Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
ELEVATED The Bells’ house in Saugerties, N.Y., straddles a road.

By LISA A. PHILLIPS

BYRON BELL likes to describe himself as an architect who does his best work when there’s a challenge.

A senior partner at Bell Donnelly Architects & Planners in New York City, he designed the renovation of the Manhattan School of Music with, as he put it, “nowhere near enough money” and fused together five buildings that had different architectural styles and varying floor levels for the Council on Foreign Relations headquarters on East 68th Street.

By MARK LEIBOVICH and GRANT BARRETT

WASHINGTON — Politics without buzzwords is like sports without clichés, math without numbers or Blago without bleeps. Tough to imagine, in other words, especially in such a game-changer of a campaign year in which buzzwords were flying like shoes.

Buzzwords are what political wiseguys use to sound all important and knowing in a profession whose prime currency is the illusion of being both. They are like secret passwords for the chattering class, the verbal equivalent of a terrorist fist jab.

By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — Chinese authorities have begun blocking access from mainland China to the Web site of The New York Times even while lifting some of the restrictions they had recently imposed on the Web sites of other media outlets.

When computer users in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou tried to connect on Friday morning to nytimes.com, they received a message that the site was not available; some users were cut off on Thursday as early as 8 p.m. The blocking was still in effect on Saturday morning.

Microsoft is rushing out a software update for its Internet Explorer web browser, after security experts warned that millions of computer users could have their PCs ‘hijacked’ by hackers.

By Claudine Beaumont

Opera, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Flock are five alternative web browsers to Internet Explorer

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said he would be watching out for journalists taking off their shoes in news conferences after an Iraqi reporter threw a pair at outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad.

Liu Jianchao was asked what he thought of Sunday’s incident, when the television journalist also called the American leader a “dog,” and replied all leaders deserved respect.

“I believe we should have basic respect for the leader of a country,” he told a media briefing, before adding that the attack had given him pause for thought.