My visa will be canceled immediately, and I'll be given a transit document requiring that I leave the country within three days.
Sergei A. Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst, said if Mr. Snowden received asylum, he could acquire a Russian transit document and leave the country, or else remain in the country as a public figure, which he said would be "very good for public relations, he will be like Gérard Depardieu".
It is hard to quantify the disease risks of mass transit: Documenting them would require, for instance, swabbing subway poles to identify the microbes on them, then tracking people who touched the same poles, said Robyn R. M. Gershon, associate dean for research resources at the Mailman School.
Last month, after protracted haggling with the EU, Russia agreed to a "facilitated-transit document" for Kaliningraders who want to get to the mainland through Lithuania a face-saving name for what is basically a visa.
Transit budget documents state that those changes, which must also be approved by the M.T.A. board, would add about 20percentt more service, or up to nine more trains an hour, along the Queens Boulevard-Manhattan corridor beginning in August 2001.
It had been assumed that Al Qaeda was using Thailand mainly as a place for rest and recreation, transit and false documents, he said.
Passports, letters of transit, and similar documents were used for centuries to allow individuals to travel safely in foreign lands, but the adoption of the passport by all countries is a development of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The resulting images silently inspire feelings and associations of living in large city and using public transit as it documents, as Magyar put it, "the in-between times," from packed subway cars, to interactions with strangers, to reading your neighbor's newspaper.
