New York: Pioneer journalist dies

Keith Fuller, who as president of The Associated Press for nearly a decade guided the world’s largest newsgathering organization into an age of stories and pictures transmitted by satellite instead of telephone and teletype, died Friday. He was 79.

Fuller, who had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, died at his home in Chevy Chase, Md.

During four decades with AP, Fuller remained a reporter at heart. His career spanned a period, as he once put it, “from Louisiana Gov. Earl Long slopping the hogs on his pea patch farm to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meeting at the summit.”

When Fuller retired as AP’s president and chief executive in 1985, the news cooperative had 1,800 reporters, editors and photographers in 219 bureaus worldwide.

New york: Millions OK’d to draw residents to WTC area

The Bush administration has approved $305 million in grants to draw housing-seekers to the World Trade Center area and keep current residents from moving, officials said Friday.

“We’re no longer in the phase of recovery and relief. We’re in the phase of rebuilding,” Gov. George Pataki said.

The grant program has drawn criticism from some community groups for funneling money to residents of a neighborhood where nearly 90 percent of households earn more than $60,000 a year. Such housing grants usually are restricted to low- and more moderate-income brackets.

Eligible for assistance are apartment owners and renters who were living on Sept. 11 in three downtown zones.