York State

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The message education officials are sending is straightforward and urgent -- an already acute teacher shortage will likely worsen in the next few years as a slew of older teachers retire and more would-be educators succumb to the financial lure of the private sector. But the automated message on New York state's telephone help-line for potential teachers takes a different tone. "Office of Teaching representatives are not available to speak to you on Wednesdays or on Friday mornings," the recording says.

NEW YORK -- After more than a decade's crusade by preservationists, Sterling Forest has been acquired by the state of New York from its private owners, creating a park that is 18 times as large as Central Park and an hour-and-10-minute drive from midtown Manhattan.The acquisition is the largest by the state's park system in 50 years. The complex real estate deal is valued at $55 million.The deal with the land's owners, Sterling Forest LLC in Tuxedo, N.Y., gives the public 15,800 acres of rugged woodland 40 miles northwest of New York City that is studded with crystalline lakes and streams and is a habitat for bobcat and black bears.

NEW YORK -- The Navy has decided to end its efforts to search the Atlantic Ocean for what little is left of TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 that exploded off the Long Island coast July 17, killing all 230 people aboard.Cmdr. Gordon Hume said yesterday morning that divers were expected to end their three-month search of the ocean floor last night or today.Then, perhaps as early as next week, a "scalloping" trawler will begin to churn the ocean bottom for airplane wreckage that might be buried under silt and sand.

NEW YORK - Richard A. Grasso, former chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, rejected the Big Board's demand that he return at least $120 million of his pay package, his lawyer said yesterday. He may file suit to retrieve an additional $50 million. The comments were Grasso's first response since his ouster in September from the world's largest stock exchange and come as current exchange officials call for him to return part of what they have called his "excessive" pay. "Mr. Grasso has no intention of returning any portion of his compensation to the exchange," his lawyer, Brendan Sullivan Jr., wrote in a letter to John S. Reed, the exchange's interim chairman.

WASHINGTON -- Nushawn Williams was despicably criminal in having unprotected sex with dozens of New York state girls and women after he knew that he was infected with the deadly AIDS virus. He was a devout criminal who apparently hung out near the high school in Mayville, N.Y., seducing many female students who would give him sex for drugs. And, after he drifted into New York City, this 20-year-old was able to charm dozens of adult females into having sex with him.At latest count, health officials had identified at least 28 girls and women who had had sexual intercourse with Mr. Williams, some of whom are now infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

WASHINGTON -- Taking up an issue of keen interest to victims' rights activists, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to rule on the constitutionality of states' seizure of the money that a criminal would make by selling a story of crime to a book publisher or movie studio.Thirty-four states and the federal government now have such laws, and the first and broadest of those laws -- New York's -- is at issue in the new appeal involving the mobster's story providing the plot for the book "Wiseguy" and the popular movie "GoodFellas."

Sarah Betsy Fuller, 58, lead attorney in a federal case that established the right of Native Americans to practice their religion freely in New York state prisons, died of breast cancer April 21, according to Cornell University, where she taught. A longtime lawyer with Prisoners Legal Services of New York, Ms. Fuller also was active in exposing New York state's severe punishments of giving some prisoners only bread and water, and she helped eliminate some strip search practices. When New York Gov. George E. Pataki issued a proclamation in the mid-1990s honoring the contributions of Native Americans, Ms. Fuller wrote him and the commissioner of the state Department of Correctional Services suggesting that a fitting tribute would be to let Native Americans practice their religion in prison.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to reduce traffic by charging commuters who drive into Manhattan received a significant boost yesterday, as Gov. Eliot Spitzer endorsed the idea and the Bush administration indicated that New York stands to gain hundreds of millions of dollars if the plan is enacted. If the measure were approved by the Legislature, New York would become the first U.S. city to impose a broad system of "congestion pricing," which was introduced in London in 2003 and has reduced traffic there.

ALBANY, N.Y. - New York's Gov. George Pataki has announced that the state has reached a landmark agreement to buy nearly 15,000 acres of Adirondack wilderness that the Whitney family had planned to develop, while protecting another tract twice that size for 10 years.The $17.1 million deal opens a pristine stretch of forests, streams and lakes - including Little Tupper Lake, regarded by naturalists as one of the region's jewels - to the public for the first time since William C. Whitney, the industrialist, bought the land for a family retreat a century ago.The acquisition will connect separate tracts of publicly owned forests in the Adirondacks, allowing canoeists and other adventurers to travel hundreds of miles without interruption.