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Saul Zaentz, an acclaimed independent film producer who adapted literary works for the screen and won best-picture Academy Awards for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus" and "The English Patient," died Friday at his apartment in San Francisco. He was 92.

Mr. Zaentz died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, the producer Paul Zaentz, his nephew and longtime business partner, told The Associated Press.

Mr. Zaentz (pronounced zants) was comfortably in his 50s when he began making movies and had already made a fortune in the music business from the success of the rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival and the acquisition of a formidable jazz catalog.

In a business driven by celebrity stars and box-office profits, he staked his reputation and his money on serious, intelligent films, often based on offbeat prizewinning books or plays, featuring rising stars and relatively untested directors passionate about the collaboration.

Working with Milos Forman, Anthony Minghella, Peter Weir and other directors, he made only nine films in his cinematic heyday, from 1975 to 2007, most of them without Hollywood studio backing. They included "The Mosquito Coast" (1986), "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988), "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" (1991) and "Goya's Ghosts" (2007).

He produced blockbusters and bombs, made and lost millions, and, while applauded by critics, he never became a household name like Zanuck, Spielberg, Hitchcock or George Lucas. But his major hits (each a decade apart), "Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), "Amadeus" (1984) and "The English Patient" (1996), won 22 Oscars for his actors, actresses, directors and other contributors.

And on Oscar night in 1997, Mr. Zaentz won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement and his third best-picture award. It crowned a career and an evening of triumph, with nine Academy Awards conferred on "The English Patient," Mr. Minghella's mesmerizing dramatization of Michael Ondaatje's novel of love and war set in the North African desert and a bombed-out Italian villa.

Described by The New York Times in 1995 as the last of the great independent producers, Mr. Zaentz, a portly, balding man with a full white beard who read voraciously and loved baseball, financed his own pictures when possible to retain creative control, selected his own stars and directors and shot on location to capture the beauties of an African desert, a ruined Tuscan monastery or the jungles of Central America.

Colleagues said he did not interfere with his artists' work. "Saul is the producer ideal because he realized that a film has to be made by one person, the director, not by a committee," Mr. Forman, who directed "Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus" and "Goya's Ghosts," recalled in 1995.

Berkeley was the home of the Saul Zaentz Film Center, for years the editing and sound studio for his and other independent films, and the Bay Area was his spiritual home. There in the 1960s and 1970s he made millions in the music business: his grubstake for an autumn-of-life film career that, critics said, reflected his rebel persona and eclectic taste for fiction and drama.

Saul Zaentz was born in Passaic, N.J., on Feb. 28, 1921, one of five children of Morris and Goldie Zaentz, Jewish refugees from a shtetl in Eastern Poland. He ran away from home at 15, sold peanuts at ballgames in St. Louis, made a little money gambling and traveled around the country, hitchhiking and riding freight trains. He enlisted in the Army in World War II and served in Africa, Europe and the Pacific.

After the war he studied at Rutgers University, worked on a chicken farm and took a business course in St. Louis. He settled in San Francisco in 1950 and began working for a record distributor. In 1955 he was hired as a salesman by Fantasy Records, a label whose roster included the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, the poet Allen Ginsberg and the comedian Lenny Bruce. He also managed tours for Duke Ellington, Stan Getz and others.

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DHAKA, Bangladesh — As Bangladesh prepared for general elections on Sunday, a truck driver named Nur Islam was trying to haul a load of potatoes to Dhaka, the capital, along a route he knew would be targeted by protesters allied with the opposition.

He took precautions, strapping on a helmet and leaving in the dead of night, but was still terrified after his truck was surrounded — not once, but twice — by young men hurling bricks. His windows and windshield shattered, blanketing him with glass, but he kept driving, afraid that if he stopped the men would set his truck on fire. He arrived in the capital battered, exhausted and more frustrated than ever by the combustible standoff between the country's two major political forces.

"Both parties are playing with the lives of common people," Mr. Islam said.

The tension could rise to a new level on Sunday, when the country will go to the polls in a vote that is strikingly noncompetitive by Bangladeshi standards. The opposition has refused to participate, leaving more than half of the seats in Parliament uncontested.

The country's main opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party, called the boycott after the government refused to put in place an impartial caretaker government ahead of the elections, which has been customary in Bangladesh since 1996 and is seen as a guard against government manipulation. Protesters have set fire to vehicles and hurled bricks and homemade explosives, demanding that the government hold new elections on terms the opposition accepts.

For weeks, it seemed as if the vote might be delayed at the last minute, in an effort to avoid the confrontation that was certain to follow. But the governing Awami League has pushed forward. As the vote approached, each side took a harder line — the opposition calling for a street campaign powerful enough to derail the elections, and the government clamping down severely on demonstrators and opposition leaders. By Saturday, the country was bracing itself.

"The fact that we are having this sort of sham election, it's not going to solve our problems," said Badiul Alam Majumdar, secretary of the nonprofit group Citizens for Good Governance. "It will push us to an uncertain future. We will be in uncharted waters."

Street protests often accompany elections in Bangladesh, but political violence intensified in 2013, resulting in around 150 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch.

The violence increased in part when the government began prosecuting figures from Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence for war crimes, handing down death sentences to several leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamic political party. The Awami League has also hardened its view of Begum Khaleda Zia, the Bangladesh National Party's leader and a two-time prime minister, accusing her of links to Islamist militants.

That distrust culminated last week in an unprecedented step. Police officers surrounded Mrs. Zia's home when she tried to leave for a rally, and would not allow her to leave. Since then, she has remained blockaded inside the compound, at one point behind five trucks loaded with sand. After arranging with Mrs. Zia for an interview on Friday, a reporter for The New York Times was turned away by officers at the gate, who said the meeting could not take place, out of concern for Mrs. Zia's security.

Hasanul Haq Inu, Bangladesh's information minister, said Mrs. Zia had been "unleashing violence" and was not under arrest, but "detained."

"The law of the country says a person can be detained in his house by an order of the home ministry," he said. "We are just protecting her safety. In her house, she is very safe." Asked what threat Mrs. Zia faced, he said: "Nobody knows. Some miscreants can just shoot at her."

One worry about Sunday's elections is whether they will lead to a burst of violence from supporters of the opposition. By Saturday evening, Bangladeshi news outlets were reporting arson attacks on some polling stations, ballot boxes and trucks used to transport election materials. Near midnight, police officials in the country's north reported the stabbing death of the chief at one polling station.

Osman Faruk, a former education minister and top aide to Mrs. Zia, said the party told its supporters to discourage Bangladeshis from voting on Sunday, and hoped to continue its campaign "in a peaceful way," by distributing leaflets, for example. But he went on to justify the use of violence as the only outlet available to Mrs. Zia's followers.

"When people say the movement is not peaceful, the reply is that whatever happens in the street is a reflection of the government's actions," he said.

A low turnout could pressure the government to begin preparing for fresh elections, something that happened after a similar opposition boycott in 1996. Gowher Rizvi, an adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said it was "almost without doubt" that Mrs. Hasina would call new elections ahead of schedule, noting that an election "loses its luster" when a major party does not take part.

"Is it one year? Is it nine months? Is it 15 months? I can't tell you," he said.

That step would be welcomed by many in Dhaka, where opinion polls testify to voters' frustration at being denied a choice. Bangladeshis are boisterous in their embrace of democracy, having voted out the incumbent government in four consecutive elections. A Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that factor might force the two parties to "step back and realize that they may be overreaching."

"This election does not appear to be credible in the eyes of the Bangladeshi people," the diplomat said. "So they have to find a way back to the table."

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BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Army shelled the western city of Falluja overnight to try to wrest control of it from Sunni Muslim militants and local tribesmen, killing at least eight people, according to tribal leaders and officials on Saturday.

Falluja has been held since Monday by militants linked to Al Qaeda and by some tribal fighters united in their opposition to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, posing a serious challenge in Anbar Province to the authority of his Shiite-led central government.

Medical officials in Falluja said that in addition to the deaths, 30 people were wounded in the army shelling.

In recent months, the militants, members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, have been tightening their grip in the Sunni-dominated desert province of Anbar, near the Syrian border, in a bid to create an Islamic state across the Iraqi-Syrian borders.

Tribal loyalties are fluid in the region, and the government has tried to secure the support of local tribal leaders with offers of guns and money. In Ramadi, the other major city in Anbar, the army and tribesmen who have decided for now to side with the central government have worked together to counter the militants seeking to take control.

But in Falluja, the militants' task has been made easier by the cooperation of other tribesmen, who have joined forces against the government with ISIS.

Tension has been running high in Anbar, once the heart of Iraq's insurgency after the 2003 American-led invasion, since the Iraqi police broke up a Sunni protest camp on Monday. At least 13 people were killed in those clashes.

The escalating tension shows that the civil war in Syria, where mostly Sunni rebels are battling President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by the Shiite power leaders in Iran, is spilling over to other countries like Iraq and threatening a delicate sectarian balance.

Officials and witnesses in Falluja said the northern and eastern parts of the city were under the control of tribesmen and militants after residents fled those areas to take refuge from the army shelling.

Militants have deployed snipers on top of empty houses and government buildings to prevent soldiers from entering the city.

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The turnabout by Mr. Cuomo, who had long resisted legalizing medical marijuana, comes as other states are taking increasingly liberal positions on it — most notably Colorado, where thousands have flocked to buy the drug for recreational use since it became legal on Jan. 1.

Mr. Cuomo's plan will be far more restrictive than the laws in Colorado or California, where medical marijuana is available to people with conditions as mild as backaches. It will allow just 20 hospitals across the state to prescribe marijuana to patients with cancer, glaucoma or other diseases that meet standards to be set by the New York State Department of Health.

While Mr. Cuomo's measure falls well short of full legalization, it nonetheless moves New York, long one of the nation's most punitive states for those caught using or dealing drugs, a significant step closer to policies being embraced by marijuana advocates and lawmakers elsewhere.

New York hopes to have the infrastructure in place this year to begin dispensing medical marijuana, although it is too soon to say when it will actually be available to patients.

Mr. Cuomo's change of heart comes at an interesting political juncture. In neighboring New Jersey, led by Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican whose presidential prospects are talked about even more often than Mr. Cuomo's, medical marijuana was approved by his predecessor, Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, but implemented only after Mr. Christie put in place rules limiting its strength, banning home delivery, and requiring patients to show they have exhausted conventional treatments. The first of six planned dispensaries has already opened.

Meanwhile, New York City's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, had quickly seemed to overshadow Mr. Cuomo as the state's leading progressive politician.

For Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who has often found common ground with Republicans on fiscal issues, the sudden shift on marijuana — which he will announce on Wednesday in his annual State of the State address — was the latest of several instances in which he has embarked on a major social policy effort sure to bolster his popularity with a large portion of his political base.

In 2011, he successfully championed the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York. And a year ago, in the aftermath of the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Cuomo pushed through legislation giving New York some of the nation's toughest gun-control laws, including a strict ban on assault weapons. He also has pushed, unsuccessfully so far, to strengthen abortion rights in state law.

The governor's action also comes as advocates for changing drug laws have stepped up criticism of New York City's stringent enforcement of marijuana laws, which resulted in nearly 450,000 misdemeanor charges between 2002 and 2012, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates more liberal drug laws.

During that same period, medical marijuana became increasingly widespread outside New York, with some 20 states and the District of Columbia now allowing its use.

Mr. Cuomo voiced support for changing drug laws as recently as the 2013 legislative session, when he backed an initiative to decriminalize so-called open view possession of 15 grams or less. And though he said he remained opposed to medical marijuana, he indicated as late as April that he was keeping an open mind.

His about-face, according to a person briefed on the governor's views but not authorized to speak on the record, was rooted in his belief that the program he has drawn up can help those in need, while limiting the potential for abuse. Given Mr. Cuomo's long-held concerns, this person said, he insisted that it be a test program so he can monitor its impact.

But Mr. Cuomo is also up for election this year, and polls have shown overwhelming support for medical marijuana in New York: 82 percent of New York voters approved of the idea in a survey by Siena College last May.

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A small plane made an emergency landing on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx on Saturday afternoon, fire officials said.

The plane landed on the highway around 3:20 p.m. near East 233rd Street, fire officials said. There was no fire and no fuel spilled, and the passengers were able to leave the plane.

At least one passenger was taken to a local hospital, fire officials said. None of the passengers had life-threatening injuries.

Drivers should expect traffic delays and take alternate routes, New York's Office of Emergency Management said.

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BOSTON — When Massachusetts finally gave in after decades of resistance and decided two years ago to legalize casino gambling, it seemed a relatively easy way to fill the state's recession-battered coffers.

Some of the nation's biggest casino operators, including Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International and Wynn Resorts, rushed in to get a piece of this potentially lucrative market. Having already spent millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers to allow casinos, they then spent millions more selling themselves to voters, mainly by promising streams of revenue and thousands of jobs.

But a funny thing happened to the moguls on the way to staking their claims. Voters in several towns rejected them. While they did not object to casinos per se, they told pollsters, they did not want them in their own backyards.

Even Gov. Deval Patrick, who pushed through the casino legislation, acknowledged that he would vote against a casino if one were proposed for the town in the Berkshires, in western Massachusetts, where he owns a second home.

As if voter rejection were not discouraging enough, the casinos also faced an unusually tough gatekeeper in the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, which was charged with investigating them and will be selecting one casino for at least two of three regions in the state this spring. The winnowing produced daily twists and turns that transformed the process into a running soap opera. Investigators raised questions, for example, about Caesars' suitability for a license. One involved a rather tenuous tie to an alleged Russian mobster. Still, Caesars withdrew, despite having spent $100 million here.

There were revelations about a possible conflict of interest involving the gambling commission chairman, who was subsequently sued by Caesars, which is looking to redeem itself. And the commission made some eyebrow-raising decisions, like allowing a casino proposal to move forward even though it had been defeated by one of the two towns it would straddle (the commission said the law was ambiguous).

Adding to the drama is Steve Wynn, of the Wynn Resorts gambling empire. He is already trying to change the long-set state law that says gamblers must pay a tax on any winnings over $600, an amount he says is so low it will discourage customers. At one commission hearing on his company's practices, he fell asleep at the witness table.

Lawsuits are now flying, and a nascent statewide movement to repeal the 2011 casino legislation has picked up steam.

"Watching the way this is playing out, for those of us who opposed the casino legislation in the first place, just reinforces our concerns," said Michael S. Dukakis, a former governor.

Gambling is not anathema to New England, despite the region's Puritan roots. New Hampshire started the nation's first state lottery in 1963. New England's first casino, Foxwoods, opened in Connecticut in 1992; today it is one of the largest in the world.

It was the success of Foxwoods that helped inspire Massachusetts to consider casinos in the first place; so many residents were going to Connecticut to gamble that officials here decided to give them a reason to part with their money at home.

The casinos scouted locations and made lavish offers to their potential host communities to win support. Towns that were struggling financially tended to accept them. Wealthier towns spurned them, fearing that the quality of life would deteriorate because of increases in traffic and crime, the ripple effects of gambling addiction and the cannibalization of local businesses, especially mom-and-pop enterprises.

"The gambling industry is constantly looking for new markets, but it's finding it very difficult to get into the markets they want to be in," said Richard McGowan, who teaches business at Boston College and is an authority on gambling. "They want to be where the money is."

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Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Greggor Ilagan initially thought a ban on genetically modified organisms was a good idea.

KONA, Hawaii — From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.

Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.'s: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.

Like some others on the nine-member Council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill's proponents called a "G.M.O.-free oasis."

"You just type 'G.M.O.' and everything you see is negative," he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone's re-election prospects.

Yet doubts nagged at the councilman, who was serving his first two-year term. The island's papaya farmers said that an engineered variety had saved their fruit from a devastating disease. A study purporting that a diet of G.M.O. corn caused tumors in rats, mentioned often by the ban's supporters, turned out to have been thoroughly debunked.

And University of Hawaii biologists urged the Council to consider the global scientific consensus, which holds that existing genetically engineered crops are no riskier than others, and have provided some tangible benefits.

"Are we going to just ignore them?" Mr. Ilagan wondered.

Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban's sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to "act before it's too late," the Council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Mr. Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence.

At stake is how to grow healthful food most efficiently, at a time when a warming world and a growing population make that goal all the more urgent.

Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and teaching evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.'s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones.

"These are my people, they're lefties, I'm with them on almost everything," said Michael Shintaku, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, who testified several times against the bill. "It hurts."

But scientists, supporters of the ban argued, had not always correctly assessed health and environmental risks before. "Remember DDT?" one proponent demanded. "It took years to figure out that's why the eggshells were thinning and the eagles were going extinct."

Ms. Wille's bill would ban the cultivation of any genetically engineered crop on the island, with the exception of the two already grown there: corn recently planted by an island dairy to feed its cows, and papaya. Field tests to study new G.M.O. crops would also be prohibited. Penalties would be $1,000 per day

Like three-quarters of the electorate on Hawaii Island, known as the Big Island, Mr. Ilagan voted for President Obama in the 2012 election. When he took office himself a month later, after six years in the Air National Guard, he planned to focus on squatters, crime prevention and the inauguration of a bus line in his district on the island's eastern rim.

He had also promised himself that he would take a stance on all topics, never registering a "kanalua" vote — the Hawaiian term for "with reservation."

But with the G.M.O. bill, he often despaired of assembling the information he needed to definitively decide. Every time he answered one question, it seemed, new ones arose. Popular opinion masqueraded convincingly as science, and the science itself was hard to grasp. People who spoke as experts lacked credentials, and G.M.O. critics discounted those with credentials as being pawns of biotechnology companies.

"It takes so much time to find out what's true," he complained.