Arvidson, who has handled the day-to-day directing of Spirit’s science research, while Principal Investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, directs Opportunity’s science meetings and oversees all rover science, is partial to his charge but not as optimistic as he was just last month. "Spirit's in a tough situation," he summed up.

“It's a very complex situation, very difficult situation for the rover,” assessed MER Project Manager John Callas, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where the ...

Yves Klein, the radical French artist who died in 1962 when he was only 34, has been something of an enigma to Americans. Individual works have occasionally turned up in museum shows in this country, and Upper East Side galleries like Gagosian, Michael Werner and L&M Arts have displayed his work. In contrast to Europe, where several institutions have held shows of his art, such exhibitions have been rare here.

Now the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington and the Walker Art Ce...

Restraint proves a virtue of — and a shrewd if necessary choice for — “Children of Invention,” a modestly scaled, quietly effective independent movie about a struggling single mother and her two children. Directed and written by Tze Chun, making a fine feature debut, the movie offers both a familiar tale of immigrant striving and a topical look at what it means to be working and poor in America while hanging onto a badly frayed thread. Yet while the politics a...

When the British musical theater star Clare Burt was a little girl, she recalled on Wednesday evening, she was so infatuated with the idea of Manhattan that she adopted a New York accent and pretended to be American. Her bluff was called when people asked her from what part of the city she came, and she naïvely replied “Carnegie Hall.”

The Metropolitan Room, where Ms. Burt is appearing through Saturday, may not be Carnegie Hall, but it is only 35 blocks south. And Ms. Burt, who...

You can’t take it with you. Or so you think if you are an enlightened citizen of the modern world. All your earthly possessions and attainments aren’t going to do you a bit of good after you’ve gone.

The ancient Egyptians, of course, thought otherwise. They believed that this terrestrial sojourn was only a prologue to the main attraction, the afterlife, and they devoted much of their tremendous creative and technological ingenuity to ensuring that their dead — the wealth...

How German was Otto Dix? The question echoes through the retrospective of Dix’s unforgiving art, the first show of its kind ever held in North America, at the Neue Galerie. The answer delivered by this completely engrossing yet sadly flawed exhibition is: deeply, madly, truly.

More than any other artist, Dix made every stop on the itinerary of German modernism, including Realism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism and visionary, and he managed it all in one decade, the Roaring ’20s. Th...

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

What's likely to be the hottest tech trend at this weekend's trendy South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, the powwow that has become a launch pad for the coolest, hippest new technology? Location, location, location.

The conference is shaping up to be a coming-out party for Foursquare, an application that lets people flag where they are — and for the entire category of fledgling geo-location services. A bumper crop of services, notably Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt and Where.com, are being embraced by s...

By Sharon Silke Carty, USA TODAY

DETROIT — Jim Sikes is finding out the downside of instant celebrity in the Internet age after his highly publicized trip in a runaway Toyota Prius: You have no secrets.

As National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota inspectors continue to take apart his vehicle — which he says took him on a 23-minute, out-of-control race down a freeway — an auto blog posted details of his financial situation and set off speculation about his tale.

Sikes filed for bankruptcy in 2008, a...

The debt has implications for savers and investors:

•Eventually, the Fed will have to raise interest rates to prevent inflation, which will add to the nation's interest expenses: The average Treasury security matures in 55 months, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. But savers will get better yields on money market funds and bank CDs. If you're shopping for CDs now, don't lock in to today's rates for five years. Keep your CD maturities short — about a year or so — and you'll be able to reinvest at higher rat...

By Jewel Gopwani, USA TODAY

DETROIT — When Russell Levine's lease on his 2006 Subaru Forester was coming to an end, his car hunt was quick.

Levine picked out another Forester SUV, his fourth.

Levine, 48, of Huntington Woods, Mich., was not tempted to try another brand.

"The data speaks for itself. It's highly rated by independent agencies. The mileage is good," said Levine, an information technology architect who recently started commuting to a new job at General Electric's technology center.

Subaru's message of high saf...

As he accepted his party’s nomination, Mr. White, the former mayor of Houston, called Mr. Perry a “career politician” who had cynically distracted voters from the problems Texas faced by complaining about Washington.

Mr. White’s effort to define the governor is the gambit in what promises to be an uphill battle against an entrenched incumbent whose party has enjoyed a 10-point advantage in statewide races for more than a decade.

Mr. Perry, a staunch conservative who is seeking an unprecedented fo...

WASHINGTON — In another twist in a long and troubled career, Councilman Marion S. Barry Jr., the former mayor of Washington, was unanimously censured and stripped of his committee chairmanship by his Council colleagues on Tuesday in response to corruption accusations.

The Council also formally recommended that federal prosecutors investigate the accusations.

The decision comes after a Washington lawyer, hired by the Council, concluded that Mr. Barry had misused public money and violated city conflict-of-interest l...

WASHINGTON — It was cold and drizzling outside the City Courthouse just after 6 a.m. on Wednesday, but no one seemed to mind among the same-sex couples waiting for the chance to apply for a marriage license.

Enlarge This Image Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency

For Candy Holmes, at right below with her partner, Darlene Garner, the experience brought forth tears of joy.

“This is a dream come true,” said Sinjoyla Townsend, 41, as she smiled ear to ear and held up her ticke...

What happens to gun control laws if the Supreme Court strikes down Chicago's handgun ban?

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By its conclusion, it seemed plain that the court would extend a 2008 decision that first identified an individual right to own guns to strike down Chicago’s gun control law, widely considered the most restrictive in the nation.

While such a ruling would represent an enormous symbolic victory for supporters of gun rights, its short-term practical impact would almost certainly be limited. Just h...

PITTSBURGH — In the 1950s, the East Liberty neighborhood five miles east of downtown was Pennsylvania’s third-largest shopping district, behind Center City Philadelphia and downtown Pittsburgh, with more than 500 local businesses and a population of 14,000.

Enlarge This Image Ross Mantle for The New York Times

Enlarge This Image Photographs by Ross Mantle for The New York Times

Google will be the anchor tenant in Bakery Square, which includes a converted Nabisco plant.

The su...

The former board member, Dr. Daniel D. Ricciardi, agreed to the fine in a settlement in which he admitted that he had held high-ranking paid positions at St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada while soliciting clinical clerkships — a critical part of medical education — from personnel in the city hospital system, which he also helped to lead.

Dr. Ricciardi, a rheumatologist and 1981 graduate of St. George’s, acknowledged that from January 2000, when he was appointed to the board of the...

The increase in poverty under the city’s calculation from 2005 to 2008 contradicts the official federal poverty rate, which showed a decline in New York for the same period, and defied the efforts of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had made combating poverty a priority of his second term and pioneered the new poverty measurement.

City officials said the poverty rate could show a further increase again for 2009 as a result of the recession. Although the recession does not seem to have drained the city of jobs as severe...

Enlarge This Image Mike Groll/Associated Press

On Tuesday, the State Police superintendent, Harry J. Corbitt, announced he would resign.

“Tell her the governor wants her to make this go away,” the governor told Deneane Brown, according to the person. Ms. Brown, a state worker, was friends with both the governor and the woman who says that a senior aide to Mr. Paterson roughed her up in a violent Halloween altercation.

Ms. Brown then contacted the accuser, Sherr-una Booker, repeatedly by phone a...

WASHINGTON — Caught in a swirl of ethics inquiries, Representative Charles B. Rangel, the dean of the New York Congressional delegation, appeared to be losing his grip on his powerful post as chairman of the tax-policy-writing Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday as Republicans planned to force a vote to remove him from his position.

Associated Press

The House ethics committee last week admonished Mr. Rangel, an ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for violating Congressional gift rules by accepting co...

WASHINGTON — Representative Charles B. Rangel stepped down on Wednesday as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee after losing support within his party because of ethics violations, shaking up the Democratic power structure in the House and costing New York a powerful seat of influence in Congress.

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Video Rangel Takes Leave From Committee

Charles B. Rangel, Dean of Harlem Politics

Video: Washington Report

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Many Potential Successors if Rangel Retires ...