NEW YORK BRIEFING February 2005

News this month

State of the city

Mr Bloomberg used his state of the city speech on January 11th to list his achievements in office, thus kicking off his re-election campaign. Crime is down 14% since his election in 2001; last month, an FBI listing put New York's crime rate lowest among America's 25 biggest cities. Traffic-related fatalities are at their lowest level since 1910 (the first year they were tracked) and, perhaps most impressively, the city has gone from fiscal crisis to fiscal stability. For the first time in 16 years, the city's unemployment rate of 5.4% was in line with the rest of the country's. Almost 28,000 homeless have been housed, and New Yorkers now live longer than the average American.

Mr Bloomberg also spoke of future plans: anti-graffiti initiatives, expanded gifted-and-talented and advanced-placement programmes in city schools, expanded vocational training for dropouts and a new commission proposed by Charles Rangel, a powerful Democratic congressman, to open up highly coveted construction jobs to minorities, young people and veterans. He also announced he would fight for more federal homeland-security funding. (Mr Bloomberg, a nominal Republican, will not attend George Bush's inauguration.) Several Democratic hopefuls eyed Mr Bloomberg enviously from the audience.

Terror trial

Jury selection began on January 10th for the federal trial of two men accused of raising millions of dollars for Islamic terrorists. Sheik Mohammad Ali Hassan al-Moayad, a 56-year-old Yemeni cleric, and his 31-year-old associate, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, allegedly raised funds for al-Qaeda and Hamas. They were arrested in Germany in January 2003 and extradited to New York shortly thereafter. Mr Zayed told the FBI that some of their fund-raising was done at the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighbourhood. If convicted, the men could face up to 30 years in prison.

The trial has not begun smoothly. On “national security grounds” American consular officials in Yemen revoked visas issued to four defence witnesses. In November, the government's main witness, Mohamed Alanssi, set himself on fire outside the White House to protest his treatment by the FBI, and it now is unclear whether he will testify. This is the first terror trial held in Brooklyn, and security at the federal courthouse is tight.

They love New York

New York weathered a record 39.6m tourists in 2004, 4.6% more than the previous year. This includes a 10% increase in the number of foreign visitors, the first such rise since the September 11th attacks. City Hall estimates that tourists spent $15.1 billion in New York last year.

International visitors are particularly welcome since they account for a disproportionate 40% of total visitor spending in New York. They spend an average of $1,132 per person, while the average domestic visitor spends a measly $265. Britons comprised the largest group of foreign visitors, though French, Germans and Italians all had a good showing. The number of Japanese tourists increased by 20%, thanks in part to a marketing campaign starring Hideki Matsui, a Japanese baseball star who now plays for the Yankees.

Hotel occupancy climbed to its highest levels this century, even as the average daily rate rose from $193 in 2003 to $212 last year, infusing the city with an estimated $220m in hotel-tax revenue. Two major cruise lines have also made New York their exclusive east coast port of call. Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor, attributed the rise in tourists to low crime, clean streets and a clean image, though he admitted, “Clearly, the weak dollar helps.”

Looking up

Mr Bloomberg's numerous school-improvement initiatives may finally be working. He and Joel Klein, the city's Schools Chancellor, announced in early January that the number of city schools on the state-wide list of failing schools reached an all-time low of 35, down from a high of 104 just six years ago. Schools on the list face closure within three years if they don't improve, though in practice the city rarely exercises that option. Last year only two schools were closed due to poor performance.

Mr Bloomberg is the first mayor to wrest control of schools from the powerful education board. His initiatives have included introducing a standard curriculum and providing students with math and literacy coaches. But not all news is rosy: while city students' performance on state-wide tests has improved, it remains lower than the state-wide average, and a majority of eighth graders still fail the tests.

Watching the wheels

About 600 drivers and mechanics for two private bus companies, Green Line and Command Bus, went on strike on January 10th, leaving some 70,000 commuters in Queens and Brooklyn in the lurch. The city has allowed commuter vans and livery cabs to pick up passengers along affected routes, but the routes remain sticky.

Since 1974, private bus companies have been paid $150m per year to run commuter lines in New York. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has gradually been taking control of these lines, retaining the same drivers and mechanics. But the striking workers have been without permanent contracts for two years. They seek pay and medical benefits equal to those of other MTA workers when the authority takes over on April 30th. Union leaders and city officials have blamed each other for the stoppage, and talks on January 13th broke down.

Catch if you can

February 2005

The Aztec Empire

Until February 13th 2005

This exhaustive show is billed as the broadest-ever survey of Aztec cultural output, and the first in America in 20 years. It looks the part, with over 440 artefacts spread along all six storeys of the Guggenheim's coiling exhibition space. Organised thematically, with sections such as “Gods and Rituals” and “Day Life of Commoners and the Nobility”, it gives a sense of the Aztec's famously strange and bloodthirsty culture, and how they terrorised their neighbours before falling to marauding conquistadors.

The display is creative, with pieces tucked into nooks in an undulating scrim. There is plenty that is gruesome, pretty or both: there is a pot used to store the flayed skin of sacrifices (its mottled finish suggesting its contents); a ghoulish oversized statue of Mictlantecuhlti, the god of the dead whose liver and lungs hang from an exposed ribcage; and also dozens of adorable sculptures of coyly smiling rabbits, snakes and jaguars. Work your way up from the ground floor, and spare the extra $5 to rent an audio guide, which gives a much richer sense of what's collected here.

Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave (at 89th St). Open: Sat-Wed 10am-5.45pm, Fri 10am-8pm. Tel: +1 (212) 423-3500. See the museum's wesbite.