The New York Times

Kate Taylor notes: “On the last Sunday before a city policy went into effect barring religious services in public schools, leaders of congregations around the city expressed a range of responses, with some taking a pragmatic attitude and others vowing to not give up without a fight.”

Nina Bernstein reports: “New York’s charity care system, partly financed by an 8.95 percent surcharge on hospital bills, is one of the most complicated in the nation, but many states have wrestled with aggressive debt collection by hospitals in recent years. Like New York, several passed laws curbing hospitals’ pursuit of unpaid bills, including Illinois, California and Minnesota. But a new study of New York hospitals’ practices and state records finds that most medical centers are violating the rules without consequences, even as the state government ignores glaring problems in the hospitals’ own reports.”

Colin Moynihan writes: “On Sept. 11, 2001, Police Officer Alonzo Harris rushed to the World Trade Center to try to evacuate people from the burning towers. When the first tower collapsed, he dove beneath a parked car as thick plumes of dust and debris blotted out the sun. Later, he said, he sealed the grit-covered uniform he had worn that day in a plastic bag. On Sunday, police union leaders and elected officials displayed that uniform as they called upon Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to release police medical records to a panel that is studying possible links between cancer and contaminants unleashed by the destruction of the trade center.”