your expertise extends beyond buying perfectly ripe hunks of cheese and juicy olives? Then think about doing some cooking.

Here is a collection of party foods that are as easy to eat as they are to make. Each can be produced in 20 minutes or less. Many can be served at room temperature. And none require a plate. (Few people can juggle plate, wineglass and fork successfully, let alone gracefully.)

Most of these recipes are beyond minimalist: they never do in two steps what can be done in one, and they need no embellishment. As you scan these recipes for ideas, mostly think this: The ones you find most appealing are the ones your guests will like. Choose a few, spend an hour or two in the kitchen, and you’ll be in great shape.

On Bread or Crackers

1 Red peppers and anchovies: Drizzle piquillos or other roasted red peppers with olive oil, and top with a good anchovy fillet. A caper or two on each is not amiss.

2 Top rye flatbread with thin slices of crisp apple and pickled plain or schmaltz herring (not herring in cream sauce).

3 Sear skirt steak to medium-rare, not more than 8 minutes. Cut into chunks 1/2-inch to 1 inch, first with the grain, then against it. Spread bread with coarse mustard and/or butter. Top with steak and coarse salt.

4 Toss high-quality crab meat with minced shallots, a little tarragon or a lot of parsley and/or basil, and enough mayonnaise to bind. Also good on lettuce leaves.

5 Mash together best-quality tuna, minced anchovies, minced garlic, chopped oil-cured olives and olive oil as necessary.

6 New York comfort food: Spread cream cheese or crème fraîche on small bagels or bagel chips; black bread is also terrific. Top with sturgeon, sable or lox.

7 Slice soft goat cheese and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and chopped herbs, then with bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees until soft, about 10 minutes, and serve hot.

8 Might not be the new ketchup, but great stuff: purée skinned roasted peppers or piquillos with some of their liquid, salt and olive oil. Serve alone or with other foods — a piece of cheese, even.

9 Top buttered bread with shaved country ham, prosciutto or regular deli ham and bread-and-butter pickles.

10 Chop shrimp fine, then sauté in a minimum of oil, or poach quickly and drain. Mix premade pesto with mayonnaise so that it is gluey. Combine cooled shrimp with sufficient pesto to bind; chill.

The Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi.

FOR almost 200 years, Santa Fe has been a site of pilgrimage. Every Good Friday since the early 18th century, believers have marched by foot, away from the center of town, with its Romanesque cathedral and rounded stucco buildings the color of roasted corn, toward El Santuario de Chimayo, the Lourdes of the Southwest, in the high-desert hills some 28 miles north. It’s a marathon of the devout, who reach the holy finish line wearing anything from hiking gear to their Sunday best.

When I arrived in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, last summer, however, a different sort of Friday pilgrimage was under way. A remarkably homogeneous set of faithful were ambling up Canyon Road, where 100-plus art galleries had thrown open their doors, as they do every Friday night.

The women were all willowy, with long, pale hair that plumb-lined down the backs of their linen blouses. The men all wore freshly laundered jeans and crisp oxford shirts, their cuffs buttoned to the wrist. Most were in late middle age; many might once have been hippies. All exuded an aura of moneyed confidence.

All, that is, except me and my mother, who had flown in from Connecticut for the weekend. While the people around us were very likely spending hundreds, if not thousands, on Colonial-chic hotels, trendy restaurants and Navajo artifacts, I had a weekend budget of just $500, far from enough to support Mom in the style to which she should really be accustomed. More stressful yet, my mother had been my original tutor in frugality — a coupon-clipping budgetarian capable of transforming humdrum leftovers into Michelin-starred feasts. Now I had to live up to her example.

Yet our stay in this 400-year-old city began auspiciously, with a perfectly inexpensive art walk. Up Canyon Road we followed the pilgrims, popping into Marigold Arts to glance at Kenneth Parker’s vibrant Asian landscape photos (and drink the free ginger iced tea), then wandering down an alley to the Anahita Gallery for a stark behind-the-Iron-Curtain photography show (plus cheese and crackers).

The best show was “Flooded Desert,” Teresa Neptune’s painterly photographs of drenched dunes at White Sands. Not only was the show in El Zaguán, a rickety but quaint 1850s merchant’s home that houses the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, but Ms. Neptune had shot all these gorgeous images on just a few rolls of film. Whence such efficiency? As a poor art student, she said, “I had to learn to be very frugal.”

To beat the crowds, Mom and I departed Canyon Road for the Coyote Cafe, the storied restaurant that elevated Southwestern cuisine way beyond green-chili cheeseburgers. But because its entrees frequently hit the $30 mark, we went up to its more casual (and cheaper), bustling Rooftop Cantina. There, we munched chipotle shrimp, Cuban sandwiches and duck quesadillas and drank crisp, hoppy Santa Fe Pale Ale.

As I paid the bill, which came to $54, I jokingly suggested we celebrate our first trip together in 15 years the traditional Southwestern way — with tequila shots. Five minutes later, we were entering the Matador, a subterranean bar where the punk-ska band Operation Ivy was playing on the sound system and one wall displayed a poster for D.O.A., an early-’80s hard-core group.

This was a real dive bar. Well, a Santa Fe dive — instead of shots, we sipped smooth añejo ($19 with tip) until Mom announced she was tired.

I was beat, too, so we returned to the Camel Suites (just recently sold and renamed the Santa Fe Suites), the least expensive hotel I could find that still claimed to represent Santa Fe’s “rustic charm.” So, rustic charm meant the bedspreads were an indiscriminate medley of pink, purple, copper and turquoise, and the wood furniture was factory-made to look rough-hewn. But the beds were soft, the historic district just minutes way, and the rate was $90.75 a night (including tax). We slept soundly.

The next morning we drove to the Santa Fe Baking Company, a homey, crowded cafe where Mom loaded up on scrambled eggs with scallions and Cheddar cheese, and I ate light: a cinnamon bun, coffee and an imperial pint of fresh orange juice — all for a fair $20.

Then, it was off to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (admission was $8 for me, $7 for my 60-or-older mother). We arrived in time to join a free tour, whose elderly docent sketched the painter’s life, from her discovery by Alfred Stieglitz to her artistic blossoming in New Mexico.

My mother, a part-time docent herself, questioned the way the guide played down O’Keeffe’s sensuality — an approach that, of course, had the opposite effect on us. We could see little else in O’Keeffe’s flowers and landscapes, and couldn’t help speculating on her relationship with Tony Vaccaro, whose intimate photographs of her adorned one gallery.

Post-museum, we window-shopped in the central plaza. (“Well!” Mom exclaimed. “It looks just like Taormina!”) At jewelry stores, Indian storyteller figures — ceramic characters on whose shoulders sit a rapt audience of children — were selling for $1,500, and at Shiprock Trading, antique Navajo rugs cost 10 times that.

We did find one bargain, though not really at a boutique: the Frito pie, $4.15 at the Five and Dime General Store on the tourist-flooded plaza. Back behind the aisles of shampoos and Hallmark cards lay the lunch counter where this delicacy — a small bag of chips sliced open and drenched with chili — was allegedly invented in 1962, when this was still a Woolworth’s. The pie is a satisfying snack. In fact, it weighed a ton — something like three pounds of meaty, beany, salty, corny goodness.

It necessitated a trip to the countryside to work off that weight. For Santa Fe is not simply its historic center but also the wild hills that lead into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We drove past adobe-style gated housing developments, then around tight switchbacks, the forests of pine and aspen growing ever thicker.

At last, we reached 10,350 feet and Ski Santa Fe. The lifts that are now serving skiers were not open, so we ascended the unused trails on foot. Mom, alas, made it only partway before calling it quits — but she insisted that I soldier on, and I soon learned how steep even bunny slopes can be when there’s no high-speed quad to whisk you uphill.

Thirty minutes later, I arrived at a peak and saw what I’d been hoping for: sunbeams breaking through clouds; the hills, so red up close, now infinite shades of blue and gray; and Santa Fe itself, reduced to a little pueblo. It was a vista Mom would have loved. Then I rushed back down; we were due at the opera.

Now, I prefer Hollywood musicals to Mozart and Puccini, but at $14 a ticket, the open-air Santa Fe Opera, a few miles outside the city, was too good to pass up — especially since the opera-going culture there includes a unique aspect: gourmet tailgating. As Mom and I walked through the parking lot, we encountered a dozen parties, some in formal dress, seated at fold-out tables and finishing off bottles of wine.

This was serious feasting, and we actually began to feel a little ashamed of our takeout meal from Dave’s Not Here ($18.56). Mom had ordered her favorite, chiles rellenos, and I a green chili stew — delicious, but so sloppy that I wished I’d chosen Dave’s famous green-chili cheeseburger.

The opera? It was Strauss’s “Daphne,” and apart from the chic production design and the presence of live sheep onstage, its turgid plotting and lack of catchy hooks failed to convert this philistine. I’ll take “Gold Diggers of 1933” any day.

One mission remained for Sunday: the International Folk Art Market, the annual gathering of artisans from Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Laos and everywhere in between. On Saturday, admission had been $15; on Sunday, it was $5. But as we waited for the free shuttle to the fairgrounds, outside the Museum of International Folk Art, an official called out, “Anyone from Connecticut?” Mom answered his call, and he gave us free tickets, just for being from far away.

The fair itself was overwhelming. Crafts makers in traditional costumes demonstrated their techniques, live bands from Japan and West Africa performed on a stage, and thousands of shoppers pawed at jewelry, toys, textiles, masks and trinkets galore.

As afternoon approached, prices dropped. A $300 Mexican indigo rug was half off; a Kyrgyz felt rug went for $100. Mom picked a lovely, bright woodcut of an orange by the Brazilian artist Abraão Batista Bezerra (just $30!) while I went for one by his countryman José Francisco Borges ($20!).

We celebrated with a $5 cup of organic lavender ice cream from Tara’s booth — sublime.

With about $40 left before we hit our weekend limit, Mom and I decided to visit Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese-style spa in the hills. But when I went online to double-check prices — $19 for an all-day soak in the communal hot tub — I discovered it was clothing optional. Now, my family’s fairly progressive, but some things, thankfully, remain off limits. I went alone, which was a smart decision: There was a single bathrobed woman lounging in a chair, but the communal tub was full of naked men. Mom would not have loved this vista.

Among the bamboo walls and the needly pine trees, I alternated between hot tub, cold plunge and sauna, drank tea and finally relaxed. All weekend, I realized, I’d been stressing, worried that, on this meager budget, my mother would be miserable. But she’d eaten gloriously, shopped thriftily and gotten a hefty dose of Santa Fe culture — and so had I.

Total: $493.30 (including taxes, parking fees and a mind-blowing $53 brunch — smoked trout hash, red chili with fried egg — at Café Pasqual’s on our final morning).

By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON — NASA has delayed the launching of a mission to Mars by two years, to 2013, because of an undisclosed conflict of interest involved in one of two final proposals, officials said Friday.

Postponing the Mars Scout program mission means that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will miss an opportunity to launch a flight to Mars for the first time in more than a decade, Doug McCuistion, director of the agency’s Mars Exploration Program, said at a news conference.

Mars and Earth only get close enough to efficiently launch explorations every 26 months.

After reducing 26 mission proposals to two, and entering an evaluation period this fall to select a winner, Mr. McCuistion said an unspecified conflict of interest arose concerning one proposal and the assessment group.

Resolving the conflict, the nature of which Mr. McCuistion said he could not discuss, required disbanding the review panel and forming a new one. This process, he said, in setting back a selection by at least four months, meant that keeping to the original launching date would put undue cost and schedule pressure on the winner.

“Delaying the next Scout mission is allowing the mission planning teams to re-plan their proposed missions,” he said. “It will also reduce the risk of cost overruns driven by the tight mission schedule.”

The teams, one at the University of Colorado and the other from the Southwest Research Institute branch in Boulder, Colo., have until August 2008 to submit their new proposals. NASA will make a final selection next December.

Both groups are proposing similar spacecraft to orbit Mars and study why the planet’s thin atmosphere is escaping into space. The five-year, $475 million mission is part of the Scout program to send missions with relatively modest costs to regularly explore Mars. Mr. McCuistion said the delay could add as much as $40 million to the cost of the mission.

In other news concerning Mars, NASA said Friday that a recently discovered asteroid that appeared on course to hit the planet would probably pass it within 30,000 miles. The asteroid, estimated to be about 164 feet wide and named 2007 WD5, should zoom by about 6 a.m. on Jan. 30, 2008, the announcement said.

Uncertainties about the asteroid’s orbit gives it a 1-in-75 chance of hitting Mars, scientists said. If it were to hit, it would strike at about 30,000 miles per hour and create a crater more than a half-mile wide.

By KENNETH CHANG

The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the nation’s premier center for plumbing the mysteries of the universe in the tiniest bits of matter, is planning to lay off more than 10 percent of its employees in the coming months, the result of impending budget cuts mandated by the spending bill passed by Congress this week.

Fermilab’s collaboration in an international project to design and build the International Linear Collider, which would slam together electrons and their anti-particles — positrons — at ever-higher energies, will slow to a halt. A Fermilab experiment called NOvA to look for an asymmetry in the laws governing evanescent particles known as neutrinos will be placed in limbo with hopes that it can be revived next year by new financing.

Outside of Fermilab, the spending bill also eliminated the United States’ planned contribution of $160 million to ITER, a test fusion reactor that is intended to lead to commercial energy production by emulating the process that powers the Sun.

Fermilab, in the western suburbs of Chicago, had expected its budget to rise to $372 million from $342 million. Instead it will fall to $320 million. Officials said they were caught unaware by the cuts, and because they affect the 2008 fiscal year that started nearly three months ago, the officials said they had to take action quickly.

“I have never been handed a problem more difficult than this one,” Piermaria Oddone, Fermilab’s director, told his employees at a meeting on Thursday, where he announced that probably 200 layoffs out of a work force of 1,940 people would be necessary.

Remaining employees will effectively have their pay cut. Beginning in February, they will have to take off two unpaid days a month.

Some scientists attributed Fermilab’s woes to Congress’s reviving its practice of earmarks that direct agencies to finance projects that would probably not receive money otherwise. In a statement, the American Physical Society said it “notes with some dismay that had Congress applied the same discipline to earmarking as it did last year, the damage to the science and technology enterprise could have been avoided.”

President Bush is expected to sign the spending bill into law.

In the budget proposed by Mr. Bush in February as well as the versions passed later by the Senate and the House, the Office of Science at the Energy Department was slated for a healthy budget increase of more than 18 percent, part of a promise to double financing for research for the physical sciences over the next decade.

But to meet bottom-line spending targets demanded by Mr. Bush, Congress rolled back the planned increases for the Energy Department and other science agencies. Fermilab’s budget fell, because the spending bill specifically dictates large cuts to the International Linear Collider and the NOvA projects.

Young-Kee Kim, deputy director of Fermilab, said the laboratory had expected to receive $47 million for the collider project, employing about 170 scientists, engineers and technicians. With the final spending bill, that amount was reduced to $15 million. “The money is kind of already spent,” Dr. Kim said.

About $36 million had been allocated for NOvA with about 80 Fermilab people working on that project.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING (AP) -- Police were searching for the culprits behind the beheading and skinning of a rare Siberian tiger at a zoo in central China, state media reported Sunday.

The female tiger was found with its head, legs and skin missing Thursday morning at the Three Gorges Forest Wild Animal World in Yichang city in Hubei province, Xinhua News Agency.

It said the locks of the tiger's cage were broken and that police found four homemade anesthetic rifles near the cage.

''It is highly possible that the killer or killers broke into the room, anesthetized the tiger, opened the cage and then dragged the animal out of the room and butchered it,'' Xinhua quoted one unnamed official as saying.

Tiger skins are sold on the black market in China, and tiger parts are used in traditional medicines.

Calls to the zoo rang unanswered on Sunday. A man at the Forestry Bureau of Yichang city confirmed the killing and said an investigation was under way. He refused to give his name.

The WWF conservation group lists the Siberian tiger as ''critically endangered'' and says there are only about 530 of the animals alive in the wild. Most live in the far east of Russia or northeast China.

Hundreds more live in captivity. Xinhua said China has established breeding bases to help protect the animals.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.

“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”

By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.

People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.

“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”

Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.

Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.

“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”

The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.

And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.

“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”

Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”

It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.

“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”

August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.

“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”

Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)

From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.

They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.

Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.

The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.

“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”

Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”

Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.

By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.

By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.

“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.

Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.

But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.

Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.

Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.

But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.

Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.

From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.

But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.

With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.

By Elliott Hester

“Why is it, I often wonder, that U.S. carriers have far and away the worst — most surly, inattentive and often snooty — service in the world?” The question, recently posted on this blog by Pico Iyer, begs to be answered by the accused.

During my 20-year career as a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline, I’ve worked perhaps 5,000 domestic and international flights. In addition to these, I’ve flown hundreds of times as a “non-revenue” passenger, hundreds more as a “full-fare.” From my perspective as both customer and employee, I haven’t seen it all but I’ve seen a lot. Airplane brawls, emergency landings, ailing passengers, terrorist threats, in-flight robberies and, yes, a few surly, inattentive and snooty airline employees. (If passengers gasp at the sight of a truculent flight attendant, imagine what it’s like to work with one.)

The truth is … drum roll please … most flight attendants are pleasant and hard-working people. Perhaps we don’t always smile as much as some passengers would like. Perhaps we don’t make you feel as special as the TV commercials promised. Maybe you don’t like the way we look (many of us are beyond middle-age and not as physically attractive as passengers want us to be). But more often than not, we treat you fairly, if not courteously.

Flight attendants spend a lot of time with passengers. Unlike management personnel tucked away at airline headquarters, customer service agents on the other side of the ticket counter and pilots who remain locked behind the cockpit door for the duration of a flight, no physical barriers exist between flight attendants and the passengers we serve. We’re in it together, attendant and attendee — hurtling through space in a narrow metal tube — for up to 14 hours at a time.

For all intents and purposes, flight attendants are the face of the airline. When frustration reaches the boiling point, when missed connections and diminished services and late departures send passengers flying into a frenzy, the face of the airline gets slapped.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been blamed for the level of service my airline allows me to provide. You would not believe how often I’m belittled for not being able to magically produce a pillow. I’ve been screamed at after making simple requests, like asking a passenger to fasten his seat belt or turn off her cellular phone. I’ve been rebuked time and time again because flights at my airline are “always late,” because luggage “never” makes a connecting flight, because the seats I personally designed and constructed are too small.

Needless to say, my skin has thickened over the years. Not as thick, apparently, as the “large, angry and tired militant” senior U.S. flight attendants working Mr. Iyer’s flights to Japan. I’m not disputing claims of inattentive treatment by my airborne colleagues. Perhaps, after 30 or more years of flying (30 or more years of passenger complaints) they’ve grown tired and jaded. But to compare service on Asian carriers (Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Thai) to American carriers … well, this is a comparison of cultures.

The last time I flew Singapore Airlines, the flight attendants, all of whom were stunningly beautiful narrow-waisted young women, all but bowed as passengers walked onto the plane. In business class, the attendants got down on their knees to give passengers complimentary foot massages.

When the captain’s voice squawks over the P.A. system, announcing an Air Traffic Control delay, Japanese passengers don’t groan audibly and punch their fight attendant call buttons.

Not so long ago, while I was working a flight from J.F.K. to Barbados, an American passenger complained throughout the flight. He complained about the food, although no one else did. He complained about the service, although other passengers seemed satisfied. While a planeload of passengers appeared to be content, this particular passenger complained that flight attendants weren’t paying attention to his needs. We tried our best to make him comfortable. When the ranting finally stopped, when his voice lowered to a whisper, he reached out to shake my hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not used to this. I’ve been living in Asia for years.”

It all happened so fast that if you blinked you might well have missed the recent brouhaha over the latest public awareness campaign by the Child Study Center, a mental health treatment, advocacy and training institute at New York University. Designed to get across the message that untreated mental disorders hold children “hostage,” the ads were made to look like ransom notes that kidnappers had seemingly scribbled on lined paper or clumsily glued together with letters cut out of newspapers.

Their texts began “We have your son”; “We are in possession of your son”; “We have your daughter.”

“We are destroying his ability for social interaction and driving him into a life of complete isolation,” read the note signed Asperger Syndrome. “We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives,” threatened Autism. “We are making him squirm and fidget until he is a detriment to himself and those around him,” said A.D.H.D. (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Every ransom note came with an admonition: “This is only the beginning.” “It’s up to you now.” “Ignore this and your kid will pay.” And, at the bottom of each was a kicker: “Don’t let a psychiatric disorder take your child.”

The ads were barely out when the outcry against them began. Furious e-mails and phone calls from advocacy groups and individual parents of children with A.D.H.D. and autism spectrum disorders flooded the office of Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, director of the Child Study Center and chair of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University.

The critics said the ads were overly negative. They said they made the children they described seem “damaged,” even “criminal.” They felt they were insulting to children and to their parents.

The public outcry was a truly troubling turn of events for an advocacy organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of children’s mental health issues, to bringing more and better treatments to children and, above all, to reducing the stigma that continues to this day to keep children and their parents from getting the help and support they need.

For Dr. Koplewicz, author of the 1996 book, “It’s Nobody’s Fault: New Hope and Help for Difficult Children and Their Parents,” the criticism was particularly painful. The ads were meant, he told me on Tuesday, to raise public awareness of the ravages wrought by untreated mental disorders — not to cast aspersion upon diagnosed children and their parents. They were meant to draw attention to the fact that these problems are widespread — 15 million children in America, he said, suffer from diagnosable psychiatric or learning disorders — and are, overwhelmingly, going untreated, with only one in three white children, one in five African American and one in seven Hispanic children receiving sufficient care.

The campaign was simply meant to get across the point that “these kids are not living the childhoods they were supposed to have or in my opinion they were entitled to have,” Dr. Koplewicz said. “Obviously we hit a nerve that we didn’t want to hit.”

The hit was, perhaps, predictable. The nerve might have been avoided. If only the Child Study Center had realized that phrases like “it’s up to you,” “your kid will pay,” and “don’t let…” would make parents feel personally attacked right where such attacks would hurt the most.

For parents of children with “issues” — psychiatric, developmental, neurological, whatever you want to call them — guilt is a constant life companion. We no longer believe that “refrigerator mothers” cause autism by being cold and withholding, or that mothers who give their children “mixed messages” cause schizophrenia, but we’ve replaced these outmoded beliefs with a whole new slew of fears and self-flaggelating forms of blame.

If a child has an inherited disorder, parents blame their faulty genes. They blame immunizations they authorized, or tuna they ate in pregnancy, or marital conflicts that poisoned their homes with conflict and anxiety.

Mothers and fathers blame themselves when they parent their challenging children less than optimally. They curse themselves every time they react to difficult moments with anger or frustration instead of warmly supportive unconditional love.

Most, lacking access to pediatricians who can take the time to properly support and guide them, and lacking the kind of health insurance that could pay for top-level, comprehensive care, are left on their own to wade through the morass of information, advice, marketing and myth that surrounds them. Then, if they drag their feet in getting their children diagnosed, if they spend years waiting to see if their kids will outgrow their “quirky” behaviors, if they hesitate, out of distaste for the medico-industrial complex, they end up wanting to shoot themselves for the time lost and the early intervention opportunities they let slip by.

I met a father a few weeks ago at a children’s event who had moved with his family recently to Washington, D.C., in order to secure the best possible services for his son, who has high-functioning autism. The family had previously been living in a Midwestern suburb where the choice of services was highly limited. They had done everything they could for him there, but they knew that it was too little. And now that they had him enrolled in a special school for children with learning and developmental disabilities in the D.C. area, they feared that it was too late.

The school was wonderful. Their son was making great strides. But, the father told me, “You can’t imagine the guilt we feel, every day, thinking that we could have done this earlier.”

This guilt is the curse of a time when so much is known about early intervention and effective therapies, and so little is placed within the reach of average families. It’s the blight that’s visited upon a country where medical science has far outpaced public awareness and the blame game continues to replace a sense of shared social responsibility.

Making parents feel guilty, at fault, or in some way responsible for their children’s diseases or disorders was, unquestioningly, the last thing that the Child Study Center sought to do. But when you have a population of people already brimming over with self-blame and guilt, when you have a group of parents whose every nerve ending is exposed, it’s all too easy to spark a crisis. The world of children’s mental health issues is a minefield right now, and it doesn’t take much to trigger full-blown conflagrations.

On Wednesday, the Child Study Center issued a statement saying it had made the decision to end the “ransom notes” ad campaign. No more ads will be posted, and those already up will come down as soon as it’s possible. Early next year, the Center will hold an online “town hall” meeting to draw outside voices into the planning of its next public awareness campaign.

Maybe some of the fear and guilt and shame will come out into the open then. And then, maybe, they’ll start to fade.

By: SARAH MOORE, The Enterprise

The Texas Attorney General released an opinion today saying that a bill passed by the Texas Legislature during the last session concerning clean energy projects is not restricted to the generation of electricity by coal burning plants, but could include refineries.


However, the AG did not say that the bill expanded property that qualified for tax exemption, said Don Lee, executive director of the Texas Conference of Urban Counties.

Under current standards, to qualify for exemption, the equipment must reduce pollution at the site, not simply produce a product that will be cleaner when used.

Jefferson County and other areas have feared that the inclusion of certain refinery equipment on a list of exempt equipment would result in the potential loss of $8 million in tax revenues to the county.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will meet Jan. 16 to vote on rules for administering HB 3732.

By DAN KOHLER, The Daily Telegram

With the first meaningful improvement in gas mileage standards in a generation, Congress has taken a significant step in an energy bill signed by President Bush.

But even this big step forward is just the beginning of what we must do to address America’s energy challenges. If we’re serious about America’s transition to a clean energy economy and solving global warming, we can’t stop now.

The next milestone in the journey toward clean energy must include making a national commitment to renewable energy. And, the best way to put America on a path to clean, homegrown, renewable energy is one that is simple and has proven remarkably effective: Setting a nationwide minimum standard for renewable electricity

Congress just missed a golden opportunity to jump start renewable energy in America by including a renewable electricity standard in this energy bill. Unfortunately, the threat of a presidential veto and a Republican led filibuster fueled by the coal industry and the utilities forced the Senate to drop a provision that had been passed by the House of Representatives to require that utilities provide 15 percent of their power from renewable resources despite Senator Feingold’s support.

Governors, mayors, labor unions, farmers, investors and the faith community have all united to support a national renewable electricity standard because it will create jobs, save consumers money, revitalize rural communities and make significant cuts in global warming pollution. A recent study by the Renewable Energy Policy Project for the United Steelworkers showed that a 15-20 percent renewable standard has the potential of creating 850,000 new jobs in component part manufacturing alone.

Thanks to Wisconsin’s renewable energy standard, clean renewable energy will generate 79 megawatts of energy by the end of this year. These projects will replace dirty energy as well as prevent the use of 14.2 million gallons of water and avert 159,000 metric tons of global warming pollution.

Wisconsin, along with every other state in the country, would benefit greatly from a national renewables standard. An analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that a federal renewables standard would create 4,240 clean energy jobs in Wisconsin, and save Wisconsinites $90 million through lower energy bills by 2020.

America’s skilled workforce and the same venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who helped revolutionize telecommunications and the Internet are lining up to usher in the green energy boom. But the clean energy revolution won’t happen on its own. In order to realize the full potential of our renewable energy resources, the U.S. needs strong and consistent public policy to support these new economies. That is why Goldman Sachs, Google, and other investment power houses have endorsed the renewable electricity standard.

After decades of federal inaction on fuel economy, Congress has taken action. They shouldn’t stop there. The next step on our journey toward a new energy future must be to follow the leaders in the 25 states that are already reaping the rewards of clean renewable energy. Congress should continue its work to pass a national renewable electricity standard.

— Dan Kohler directs Wisconsin Environment, a statewide, non-partisan, non-profit environmental advocacy organization that can be found at www.WisconsinEnvironment.org

FARIBAULT, Minn. - When the Mitchell Report, which detailed the illegal use of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, was released earlier this month, we listened as local coaches confidently declared that they don't believe any local athletes they have seen or coached use steroids. We have no reason to doubt their assertion.

Yet, we know for certain about as much as they know for certain because neither the state of Minnesota nor its high school athletics governing body required any sort of testing for its athletes. And in this case, not knowing is a dangerous game.

Far from giving in to the steroid hysteria caused by the Mitchell Report, we recommend that the state and the Minnesota State High School League take up the issue of random steroid testing for four reasons:

-- It's happening. Whatever local coaches might believe about what's happening here, the fact is, steroid abuse is happening among high schoolers. Statistics in the Mitchell Report cited studies suggesting up to 6 percent of high school students in the U.S. took steroids without a doctor's prescription. That's about 300,000 students.

-- There's an incentive for it to happen. Beyond the social benefits to a high school kid of being seen as the best of the best at his sport, there are financial incentives to look for an edge: college scholarships.

When you couple the natural competitive desire to be the best at the high school level with the gains to be found by reaching the next level, the foundation is there to provide an incentive for abuse of performance enhancing substances.

-- There's no harm in testing. Civil libertarians likely will disagree, but proving an athlete to be clean does not cause harm to the athlete, his family, the team or his school in any way. We're not even talking about a needle stick here.

-- There is tons of harm in abuse. Among the dangers shown by various studies: Mania, heart attack, liver injury, reproductive problems, stunted growth, acne, hair loss.

The good thing for Minnesota and the Minnesota State High School League is that the trail already has been blazed for a smart steroid testing plan. It comes from New Jersey.

In 2006, New Jersey became the first to institute a statewide steroid-testing policy for high school athletes. The plan calls for random testing of athletes who have qualified for team or individual state championships, with a one-year loss of eligibility for those who test positive. The tests, which cost between $150 and $200 each, were funded by the state's high school athletic association.

That's a smart, simple and effective plan that isn't bogged down by bureaucracy.

Minnesota should look hard at New Jersey's rules and then implement a similar plan. Bottom line: It's about making sure our kids aren't hurting their long-term health for short-term glory like some of their professional idols are.

By Linda Thomson

Floyd Eugene Maestas, who has been charged with capital murder in the death of an elderly Salt Lake woman, has asked the Utah Supreme Court to postpone his January trial because he wants the high court to issue an opinion regarding a district judge's ruling that Maestas is not mentally retarded.

Maestas, 51, could face the death penalty if convicted of the killing of Donna Lou Bott, 75, who was attacked while sleeping in her home Sept. 28, 2004.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 issued a landmark ruling that prohibited the execution of convicted criminals who are deemed mentally retarded. Maestas' defense team recently mounted a vigorous push to convince 3rd District Judge Paul Maughan that their client is retarded and should therefore be exempt from the ultimate penalty.

But prosecutors argued strenuously that, while Maestas is not particularly intelligent, he does not meet the definition in Utah's law that would make such an exemption apply in his case. The judge, in a lengthy written decision, agreed and said the January capital murder trial should proceed.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys filed an interlocutory appeal on Dec. 20 with the Utah Supreme Court seeking to overturn Maughan's ruling. They believe that Maughan erred in his decision and they also say that Utah's law is "ambiguous, internally inconsistent and constitutionally deficient under the 8th Amendment" of the U.S. Constitution. The amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment. They also argue that Maestas' rights are being compromised under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees individuals due process in legal proceedings.

By Michael Burge
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

CARLSBAD – Construction of a long-awaited park and swim complex was pushed back two months when the Carlsbad City Council on Tuesday night rejected all bids to build the facility.

The city's engineers estimated it would cost $38.6 million to build the 30-acre Alga Norte Community Park, which would have baseball fields, basketball courts, a skate park, a dog park, three pools, water slides and a circulating “lazy river” for tubing.

A staff report said the lowest of the six bids was $29.3 million by Consolidated Contracting Services of San Clemente – nearly $10 million less than the city's estimate and $3.6 million less than the next-lowest bid.

The highest bid, by Mallcraft of Altadena, was $39 million.

A seventh bidder, PCL Construction Services of San Diego, submitted a late bid that remained unopened, the report said.

On Nov. 9, the day after the bids were opened, PCL protested, saying Consolidated Contracting failed to list all of its subcontractors, a bid requirement.

Bernardo Bros., the second-lowest bidder, wrote that the city should reject the low bid as nonresponsive and accept Bernardo's bid.

The park will be at Alicante Road and Poinsettia Lane in southeastern Carlsbad.

The council voted 4-1, with Councilman Mark Packard opposed, to rebid the project. Packard has voted against the project several times, saying it is too expensive.

Skip Hammann, the city's special-projects director, said the project will go to bid again next month and probably return to the council in February. He said the project would take 18 to 24 months to build.

As 2007 draws to a close, here is my individual review of the year, taken from the perspective of seven key groups:
1. Bill-payers

It's not been a terribly good year for Britain's bill-paying public. Although wages rose by an average of around 4% during 2007, much of this gain has been gobbled up by rising prices. Indeed, annual inflation, as measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI), is up by around 4.3%. This is largely due to the rising cost of food, fuel and other essential goods. Although gas and electricity prices fell in early 2007, wholesale prices are climbing again, so expect higher energy bills to kick in next year.

On the other hand, the national minimum wage (for workers aged 22+) rose to £5.52 an hour in October, which provided some cheer for low-paid employees.
2. Motorists

As ever, motorists found themselves under the cosh. A surge in the price of oil late in the year saw fuel prices soar. In November alone, average petrol prices rose by 3.5p a litre to exceed £1, with the monthly rise for diesel averaging 5p. As usual, Vehicle Excise Duty (‘road tax') was increased and premiums for motor insurance climbed.

The London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames (LBRUT) started a revolution when it began linking the cost of parking permits to vehicles' CO2 emissions. Under the new scheme, LBRUT households with two or more cars will pay more for second and subsequent parking permits. Perhaps this scheme will be copied by other councils in 2008?
3. Borrowers

The longest borrowing binge in British history continued throughout 2007. Indeed, personal debt rose by almost £10 billion a month. It now stands at £1,400 billion, which is exactly the figure I predicted in January. Also as forecast, over 10,000 people now become insolvent or bankrupt each month.

The Bank of England piled on the pressure early in the year, hiking its base rate by a quarter-point in January, May and July. However, a global credit crunch which started in the summer played havoc with financial markets, leading the Bank to cut its base rate to 5.50% in December. Although further rate cuts are expected, I predict that these will be too little, too late. Our huge debt burden is here to stay, so I foresee that 2008 will be the year when ‘easy credit' turns into ‘tough debt'!
4. Savers

A rising base rate is good news for savers, so the first half of the year saw Best Buy savings rates reach and then exceed 6% a year. The ‘dash for cash' among banks also caused rates to rise, especially for fixed-rate savings bonds. However, the rate cut late in the year has caused a dip in savings interest rates, and we can expect more cutbacks in 2008.

Then again, it seems that savers are a rare breed these days. Despite government efforts to stimulate saving through improvements to ISAs and pensions, more than a third of adults have no savings at all. Furthermore, the savings ratio (the proportion of our take-home pay which we save) hit 2% in early 2007 -- its lowest level in 47 years. Still, weak house-price growth tends to encourage saving, so this ratio has started climbing again.
5. Homeowners

The year started well for homeowners, with house prices continuing to climb across most of the UK. By the midpoint of the year, the Halifax House Price Index showed house prices up an average of 10.9% over the previous twelve months. However, the credit crunch forced banks to cut back on mortgage lending, causing house prices to fall in September, October and November. Hence, house-price inflation should be around 6% for 2007. I expect to see house-price indices continue to fall and turn negative at some point in 2008.
6. Investors

It's been a rollercoaster year for stock-market investors, as market jitters depressed share prices in the second half of the year. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index began the year at 6220.8, so it's up a mere 1% as I write. Add on, say, 3% for dividends (the income paid by shares) and the total return for the Footsie is roughly 4%. Thus, the FTSE 100 has underperformed cash for the first time in five years -- and many investors in smaller companies are sitting on some hefty losses. Not a great year for equities, all told.
7. Pensioners

It was a mixed year for pensioners. The basic state pension for a single person rose in April by almost £3 to £87.30 a week. However, pensioner inflation is much higher than general inflation, as they spend a far higher proportion of their incomes on food, energy and the Council Tax. Thus, many pensioners felt worse off in 2007.

The only truly good news for pensioners came close to the end of the year, when the government agreed higher compensation for the 140,000 victims of collapsed company pensions. Again, this settlement came several years too late, so it joins Equitable Life, Farepak and Northern Rock in this government's Hall of Shame.

Blast, I thought I'd made it all the way to the end without mentioning Northern Rock! Watch out for its inevitable nationalisation in early 2008...

Finally, I offer season's greetings to all Fool readers. It's been a pleasure writing for you, and I hope to continue to "educate, amuse and enrich" you next year.

As 2007 draws to a close, here is my individual review of the year, taken from the perspective of seven key groups:
1. Bill-payers

It's not been a terribly good year for Britain's bill-paying public. Although wages rose by an average of around 4% during 2007, much of this gain has been gobbled up by rising prices. Indeed, annual inflation, as measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI), is up by around 4.3%. This is largely due to the rising cost of food, fuel and other essential goods. Although gas and electricity prices fell in early 2007, wholesale prices are climbing again, so expect higher energy bills to kick in next year.

On the other hand, the national minimum wage (for workers aged 22+) rose to £5.52 an hour in October, which provided some cheer for low-paid employees.
2. Motorists

As ever, motorists found themselves under the cosh. A surge in the price of oil late in the year saw fuel prices soar. In November alone, average petrol prices rose by 3.5p a litre to exceed £1, with the monthly rise for diesel averaging 5p. As usual, Vehicle Excise Duty (‘road tax') was increased and premiums for motor insurance climbed.

The London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames (LBRUT) started a revolution when it began linking the cost of parking permits to vehicles' CO2 emissions. Under the new scheme, LBRUT households with two or more cars will pay more for second and subsequent parking permits. Perhaps this scheme will be copied by other councils in 2008?
3. Borrowers

The longest borrowing binge in British history continued throughout 2007. Indeed, personal debt rose by almost £10 billion a month. It now stands at £1,400 billion, which is exactly the figure I predicted in January. Also as forecast, over 10,000 people now become insolvent or bankrupt each month.

The Bank of England piled on the pressure early in the year, hiking its base rate by a quarter-point in January, May and July. However, a global credit crunch which started in the summer played havoc with financial markets, leading the Bank to cut its base rate to 5.50% in December. Although further rate cuts are expected, I predict that these will be too little, too late. Our huge debt burden is here to stay, so I foresee that 2008 will be the year when ‘easy credit' turns into ‘tough debt'!
4. Savers

A rising base rate is good news for savers, so the first half of the year saw Best Buy savings rates reach and then exceed 6% a year. The ‘dash for cash' among banks also caused rates to rise, especially for fixed-rate savings bonds. However, the rate cut late in the year has caused a dip in savings interest rates, and we can expect more cutbacks in 2008.

Then again, it seems that savers are a rare breed these days. Despite government efforts to stimulate saving through improvements to ISAs and pensions, more than a third of adults have no savings at all. Furthermore, the savings ratio (the proportion of our take-home pay which we save) hit 2% in early 2007 -- its lowest level in 47 years. Still, weak house-price growth tends to encourage saving, so this ratio has started climbing again.
5. Homeowners

The year started well for homeowners, with house prices continuing to climb across most of the UK. By the midpoint of the year, the Halifax House Price Index showed house prices up an average of 10.9% over the previous twelve months. However, the credit crunch forced banks to cut back on mortgage lending, causing house prices to fall in September, October and November. Hence, house-price inflation should be around 6% for 2007. I expect to see house-price indices continue to fall and turn negative at some point in 2008.
6. Investors

It's been a rollercoaster year for stock-market investors, as market jitters depressed share prices in the second half of the year. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index began the year at 6220.8, so it's up a mere 1% as I write. Add on, say, 3% for dividends (the income paid by shares) and the total return for the Footsie is roughly 4%. Thus, the FTSE 100 has underperformed cash for the first time in five years -- and many investors in smaller companies are sitting on some hefty losses. Not a great year for equities, all told.
7. Pensioners

It was a mixed year for pensioners. The basic state pension for a single person rose in April by almost £3 to £87.30 a week. However, pensioner inflation is much higher than general inflation, as they spend a far higher proportion of their incomes on food, energy and the Council Tax. Thus, many pensioners felt worse off in 2007.

The only truly good news for pensioners came close to the end of the year, when the government agreed higher compensation for the 140,000 victims of collapsed company pensions. Again, this settlement came several years too late, so it joins Equitable Life, Farepak and Northern Rock in this government's Hall of Shame.

Blast, I thought I'd made it all the way to the end without mentioning Northern Rock! Watch out for its inevitable nationalisation in early 2008...

Finally, I offer season's greetings to all Fool readers. It's been a pleasure writing for you, and I hope to continue to "educate, amuse and enrich" you next year.