A Rational Animal

Mr. Autrey was waiting for the downtown local at 137th Street and Broadway in Manhattan around 12:45 p.m. He was taking his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, home before work.

Nearby, a man collapsed, his body convulsing. Mr. Autrey and two women rushed to help, he said. The man, Cameron Hollopeter, 20, managed to get up, but then stumbled to the platform edge and fell to the tracks, between the two rails.

The headlights of the No. 1 train appeared. “I had to make a split decision,” Mr. Autrey said.

So he made one, and leapt.

Mr. Autrey lay on Mr. Hollopeter, his heart pounding, pressing him down in a space roughly a foot deep. The train’s brakes screeched, but it could not stop in time.

Five cars rolled overhead before the train stopped, the cars passing inches from his head, smudging his blue knit cap with grease. Mr. Autrey heard onlookers’ screams. “We’re O.K. down here,” he yelled, “but I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s O.K.” He heard cries of wonder, and applause.

[ . . . ]

Mr. Autrey refused medical help, because, he said, nothing was wrong. He did visit Mr. Hollopeter in the hospital before heading to his night shift. “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help,” Mr. Autrey said. “I did what I felt was right.”

Talk about starting the new year with some serious karmic equity. 

Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in ‘’mass killing'’ late in 2007.

‘’I'm not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,'’ he said during his news-and-talk television show ‘’The 700 Club'’ on the Christian Broadcasting Network. ‘’The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.'’

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

The U.N. has an official stance opposing capital punishment and Ban’s predecessor Kofi Annan reiterated it frequently. The top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, restated it again on Saturday after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged.

Ban, however, took a different approach, never mentioning the U.N. ban on the death penalty in all its international tribunals, and the right to life enshrined in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

‘’Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime,'’ Ban said in response to a reporter’s question about Saddam’s execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. ‘’The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide'’ [emphasis added].

‘’The U.N. policy still remains that the organization is not for capital punishment,'’ she said. ‘’However, the way the law is applied in different countries, he left it open to those different countries'’ [emphasis added].