The article goes on to say that Apple’s federal tax bill likely would have been $2.4 billion higher last year without these moves.

“This case is about the choices that that man made: choices to murder Americans overseas, choices to come back and murder Americans here in New York on behalf of al-Qaeda,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Berit Berger said in closing arguments at the trial of Adis Medunjanin in Brooklyn, New York.

Medunjanin, 28, and two other New York men were recruited by al-Qaeda for a planned bombing of subway lines in Manhattan in 2009, according to an indictment. The plot was stopped within days of its happening, prosecutors said. The two other men, Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay, pleaded guilty in 2010 and testified at the trial for the government.

A naturalized U.S. citizen born in Bosnia, Medunjanin faces as long as life in prison if convicted. U.S. District Judge John Gleeson is presiding over the trial, which began April 16.

In his closing argument today, Robert Gottlieb, a lawyer for Medunjanin, said his client’s only goal was to fight on behalf of Muslims in Afghanistan.

“His plan and intent was to join the Taliban and stand up for his religion,” Gottlieb said. “The evidence is that killing was not their intent. That was not their specific and conscious intention.”

Paulo Maluf and his son, Flavio, have never appeared in a New York court to fight 5-year-old charges of scheming to take more than $11 million in kickbacks from Brazilian highway contractors and shuttle the money through New York bank accounts.

Instead, they asked a civil court to order the Manhattan district attorney’s office to dismiss the charges, which the Malufs called a case of prosecutors overreaching into another continent. In a ruling filed Wednesday, a civil court judge said the men were pursuing their claims in the wrong court.

The Malufs’ “challenges to the indictment may be raised and addressed in a pre-trial motion to dismiss or at a trial” in criminal court, should they decide to show up there, state Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman wrote.

A lawyer for the Malufs, Sharon McCarthy, said she was evaluating the ruling to determine what move they might make next. The DA’s office declined to comment.

Paulo Maluf, a former Brazilian presidential candidate, and his son said the Manhattan DA had no place prosecuting a case derived from allegations that arose in Brazil and are also being prosecuted there. The Malufs deny the allegations in both countries.

“The Manhattan DA’s actions have stepped all over the sovereignty of Brazil,” another Maluf lawyer, Bryan C. Skarlatos, told the judge at an April 2010 hearing.

But prosecutors said they had legal grounds to go after the Malufs because the money passed through New York, and some of the cash bought watches and jewelry here.

“They had no problems using the United States and New York to commit their crimes,” Assistant District Attorney Marc Scholl told the judge at the 2010 hearing.

Manhattan prosecutors haven’t formally tried to extradite the Malufs, citing a provision in Brazil’s constitution that largely bars extradition of its citizens. But prosecutors have asked police around the world to pick up the Malufs if they leave their homeland.

The judge did say there might be questions about whether allegations underlying certain conspiracy charges against the Malufs were sufficiently tied to New York, though she didn’t call for them to be dismissed. The men also face other conspiracy counts, as well as charges of possession of stolen property.

Paulo Maluf’s political career spans four decades and includes stints as mayor of Sao Paulo and governor of the surrounding state. He was elected to congress in 2006, and later re-elected, under the conservative Progressive Party banner.

He built a reputation for effectiveness, though he has long been dogged by corruption allegations.

Some of the alleged kickback money that coursed through Manhattan helped finance Maluf’s unsuccessful 1998 campaign to return to the Sao Paulo state governorship, Manhattan prosecutors say.

The Manhattan case was unveiled in March 2007. Then-District Attorney Robert Morgenthau called it an illustration of “corruption and greed on a colossal scale”; a spokesman for Maluf denounced it as “the fruit of political persecution.”

The Manhattan DA’s office has a history of pursuing far-reaching financial cases, often based on money flowing through international banking hubs in Manhattan.

A proposal co-sponsored by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver includes voluntary public financing of campaigns to preserve “the heart of our democracy.” It would be funded by money from Wall Street fraud settlements.

The Senate’s Republican majority quickly made its opposition to public financing clear. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is closely allied with the Senate Republicans, said he is still considering the concept, which had been a major element of his 2010 campaign.

New Yorkers have heard similar talk before over the past 26 years, including during the 2010 elections.

In all, $246 million in campaign donations were collected for 215 statewide and legislative races in that election year, dominated by contributions from a few individuals and business interests. Eighteen people donated $150,000 each, the limit for a calendar year that’s far higher than in most states, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group. The vast majority of New Yorkers don’t contribute.

Candidates routinely promise in election years to make campaigns less about money and more about ideas and the candidates themselves. Once in Albany, the Senate and Assembly often back competing proposals, then fail to compromise enough to pass a law.

“Public financing in New York City has worked, it’s a good idea, and it’s never going to pass in Albany,” said Bill Samuels, founder of the New Roosevelt good-government think tank.

“She just started treating me horribly, viciously, inhumanly after the surgery,” Stevens told ABCNews.com. “It was almost like she hired me just to get my kidney.” Although Stevens turned out to be less than a perfect kidney match for Brucia, Stevens donated her organ to an out-of-state stranger so that Brucia could move up on the organ donor list.

Stevens left the company in June 2010 to move to Florida. She returned to New York in September to visit her daughter, and decided to stop in at the dealership, according to the complaint. It was during this visit that Brucia told Stevens of her need for a kidney transplant.

“She said she had a possible donor, a friend or something,” Stevens said. “But I told her if anything happened that I’d be willing to donate my kidney. She kind of jokingly replied, ‘You never know, I may have to take you up on that one day.’”

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said the institutions “systemically and repeatedly ignore rampant sexual harassment.” Besides seeking lasting changes at the military institutions, the suit also seeks unspecified damages and the awarding of academic credit for the women who said they were forced to leave the institutions when the psychological effects of attacks left them too distressed to remain enrolled.

Times Co. climbed 4.4 percent to $6.38 at the close in New York, the biggest gain since Dec. 20. Net income rose to $42.1 million, or 28 cents a share, from $5.42 million, or 4 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. Excluding some items, profit was 8 cents a share, beating the 2-cent average of seven analysts’ estimates (NYT) compiled by Bloomberg.

The newspaper publisher, which still owns the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette after selling the Regional Newspaper Group for $143 million in December, has built up its digital business to capitalize on the ad industry’s shift toward online marketing and away from print.

“The results were better than we anticipated,” said Leo Kulp, a Citigroup Inc. analyst. “Costs were better than we thought and there appears to be a lot of upside in these results.”

Not all of the Times’s numbers rose. Sales declined 0.3 percent to $499.4 million. Five analysts had estimated $499.8 million on average. Advertising revenue declined 8.1 percent to $237.9 million, from $258.9 million a year earlier. Times Co. expects ad revenue in the second quarter to be “similar to the level experienced in the first quarter,” the company said.

Times Co.’s annual sales have fallen every year since 2006 as the publishing industry has lost ad dollars to Internet companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) and Facebook Inc.

Paid Subscriptions

Paid subscriptions to the company’s digital publications, including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Boston Globe, totaled 472,000 as of March 18.

“The paid subscriptions aren’t quite enough to make a major difference to the declines in print advertising,” said Kulp, who rates the shares neutral.

Digital-advertising sales dropped 10 percent from a year earlier to $71.1 million because of lower revenue at About.com, while circulation sales gained 9.7 percent to $227 million, the company said.

Times Co. has operated without a permanent chief executive officer since Janet Robinson was fired in December, a development that’s helped drive down its stock price despite gains in online subscriptions, according to Douglas Arthur, media analyst with Evercore Partners Inc.

‘Lots of Good’

“There’s lots of good going on with the company, from selling the regional newspapers to great pay-wall numbers and increased cash, but the stock is just death because there’s no CEO,” Arthur said in an interview before the earnings release. “This is the slowest CEO search ever,” said Arthur, who rates the shares overweight and doesn’t own any.

The company recently moved to boost its online subscriptions by further restricting the number of free articles people can read on the New York Times website to 10 articles a month from 20.

The company hasn’t broken out online subscriptions to the New York Times website alone since September, when there were 324,000 such paying readers.

Online Subscriptions

“We’re looking to see if that growth in online subscriptions can be sustained,” Kannan Venkateshwar of Barclays Capital Inc., said in an interview earlier this week.

Times Co. is generating an average of $250 annually for every digital subscriber, according to his estimates. If the publisher can continue to increase the number of paying readers, it could be enough to offset declines in print advertising, said Venkateshwar, who rates the shares neutral.

New York Times comes second to the Wall Street Journal in online subscribers. The Journal, owned by News Corp. (NWSA) (NWSA), averaged 521,417 paying readers to its site as of October, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Gannett Co. (GCI) (GCI) started a digital- subscription program for 81 daily newspapers this year, while keeping its flagship USA Today freely available online.

U.S. newspapers lost $10 in print-advertising sales for every dollar gained online last year, Pew Research Center said last month. In 2010, newspapers lost $7 in print advertising for every dollar made from digital outlets.

Times Co. will bring in an estimated $90 million this year from digital subscriptions, Evercore’s Arthur said.

“If they keep that up, online could turn into a real business in the next year or two,” he said.

After fleeing Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts last summer because of the company’s deteriorated finances, City Opera used three venues this season, starting at BAM, moving on to the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College and ending up next month at El Museo del Barrio.

“We have successfully, I believe successfully implemented our new model for the company and that the New York City Opera is on firm footing,” chairman Chuck Wall said.

Like this season, 2012-13 will consist of an abbreviated schedule of 16 performances of four operas. Next season includes new stagings of Thomas Ades’ ”Powder Her Face” (Feb. 15-23) and Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw” (Feb. 24-March 2) at BAM, and Rossini’s “Mose in Egitto (Moses in Egypt)” (April 14-20) and Offenbach’s “La Perichole” (April 21-27) at City Center.

Built in 1923, originally called Mecca Temple and known for many years as City Center of Music and Drama, the auditorium a block south of Carnegie Hall in midtown Manhattan was home to City Opera for 1,447 performances of 108 operas, starting with Puccini’s “Tosca” on Feb. 21, 1944, and ending with Lehar’s “The Merry Widow” on Nov. 15, 1965.

City Opera moved to Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater, opening on Feb. 22, 1966, with Alberto Ginastera’s “Don Rodrigo” and playing its final performance there last May 1, Stephen Schwartz’s “Seance on a Wet Afternoon.”

In its last full season at Lincoln Center, City Opera presented 13 productions in 2007-08. The company then stumbled, missing a season of staged performances to have its auditorium renovated and hiring Gerard Mortier as general manager, only to watch him quit before he was to start in 2009-10.

The company said it reached agreements to use BAM and City Center as its primary theaters through the 2014-15 season.

General manager George Steel said the company’s budget of about $13.5 million this season was balanced for the first time in 12 years. Its endowment has been stable for the past year at $9 million, down from $55 million.

He expects sellouts for all 16 performances this season, helped by $25 tickets that were underwritten by a donor. He hopes to expand seasons to 8-10 operas in the future but has no timetable. There also is no timeframe for hiring a music director to replace George Manahan, who left a year ago.

“We will expand on sustainable basis,” Steel said.

Najibullah Zazi, testifying in the trial of another defendant, Adis Medunjanin, said “Hamad” told the men, who traveled to Pakistan in 2008 to join the Taliban in Afghanistan, to return to the U.S. “Hamad” is Adnan Shukrijumah, one of al- Qaeda’s top operatives, according to the indictment.

The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., won for local reporting for breaking the Penn State sexual abuse scandal that eventually brought down legendary football coach Joe Paterno.

A second Pulitzer for investigative reporting went to The Seattle Times for a series about accidental methadone overdoses among patients with chronic pain.

The New York Times won two prizes, for explanatory and international reporting.

RELATED: How well do you know the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction? Take the quiz

The Huffington Post received its first Pulitzer, in national reporting, for its look at the challenges facing American veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A year after the Pulitzer judges found no entry worthy of the prize for breaking news, The Tuscaloosa News of Alabama won the award for coverage of a deadly tornado. By blending traditional reporting with the use of social media, the newspaper provided real-time updates and helped locate missing people, while producing in-depth print coverage despite a power outage that forced the paper to publish at a plant 50 miles away.