NEW YORK - Transit workers and the agency that runs the city's subways and buses broke off contract talks after less than four hours Saturday with no agreement to prevent a strike at the height of the Christmas rush.
Ed Watt, secretary-treasurer of the 33,000-member Transit Workers Union, said the negotiations Saturday were limited. Neither union head Roger Toussaint nor Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Peter Kalikow was involved.
"Both sides are in what seems to be intractable positions," Watt said.
MTA spokesman Tom Kelly described the decision to break off talks as a "recess." There was no indication when bargaining might resume.
The previous contract expired early Friday, but the trains kept running and the union set a new strike deadline for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. The new deadline gave negotiators at least a few more days to try to reach an agreement.
Transit workers are prohibited by state law from striking the buses and subways, at the risk of fines and lawsuits.
Toussaint announced a selective strike to begin Monday against two private bus lines in Queens that are in the process of being taken over by the MTA, but are not yet covered by the law outlawing strikes by public transit employees.
The two lines have about 50,000 riders and 750 workers.
A citywide bus and subway strike would be New York's first since an 11-day walkout in 1980 that paralyzed the nation's largest mass-transit system, which carries 7-million passengers a day.
Teen accused of killing father to hide bad grades
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - A 15-year-old boy killed his father, then set their home on fire because he was afraid his father would find out he was failing classes, prosecutors said.
Ryan Watts faces a murder charge in the death of his father, 50-year-old John E. Bruner, who was at first thought to have died in the fire. The teenager was charged as an adult.
Watts was arrested Wednesday after an autopsy determined that Bruner died from multiple gunshot wounds and not from the fire, Santa Clara police said.
Court documents allege he shot his father in the head at close range Monday, then set the body on fire because it was too heavy to carry to the back yard, where he had planned to bury it. Watts hid the gun and went to Taco Bell before calling 911 to report the fire, the documents said.
Suspect in N.Y. attack to face kidnap charges
NEW YORK - A former fashion writer wanted in connection with a vicious Halloween sex attack will face charges of kidnapping and other offenses when he can be brought back from Tennessee, where he was found on a college campus, prosecutors said.
Peter Braunstein, 42, was hospitalized in fair condition Saturday, recovering from self-inflicted knife wounds. Police said he stabbed himself several times in the neck after a campus police officer confronted him Friday afternoon at the University of Memphis.
Braunstein is expected to be arraigned in Tennessee on Monday, authorities said.
Prosecutors plan to seek an arrest warrant charging Braunstein with attacking a female acquaintance in Manhattan in October, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
New York police had been hunting for Braunstein since early November.
