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ny0196633 | [
"science"
]
| 2009/10/07 | Name That Atom-Smasher | How often do you get to name a new atom-smasher, or even part of one? New York Times readers now have the once-in-a-generation chance to help do just that. Partly buoyed by $53 million from the economic stimulus package, aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, aka Fermilab, has embarked on a plan to build a new machine for accelerating protons. For now, it goes by the name of Project X , but Fermilab would like to come up with a zippier, more descriptive name before this one gets cemented into place by the press. The new machine would replace an aging linear accelerator that now feeds the Tevatron, the world’s biggest particle collider for at least another two months, before the giant Large Hadron Collider in Europe takes over. The Tevatron is due to be shut down in 2011; Project X, or whatever name it eventually gets, is a step toward insuring that Fermilab has a future in high energy physics. The machine will use a new technology called superconducting radio frequency cavities that will produce proton beams more efficiently. The beams can then be directed to other experiments to produce neutrinos, the ghostly particles that can pass through miles of lead with impunity, and muons, which are sort of like fat electrons. One glimmer in Fermilab’s eye is a collider for muons. The technology is also thought to be crucial for whatever giant acclerator, such as the International Linear Collider, eventually succeeds the hadron collider, presuming it discovers anything. Young-Kee Kim, deputy director at Fermilab said in an email, “If we can get good suggestions by NY Times readers, that will be just super.” So send in your suggestions to Dr. Kim at [email protected] . You can see previous suggestions here . | Physics;Large Hadron Collider;Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory |
ny0106436 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2012/04/17 | Mothers Get the Glory in Procter & Gamble Campaign | THERE are few things that seem more patriotic than mothers and the Olympics. On Tuesday, Procter & Gamble , the world’s largest advertiser, will announce its new campaign — its biggest ever — called “Thank You, Mom,” focusing on thanking mothers of Olympians and would-be Olympians around the world. Procter has tried wooing mothers with its advertising campaigns for years, but its latest campaign will be the company’s most global serenade to mothers yet. The campaign is a broader extension of the mothers campaign created by Wieden & Kennedy for the Vancouver Olympics in February 2010. That campaign also focused on the parent company itself and not on Procter’s multitude of individual brands. The company has a partnership with the International Olympic Committee to sponsor the Games from 2012 through 2020. “P.& G. is in the business of helping moms,” said Marc S. Pritchard, global chief marketing officer at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. “Every Olympic athlete has a mom and those moms are with their athletes every step of the way.” The campaign includes digital media, print and television ads and a mobile application. The cornerstone of the campaign is a television ad lasting a minute and 20 seconds and showing the mothers of young athletes preparing them for their day. The spots feature mothers and children (played by actors) in four Olympic cities past, present and future: Los Angeles, Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro. The spot, directed by Alejandro González Iñárrit, starts in the twilight of morning as each of the mothers wakes up her young child, prepares breakfast (beans and toast in London, dumplings in Beijing) and gets the child off to practice. The mothers then return home to do laundry, wash dishes and make beds. The background music swells as the children are seen finally becoming Olympic athletes, with their mothers watching them compete from the sidelines or on television. “We had to look at raising children as a global endeavor,” said Karl Lieberman, the creative director at Wieden & Kennedy, who worked on the campaign. “We could embrace the differences — they may do things differently but they do relatively the same thing.” Different versions of the ad have been produced for specific countries, including China, Brazil and Russia; they will be introduced after the main ad’s debut. About 20 versions will be shown around the world, said Joani Wardwell, the global public relations director at Weiden & Kennedy. Procter did not disclose the cost of the campaign. According to Kantar Media, part of WPP, the company spent $3.02 billion on marketing in 2011. Leading up to and throughout the 2012 London Games, Procter will also show a series of minidocumentaries called “Raising an Olympian,” which will tell stories about how mothers raise their children to be Olympians. The documentaries will begin in early May online, including social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. “There are universal human insights that really not only unify our brands and company from a creative standpoint but also bring people together,” Mr. Pritchard said. Consumers can also use the “Thank You, Mom” mobile app to upload videos, photos or texts to send messages of thanks to their mothers. For the Vancouver Games, Procter & Gamble flew the mothers of American Olympic athletes to the Games and gave them housing so they could watch their children compete. The company will announce a similar initiative for mothers, including the rest of its plan for the London Games, at an event in New York in May, said Glenn Williams, external relations manager for Procter. In addition to supporting and showcasing the mothers of athletes, Procter will sponsor 150 Olympic and Paralympic athletes (and hopefuls) for the 2012 Olympic Games and Summer Paralympics, both in London. Some of the sponsorships will include the athletes in commercials for certain Procter & Gamble products. A coming commercial for Pampers, for example, will feature Kerri Walsh, a beach volleyball athlete. The commercial’s theme will be on making high-chair climbing an Olympic sport for babies. Another spot, for Gillette, will feature Tyson Gay, a track and field athlete, and Ryan Lochte, a swimmer. To help those mothers and children who may not be headed to the Olympics but who still want to play sports, the company announced a fund-raising initiative called the P.& G. Team USA Youth Sports Fund. Procter hopes to raise $500,000 for the fund through in-store purchases of products like Pampers, Tide, Pantene and Gillette, corporate donations and social media efforts on the company’s “Thank You, Mom” Facebook page. For every “like” on the page, the company will donate $1, up to $100,000. The campaign will be the first time Procter begins a global campaign online instead of traditional media. Digital ads and videos will begin appearing across the world on sites like YouTube, Facebook and Yahoo on Tuesday. Television ads will begin in early May. And what about fathers? “Dads play an incredibly important role,” Mr. Pritchard said. “We will be honoring dads around Father’s Day.” | Advertising and Marketing;Online Advertising;Procter & Gamble Company;Olympic Games (2012) |
ny0099119 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
]
| 2015/06/24 | Credit Karma Raises $175 Million | Credit Karma, an online personal finance company, has obtained $175 million in new financing from the investment firms Tiger Global Management, Valinor Management and Viking Global Investors. With the new capital, Credit Karma, which is based in San Francisco, is valued at $3.5 billion, according to people briefed on the transaction. The new financing is another sign that many are betting that the financial industry in the United States is due for significant changes. Such sentiment was buoyed in part by the initial public offering of the peer-to-peer lender Lending Club last year. Credit Karma faces competitors, including Credit Sesame, which last month said it raised $16 million in financing, giving it a total of slightly more than $35 million, and Credit.com. In the financial technology market, Credit Karma is among the early players, founded in 2007. Its product was introduced in 2008. Earlier investors include Google Capital, which, with Tiger Global, led the company’s last financing round in 2014. Other earlier backers are Ribbit Capital, Susquehanna Growth Equity, Felicis Ventures and Dave McClure. The company said that it had raised a total of $368.5 million in its history. Some of that resulted from secondary transactions, however, and the company did not specify how much was primary capital. Credit Karma, which claims to have more than 40 million members, said in a statement on Tuesday that the new financing would go toward adding platforms and expanding services. It wants to allow users to consolidate student loans and compare insurance rates, for example. Credit Karma began as a site that merely provided credit scores to consumers. The statement also said that, “Credit Karma will continue to find new ways to leverage its data for the benefit of consumers and deliver tools and information to help them achieve their financial goals.” | Venture capital;Personal finance;Credit Karma;Tiger Global Management |
ny0070811 | [
"world"
]
| 2015/03/11 | Jordanian City Votes to Avoid ISIS Aesthetic | AMMAN, Jordan — Push brooms in hand, the sanitation workers who clean the streets of this capital could be easily recognized by their bright orange work suits. The city’s mayor, Aqel Biltaji, even donned the municipal uniform in 2013 to help show Jordanians that there was no shame in a job that requires “dedication and loyalty.” But that uniform has become more closely associated with Islamic State militants who force their captives to wear orange jumpsuits in videos that show grisly deaths, including beheadings and the recent immolation of a Jordanian fighter pilot. A video released on Tuesday purportedly shows the killing of a Palestinian man by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, wearing the orange outfit. In an effort to erase what has become a daily reminder of the militants’ violent crusade, the brother of First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, the fighter pilot burned alive inside a cage by ISIS militants, has led a campaign to change the color of the uniform worn by nearly 4,600 sanitation workers here. “It’s the right of our children not to see this color in the streets,” said the pilot’s brother, Jawad al-Kasasbeh. “Our workers and our people deserve not to have to see this color, which reminds them of the evil actions of Islamic State.” Mr. Kasasbeh’s initiative gained momentum online, and the city responded by forming a committee to consider changing the uniform and conducting a public poll to choose a new color. “My message spread, and citizens responded positively, and the municipality took action quickly,” Mr. Kasasbeh said. Visitors to the city’s website were asked whether they favored changing the color and, if so, their preference among eight options, including bright green, fuchsia and turquoise. Mr. Kasasbeh said in a telephone interview that he did not want Jordanian citizens to think about “revenge” when they see sanitation workers. City workers have the right to do their jobs without wearing “this ugly color” that ISIS hostages are forced to wear, he added. Instead, sanitation workers will wear turquoise uniforms printed with the city’s emblem starting on March 21, Mother’s Day here in Jordan. The new color, Mr. Kasasbeh said, is “beautiful and signifies life and energy, everything that is the opposite of Daesh,” another name for ISIS. Since the immolation of Lieutenant Kasasbeh, Jordan has increased its participation in the American-led assault against the Islamic State. | ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Moaz al-Kasasbeh;Jawad al-Kasasbeh;Amman Jordan;Uniform;Jordan |
ny0203625 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2009/08/01 | China to Try Suspects Held After Riots | BEIJING — China will begin trials in the next few weeks for suspects it accuses of playing a role in the deadly riots that shook the capital of the Xinjiang region in early July, state media outlets reported Friday. The English-language China Daily newspaper said officials were organizing special tribunals to weigh the fate of “a small number” of the 1,400 people who have been detained, most of them Uighurs , a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority whom security forces have blamed for much of the killing. Earlier this week, the authorities arrested an additional 253 suspects, many through tips provided by residents of Urumqi, the regional capital where the violence took place. On Thursday, the authorities published the photographs of an additional 15 people, all but one of them Uighur, who they say had a hand in the unrest. Those who provide information leading to an arrest can collect as much as $7,350 in reward money. “The police urged the suspects to turn themselves in,” China Daily wrote, quoting an unidentified law enforcement official. “Those who do so within 10 days will be dealt with leniently, while others will be punished severely.” In the days after the riots, the head of the Communist Party in Urumqi was blunt about what awaits those convicted of the most serious offenses. “To those who have committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them,” said the official, Li Zhi. The riots, the worst outbreak of ethnic strife in China’s recent history, began July 5 after protests over the deaths of Uighur factory workers in another part of China turned into a murderous rampage. The violence, which lasted three days, claimed 197 lives, most of them Han Chinese beaten to death on the streets, according to the government. The Han are the dominant ethnic group in China. Uighur advocates overseas, however, insist that the official death toll undercounts the number of Uighurs killed by the paramilitary police and during revenge attacks by the Han that followed the initial rioting. China has accused outsiders of instigating the unrest, heaping most of the blame on Rebiya Kadeer, the 62-year-old leader of the World Uighur Congress, which advocates self-determination for China’s Uighurs. They say Ms. Kadeer, a businesswoman who spent years in a Chinese jail before going into exile, organized the killings from her home in Washington. In recent weeks Ms. Kadeer has been on an aggressive campaign to convince the world that her people are the primary victims of the rioting. During a visit to Japan on Wednesday, she told reporters that 10,000 people had disappeared overnight in the days following the unrest. “Where did they go?” she asked. “Were they all killed or sent somewhere? The Chinese government should disclose what happened to them.” Her claims have infuriated China, with one official in Xinjiang describing her remarks as “completely fabricated.” Ms. Kadeer says she cannot reveal the source of her information because to do so would endanger those who provided it. If the trials that followed the 2008 riots in Tibet are any guide, the court hearings in Xinjiang will be swift. According to China Daily, the accused will be appointed lawyers who have “received special training,” as have the judges who will preside over the cases. Each trial will be heard by a panel of three or seven judges, and the majority opinion will prevail. Human rights groups, however, say they have little confidence the tribunals will be fair. They expect the proceedings to be closed to the public, as are most trials in China, and they note that the defendants will not have lawyers of their own choosing. “Without independent legal counsel, you don’t have any clue as to what evidence has been collected and through what means,” said Renee Xia, international director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which is based in Hong Kong. “Were they tortured or coerced to confess? Trials can be speedy, but it doesn’t mean they will be fair.” | China;Xinjiang (China);Demonstrations and Riots |
ny0149433 | [
"nyregion",
"thecity"
]
| 2008/09/07 | A Tangy Taste of Victory | The 2007 vidal blanc made by the large-scale Swedish Hill Winery, of Seneca County, was voted New York’s best wine last month in the Wine and Food Classic, an annual statewide contest. This complex, full-bodied dry white, from a French hybrid grape that thrives in the cool Finger Lakes region, is luscious and tangy. Vintage New York, 2492 Broadway (93rd Street) and 482 Broome Street (Wooster Street), SoHo, charges a bargain $11.99. | Wines;Alcoholic Beverages;Goldberg Howard G |
ny0187462 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2009/04/17 | Passover’s Over, and Bagels Are Back, Big | Giasuddin Ahmed ran through the timetable. “The guys arrive at 4:30 a.m. to make the bagels,” he said. “At 5:30 a.m., the coffee. Open, 6 a.m.” He left out one step. Someone had to tear down the white paper that had been taped over the plate-glass windows of the store he runs — and the signs that said the store, 72nd Street Bagel, on the West Side, would be closed for Passover . Mr. Ahmed and other bagel makers say that the first business day after the holiday ends — Friday — is typically one of their busiest days of the year as Jewish customers line up to observe the passing of at least eight days of yeast privation. Bagel makers spent Thursday contemplating the end of Passover. Some, like Mr. Ahmed, gave their ovens and mixing bowls the once-over after time off during the holiday, which started at sundown on April 8. His store follows kosher dietary rules and treats Passover as an eight-day holiday, as many observant Jews do. (Reform Jews typically celebrate Passover for seven days, said Rabbi Andy Bachman, the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn.) During Passover, many Jews avoid leavened products in commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, during which, according to Old Testament tradition, the Israelites had so little time to flee that the bread they were baking did not have time to rise, and came out of the ovens as matzo. That means eight bagel-free days, unless you make bagels with matzo meal (there are recipes on the Internet). People who have not had a bagel in eight days make the post-Passover time busy — as busy, Mr. Ahmed said, as Thanksgiving Day, when crowds watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade stream down Central Park West, a block from his shop. “Generally,” he said, “we do one and a half times” the normal business on the day after Passover ends. Some bagel shops shut down for part of Passover. Ess-a-Bagel, with two stores on the East Side, closed for the first two days of the holiday, said Florence Wilpon, who started Ess-a-Bagel with her husband and her brother in 1976. For some Jews, a Thursday evening bagel would have been premature, she said. “People who observe Passover would not eat from flour made during Passover,” she said. “They’d eat bagels made with flour and dough mixed after sundown on Thursday.” Lenny’s Bagels, on Broadway at 98th Street, was open during Passover. But Benjamin Choi, the owner, said that business was down 20 percent during the eight-day holiday. He said he typically makes up for that as the holiday ends. How many more bagels would Lenny’s make for Thursday evening and Friday morning? “I don’t count,” Mr. Choi said. But he did the math. “On an average day, we sell 50 dozen,” he said. “Thursday night and Friday, it’s 70 dozen.” Terrace Bagels in Park Slope was planning no such increase, but could handle a sudden jump in demand if it materialized. “We bake as needed all day long,” said Anthony Thompson, the manager. “Do I expect to sell more?” he asked. “Yes. It’s hard to say with the economy the way it is. You think you’re going to do good, you do nothing. You think you’re going to do nothing, you’ve got a line of people out the door.” He said there had been “a slight drop” in sales during Passover. “But I put that more to people going away for vacation because school is out,” he said. Rabbi Bachman said he knows more people who are hungry for pizza or pasta, which are also off limits during Passover, than for bagels. “Maybe what that tells you is that what we’re slowly experiencing is the Americanization of Jewish eating proclivities,” Rabbi Bachman said. “People will go out for more American food than the classic Jewish ethnic food of the bagels. People rush to eat after the Yom Kippur fast, but most people I know don’t rush for a bagel. They go for a slice with some pasta.” | Passover;Jews and Judaism;Bakeries and Baked Products;Bagels |
ny0282926 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2016/07/21 | A New Queens Building That Can’t Be Overlooked: A Library | Standing at a 29th-floor window of a skyscraper on Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, Dennis M. Walcott was deeply impressed last week when he spotted the newest branch of his library system under construction. Mr. Walcott, it should be said, is the president and chief executive of the Queens Library . What he could see so clearly was the Queens Library at Hunters Point, across the East River and a mile away, in Long Island City. “You talk about the pride of the borough of Queens,” said Mr. Walcott, who was a deputy mayor and schools chancellor in the Bloomberg administration. Neighborhood libraries are not typically foreground buildings. It is telling that the latest addition to the New York Public Library system occupies the basement of a 50-story condominium tower in Manhattan in which one apartment sold for more than $23 million. But the $38 million Hunters Point library, designed by Steven Holl Architects , already occupies the foreground, even though it is at least a year from opening. This 81½-foot-high concrete box, pierced by enormous gummi-shaped cutouts, has staked its place on the waterfront, between the landmark Pepsi-Cola sign and the long-legged Long Island Rail Road gantries of Gantry Plaza State Park . It will not suit everyone’s taste. But no one will overlook it. Image From left, Feniosky Peña-Mora, commissioner of the city’s Department of Design and Construction; Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer; the architect Steven Holl; and Dennis M. Walcott, president of the Queens Library system. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times “A public building has to have a presence, has to be a beacon,” Mr. Holl said Monday, as he led a hard-hat tour through the great concrete shell, which is not just a facade but a load-bearing structure. (There is only one interior column.) The cutouts are angled and situated to take advantage of unobstructed views of Manhattan. “These are not gratuitous shapes,” Mr. Holl said. “These are expressions of the inside, looking out.” The principal diagonal void on the riverfront facade marks the location of what will be a grand staircase paralleling the tiered adult reading area. The panorama includes the two new “dancing” American Copper Buildings , the stately United Nations Secretariat, the monolithic Trump World Tower and the cloud-piercing 432 Park Avenue . “This will become a tourist attraction itself,” said Feniosky Peña-Mora , the commissioner of the city’s Department of Design and Construction, as he admired the scene. His agency is managing construction of the library. Opposite the adult reading area is the children’s area, visibly expressed at the south end of the structure where an entire chunk of the corner seems to have been sliced away. These two reading areas are separated by a central atrium that is more than 60 feet high. Under the adult reading area will be a community meeting room. Above it will be the teenagers’ area. On the opposite side of the atrium will be a small cyber center and cafe. There is also a stepped roof terrace. The concrete exterior will be painted silver. Conscious of the threat posed to the Hunters Point peninsula by hurricanes and tidal surges, architects and engineers set the base of the library one foot above the 100-year floodplain (an area where the probability of flooding is one percent in any given year). Image The building’s cutouts are angled and situated to take advantage of unobstructed views of Manhattan. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times No one in Mr. Holl’s entourage was more appreciatively wide-eyed than Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer , a Queens Democrat who said he had been fighting for a Hunters Point branch since 1999, when he worked at the Queens Library. Through the mayoral administrations of Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican turned independent, and Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, the library project started and stopped, died and revived, Mr. Van Bramer said. It had to survive the stormy months in 2014 that led up to the firing of Mr. Walcott’s predecessor , Thomas W. Galante, over his spending practices. The feeling at City Hall, Mr. Van Bramer said, was that Long Island City did not need much more than a one- or two-story box, in spite of the fact that Hunters Point was filling with apartment towers, and the towers were filling with young families. “I said, ‘We’re not building for who’s here today but who’s going to be here in the future,’” Mr. Van Bramer recalled. Drawing on the discretionary funds that are made available to members of the City Council for the support of nonprofit organizations, Mr. Van Bramer said he directed $15 million to the Hunters Point library over several fiscal years. “It’s the single most important project of my career,” he said. Mr. Van Bramer credited two neighborhood advocates in particular for leading the fight: Don Dodelson , the first president of the Friends of the Hunters Point Library, and Fausta Ippolito , an elementary schoolteacher and mother of two, who died in 2011. Ms. Ippolito was very much on Mr. Van Bramer’s mind during the visit on Monday, his first inside the library. While everyone else took in the impressive volumes and astonishing views, he seemed preoccupied by the question of which of these spaces, now taking form in raw steel and concrete, would one day bear her name. | Queens Borough Public Library;Long Island City Queens;Library;Construction;Steven Holl Architects;Dennis M Walcott |
ny0195795 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2009/10/20 | Girardi and Scioscia Tangle in Tense Game of Move and Countermove | ANAHEIM, Calif. — When a manager sprints to the mound in the ninth inning, which Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels did Monday, he usually has an important message to deliver. Scioscia wanted to make sure Brian Fuentes did not throw one pitch to Alex Rodriguez. The Angels had seen that act before. Scioscia tossed away the managerial book that says the potential tying run should not be put on base. After Rodriguez blasted a game-tying home run off Fuentes on Saturday, it was not shocking to see the Angels walk him with two outs and no one on base Monday. Suddenly, the man who could not hit in October has become Barry Bonds. But the strategy worked. Rodriguez did not budge off first, and the Angels eventually outlasted the Yankees, 5-4, in 11 innings. In a game flush with bold decisions by both managers, Scioscia’s choices worked out better than Joe Girardi’s in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series. “I think there were a lot of twists and turns, and both teams played a terrific game,” Scioscia said. “We just got it done at the end.” The Angels got it done at the end because Girardi’s last decision fizzled. After Dave Robertson secured the first two outs in the 11th, Girardi summoned Alfredo Aceves, his eighth pitcher of the game. Did Girardi channel too much of his inner Tony La Russa? Girardi wanted to smother the Angels and take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. So he continually tried to outwit Scioscia. Girardi may have tried too hard. Howie Kendrick singled and Jeff Mathis hammered a double off Aceves for the decisive run. Girardi said the Yankees preferred Aceves’s stuff against the two Angels and felt “it was a better matchup for us.” Without Mariano Rivera, the Yankees might not have made it to the 11th. Mathis started the 10th with a double off Phil Hughes, which caused Girardi to summon Rivera. Rivera fielded Erick Aybar’s bunt and bounced a throw to third, putting Angels on first and third. Although Rivera’s throw put him in a dicey spot, he dominated the rest of the inning. With three chances to get the winning run home, the Angels could not hit the ball out of the infield. Maybe the Angels should have bunted again. During the 10th, Girardi put Jerry Hairston Jr., who had entered to play designated hitter, in left field and removed Johnny Damon. That meant the pitcher would hit in the D.H. spot for the Yankees. As electrifying as Rivera was in the 10th, Girardi did not let him pitch the 11th, another decision that failed. Because Rivera had thrown two and a third innings Saturday, Girardi said he did not want to “stretch” Rivera. “So he had that one inning and that was it,” Girardi said. But if the Yankees had scored in the 11th, Girardi said he might have used Rivera for another inning. Francisco Cervelli pinch-hit for Rivera in the inning and struck out. Once Rivera was gone, Torii Hunter was relieved. “Nobody wants to face Mariano,” Hunter said. “That guy’s too nasty. It’s not fair.” How pivotal a presence is Rivera? Scioscia explained how he did not pinch-run for Mathis in the 10th because Rivera was in the game. If Rivera had been lurking in the bullpen, Scioscia said there would be an “absolute sense of urgency” to score before the Yankees could use Rivera, so he would have inserted a pinch-runner. The way Scioscia spoke ominously of Rivera made his absence in the 11th even more glaring. When Girardi used Brett Gardner as a pinch-runner at first in the eighth, he wanted Gardner to steal. Scioscia knew that, so the guessing game started. On the second pitch to Jorge Posada, Scioscia signaled for a pitchout. It was the right call. Mathis nailed Gardner at second. Posada followed with a tying homer. One inning later, Scioscia took a risk that actually seemed like a safe move. Managers are taught not to let the best hitter beat you, and Rodriguez has been the Yankees’ best hitter. Rodriguez said he had never been walked in that kind of situation before. Fuentes struck out Hairston to make the strategy work. In a game the Yankees wanted to win and the Angels had to win, the teams combined to use 14 pitchers, throw 352 pitches and go 0 for 13 with runners in scoring position. The two managers combined to make dozens of decisions, with Scioscia’s choices being more successful. “Both teams pitched well, made plays, and, you know, there were a lot of little things that were really interesting if you’re really into the game of baseball,” Scioscia said. “It was a great game.” | Los Angeles Angels;Baseball;Playoff Games;American League |
ny0027125 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2013/01/16 | Cuomo Raises Nearly $22.5 Million for Re-election Campaign | ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s campaign reported nearly $22.5 million in the bank on Tuesday, a formidable war chest that could scare off potential rivals when he seeks re-election next year. Mr. Cuomo continued to focus his fund-raising on well-heeled donors — real estate developers in particular. His donors from the industry included Aby Rosen ($23,000), principal of RFR Holding , a development and property management company; Rita Castagna ($50,000) of Castagna Realty; and Barry M. Gosin ($50,000), chief executive of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, a commercial real estate adviser. He also received $50,000 from Kenneth and Winston Fisher, two real estate developers. The governor’s top donor appears to have been Leonard Litwin, another real estate developer, who donated $250,000, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group. Even though Mr. Litwin’s name does not appear in Mr. Cuomo’s campaign filings, he donated through a host of limited-liability companies that he controls. Over the past two years, he has donated $500,000 to the governor. Over all , Mr. Cuomo raised $4 million in the past six months and spent close to $900,000. While his fund-raising for the reporting period was slower than usual, it came amid Hurricane Sandy. And it did not represent much of a problem: Mr. Cuomo already has enough in the bank to put him in an enviable position for his 2014 campaign. “It’s almost as much as he would need to spend on an entire campaign,” said Bill Mahoney, research coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group. Of the slowing fund-raising, Mr. Mahoney said, “Part of that is he’s already raised the maximum from many of his donors.” | Andrew Cuomo;Campaign finance;Election;Leonard Litwin;New York;Gubernatorial races |
ny0175278 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2007/10/01 | Ray Timothy, 75, Former President at NBC Television, Is Dead | Ray Timothy, who started working for NBC television as a tour guide and 34 years and more than 30 jobs later retired as one of the network’s top executives, died Thursday in Seattle. He was 75. The cause was multiple myeloma, his son Matt said. Mr. Timothy was president of the NBC Television Network and NBC’s entertainment division in the early 1980s, then was promoted to group executive vice president of NBC, with expanded responsibilities for business matters. After a period of low ratings and consequent dissatisfaction on the part of NBC affiliates in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was part of a team led by Grant Tinker, then the chairman, that revived the network. Programs introduced by Brandon Tartikoff, head of the network’s entertainment division, had raised ratings by the mid-1980s. Until then, Mr. Timothy used patience and his experience at managing NBC stations and working with affiliates to stem defections by the company’s affiliates, said a former NBC spokesman, Bud Rukeyser. Raymond Joseph Timothy was born in Manhattan on March 23, 1932, and grew up in Little Neck, Queens. He graduated from Queens College with a major in political science. After serving in the Army in the military police at Fort Lewis, Wash., he earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School. He sought a job as a tour guide on NBC’s guest-relations staff in 1954, because he wanted to learn about the new business of television. He was given a job that paid $162 a month, including uniforms. He was promoted regularly, from scenery mover to accounting to sales. He managed NBC-owned stations in Washington, Cleveland and Los Angeles. In 1975, he became general manager of WNBC-TV in New York and in the late 1970s asked to be moved over to affiliate relations at the network. At the time, many NBC stations were being wooed away by ABC. In 1982, he became president of the NBC Television Network. In 1984, Mr. Timothy’s role expanded to include business affairs and NBC Productions. In 1986, he was promoted to group executive president of NBC and retired from that position in 1988. He then worked for Furman Selz, a financial advisory firm. In 1997, he started Salem Partners, a media and entertainment-industry company that helped Wall Street firms raise capital. Mr. Timothy is survived by his wife, the former Kathleen Shanahan; three sons, Luke, of Forest Hills, Queens, and Matt and Pat, both of Port Washington, N.Y.; his brother Richard, of New Orleans; and four grandchildren. | Deaths (Obituaries);National Broadcasting Co;Television |
ny0103667 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2012/03/29 | Widespread Abuse of Afghan Women and Girls Detailed | KABUL, Afghanistan — Asma W., 36, ran away from her husband after he beat her, threw boiling water on her, gave her a sexually transmitted disease and announced that he would marry his mistress. Fawzia, 15, took refuge with a family that drugged her and forced her into prostitution. Farah G., 16, fell in love with her friend’s brother and eloped with him. Gulpari M., 16, was kidnapped off the street by a stalker who decided he wanted to marry her; she turned him in to the first policeman she saw. All of these women and girls were jailed, joining hundreds of imprisoned Afghan women convicted of so-called moral crimes — often based on the testimony of their own abusers. They were some of the case studies cited in a report released on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch , which interviewed 58 women and girls in prison and found that more than half of them were there for acts that in most countries would not be considered crimes. Many of them were locked up simply for running away, which is not a crime even under the Afghan penal code, Human Rights Watch said. The group called on the Afghan government to release about 400 women and girls imprisoned for similar accusations. Saida T., 16, was separated from her brother in a crowd, and accused of having had sex outside of marriage, a crime in Afghanistan. A vaginal test proved she was a virgin, so she was accused of running away instead, and jailed. The group said that Afghanistan’s model new legislation to protect women, the Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which President Hamid Karzai enacted in 2009, had done little to end traditional practices like baad — giving away daughters to settle family scores — as well as forced and under-age marriages , and violent abuse by close relatives. “The majority of the women and girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch for this report appear to have been victims of acts criminalized under the E.V.A.W. law, although those who had committed these crimes were rarely arrested, prosecuted, or convicted,” the report said. It cited the case of one young woman who fled her home after her husband stabbed her in the head, arms and chest with a screwdriver. The prosecutor said her injuries were not severe enough to charge the husband, because she had not died. “While the women and girls who flee abuse often end up incarcerated, the men responsible for the domestic violence and forced marriages causing flight almost always enjoy impunity from prosecution,” the report said. Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, criticized what it said was Mr. Karzai’s mixed record on women’s rights. Early this month he issued a decree that women who flee their homes to marry someone of their own choosing should be pardoned, but he also signed off this month on a recent declaration by the country’s highest religious authority, the Ulema Council, which has alarmed women’s rights advocates. The Ulema Council said that women were secondary to men, should never travel without male chaperons and should neither work nor study if it meant mixing with men. “Ten years after the fall of Taliban rule, abuses against women and girls are widespread, and redress limited or nonexistent,” the report said. “It is a sad irony that Afghanistan’s relatively scarce resources for criminal justice are being used to prosecute and incarcerate women and girls for actions that should never be crimes, while impunity reigns for most perpetrators of serious human rights violations and violence against women and girls.” Human Rights Watch’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, who was in Kabul to release the report, met with Afghan justice officials to discuss the findings. “The government seems to be defending the ‘running away’ prosecutions because that’s what’s always been done, but the defense is weak and, I sense, vulnerable,” he said. “I’m optimistic that we might be able to end this particular persecution of women victims.” | Afghanistan;Prisons and Prisoners;Women and Girls;Human Rights Watch;Women's Rights;Karzai Hamid |
ny0230609 | [
"us"
]
| 2010/09/19 | Bold Ideas Inspire New Life for Magazines | Jeanne Carstensen writes a column for The Bay Citizen. Media innovation in the Bay Area is not hard to come by, with the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter continually reinventing the way we produce and consume information. Yet one of the venerable media forms that is threatened by the digital tsunami — the magazine — is experiencing something of a renaissance here, too. The New York-based glossy magazine business may be in upheaval, with bellwether Condé Nast shuttering five of its titles, but the art of editing, writing and visually crafting an editorially coherent, beautiful and engaging experience is not dead. Some of the foment is made possible by MagCloud , a Web-based print-on-demand service from Hewlett-Packard that dramatically lowers the financial barriers to magazine publishing. With MagCloud, there are no upfront costs for printing and distribution; a PDF file is uploaded to the MagCloud site, and each time a reader orders a copy, it is printed on high-quality paper and shipped. The per-copy price is much higher than it would be with a traditional printing process, and there is still the problem of getting people to buy it. But the format has opened the door for people to try their hand at producing magazines. Plenty of the MagCloud efforts are vanity projects or high-end brochures, but many others are surprisingly interesting, gorgeous, niche magazines — Mormon Artist , San Louie , Stranded , to name a few — that would not look out of place at Barnes & Noble. Probably the highest-profile MagCloud magazine is 48 Hour, which is based in San Francisco and which published its first issue in June. Alexis Madrigal, a co-founder, called it “an event that spawns a magazine” — the whole thing was assigned, written, edited, designed and produced by volunteers in, yes, 48 hours. It sold over 1,000 copies within a few days, with fans staying connected through Twitter and other social media. Now renamed Longshot (after a legal dispute with CBS over the 48 Hour title), the second issue was produced between noon, Aug. 27, and noon, Aug. 29. Then there is San Francisco’s Pop-Up Magazine , which skips publishing altogether and opts instead for a live stage performance that is “a love letter to nonfiction,” according to Douglas McGray, its editor in chief. The event has been something of a sensation around town, with the latest “issue,” presented Sept. 9, selling out the 900-plus-seat Herbst Theatre in about 20 minutes. The performance follows the structure of a magazine, beginning with Mailbag and other short, front-of-the-book items and moving on to columns and feature articles. Most of the crew at Longshot and Pop-Up work in media — Mr. Madrigal is a senior editor at TheAtlantic.com , while Mr. McGray freelances for The New York Times Magazine and other publications — so creating magazines in their spare time is akin to physicians who volunteer for Doctors Without Borders on their vacations. It’s a passion. Mr. Madrigal and most of his Longshot colleagues are hard wired into a digital lifestyle. But Mr. Madrigal told me he relished working face to face with people instead of online, and channeling the “electricity” from Twitter into something more permanent. Evan Ratliff, who writes for The New Yorker and other magazines, is Pop-Up’s story editor. He seeks out new material by writers, filmmakers, photographers and others who can tell a good nonfiction yarn, ideally “the part of the story you would tell people over drinks.” As the media environment becomes more and more dominated by pixels on a screen, the tactile appeal of a printed magazine is undeniable. MagCloud is tapping into what Mignon Khargie, an art director at San Louie, the new all-volunteer San Luis Obispo city magazine, calls the desire for “pet-able objects.” “Paper and ink are sensual things,” Ms. Khargie said. But as Pop-Up shows, it is not just the physicality — the strong editorial sensibility and creative passion of great magazines constitute their allure. “A beautiful thing about magazines is you get to control the context as well as the content,” Mr. Madrigal said, pointing out that on the Web, readers often encounter articles or blog posts as disembodied one-offs. Search engines are beautiful things when you are looking for, say, the most widely planted wine grape in Sonoma County (that would be Chardonnay). But sometimes I want more than results. For that, I subscribe to magazines. | Magazines;Computers and the Internet;MagCloud;Conde Nast Publications Inc |
ny0141451 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2008/11/20 | City Plans to Reduce Aid to 21 Day Care Locations | The city will reduce funds for 21 day care sites in January as part of efforts to close a yawning budget deficit, city officials said on Wednesday. While officials made it clear that the sites would not be closed, critics charged that the reductions would have the same effect, by destabilizing the centers to the point that they would be forced to shut down. The reductions are part of $62 million in cuts being made by the Administration for Children’s Services that will affect day care services used by struggling working families across the five boroughs. The agency’s commissioner, John B. Mattingly, said in a press briefing that some hard choices were necessary “to avoid a train wreck” in the city’s day care programs during a time of fiscal crisis. “If we do not make these changes,” he said, “we could push the system to a point where we would be forced to shut the doors of child care centers throughout the city that are currently serving thousands of children.” The rest of the cuts in the child welfare agency’s day care budget will affect school-age children, who will be served instead by Department of Education programs, he said. By the start of the next school year, for example, Children’s Services will no longer pay for day care slots for 3,300 5-year-olds who can be served through kindergarten and after-school programs. The agency will also stop providing partial funding for 4-year-olds who are enrolled in universal prekindergarten programs. Currently, child welfare funds go to provide enrichment in these classrooms. But City Councilman Bill de Blasio, chairman of the Council’s General Welfare Committee, said in an interview that it was unclear whether after-school programs for 5-year-olds could fill the extra hours that the children would have spent in day care. Kindergarten programs run 6 ½ hours a day, and day care is up to 10. Spokesmen for the Department of Education and the Department of Youth and Community Development, which runs the after-school programs, could not confirm that they had the capacity to match the 10 hours offered by day care. Mr. Mattingly acknowledged that some of the changes might be disruptive for working families, especially those who like having their 5-year-olds in the same 10-hour day care program as their younger children because it makes dropping off and picking up the children easier. Still, he said, it was the best option, and promised, “Every child currently being served will continue to be served.” The 21 sites facing the cuts will be notified next week, and their names and locations will then be made public. But Mr. de Blasio said he expected them to be disproportionately located in poor communities, like Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The city said it would not close any of the sites, which are run by private contractors, but would remove funds that it says were not fully used. All the sites on the list have had persistent vacancies — 15 or more each, for a total of 540 — that the city must pay for anyway, said Mr. Mattingly, who has long pursed the goal of full enrollment. The fiscal crisis has just sped up the timetable, he said. But Mr. de Blasio said the cuts could force many of the centers to close. “They don’t contest that it might lead to the demise of the whole center,” he said of child welfare officials. He said the city could avoid a lot of disruption if officials figured out exactly what these sites needed to stay open instead of just cutting financing. As part of welfare reform, which has placed pressure even on women with young children to go back to work, the agency’s budget for child care has steadily increased, to $800 million today from $600 million a year in 2000. But the state’s share of the budget has decreased in recent years, and the city has been forced to fill the gap with its own tax dollars, something officials said they could not do this year. | Budgets and Budgeting;Day Care Centers;Child Care;Finances;Administration for Children's Services |
ny0202287 | [
"business"
]
| 2009/08/05 | UBS’s Quarterly Loss Swells to $1.3 Billion | LONDON — UBS , Switzerland’s biggest bank, posted a $1.3 billion quarterly loss on Tuesday, its third, and blamed costs linked to its reorganization program. The loss widened to 1.4 billion Swiss francs in the second quarter, from 395 million francs in the same period a year ago. The company cited costs related to job cuts and write-downs to improve the bank’s debt position, and it said clients continued to withdraw money from its wealth management units although the rate of net outflows slowed. The bank gave a bleak outlook, saying that a sustainable economic “recovery is not yet visible.” “Our outlook remains cautious, consistent with our view that economic recovery will be constrained by low credit creation and the structural weaknesses in consumers’ and governments’ balance sheets,” the bank said in a statement . Oswald J. Grübel, the bank’s chief executive, has cut about 7,500 jobs, reduced risk-weighted assets and sold a unit in Brazil in an effort to return the company to profitability. Credit Suisse and other UBS rivals have recently reported higher earnings as strong performances of their investment banking units outweighed rising bad loans at their retail operations. At UBS, the investment banking business had a pretax loss of 1.85 billion francs, down from 5.24 billion francs a year ago. Mr. Grübel is looking to streamline operations and repair the bank’s reputation, which was damaged by its exposure to products linked to the subprime mortgage market and a legal dispute in the United States. UBS remains embroiled in a battle with regulators in Washington over demands that it release the names of thousands of its clients. The bank already settled some aspects of the lawsuit, which is linked to claims that UBS helped wealthy clients evade taxes. The company has said it plans to resolve the rest to repair its reputation. UBS, which relied on $5.5 billion in government aid to improve its capital base, said net outflows at its wealth management and Swiss bank unit were 16.5 billion francs, mainly from clients outside Switzerland, compared with 23.4 billion francs in the first quarter. Wealth Management Americas lost 5.8 billion francs, down from 16.2 billion francs in the first quarter. The bank took a charge of 1.2 billion francs on its own debt and paid 582 million francs in reorganizing costs. It also booked a good will impairment of 492 million francs related to the sale of UBS Pactual in Brazil. Earnings at the wealth management and Swiss bank unit were down about half while the pretax loss at its Americas wealth management unit was reduced to about a third. Earnings in the asset management unit dropped 77 percent. Northern Rock, the British lender that was bailed out by the government after a run on the bank, also presented a bleak outlook on the economy and continued to struggle to get bad loans under control. The bank, which is now owned by the British government, said its net loss widened to £770.9 million, or $1.3 billion, in the first half from £592 million a year earlier. Late payments on mortgages rose to 3.9 percent of mortgages in the first half, higher than the national average. Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, two British lenders that also count the government among their major shareholders, are also to report earnings figures this week. Some analysts expect they too will say that more clients are struggling to repay debt as unemployment rises and house prices fall. | UBS AG;Banks and Banking;Company Reports |
ny0052299 | [
"us"
]
| 2014/10/14 | Questions Rise on Preparations at Hospitals to Deal With Ebola | Federal health officials have offered repeated assurances that most American hospitals can safely treat Ebola, but Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which had years of preparation for just such a crisis, found out how hard that is while it cared for three Ebola patients. As doctors and nurses there worked to keep desperately ill patients alive in August, the company that hauled medical trash to the incinerator refused to take anything used on an Ebola patient unless it was sterilized first. Couriers would not drive the patients’ blood samples a few blocks away for testing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And pizza places would not deliver to staff members in any part of the hospital. “It doesn’t matter how much you plan,” Dr. Bruce Ribner, an infectious disease specialist who directed the patients’ care, said in an interview. “You’re going to be wrong half the time.” Emory solved its problems, but the challenges it faced could overwhelm a hospital with fewer resources. At Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, mistakes in treating a patient from Liberia — a delay in diagnosing the disease, and its spread to a health worker who had apparently taken all precautions — have raised questions about the general level of preparedness in hospitals around the country. Medical experts have begun to suggest that it might be better to transfer patients to designated centers with special expertise in treating Ebola. Federal health officials are also beginning to consider that idea, though they emphasize that every hospital has to be able to diagnose the disease. Video Health care workers must learn the proper use of hazardous-material suits and other equipment to prevent the spread of Ebola. During a news conference this month, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: “Essentially, any hospital in the country can safely take care of Ebola. You need a private room with a private bathroom, and rigorous, meticulous training and materials to make sure that care is done safely so caregivers aren’t at risk.” But on Sunday, after it was confirmed that a nurse in Dallas had been infected with Ebola, Dr. Frieden said his agency would consider whether patients should be transferred to specialty centers. “We’re looking at different options for what will be the safest way to care for patients,” he said in an interview on Monday. But he declined to explain what those options were. There are four biocontainment units around the country that have been equipped to isolate patients with dangerous infectious diseases: at Emory; the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.; Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha; and St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont. But other large hospitals around the country could also handle Ebola patients, Dr. Ribner said. “I think the larger regional hospitals are where the care of these patients is going to have to be focused,” Dr. Ribner said, adding that there is a long tradition in medicine of transferring critically ill patients from smaller hospitals to larger ones better equipped to care for them. One reason for referring Ebola patients is that they are so ill. “Usually, an individual is not sick for three to five days after the onset of symptoms, which will fool you,” Dr. Ribner said. “You say, ‘Oh, you’re not going to be that sick.’ Then, around Day 5 to 7, they really crash. Their blood pressure goes down, they become stuporous to unresponsive, and they start to have renal and liver failure. This correlates with the enormous viral load, which is just attacking every organ in the body.” Is the U.S. Prepared for an Ebola Outbreak? A look at the government agencies and private entities that were involved in the case of the first person found to have Ebola in the United States. Ebola patients lose enormous amounts of fluid from diarrhea and vomiting, as much as five to 10 quarts a day during the worst phase of the illness, which lasts about a week. Doctors struggle to rehydrate them, replace lost electrolytes and treat bleeding problems. Some patients need dialysis and ventilators. A concern for health workers is that as patients grow sicker, the levels of virus in their blood rise and they become more and more contagious. The researchers at Emory tested patients and found high levels of the virus in their body fluids and even on their skin. At the peak of illness, an Ebola patient can have 10 billion viral particles in one-fifth of a teaspoon of blood. That compares with 50,000 to 100,000 particles in an untreated H.I.V. patient, and five million to 20 million in someone with untreated hepatitis C. “That helped us to understand why, if this is only spread by body fluids, why it is more contagious than hepatitis A, B and C, and H.I.V.,” Dr. Ribner said. “It’s just that there’s so much more virus in the fluids they put out.” The high risk of infection means that health workers need extensive training on using protective gear and on removing contaminated garments without infecting themselves. Emory follows a rigid procedure that requires everyone “donning and doffing” gear to be watched to ensure that no mistakes are made. “You can’t just assume that if one of these patients shows up you can sort of wing it,” Dr. Ribner said. “You have to pay attention to your training and planning before the first patient shows up.” How Many Ebola Patients Have Been Treated Outside of Africa? Questions and answers on the scale of the outbreak and the science of the Ebola virus. Stephen S. Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said, “I don’t think every hospital has the facilities or the wherewithal, or for that matter the desire, to care for Ebola patients.” Dr. Morse said it would make sense to transfer patients to the hospitals with specialized isolation units, or to designate certain regional hospitals as Ebola centers. But, he added, “you obviously have to have a safe way of transporting them to a center.” Dr. William Schaffner, an expert on infectious disease at Vanderbilt University, said that a referral system for Ebola cases was worth discussing. He added that the subject came up repeatedly in conversations among doctors at a national meeting of infectious disease specialists last week. An additional advantage of such a system, he said, is that specialized hospitals and academic medical centers have more experience than local ones in obtaining and using experimental treatments that might benefit Ebola patients. Dr. Ribner said he expected to see more Ebola cases as the United States sent military personnel to West Africa. “We are putting 3,000 to 4,000 Department of Defense personnel out in the field,” he said. “In addition, we are putting 1,000 to 2,000 beds out there for patients, and that means many hundreds of additional health care workers there. I think it would be silly to think that some of them are not going to get infected, and if they get infected they are most likely coming back to the U.S., and some of them are going to work their way to Emory University Hospital.” | Ebola;Hospital;Emory University Hospital;Dallas;Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital;Thomas R Frieden;William Schaffner;Bruce S Ribner |
ny0079368 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2015/02/28 | G.O.P. Plan Would Subject Sandra Lee, Cuomo’s Girlfriend, to Financial Disclosure Rules | As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pushes lawmakers to disclose more about the income they earn in part-time jobs, Republicans in the New York Senate have drafted legislation that would expand the spirit of that disclosure to the governor’s girlfriend, the celebrity cook Sandra Lee . New York’s state officials are already required to disclose financial information about their spouses, including their spouses’ income and investments. The new proposal , introduced on Thursday by the Republican majority in the Senate, would expand the disclosure requirements to include anyone who resides with a public official, whether or not they are married. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, and Ms. Lee share a home in Westchester County. The governor’s office responded in part by suggesting that if Ms. Lee had to reveal her income, so should the paramours of married state legislators. Mr. Cuomo has called on lawmakers to enact stricter financial disclosure rules after the January arrest of Sheldon Silver , who was subsequently forced to resign as the State Assembly speaker. Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, is accused of taking payoffs disguised as legitimate income from practicing law. Ms. Lee’s culinary empire includes television programs on the Food Network, endorsement deals, cookbooks, a magazine and a line of housewares. She has eschewed the traditional role of first lady, seldom appearing at political functions with Mr. Cuomo. The governor, in turn, has bristled at questions about Ms. Lee. A spokeswoman for the Senate Republicans, Kelly Cummings, said the legislation was “not targeted at any one person.” The bill was introduced by the Senate Republicans without a named sponsor. A spokeswoman for the governor, Melissa DeRosa, said, “We’re happy to review any ethics proposal with the bill’s sponsor, whoever that may be.” In addition to Ms. DeRosa’s comment, Mr. Cuomo’s office provided reporters with an anonymous quotation, attributed to an unnamed administration official, suggesting that the financial disclosure measure be expanded “to include all girlfriends, even those of married members” of the Legislature. | New York;Andrew Cuomo;Sandra Lee;Income;Legislation |
ny0185813 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2009/03/08 | Vatican Backs Excommunications Stemming From an Abortion | ROME (Agence France-Presse) — A senior Vatican cleric on Saturday defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a 9-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped. The child was pregnant with twins. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for Bishops, told La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper, that the case was sad, but that “the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated.” The regional archbishop, José Cardoso Sobrinho, excommunicated the mother for authorizing the operation. He also excommunicated the doctors, who carried out the operation for fear that the 80-pound girl would not survive a full-term pregnancy. “God’s law is above any human law,” Archbishop Cardoso said Thursday. The girl’s stepfather, whom she accused of sexual abuse, has been jailed. The case has incited fierce debate in Brazil. Abortion is illegal there, but exceptions are allowed in cases of rape and when the mother’s life would be endangered by giving birth. One of the doctors involved, Rivaldo Albuquerque, told Globo television that he would keep going to Mass, regardless of the archbishop’s order. The girl, who was not identified because she is a minor, was found last week to be four months pregnant after being taken to the hospital for stomach pains. | Roman Catholic Church;Abortion;Excommunication;Sex Crimes |
ny0212609 | [
"business"
]
| 2017/01/13 | S.E.C. Inertia on Paybacks Adds to Investor Harm | When securities laws are broken and investors get hurt, the Securities and Exchange Commission often rides to the rescue, using its regulatory muscle to extract penalties that can be returned to victims. But as a cadre of harmed Citigroup investors is learning, it is one thing to persuade a wrongdoer to pay reparations and quite another to disburse the money. This particular matter dates to August 2015, when the S.E.C. struck a settlement with Citigroup over an exotic investment strategy involving municipal bonds that the bank sold to clients from 2002 to 2008. Contending that Citigroup had misrepresented the investments’ risks, the S.E.C. ordered the creation of a so-called fair fund to be distributed to investors. Citigroup neither admitted nor denied the allegations but agreed to pay $180 million into the fund. That was over 16 months ago. Today, the wronged investors are not only still awaiting their money, but they have yet to see any plan outlining how the $180 million will be distributed, the S.E.C.’s website shows . Receiving reparations in cases like these is a multistep process that the S.E.C. details on the site. Typically, restitution funds sit in an account at the United States Treasury. Disbursement is generally overseen by outside entities appointed by the S.E.C.; their fees are paid by the institution providing the funds. Fair funds were established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; they allow the S.E.C. to exact civil penalties in addition to recovering ill-gotten gains, a process known as disgorgement. The S.E.C. website shows that the Citigroup case is one of roughly 80 fair fund and disgorgement plans currently operating. Another 60 or so plans have been terminated; this means they have finished distributing the money to investors. Any amounts left over go to the Treasury or an S.E.C. investor protection fund. Patience is required of those going through the process, the S.E.C. warns. “The process for distributing the money to harmed investors may take a long time,” it noted on its site. But the pace of the Citigroup restitution plan seems especially glacial. And it raises questions about how these plans are administered and whether those overseeing them are rewarded for slowing down the process. At the time of the settlement, the S.E.C. said a plan of distribution to harmed investors would be submitted “within 120 days of payment in full” by Citigroup. That payment was made in August 2015, a bank spokeswoman said. And yet, 500 days later, there’s still no plan of distribution. I asked the S.E.C. what was causing the holdup. Judith Burns, a spokeswoman, declined to comment. Keep in mind: It has been almost nine years since the Citigroup investors incurred their losses when the municipal bond strategy collapsed in 2008. Advertised as a safe-money bet to some 4,000 clients who invested $3 billion, the strategy wound up losing between one-half and three-quarters of some customers’ account values. Seven years later came the settlement and the S.E.C. order to create the $180 million fund. Lawyers for the aggrieved investors say they are losing patience. “To me, it comes down to a bureaucratic quagmire of indifference and concealment,” said Steven B. Caruso, a lawyer at Maddox Hargett & Caruso in New York City. “There is simply no transparency in this process, and no effort being made by the S.E.C. to recognize that these are funds that belong to other people.” Because many of the investors are subject to confidentiality agreements, they were wary about discussing their concerns. A bit of activity occurred in the case last April, when the S.E.C. said it had appointed a plan administrator for the fund. It was Garden City Group , a provider of legal administrative services that is a unit of Atlanta-based Crawford & Company. Then more silence. Of course, it isn’t simple returning money to wronged investors. Determining who deserves how much of a settlement’s proceeds, and locating those people, is complicated. Needless to say, recovering some losses, even if it’s pennies on the dollar and many years later, is better than never receiving a thing. But the S.E.C. trumpets its role in getting money back to harmed investors. In its most recent annual report , for example, the agency said, “Hundreds of billions of dollars were returned to harmed investors as a result of our aggressive enforcement program.” A review of the S.E.C. website shows that the timelines for these fund distributions can be long indeed. For example, in 2007, the S.E.C. settled an enforcement case with a mutual fund company and ordered the creation of a $40 million fund approved for distribution to wronged investors. That fund was approved in July 2015; the improprieties at the mutual fund company had occurred from September 2001 to October 2003, the S.E.C. said. Even relatively simple cases seem to be a slog. Consider a municipal bond, pay-to-play case involving J.P. Morgan Securities and Jefferson County, Ala. In early November 2009, the bank settled with the S.E.C., without admitting or denying the allegations, and paid a $25 million penalty. A fair fund was set up to dispense the money to the county; the plan was approved in early October 2010 and disbursements went out in February 2011. Even though the case involved just one recipient, it took 15 months from start to finish. I asked the S.E.C. how long each fair fund process takes, and got a partial answer. In fiscal 2015, the most recent data available, the agency said 96 percent of fair funds and disgorgement plans had distributed 80 percent of their money within two years of a plan’s approval. That was a significant improvement over the previous year, when only 80 percent of funds had done so. But these figures don’t take into account the time between an S.E.C. settlement and a plan’s approval, which can be many years. In the $40 million mutual fund case dating to 2001, for example, it took eight years for the fund to be approved. Mr. Caruso said he had tried repeatedly to get answers about what was happening with the fund. At first, the S.E.C. told him it was waiting to get the list of investors from Citigroup. Then, an agency official suggested he try Garden City Group, which he did. “Every time I would call, somebody else would call me back to say, ‘We really don’t have a timetable, and we don’t have a lot of information,’” Mr. Caruso recalled. I asked Stephen Cirami, chief operating officer of Garden City Group, about the status of the fund. He did not return my voice mail message or email. I had hoped to learn how Garden City Group gets paid for its services. For example, is it incentivized to move quickly in distributing the funds, or is it paid more the longer the process takes? It is Citigroup, not the investors, paying these costs. But an inefficient process means investors are hurt twice. “That $180 million should be back in people’s pockets, not sitting in some account somewhere,” Mr. Caruso said. “The bottom line is, there’s no accountability.” | Reparations;Citigroup;JPMorgan Chase;SEC;Treasury Department;Stocks,Bonds |
ny0126886 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2012/08/22 | Clippers’ Chris Paul Has Thumb Surgery | Los Angeles Clippers point guard Chris Paul had surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right thumb, an injury that occurred last month in training for the London Olympics. The team said Paul was expected to be sidelined for eight weeks, or until mid-October. The Clippers open the season Oct. 31. | Basketball;Paul Chris;Los Angeles Clippers |
ny0059937 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
]
| 2014/08/09 | Bank Rejects Ecclestone’s Offer | The German bank BayernLB said it had rejected a roughly $33 million settlement offer from Bernie Ecclestone, considered Formula One’s boss, relating to his involvement in the 2005 sale of its stake in the business. BayernLB said Ecclestone collected unjustified commissions and undervalued its stake in the business when the private-equity fund CVC became Formula One’s largest shareholder. | Car Racing;Formula One;Bayerische Landesbank;Bernie Ecclestone |
ny0128476 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2012/06/11 | Friedrich Hirzebruch, Mathematician, Dies | Friedrich Hirzebruch, who helped revive the German mathematical community after World War II and whose work in unifying disparate parts of mathematics gave birth to new tools and fields of research, died on May 27 in Bonn, Germany . He was 84. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, apparently brought about by a minor fall a month earlier, said Don Zagier, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, which Dr. Hirzebruch founded. When Dr. Hirzebruch began his mathematical career after World War II, much of Germany lay in ruins. The best German scientists, according to the mathematician Hermann Weyl , “were scattered over the earth.” Dr. Hirzebruch spent two years in the 1950s at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and was inspired by that experience with a vision of international mathematical collaboration that he hoped to recreate in Germany. When he returned there, not yet 30, he was appointed a full professor at the University of Bonn and set about achieving that goal. “As a young man, by his own personality, example and organizational skills, he recreated German mathematics,” said Sir Michael Atiyah , a British mathematician. Dr. Hirzebruch began by establishing an informal yearly mathematical meeting that he called the Arbeitstagung (working meeting), which quickly grew from a group of seven to more than 200 attendees. It was unusual in that it had no programs or invitations. On the first day, the participants would gather in an auditorium and call out topics, which Dr. Hirzebruch would assign to experts in the audience. In the pre-Internet world, this was the best way to keep up with the latest developments. He realized his dream of creating an international center of mathematics along the lines of the Institute of Advanced Study in the early 1980s, when he persuaded the Max Planck Society to open the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, where he was director until 1995. Dr. Hirzebruch was also the first president of the European Mathematical Society and served on the boards of many other mathematical organizations. In his own work, Dr. Hirzebruch was best known for his ability to find connections between various fields of mathematics, like algebraic geometry and topology, which inspired new areas of mathematical research and turned out to be vital to modern physics. He is best known for the Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch theorem , the Hirzebruch signature theorem, his work on Hilbert modular surfaces and his co-creation of K-theory. “He took old ideas and refurbished them,” said Dr. Atiyah, who collaborated with Dr. Hirzebruch. “All of these fields had links before, but he was the person who mainly developed those links and put them in a modern form and forged a new way forward.” Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch was born on Oct. 17, 1927, in Hamm, Westphalia. His father, Fritz, a mathematician, was his first math teacher. He was drafted into the Luftwaffe youth corps when World War II started. Spending long nights in antiaircraft positions watching the skies, he imagined spherical triangles drawn across the sky and worked out their geometry. Later in the war, he was briefly imprisoned by Allied forces. In prison he used toilet paper to write mathematical proofs. Dr. Hirzebruch received many awards and honors, including the Wolf Prize in 1988, the Lobachevsky Prize in 1990 and nine honorary doctorates. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Ingeborg Spitzley; three children, Ulrike Schmickler-Hirzebruch, Barbara Hirsch and Michael Hirzebruch; and six grandchildren. Even while serving as director of the Max Planck Institute, Dr. Hirzebruch continued teaching at the University of Bonn. As a lecturer, Dr. Atiyah recalled: “He was a very skilled conjurer in the sense that he would lead you along and you didn’t know where you were going, and then suddenly at the end of the lecture a beautiful thing would emerge. It was a work of art, a little theatrical production that gave the appearance of being ordinary, but they were very carefully planned.” | Hirzebruch Friedrich;Mathematics;Deaths (Obituaries);Germany |
ny0156303 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2008/06/10 | New York Times Names Human Resources Executive | The New York Times announced the appointment of Michael Valentine on Monday as vice president for human resources. Mr. Valentine will be responsible for all human resources functions at The Times and will report to Scott H. Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of the paper. The appointment is effective June 30. Most recently, Mr. Valentine was vice president for human resources at Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, which he joined in 2001. From 2000 to 2001, Mr. Valentine was director of human resources for operations at The Times, managing all human resources activities at the newspaper’s two printing plants in the New York area. From 1998 to 2000, Mr. Valentine was international division human resources director of the Eaton Corporation. | New York Times;Appointments and Executive Changes;Newspapers;Valentine Michael |
ny0199127 | [
"business"
]
| 2009/07/30 | Fall in Commodity Prices Drags Shares Lower | A steep slide in the price of oil, copper and other commodities dragged Wall Street lower on Wednesday, as traders questioned whether a recent upswing in the stock markets had raced too far ahead of the real economy. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 26 points, or 0.29 percent, to 9,070.72 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was off 4.47 points, or 0.46 percent, at 975.15. The Nasdaq was down 7.75 points, or 0.39 percent, at 1,967.76. It was a second day of light losses that followed a surge that lifted the S.& P. 500 more than 10 percent in two weeks. “The bulls are hoping this is merely a consolidation phase that will lead to new investors coming in,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. “But a major sell-off is going to make investors question the recovery theme, if it occurs.” Investors offered a chilly response to an accord on Internet searches and advertising between Microsoft and Yahoo, in an effort to take market share from Google. Shares of Microsoft gained 1.4 percent, to end at $23.80, while Yahoo’s stock fell 12 percent to $15.14. Shares of Google were down 0.8 percent. While technology news dominated the headlines, the energy and commodities sectors were driving the markets. Shares of oil and gas producers and manufacturers of basic materials led stock markets lower as oil prices slid for another day. Oil prices fell $3.88, to $63.35 a barrel, after the Energy Department reported that oil stockpiles rose by 5.15 million barrels for the week that ended July 24, a sign that demand remained weak. And investors seemed unimpressed with the day’s reports of corporate earnings. Shares of Time Warner were down 1.8 percent after the media company reported that its revenue fell 9 percent in the second quarter. The wireless provider fell 11.8 percent after it announced a $384 million quarterly loss. A new report showing a 2.5 percent decline in manufacturers’ orders did little to lift Wall Street’s mood. Forecasters expected a smaller decline. Some economists saw indicators of stability in the details of the numbers, pointing out that orders for durable goods excluding transportation equipment rose 1.1 percent for the month. But the headline of a research note from Steven Ricchiuto, the chief economist at Mizuho Securities, seemed to sum up Wall Street’s concerns: “Economy still searching for a bottom.” On Friday, the government will offer investors a crucial indicator of economic activity when it releases its advance figures on gross domestic product for the second quarter of the year. An auction of $39 billion in five-year Treasury notes did not go as well as analysts had expected, sending a shudder through bond and stock markets. The government is auctioning off a record $150 billion in Treasury notes this week, again raising concerns about the cost of raising billions of dollars in new debt. “It now takes the cake as one of the worst-performing auctions for the year,” George Goncalves, head of fixed-income rates strategy at Cantor Fitzgerald, wrote in a research note. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note rose 6/32, to 95 20/32, and the yield fell to 3.66 percent, from 3.68 percent Tuesday. Following are the results of Wednesday’s Treasury auction of five-year notes: | Stocks and Bonds;Dow Jones Stock Average;United States Economy |
ny0249029 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2011/05/15 | Assault in Border Town Sends Syrians Into Lebanon | BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hundreds of Syrians fled into Lebanon on Saturday after Syrian Army troops assaulted a border town, killing at least three people and arresting hundreds in the latest phase of a ferocious crackdown on the two-month uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad . Backed by dozens of tanks, Syrian troops entered the town of Tall Kalakh before dawn, following the pattern of raids on other cities like Dara’a, Baniyas and Homs. The assault came a day after another Friday of protests and an announcement by the Syrian government that a national dialogue would begin next week. Even though the death toll in the protests on Friday paled compared with past weeks, the assault seemed to show that the government would persist with a crackdown that has led to the deaths of hundreds and the detention of thousands in one of the most brutal campaigns of repression since the so-called Arab Spring began. The uprising has represented the most serious challenge to the four decades of rule by the Assad family, though Syrian officials have maintained that they have the upper hand. “People in the town were expecting a big military operation,” said a human rights advocate in Damascus, who was in contact with people in Tall Kalakh, a town about 25 miles from the Lebanese border. “This morning, they saw army troops with dozens of tanks moving around their town.” Fayaz Abdallah, a local official from the Lebanese village of Awadeh, across from Tall Kalakh, said that at least 600 Syrian families had fled to Lebanon since Saturday morning. He said that most of them were women and children. In all, Lebanese border officials say, at least 5,000 families have fled Syria since the beginning of the uprising in mid-March, when protests in the southern town of Dara’a over the arrests of youths set off nationwide demonstrations. A local Lebanese official who gave his name as Amer said that among those who crossed the border Saturday were four wounded people, two men and two women. One of the men died later of his wounds in a Lebanese hospital, he said. By nightfall, residents said, the town, along a landscape of rounded hills, remained tense. At least three people were killed in the assault, all by sniper fire, said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. Mohamad Fawzi, a 24-year-old Awadeh resident, said that gunfire in Syria could be heard for hours on the Lebanese side of the border. Since last month, the Syrian military, often at the vanguard of security forces and plainclothes paramilitary men known as shabeeha, has methodically marched across the country in an attempt to suppress the uprising by force. Dara’a was first, then Baniyas, on the Mediterranean coast, a week ago. Adnan Mahmoud, the Syrian information minister, said Friday that troops had pulled back from both those towns, though residents said a military presence remained. He declared both towns, and their hinterlands, quiet. The assault on Tall Kalakh may have been spurred by a protest Friday by hundreds of professionals who have recently resigned from the governing Baath Party . In their protest, a show of dissent unheard of just months ago, residents said many of them chanted slogans calling for the fall of the government. “For a week, we’ve been hearing that the government will send the army to punish us because we have been organizing big demonstrations against the Baath Party and President Assad,” said a Tall Kalakh resident who was reached by phone. In past assaults, the military raid has been followed by waves of arrests, in which intelligence is gathered, and then more detentions are carried out. Friday’s protests were, at least anecdotally, smaller than past weeks, though still remarkable in that they came in the face of the withering crackdown. Even in Homs, where the military deployed tanks last week, at least five small protests were reported. Human rights activists said three people were killed Friday in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, and three others in protests elsewhere in the country. Human rights activists say that at least 775 people have been killed since the beginning of the uprising. The government, which has portrayed the unrest as an armed rebellion led by militant Islamists and provocateurs, has said 98 soldiers and 22 police officers have been killed. American officials acknowledge that at least some protesters, though a small minority, have resorted to arms. | Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Defense and Military Forces;Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Baath Party;Assad Bashar Al-;Syria |
ny0133630 | [
"business"
]
| 2008/03/28 | Odd Crop Prices Defy Economics | Economists note there should not be two prices for one thing at the same place and time. Could a drugstore sell two identical tubes of toothpaste, and charge 50 cents more for one of them? Of course not. But, in effect, exactly that has been happening, repeatedly and mysteriously, in trading that sets prices for corn, soybeans and wheat — three of America’s biggest crops and, lately, popular targets for investors pouring into the volatile commodities market. Economists who have been studying this phenomenon say they are at a loss to explain it. Whatever the reason, the price for a bushel of grain set in the derivatives markets has been substantially higher than the simultaneous price in the cash market. When that happens, no one can be exactly sure which is the accurate price in these crucial commodity markets, an uncertainty that can influence food prices and production decisions around the world. These disparities also raise the question of whether American farmers, who rely almost exclusively on the cash market, are being shortchanged by cash prices that are lower than they should be. “We do not have a clear understanding of what is driving these episodic instances,” said Prof. Scott H. Irwin , one of three agricultural economists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who have done extensive research on these price distortions. Professor Irwin and his colleagues, Prof. Philip T. Garcia and Prof. Darrel L. Good , first sounded the alarm about these price distortions in late 2006 in a study financed by the Chicago Board of Trade . Their findings drew little attention then, Professor Irwin said, but lately “people have begun to get very seriously interested in why this is happening — because it is a fundamental problem in markets that have generally worked well in the past.” Market regulators say they have ruled out deliberate market manipulation. But they, too, are baffled. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission , which regulates the exchanges where these grain derivatives trade, has scheduled a forum on April 22 where market participants will discuss these anomalies and other pressure points arising in the agricultural markets. The mechanics of the commodity markets are more complex than selling toothpaste, however. The anomalies are occurring between the price of a bushel of grain in the cash market and the price of that same bushel of grain, as determined by the expiration price of a futures contract traded in Chicago. A futures contract is an agreement to deliver a specific amount of a commodity — 5,000 bushels of wheat, say — on a certain date in the future. Such contracts are important hedging tools for farmers, grain elevators, commodity processors and anyone with a stake in future grain prices. A futures contract that calls for delivery of wheat in July may trade for more or less for each bushel than today’s cash market price. But as each day goes by, its price should move a bit closer to that day’s cash price. And on expiration day, when the bushels of wheat covered by that futures contract are due for delivery, their price should very nearly match the price in the cash market, allowing for a little market friction or major delivery disruptions like Hurricane Katrina . But on dozens of occasions since early 2006, the futures contracts for corn, wheat and soybeans have expired at a price that was much higher than that day’s cash price for those grains. For example, soybean futures contracts expired in July at a price of $9.13 a bushel, which was 80 cents higher than the cash price that day, Professor Irwin said. In August, the futures expired at $8.62, or 68 cents above the cash price, and in September, the expiration price was $9.43, or 78 cents above the cash price. Corn has been similarly eccentric. A corn futures contract expired last September at $3.36, which was a remarkable 55 cents above the cash price, but the contract that expired in March 2007 was roughly even with the cash price. “As far as I know, nothing like this has ever happened in the corn market,” said Professor Irwin. Wheat futures had been especially prone to this phenomenon, going back several years. Indeed, the 2007 study by Professor Irwin and his colleagues concluded that wheat price distortions reflected a “failure to accomplish one of the fundamental tasks of a futures market.” And while the situation improved sharply for wheat futures in Chicago late last year, it deteriorated for futures traded in Kansas City. And it has gotten worse for corn and soybeans, Professor Irwin said. Many people have a theory about why this is happening, but none of them seem to cover all the available facts. Mary Haffenberg, a spokeswoman for the CME Group, which owns the Chicago Board of Trade, where these contracts trade, said the anomalies might be a temporary result of “a lot of shocks to the system,” including sharp increases in worldwide food demand, uncertainty about supplies and surging commodity investments. Veteran traders and many farmers blame the new arrivals in the commodities markets: hedge funds, pension funds and index funds. These investors and speculators, they complain, are distorting futures prices by pouring in so much money without regard to market fundamentals. “The market sends a sell signal, but they don’t sell,” said Kendell W. Keith, president of the National Grain and Feed Association. “So the markets are not behaving the way they otherwise would — and the pricing formula for the industry is a lot fuzzier and a lot less efficient than we’ve ever seen.” Representatives of the new financial speculators dispute that. Their money has vastly increased the liquidity in the futures markets, they say, and better liquidity improves markets, making them less volatile for everyone. And, as Professor Irwin noted, if new money pouring into the market has been causing these distortions, they probably would be occurring more consistently than they are. Some experienced commodity analysts think the flaw may be in the design of the contracts, said Richard J. Feltes, senior vice president and director of commodity research for MF Global, the world’s largest commodity futures brokerage firm. If futures were settled based on a cash index, it would eliminate these odd disparities, Mr. Feltes said. Ms. Haffenberg at the CME Group said cash settlement had “not been ruled out,” but it raised the question of finding the appropriate cash index. Other modest contract changes are awaiting approval of the futures trading commission, she said. “We are continuing to have industry meetings to discuss what we need to do,” she said. “But we want to be careful, before we undertake any changes, that above all, we don’t do any harm.” Moreover, defenders of the exchange’s current contract design note that these widely used agreements have gone largely unchanged for some time — and yet, have only begun to display this odd and inconsistent behavior in the last few years. Some economists are exploring whether some unperceived bottlenecks in the delivery system explain what is going on. But traders say that such bottlenecks would eventually become known in the market and prices would adjust. Professor Irwin, whose research is continuing, said there might not be a single explanation for the price distortions. Markets may simply be responding to the uneven impact of new financial technology, which allows more money to flow in and out, and to investors’ growing but fluctuating appetite for hard assets. “Those factors may be combining to create this highly volatile environment for discovering prices,” he said. “But for now, that is pure conjecture on my part.” What is not happening in these markets is equally mysterious. Normally, price disparities like these are quickly exploited by arbitrage traders who buy goods in the cheap market and sell them in the expensive one. Their buying and selling quickly brings the prices back into balance — but that is not happening here. “These are highly competitive markets with very experienced traders,” he said. “Yet they are leaving these profits alone? It just doesn’t make sense.” | Futures and Options Trading;Soybeans;Wheat;Corn;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Chicago Board of Trade;Commodity Futures Trading Commission;MF Global |
ny0207390 | [
"business"
]
| 2009/06/19 | Jobs Data Gives Shares a Lift | The Dow and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained on Thursday, breaking a three-day losing streak, as data on the job market and regional manufacturing revived hope that the economy was stabilizing. After gaining as much as 40 percent from a 12-year closing low in early March, the S.& P. 500 has eased as investors reassessed the potential strength of an economic recovery. The day’s data revived optimism, but analysts said real improvement was needed to sustain the rally. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 58.42 points, or 0.69 percent, to 8,555.60. The S.& P. 500 gained 7.66 points, or 0.84 percent, to 918.37. The Nasdaq composite index was off just 0.34 of a point, or 0.02 percent, at 1,807.72. The Nasdaq ended little changed as some big-cap technology companies fell. Financials supported the stock market after being among the week’s biggest drags. Discover Financial Services gained 4 percent, to $9.27, after it reported a smaller-than-expected operating loss as bad loans grew less than anticipated. Lincoln National rose 6.9 percent, to $15.92, after an upgrade from Credit Suisse, and the KBW insurance index rose 1.8 percent. The S.& P. financial index gained 2.5 percent. Data showed the number of people staying on jobless benefits fell for the first time since January, while manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region contracted less than expected in June. “The data supports the case of those looking for the bottom of the economy in this quarter,” said Jim Awad, managing director at Zephyr Management in New York. Research in Motion, the BlackBerry maker, fell as much as 5 percent in some after-hours trading after it posted quarterly results that were better than expected but gave an outlook that disappointed some investors. Health care companies, deemed better positioned to withstand a still uncertain economy, also buoyed the market. Merck & Company rose 3.6 percent, to $25.65. “People are hedging their bets by saying we’re going to stay in, but stay in defensively to protect their gains,” Mr. Awad said. Friday is the end of the two-day quadruple witching period, referring to the expiration and settlement of June stock and index futures and options, which may increase volatility. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index was down 4.8 percent, but slightly above the psychologically important 30 level. On the downside, Caterpillar lost 2.1 percent, to $34.08, after it said retail sales of its machines had fallen at a faster pace in May. The stock was the Dow’s biggest drag. Government data showed that while the amount of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week, the number of people collecting aid after the initial week experienced its biggest decline since November 2001. Though regional manufacturing contracted in June, it was far less severe than the previous month, adding to stabilization hopes. After a nearly 4 percent pullback over the last three sessions, the broad S.& P. 500 is up 35.7 percent from its 12-year closing low on March 9. Interest rates rose for a second consecutive day. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note fell 1 3/32 to 94 8/32. The yield, which moves in the opposite direction from the price, was at 3.83 percent, up from 3.69 percent late Wednesday. | Stocks and Bonds;Economic Conditions and Trends |
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"us"
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| 2015/03/14 | Barred Fraternity’s Lawyer Seeks to Alter Punishment | The fraternity chapter banished from the University of Oklahoma and evicted from its house after members were caught on video singing a racist song is seeking “some other resolution to this matter” and, failing that, may take the university to court, the group’s lawyer said Friday. “Some members have received death threats, have been verbally assaulted,” said Stephen L. Jones, a lawyer hired by the local Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter. He did not say whether the fraternity would seek reinstatement, but called for talks with the university to modify its response to the video. “I’m not ruling out a lawsuit,” Mr. Jones said. “I’m saying our preference is to proceed to a non-legal solution, a non-adversarial solution.” On Sunday night, a video became public of tuxedo-clad students on a bus, singing a song laced with racial slurs and a reference to lynching, asserting that the fraternity would never have a black member. Within hours, the national fraternity severed ties to the University of Oklahoma chapter, a second video of the singing surfaced, and David L. Boren, the university president, shut down the chapter and ordered members out of the fraternity house. Mr. Boren also expelled two men seen leading the song, a move that some legal experts have called legally dubious . Mr. Jones said he believed those students — whom he does not represent, and who have publicly apologized — actually withdrew before the expulsion. The administration offered only a terse response to Mr. Jones’s statements. The university “is seeking to learn all the relevant facts and circumstances,” said Catherine F. Bishop, a university vice president, but “does not comment on any pending litigation.” On the campus in Norman, black students said the videos exposed an old culture of hostility that persists, in subtle and overt ways, from racial slurs to social exclusion, while white students cautioned against painting a picture of widespread bigotry. Image George Lee Jr., a student at the University of Oklahoma, said he was once turned away from a fraternity party because of his race. Credit Nick Oxford for The New York Times George Lee Jr., 24, a black graduate student, said that when he was a sophomore, white students refused to let him into a party at their fraternity house, claiming that black students had stolen items at previous parties. “That was kind of the reason I was given, ‘We’ve had some things come up missing and we kind of wouldn’t feel comfortable with you coming in,’ ” Mr. Lee said. Ini-Obongo Samuel Udo, 19, a junior from Nigeria, said that in an argument about the merits of rap music, a white student once told him, “black people are ignorant.” But Mr. Udo said he saw segregation more than overt racism. “They don’t have a relationship with us,” he said. “We don’t have a relationship with them. It’s not like we intentionally do it.” Scotty Adams, 24, a white 2013 graduate and S.A.E. member, lamented that a few students “cast this shadow over anyone who says they’re an S.A.E.” He said that he had never heard the racist song, and that racism was not prevalent or tolerated at the fraternity when he was there. “When I left school a couple years ago, it was an honor to say I was an S.A.E. at O.U., applying for jobs or meeting people,” he said. “You walk around Oklahoma right now and say you’re an S.A.E., you get kind of shunned.” Prompted in part by the videos, people around the country have drawn attention to incidents on other campuses. The national Sigma Alpha Epsilon organization is investigating charges that the racist song in the videos was known to at least two other chapters. The University of Washington in Seattle is looking into claims that Sigma Alpha Epsilon members shouted racial slurs at black students taking part in a protest march. The chapter said it was other students, not its members, who made the offensive comments. Thousands of social media postings this week have featured the hashtag #NotJustSAE. Some have featured personal accounts of racial discrimination, or claims that versions of the song heard on the video were sung by other groups at other campuses. Other posts included photos of parties with inner-city gang themes, students in blackface, or racist banners or graffiti, all apparently on college campuses. The University of Maryland in College Park revealed on Thursday night that its officials had learned of email sent last year, apparently connected to a different fraternity, containing racist and sexist slurs, and that the university was investigating. Some news media figures, particularly conservatives, have said that rap music is to blame for young people learning and becoming desensitized to racial slurs and other offensive terms. (Although the chant on the bus was to the tune of an old song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”) | College;Fraternities,Sororites;Sigma Alpha Epsilon;Discrimination;Race and Ethnicity;University of Oklahoma;Oklahoma;Black People,African-Americans |
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| 2014/02/22 | Walter Ehlers, Last of Medal of Honor Recipients in D-Day Attack, Dies at 92 | Walter D. Ehlers, who received the Medal of Honor for his exploits as an Army sergeant in the D-Day invasion of France and came to personify the heroism of the G.I.’s who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, died on Thursday in Long Beach, Calif. He was 92. The cause was kidney failure, his wife, Dorothy, said. Mr. Ehlers was the last survivor of the 12 soldiers who received the medal for actions in the Normandy campaign. Nine of the medals were awarded posthumously. When the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion was commemorated in Normandy, Mr. Ehlers gave an address there, and he walked along Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the five Allied invasion beaches, beside President Bill Clinton. He also spoke at the dedication of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va., in 2001, at ceremonies attended by President George W. Bush. Mr. Ehlers was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, for his courage “in the face of overwhelming forces” during firefights near Gonville, France, on June 9 and 10 of 1944. Beyond Sergeant Ehlers’s actions, the story of the fate that awaited him and his older brother Roland, who came ashore in a different landing craft at virtually the same moment, spoke to the randomness of combat. Walter David Ehlers was born on May 7, 1921, in Junction City, Kan. He and his brother pitched hay on their uncle’s farm during the Depression. They joined the Army together in November 1940 and fought side by side in North Africa and Sicily. In the spring of 1944, they were training in England with the 18th Regiment, First Infantry Division, for World War II’s long-awaited Allied invasion of northern France. Both were assigned to Company K, its men destined to be in the second wave hitting Omaha Beach. Anticipating heavy casualties, their company commander transferred Walter Ehlers to Company L, promoting him to sergeant and designating him a squad leader, so that he and Roland would not have to fight alongside each other once more. The Ehlers brothers were several hundred yards apart when they approached Omaha Beach in their boats, facing machine-gun, mortar and rifle fire from Germans on the cliffs. Walter Ehlers led his 12-man reconnaissance team onto the beach through water nearly over the men’s heads, and they made it to the heights through a breach in German minefields without a single casualty. The next day Walter learned that Roland was missing in action. On June 9, Sergeant Ehlers single-handedly killed four German soldiers while on patrol amid the Normandy hedgerows, then destroyed three machine-gun nests and a mortar position, at one point leading a bayonet charge. The day after that, firing away while in the open, he enabled his men to withdraw when they were surrounded. He was shot in the back, but he managed to carry a wounded comrade to safety. On July 14, he was told by his brother’s company commander that Roland had been killed by a shell that had struck the ramp of his landing craft just as he was stepping onto Omaha Beach. Sergeant Ehlers received the Medal of Honor on Dec. 11, 1944, and was promoted to lieutenant. He was then granted a leave to Manhattan, Kan., where his family was living. When he rejoined his unit, he was wounded three more times fighting with the First Infantry Division through the end of the war in Europe. Mr. Ehlers, who received the Silver Star and Bronze Star in addition to the Medal of Honor, moved to California soon after the war. He lived in Buena Park and worked as a counselor for the Veterans Administration. He died at a V.A. hospital. In addition to his wife, Mr. Ehlers is survived by a son, Walter Jr., a retired lieutenant colonel who also served in the First Infantry Division; his daughters, Catherine Metcalf and Tracy Kilpatrick; his sisters, Leona Porter, Marjorie Gustin and Gloria Salberg; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. For all the plaudits Mr. Ehlers received, the loss of his brother haunted him. “I used to have nightmares every night,” he told The Orange County Register after the 60th anniversary of D-Day. “Nightmares about my brother coming home. He always showed up immaculately dressed, and he had that beautiful smile, and we’d talk. I’d go get something and come back, and he’d be gone. Then, I’d wake up.” What “broke the cycle,” he said, was when he spoke at Omaha Beach, telling of how he had waved to Roland as they prepared to board their ships to cross the English Channel. “My knees were trembling when I stood before the audience that day, with 14,000 vets and 17 heads of state,” he said. “But after that, the nightmares went away. I came to grips with his death. They say when you talk about something you finally let it out.” His thoughts of Roland, and the distance between them at the shores of Omaha Beach, never left him, however. “I still can’t talk about him without bringing tears to my eyes,” he told The Register. “I felt like if we’d been together, that wouldn’t have happened. But God sent us in different ways. He was a great soldier, a fantastic soldier, who got wounded in Sicily and died in Normandy. He was my hero until the day he died. He still is.” | Medal of Honor;Obituary;World War II;Walter D Ehlers;US Army |
ny0053047 | [
"us"
]
| 2014/07/18 | Public Problems, Private Dollars: Obama Seeks Infrastructure Repair Money | WASHINGTON — How can a president fix more roads and bridges without any new money to spend? President Obama’s answer on Thursday was to announce new initiatives to encourage private-sector investment in the nation’s infrastructure, including the creation of a “one-stop shop” at the Department of Transportation to forge partnerships between state and local governments, and public and private developers and investors. Stymied by Republican lawmakers who refuse to go along with Mr. Obama’s call for vast new spending on the nation’s infrastructure, the president is spending the week trying to demonstrate that he can still find ways to stop big things from crumbling. The executive actions the president announced aim to “turbocharge private investment in our roads, rails, highways and bridges,” said Jeffrey Zients, the director of his National Economic Council. “If we don’t act, we could lose our competitive edge in infrastructure. It’s a no-brainer – we need to make these investments.” On Thursday, Mr. Obama appeared at the I-495 bridge over the Christina River in Wilmington, Del., a span that has been closed since June, when engineers discovered that four of its columns were leaning to one side. That has created a traffic nightmare for the 90,000 vehicles that travel the major East Coast highway every day. In his remarks, Mr. Obama criticized Congress for failing to invest in infrastructure, saying that Republicans have refused to focus on the need for a long-term plan for paying for transportation and other projects. “If Washington were working the way it was supposed to, Congress would be creating jobs right now,” Mr. Obama told a small crowd at a port near the interchange. “Instead of barely paying our bills for the present we should be planning and investing for the future.” Mr. Obama arrived in Delaware with empty pockets, but armed with what his advisers said were creative ways that similar problems can be fixed. “None of the steps we are taking should be seen as a substitute for adequate public financing, because there isn’t a substitute for that,” Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx told reporters in a conference call with Mr. Zients and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew to detail the plan. But Mr. Foxx said he hoped local and state leaders would take advantage of the new Build America Transportation Investment Center Mr. Obama is creating at the Transportation Department – designed to help the government seek partnerships with private companies to get projects underway using existing federal credit programs – and to “reimagine” how to meet their infrastructure needs. “We have a huge opportunity in front of us if we just seize it,” Mr. Foxx said. Lawmakers from both parties have acknowledged the need to address the deteriorating roads, bridges, railways, ports and sewer systems across the country. But few agree on how to pay for it. Mr. Obama acknowledged the limits of what he can do without that agreement. But he announced his intention to create the Build America Investment Initiative, which aims to focus all of the federal government’s agencies on the task of investing in infrastructure. Officials said the initiative would help the government seek partnerships with private companies to get projects underway, using existing federal credit programs. To do that, the first step will be the creation of a Build America Transportation Investment Center in the Department of Transportation. “This center will serve as a one-stop shop for state and local governments, public and private developers and investors seeking to utilize innovative financing strategies for transportation infrastructure projects,” the fact sheet said. The White House will also create a Build America Interagency Working Group that officials said would “expand and increase” private investment and collaboration by addressing “barriers” to private investment in the transportation area. The Treasury Department will also host an Infrastructure Investment Summit in September. “There’s broad agreement that strengthening our nation’s infrastructure is critical for economic growth,” generating new jobs and business activity, Mr. Lew said. The announcements on Thursday were stark evidence of the gridlock in Washington. But they came amid a glimmer of hope. In the days ahead, Congress is expected to agree on a short-term financing bill to keep the nation’s transportation trust fund solvent for several months. The federal government is set to cut back its highway and infrastructure spending by 28 percent, starting Aug. 1, forcing as many as 100,000 infrastructure projects to halt at the height of the building season and jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of jobs. The federal highway trust fund pays for much of the road repairs and construction around the country, and is financed mostly by the gas tax, which has been declining as fuel efficiency improves. The president has proposed closing business tax loopholes to bolster the fund over the long-term, but Republicans have balked at the idea. Neither side wants to raise the gas tax rate. In the meantime, lawmakers have seized on short-term measures to delay the need for a longer-term solution. Aides said Mr. Obama would offer his support for the temporary fix, but urge a more permanent solution. “We still need a long-term plan that cities and states can count on for steady and certain funding over several years — not just months,” Mr. Foxx said during the conference call. On the way to his speech about infrastructure, Mr. Obama stopped at the Charcoal Pit, a well-known Wilmington, Del., lunch place. At the restaurant, the president shook hands and then sat down to eat with a woman who had written him a letter. White House officials said that the woman, Tanei Benjamin, wrote to Mr. Obama in July 2013 about her “struggle as a single, working mother of one daughter who is now 6 years old.” After reading the letter from Ms. Benjamin, officials said the president sent copies of her letter to his senior staff with a note at the bottom: “This is the person we are working for.” As Mr. Obama sat down for lunch Thursday, he declared, “I’m starving!” and ordered a four-ounce “Pit Special” — a cheeseburger and fries. He asked for the burger to be done medium-well, and ordered a water, with lemon. | Infrastructure,public works;US Politics;Transportation Department;Highway Trust Fund;Barack Obama;Wilmington Delaware |
ny0177932 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2007/09/08 | Donor, After Missing California Court Date, Is Found Ill on Train in Colorado | Norman Hsu , the Democratic fund-raiser whose 15-year fugitive odyssey began and ended with skipped court dates and cut a trail of fraud, tainted donations and blindsided candidates, seemed to be at the end of his rope yesterday, hospitalized under guard in Colorado after his latest vanishing act failed. Mr. Hsu, a 56-year-old Hong Kong businessman born Yung Yuen Hsu, who raised large sums for presidential races and many major political figures, who reveled in circles of power and even became a university trustee (with a scholarship in his name) — all while on the run from a three-year prison term — was at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction after being taken ill off a Denver-bound Amtrak train on Thursday, federal officials said. In federal custody and under guard by Mesa County sheriff’s deputies, Mr. Hsu, who was listed in fair condition with an unspecified ailment, faced new charges and extradition to California. He was to have appeared in court there on Wednesday to surrender his passport and seek a reduction in $2 million bail he posted last week when he turned himself in for running away from a 1992 felony sentencing. After he failed to show up at Wednesday’s hearing, a new warrant was issued. Federal officials said Mr. Hsu had arrived at Oakland International Airport on a charter flight from New York. But instead of heading for the hearing in San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City, south of San Francisco, he boarded an eastbound Amtrak train in Emeryville, near Oakland, the officials said. He had his passport and a berth in a sleeper, but his trip was cut short when he fell ill. Amtrak notified the authorities, an ambulance met the train at Grand Junction and federal agents arrested Mr. Hsu at the hospital, ending what had become an embarrassment for law enforcement as well as for politicians he aided. There was no comment from many Democrats whose campaign coffers had been enhanced by Mr. Hsu — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, and others, who have said they would give the money he donated to charities. Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, who had called Mr. Hsu “one of the best 10 people I’ve met,” said yesterday that he was “disappointed,” and would give the $38,000 he had received to charity. Other friends who have recently seen Mr. Hsu described him yesterday as a broken man. “He was extraordinarily distraught,” said one who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for Mr. Hsu. “He said he had not been hiding out, but had been leading a life that was highly visible.” Another friend said Mr. Hsu was “in bad shape,” adding: “It was obvious he was under stress and strain. At some point, he seemed to be confused.” Mr. Hsu’s lawyer in San Francisco, James J. Brosnahan, said that “in the last 36 hours, a great many friends of Norman Hsu have expressed concern about his mental health and well-being.” He added: “The strain he has been under during the last week has been enormous, and perhaps unbearable. We will be getting him the best medical care available.” Details of the latest accusations were sealed by the court. But the tale of his double life as a businessman-donor and as a fugitive has emerged in outline in recent days. It all began, according to the California Department of Justice, with latex gloves that did not exist. Mr. Hsu, who was born and raised in Hong Kong and came to the United States at 18 to attend the University of California, Berkeley, started several sportswear companies in the 1980’s, but his career hit a low in 1989 when he began raising cash from investors in a plan to buy and sell latex gloves. In 1991, he was charged with stealing $1 million from 20 investors in what the California authorities called a Ponzi scheme. In February 1992, he pleaded no contest to one count of grand larceny in an agreement that called for three years in prison. But he failed to appear for sentencing on June 10, 1992. Investigators believe he fled to Hong Kong and worked in the garment trade. At some point, Mr. Hsu, a naturalized American, returned to New York and in 2003 made the first of some $600,000 in contributions to federal, state and municipal campaigns. He also gave about $100,000 to the New School in New York, and became a board member with a scholarship in his name. He has since cut his ties to the university. While Mr. Hsu made no secret of his political, university and business associations, he also listed nonexistent businesses and addresses that were mail drops. So questions about the source of his money and his rise in influential circles remained when news of his past began to emerge last month. On Aug. 31, he surrendered in California on the fugitive warrant in the 1992 case, posted $2 million in bail and was ordered to appear again last Wednesday. That was the hearing he skipped. | Hsu Norman;Frauds and Swindling;Colorado |
ny0067071 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2014/12/03 | A Village Has What All of Italy Wants: The Internet | VERRUA SAVOIA, Italy — This rural hilltop village, where a 17th-century fortress is a reminder of how residents warded off invaders for hundreds of years, might seem the last place in Italy to find a wireless Internet connection. After all, roughly a third of Italians have never used the Internet, giving the country one of the lowest rates of usage in Europe. Residents can recall providers laughing over the phone at their request for an Internet hookup, or the perplexed look of technicians upon arriving in Verrua Savoia, where just 1,500 residents live in dozens of small settlements spread over nearly 20 miles of valleys and steep hillsides in northern Italy. Even so, some here believed they had the right to join the digital world, to pay their bills, do their banking or make a doctor’s appointment online. One was Daniele Trinchero, a professor at the nearby Polytechnic University of Turin, who helped set up a nonprofit association that started last week and that offers fellow citizens what both the state and telecommunications companies have so far failed to deliver. The group may be the first of its kind in Italy. Over eight years, he and his team have built a radio link with parts scavenged from computers and provided City Hall with several routers to distribute the Internet to five access points. The access points, perched on peaks, direct the signal to homes with cheap receivers on their roofs or balconies. “It’s simply necessary,” said the Rev. Corrado Cotti, 84, the parish priest, a former editor of the local paper and one of the pioneers of the experiment. “Print made communication easier,” he said. “But with the Internet, words fly.” Well, sometimes. Italy’s tardy embrace of the digital age looms as perhaps one of the nation’s most pressing, if unresolved, problems. In the 1990s, the leading telecom company was privatized, shifting the responsibility for connecting Italy from public to private hands. But Italy is a country where about half the land is mountainous, where the signal does not travel easily and where installing fiber optic cable is costly. Image Daniele Trinchero, center, a professor at Polytechnic University of Turin, adjusted an antenna that is part of the Internet network in Verrua Savoia. Credit Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times After years of unkept promises, the government of Italy’s youngest prime minister, Matteo Renzi, 39, is trying to put “digital first,” starting with a plan to invest over six billion euros, or $7.25 billion, in ultrafast broadband connections. But for now, the country lives with a yawning digital — and cultural — divide that has left behind not only large swaths of Italians, but also Italy itself from much of the rest of Europe and the United States. Italy has one of the lowest rates of ultrabroadband connection per household in Europe — half as many as, say, neighboring Switzerland. Only 10 percent of Italy’s primary schools have a broadband connection. Introducing ultrafast broadband would “sensibly increase” the country’s gross domestic product, the government says, and it could also slow or reverse the migration to cities that has depopulated villages like this one. “A speedy Internet connection makes all the difference in the world when you are in the final seconds of an eBay auction,” said Eldio Ginevro, 76, a former mayor and passionate collector of over 270 postcards of Verrua Savoia sent to him from all over the world. “When Daniele first told me about his project, I thought it could revitalize Verrua and also make it more attractive for newcomers,” he added. “So many have left this area recently.” Verrua Savoia, like many other villages in rural areas, does not offer the comfort of city life. For people here, the introduction of a faster Internet connection was something of a utopian notion. “When we moved here in 2003, there was no speedy Internet connection, and for our business it was a real problem,” said Marco Di Giovanni, who is responsible for international sales at a nearby packaging firm that paid to install a transmitting device with the Polytechnic University in late 2006, soon after the project began. “How could we compete internationally if we couldn’t even hold a video conference?” he asked. “That’s where you realize how crucial the digital divide is to your business.” That is also where Mr. Trinchero’s researchers have come in. Their project started as an experiment. Over the last eight years, he and his team have built and maintained the network and addressed residents’ problems and complaints with the 19-megabit speed of their connection, which other Italians in central areas would consider a miracle. The university experiment officially ends on Dec. 31, and the association of local residents, called “Without Wires, Without Borders,” has already begun to take over. Five residents are on the board and coordinate the paid work of the experts who will manage the network, together with younger residents, and offer courses to those who want to learn how to use the Internet. Membership will cost only 50 euros a year, about $75 — courses and 20-megabit Internet connection included. “With the association, we are proving that this experiment of democracy from the bottom is ready to take off,” Mr. Trinchero said, walking down the slope that he has skied and climbed to clear snow off solar panels and transmitters. “Our goal is to bridge up the infrastructural and cultural digital divide,” he said. Many residents of Verrua Savoia, like other rural parts of Italy, left in the 1950s and ’60s to take industrial jobs in nearby cities. The already spread-out village became increasingly fragmented, and social life wore thin, said Father Cotti, who moved to Verrua Savoia in 1957. Today, the impact of Mr. Trinchero’s experiment is easy to see. Building and maintaining a working Internet connection has residents exchanging ideas and concerns in person and by email. Younger residents help older ones buy things online that they cannot find in the two local grocery stores. The most adventurous of those over 65 have started sending scanned documents to their children living in Turin. Many now keep up with one another’s lives on social media. “The Internet has helped us aggregate people again,” Father Cotti said. One recent morning, residents worried about what would happen when the network passed from the university’s management to that of the nonprofit association. “We trust you — you do what you need to do,” Mr. Ginevro, the former mayor, told Mr. Trinchero. “But you make sure we still have a performing Internet. We are not giving it up. It is ours now.” | Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;Italy;Nonprofit;Rural area;Daniele Trinchero;Polytechnic University of Turin;Without Wires; Without Borders;Verrua Savoia |
ny0245701 | [
"business"
]
| 2011/04/30 | Profit at Maker of UGG Boots Tops Forecasts | The Deckers Outdoor Corporation reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit, spurred by continued demand for its sheepskin UGG boots, but said it would post a loss in the second quarter as it changed its business model in some European markets. UGG boots have been the chief growth driver for the company, which also owns the Teva, Tsubo and Simple brands. The UGG fad has now helped the company top earnings expectations for at least 10 consecutive quarters. For the first quarter, the company earned $19.2 million, or $49 cents a share, compared with $17.9 million, or $46 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 31.4 percent to $204.9 million, as the spring collection of UGG boots resonated well with customers. Stock in Deckers, which is based in Goleta, Calif., fell $9.59, or 10 percent, to $84.86 a share. | Company Reports;Shoes and Boots;Deckers Outdoor Corporation |
ny0159405 | [
"world",
"americas"
]
| 2008/12/23 | Conservatives Appointed as Senators in Canada | OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed 18 Conservatives to Canada ’s unelected Senate on Monday, a move that broke his longstanding promise not to name additional members to the upper chamber of Parliament until it is transformed into an elected body. Opposition parties had in recent weeks challenged the appropriateness of Mr. Harper’s making appointments to the Senate after he suspended Parliament to avoid a near-certain defeat in a no-confidence vote. Though that vote will take place after a new session begins in late January, opposition members contend that Mr. Harper no longer has the confidence of Parliament. His Conservative Party does not hold a majority of seats in the House of Commons. The announcement of the Senate appointments was unusually low-key and came after many Canadians had already begun taking time off for Christmas and New Year’s Day. Mr. Harper said in a statement that he had made them to ensure that the Senate seats are not filled by the opposition parties should they defeat his government and take power in the new year. “While I look forward to welcoming elected senators to the upper chamber in the future, these current vacancies must be filled in order for the Senate to transact legitimate government business,” he said in the statement. “If the opposition parties do not approve of these Senate appointments, they should stop obstructing our attempts to introduce meaningful Senate reform.” Mr. Harper made no public appearance on Monday. Michael Ignatieff, the new leader of the Liberal Party, criticized Mr. Harper’s action. “Mr. Harper has said repeatedly that he would never appoint senators, including during the last election,” Mr. Ignatieff said in a statement. “Canadians cannot understand why he keeps breaking his word.” Mr. Ignatieff, who is also leader of the coalition of opposition parties, added, “Appointing senators when he lacks a mandate from Parliament is not acceptable.” No prime minister has ever appointed as many senators on a single day. While the Senate can try to amend or reject bills passed by the House of Commons, the Senate’s actions can ultimately be overridden by the House of Commons. Senators hold their seats until the age of 75. Senators earn generous salaries and expense allowances, but their work ethic is frequently criticized. A columnist in The Globe and Mail described Senate appointments on Monday as being a “taskless thanks.” The latest appointees include two broadcast journalists, as well as a former Olympic downhill skiing star, Nancy Greene Raine. The other new senators include Conservative Party fund-raisers and Conservatives who ran unsuccessfully for the House of Commons. The new senators have agreed to step down and run for election if the Senate is turned into an elective body. But Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper’s spokesman, confirmed that they are not legally bound to that promise. “They are appointed under the rules as they exist today,” he wrote in an e-mail message. | Conservative Party;Harper Stephen J;Politics and Government;Canada |
ny0126977 | [
"nyregion"
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| 2012/01/03 | An Abuse Survivor Has a Vision to Help | By the time Wendolyn Colon was 20, she had no expectations about finding true love. She was a single mother raising a son, Dayon, and was determined to do it alone, having escaped abuse at the hands of men she had trusted. “Men were disgusting to me,” Ms. Colon said. “I was like, ‘I’d rather continue raising my son by myself.’ ” But then she met Dean Parsons. He worked at a discount store and had a son the same age as Dayon. They bonded over being single parents. Ms. Colon began to let her guard down, slowly learning to trust again. “I never knew I was going to find my true prince,” Ms. Colon said. “I thought because of everything I’ve been through, I’d never find somebody who would accept me.” Ms. Colon, 28, is developmentally disabled and has battled severe depression for much of her life. When she was 9, she said, she saw her younger sister fall four stories from a fire escape, dying of her injuries in the hospital. A year later, Ms. Colon said, she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint by her mother’s boyfriend. The abuse continued for two years, she said, until the boyfriend went to pick her up from school one day and she broke down, screaming. Ms. Colon said school officials rushed to her aid, alerting her mother and the police. A social worker took her to a doctor, who discovered that she was pregnant. At 12, she said, she had an abortion. Her mother’s boyfriend was arrested and convicted, Ms. Colon said. “I know there are a lot of teenagers today who are going through similar stuff,” Ms. Colon said. “But they’re not open enough to say what’s going on.” Her mother, Marina Castillo, 48, said she was devastated by the assault on her daughter. “You can’t imagine how I felt,” Ms. Castillo said in Spanish in a recent telephone interview. “It pains me so much.” Though Ms. Castillo had not been aware of the abuse, Ms. Colon said that at the time she resented her mother. “Inside I was hurt,” she said. “The man who you brought into my life, he did that to me.” By 13, Ms. Colon was running away from her home in East New York, Brooklyn, and sometimes living on the streets. After telling a school guidance counselor that she wanted to kill herself, she was sent to the psychiatric ward at Kings County Hospital Center, where she stayed for months. She then lived with an aunt, but by 16 she had dropped out of school and was pregnant. “I reached out to men to give me love, to give me comfort,” Ms. Colon said. When her son, Dayon, now 11, was born, Ms. Colon moved in with his father, hoping it would be the start of a better life. Instead, Ms. Colon said, she again had to leave. She took Dayon to live with her father in Texas, but after a dispute with her stepmother, Ms. Colon said, she left again. She wound up in New Orleans, then made her way back to New York, reconciling with her mother. Ms. Colon found work as a restaurant cook. Then, seven years ago, Ms. Colon met Mr. Parsons. She had gone to the store to buy batteries, and he paid for them. She liked the way he presented himself. “I decided to give him a chance,” she said. “He proved that he was the right one.” In their living room hangs a poem that Mr. Parsons wrote on their first Valentine’s Day together. It reads in part, “I love you like I’ve never loved another.” On the other side of the room hangs a photograph from the day they introduced their sons. It was also the day that Mr. Parsons proposed. “She’d do anything for me; she’s my backbone,” Mr. Parsons, 34, said of his wife. The couple now have three daughters, ages 6, 4 and 3, and Ms. Colon is a stay-at-home mother. In October, Mr. Parsons lost his job of three years delivering auto parts. The family gets by on the monthly $306 in Supplemental Security Income Ms. Colon receives, along with $309 in public assistance and $600 in food stamps. The couple pays $80 in rent, and Section 8 covers the rest. Three years ago, they turned to Brooklyn Community Services, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, for tutoring for the boys and counseling for Ms. Colon. In October, when the couple needed help buying furniture — they had been living without a couch or a dining room set — the agency drew $1,200 from the fund. Mr. Parsons is applying for a commercial driver’s license in hopes of finding work. Ms. Colon wants to become a counselor, to help teenage girls who were victims of sexual abuse. “The advice I give young teenagers who’ve been through what I’ve been through: speak out, no matter how much someone’s threatening you,” she said. “I won’t let my past get in my way,” Ms. Colon added. “I’m going to move forward from that.” | New York Times Neediest Cases Fund;Brooklyn Community Services;Philanthropy;Child Abuse and Neglect;Sex Crimes |
ny0153030 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2008/01/03 | Bill Bonanno, 75, Mob Family Member, Dies | Salvatore (Bill) Bonanno, whose appointment by his father to the second most powerful position in the Bonanno crime family in the mid-1960s touched off what became known as the “Banana Wars” and led to the exile of the Bonannos to Arizona , died on Tuesday at his home in Tucson. He was 75. The cause was a heart attack, his son Joseph said. Mr. Bonanno’s father, Joseph Bonanno, known as Joe Bananas, had come to the United States from Sicily with his parents in 1906. By the 1930s, he had risen from bootlegger and gunrunner to don of one of New York’s five Mafia families. Starting as a small, Brooklyn-based bootlegging operation, the Bonannos thrived during Prohibition. Bill Bonanno became a “made” member of his father’s crime family when he was in his 20s, according to his Web site. The Web site refers to Prohibition as “the government’s gift to us.” Mr. Bonanno was also a writer and occasional television producer, and he gave extensive interviews to the author Gay Talese as the subject of “Honor Thy Father,” Mr. Talese’s 1971 account of the Bonanno family. In 1999, Mr. Bonanno published an autobiography, “Bound by Honor: A Mafioso’s Story” (St. Martin’s Press). With Joseph Bonanno leading the family for more than three decades, the Bonannos were involved in the numbers racket, extortion, control of businesses in the garment center and sometimes killings. But “rather like the Marlon Brando character” in “The Godfather,” Mr. Talese said in an interview on Wednesday, “Joseph Bonanno preached against getting into the drug business.” Despite that decree, several “strays in the organization” began selling drugs, Mr. Talese added. That touched off tension with other Mafia families, much like the fictional events in “The Godfather.” “Joseph wanted his son, Bill, to be elevated to consigliere, the No. 2 position in the family,” Mr. Talese said. “There were others within the organization who didn’t want him to be the No. 2. He was a college boy who was in the Mafia.” Bill Bonanno had attended the University of Arizona from 1950 to 1952. His appointment as consigliere fractured the crime family and, on Jan. 28, 1966, the “Banana Wars” exploded into gunfire. Mr. Bonanno and his bodyguards were on their way to a peace meeting at a brownstone on Troutman Street in Brooklyn when more than 20 shots were exchanged with members of the opposing faction. No one was injured. “Bill Bonanno and his father were in hiding for months,” Mr. Talese said, “and they finally made a truce with their competing factions. Part of the deal was the Bonannos had to vacate New York — father, son and others.” They moved to Arizona, where the family already owned a 3,300-acre cattle and cotton ranch 20 miles north of Tucson. For 30 years, they continued to be involved in criminal activity, with some convictions, even as the Bonanno family faction remaining in New York maintained its operations. Salvatore Vincent Bonanno (he chose to be called Bill) was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 5, 1932, one of three children of Joseph and Fay Labruzzo Bonanno. His brother, Joseph Jr., died in 2005. Besides his son Joseph, of Phoenix, who is a physician, Mr. Bonanno is survived by his wife of 51 years, the former Rosalie Profaci; a sister, Catherine Genovese of Pleasant Hill, Calif.; two other sons, Salvatore, of Scottsdale, Ariz., a software engineer, and Charles, of Phoenix, a long-haul truck driver; a daughter, Gigi Pettinato of Grass Valley, Calif.; 18 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Joseph Bonanno died in 2002 at the age of 97. In 1985, when he was 80, he was briefly imprisoned for refusing to testify about a “commission” of top Mafia leaders, even though he had written about it in his 1983 autobiography, “A Man of Honor.” Bill Bonanno spent a total of 12 years in prison for several crimes, including a sentence for a 1985 conviction on one count of conspiracy and eight counts of grand theft for his involvement in a home-improvement contract scheme that bilked nine elderly Alameda County, Calif., citizens of $110,000 for services paid for but never rendered. In his later years, he used his particular expertise in helping produce several television miniseries: “Honor Thy Father” (CBS), “Love, Honor and Obey: A Mafia Marriage” (CBS) and “Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story” (Showtime). He also made appearances on the History Channel, “60 Minutes” and radio talk shows. On his Web site, Mr. Bonanno contended that while most people use the word Mafia as a noun, “depending on its use, it is also an adjective and always a verb.” “One can be a mafioso, not because he belongs to a secret society, but because he behaves in a certain way,” he continued, adding, “I almost always use a small ‘m’ when I refer to the mafia as a form of behavior.” | Bonanno Bill;Organized Crime;Bonanno Crime Family;Deaths (Obituaries);Crime and Criminals;Honor Thy Father (Book);Brooklyn (NYC);Arizona |
ny0117462 | [
"sports"
]
| 2012/10/07 | In-Box — In Ryder Cup, Yay Team! | To the Sports Editor: All those men who normally stride through almost emotionless rounds on the PGA Tour, stalking one another in the solitude of each individual against every other, were hugging and laughing and shouting and crying and bumping fists during the Ryder Cup. Why? Because they were in teams. We humans love competition but we compete better and we care more and we love it best when we do stuff together. All this political talk about how I built it and you didn’t help me is bogus. We instinctively find it sterile. No wonder a candidate whose instincts favor team play is beating one who appears to favor competition without empathy. Michael Parfit Sidney, British Columbia Yaz and ’67: Unforgettable To the Sports Editor: Re “Drama on Baseball’s Final Day as a Star Completes a Crown,” Oct. 4: Miguel Cabrera’s triple crown for Detroit is an awesome achievement, largely because of the 45-year stretch since Carl Yastrzemski’s similar feat in 1967. Similar, but not identical, because Minnesota’s Harmon Killebrew tied Yastrzemski with 44 home runs that year. Thus it has been 46 years since anyone led outright in all three hitting categories — batting average, home runs and runs batted in — as Frank Robinson did in 1966. I do not mean to derogate Yastrzemski’s achievement. With or without an asterisk, his triple crown only begins to describe the impact he had in 1967, carrying to a pennant a Boston Red Sox team that had placed ninth the previous year. No one ever questioned whether Yastrzemski deserved the Most Valuable Player award. Frank Heffron Exeter, N.H. In Moonlight Graham’s Shadow To the Sports Editor: Re “An Out Well Worth Waiting 7 Years For,” Oct. 3: Lost among the publicity given to Adam Greenberg’s long-awaited at-bat with the Miami Marlins was his similarity to Moonlight Graham, from the book and the film “Field of Dreams.” Graham played an inning in the field for the New York Giants in 1905 but never had a plate appearance. Bob Berman had a similar story. As a 19-year-old, Berman made two appearances for the Washington Senators in 1918. In the first, he was a pinch-runner (and did not score). In the other, he caught the bottom of the ninth inning, never to play in another game. Berman’s presumed anxiety at never having a plate appearance was allayed because in his half-inning, he caught Walter Johnson, perhaps the greatest pitcher. Years later, as a teacher in the New York City school system, Berman spoke proudly to my father of once being Johnson’s catcher. Sheldon Hirsch Wilmette, Ill. The Saints’ Debacle To the Sports Editor: Re “Quarterback Under Pressure,” Oct.2: Thank you for publishing a measured account of the New Orleans Saints’ problems this season. Kudos to Bill Polian for speaking out in support of quarterback Drew Brees’s efforts. Too bad that recognition didn’t come from the Saints’ owner, who has been silent during this debacle. Nancy Silverblatt Dallas | Ryder Cup (Golf);Baseball;Yastrzemski Carl;Football;Golf |
ny0129895 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2012/06/24 | Examining ‘Light and Landscape,’ at Storm King Art Center | Mountainville, N.Y. — A sparkling melody dances through the air on a hilltop in the south fields of Storm King Art Center , a sculpture park that spans 500 verdant acres here. Emanating from four bullhorn speakers mounted on a lone pole, the jazzy keyboard notes fill what is normally a silence broken only by birdsong and the occasional whoosh of the wind. Peter Coffin , the artist who created this sound installation, called it “a soundtrack to the sunshine,” an answer to the question: What does sunlight sound like? Mr. Coffin was inspired to pose such a question when he was invited to participate in “Light and Landscape,” this season’s special exhibition on the grounds and in the indoor galleries of Storm King. Curated by Nora Lawrence, Storm King’s associate curator, the show features the work of 14 contemporary artists, including Donald Judd , Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson , for whom natural light is either a primary component or a conceptual focus. In an environment where light and landscape already play a prominent role, the 28 works in the exhibition — sculptures and installations as well as photographs, drawings, videos and even an apiary — reinterpret these elements through an array of often unexpected approaches. Katie Paterson ’s “100 Billion Suns,” for instance, replicates gamma-ray bursts, which are among the brightest and hottest explosions in the universe. Once a day, in front of the center’s Normandy-style museum building, a confetti cannon releases 3,216 tiny circles of colored paper, representing the 3,216 times such bursts have been photographed since their discovery in the 1960s. A second piece by Ms. Paterson, a Scottish artist based in London and Berlin, is a real-time manifestation of lightning storms around the world. “Streetlight Storm” uses Skype to connect the lanterns above the building’s two entrances to an antenna in Britain, which detects lightning from the Arctic Circle to North Africa and transforms its signals into transmittable data that causes the bulbs to flicker. “Every time you see them pulse,” Ms. Lawrence said, “there’s lightning somewhere far away.” It is the weather at Storm King that plays with Alyson Shotz ’s two luminescent sculptures, “Transitional Object (figure #1)” and “Transitional Object (figure #2).” These torso-like forms, which stand alone in an all-white gallery, are built from twisting curves of clear acrylic strips that reflect and refract a spectrum of sunlight. In an overgrown field across the park, Spencer Finch ’s “Lunar” mimics the color of moonlight. A solar-powered geodesic sphere standing over 11 feet tall, “Lunar” glows at night, and on particularly overcast days, in the exact shade of the full moon that shone last July over Chicago, where the work was first displayed. To allow for nighttime viewings, Storm King will offer guided walks after dusk on certain evenings when the moon is full. In assembling “Light and Landscape,” Ms. Lawrence, who started at Storm King in April 2011, sought works that were attuned to natural light in all its guises and in a variety of ways. But she had other goals in mind, too. One was to raise environmental awareness, “but not in a didactic way,” she said. This is where the apiary comes in. At a far corner of the park, Mr. Coffin’s “Untitled ( Bees Making Honey)” is a fenced-in area with four active beehives. Weekly tours led by a beekeeper teach participants about the sun’s critical role in the lives of honeybees. “It’s fascinating to learn how bees make honey,” Mr. Coffin said. “We forget how magical it is.” And the local honey samples offered to guests at the end of the tours provide a possible answer to another question Mr. Coffin, of Brooklyn, asked himself in anticipation of the exhibition: What does sunlight taste like? From the earliest stages of planning “Light and Landscape,” Ms. Lawrence was driven by a desire to exhibit one particular object: Roni Horn ’s cast glass “Untitled (‘...it was a mask, but the real face was identical to the false one’).” “I had seen her works that were similar to this one, and I really wanted to see the piece in here,” Ms. Lawrence said, indicating the downstairs gallery where the sculpture — a 3-foot-wide, 18-inch-tall cylinder of sky-blue glass whose top has been fire-polished to produce a surface so smooth it almost vanishes — rests on the floor. “She uses the color blue because of its association with moodiness and human emotion. It’s like water, like the sky, like our feelings.” Ms. Lawrence also wanted to honor Storm King itself. “Coming here is very different from visiting a traditional museum space,” she said. “It’s not only the dramatic landscape, but also the indoor galleries, which I think are unusual and beautiful. So I wanted to do something that existed in both.” The show does just that, with 10 works dotting the southeastern part of the grounds, and the rest in seven of the nine galleries. In addition to loans from artists, galleries and private collections, and one piece (Mr. Judd’s 1969 “Untitled,” the oldest work in the show) from Storm King’s own collection, “Light and Landscape” contains 11 site-specific installations, nine of which were commissioned for the exhibition. These include William Lamson ’s “Last Light,” a 190-foot-long strip of reflective foil stretched diagonally beneath the surface of the park’s south pond. Positioned to mirror the angle at which the final ray of the setting sun struck the pond on the summer solstice, the foil tapers toward the water’s edge like a blade, or perhaps a miniature, underwater highway. Another commissioned work is Katie Holten ’s “Sun Clock (Making Time),” which tells time using the shadows cast by visitors on numbered, papier-mâché orbs. Ms. Holten is one of several artists in “Light and Landscape” who consider the relationship between light and time. Her “Shadow Drawings (Storm King)” record individual, fleeting moments with charcoal. Matthew Buckingham ’s “Celeritas” asks viewers to think about the speed of light, while Anthony McCall ’s “Crossing the Hudson (April 12, the 295th night)” explores how light changes over the course of a year. Light changes the perceptions of visitors observing Ms. Shotz’s “Transitional Objects” more quickly. “If you let yourself, you can see it happening minute by minute,” said Ms. Shotz, who lives and works in Brooklyn. “It puts you into a different sense of time that is more sun-based than clock-based, and it gets you thinking about the actual sun and its direction in reference to the earth — things you don’t usually think about.” Ideas like these please Ms. Lawrence. “I love the connection the show makes between natural light and time,” she said. “That was unexpected, a big surprise for me. It’s showing that this is art you can’t look at in just five minutes. You have to let yourself stay for a while, and then come back to see it again and again throughout the season.” | Art;Westchester County (NY);Storm King Art Center |
ny0259157 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2011/01/15 | Islamic Center Near Ground Zero Has New Imam | Long-simmering tensions between co-founders of the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero led to a parting of the ways on Friday that sharply reduced the role of one: the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf , long the project’s public face. The break-up sent ripples of uncertainty through a community of religious and political leaders in New York who rallied last summer to the side of Mr. Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, when opponents assailed the plan to build near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Some worried aloud that the curtailed involvement of the couple could cost the project support. Others said the plan would continue to be endorsed by people committed to interfaith dialogue and freedom of religious expression. The split was announced unilaterally by Mr. Abdul Rauf’s partner in the project, Sharif el-Gamal , the real estate investor who owns the former coat store at 51 Park Place where the 13-story center is planned. In a statement that took Mr. Abdul Rauf by surprise , according to a spokesman for the imam, Mr. Gamal said the imam and his wife would no longer raise money for or speak on behalf of the project, known as Park51, though Mr. Abdul Rauf would remain on its board. “While Imam Feisal’s vision has a global scope and his ideals for the Cordoba movement are truly exceptional, our community in Lower Manhattan is local,” said Mr. Gamal, referring to the imam’s longstanding work in promoting interfaith understanding. “Our focus is and must remain the residents of Lower Manhattan and the Muslim American community in the greater New York area.” The imam’s efforts have taken him on State Department speaking tours in the Middle East. On Saturday, he was to begin a United States speaking tour. The differences between the imam and Mr. Gamal have been evident on a wide range of issues for many months, said Muzaffar A. Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University School of Law and a friend of Mrs. Khan and her husband. The two men have differed over the size of the project, its commercial or noncommercial character, and whether it would be primarily a place for Muslims or for people of many faiths, he said. But the divide was most apparent in the different names each leader has used for the project. The imam has always referred to the proposed Islamic center and mosque as the Cordoba House. To Mr. Gamal, a businessman and real estate developer, it is Park51. In his announcement, Mr. Gamal said Friday services at the temporary mosque now operating in the building, previously conducted by Mr. Abdul Rauf when he was in town, would now be run by an imam, Abdallah Adhami, who has served another Lower Manhattan mosque for many years. Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, which approved the Muslim center last spring, said Mr. Gamal, as owner of the property, had the right to “do as he wishes” on his project. Whether the reduced roles of Mr. Abdul Rauf and Ms. Khan would affect support, Ms. Menin said, “It’s too soon to know.” Mr. Chishti, however, suggested that the prospects for raising the estimated $100 million it might cost to build the center would be diminished. “The groundswell of support we saw over the summer for this project was not a wave of support for a developer’s rights,” Mr. Chishti said. “It was support for a vision that was articulated by Imam Feisal.” Neither Mr. Abdul Rauf nor Mr. Gamal would agree to an interview on Friday, but each had someone speak on his behalf. Larry Kopp, a spokesman for Mr. Gamal, said the imam would stay on the Park51 board, which now has four members including Mr. Gamal. Mr. Kopp said the board would expand to about 15 members this year. Leyla Turkkan, a spokesman for Mr. Abdul Rauf, said the imam and his wife would “continue their leadership work in creating the Cordoba House,” and their efforts “to help build broader connection and understanding among people of all faiths.” By most accounts, both Mr. Abdul Rauf and Mr. Gamal were surprised over the summer when their project drew such emotionally charged opposition, despite receiving the approval of Community Board 1 and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Mr. Abdul Rauf has said the decision to present the plans to both panels while the two men were still hammering out their own differences was in part an effort to begin building public support. When the hearings instead touched off a nationwide controversy, the two found themselves ill-prepared: The board of directors still has no prominent leaders, and the project has raised little money. “When events started outpacing them, they had not really ironed out the basic elements of their plan,” Mr. Chishti said. “In the glare of attention, they couldn’t back down from their positions. It’s not surprising they weren’t able to come to terms.” Pamela Geller, a blogger who marshaled much of the opposition to what she termed “the ground zero victory mosque,” said the pushing aside of Mr. Abdul Rauf would not change much. “It doesn’t matter whose face is out front,” she said. “We’re still against it.” | Park51;Rauf Feisal Abdul al-;El-Gamal Sharif;Mosques;World Trade Center (NYC);Muslim-Americans |
ny0018899 | [
"us"
]
| 2013/07/10 | Texas Resumes Efforts at Abortion Restrictions | AUSTIN, Tex. — The restrictive abortion bill that has stirred up Texas politics in the past few weeks is once again moving its way through the Legislature during a second special session called by Gov. Rick Perry. The bill was initially stalled last month by the 11-hour filibuster of State Senator Wendy Davis, Democrat of Fort Worth. A new version was drafted, restarting the process in the Republican-controlled Texas House with a hearing on Monday and an often-angry debate on the floor on Tuesday. The bill, like its predecessor, would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers. Its stringent requirements for the clinics are described by the bill’s supporters as a means to improve safety but denounced by opponents as a way to burden the clinics with expenses that will not improve the health of patients and would force many that cannot afford the changes to close. At an early point in Tuesday’s debate, Representative Senfronia Thompson, Democrat of Houston, spoke at the chamber’s front microphone surrounded by allies holding coat hangers — an allusion to the kinds of dangerous procedures that opponents of the bill say women will resort to if clinics are closed and access to legal abortion is narrowed. Her proposed amendment, to create an exception to the ban on abortions after 20 weeks, was shelved by votes along party lines, as were other proposed changes. Much of the pointed questioning of the bill by Democratic House members seemed to anticipate later court challenges, should the bill become law. Meanwhile, competing rallies have taken place around the Capitol complex. Contingents supporting the bill, dressed in blue, and those opposed, in orange, could be seen throughout the Capitol and in the House gallery. On Monday evening, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas spoke to a crowd supporting the bill; that group was later confronted by opponents, who followed with a rally of their own. While voices were raised and slogans exchanged, the evening passed peacefully. Image Representative Senfronia Thompson offered an amendment on Tuesday that sought to weaken abortion legislation in the Texas Legislature; it and other proposed changes failed. Credit Eric Gay/Associated Press On Tuesday morning, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund announced a “Stand with Texas Women” bus tour across the state, with events to be held in various cities to draw attention to the issues being debated. “It’s time to get the Texas Legislature out of our examination rooms,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and daughter of former Gov. Ann Richards, who died in 2006. In an interview, Ms. Richards said that she was heartened to see the thousands of protesters, many of them young, coming to Austin to voice their opposition to the bill. Recalling her mother’s campaign for governor, she said, “It was on a platform that we need to open up government to the people of Texas, and boy! I’ve never seen that more than the last few weeks.” Noting that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had called opponents in the Senate gallery during the final hours of the previous session an “unruly mob,” she said, “I call it participatory democracy — that’s what democracy is about.” Mr. Dewhurst, a Republican, issued a statement on Monday strongly supporting the bill and telling opponents, “We love you.” He added: “We love you because as a Christian, as Christians, we love you just as much as we love that unborn baby. And that as an American, I respect your First Amendment rights to free speech. As a Texan, I respect your toughness. But as a leader, we’re going to pass this bill.” When that might happen is still something of an open question, complicated by the rules of the Texas House and Senate. The House is unlikely to vote final passage of the bill before Wednesday; the Senate committee that would consider the House measure, Health and Human Services, has scheduled a hearing for Thursday to do so. After that, the bill would go to the full Senate for a vote — “My guess is Monday,” said Senator Rodney Ellis, Democrat of Houston. “It’s possible Friday, but there’s a whole lot of hoops to go through.” Mr. Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, expressed some of that uncertainty in a brief Senate session on Tuesday, saying he would be “talking with the members about whether we want to come back in on Friday or Saturday, or whether we want to come back in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday” to consider the bill. | Texas;State legislature;Legislation;Abortion;Planned Parenthood;Wendy Davis;Rick Perry |
ny0161157 | [
"sports",
"othersports"
]
| 2006/04/16 | With Kasey Kahne | Kasey Kahne, driver of the No. 9 Dodge on Nascar's premier circuit, turned 26 last Monday, a day after he won the Samsung/Radio Shack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Kahne is off to the best start of his career, sitting third in the Nextel Cup standings after seven races. KEN DALEY DRIVER HE MOST ENJOYS BEATING -- Always Tony Stewart. FAVORITE TRACK -- Eldora Speedway (a half-mile high-banked dirt oval track in Rossburg, Ohio). Tony Stewart owns it. WHEN HE STARTED RACING -- I was 14. FAVORITE DRIVER GROWING UP -- Dave Blaney. FIRST CAR -- A 1999 Dodge Durango, brand new. LAST PURCHASE OVER $1,000 -- Hmm. Probably the landscaping lights for my new house. PERSON HE WOULD MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH -- Juan Montoya (the Colombian Formula One driver). FAVORITE MOVIE -- "Tombstone." FAVORITE TV SHOW -- "24." LAST BOOK READ -- "Of Mice and Men." LAST SONG DOWNLOADED -- "Something to Be," by Rob Thomas. BEST THING ABOUT NASCAR -- Probably the fans. TOUGHEST THING ABOUT NASCAR -- Also the fans. DRIVER YOU STEER CLEAR OF AT A POKER TABLE -- Elliott Sadler. 30 Seconds | NATIONAL ASSN OF STOCK CAR AUTO RACING;KAHNE KASEY;AUTOMOBILE RACING |
ny0235323 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2010/01/09 | U.S. Has Few Resources to Face Threats in Yemen | WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration confronts the latest terrorism threat in Yemen , its diplomatic and development efforts are being constrained by a shortage of resources, a lack of in-house expertise and a fraught history with a Yemeni leader deeply ambivalent about American help. Administration officials said they focused on Yemen as a hothouse for Islamic terrorism from the day President Obama took office. The United States has tripled its foreign assistance to the country from 2008 levels and plans to spend up to $63 million on Yemen this year. But by all accounts, that is a modest amount for a country that is suddenly a central threat on the foreign policy landscape; it is roughly the same amount the United States sends to Serbia. It illustrates how much the United States is stretched on the foreign policy front, and how hard it is to extend its resources beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Beyond providing military and intelligence help — showcased in recent airstrikes on training sites for Al Qaeda — the administration has yet to develop a coherent plan for dealing with Yemen’s pervasive poverty and corruption, according to former diplomats and outside experts. Those ills, they say, are at the root of Yemen’s lure for terrorists. “I don’t think we have a strategy for Yemen; I think we have some responses,” said Edmund J. Hull, the American ambassador there from 2001 to 2004. “It’s difficult to do because the problems in Yemen are so huge that you almost get stopped before you start.” In an overburdened State Department, there are only a handful of Yemen experts, compared with 30 people from nine government agencies who are assigned just to the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke. Washington’s limited insight into Yemen was on display Thursday, when the White House’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, expressed surprise that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was sophisticated enough to carry out a plot against an American jetliner. In fact, Mr. Brennan, a onetime C.I.A. station chief in neighboring Saudi Arabia, is widely regarded as one of the administration’s most knowledgeable officials about the country. “It’s not that Yemen is the most mysterious and unknowable country in the world,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations . “One needs to ask why more wasn’t done sooner.” The State Department said it had decided to step up its engagement with Yemen even before the botched Dec. 25 attack on the jetliner . In September, the United States signed an agreement with the Yemeni government for a three-year $120 million “stabilization program,” devised to create jobs and improve health and other public services on an accelerated timetable. “We wanted to put together a package of quick-impact projects that would give people a sense that their lives are improving,” said Janet A. Sanderson, a deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees Yemen. After the Navy destroyer Cole was bombed in Yemen in 2000, the United States embarked on a similar effort. In addition to focusing on counterterrorism operations, the State Department helped finance projects like a health clinic on the rugged highway between the capital, Sana, and Marib, a town in a remote region where Qaeda forces are known to cluster. Improving health care is one way to make Yemenis less receptive to Al Qaeda and other extremists, Mr. Hull said. The United States had previously tended to focus its economic aid on politically influential places like Sana and Aden, the port city where the Cole was attacked. From 2002 to 2004, officials said, Qaeda elements in Yemen were on the defensive. But Washington’s relations with Yemen soured after several Qaeda suspects escaped from a prison in Sana in 2006. After the release of a high-profile Qaeda operative in 2007, the United States suspended aid that Yemen was supposed to get through the Millennium Challenge program. “You had this reversal and downward trend in relations,” Mr. Hull said. “Both we and they took our eyes off the ball.” By 2008, nonmilitary aid to Yemen had dwindled to less than $20 million. Afghanistan is expected to receive $2.7 billion a year in nonmilitary aid, Pakistan $1.5 billion and Iraq $500 million. The administration doubled Yemen’s economic aid last year, but as Barbara K. Bodine, another former ambassador, pointed out, the amount “works out to $1.60 per Yemeni.” “That won’t even buy you a cup of coffee in Yemen,” she added, “and they invented coffee.” Ms. Bodine, who was posted to Yemen at the time of the Cole bombing, said that even with the increased commitment, American aid was still overly skewed toward military support, much of it covert. Over time, she said, that could undermine Yemen’s struggling democracy. “If they see David Petraeus more than Kathleen Sebelius, then we have a problem,” Ms. Bodine said, referring to the military commander and the secretary of health and human services, respectively. State Department officials acknowledge that the United States has limited resources for Yemen, though given the intense scrutiny focused on the country, those numbers could rise. But they question whether more aid money would be used effectively, given the pervasive corruption there. As it is, the United States steers most of its dollars through outside organizations like CARE. Officials also say the United States has to be realistic about what can be done in Yemen, given a long list of problems, including a water shortage, dwindling oil reserves and secessionist movements in the south, a major insurgency in the north and a growing young population with no jobs. In a speech this week on development strategy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to labeling Yemen a lost cause. “In countries that are incubators of extremism, like Yemen,” she said, “the odds are long. But the cost of doing nothing is potentially far greater.” The biggest hurdle to aid may be Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh . While American officials said he appeared determined to root out Qaeda elements, his resolve has wavered over time , depending on his calculation of whether radical Islamists are a threat or benefit to him. Mr. Saleh is also worried about being too closely identified with the United States. Saudi Arabia already pours an estimated $1 billion a year into Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Germany have longstanding ties. “He hasn’t always been eager for American support,” a senior administration official said of Mr. Saleh. “That’s all the more reason to wrap this in broader international support. That makes it easier politically for him.” | Yemen;United States International Relations;Terrorism;United States;Saleh Ali Abdullah;Obama Barack;Foreign Aid;Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula |
ny0240306 | [
"business",
"global"
]
| 2010/12/08 | Zhang Yue, Chinese Tycoon, Pushes a Green Agenda | CHANGSHA, China — Zhang Yue has grounded his three private jets and personal helicopter. He has stored the midnight blue Rolls-Royce stretch limousine and canary-yellow Ferrari behind the conference center he built here as a reproduction of a French palace. This past summer, he kept the thermostat in his office at a steamy 81 degrees. Mr. Zhang has embraced frugalities like working in heat rather than turning on an air-conditioner not because of any financial setback. He still shows up on lists of China’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, with a personal fortune estimated at $850 million. But Mr. Zhang, 51, has also emerged as China’s most outspoken tycoon on environmental issues. It is a notable distinction, now that China has passed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases — and as Chinese officials vow to resist any binding limits on their country’s emissions at the United Nations’ international climate talks under way in Cancún, Mexico. When a Chinese vice minister and the Hong Kong secretary of the environment spoke enthusiastically at a conference in Hong Kong about their energy efficiency efforts, Mr. Zhang interrupted and disagreed in a sharp tone that Chinese entrepreneurs seldom take with government officials. “There are laws on everything, but I do not think there are enough laws on energy consumption,” he said. “We need more laws.” All this is not simply green altruism on Mr. Zhang’s part. He has a financial stake in environmentalism. His company, Broad Air Conditioning, is a world leader in the manufacture of central air-conditioning systems that use diesel or natural gas instead of electricity to cool office buildings, shopping malls and factories. The systems, known as absorption chillers, cost much more to install but are less expensive to operate, with the number of years needed to break even dependent on local electricity rates. Absorption chillers are particularly popular in China because many factories already have diesel generators and diesel fuel storage tanks. As electricity demand in China grew 11.5 percent a year over the last decade, provincial governments periodically had to impose blackouts in industrial zones for up to three days a week to make sure that residential areas almost always had power . Factories buy diesel generators to maintain operations during blackouts. Absorption chillers occupy an estimated one-fifth of China’s $2.5 billion annual market for central air-conditioning systems, according to Charles Oliver, a co-founder of GCiS, a market research company based in Beijing. Broad Air Conditioning is the absorption chiller market leader by revenue in China, and exports to markets around the world. The company is privately held, mostly by Mr. Zhang and his family, and does not release financial data. Absorption chillers have less than 1 percent of the American market, said Karim Amrane, the vice president for regulatory affairs and research at the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group in Arlington, Va. “It’s simply too expensive,” he said. The equipment tends to be more attractive in places with high electricity prices, and especially places with high prices during the afternoon, when power grids are already under stress and when air-conditioning systems need to work hardest. That gives Broad Air Conditioning a financial incentive to press for climate change policies that make it more expensive for electric utilities to burn coal, an inexpensive fuel in much of the world but also the dirtiest in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. One obstacle for the company is that many developers build and sell commercial office projects, instead of holding on to them and renting them. So minimizing initial costs may be more important to them than reducing long-term electricity costs. “How do you convince a developer to spend more money on a building that he’s just going to sell?” said Tom McCawley, a general manager of Evergreen Sustainable Development, a company based in Shanghai that plans air-conditioning and heating systems for large complexes. In exporting to the United States and 67 other countries, Broad has marketed its products for corporate headquarters and other buildings that tend to be held for a long time by a single owner. Mr. Zhang’s company is now branching out into the manufacture of heavily insulated, energy-efficient segments of buildings that can be quickly bolted together at a construction site. All of Broad’s buildings have insulation with a thickness of 15 centimeters, or 6 inches, to minimize the energy needed to cool or heat them. As a demonstration project, Broad shipped to Cancún this autumn the components for a two-story building with floor space of 1,000 square meters, or 11,400 square feet. The components are designed for quick assembly at a site near the climate negotiations (the building was assembled in less than two days at the end of last week, and is scheduled to open on Wednesday after interior decorations are completed). The project has the support of Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an advisory group to the United Nations climate talks. He said it was a way to draw attention to the need for energy-efficient construction around the world. Mainland Chinese tycoons are known for keeping extremely low profiles and seldom speaking in public, for fear of antagonizing political leaders or attracting the attention of tax investigators. But Mr. Zhang, who insists that his commitment to environmentalism is genuine and separate from his business interests, may have more political protection than most Chinese tycoons. He is an outspoken defender of the government’s unpopular one-child policy, for example, saying that humanity needs to reduce its population to protect the environment. Perhaps most important, he is a longtime apostle of energy efficiency at a time when China’s leadership has become deeply worried about energy security and eager to reduce the country’s ever-rising reliance on imported energy. And while Mr. Zhang wants China to address global warming more directly, he reserves some of his bluntest criticisms for foreign governments. “The United States is not limiting emissions,” he said, “so why should you ask China to do so?” | Greenhouse Gas Emissions;Air Conditioning;China |
ny0063563 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2014/01/12 | Heat Are Fine With Learning From Losses | The Miami Heat arrived in New York last week in the midst of another marauding march through the regular season. They limped away with a training room full of banged-up players after losses on consecutive nights to the Knicks and the Nets . When motivated, LeBron James and the Heat can find another gear. In the last two and a half seasons, no team has been able to match it. Now on their way to a possible fourth straight trip to the N.B.A. finals — which no team has done since the Boston Celtics from 1984 to ’87 — the Heat have struggled to summon that whirring combination of frenetic defense and explosive scoring. Miami is 12-2 against teams with current records of .500 or better, and 16-8 against teams that now have losing records. The Heat’s puzzling record can partly be explained by circumstance. The New York teams that toppled the Heat have records that belie their talent. The Knicks and the Nets have combined to win nine of their last 10 games. It is also true that the Heat were without three starters, Mario Chalmers, Shane Battier and the All-Star guard Dwyane Wade, in Friday’s double-overtime loss in Brooklyn . Miami players admit that their runs to the N.B.A. finals have altered their perspective on the regular season. “We get everybody’s best,” the reserve forward Rashard Lewis said, referring to Miami’s opponents. “They’re hyped every time we step in the building.” But for Miami, Lewis said, “The second half of the season, getting into the playoffs, that’s when the real season starts.” Despite the embarrassment of talent that James, Wade and Chris Bosh represent, the Heat cannot afford to play without urgency, even against weaker competition. In contrast to the Indiana Pacers, who play a conservative defensive style with Roy Hibbert clogging the middle of the floor, the Heat have a scrambling defense that is something of a high-wire act. When at their ferocious best, the Heat smother opponents by double-teaming ball-handlers, then closing out passing lanes and driving angles that appear open, only to vanish before the offense can take advantage. “Mostly it goes back to energy and discipline,” Battier said. “Not necessarily schematics.” It is a demanding style that can be tough to execute effectively without an almost desperate fervor. “Our defense is predicated on being disciplined,” Battier said, “and if we’re late in our rotations, because we’re small, we pay for it.” Through Friday, the Heat had the league’s 11th-best defense and are on pace to have their worst defensive season since James and Bosh arrived in Miami. Motivation can be an issue when a team wins as much as the Heat do. Last season, sustaining their 27-game winning streak became reason enough for the Heat to bring a tremendous amount of energy every time they took the court. They have not created an inspiring narrative for this season, but intense moments still bring out the beast in James and the Heat. James has a remarkable talent for producing gaudy statistics without appearing to do much more than play within the Heat’s offense. He coasted to 16 points and 3 assists in the first quarter Friday against the Nets. But as the Nets built a double-digit lead heading into the fourth quarter, James began to unleash punishing drive after punishing drive, somehow finding his burst after logging long minutes two nights in a row. On one fast break, he took on three Nets defenders and finished a hanging bank shot from the left side of the rim, and the Barclays Center crowd seemed united in anticipation of a Heat comeback. But it never came. James finished with 36 efficient points but could not drag his poor-shooting teammates to victory. Despite their long-term ambition, every game matters for the Heat. They are two and a half games behind the Pacers and, should the two meet in the Eastern Conference finals, home-court advantage will be vital. Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra is fond of referring to each season as a process and a journey. He implores his players to not worry too much about individual results, to not focus on every make or miss. Rather, it is all about method and habit. “We’re trying to reinvent ourselves,” Spoelstra said before Friday’s game. “We’re trying to get to another level.” This mind-set is ingrained throughout the Heat locker room. James studies the advanced stats, and the Heat have developed a library of specialty plays they can go to whenever they like. On Friday, it was a pick-and-roll in which the point guard, this time the backup Norris Cole, screened for James to force a mismatch. The Heat turned to the unorthodox play in crunch time and repeatedly created good chances. In the long grind of an N.B.A. season, late-game moments still inspire the Heat’s full attention. On Friday, the Nets were more than a match for them. The Heat now have four days off to regain their health and dive into the video. Miami’s mentality may result in some regrettable losses, but it allows the team to peak at the right time. Bosh said the Heat would evaluate their two New York losses from their privileged perspective. “Win or lose,” he said, “you always look at what you can do better.” | Basketball;Brooklyn Nets;Miami Heat;Knicks;LeBron James;Erik Spoelstra |
ny0134448 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2008/04/02 | In Fight for Pennsylvania, a Few Heated Rounds | WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — The Democratic presidential candidates hopscotched across eastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton comparing herself to Rocky Balboa in rebuffing suggestions that she quit the race. Her opponent, Senator Barack Obama , struck into the heart of Clinton territory, courting voters in the Scranton area where Mrs. Clinton has deep family ties. Mrs. Clinton used the setting of a state A.F.L.-C.I.O. gathering in Philadelphia to begin a blistering attack on the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain , saying that Mr. McCain “admits he doesn’t understand the economy, and unfortunately he’s proving that day after day on the campaign trail.” “He looked at the housing crisis, and he blamed consumers,” she said. “His plan for the economy is to extend George Bush’s tax cuts for billionaires and give a $100 billion additional corporate tax cut.” Her remarks came as Mr. McCain was in the second day of a tour to highlight his own biography, and he called attention to what he portrayed as his rebellious adolescent background in a stop at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., where he was a member of the class of 1954. “As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone whom I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect,” Mr. McCain said. “Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble.” But it was on the Democratic side where the battles continued to play out, with Mrs. Clinton suggesting — in what turned out to be an April Fools’ Day joke — that she and Mr. Obama should settle their battle in a bowl-off. “It’s time for his campaign to get out of the gutter,” she said. “For all the pins to be counted. And when this game is over the American people will know they’ll have a president who’s ready to bowl on Day 1.” Mrs. Clinton continues to lead in polls in Pennsylvania, where her grandparents settled and her father grew up, but Mr. Obama is in the midst of a six-day bus tour there and just began an advertising blitz to try to narrow the gap. For her part, Mrs. Clinton seemed to be reveling in playing the underdog, saying: “When it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit.” She made the allusion even though the boxer lost in the first “Rocky” film (there were rematches), and the actor who portrayed him, Sylvester Stallone, has expressed support for Mr. McCain. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama campaigned in the Scranton area, with Mr. Obama seizing on the foreclosure crisis to drive home the increasingly populist themes he has been using in Pennsylvania. He scorned corporate executives as reaping lush bonuses while employees are laid off and homes foreclosed upon. “They call it an ownership society, but basically the idea is that you’re on your own,” he said in a speech in Wilkes-Barre. “Well, that’s not what America is about. It’s not the America that immigrants travel to reach. It’s not the kind of America that you believe in; it’s not the kind of America I believe in.” Mrs. Clinton appeared later at King’s College in the same city, where she spoke to about 2,000 people, saying the campaign was about “jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs.” | Presidential Election of 2008;Pennsylvania;Clinton Hillary Rodham;Obama Barack;McCain John;April Fool's Day |
ny0238615 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
]
| 2010/06/25 | Africa Fizzles in a Chance to Shine | JOHANNESBURG — Going into the first World Cup to be held on African soil, there were hopes that its countries would finally put on a strong showing, possibly getting two or three of its teams to the second round. This weekend brings a change in tone and format, with those knockout rounds starting and the weakest weeded out, left to watch the big boys play. And once again, most of the continent’s teams are left in a familiar spot: On the outside looking in. Whatever happened to the claim, by Pelé, the world’s most renowned player of all time, that before the end of the last century, or very early in this one, an African country would be champion of the world? The story of Africa is that for the past 35 years it has been the continent of tomorrow, always hopeful that it can build organizations and harness its talent into teams that can compete with anyone. But the continent’s countries find themselves hamstrung by a familiar problem: Its players are plucked up in adolescence by Europe’s rich clubs in much the same way that colonial powers came here for diamonds. Who would have thought that France, long a colonial power, would be on the first plane out? And who would have predicted that the vast majority of African countries, including the host, would fail to make the second stage of the competition? As of Thursday morning, Ghana was the only one guaranteed to move on. Ghana’s soccer federation rightly says that its team, like its soccer structure, is based on nurturing its own youth before foreign clubs entice them away. But with the exception of Ghana’s narrow victory over Serbia in its opening game, and apart from South Africa taking full advantage of France imploding, there has not been another victory among the 16 matches played by the six African teams. Much has been said about Africa’s sporting development, or lack of it, during this tournament. The habit of countries qualifying on their own and then paying millions to imported coaches so they can offer their supposed greater wisdom for one last big push has backfired. Again. Before this tournament, many regarded Ivory Coast as the African nation that could potentially advance the furthest. It is hard to see what the Swedish coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson, has done to justify the $3 million that he was paid to spend a few months with a squad that includes the Chelsea star Didier Drogba and other players who have proven themselves at Europe’s elite clubs. It wasn’t Eriksson’s fault that Drogba broke a bone in his arm, but it is Eriksson’s responsibility that the Elephants, as the Ivory Coast squad is known, performed like mice. A mercenary who has flitted from the national teams of England to Mexico and then to Africa, receiving enormous payoffs for little return, Eriksson had too little time, and perhaps too little knowledge of African culture, to make a significant impact here. The illusion that foreign coaching might help Africans discover themselves was demolished by Simaata Simaata, general secretary of the Zambia Football Coaches Association. Speaking to my colleague Christopher Clarey, Simaata said: “It’s like saying David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls. No, David Livingstone was the first European to see the Victoria Falls. There were already local people who knew where the mighty wonder of the world existed, and they were the local scouts who knew the terrain.” For David Livingstone, perhaps, substitute Stanley Rous. A former English school teacher who rose from a soccer referee to be president of FIFA in the late 1960s and early ’70s, he was the first to say that Africa would be a power in the global game. Rous, a man given to Churchillian rhetoric, overestimated the sporting prowess of Africa, but he underestimated the politics that resulted in him being removed from office. João Havelange, supported by Sepp Blatter, then FIFA general secretary, saw the power in Africa as something else. He saw the power of Africa’s 53-member bloc, an organization that has 208 national or territorial associations. Win the African vote, and you are well on the way to winning the FIFA presidency. Havelange courted Africa with promises of a greater distribution of FIFA funds in 1974. He and Blatter were omnipresent when South Africa hosted the 1996 African Cup of Nations soon after Nelson Mandela became the head of state, and now Blatter has succeeded Havelange in office. The pledge made to Mandela then — to help South Africa’s transition after apartheid — is being delivered by the World Cup today. The cash that FIFA promised, not just to Africa but to every continent from its television and sponsorship income, has helped build some local soccer headquarters and many playing fields. But in many countries on this continent there are no visible signs of where that money went. And the traffic of players out of Africa to play professionally for teams in Europe has not benefited Africa, either. It has helped them as players, enriched them enormously. But they return to the national teams as strangers, accustomed to other cultures. Yes, there are gestures, like Drogba donating $3 million of his fortune to build a hospital in Ivory Coast, which he left as a teenager to find his way through French soccer before becoming one of the most-recognized and highest-paid athletes in the world with Chelsea. It was naïve, however, to expect that taking the stars out of Africa and throwing some money at it in return would raise standards or stimulate grass-roots coaching. We see it as this tournament unfolds. Walk through Soweto and you see how government funding and tourism have transformed living standards. But visit other townships, and ghettos are still ghettos. White rule has ended, but inequality lingers. Until that inequality is gone, the question of why South Africa’s youth systems can produce champions in rugby and cricket , previously exclusively white sports, but not field a competitive soccer team, is not even worth asking. The country, the continent, is talent rich, but organization poor. Without that, you can’t win a World Cup. | World Cup (Soccer);Ghana;Soccer;South Africa |
ny0163723 | [
"business",
"yourtaxes"
]
| 2006/02/12 | Inheriting? Don't Forget Your State's Tax Bill | EFFECTIVE Jan. 1, Congress eliminated the federal tax on estates worth up to $2 million -- a development that might lead you to think that there were no longer any taxes on inheritances up to that limit. But you would be wrong. The maze of rules and regulations that defines the tax system is rarely that simple. In this case, the problem is that federal and state tax codes are not entirely in harmony. While Congress in 2001 began raising the exemption on the federal estate tax, many states did not. In more than a dozen states -- including New York, New Jersey, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin -- there are still state taxes on estates worth under $2 million. There is a tax on estates in this range in the District of Columbia, as well. In New York, Gov. George E. Pataki last month proposed eliminating the tax. Tax rates in New York range from about 1 percent to 16 percent for amounts above the state's $1 million exemption, according to James C. Walschlager, an analyst at CCH, a publisher of tax materials in Chicago. For now, if someone dies in New York with an unsheltered estate worth $2 million, the estate would owe $99,600, according to the calculations of a tax lawyer, Sanford J. Schlesinger, founding partner at Schlesinger Gannon & Lazetera in New York. Many clients are stunned when they find that they still could owe state estate taxes, several estate planning lawyers said. "To be surprised by that kind of number is not pleasant," said Barbara A. Sloan, a partner at McLaughlin & Stern. "This is a very serious problem." Unless there is further legislative action, the conflict between state and federal regulations in this area is likely to grow. In 2009, for example, the federal estate tax exemption is scheduled to rise to $3.5 million -- but the exemption in Illinois, for example, is to remain at its current level, $2 million. The situation will become more complicated by 2010, when the federal estate tax is set to disappear entirely, while many states are currently planning to retain at least some estate tax. And matters become even murkier in 2011. That is when the federal estate tax exemption legislation is due to "sunset," -- Washington language for expire -- cutting the exemption back to $1 million. The rate for federal estate taxes, which is 46 percent on all estates worth more than $2 million, also remains a moving target. In 2007, the maximum rate drops to 45 percent, is eliminated entirely in 2010 and is revived 2011 at 55 percent -- unless, of course, Congress changes it before then. None of this makes for smooth estate planning. "It's a disaster," Mr. Schlesinger said. Among other problems, he said, people who live in one state and own property in another could be dealing with three different tax systems: one federal and two state. While the estate tax has never been popular with many groups of Americans -- critics often call it the "death tax" -- the current muddle is a relatively recent creation. Until Congress passed the 2001 tax law, New York and 39 other states shared estate tax revenue with the federal government. The federal government would assess the estate tax and provide a credit to tax filers that was equal to state estate taxes. These state taxes were called "sponge" or "pickup" taxes because they did not add to an individual's estate tax burden. But in 2001, Congress not only raised exemption levels but over the next four years also eliminated the credit, effectively cutting off estate tax revenues for the states. Today, Florida, California, Texas and 23 other states have no estate tax. In those states, if an estate owes federal estate taxes, the states collect nothing, said Charles D. Fox IV, a partner at McGuire Woods. The remaining 24 states, plus the District of Columbia, have their own disparate tax systems. "It certainly makes estate planning in states that have a separate death tax much more difficult," Mr. Fox said. The complexity and fluidity of the rules have made the field a fertile one for lawyers, accountants and financial advisers, who may be able to suggest ways to minimize the hit from federal and state estate taxes. At this point, the goal of many estate plans is simply to defer the decision on how to handle jointly held estates until the law and individual circumstances are clearer, said Gideon Rothschild, a partner at Moses & Singer. At the moment, though, these strategies will still leave you with a basic problem: if you take advantage of the full federal exemption, you may be liable for a hefty state tax bill. In the end, the only way to avoid estate taxes entirely may be to live in a state that does not have them. When clients, especially those with second homes, ask Mr. Schlesinger what they should do, "my favorite answer is 'move,' " he said. | SCHLESINGER SANFORD J;STATES (US);INHERITANCE AND ESTATE TAXES;TAXATION;TAX CREDITS DEDUCTIONS AND EXEMPTIONS;SPECIAL SECTIONS;WILLS AND ESTATES |
ny0266543 | [
"sports"
]
| 2016/03/19 | Banned Substance Defended | Ivars Kalvins, the inventor of the banned drug meldonium, insisted on Friday that it was safe and questioned whether the authorities were justified in listing it as a performance enhancer. The Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova is facing a potentially career-ending four-year ban after she tested positive for the drug at the Australian Open. Ivars, of Latvia’s Institute of Organic Synthesis, called meldonium “the safest cardiovascular drug in the world” and added: “Nobody has demonstrated that it is an enhancer or performance booster. The only evidence is anecdotal.” ■ Sales of meldonium have soared in Russia since Maria Sharapova admitted to taking the substance, according to a survey. Russian pharmaceutical outlets sold 78,300 boxes of meldonium in the week ending March 13, more than three times as many as in the previous week, according to a survey by DSM Group, which tracks the pharmaceutical sector. ■ Three Russian speedskaters, including the Olympic 5,000-meter short-track relay champion Semen Elistratov, have been provisionally suspended after tests confirmed the presence of meldonium, the International Skating Union said. Elistratov, 25, the world 1,500-meter champion last year, tested positive for meldonium, as did the short-track skater Ekaterina Konstantinova and Pavel Kulizhnikov, a two-time world speedskating sprint champion. ■ Spain said that it was unable to meet Friday’s deadline to comply with World Anti-Doping Agency regulations, but that it hoped to avoid significant sanctions. Spain’s antidoping agency said it had been unable to make all the required changes demanded by WADA because the country still had not formed a government after elections last year. (AP) | Doping;World Anti-Doping Agency |
ny0180065 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2007/08/31 | Centerreach: Woman Pleads Not Guilty in Driving Death | A woman accused of dragging her companion to his death after he tried to stop her from driving away from a party pleaded not guilty yesterday to a grand jury indictment charging her with manslaughter and drunken driving. The woman, Jesenia Vega, 27, who has been held in $100,000 cash bail, said through her lawyer that she was abused by Louis Wiederer, at a block party on July 21, when she tried to drive away. Mr. Wiederer, 26, who hung on to an open window of Ms. Vega’s car, fell under the car and was killed, the Suffolk County police said. The police said Mr. Wiederer was concerned that Ms. Vega had had too much to drink, but her lawyer said she was trying to flee from Mr. Wiederer. | Accidents and Safety;Alcohol Abuse |
ny0220892 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/02/26 | Representative Rangel Admonished by House Ethics Panel | The House ethics committee said on Thursday that it had admonished Representative Charles B. Rangel for violating Congressional gift rules by accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008. But the ethics panel, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, did not issue findings in its continuing inquiries into more serious matters concerning Mr. Rangel’s fund-raising, his failure to pay federal taxes on rental income from a Dominican villa, and his use of four rent-stabilized apartments provided by a Manhattan real estate developer. Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, was one of five members of the Congressional Black Caucus who accepted trips to attend business seminars in Antigua and Barbuda and in St. Maarten organized by the Carib News Foundation, a charity affiliated with a Caribbean-focused newspaper in New York. But the conventions had been underwritten by corporations like Pfizer, Verizon and AT&T, and that sponsorship was widely noted at the events, according to an ethics complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center , a conservative advocacy group. The committee’s findings, released Thursday night, admonished Mr. Rangel, even though it said it had no proof that he knew of the sponsorships. But it held him accountable because two members of his staff knew. “Representative Rangel was responsible for the knowledge and actions of his staff and the performance of their official duties,” the report said. Mr. Rangel, in a news conference Thursday night, disputed the findings. “Common sense dictates that members of Congress should not be held responsible for what could be the wrongdoing or mistakes or errors of staff unless there is reason to believe the members knew or should have known,” he said. He also said the ethics committee bore some responsibility because it had approved the trips in advance. But the committee said that it had been given misleading information by officers of the foundation, and that it had referred their actions to the Justice Department. A message left Thursday night at the foundation’s affiliated newspaper, The New York Carib News, was not answered. None of the other members of Congress on the trips were admonished because they did not know of the sponsorships, the committee said. But all were ordered to repay the cost of the trips, about $11,800 in total. The others were Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan; Donald M. Payne of New Jersey; and Delegate Donna Christensen of the Virgin Islands. All five are Democrats. While Mr. Rangel characterized the report as mildly critical, it brought a quick response from Republicans, who have repeatedly called for Mr. Rangel to step down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax policy. “In this time of great economic uncertainty, struggling middle-class Americans deserve better than to have a tax cheat chairing a powerful Congressional committee that directly impacts the financial livelihoods of millions of hard-working people,” said Ken Spain, the communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee . An outside watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , said it did not understand how Mr. Rangel could be rebuked while the other lawmakers were not. “Each and every member of Congress present was equally as culpable as Representative Rangel, and all should be held to the same standard,” said Melanie Sloan, director of the group. The ethics inquiry about Mr. Rangel began in September 2008, after reports that included assertions that he was renting four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at a price well below market value, despite rules forbidding House members from accepting gifts worth more than $50. The inquiry — which also included an investigation into whether he improperly used his office to provide legislative favors for an oil drilling company that pledged a $1 million donation for an academic center named for Mr. Rangel — later expanded after questions were raised about unreported taxable income the congressman received from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Rangel did not take questions at the news conference and did not respond to a question about whether he would step down from his committee post. There was no immediate reaction from the House Democratic leadership about the report. But the ethics finding comes at an important moment for Democrats, since they are trying to push ahead with their stalled health care measure and Mr. Rangel’s committee would play a central role in the final process. | Rangel Charles B;Harlem (NYC);Ethics;House Committee on Ways and Means;House of Representatives;Rangel;Rangel |
ny0073212 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2015/03/25 | China Executes 3 Over Deadly Knife Attack at Train Station in 2014 | BEIJING — A provincial court in southwestern China announced on Tuesday that the authorities had executed three men for carrying out a knife attack last year on civilians in a crowded train station in which 31 people were killed and 141 wounded. The court, in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, said on its microblog that the men were Iskandar Ehet, Turgun Tohtunyaz and Hasayn Muhammad, which are ethnic Uighur names. Officials had said an eight-person group was responsible for the attack; four were shot dead at the scene and the others were arrested. One female attacker, Patigul Tohti, is serving a life sentence, according to official news reports. She was pregnant at the time of her capture and so was spared the death sentence, which was imposed on the three remaining men after a quick trial in Kunming last September. Many Chinese equated the killings to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington. The United States State Department condemned the Kunming attack as an act of terrorism. The assault took place last March during a period when violence between Uighurs and ethnic Han, the dominant group in China, had been on the rise in the far western region of Xinjiang. The Uighurs, a mostly Sunni Muslim group, consider part of that region their homeland. The Kunming attack was shocking to many Chinese because it took place in southwest China, far from Xinjiang and in a corner of the nation where few people had worried about the possibility of domestic terrorism. | China;Uyghur;Capital punishment;Murders and Homicides;Terrorism;Kunming;Han Chinese |
ny0291670 | [
"sports"
]
| 2016/01/15 | Officials Accused of Extortion to Clear Athletes Who Doped | International sports officials have occasionally run afoul of their own rules and even the law over the years, from the Olympic officials caught accepting bribes to award the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City, to the soccer officials who were more recently accused of accepting bribes related to TV contracts and World Cup bids. But perhaps a new low for sports officials has been reached in track and field: Officials are accused of blackmailing some athletes who failed drug tests and choosing not to discipline runners who were suspected of doping. The accusations were laid out in an 89-page report released on Thursday by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Unlike most sports scandals in the past that involved top officials, this one touches the field of play. The leaders of track and field’s global governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, allowed athletes who had used banned substances to continue competing in major events, according to the report. “It’s not just a bunch of people sitting at a table passing money to each other,” said Richard W. Pound, a lead author of the report. “This actually affects the outcome of competition.” The report provided few specific details of individual athletes and competitions they participated in after doping suspicions arose. Liliya Shobukhova, a Russian distance runner who won three Chicago Marathon titles, was cited by name. She was among those extorted, according to the report. After her name appeared on a list of 23 Russian athletes with suspicious test results in 2011, officials told her to make three payments of nearly $200,000 each in order to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Image Sebastian Coe, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, in 2015. Credit Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto Agency Such shakedowns, the report said, were not limited to Ms. Shobukhova, nor to Russian athletes. Asli Cakir Alptekin, a middle-distance runner from Turkey, also paid bribes to officials in late 2012, hoping to keep the gold medal she won at the London Olympics. Track’s top officials fostered a culture of corruption and recruited family members to join their schemes, the commission said. Among those implicated in the report are the I.A.A.F.’s longtime president, Lamine Diack of Senegal, and its former treasurer, Valentin Balakhnichev of Russia. High-ranking advisers, including a doctor once in charge of policing doping violations, were also cited. Mr. Diack, who was arrested in France late last year in connection with the commission’s inquiry, in one instance advised a lawyer that he needed to consult the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, who had become a friend, before processing the doping violations of nine Russian athletes. Mr. Diack is suspected by French prosecutors of having accepted more than $1 million in bribes to cover up positive drug tests. Mr. Diack presided over the I.A.A.F. for 16 years, hiring his two sons as consultants and drawing them into his schemes, the inquiry found. Mr. Balakhnichev, too, installed his son as an I.A.A.F. employee in Moscow. Suspicions of bribery related to television broadcast rights and International Olympic Committee votes also surfaced in the group’s investigation. According to the report, Mr. Diack supported Japan’s bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics because it paid $4 million to $5 million in sponsorship money to the I.A.A.F. Tokyo was ultimately selected to host the 2020 Games. Describing the corruption as “embedded” in the organization, the report said: “It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own,” adding, “It is increasingly clear that far more I.A.A.F. staff knew about the problems than has currently been acknowledged.” The first part of the group’s inquiry concluded in November, with a report that accused Russia of a state-sponsored doping program . Those findings prompted track and field’s governing body to suspend Russia from global competition, jeopardizing its participation in this summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The second report, released Thursday , shifted attention from Russia to the ruling body that investigators said had enabled it. The Olympic body said Thursday that it planned to study the report and act as necessary. Last November, after the release of the commission’s first report foreshadowing what could come, the I.O.C. suspended Mr. Diack. In a statement Thursday, the I.A.A.F. said that it accepted the “extreme gravity” of the report’s findings, noting that weak governance had allowed “individuals at the head of a previous regime” to act poorly. The report raised questions about both past leaders of track and field and the sport’s celebrated current leader, Sebastian Coe, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who was in charge of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Although Thursday’s report said members of the I.A.A.F.’s council “could not have been unaware” of the alleged schemes as they occurred, Mr. Pound emphasized at a news conference in Munich that he believed the organization’s current leader, Mr. Coe, had not been a part of any wrongdoing and had not known about it. Mr. Coe, who was vice president to Mr. Diack for seven years, called the corruption “totally abhorrent,” adding, “We cannot change the past, but I am determined that we will learn from it and will not repeat its mistakes.” Authorities have reacted to the commission’s yearlong inquiry. In addition to Mr. Diack’s arrest, Habib Cisse, Mr. Diack’s legal adviser, and Gabriel Dollé, a former director of the I.A.A.F.’s antidoping division, are under criminal investigation in France. None are currently working for the I.A.A.F. French authorities are continuing their investigation into the matter, they said Thursday. Interpol, the international police organization, is also leading a continuing global inquiry. The organization has put out a wanted notice for one of Mr. Diack’s sons, Papa Massata Diack, who worked as a marketing consultant. Last week, the I.A.A.F. announced it had barred him from any future work in track and field. Mr. Coe has recognized in recent weeks that the sport and his organization are in crisis. Last week, perhaps acting pre-emptively, he announced that he had hired a team of outside lawyers and accountants to conduct an internal investigation at the I.A.A.F. He said he planned to institute stricter organizational controls and double the antidoping budget by midyear. The three-person commission that wrote Thursday’s report was created in December 2014. It consisted of Mr. Pound, founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency; Richard H. McLaren, a Canadian lawyer; and Günter Younger, the head of cybercrime for the police in the German state Bavaria. The commission’s investigation was inspired by reports from the German public broadcaster ARD, which released a documentary in December 2014 focused on doping in Russian athletics. On Thursday, the commission focused on what it called a corrupt administration. “You’ve got to have 21st-century governance,” Mr. Pound said, “even if it’s an organization that’s 19th century in origin.” | World Anti-Doping Agency;International Assn of Athletics Federations;Doping;Track and field;Extortion and Blackmail;Corruption |
ny0144626 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2008/10/21 | Gene Hickerson, Cleveland Browns Hall of Famer, Dies at 73 | BEREA, Ohio (AP) — Gene Hickerson, the Cleveland Browns ’ Hall of Fame right guard whose blocking helped Jim Brown, Leroy Kelly and Bobby Mitchell make the shrine, died Monday. He was 73. Joe Horrigan, a spokesman for the Hall of Fame, confirmed Hickerson’s death, saying that Hickerson’s son, Bob, had received a telephone call from the facility where his father was under care. Hickerson was Brown’s bodyguard on the field. Brown called Hickerson “the greatest downfield blocker in the history of pro football.” When Hickerson was inducted into the Hall in 2007, Brown, Kelly and Mitchell pushed his wheelchair onto the stage in Fawcett Stadium. At 6 feet 3 inches and 248 pounds, Hickerson was small by today’s gargantuan N.F.L. standards. A sixth-round draft pick from Mississippi, he used his superior speed and quickness to beat defensive linemen off the ball. Hickerson was voted to six consecutive Pro Bowls and was chosen for the league’s All-Decade team of the 1960s. The Browns never had a losing record during his 15 years with them. He retired in 1973 at 38. The Browns selected Hickerson in the same draft in which they made Brown the first selection. Hickerson played behind the former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll for one season before taking over as a starter in 1959. He broke his leg in the 1961 preseason opener, then broke the leg again later in the season while standing on the sideline. After sitting out two games in 1962, Hickerson played in 165 straight before retiring. | Football;Deaths (Obituaries);Cleveland Browns |
ny0238189 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2010/06/15 | Mineral Wealth Estimate Excites Afghan Officials | KABUL, Afghanistan — Government officials sounded headily optimistic Monday as they fielded questions from local and international reporters about a new report on the extent of Afghanistan ’s mineral wealth that suggests considerable potential for products other than opium, which until now has been the country’s most lucrative export. The report, produced by the American military and the United States Geological Survey , found that Afghanistan had at least $1 trillion in mineral wealth. In a news conference primarily with Afghan reporters, President Hamid Karzai ’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, called the report “the best news we have had over many years in Afghanistan.” “The Afghan government is actively looking to its Ministry of Mines, to its Ministry of Commerce and to other entities in the Afghan government to start to bring these to the benefit of the Afghan people,” he said. As they waited to hear Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, some Afghan reporters excitedly calculated among themselves how much each Afghan would theoretically get if the mineral treasure trove were divided equally. Assuming the $1 trillion valuation and Afghanistan’s population of 29 million, that would give each Afghan man, woman and child $34,482.76. Bidding for rights to explore the reserves could begin in as little as six months, said Jawad Omar, spokesman for the Mines Ministry . The minister is expected to give a detailed news conference on the report this week. According to the report, which was described Monday in The New York Times, Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in mineral deposits that have yet to be unearthed. It is a potential income source so vast that if it were tapped and the wealth handled in a way to benefit the whole population, the country could be transformed. It would also turn Afghanistan into a mining center. That would, however, require a substantial change in the country’s circumstances, since many of the reserves were found in politically unstable areas, said Mr. Omar, the Mines Ministry spokesman. “Mining is not like a shop that you can open and immediately take advantage of,” he said, adding that it would most likely take 5 to 10 years before the country could begin to use those reserves. “Mining needs studies, infrastructure and security in order to attract the investments,” he said. American geological experts have said it could take far longer, perhaps decades, given the lack of mining infrastructure. Afghan officials said the government believed that there was even more wealth than was reflected in the minerals survey, in part because the surveyors did not examine closely the entire country and at least 30 percent of it has yet to be fully investigated. One worry, raised by reporters at the presidential spokesman’s weekly news conference on Monday, is that neighboring countries as well as the Taliban would see the wealth as a further incentive to wrest power from the current government. Or perhaps in some areas, insurgents or warlords would try to ensure that a measure of the wealth came to them. Waheed Omar, the president’s spokesman, avoided addressing the worrisome possibilities and focused on the potential benefits. “This will improve drastically the lives of the Afghan people, the economic status of the Afghan people and to see that positively, that will unite the Afghan people,” he said. | Afghanistan;Mines and Mining;Karzai Hamid;Lithium (Metal);United States Geological Survey |
ny0224129 | [
"science"
]
| 2010/11/23 | Lessons in Sumerian Math on Display | Papyrus, parchment, paper ... videotape, DVDs, Blu-ray discs — long after all these materials have crumbled to dust, the first recording medium of all, the cuneiform clay tablet of ancient Mesopotamia, may still endure. Thirteen of the tablets are on display until Dec. 17 at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World , part of New York University. Many are the exercises of students learning to be scribes. Their plight was not to be envied. They were mastering mathematics based on texts in Sumerian, a language that even at the time was long since dead. The students spoke Akkadian, a Semitic language unrelated to Sumerian. But both languages were written in cuneiform, meaning wedge-shaped, after the shape of the marks made by punching a reed into clay. Sumerian math was a sexagesimal system, meaning it was based on the number 60. The system “is striking for its originality and simplicity,” the mathematician Duncan J. Melville of St. Lawrence University, in Canton, N.Y., said at a symposium observing the opening of the exhibition. A 59 x 59 multiplication table might not seem simple, and indeed is far too large to memorize, so tablets were needed to provide essential look-up tables. But cuneiform numbers are simple to write because each is a combination of only two symbols, those for 1 and 10. Why the Sumerians picked 60 as the base of their numbering system is not known for sure. The idea seems to have developed from an earlier, more complex system known from 3200 B.C. in which the positions in a number alternated between 6 and 10 as bases. For a system that might seem even more deranged, if it weren’t so familiar, consider this way of measuring length with four entirely different bases: 12 little units, called inches, make a foot, 3 feet make a yard, and 1,760 yards make a mile. Over a thousand years, the Sumerian alternating-base method was simplified into the sexagesimal system, with the same symbol standing for 1 or 60 or 3,600, depending on its place in the number, Dr. Melville said, just as 1 in the decimal system denotes 1, 10 or 100, depending on its place. The system was later adopted by Babylonian astronomers and through them is embedded in today’s measurement of time: the “1:12:33” on a computer clock means 1 (x 60-squared) second + 12 (x 60) seconds + 33 seconds. The considerable mathematical knowledge of the Babylonians was uncovered by the Austrian mathematician Otto E. Neugebauer, who died in 1990. Scholars since then have turned to the task of understanding how the knowledge was used. The items in the exhibition are drawn from the archaeological collections of Columbia, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. They include two celebrated tablets, known as YBC 7289 and Plimpton 322, that have played central roles in the reconstruction of Babylonian math. YBC 7289 is a small clay disc containing a rough sketch of a square and its diagonals. Across one of the diagonals is scrawled 1,24,51,10 — a sexagesimal number that corresponds to the decimal number 1.41421296. Yes, you recognized it at once — the square root of 2. In fact it’s an approximation, a very good one, to the true value, 1.41421356. Below is its reciprocal, the answer to the problem, that of calculating the diagonal of a square whose sides are 0.5 units. This bears on the issue of whether the Babylonians had discovered Pythagoras’s theorem some 1,300 years before Pythagoras did. No tablet bears the well-known algebraic equation, that the squares of the two smaller sides of a right-angled triangle equal the square of the hypotenuse. But Plimpton 322 contains columns of numbers that seem to have been used in calculating Pythagorean triples, sets of numbers that correspond to the sides and hypotenuse of a right triangle, like 3, 4 and 5. Plimpton 322 is thought to have been written in Larsa, just north of Ur, some 60 years before the city was captured by Hammurabi the lawgiver in 1762 B.C. Other tablets bear lists of practical problems, like calculating the width of a canal, given information about its other dimensions, the cost of digging it and a worker’s daily wage. With some tablets the answers are stated without any explanation, giving the impression that they were for show, a possession designed to make the owner seem an academic. | Mathematics;Babylon (Iraq);Museums;Archaeology and Anthropology;Science and Technology |
ny0154592 | [
"us"
]
| 2008/01/08 | Justices Chilly to Bid to Alter Death Penalty | WASHINGTON — With conservative justices questioning their motives and liberal justices questioning their evidence, opponents of the American manner of capital punishment made little headway Monday in their effort to persuade the Supreme Court that the Constitution requires states to change the way they carry out executions by lethal injection. Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the lawyer for two inmates on Kentucky ’s death row who are facing execution by the commonly used three-chemical protocol, conceded that theoretically his clients would have no case if the first drug, a barbiturate used for anesthesia, could be guaranteed to work perfectly by inducing deep unconsciousness. But as a practical matter, Mr. Verrilli went on to say, systemic flaws in Kentucky’s procedures mean that there can be no such guarantee, and the state’s refusal to take reasonable steps to avoid the foreseeable risk of “torturous, excruciating pain” makes its use of the three-drug procedure unconstitutional. It was here that Mr. Verrilli met resistance from both sides of the court, and the closely watched case appeared to founder in this gap between theory and practice. Of the 36 states with the death penalty, all but Nebraska, which still uses only the electric chair, specify the same three-drug sequence for lethal injections. The second drug, pancuronium bromide, paralyzes the muscles with suffocating effect. The third, potassium chloride, stops the heart and brings about death, but not before causing searing pain if the anesthesia does not work as intended. The paralyzing effect of the second drug gives the inmate a peaceful appearance and, even if he is in great pain because of inadequacy of the anesthesia, renders him unable to communicate that fact. Mr. Verrilli said the risk of pain could be eliminated if medically trained personnel, rather than the prison warden, monitored the anesthesia. When Justice Antonin Scalia objected that the American Medical Association’s ethical code prohibited doctors from participating in executions, Mr. Verrilli replied, “That’s why there is another practical alternative here, which solves that problem.” The alternative, he said, is a “single dose of barbiturate, which does not require the participation of a medically trained professional.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked what the court should do “if you prevail here, and the next case is brought by someone subject to the single-drug protocol, and their claim is, ‘Look, this has never been tried.’” Further, the chief justice said, the inmate might object that death would take longer without the third drug, and would appear less “dignified” because of muscle contractions that are suppressed by the second drug. “You have objections that would apply even to your single-drug protocol,” Chief Justice Roberts said. While the chief justice’s skepticism was not unexpected, Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s response to Mr. Verrilli’s argument was a surprise. Justice Breyer told Mr. Verrilli he had read scientific articles supporting the one-drug protocol that were cited in the briefs filed by the inmates and had found them confusing. “So I’m left at sea,” he said. “I understand your contention. You claim that this is somehow more painful than some other method. But which? And what’s the evidence for that? What do I read to find it?” “I ended up thinking, of course there is a risk of human error,” Justice Breyer continued. “There is a risk of human error generally where you’re talking about the death penalty, and this may be one extra problem, one serious additional problem. But the question here is, Can we say that there is a more serious problem here than with other execution methods?” Often, such doubts about the quality of the evidence lead the court to send a case back to the lower courts for further factual development. Mr. Verrilli said that although the record was sufficiently clear for the justices to proceed, “it certainly would be a reasonable thing to do” to send the case back to the Kentucky courts, which rejected the challenge to the three-drug protocol without considering whether the availability of the single-drug alternative meant that inmates were being subjected to an unnecessary risk of pain. But Justice Scalia served notice that the conservatives on the court would be disinclined to take that route. “I’m very reluctant to send it back to the trial court so we can have a nationwide cessation of all executions while the trial court finishes its work,” he said, “and then it goes to another appeal to the State Supreme Court, and ultimately — well, it could take years.” Since September, when it agreed to hear this case, Baze v. Rees, No. 07-5439, the Supreme Court has routinely granted stays of execution to inmates challenging lethal injection. State and lower federal courts have also granted stays, leading to a de facto national moratorium that brought executions last year to the lowest level since 1994. The Supreme Court’s actions, first in agreeing to hear the case and then in granting the stays of execution, raised expectations among some opponents of the death penalty that the justices were inclined to be sympathetic to the arguments against the three-drug protocol. But as the argument proceeded on Monday, another possibility appeared at least as likely: that the votes to hear the case had come from justices who regarded the challenge as insubstantial and wanted to dispose of it before many more state and federal courts could be tied up with similar cases. If that was the case, then the subsequent stays of execution were simply routine, different only in context from the dozens of federal sentencing appeals that were held up pending the justices’ decisions in two cases on the federal sentencing guidelines. The justices disposed of all the sentencing cases in orders issued on Monday, their first day back at work since the two decisions were issued on Dec. 10. Arguing for Kentucky, Roy T. Englert Jr. said the state “has excellent safeguards in place” to ensure the adequacy of the anesthesia. Any risk that the inmate will feel pain is minimal, he told the justices. The one execution that Kentucky has carried out by lethal injection did not cause any known problems. “The record is very persuasive in your favor, I have to acknowledge,” Justice John Paul Stevens told Mr. Englert. Justice Stevens then pressed Mr. Englert to justify the state’s use of the second drug, and Mr. Englert replied that it served to protect the inmate’s dignity. The justice was unpersuaded, remaining “terribly troubled,” he said, by the fact that the drug appeared “almost totally unnecessary” except to spare witnesses the “unpleasantness” of seeing the inmate twitch or grimace. But perhaps sensing that there would not be five votes to eliminate the drug, Justice Stevens suggested a minimalist approach: rule that “Kentucky is doing an adequate job of administering this protocol” and save the underlying question of the protocol’s constitutionality for another day. | Capital Punishment;Supreme Courts (State);Kentucky;Washington (DC) |
ny0053090 | [
"sports"
]
| 2014/07/18 | And They’re Off, to Horse Racing’s Version of Summer Camp | Not many text messages bring a smile in the dog days of summer, but one I received a few weeks ago not only prompted a grin, but a shiver as well: “The MALICE left Belmont for summer camp today, when do you go?” It wasn’t code. Horse players will decipher its meaning instantly. The malice is Palace Malice, last year’s Belmont Stakes winner , and the best racehorse currently training in America. Summer camp, of course, is Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where a one-of-a-kind racetrack opens its doors Friday. When nine horses burst from the gate at 1 p.m. to a chorus of “They’re off at Saratoga,” led by the announcer Tom Durkin, summer camp will commence once again for those who cherish horses and history and the fellowship of those who enjoy the same. Last year, the Spa, as it is known, celebrated its 150th anniversary. In the past, I’ve written about the track’s founder, John Morrissey, known as Old Smoke, and have quoted Red Smith. I’ve told how my father, before he died, introduced me to the place and how I’ve tried to do the same with my son . There have been nods to the great friends made and sadly lost. The Spa may be timeless, but we aren’t. Image A horse being bathed after morning workouts at Saratoga, which celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press Horse racing is often a hard game to like, but Saratoga shows why it is an easy game to love. The sound of hooves crossing Union Avenue, the morning mist that rises from the Oklahoma training track, the steam rising from beneath the blankets of freshly bathed racehorses, are touchstones that are good for the soul. They don’t erase the sport’s myriad problems — an aging fan base, a pervasive drug culture that ravages its athletes, and a feckless leadership separated into tribes of owners, trainers and racetrack operators that, when they come together at all, resemble a circular firing squad. But Saratoga at least offers an ideal to which the sport can aspire. Joe Palmer, a Kentuckian and a well-known turf writer in the 1930s and 1940s, fell so hard for the horses that he left the University of Michigan a thesis short of a Ph.D. in contemporary literature. He perfectly summed up the Spa’s spell on horse people. “Saratoga represents a reaffirmation of racing as enjoyment, of the original forces which first called it into being,” he wrote. “You come away feeling that, well, there is going to be a good deal of concrete and gravel in your horoscope for a goodish while, but afterward there will be Saratoga again.” It’s still true in the here and now, and Saratoga’s opening trumpets the start of horse racing’s second season. Any horsemen with a fast 2-year-old will head down the road toward the 2015 Kentucky Derby by trying to win the Sanford, the Saratoga Special and the Hopeful Stakes. The older horses will take to the rich stakes races on the turf and the dirt to earn their way to November’s Breeders’ Cup World Championships. 150 Years at Saratoga Saratoga Race Course has been the site of victories by celebrated thoroughbreds like Rachel Alexandra as well as the scene of Man o’ War’s only defeat. The Travers Stakes, or Midsummer Derby, remains the summer showcase race for 3-year-olds and certainly will bring together horses familiar from the Triple Crown trail. California Chrome won’t come east, having earned some deserved rest after a hard and thrilling campaign that had even the most casual sports fans on the edges of their seats as he tried to become the 12th Triple Crown champion and the first since Affirmed in 1978. But Tonalist, the colt who denied him before a crowd of more than 102,000 at Belmont Park and a television audience of 20 million, will be. Even better is the presence of Palace Malice. He is a throwback horse managed by a throwback owner, Dogwood Stable, whose managing partner, Cot Campbell, 86, plays the game the way they did in Joe Palmer’s era. For more than 40 years, Campbell has attracted like-minded horse people — like the author of my text message, Carl Myers — who know the money is in breeding, but the real fun is in racing. At a time when lightly raced horses are rushed to stud after winning a graded stakes race as a 3-year-old, the Malice is a 4-year old who has raced 16 times, winning seven of them, including all four he has tried this year. He is versatile — winning at distances from six and half furlongs to the mile and a half Belmont. He is fast, as he demonstrated his last time out in the Metropolitan Mile, the testing all-out sprint. If all goes to plan, Palace Malice will take on all comers in the $1.5 million Whitney Handicap and then, four weeks later in August, in the Woodward. He is a racehorse from the old school who, indeed, has found the perfect summer camp. It is only right to let Joe Palmer have the final word. “I rather think that the charm of Saratoga is that it represents to those to whom racing is a way of life, something to which they may at need return,” he wrote. “It is, of course, the oldest track in America, and its ways are old-fashioned ways. After eleven months of new-fashioned ways, it is as restful as old slippers, as quiet as real joy.” | Horse racing;Saratoga NY;Saratoga Springs NY;Joe Palmer;Saratoga Race Course |
ny0106521 | [
"science"
]
| 2012/04/10 | Seeking Guidelines to Protect Fragile Titanic From Visitors | Explorers and United States government experts have put together the first comprehensive map of the Titanic’s resting place, illuminating a square mile of inky seabed as a guide to better understanding the liner’s death throes and better preserving its remains. Already, knowing the exact positions of thousands of parts, structures and artifacts has allowed the government and the International Maritime Organization to draw up recommendations for the operation of the mini-submarines that ferry tourists more than two miles down to the bottom of the North Atlantic for a glimpse of the great ship. “People have the right to see, explore and learn,” said James P. Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors the wreck. “But you want to put down guidelines like those at Gettysburg and the Acropolis, so visitors can experience it in the same way.” The Titanic went down in international waters, 380 miles off Newfoundland, so no nation has an exclusive claim to its scattered remains. In 1985, a team of American and French explorers found its wreckage upright but split into two large sections, the bow and stern about a third of a mile apart. Entrepreneurs mounted expeditions in 1987, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2004 that picked up roughly 5,500 artifacts. An American company, RMS Titanic Inc., owns the salvage rights and displays many of the artifacts in Titanic shows. On Wednesday, it plans to auction off its entire trove . Meanwhile, the tourist submarines have a history of damaging delicate artifacts and bumping into the increasingly fragile wreck, threatening to accelerate its demise. Starting in 2004, the United States sought to forge an agreement with France, Canada and Britain to find ways to protect the ship’s remains. Then, in 2010, federal experts joined with RMS Titanic on an expedition to do extensive mapping. Sonars crisscrossed the dark site, and cameras snapped 130,000 pictures, revealing much that had previously been lost to history. The technical muscle behind the effort came from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which originally helped find the doomed liner. “It’s the first bird’s-eye view of the entire site,” said David Gallo, director of special projects at Woods Hole. One revelation is that the liner broke in two near the surface and that the stern pinwheeled down through the dark waters. Judging from roiled sediments, the force of momentum kept trying to rotate the stern as it slammed into the bottom. “We can identify the big pieces, put them back together and better understand what happened,” said Paul H. Nargeolet, a French mini-sub pilot who helped lead the 2010 expedition. National Geographic magazine has posted many images from the project online, at ngm.com/titanic , including ones that allow viewers to zoom in to see individual artifacts and parts of the shipwreck up close. And on Sunday, the History Channel will broadcast a documentary featuring the project. The National Park Service is now helping to analyze the images as part of an increasingly wide effort to subject the entrepreneurial zone to the ordered thoroughness of an archaeological site that can be analyzed and preserved for future generations. “The overwhelming majority of the artifacts that we see on the bottom come from a small section where the ship disintegrated,” said David Conlin, an underwater archaeologist with the park service. “That leads to the conclusion that millions of other artifacts remain inside the bow and stern.” Dr. Delgado of NOAA said he expects the team will issue an archaeological report next year. He said it could become the basis for accelerated efforts at protection. “There’s an awful lot of stuff that’s come down in recent years — beer cans and garbage bags — plus equipment left over from various expeditions,” he said. “We wouldn’t think that was a good thing at Gettysburg,” he said of the Civil War battlefield. “With Titanic, we need the same kind of standard.” In January, the International Maritime Organization issued an advisory based on a United States Coast Guard analysis conducted in cooperation with the imaging project. It is now “strongly recommending” that vessels refrain from dumping garbage at the site or installing memorial plaques, “however well intentioned.” The advisory also designates four areas where mini-submarines can release their dive weights so the vessels can become buoyant enough to return to the surface. Dr. Delgado said the team’s analysis showed the designated drop zones to be “artifact-free — not unlike a wilderness area.” | Titanic (Ship);Shipwrecks;Submarines and Submersibles;National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;International Maritime Organization;Maps |
ny0110312 | [
"business"
]
| 2012/05/15 | Coca-Cola to Test New Sweeteners | Coca-Cola is testing a new blend of sweeteners aimed at lowering the calorie counts in sodas, following on the heels of its rival, PepsiCo , which introduced the 60-calorie Pepsi Next at the end of March. The companies are hoping to win over those consumers who want a lower-calorie soft drink but have shunned diet sodas. Coke’s new midcalorie carbonated soft drinks are going on sale in a handful of stores across the country, so few that Coca-Cola said it did not even have photographs of the new products to share. “It’s a limited test of new formulations to see if they might appeal to consumers,” said Scott Williamson, a Coca-Cola spokesman. Soda companies are experimenting as never before with new sweeteners and sweetener combinations, hoping to stem a slide in sales of carbonated beverages and combat criticism that their marquee products contribute to the nation’s obesity crisis. The trade publication Beverage Digest, which was first with the news in an e-mail to subscribers Monday morning, said the new drinks would be sold as Sprite Select and Fanta Select in Memphis, Detroit, Louisville and Atlanta, where Coca-Cola is based. The publication said its sources reported that Coke would be using a combination of sugar, the stevia-based sweetener Truvia and erythritol, a sugar alcohol that has virtually no calories and does not cause intoxication. Some of the sweeteners are already used in Coke’s Vitaminwater Zero and Pepsi’s SoBe Lifewater 0. PepsiCo uses a combination of high fructose corn syrup; aspartame; acesulfame potassium, a no-calorie sweetener; and sucralose, better known as Splenda, in Pepsi Next. Pepsi Next went on sale in a handful of markets at the end of March, and PepsiCo is so far pleased with consumer response, said Dave DeCecco, a spokesman. | Coca-Cola Company;Artificial Sweeteners;Soft Drinks;Pepsico Inc |
ny0193243 | [
"nyregion",
"long-island"
]
| 2009/02/22 | Nostalgic Exhibition Recalls Long Island Life | Stony Brook WHETHER it’s hippie-era embroidered jeans or an old Nintendo game, something in “Growing Up on Long Island,” the new exhibition at the Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages, is likely to strike a personal note for the visitor. For Joshua Ruff, the show’s curator, it’s a video clip in which a grandfather reminiscences about the many cliques at his high school, and how he didn’t fit into any of them. Mr. Ruff, 36, said his own experience was like that: “I didn’t follow any group in high school.” For Christian Routh, 27, the exhibition’s designer, it was a roomy baby buggy that brought his own West Sayville childhood most vividly to mind. His mother used one of the same style, he said, to take him to the center of town, and more recently she pushed a similar buggy to carry his young nephew along the same route. Mr. Ruff, who grew up in Ithaca, said, “The goal is to have people of all ages walk through and see something they can connect with.” The original idea was to show off the museum’s extensive collection of objects relating to children. “But we wanted it to be about more than the 19th century,” Mr. Ruff said this month as he oversaw final touches to the installation. “We also wanted to tell the baby boom story. Long Island is so iconic as a place where in the 1950s and ’60s, neighborhoods were full of children.” Mr. Ruff also wanted to bring the show into the present, to chronicle the shifts that accompanied changing demographics and technology. A pink sequined gown that Edna Vasquez of Riverhead wore this summer for her quinceañera, or 15th-birthday celebration — displayed near a 1964 bat mitzvah dress and circa-1970 patchwork jeans — helps demonstrate the Island’s growing diversity. “Each section has a juxtaposition of old and new, so people can get that it’s not just about old kids but new kids, too,” Mr. Ruff said. The bridge from old to new resonates in a dress-up area, where parents may take photos of their children wearing reproduction 19th-century clothing and later e-mail the pictures to the museum, where they’ll be shown on a monitor. Video stations throughout the exhibition show excerpts from children’s interviews with their grandparents (the source of Mr. Ruff’s connection with his own high-school experience). Another display that arcs through time is devoted to the late Constance Bannister, whose humorous baby portraits, often taken in her Syosset studio, appeared in many publications. Mr. Ruff asked Ms. Bannister’s daughter, Lynda Bannister, 51, of East Northport, to track down some of the infants for current photos and biographical sketches. Among them is Carl Schroeter, who appeared in My Baby magazine in 1951 and is now chief real estate negotiator for Nassau County and assistant chief of the Miller Place Fire Department. A section on toys and games shows how amusements became more elaborate and electronic. An 1890 hobby horse shares space with early-1900s carousel horses from Coney Island and a 1940s rifle arcade game from the former Nunley’s Amusement Park in Baldwin. A clown’s head still shuttles back and forth, but the rifle’s trigger no longer works, Mr. Ruff said, so visitors can only watch, not play. But children will be able to play with a large Mr. Potato Head magnetic board and other toys. A pair of 1980s electronic games — an Atari 2600 and a Nintendo Entertainment System — are under glass, as is a circa-1945 Erector Set with a box that says “Hello, Boys!” There’s much to be nostalgic about and much to enjoy, including a game to match current pictures of celebrities with their high school yearbook photos (Francis Ford Coppola and Andy Kaufman, both of Great Neck North; Pat Benatar of Lindenhurst; Howard Stern of South Side, in Rockville Centre; and Mariah Carey of Harborfields, in Greenlawn). Jerry Seinfeld’s detailed second-grade report card from 1962, in which his teacher wrote “Jerry doesn’t take the time to form his letters carefully,” is a gem. Death and danger, the dark sides of childhood, are here, too. A tiny coffin made around 1880 by James L. Haines, Bridgehampton overseer of the poor, sits in one corner, across from an exquisite “mourning sampler” embroidered by Mary Ann Hewlett of Great Neck soon after her 7-year-old sister, Peggy, died in 1816. An 1860 photo of children playing near the Glen Cove Starch Works highlights longstanding environmental concerns. Respiratory ailments and deaths of more than 50 children were blamed on the plant’s runoff into Glen Cove Creek, according to a wall label in the exhibition, but cleanup of the creek did not begin until the late 20th century. A sad-eyed photo of Katie Beers, the 10-year-old rescued in 1993 from imprisonment in a bunker under the garage of a Bay Shore man, illustrates another danger. A section on schools includes lockers from Lindenhurst and a teacher’s desk that Walt Whitman used when he taught in Woodbury — not happily, he wrote to a friend in 1840, calling the place “Wood-bury-me.” This area also shows the ways children were kept out of school. Many were immigrant or African-American children who toiled all day at the Duryea Starch Works in Glen Cove, the Setauket Rubber Factory or the West Neck Brickyard of Huntington in the late 1800s and early 1900s, or who picked potatoes or cranberries until as late as the 1970s, Mr. Ruff said. “Long Island has been a great but an imperfect place to grow up for generations,” Mr. Ruff said. “The exhibit will hopefully be both a lot of fun and food for thought.” | Art;Long Island Museum of American Art History and Carriages;Long Island (NY) |
ny0207357 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2009/06/10 | Reyes’s Status Still Unclear | Jose Reyes said he did not know when he would play again. He was at Citi Field on Tuesday to receive treatment for his ailing right hamstring, and said he would continue working out in New York through the weekend. He added that he did not know his schedule after that. “They haven’t said anything about time,” Reyes said before the Mets ’ game against the Phillies. “They just said that when I’m good to go, I’ll play.” Reyes will not play until after going to Florida, where he will test his hamstring in minor league games. That means he is at least another few weeks away. Several setbacks have slowed his recovery from tendinitis behind his right calf, and he sustained a “small tear” of his right hamstring tendon last Wednesday while running out a ground ball in an extended spring training game. Reyes said he felt the sensation in a different spot of his leg, a bit higher behind the knee than his calf discomfort. “After the first couple of steps, I feel like, you know when you touch electricity?” Reyes said. “I feel that in my leg.” Every time Reyes has tried to run harder, he has aggravated the soreness or reinjured himself. The Mets are approaching his injury conservatively but treating it differently, with an innovative procedure in which some of his blood is reinjected by the affected area. Reyes said he had had the treatment, called platelet-rich plasma therapy, once, and said he was starting to feel better. That therapy is complemented by more traditional methods, like riding an exercise bike, walking on a treadmill and lifting weights. WRIGHT ENDS STREAK A few hours after playing down comments by Chipper Jones that he was frustrated by Citi Field’s cavernous dimensions, David Wright ended a streak of 100 at-bats without a homer by crushing a bases-empty blast into the left-center-field bleachers in the second inning. Jones told Sirius XM Radio on Monday that, during the Braves’ series at Citi Field last month: “David Wright would run by me and go, ‘Nice park.’ He’s a little frustrated with it.” Wright said Tuesday: “That was me having a good time with Chipper because I saw the look on his face after, you know, hitting 800 feet worth of fly balls and no home runs.” OUTFIELD CAROUSEL TURNS Ryan Church started in right field Tuesday, but he may not get another start this series. With Jerry Manuel and the Mets committed to playing 20-year-old Fernando Martinez, who also hits left-handed, Church’s playing time hinges on his game-to-game performance. Church is a superior defender to Martinez and has more experience against left-handed pitching in the major leagues, which is relevant because the Phillies are starting three lefties this series. But the Mets also do not want to hinder Martinez’s development by using him off the bench. The right-handed-hitting Gary Sheffield is expected to start in left field every game this series. “It just depends on how they’re swinging individually, really,” Manuel said. “That’s what it all comes down to. If you see a guy puts together some good at-bats — not necessarily good hits — but puts together some good at-bats, you feel you see some life in his bat, you give him a shot the next day.” This approach is hardly different from how Manuel has handled Church all season, starting him some days, benching him others, as he tries to alleviate an outfield logjam. Church, at least outwardly, has handled everything professionally. But he noted that since coming off the disabled list Saturday, he had not spoken to Manuel about his anticipated playing time. “In the past, that hasn’t been good,” Church said. All the Mets’ outfielders are healthy now, and by playing Church, the Mets may also be showcasing him for a potential trade this season. He could be used to acquire starting pitching, a versatile right-handed hitter or even bullpen help, should they decide to turn over right field to Martinez sooner than expected. PRESENT OVER FUTURE The Mets were not complaining about not making their first draft selection Tuesday until pick No. 72. They forfeited their first-round choice in December when they signed Francisco Rodriguez, who in converting all 15 save chances has kept the Mets within striking distance of first-place Philadelphia. Last season, the Phillies’ superior bullpen, led by Brad Lidge, boosted them past the Mets and eventually to a World Series title. Lidge did not blow a save chance last season, but he has struggled this year, and the Phillies placed him on the disabled list Tuesday with a sprained right knee. Lidge is 0-3 with a 7.27 earned run average in 28 games and has blown 6 of 19 save opportunities, including consecutive chances Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles in games that the Phillies went on to lose. A few Phillies seemed surprised that Lidge, bothered by inflammation in the knee last month, went on the disabled list because they said he had hardly mentioned being hurt. Setup reliever Ryan Madson is expected to take over closing duties from Lidge. PUTZ HAS SURGERY J. J. Putz had surgery Tuesday to remove a bone spur and bone fragments from his right elbow. He is expected to resume throwing in about six weeks and to rejoin the Mets in 10 to 12 weeks. | Baseball;New York Mets;Reyes Jose |
ny0087073 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2015/07/30 | Junior Seau’s Family Silenced by a Policy Not Found at Other Halls of Fame | When three dead men — an umpire, a team owner and a player — were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013, relatives delivered speeches at the enshrinement ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y. And last year, when Coach Pat Burns was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, his son, Jason, and his widow, Line Gignac Burns, spoke poignantly. “Healthy Pat,” Line Burns said, taught his teams “how to win: tall, proud, intense, true.” She continued, “Unhealthy Pat taught me, our family and friends how to live and how to survive: tall, proud, intense, true.” But when the Pro Football Hall of Fame holds its annual induction ceremony on Aug. 8 in Canton, Ohio, the family of Junior Seau, a former linebacker who committed suicide in 2012, will not address the audience as he is honored. Image Family members of Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, from left: Jerry Watkins, the great-grandson of Deacon White; Anne Vernon, the great-grandniece of Jacob Ruppert; and Dennis McNamara, grandnephew of Hank O'Day. Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press Seau had wanted his daughter, Sydney, to give the speech introducing him if he were ever enshrined in the Hall. But a rule enacted in 2010 ended the practice of letting relatives or close associates speak because, a Hall spokesman said last week, their remarks often repeated what was said in the videos highlighting the inductees’ careers. After his death, Seau was found to have a traumatic brain injury that doctors believe was brought on by hits to his head. His family later filed a lawsuit against the N.F.L. Sydney Seau said last week that it was “painful” knowing that she could not speak for her father and that she had no intention of using her speech, were she able to make one, as a platform to discuss the lawsuit or his death. The policy of the football Hall — which will welcome seven new members in addition to Junior Seau — differs from the open door to family members at the baseball and hockey Halls. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame once permitted relatives to speak for dead inductees but switched in 2012 to allow family members to deliver videotaped messages shown at the annual ceremony in Springfield, Mass. “Our classes have gotten much bigger — we have a class of 11 enshrinees this year,” said Paul Lambert, the basketball Hall’s vice president for enshrinement services. “The show had gotten longer, and this gave us a chance to have some flow.” Image Jason Burns, center, accepting a Hockey Hall of Fame blazer for his father, Pat Burns, who died in 2010, during the Legends Classic Game in Toronto last year. Credit Bruce Bennett/Getty Images The family of one inductee — John Isaacs, a star guard in the 1930s and ’40s for all-black teams like the New York Renaissance — will speak on tape for him on Sept. 11. The varying sizes of Hall of Fame classes do pose challenges for the organizations and for the television networks that present the inductions. New members of the Halls are frequently asked to keep their speeches to manageable lengths to help the networks conclude the programs in their allotted times. But new Hall of Famers frequently have so much to say and so many people to thank that they are expected to exceed their time limits. “We realize this is their moment, maybe the last milestone of their career,” said Kelly Masse, the director of corporate and media relations for the Hockey Hall of Fame. The networks that show the inductions in the United States are owned by the leagues, which take pride in their storied players. Had Sydney Seau been allowed by the football Hall to speak at her father’s induction, any overrun past the scheduled conclusion at 11 p.m. Eastern would bump into “NFL Total Access,” a nightly studio news show. Baseball’s induction ceremony on Sunday went about a half-hour past its planned 4:30 p.m. ending on MLB Network. Image Vicki Santo, the widow of the Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ron Santo, speaking at his 2012 induction ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y. Credit Jim McIsaac/Getty Images Relatives’ speeches are typically different from those delivered by inductees, who tend to relay tearful expressions of gratitude, funny anecdotes about teammates and personal insights about how they developed as athletes. Family members frequently provide a perspective that would be lost if they were prevented from speaking. In 2006, Dan Brooks spoke at the Hockey Hall of Fame for his father, Herb, the coach of the United States hockey team that won the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. After enumerating some of his father’s many principled decisions, Dan Brooks said, “To me, he was a hero well beyond those two weeks in Lake Placid.” In 2012, Vicki Santo spoke for her husband, Ron Santo, the popular Chicago Cubs third baseman of the 1960s and early ’70s, who had died about a year before he was elected. She gave a speech that focused on her husband’s struggles with juvenile diabetes, a condition he had concealed for most of his career, “afraid they’d take baseball away from him.” She added, “On a given day, he was as much guinea pig as he was a baseball player.” During games, she explained, he determined how much insulin he needed to inject or when he needed a candy bar to increase his blood-sugar level. Image Steve Towns, left, and Fritz Pollard III before their grandfather, Fritz Pollard, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 2005. Credit Tony Dejak/Associated Press Well into his postretirement career as a Cubs announcer, Santo had both legs amputated. The next year, when the umpire Hank O’Day was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, his great-nephew, Dennis McNamara, called him a “mythic figure in our family” who was known for his honesty and integrity. O’Day’s example “guided me as a policeman” in Chicago for 29 years, McNamara said. Unless the football Hall changes its policy to let Sydney Seau speak, she and other people who were close to her father will be heard only in a video about his career that will precede his induction. The Hall put out a statement on Saturday saying that Seau’s relatives “understand and fully support the Hall’s policy,” but a family lawyer disputed that . Ten years ago, when relatives of deceased players still spoke at the football induction, Steve Towns represented his grandfather, Fritz Pollard, one of the first two black players in the N.F.L. and its first black coach. Towns offered the sort of dramatic moment that only a relative could provide in Canton. “Grandpa, the fans are cheering,” he said before a crowd of 22,000 at what was then called Fawcett Stadium. “From now on, people will know your legacy in pro football. You more than earned your place. “Rest in peace, Grandpa,” Towns said. “Rest in peace.” | Football;Pro Football Hall of Fame;Junior Seau;Baseball;Baseball Hall of Fame;Pat Burns;Ron Santo;Hank O'Day |
ny0042477 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2014/05/10 | U.K. Finds Way Out of Impasse on Ties to E.U. | LONDON — If he wins re-election next year, Prime Minister David Cameron has said he plans to renegotiate British ties to the European Union, then hold a referendum in 2017 on whether to stay in the bloc. But those plans hit a roadblock when Mr. Cameron called for a rewrite of the Union’s governing treaty — a tricky political process many other European nations want to avoid. Now an influential group of country’s Euroskeptics, whose support Mr. Cameron needs, has pointed to a way out of this impasse by accepting that an early treaty change is neither likely nor necessary in order to change Britain’s ties to the European Union. “We are not going to get full-blown treaty change on all these things by 2017,” said Tim Loughton, a senior member in a group of Euroskeptic lawmakers within Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party called the Fresh Start Project. “What we can do is a whole load of things that do not require treaty change, and there would be an understanding that treaty change will have to come in time.” The shift is significant because Mr. Cameron made his referendum pledge under pressure from Euroskeptics within his party and after electoral gains by the upstart U.K. Independence Party, which wants to quit the European Union. Mr. Cameron knows that after any renegotiation of membership terms, he would need the support of the Euroskeptics to mount a convincing campaign to stay in the Union. After holding talks with Continental politicians, Mr. Loughton and his colleagues have accepted that treaty change is off the agenda in the short term. Instead, Britain’s renegotiation could conclude with a political accord on the understanding that it would be written into the treaty the next time it is revised. “The political cycle is difficult,” Mr. Loughton said in an interview this past week, adding that France and Germany are due to hold domestic elections in 2017. “What they don’t want is to be mired in treaty change things which would dominate their election campaigns.” Asked if revamped British membership terms are possible without a treaty change by 2017, Chris Heaton-Harris, another prominent member of Fresh Start, replied: “The simple answer is yes.” Mr. Heaton-Harris said several measures “which would fundamentally change our relations with Europe” could be achieved without treaty change. Others “wouldn’t have to be enshrined in the treaty” by 2017, he added, but the treaty change “would have to be coming.” Mats Persson, director of Open Europe, a research institute favoring looser British ties to the bloc, said that the Conservative Party’s debate has adopted “a more pragmatic tone.” While big obstacles remain, a successful revamp of British membership terms is “an attainable goal,” he said. Mr. Cameron has not publicly abandoned his call for a new treaty though he did not mention it in a newspaper article last month which outlined some of his renegotiation objectives. His main goals include strengthening rules to allow a number of national parliaments — collectively — to block European legislation; restricting some welfare entitlements for immigrants from other European countries; and ending the European Union’s pledge for an “ever closer union” (at least for countries like Britain that are outside the bloc’s single currency zone). Getting agreement on the first of those objectives — giving national parliaments a “red card” to stop European legislation — may be the most difficult task. However, there is support from countries including Germany for restrictions on welfare entitlements for migrants, a move that does not contradict the right of Europeans to move between nations. “Sorting out benefit tourism isn’t a challenge to free movement,” Mr. Heaton-Harris said. Ending the bloc’s commitment to “ever closer union” might also be possible, judging by discussions over the preamble of a draft constitution for the European Union where such a move was contemplated. The draft document was ultimately rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Mr. Cameron also wants guarantees that protect countries, like Britain, that stay outside the euro zone. His government has already negotiated safeguards over banking supervision to prevent nations inside the euro zone from caucusing and outvoting those outside. “If you can extend the safeguard to the single market, so that the euro zone cannot outvote those outside, that would be a big win,” Mr. Heaton-Harris said. He added that, while he would vote “no” in a referendum on British membership in the European Union today, he could “certainly see a scenario where we get a deal that I believe is good enough for my country to stay in.” | Great Britain;David Cameron;EU |
ny0151007 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
]
| 2008/08/27 | Data Points to Downturn in Germany, With a Ripple Effect Feared | FRANKFURT — The odds of a mild recession in Germany rose significantly Tuesday, as data showed the outlook for business had plunged to its lowest level since a downturn in 1993. The euro subsequently hit a six-month low against the dollar, amid worries of a ripple effect across the Continent. A separate survey showed that the mood of German consumers has darkened as well. As such, economists said, the risks were growing that the German economy, the largest in Europe, would shrink for a second consecutive quarter. That would meet the common definition of a recession. “We are probably going to get a technical recession,” said Andreas Rees, chief Germany economist at UniCredit in Munich. “It’ll be close but it’s likely.” Julian Callow, chief Europe economist at Barclays Capital in London, said that the reading raised recession warnings for the entire euro zone. The German corporate sector, flush from steady exports, had been a stalwart of the 15-country region. “This is a bombshell,” Mr. Callow said, “because in one fell swoop it went down far more than we would have expected.” The European Central Bank is avoiding any signals that it might lower interest rates to help spur growth despite widespread weakness. Inflation is running at a 4 percent annual rate because of high energy and food costs, and the bank is leery about easing credit until prices stabilize. Figures to be released Thursday are expected to show that inflation is beginning to ease in the euro area. But most economists do not expect it to re-enter the central bank’s comfort zone of just below 2 percent until mid-2009. In Germany, the Ifo index, compiled by the Ifo Institute in Munich, showed the lowest reading for business confidence in the last three years. A crucial component of the index, which measures expectations for the future, showed a level not seen since Germany tumbled into recession in the early 1990s, after reunification. GfK, a German consumer research organization, offered another bit of grim news with word that household confidence had also dropped. The German statistical office, Destatis, also said that private consumption shrank 0.5 percent in the second quarter, the third consecutive contraction. The reluctance of German consumers to spend, despite a solid job market, has emerged as a serious problem for an economy that profited immensely from global growth through its exports. But the steady rise of energy and food prices not only reduced buying power, it shocked Germans into hoarding cash. After declining somewhat in recent years, the country’s unusually high savings rate is now rising. The German economy minister, Michael Glos, said that consumer spending was turning out to be “the Achilles’ heel” of the country’s economy. Analysts cautioned against reading too much into the new data since unemployment was still falling in Germany. Also, growth figures tend to be revised upward later. “The right question is: ‘Do we get a full-blown recession?’ ” said Elga Bartsch, an economist with Morgan Stanley in London. “The answer is probably no.” Mr. Rees at UniCredit said that one reason Germans could be fairly confident that growth would resume next year was the careful investment planning of its companies. Previous cycles have seen heavy overinvestment followed by a sudden pullback and job cuts. But this time, German manufacturers have been careful to build just enough production capacity to meet demand. Still, the data confirmed that slowing global growth is replacing energy prices and the strong euro as the worst headache for German companies. On Tuesday, the euro fell to $1.465 against the dollar, its lowest point since February, while oil prices were around $116, far off their summer peaks. But with growth slowing in Spain, France and Italy — Germany’s main export markets — business sentiment has continued to suffer. “The cyclical downturn in the most important euro countries is really drowning out the upside of the weaker euro and cheaper oil,” Mr. Rees said. | Germany;Economic Conditions and Trends;Recession and Depression;Euro (Currency) |
ny0260874 | [
"us"
]
| 2011/06/10 | New ‘Ring’ Straddles Two Visions | “The Ring of the Nibelung,” Richard Wagner’s monumental, four-part opera cycle chronicling the battle between gods, heroes and monsters over an all-powerful, magical ring wrought out of a mystical hoard of gold, is opera’s answer to extreme sports. The grand scale and huge costs involved in staging the masterwork provide the ultimate test for opera companies. With a budget of $23 million and 415 people involved in the production , San Francisco Opera is doing the equivalent of a base jump off Coit Tower with its current version of the 17-hour epic. And in a time of fiscal crisis for opera companies nationwide, San Francisco Opera’s decision to mix traditional and experimental production elements — thereby not committing to either — represents the calculated risk of the whole endeavor. “The Ring” has the potential to draw large crowds and make headlines; this production has already nearly sold out its run at the War Memorial Opera House, which goes through July 3. But San Francisco Opera is struggling to fill a $7 million budget shortfall and had to create the final part of the cycle, “Götterdämmerung,” alone when its co-producer, the Washington National Opera, encountered financial difficulties. “When the Washington National Opera pulled out about 18 months ago, we thought we might not be able to complete the cycle,” said David Gockley, the general director of the San Francisco Opera, who is mounting “The Ring” for the first time in his career. “But we were already in it up to our necks with ticket sales and contributions and would have lost more by canceling.” The very nature of putting on the epic “Ring” serves to announce an opera company’s creative values. There are some “Rings” that favor anachronism, like Stephen Wadsworth’s 2000 production for the Seattle Opera (scheduled to be remounted in 2013) with its robed characters cavorting amid picturesque pastoral landscapes. Meanwhile, the neon light-gashed, abstract version for the Los Angeles Opera in 2010, directed by Achim Freyer, exists at the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum. The San Francisco Opera’s take on “The Ring” tries a multifaceted middle ground. This approach reflects the populist vision of its general director, whose tenure since 2006 has combined bringing in big stars like Placido Domingo and instituting simulcasts at the ballpark with occasional world premieres, like the coming opera about the Sept. 11 attacks, “Heart of a Soldier.” In contrast to the company’s solidly traditional previous production of “The Ring,” in 1999, which sought inspiration from the lushly Romantic landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, the director Francesca Zambello’s relatively low-tech, character-driven new cycle — featuring set designs by Michael Yeargan and conducting by Donald Runnicles — has elements that are at once traditional and contemporary. The San Francisco Opera is trying to help modern audiences connect with Wagner’s complex work. “You can see this ‘Ring’ and get right into the mythology of it,” Mr. Gockley said. “It creates a bridge to the mythology that’s more familiar to our audiences today than the lofty gods with horns and spears.” Actually, Wotan, the head deity (played by the American baritone Mark Delavan) does carry a spear on stage, proving that some traditions die hard. But Ms. Zambello’s “Ring” breaks with custom and connects with audiences through its innovative use of multiple settings. Instead of unfolding in one time and locale, the action occurs over four distinct periods of American history. “Das Rheingold,” (which received a “preview” run in 2008) takes place in the Gold Rush era, partly in a cavernous gold mine where the power-hungry dwarf Alberich holds sway. For “Die Walküre” (which audiences saw in preview last season), the story moves to the boom-and-bust years of the 1920s and ’30s with Wotan presiding over a vast corporate empire. “Siegfried” picks up the story in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. “Götterdämmerung” is staged in a dystopian future. “It’s like ‘Mad Max,’ Ayn Rand and ‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’ rolled into one,” Ms. Zambello said. But the overall feel, with the emphasis on psychological realism, is one of approachability. Unlike the Metropolitan Opera’s in-progress production of “The Ring” directed by Robert Lepage, which has so far alienated many audience members by emphasizing cumbersome design concepts over the storytelling, Ms. Zambello “tells the story straight,” said Steven Sokolow, president of the Wagner Society of Northern California , one of around 150 fan clubs dedicated to the composer around the world. In this “Ring,” little separates gods from humans because of the intimate interactions between the characters. Wotan and his wife, Fricka (Elizabeth Bishop), go from being the perfect romantic couple in “Das Rheingold” to sworn enemies in “Die Walküre.” And the top god relates to Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme) like a soccer dad chastising his offspring for missing practice. But trying to be all things to all people comes with drawbacks. The production is unlikely to attract many “Ring” newbies with its hefty $120 price tag. And while bold approaches to “The Ring” often garner criticism, they also get people talking: opera buffs are still arguing over Patrice Chéreau’s 1976 version set in the Industrial Revolution. Ms. Zambello’s middle-of-the-road production may satisfy audiences and opera accountants today, but as any X-Games gold medalist knows, with less risk comes less reward. | Opera;California;Finances |
ny0283113 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2016/07/07 | Strikes and Protests Bring Zimbabwe’s Capital to a Halt | HARARE, Zimbabwe — Business in Zimbabwe’s capital and other cities ground to a halt on Wednesday as Zimbabweans stayed home to protest the government’s handling of the deteriorating economy, the latest sign of growing popular discontent with President Robert Mugabe’s 36-year rule. In two poor townships in the capital, Harare, residents barricaded roads with rocks as they engaged in running battles with the police, who responded with tear gas. In central Harare, scores of police officers in riot gear were guarding Africa Unity Square, a popular gathering place, and other strategic spots. But much of the business district remained deserted, with most stores and banks choosing to close for the day. The stay-away day, as it was called, was one of the biggest popular protests in years against the 92-year-old Mr. Mugabe , whose increasing frailty has fueled political infighting and instability in this Southern African nation. It followed weeks of mounting popular anger as the government has struggled to pay civil servants, who are the biggest work force in Zimbabwe’s formal economy. On Wednesday, many civil servants, who have not been paid their June salaries, reported to work after being threatened with dismissal. But most public school teachers and government health care workers, who began striking a day earlier, did not show up for work. Police officers, members of the military and prison workers are the only government employees who have collected their June salaries. But in an indication of the government’s strained finances, they received their paychecks two weeks late. Mr. Mugabe and his highest-ranking officials met on Wednesday to discuss a response, though some officials played down the protest’s significance in public comments or on social media. Still, access to social media like WhatsApp and Twitter was cut off for several hours on Wednesday morning. The government agency that oversees the country’s cellphone providers issued a warning against what it described as “gross irresponsible use of social media and telecommunication services.” While not addressing the disruption in service on Wednesday, the agency said that those using social media to spread “subversive” messages would be disconnected and arrested. Supa Mandiwanzira, the minister for information, communication, and technology and courier services, denied that the government had interfered with the social media platforms. “We cannot shut down social media in complicity with those calling for the shutdown of the country,” Mr. Mandiwanzira said in an interview. Leaders of the protest, including members of civil society organizations and business groups, have used social media to organize. “We have called for a complete shutdown of the country today in protest of the government that has completely failed to look after its citizenry‚ and failed to listen to the demands of its citizenry‚” said the Rev. Evan Mawarire, a Pentecostal pastor who rose to national prominence in the past month after starting a Twitter campaign against the government under the hashtag #ThisFlag . Linda Masarira, the leader of the Zimbabwe Activist Alliance, an umbrella group that recently occupied Africa Unity Square in central Harare for several days and helped organize Wednesday’s protest, said: “What is happening now shows clearly that people here are tired of Mugabe’s rule, and that is why they heeded calls to stay away from work. That is why you see market stalls across the city here virtually empty.” In recent weeks, popular frustration has grown as the troubled economy has begun directly affecting people’s daily lives. Banks have run out of cash — Zimbabwe has used the American dollar as its currency since 2009 — as people hoard money or take it out of the country because of fear over the country’s political situation. Violent protests took place near Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa after Mr. Mugabe’s government issued restrictions on the import of certain foreign goods in a bid to stimulate the domestic economy. The move angered traders and many Zimbabweans living in South Africa who ship food and other goods to relatives back home. Other protesters have targeted one of Mr. Mugabe’s vice presidents, Phelekezela Mphoko, for staying at a luxury hotel for more than a year at a cost of more than $1 million. Mr. Mphoko has refused to move into a government-appointed residence because, according to the local news media, it is not to his taste. Government officials described the protesters on Wednesday as criminals and said they were backed by opposition parties. Opposition parties, and even some of Mr. Mugabe’s former allies, have expressed support or sympathy for the protesters, who do not appear to have political links. Christopher Mutsvangwa, chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, who was dismissed as Mr. Mugabe’s minister of war veterans in March, said he understood the protesters’ motivation. “People are frustrated and angry,” he said. “They see no prospect for prosperity.” | Harare;Civil Unrest;Robert Mugabe;Social Media;Zimbabwe;Economy;Strikes Labor;Wages and salaries;Censorship |
ny0251909 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2011/02/25 | Afghan Officials Say Jailed Christian Convert Is Free | Under international pressure, government officials in Kabul, Afghanistan, say they have freed an Afghan man who had been jailed since May and faced the prospect of the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity. The release of the man, Sayed Mussa, 46, follows months of quiet diplomacy between the Afghan government and United States Embassy officials in Kabul, who along with members of Congress and other foreign embassies had sought the former aid worker’s release. Mr. Mussa, a married father of six who worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross before his arrest, was released Monday from Kabul Detention Center after prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to go forward with the case, said Gen. Qayoum Khan, the detention center director. But there were conflicting accounts about the terms of his release. A senior prosecutor involved in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was released only after agreeing to return to Islam. It was also not immediately clear where he was taken or if he even remains in the country. Some of his relatives, including his wife, said they had not heard from him. An embassy spokeswoman would not confirm his release and declined to talk about the case, saying only that the embassy continued to monitor Mr. Mussa’s case and others like it. General Khan said Mr. Mussa was released Monday and turned over to the attorney general’s office. “We got a letter from the attorney general’s office which said we do not have any proof against this man and his detention needs to be removed,” General Khan said. The attorney general’s office did not return phone calls Thursday. Mr. Mussa was arrested last May after a television station in Kabul broadcast images that it claimed showed Westerners baptizing Afghans and other Afghans praying at private Christian meetings. The broadcast stoked fears of proselytizing brought on by the influx of foreigners since the American-led invasion in 2001. Some lawmakers have publicly declared that converts should die. A senior prosecutor closely involved with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said last month that the government was under heavy international pressure to release Mr. Mussa. But how to release him without upsetting hard-line conservatives in the government and among the public was presenting a challenge, the prosecutor said. On Thursday, however, the same prosecutor said Mr. Mussa was released only after finally agreeing to return to Islam. “Mr. Mussa said in front of everyone in high court that ‘I made a mistake converting to Christianity and I want to return back to Islam,’ ” he said, adding that “we worked with Mr. Mussa for a long time to convince him to return back to Islam.” The prosecutor said he did not know Mr. Mussa’s current location. Mr. Mussa was one of at least two Afghans being held in cases that underscore the contradictions and limits of religious freedom in Afghanistan nine years after the end of the Taliban’s rigid Islamic rule. The other, Shoaib Assadullah Musawi, who has been jailed in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif since November after being accused of giving the New Testament to a friend, is still being held, a court official said. Afghanistan’s Constitution, established in 2004, guarantees that people are “free to exercise their faith.” But it also leaves it open for the courts to rely on Shariah, or Islamic law, on issues like conversion. Under some interpretations of Shariah, leaving Islam is considered apostasy, an offense punishable by death. Mr. Mussa’s cousin-in-law, Said Yaseen Hashimi, said he visited Mr. Mussa at the jail on Monday but when he returned the next day he was told Mr. Mussa had been released the night before. In a phone interview from Pakistan, Mr. Mussa’s wife, whose full name is not being used out of concern for her safety, said she had not heard from her husband and did not know if he had been released. “I am very concerned about him,” she said. “I don’t know how he might have spent the time in prison in this cold winter season. Even if he is released I don’t know where he might be now. Or maybe he is in one of the foreign embassies for protection.” | Mussa Sayed;International Committee of the Red Cross;Christians and Christianity;Kabul (Afghanistan) |
ny0036132 | [
"sports"
]
| 2014/03/28 | Asada’s Score Sets Record | Mao Asada set a world record to finish first in the short program at the world figure skating championships in Saitama, Japan. Skating to Chopin, Asada hit her trademark triple axel at the start of her routine and completed all of her remaining jumps to finish with 78.66 points, surpassing the record of 78.50 set by Kim Yu-na at the Vancouver Olympics. | Figure skating;World Figure Skating Championships;Mao Asada |
ny0224015 | [
"business"
]
| 2010/11/24 | Product Safety Database Nears Vote, but Divisions Persist | For decades, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has gathered a trove of complaints about potentially dangerous products, from cribs to Chinese-made drywall. But for the most part, the information has not been made public because of a federal law that requires a manufacturer’s approval before it can be released. On Wednesday, the commission is scheduled to vote to create a new, publicly accessible database of safety complaints that is intended to make it easier for consumers to learn about problems with a product. But even as the vote looms, the proposal remains mired in a partisan rift among the five members of the commission. The agency’s two Republican commissioners have waged a last-ditch effort to alter the database in ways they say would be more fair to manufacturers, but that consumer groups and at least one Democratic commissioner say would significantly weaken it. The Republicans last week blocked a final vote on the database and posted an alternative proposal on the agency’s Web site that would restrict who could register a complaint, among other things. The proposal was removed by the agency’s staff, then later restored. Bob Adler, one of the commission’s three Democratic members, said opponents were trying to shield manufacturers from greater public scrutiny. “Some folks are worried more about lost sales and not worried enough about lost souls,” Mr. Adler said. With Democrats outnumbering Republicans 3 to 2 on the board, the proposal is expected to pass. As proposed, the database would go live at SaferProducts.gov in March. It would allow visitors to browse safety-related complaints about various products while giving manufacturers the ability to post replies and, if they can prove a complaint is inaccurate, have it removed. Parents, for instance, could scroll through the database before purchasing strollers, cribs or toys to see if others have reported problems with them. Michele Witte, a Long Island woman, said such a database might have helped prevent the 1997 death of her 10-month-old son, Tyler, who became entrapped in a drop-side crib. Ms. Witte said she had purchased the crib because it was advertised as being safe; only after her son’s death did she learn that other children had died in drop-side cribs, too. “There was no database back in the ’90s where I could learn if other parents had been through this,” she said. “I believed my son was an isolated case.” The Republican commissioners want to limit complaints to people with first-hand knowledge of a product hazard, like parents and health care workers; they are also seeking stronger vetting of false or misleading complaints. “The commission’s proposal allows anything from anybody to go up on the public database,” said Nancy Nord, one of the Republican commissioners, who wants to ensure that consumers receive accurate information. The database was authorized by Congress as part of a 2008 law intended to give the Consumer Product Safety Commission — long maligned for its tepid oversight — more teeth. Currently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a similar database, called SaferCar.gov , in which consumers can file safety complaints about automobiles. Under the commission’s proposal, the public could use the database to quickly report and find complaints about unsafe products. The agency’s current rules make it difficult to obtain such information without a manufacturer’s consent and typically require filing a Freedom of Information Act request, a process that can take months, even years. “It’s a slow death,” said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union , the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. “That information never gets out in the public.” But some businesses and their trade groups are concerned that any online database could become a government-sponsored bulletin board for bogus reports and merchant-bashing. The Republican commissioners, Ms. Nord and Anne Northup, have balked at some of the proposed regulations for the database, which were written by the agency’s staff. For example, Ms. Nord said, there is too much leeway in who can file a complaint: “users of consumer products, family members, relatives, parents, guardians, friends, attorneys, investigators, professional engineers, agents of a user of a consumer product, and observers of the consumer products being used.” She worries that plaintiff’s lawyers and competitors could post bogus information to gain an edge. In addition, Ms. Nord said the proposal emphasized quick posting of complaints and was not clear enough about how disputes would be handled. “The problem is, there might be a tendency to post it and forget it,” she said. “Having just a grab bag of junk that has not been investigated seems to not be in the consumer’s interest.” The commission chairwoman, Inez Tenenbaum, disputed the idea that manufacturers’ concerns had not been properly considered. She said the agency offered numerous forums for comment and some of those ideas were incorporated into the final proposal. “We have been abundantly fair,” Ms. Tenenbaum said. The Republican counterproposal was taken down from the agency’s Web site because the formal period for comment was over, staff members said. Consumer advocates suggested the opponents were trying to weaken the database to protect business interests. “They have a great deal now, and I think they are trying to maintain the status quo by levying these unfounded arguments,” said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety for the Consumer Federation of America. Under the current proposal, complaints would include a description of the harm, or the risk of harm, as well as a description of the product, the name of the manufacturer, contact information and an affirmation that the submitter is telling the truth. The submitter’s name would not appear on the database and would be provided to manufacturers only if the complainant agreed. The commission would have five days to forward the complaint to the manufacturer, which would in turn have 10 days to review it and respond. If a manufacturer could prove to the commission staff that the information was inaccurate or contained confidential business information, the commission could redact part of the report or not post it. But Ms. Nord said the proposal remained far too vague. She cited the recent case of Pampers Dry Max, made by Procter & Gamble, in which thousands of parents asserted that the diapers were causing their babies to get a rash. A commission investigation found no link between the diapers and the rashes. “We would have posted all these complaints about them even though they proved to be wrong,” Ms. Nord said. Mr. Adler, the Democratic commissioner, said the database was not meant to be a legal forum like a court but more like a catalog of consumer experiences. He noted that a disclaimer on the database said the commission did not guarantee its accuracy. “ ‘I put my baby in a diaper and my baby developed a rash.’ That goes up. It’s an early warning system to alert other consumers,” Mr. Adler said. “This is a balancing act between consumer protection and manufacturers’ protection. I think the tie goes to consumers.” | Consumer Protection;Consumer Product Safety Commission;Law and Legislation;Consumers Union;Nord Nancy A;Consumer Federation of America;Weintraub Rachel |
ny0014349 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2013/11/13 | Czech Politician Faces Claims of Aiding Secret Police | PARIS — Andrej Babis, a populist billionaire who handed out doughnuts to voters at subway stations, emerged as a surprise kingmaker in the recent Czech elections by fashioning himself as a self-made outsider who would stamp out corruption and sleaze. But now Mr. Babis, 59, a blunt-spoken Slovak food, media and chemicals mogul with a Czech passport and properties in the French Riviera, is being forced to grapple with a murky past. Prague, the Czech capital, is buzzing with talk of secret files code-named “Soldier” and “Eye” that purport to expose him as a Communist-era secret police agent, an allegation he denies. The center-left Social Democrats scraped together a slim victory in parliamentary elections held last month after a spying and bribery scandal . But by many accounts, the real winners were Mr. Babis and his anti-establishment party, Ano, or Yes. The party’s second-place showing, with about 19 percent of the vote — not far behind the Social Democrats, who had about 20.5 percent — makes it indispensable in creating a coalition government. Mr. Babis, who won a seat in Parliament himself, is being mentioned as a possible prime minister or finance minister. Yet, in a region where history is close to the surface, Mr. Babis’s dizzying rise has been clouded by allegations from the Nation’s Memory Institute , based in Slovakia, that he worked in the 1980s for the reviled Czechoslovak secret police, the StB. Czechoslovakia split 20 years ago into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Today, Czechs who collaborated with the secret police can be barred from holding public office. It is a reflection of many Czechs’ ambivalence about their own collaboration with the Communist government that the details of Mr. Babis’s files that emerged during the campaign did not stop his party from doing well. But if he is blocked from joining a future administration or decides to remain on the sidelines, the country could emerge with a minority government, worsening its political instability. Already, the allegations are unsettling some in Ano’s ranks. In a report published on Tuesday, Ivan Pilny, a senior party figure, threatened to resign if Mr. Babis turned out to have been a secret police agent. “If we are presented with proof that Mr. Babis collaborated with the StB, I would have to leave the party, as that would mean he lied to us,” Mr. Pilny told Mlada Fronta Dnes, a leading Czech news outlet. According to previously classified documents released by the Nation’s Memory Institute, Mr. Babis was registered as an informant in 1980 and became an agent two years later. His code name was Bures, a common Czechoslovak surname. The files describe how Mr. Babis, who then worked for a state foreign trade company dealing in chemicals, purportedly met with secret police handlers in 1982 at a bar in Bratislava, now the capital of Slovakia. Later, the “Soldier” file says, they met at least 17 times. The “Eye” file lists two reports Mr. Babis is said to have sent to a colleague, without giving details. In a telephone interview from Prague, Mr. Babis denied the accusations, saying he had been summoned to meet with the secret police at most three times and had never joined their ranks. He said the files were forgeries made by the StB to blackmail him, in part because some of his family members had affronted the government by emigrating. At the time, he said, the state wanted to import phosphates from Syria and he refused because the materials posed a health hazard, making him a target of official ire. He has taken the Slovak institute to court and demanded that he be removed from the list of collaborators. A hearing is scheduled for January. “It is nonsense,” Mr. Babis said. “I never signed anything. I was a victim. I never did anything wrong to anyone.” He added that he was not proud of having been a member of the Communist Party, but that he had joined at his mother’s urging, out of economic pragmatism. “I was young; I did stupid things,” he said, noting that only a minority of Czechoslovaks had the courage to be dissidents. “To get by, you had to cooperate.” Tomas Bursik, a historian at the archives of the security services in Prague, noted that a large portion of Mr. Babis’s files had been destroyed, and that what remained did not contain any examples of his handwriting or signature. “This all reminds me of a witch hunt,” Mr. Bursik said. Bridling at comparisons to Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy, Mr. Babis said his role model of a billionaire-turned-politician was New York’s departing mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. “I am happily with one woman, I combat corruption, I pay a lot of taxes,” he said. “Any comparisons with Berlusconi are a load of nonsense.” Earlier this year, a few days after he acquired the Mafra publishing house, Mr. Babis came under fire for making an angry phone call to a reporter at Lidove Noviny, one of the company’s newspapers, who had not written about his news conference. He has also been criticized for using his wealth to influence the election, pumping more than $1.6 million into his campaign, according to his party’s website. (Czech law does not limit how much of their own money candidates may spend on their campaigns.) Fed up by accusations of having undue influence, he said he planned to take Mafra and his future media acquisitions public and become a minority shareholder. Jan Richter, a journalist at Radio Prague who covered Mr. Babis’s campaign, praised his common touch but said he was now being forced to reckon with past compromises. “Many Czechs voted for him out of desperation, trusting his promise that he would run the country like a company,” Mr. Richter said. “I think they overlooked his controversial past and also underestimated the risk of him pursuing his own business interests.” Born in present-day Slovakia to a diplomat father who worked in foreign trade, Mr. Babis grew up in Bratislava, Geneva and Paris. His net worth is estimated at $2 billion, and he was ranked 736th this year on Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires. Mr. Babis, who studied economics, recalled that he started making money at 9 years old, collecting tennis balls at a club in Bratislava. After Czechoslovakia split in 1993, he said, he used $5,400 to start Agrofert, a fertilizer firm. Today, Agrofert is a sprawling conglomerate. Known as a tough negotiator, he attributed his success to a combination of financing and luck. But others said his past membership in the Communist elite had allowed him to gain experience and contacts abroad at a time when most Czechoslovaks could not leave the country. Mr. Babis said his upbringing had advantages. “I was neither Paris Hilton nor a poor kid in Bangladesh,” he said. “But my mother spoke six languages, and my parents were outward-looking, and this was a huge advantage after Communism fell.” In a sign of disillusionment with the post-Communist order, the new power broker of Czech politics does not try to conceal his contempt for the political class. “Politicians are people who have not succeeded in life — they have never worked, they have never performed, they lie,” he said. “In business, if you lie, you are finished.” | Andrej Babis;Czechoslovakia;Police;Communism;Czech Republic;Election;Legislature;Slovakia |
ny0091474 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2015/08/02 | 120 Degrees and No Relief? ISIS Takes Back Seat for Iraqis | BAGHDAD — In the Iraqi summer, when the temperature rises above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, electricity becomes even more of a political issue than usual. This past week, at the top of Iraqis’ agenda, it has even eclipsed war with the Islamic State. The prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, declared a four-day weekend to keep people out of the sun, but he did not stop there. He also called in the electricity minister for emergency consultations, and ordered an end to one of the most coveted perks of government officials: round-the-clock power for their air-conditioners. Now, the scheduled daily power cuts that other Iraqis have long endured are to be imposed on government offices and officials’ homes. That may not be enough for Iraqis, whose oil -rich country has not supplied reliable electricity in Baghdad since the American invasion in 2003 — and in many provinces, far longer. One of the country’s largest recent grass-roots protests shut down traffic in Baghdad on Friday night, and more protests took place Saturday in southern Iraq. Several thousand people — workers, artists and intellectuals — demonstrated Friday evening in Tahrir Square in the center of Baghdad, chanting and carrying signs about the lack of electricity and blaming corruption for it. They blocked traffic at a major roundabout, waiting until sundown to avoid the heat and to have more impact, since the streets are quieter during the day as people stay out of the sun. Some men stripped to their shorts and lay down in the street to sleep, a strong statement in a modest society where it is rare to see men bare-chested in public. The protest was unusual in that it did not appear to have been called for by any major political party. People carried Iraqi flags and denounced officials. Security forces with riot shields blocked them from moving across a bridge toward the restricted Green Zone where many officials live. Courteous police officers handed out water, a shift from earlier years when they responded harshly to electricity protests. One police officer there even denounced his commanders, saying they had sent him and other officers to infiltrate the protest as provocateurs. Instead, he had joined it in earnest. Shouting at a cellphone camera with the protest visible behind him, he said he was told to “ruin the protest.” Cursing his boss by name and flashing a police identity card, he added, “We will continue calling for our demands even if you fire me.” Within hours, Mr. Abadi praised the protesters for standing up for their rights, and called in the electricity minister. The minister told Parliament last week that the electricity grid would crank up to 11,000 megawatts, barely half of the summer’s peak demand of 22,000 megawatts. Normal capacity is closer to 8,500 megawatts. Earlier on Friday, in the weekly sermon in the shrine city of Karbala that typically addresses the political issues of the day, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric, had exhorted the government to address “the sufferings of citizens” over electricity. “Unfortunately, every government is blaming the government that came before it,” Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, the representative, declared to a sweltering audience packing one of the city’s great shrines. He came around only later to the subject of the war on the militants of the Islamic State — also known as ISIS , ISIL and Daesh — who control large parts of the country. Image Amid the protests, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared a four-day weekend and ordered an end to a perk for government officials: round-the-clock power. Credit Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “The people are still patient towards the sufferings, and also they are sacrificing themselves to fight Daesh terrorism to defend Iraq,” he said. “But there are limits to patience.” That conflict made the even-hotter-than-usual temperatures in recent days an even bigger problem. More than three million people have been displaced by the fighting, and many lack basic shelter to protect them from the heat. On Saturday, residents protested in the southern cities of Basra and Karbala. Another demonstration was planned for Sunday in Babil, also in the south. Mr. Abadi, in a televised address, called the protests an “early warning” system about “an error that we must solve immediately, adding, “The people will resort to revolutionary sentiments if this situation continues.” Iraqis have been complaining about electricity at least since the United States toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. In the resulting security vacuum, widespread looting, which American troops had no orders to prevent, dismantled much of what had been left of the electricity grid, already eroded by years of sanctions and war. “Maku kahraba! Maku amn!” were the complaints leveled by pretty much all Iraqis to any American they came across back in those first days of the American occupation. “There is no electricity. There is no security.” In that order. Iraqis in Baghdad had been used to a fairly reliable supply of electricity. Mr. Hussein had kept the capital disproportionately supplied, with few power failures. It was different in the southern provinces, where residents are predominantly from the oppressed Shiite majority, which had risen up against Mr. Hussein in 1991 and was brutally suppressed . Many areas there got only a few hours of power a day. American occupation officials evened out the supply all over the country — making it more equitable but also shocking residents of Baghdad who were suddenly subjected to the long powerless days that other Iraqis had been used to. The cuts were also new and enraging to people in the Sunni heartland in the north and west, the fulcrum of Mr. Hussein’s residual support and of the brewing insurgency against the occupation. Among the failures of the American administration of Iraq was the inability to meet repeated promises to get the electricity back up to the levels under Mr. Hussein. Occupation officials put out charts trumpeting modest improvements. But a combination of insurgent attacks, incompetence and corruption kept the system struggling, both then and after political power was nominally handed to an Iraqi government in 2004. The problems have continued since American troops left in 2011. More than once, Iraqis sleeping on their rooftops to keep cool have been killed by stray gunfire. Many Iraqis have air-conditioners in their homes, but during power cuts only some can afford to pay for generators. Those who can must often scale back to fans and simple air coolers because there is not enough power for air-conditioners while on generator power, and sometimes even when on the regular grid. So the lucky ones drive around in their cars with the air-conditioning on, visit shopping malls, or wait for the air coolers to switch on and huddle around them in a single room. Those without that wherewithal find cool where they can, sometimes swimming in dirty, sewage-tainted pools and canals. Help is on the way, though, from Iran, which gained significant influence in Iraq after the fall of Mr. Hussein and the end of the troubled American involvement. According to Iran’s state-run Press TV , in the country’s biggest engineering services deal ever, an Iranian company recently signed a deal to add 3,000 megawatts to the grid by building a $2.5 billion power plant in Basra. It will be supplied by a pipeline carrying Iranian natural gas. | Iraq;Electric power;Baghdad;Haider al-Abadi |
ny0244529 | [
"us"
]
| 2011/04/02 | ‘Polite Robber’ Is Given a 60-Month Sentence in Gas Station Holdup | Saying “please” and “thank you” is a virtue, but for a robber in Seattle, politeness went only so far. A judge on Friday sentenced Gregory Paul Hess to 60 months in state prison for robbing a Shell station in February, ignoring the recommendation of the prosecutor and defense attorney, who argued that Mr. Hess’s civility should win him the shortest possible sentence: 51 months. Mr. Hess had been nicknamed the “polite robber” after a video of the robbery appeared on YouTube. The video, recorded by surveillance cameras at the station, showed Mr. Hess, 65, asking the station owner, “Could you do me a favor? Could you empty that till for me, please?” Drawing a pellet gun from his waistband, Mr. Hess said, “Sir, I’m robbing you.” He then apologized for taking the money and said he needed it to pay his rent, feed his children and pay other bills. He thanked the gas station owner profusely and promised to pay him back “if I ever get on my feet again, sir.” The video gave Mr. Hess his moment of fame and helped the police identify him. His willingness to take responsibility for the crime — he pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery — made a favorable impression on the prosecutor. But in delivering the sentence, Sharon Armstrong, a King County Superior Court judge, said, “I would like to be able to follow the joint recommendation, but I can’t. Mr. Hess, you committed robbery with what appeared to be a deadly weapon.” She said that giving Mr. Hess a sentence in the midpoint of the range — 51 to 68 months — was enough to acknowledge his good attitude. Kevin Dolan, the public defender, said his client’s crime was “largely, I think, a result of the economy.” Mr. Hess told Elizabeth Mount, a law student intern who works with Mr. Dolan, that he had a degree from a culinary school — he likes to bake croissants — and that had enrolled in a hospitality management program at Seattle University . But he despaired of finding work, he told her, because jobs were scarce and he had a criminal record: he served five years in federal prison for robbing five banks in Seattle and was still under federal supervision at the time of the robbery. “He’s such a nice guy,” Ms. Mount said. “You kind of root for him because he’s very optimistic.” She said she thought hospitality management “would be a great career for him because he’s so polite and accommodating.” The gas station robbery, Mr. Hess told Ms. Mount, was a spur-of-the-moment act, inspired by his fear that he would be evicted from his apartment. He told investigators that he got $200 from the robbery. He used part of it to pay a cellphone bill and buy food and gas, and he deposited $90 in a savings account, according to court documents. Mr. Hess is single, according to other court documents, and does not appear to have children at home to feed. On a subconscious level, he told Ms. Mount, maybe he wanted to be caught. The surveillance cameras in the Shell station were obvious, and he left a fingerprint on the counter. When the police arrived at his door, he greeted them by saying, “I’m the one you are looking for.” “I did everything but smile for the camera,” Mr. Hess told Ms. Mount, adding that he confessed because he is a Roman Catholic, and “part of being Catholic is the confession aspect.” John Henry, the gas station owner, is also a religious man. A deacon at St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church , he said his faith kept him from panicking during the robbery. “When God wants to take your life, he will take it,” said Mr. Henry, who came to the United States from Egypt 19 years ago. “If you believe that, you can take it easy and you have peace.” He said he felt bad for Mr. Hess and thought it was a pity that he had not been taught better survival skills during his previous incarceration. Mr. Henry said he has also suffered the effects of the recession. He works six days a week, 10 hours a day. A new gas station across the street is cutting into his business, he said, and he is struggling to stay afloat. Mr. Dolan said Friday that even though the judge ignored the sentencing recommendation, Mr. Hess was lucky. “That’s about as good as it gets when you’ve committed a crime that five million people have seen,” he said. He noted that Mr. Hess was also fortunate that the robbery had not been deemed a “third strike,” which would have sent him to prison for life without parole. “He’ll be out before he’s 70,” he said. Even Mr. Hess seemed philosophical about his fate. “I know what I did was wrong, and I did it anyway,” he said. “I deserve what I got.” | Robberies and Thefts;Customs Etiquette and Manners;Sentences (Criminal);Seattle (Wash) |
ny0025146 | [
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
]
| 2013/08/31 | Staying at Michigan, With Renewed Focus | ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Down State Street, at the end of campus, in the white house with the blue front door, lives perhaps the best left tackle in college football. There are stacked lawn chairs and a fire pit, remnants of a good night, in the yard. And from his front porch, Taylor Lewan can see Michigan Stadium in the distance. The sky was dark and it was raining hard one recent afternoon as Lewan opened the door to give a visitor a tour. He walked through the living room, with its mounted television, roomy leather couch and side chairs big enough to fit his 6-foot 8-inch, 315-pound frame. Four other offensive linemen live here, he noted. He showed off the kitchen, its four refrigerators and the pantry stocked with tuna cans. “And yes,” he said, “if you must ask, it’s this clean all the time.” Lewan had been away since training camp started; it was about three weeks before No. 17 Michigan’s season opener. Upstairs, in his room at the end of the hall, his wood floor was clear, his bed was made and his stuffed giraffe named Henry lay neatly on top. Movie posters for “The Boondock Saints” and “The Dark Knight” hung on the walls, next to the pair of steer horns Lewan once had affixed to the hood of his Cadillac DeVille, so he could drive around campus like Boss Hogg from “The Dukes of Hazzard.” On the dresser near the door sat his accolades: the Sugar Bowl ring from two seasons ago, the award commemorating his all-conference honors from last season. He was a first-team all-American, too. After that success, he had a choice to stay for a fifth year or leave for the N.F.L. He was likely to be a top-five pick, if not the No. 1 pick. His coach, Brady Hoke, had Lewan in his office and told him about life in the N.F.L., how his peers would be grown men with families, how football would be his job. Hoke wondered if Lewan was consistent enough, mature enough. He recommended Lewan stay. Lewan had always been what his coaches called a free spirit. He has a mustache tattooed on the side of his pointer finger, to hold to his upper lip when necessary, and a stick man tattooed on his right hand — his right-hand man. He once wore sweat pants, a fedora and a sweater vest, with no undershirt, to a film session. He still wears the fedora. He rode a light-blue tandem bicycle until, he claims, his friends on the Michigan hockey team stole it. His sessions with the news media sounded like standup comedy, he threw out so many one-liners. After that Sugar Bowl victory he said he felt warm and fuzzy, like “when you see a box of kittens.” On the field, he was similarly unvarnished. He had the length, range and build of Jake Long and played with a nasty streak like Jon Runyan. Sometimes too nasty. He had a penchant for bad penalties early in his career. Darrell Funk, his position coach, started pulling him from practice when he played past the whistle or instigated a fight. Lewan hated being taken off the field, so he got serious. He cleaned up his play. His interviews turned vanilla. But, Hoke told him, perhaps he had not matured enough. Lewan got advice from Runyan, who faced a similar choice at Michigan in 1996 and decided to leave early. Runyan had thought about staying, but after his Lisfranc injury, no one would insure his left foot. He told Lewan, stay or go, “keep playing that Michigan brand of football.” Image Left tackle Taylor Lewan would have probably been a top N.F.L. draft pick after last season, but he chose to stay at Michigan for a fifth year. Credit Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times That was another reason for Lewan to stay: to help ease Hoke’s transition to a purer pro-style offense. In recent years, with the mobile Denard Robinson at quarterback, the offense had been more of a hybrid. Now with Robinson graduated, Devin Gardner, a more prototypical pocket passer, would take over full time, and the pro-style offense would be fully installed. Hoke had a deep stable of running backs, namely Fitzgerald Toussaint and the freshman Derrick Green, to pound defenses. But the line would feature three new starters. If Lewan returned, the offense would lean on him. Lewan also sought advice from Long, who had faced the same choice, too, and had stayed. Long told him he wanted to win another Big Ten championship, win the Outland Trophy, become a two-time all-American and spend another year in Ann Arbor. So Long came back, and in the season’s first game, Michigan lost to Appalachian State. Michigan did not win the Big Ten that season, and Long did not win the Outland, given to the nation’s best interior lineman. But he was an all-American, and he said he had no regrets. He was drafted No. 1 over all anyway. Maybe the same would happen to Lewan. Lewan was still undecided as Michigan prepared to play South Carolina and defensive end Jadeveon Clowney in last season’s Outback Bowl. Lewan would be responsible for Clowney, himself a top N.F.L. prospect and a physical marvel. Lewan decided to prepare as if he were in the N.F.L. He watched each of Clowney’s games at least a dozen times, taking notes, watching for tendencies. He studied what he called Clowney’s “best move.” Clowney would line up a tad outside. When the ball was snapped, he would step across the face of the offensive tackle, as if heading inside. Once the tackle shifted his weight, Clowney would club his outside shoulder, swim his left arm over and get free to the outside. In the game, Lewan more than held his own. He was quick on his feet, strong with his hands. He anticipated well. Clowney did not register a sack, but because of a miscommunication between Lewan and a tight end, he got free for the famous hit that dislodged Vincent Smith’s helmet. Otherwise, Lewan mostly contained him. Clowney would later claim he had three dreadlocks pulled out during the game, but as they shook hands afterward, he told Lewan he was the best tackle he had ever faced. About a week later, Lewan announced he would return for this season. He wanted to lead the offense. He wanted to be consistent and perfect his technique. He wanted to accomplish all the things Long did. Not since 2004, had Michigan won the Big Ten. Lewan took out a $3 million insurance policy, which covered career-ending injuries. Then, in April, a few weeks after Michigan’s spring game, three tackles went in the top four picks in the draft. Eric Fisher, a left tackle from Central Michigan, went No. 1. Image Lewan during practice at the University of Michigan. Credit Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times When Hoke saw that, he thought, “Taylor probably would have been the first pick.” Sitting in his living room, some four months later, Lewan said he did not regret his decision. It was a “no-brainer,” he said. “I knew I had to come back.” He had decided to take this fifth year seriously, to prepare himself for the N.F.L. He consulted the team’s nutritionist, Joel Totoro, who formerly worked with the New England Patriots, to revamp his diet. Now, every morning, he eats six hard-boiled eggs and two cans of tuna and downs a shot of olive oil. After he lifts weights, he drinks a protein shake and has three more eggs, two cans of tuna and another shot of olive oil. Lunch is two chicken breasts, a side salad — sometimes with feta cheese “if I’m feeling a little crazy” — and another shot of olive oil. For his afternoon snack, he eats three more eggs and two more cans of tuna, which keeps him going until his dinner of two more chicken breasts, a shot of olive oil and a salad with no feta if he went crazy at lunch. “This diet has consumed my life,” Lewan said, shaking his head. If he is not busy eating, he is likely lifting weights or watching film with the other offensive linemen, whom he mentors. He set his own 10 p.m. Saturday night curfew, which means, he said, his classmates won’t find him at the campus bars after a big win. “I’m boring,” he said. “I don’t do anything. My focus is football.” Still, being Lewan, he had his fun this summer. He grilled in the front yard with his fellow linemen. He went fishing in the Huron River. He had epic battles with his housemate Graham Glasgow, playing the Nintendo 64 video game SuperSmash Bros. to determine who was “King of the House.” They drew crowds. Lewan claimed to be the King, a moniker with no real authority. Then there was the time the house bought a pig. Lewan and the fifth-year senior right tackle Michael Schofield had been talking about the possibility for a while. One day, as a group of them sat around the living room, Schofield’s girlfriend challenged them. They were all talk, she said. They would never get a pig. Craigslist was immediately consulted. One was found for $250. Lewan called the owner, who told him the pig was potty-trained and well behaved. Lewan arranged to pick up the pig that night. They all thought it was fitting: a pet pig, a hog if you will, for a house full of offensive linemen. They brought him home and named him Dr. Hamlet III, because Lewan wanted his pig to have a P.h.D. They called him Ham, because, Lewan said, “you wouldn’t say his full name unless you were mad at him.” They taught Ham how to sit. They fed him. They loved him, Lewan said. But Ham’s hooves slid on the kitchen tile, “like Bambi on ice,” Lewan said. So Ham was confined to an area rug, and the lack of room bothered him, Lewan said. He started biting people and making noises. After two weeks, they had Ham taken away to a farm. Lewan leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands. Dr. Hamlet III was a distraction, he said. This was the new Lewan. The pig had to go. | College football;University of Michigan;Taylor Lewan |
ny0137185 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
]
| 2008/05/29 | Just a Twist (and Tilt) of the Wrist | WHEN Scott Forstall, a senior vice president at Apple, demonstrated a new space game for the iPhone , he let the spacecraft cruise through a field of stars for a bit. As the audience finished absorbing the look of the shooter set in a distant galaxy, he asked them, “I don’t have a joystick on here, or any four-button toggle, so how do I steer?” A few seconds later, he tilted the phone just a few degrees and the ship shifted course on the screen. “We have a full three-axis accelerometer in here, so all I’ve got to do is move the phone around and now I’m steering it,” he said. The crowd of programmers cheered. The iPhone is not unique. Nintendo’s popular Wii game console uses similar technology, and many cellphones, computers and other electronic gadgets are gaining a sensitivity to motion. Manufacturers are increasingly embedding accelerometers and other sensors into the machines, which allow them to respond to movement without waiting for their humans to push a button. Game designers and other programmers are jumping to remake user interfaces so that users can direct gadgets with a nudge, a tilt or a shake. Some of the applications are silly. The programmer Graham Oldfield turned his Nokia N95 cellphone into a virtual light saber by writing software that tracked the phone’s movement using the built-in accelerometer. When the phone is still, it emits a low hum, but when the user waves it, the pitch and volume increase just like the weapons in the “Star Wars” movies. If the phone is abruptly stopped, it assumes it encountered something and provides a proper cracking sound. Version 1.5 of the software, available free from Mr. Oldfield’s Web site ( graho.wordpress.com ), adds tactile feedback through the vibrating ringer, a feature Mr. Oldfield calls SaberTingle. Versions of the popular video game Snake from the 1970s are now available for iPhone and Nokia phones with accelerometers. Tilting the phone guides a snake to dinner, a process that gets harder and harder as the snake grows. Andreas Jakl and Stephan Selinger, professors at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria, transformed a Nokia N95 cellphone into a steering wheel for a radio-controlled car ( www.symbianresources.com/projects ). Turn the phone to the left and the car turns left. Professor Jakl also worked with a student to develop software that turned a Nokia phone into a device that records the movement of a skier or a snowboarder. “We’re from Austria and we’re a skiing nation,” he said. “You put your phone into your pocket. It will record your jumps, how often you jump, how often you crash. You can compare it with your friends to see who jumped longer.” Not all of the applications are about having fun. FlipSilent and ShakeSMS are two freeware tools that let the accelerometer control the user interface. If the phone rings, FlipSilent will shut off the ringer when the phone is turned over. ShakeSMS will page through text messages with a shake and a tilt with no pushing of buttons. Both are available from flipsilent.com . Accelerometers started appearing in cellphones in the early 1990s. Michael Markowitz, a spokesman for STMicroelectronics, says the company’s line of accelerometers helps to activate air bags in cars and protect hard drives in a laptop should it be suddenly dropped. The current generation of accelerometers are tiny blocks of silicon carved out of wafers using many of the same techniques used to create transistors and circuitry. Circuits built on the same chips sense how movement pushes the blocks along. For instance, the LIS302DL from STMicroelectronics, used in some phones, is only 3 millimeters by 5 millimeters by 1 millimeter, and can measure forces up to 8 times the earth’s gravity along three axes. Translating the data generated by the chips into results that a user can see requires some artful software. Johnny Chung Lee, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, recently built a pen that gives users the illusion they are pushing hard or soft 3-D buttons on a flat computer screen, enhancing their feel of virtual objects. The software follows the user’s movement of the pen and a computer calculates how much pressure should be applied. One problem with accelerometers is that they detect acceleration — the rate of change in velocity — but not the movement itself, Dr. Lee said. If a computer wants to know the speed or the position, it must apply common equations from high school calculus. Any noise or error is compounded over time. Dr. Lee says that error is why many designers pair accelerometers with other sensors, like magnetometers that follow the earth’s magnetic field or G.P.S. radio systems that use a network of satellites to detect geographic position. For example, the controllers for the Sony PlayStation 3 come with sensors that detect angles, tilting, thrusting and pulling. Fusing the results of several sensors gives the device a better sense of where it is going and where it has been. Game designers are just beginning to tap into the power of accelerometers to transform cellphones into more intuitive game devices. Travis Boatman, a vice president at EA Mobile, a division of Electronic Arts, says that placing the accelerometer in the same place as the screen helps simplify the interface while eliminating the need for the user’s brain to make a connection between a push of a button and an action on a screen across the room. In E.A.’s forthcoming game Spore, the company modified the control system in the iPhone version to eliminate buttons used in the PC version. “You control where the spore goes, but everything else is controlled for you. It eats automatically,” said Mr. Boatman. Mr. Boatman says one challenge is that accelerometers are more sensitive than humans, who often cannot tell whether the device is tilting 5, 10 or 12 degrees. The solution lies in blurring measurements and programming the devices to react to general movement. Moving a device around can be more intuitive than pressing buttons, said Ethan Einhorn, a developer for Sega of America who has been experimenting with bringing a game called Super Monkey Ball to the iPhone. “I’ve been able to hand the game off to people who are not gamers and they’re instantly able to understand what they’re supposed to do. There’s a direct connection: I tilt it and the monkey moves,” Mr. Einhorn said. These opportunities are just beginning to inspire others. Microsoft’s research division recently demonstrated a small PC with a screen that will detect and respond to twisting, stretching, bending and squeezing to move a mouse, switch programs or perform whatever other functions that programmers can dream up. | Computers and the Internet;Computer and Video Games;Wireless Communications;Cellular Telephones;accelerometer |
ny0068190 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2014/12/17 | Chinese Businesswoman Convicted of Bribery Is Sentenced to 20 Years | BEIJING — A prominent businesswoman convicted of bribery linked to China’s disgraced former railroads minister was sentenced on Tuesday by a court in Beijing to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay the largest fine yet amid President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign. Ding Yuxin, 59, also known as Ding Shumiao, was fined 2.5 billion renminbi, or about $408 million, for paying bribes and conducting illegal business, according to a microblog post by the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, which also ordered the confiscation of personal assets worth $3.2 million. The court found that Ms. Ding used her influence with the former railroads minister, Liu Zhijun, to help railroad construction contractors win bids for 57 projects from 2007 to 2010, reported Xinhua, the state-run news agency. She funneled $8 million worth of kickbacks to Mr. Liu in return for his assistance with the contracts, while taking an illegal cut of more than $325 million for herself. At her trial in September, Ms. Ding was cast as the central figure in a major corruption scandal surrounding Mr. Liu, to whom the state news media reported she provided cash and women for sexual favors. Last year, the former minister was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for bribery and abuse of power. At the time of his removal from office in 2011, a leaked directive from the Central Propaganda Bureau banned the news media from reporting that Mr. Liu “had 18 mistresses.” Though Ms. Ding had only an elementary school education and once worked as an egg seller, she built a large business empire with interests in coal and rail that gave her access to Mr. Liu, who was minister of railroads from 2003 until 2011, an era that saw China’s high-speed rail network grow to become the world’s largest, but also left the rail system drowning in debt. | China;Bribery and Kickbacks;Xi Jinping;Fraud;Criminal Sentence;Corruption;Liu Zhijun;Ding Yuxin |
ny0176392 | [
"business"
]
| 2007/07/06 | Inquiry Into Lender | The New Century Financial Corporation, a collapsed subprime lender that is liquidating in bankruptcy, said yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had elevated its investigation of the company to formal status. A formal investigation gives the S.E.C. subpoena power. New Century said it was cooperating with the agency. In an S.E.C. filing, New Century said the agency orally advised the company’s outside counsel of the formal inquiry on June 21. New Century previously said that the S.E.C.’s Pacific regional office notified it on March 12 of a preliminary investigation. An S.E.C. spokesman, John Heine, declined to comment. New Century, based in Irvine, Calif., was the largest independent American provider of home loans to people with poor credit before filing for Chapter 11 protection on April 2 amid mounting customer defaults. | Century Financial Corporation;Securities and Commodities Violations |
ny0001177 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2013/03/10 | Recipe for Divided Europe: Add Horse, Then Stir | OLOMOUC, Czech Republic — For Zuzana Navelkova, it was just another day at the office. She showed up for work last month and found a two-pound bag of frozen Swedish meatballs awaiting her attention. “There was nothing unusual, just the normal routine,” recalled Ms. Navelkova, head of the virology department at a state-financed veterinary laboratory in this Czech town about 160 miles east of Prague. Normal, that is, until she found horse meat in the meatballs, retrieved from an Ikea furniture store in the nearby city of Brno. The discovery, based on DNA testing, did not stir any alarm at the laboratory, which spends most of its time hunting for deadly health hazards, not for food-labeling fraud. “I would still eat these meatballs,” Ms. Navelkova said. “No problem.” But the results set off a firestorm across Europe, pouring fuel on a slow-burning scandal that had begun weeks earlier with the first discovery of horse meat masquerading as beef in Ireland and then Britain. “We never expected this kind of reaction,” Ms. Navelkova said. Neither, it seems safe to say, did many in Europe, where in normal times tons of horse meat are consumed every year without causing a stir. The scandal has cast a pall over Europe’s proudest achievement — a vast common market that allows the free flow of goods and services across borders — and even the very idea that Europe’s different nations can somehow work together to set and enforce common rules. Consumers are increasingly asking a simple but discomforting question: Why, in a trading bloc notorious for regulating things like the shape of bananas and the font size on food labels, was something as simple as identifying the difference between a cow and a horse so difficult? And at a time of immense strains brought on by the euro crisis and Continentwide austerity — when new, anti-European political forces are rising in country after country — the horse meat scandal has brought into the open the deep divisions, cultural and otherwise, that bedevil the European Union. A meat that nearly all Britons consider revolting, for example, is cherished as a protein-rich delight by a small but loyal minority in places like Belgium, the home of the European Union’s Brussels bureaucracy and Europe’s biggest per capita consumer of horse meat. (Italy, with its larger population, eats the most horse over all.) For a surging camp of so-called Euroskeptics in Britain, the fact that horse meat has entered the food chain through a host of middlemen and factories scattered across the Continent stands as proof of unbridgeable cultural chasms that, in their view, make the European Union unworkable. “With 27 different countries with completely different cultural backgrounds, there is no cultural brake on what goes into our food,” said Godfrey Bloom , a member of the European Parliament for the United Kingdom Independence Party, a group that wants Britain to pull out of the bloc. “I don’t think it is possible at all to have 27 countries agreeing to and complying with and implementing” the same rules, he said during a recent hearing on horse meat in Brussels. The union’s failure to prevent what Ireland’s agriculture minister, Simon Coveney , described as “fraud on a massive scale across multiple countries” flows from a deliberate design in the foundations of the so-called European project, an effort over six decades to push Europe’s once warring nations into a zone of peace rooted in shared economic and, ultimately, political sovereignty. Under an unwieldy system intended to assure national governments that they can give up some sovereignty but not lose control, legions of officials at the European Commission, the union’s Brussels-based executive arm, churn out regulations and directives but lack the authority or resources to enforce them. For the most part, that is the province of individual countries. This means that while Brussels may loom large in the public imagination, particularly in countries like Britain, as a meddlesome, even omnipotent, authority, it is actually weak. “Those who think that the European Union or the Commission has an army of inspectors and wardens to implement legislation in this field or any other should know that there is nothing in existence of this sort,” Tonio Borg , the union’s senior official for health and consumer policy, told the European Parliament recently. Image Zuzana Navelkova, head of another laboratory’s virology department, with meatballs that contained horse meat. Credit Pavel Horejsi for The New York Times The European Commission, he explained, is largely powerless to make sure its rules on food labeling or anything else get observed, especially in the face of people determined to manipulate the system. That job, he said, belongs to each country. The horse meat fracas has also put a spotlight on the tenacity of cultural and national stereotypes that were supposed to fade away as a new common sense of European identity took hold. Particularly pronounced has been a tendency in the richer nations of Western Europe to point a finger at what they often see as their poor and unreliable country cousins in the former Communist East. When it was first discovered that lasagna on sale in France and Britain contained horse meat, Romania , the second-poorest country in the European Union, was immediately cast as the culprit. Fed by mostly fictitious accounts of a mass slaughter of Romanian horses after the introduction of new traffic rules banning horse-drawn carts, the news media in France and Britain reported that hundreds of thousands of Romanian horses had suddenly entered the food chain. “It is total nonsense,” said Lucian Dinita, the chief of Romania’s road police. The nation, he said, did introduce a law in 2006 restricting horse-drawn carts on roads, but it was scrapped two years later and led to no mass culling of unemployed horses. Some of the horse meat that ended up in processed foods sold in France and other countries did originate in Romania, but a French government report issued last month said this had been clearly labeled as coming from horses, not cows. The fraudulent substitution of horse meat for beef — about three times the cost — occurred at a factory in southern France, the report said. Squeaky-clean Sweden also lapsed into finger-pointing and denial — initially, at least. When Ikea announced near the end of last month that it was withdrawing its signature meatballs from stores across much of Europe, the Swedish company that manufactured them, Gunnar Dafgard AB, denied that its products contained any horse meat and suggested that the Czech laboratory could not be trusted. In a statement, the company said that its own tests and those of an external laboratory had found “no horse meat,” and it added that it had “tried to reach the laboratory in the Czech Republic for additional information but without any success.” Jan Bardon, Ms. Navelkova’s boss at the Czech laboratory, the State Veterinary Institute Olomouc, whose phone number is easily found on the Internet, said he had heard nothing from the Swedish meatball maker. Dafgard later acknowledged that some of its products did indeed contain horse meat as the Czechs had said. The company last week announced that the meat probably came from Poland. All nations in Eastern Europe except Estonia produce horse meat, but appetites for it there are waning fast, as in the West. “I eat it occasionally, although it is not my personal favorite and I don’t search it out,” said Tomas Hrouda, the chief executive of Pribramska uzenina, a Czech food company that produces horse sausages. He said he worried that the ruckus over fraudulent labeling “sends a bad signal to customers and casts a shadow over all meat producers.” It has also led a growing number of European food producers and stores to seek shelter in patriotism by assuring consumers that their meat comes entirely from within their own country’s borders. The French frozen-food chain Picard and the supermarkets Carrefour and Intermarché, for example, have all said they will use only all-French beef in their meat dishes. Growing calls for mandatory “country of origin” labeling on all processed meats sold in Europe have stirred concern in Brussels about a surge in what Mr. Borg, the health and consumer affairs commissioner, has called “veiled protectionism.” Until now, only unprocessed meat had to identify its place of origin. “The Germans are saying we are only going to eat German products. The French are saying the same for French products. What happened to the common market? This is really serious,” said Françoise Grossetête , a French member of the European Parliament. For Jakub Sebesta, director of the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority in Brno, the furor over doctored food products is long overdue. “We have been living with this reality for some time. The big problem in the 21st century is not food safety but falsification on a massive scale,” he said. His inspection agency set up a Web site last year called Food Pillory to name and shame producers and stores in the Czech Republic that had been found to be selling adulterated and mislabeled goods. In less than a year, the agency has uncovered more than 200 such cases, including frozen fish that were in fact mostly ice and wine that turned out to contain no grapes. “In a way it is good that the horse meat case has uncovered what happens in the food business and that officials in Brussels have finally woken up to this problem,” Mr. Sebesta said. “Perhaps things will change for the better.” The European Union’s main response so far has been to prod member states to undertake a one-month program of random DNA testing for horse meat. Brussels will cover 75 percent of the cost. As testing and labeling rules become more stringent, however, the likelihood of yet more scandals and further blows to consumer confidence only increases. “What do we do when it turns out that hot dogs really do contain dog?” joked a Brussels officials involved in food issues. He added, “But at least that wouldn’t be false labeling.” Some French fans of horse meat are hoping that the fuss could add a frisson of excitement to eating horses and help lift the stigma from a fare that, even in France and Belgium, is generally viewed as old-fashioned and uncool. Several popular Paris restaurants are reported to be interested in adding horse to their menus. | Europe;Horse;Meat;Label;Regulation and Deregulation;Fraud;EU;IKEA |
ny0173904 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2007/10/27 | Groups Tie Rumsfeld to Torture in Complaint | PARIS, Oct. 26 — Several human rights organizations based in the United States and Europe have filed a complaint in a Paris court accusing former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture. The group, which includes the International Federation for Human Rights, the French League for Human Rights, and the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, made the complaint late Thursday and unsuccessfully sought to confront Mr. Rumsfeld as he left a breakfast meeting in central Paris on Friday. Jeanne Sulzer, one of the lawyers working on the issue for the human rights groups, said the complaint had been filed with a state prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, saying he would have the power to pursue the case because of Mr. Rumsfeld’s presence in France. Similar legal complaints against Mr. Rumsfeld have been filed in other countries, including Sweden and Argentina. German prosecutors dismissed a case in April, saying it was up to the United States to investigate the accusations. The French complaint accuses Mr. Rumsfeld of authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and says it violated the Convention Against Torture, which came into force in 1987. As part of their complaint, the groups submitted 11 pages of written testimony from Janis Karpinski, the highest-ranking officer to be punished in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. She was demoted to colonel from brigadier general and lost command of her military police unit. She contended that the abuses at the prison had started after the appearance of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was sent by Mr. Rumsfeld to assist military intelligence interrogators. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement that the aim of this latest legal complaint was to demonstrate “that we will not rest until those U.S. officials involved in the torture program are brought to justice. Rumsfeld must understand that he has no place to hide.” While he was secretary of defense, Mr. Rumsfeld denied many times that torture was a policy of the American government. One occasion was in 2005 when an interviewer on Fox News asked about charges of abuse, and Mr. Rumsfeld replied that American policy required that all prisoners be treated humanely. When there was abuse, he said, “people have been punished and convicted in a court-martial. So the idea that there’s any policy of abuse or policy of torture is false. Flat false.” | Rumsfeld Donald H;Torture;Freedom and Human Rights;Center for Constitutional Rights |
ny0064202 | [
"business",
"international"
]
| 2014/06/05 | Lithuania Moves Closer to Joining Euro Zone | FRANKFURT — The looming deflation. The rising tide of anti-European populism. The near-record unemployment. The euro zone is a club that few potentially eligible countries are eager to join. But Lithuania on Wednesday moved closer to becoming its 19th member. The country received a passing grade from the European Central Bank and the European Commission on the requirements for membership. On Jan. 1, if all goes according to plan, shops in the country will start accepting euros and Lithuanians will cede sovereignty over monetary policy to the European Central Bank. Lithuania may be the last new member of the euro zone until the end of the decade, or even longer. Of the seven other European Union countries still planning to join someday, none meet all the criteria for economic performance, budget discipline or central bank independence, according to a status report issued on Wednesday by the European Central Bank. Reading the so-called convergence report, it is hard to escape the impression that countries like Sweden or the Czech Republic are not yet being invited to join because they are not really trying. So Lithuania’s lone admittance among the current outsiders serves more as a reminder of the tarnished dream of a single currency than as a confirmation of the euro’s continuing appeal. In theory, all members of the European Union are required to strive for euro membership, excluding Britain and Denmark, which opposed the idea when the euro was created by treaty in 1992 and received permanent exemptions. To qualify, countries must make changes to their legal systems and economies, such as loosening rules on hiring and firing. The European Union countries that remain outside the currency group are not showing much enthusiasm for doing that. In addition to Sweden and the Czech Republic, the other five are Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Poland and Romania. “The countries that are left still have a lot to do structurally,” said Mujtaba Rahman, director of Europe for the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. “In order to progress, you need to invest some political capital. Some countries are delaying making those difficult choices.” A case in point is Poland. With more than 38 million people and one of the fastest-growing economies in the European Union, Poland would be a welcome addition to the euro club. But the government, facing strong opposition in Parliament, has not put a priority on bringing its central bank laws into harmony with euro zone standards. “They have mixed feelings about joining the euro,” Mr. Rahman said. “It’s more a political constraint than an economic one.” If Lithuania’s membership is approved, as expected, by European governments after consultation with the European Parliament, the country will become the latest member since Latvia, its neighbor and fellow former Soviet republic, which joined at the beginning of this year. Estonia, another Baltic country, joined in 2011. The euro remains appealing to the smaller countries like Lithuania, a nation of three million people whose entire economic output equals less than half a year’s revenue at Apple. Membership protects them from attacks by currency speculators, and a closer embrace with Europe offers additional help. The Lithuanian prime minister, Algirdas Butkevicius, suggested on Wednesday that linking his country to Brussels through the single currency would be beneficial in the wake of Russian assertiveness in Ukraine. Adopting the euro “is one more step toward the deeper economic, financial and political national security,” Mr. Butkevicius said in a statement issued by Lithuanian diplomats in Brussels. Image Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said joining would bolster his country’s security. Credit Georges Gobet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The move, he said, would mean a “better life for all the residents of the country." The big sacrifice of euro zone membership is that countries can no longer allow their currencies to depreciate as a way of making their exports more competitive. That drawback is on painful display in Greece. Without their own currency to absorb the shock of the debt crisis, many Greeks have had to accept steep wage cuts, which in turn have undercut government tax receipts and corporate profit. In fact, the European Central Bank is now preoccupied with preventing other countries from slipping into the same deflationary cycle of falling prices and wages as Greece. Lithuania has tied its currency, the litas, to the euro for a decade. So it is will not really give up any room to maneuver. On the contrary, use of the euro relieves the country’s central bank of the stress of having to defend the value of the litas on currency markets. And the European Union clearly retains appeal to countries outside its borders, as Ukrainians have amply demonstrated in recent months. But countries like Hungary and Sweden seem to prefer having it both ways — the easy trade and travel that membership in the bloc brings, without the straitjacket of the euro. After six years of crisis and near-record unemployment in the region, political leaders feel little popular pressure to join the euro zone. Parties that are hostile to the European Union or want to abandon the euro were the big winners in elections to the European Parliament last month. That was true even in France and Germany, the bloc’s two largest members, as well as in Britain and Denmark. The remaining seven outliers are not yet even participating in the European exchange rate mechanism, a sort of junior membership under which national central banks pin the value of their currencies to the euro. Countries must be in the exchange rate mechanism for at least two years before they can join the euro, but there is no sign that any of the countries outside the euro will start participating even in that preliminary system soon. Some of the countries actually seem to be drifting further from European norms. Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, has been accused of infringing on the freedom of the press and meddling in central bank policy. The European Central Bank chided Budapest on Wednesday, urging the country to respect the independence of the Hungarian central bank. It also expressed concern about government measures to relieve Hungarian borrowers by restructuring loans at the expense of commercial banks. Sweden, which is supposed to be moving toward euro adoption, has been dragging its feet on laws necessary to harmonize its policies with euro zone standards, the European Central Bank said. “As yet no legislative action has been taken by the Swedish authorities to remedy the incompatibilities described in this and previous reports,” the bank said, with a hint of peevishness. Even in Lithuania, a poll last year showed that opponents of euro membership outnumbered supporters by a wide margin, though sentiment may have shifted recently after the aggressive moves by Russia in Ukraine. European leaders on Wednesday cited Lithuania as proof that the euro remained alluring and as confirmation of the progress made to shore up the currency after six years of turmoil that nearly sank the project. “The euro area today has more effective economic policy coordination, a robust financial firewall to safeguard stability and, from this year, a banking union,” Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said in a statement on Wednesday. Mr. Rehn issued a plea for those countries preferring to stand on the sidelines to remember the good parts of sharing the euro, noting that it made it easier for consumers to compare prices among countries and relieved people of the risk of fluctuating currencies. Membership, Mr. Rehn said, would “bring a range of benefits to every country currently outside the euro area.” Those outliers’ eligibility will be assessed again in two years. | Lithuania;Euro;European Central Bank;EU |
ny0072624 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2015/03/15 | One Dies and Three Are Rescued After Tugboat Sinks Near Fire Island | One man died when a tugboat sank off the coast of Fire Island on Saturday, said the Coast Guard, which rescued three other members of the ship’s crew from frigid ocean waters one mile offshore. The boat was returning to its home port in New York after doing some work near Shinnecock Bay in Suffolk County on the eastern tip of Long Island, said Petty Officer Sabrina Laberdesque, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard detachment in New York City. A crew member radioed for help at 2:15 p.m. and said that the boat was taking on water and sinking. The Coast Guard found three crew members alive in the water one mile south of Fire Island. The survivors were treated for hypothermia and brought to a hospital. The dead crew member was found by the crew of a civilian tugboat that volunteered to help in the search as “good Samaritans,” Petty Officer Laberdesque said. The names of the crew members on the boat that sank were not publicly released, but The Associated Press, citing Coast Guard officials in New Haven, reported that the ship was called the Sea Bear. The Coast Guard said it did not know for certain where the boat sank. Petty Officer Laberdesque said the civilian ship that found the dead crew member was one of two boats to respond to an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast, which she described as the Coast Guard version of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s public safety notice, “If you see something, say something.” “They volunteered their time and their vessels to help us locate these people in the water,” the petty officer said. The three survivors withstood the Atlantic Ocean’s low temperatures in part because they were wearing immersion suits, which can keep a person warm in cold water for a limited period of time, said Petty Officer Laberdesque. The suits are a safety measure that the Coast Guard advises all mariners to keep aboard their ships, especially in the Northeast. The Coast Guard said it was not clear if the dead crew member was wearing such a suit. Tugboats are compact, powerfully built vessels that are often used to do heavy lifting in ports and harbors, guiding larger ships to narrow berths in crowded docks or through tight canals. They are more typically associated with performing rescue operations than being in need of them. The Coast Guard said it did not yet know why the ship sank but that an investigation was underway. “There are plenty of reasons why a vessel could begin taking on water,” Petty Officer Laberdesque said. “Maybe they were struck. Maybe it was a mechanical issue. It may have had to do with the integrity of the hull. Maybe their bilge pump failed. Right now, we do not know.” | Boat Accidents;Towboats;Drowning,drownings;Fire Island;US Coast Guard |
ny0033532 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2013/12/26 | China Investigates Vaccine Maker After Deaths of Infants | SHANGHAI — Health authorities in China are investigating one of the nation’s biggest vaccine makers after eight infants died in the past two months following injections that were meant to immunize them against hepatitis B. The government said this week that it had suspended the use of millions of doses of a hepatitis B vaccine produced by the manufacturer, Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products. Government inspectors have been sent to examine the company’s facilities. Six of the deaths have been linked to vaccines produced by Shenzhen Kangtai; the two other infant deaths occurred recently after the use of a hepatitis B vaccine produced by another drug maker, Beijing Tiantan Biological Products. The government did not say whether any action had been taken against Beijing Tiantan or its vaccines. Investigators have not determined the cause of the deaths or linked them directly to the injections, but the cases come at a time of growing public concern in China about food and drug safety problems. In recent years, China has been troubled by a series of scandals, including tainted rice and milk and the mysterious appearance of thousands of dead pigs floating in the Huangpu River in Shanghai. China has vowed repeatedly to crack down on food and drug safety violations and has moved to strengthen the powers of health officials. In the vaccine cases, the government is focusing on the role of Shenzhen Kangtai, a privately run drug maker formed in 1992 with government support and the cooperation of the American pharmaceutical company Merck. Merck helped the company build its drug-manufacturing facility in the city of Shenzhen in the 1990s, and it gave the company the biological technology to produce a hepatitis B vaccine royalty free as part of an unusual joint venture aimed at improving health standards in China. At the time, up to two million Chinese children were being infected annually with hepatitis B. Since then, China has made great strides in early vaccinations under a national program subsidized by the government. And Shenzhen Kangtai has become the country’s biggest producer of hepatitis B vaccines, with a 60 percent market share, according to China’s state-run news media. The company has also announced plans to build a $140 million research and development and drug manufacturing center in Shenzhen. A representative for Shenzhen Kangtai could not be reached Wednesday, although the company denied last week that its vaccines were at fault in the recent infant deaths. Although the authorities have banned the use of Shenzhen Kangtai’s hepatitis B vaccines at medical facilities, health experts say there are enough vaccines produced by five other Chinese drug makers to meet the demands of the national immunization program. In China, most hepatitis B vaccines are provided free to newborns. Hepatitis B, which attacks the liver and can lead to death, is the most virulent form of hepatitis, according to the World Health Organization. Chronic forms of hepatitis affect about 500 million people a year worldwide. | Hepatitis;Vaccines Immunization;Infant mortality;WHO;China;Babies;Fatalities,casualties |
ny0015556 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2013/10/29 | Ortiz, a World Series Veteran, Savors the Moment, and Makes the Most of It | ST. LOUIS — It had dawned on David Ortiz, as it does for everyone at some point in life. “I don’t have another 10 years in me,” Ortiz said late Sunday standing in front of his locker. His voice was low. He spoke slowly. “I don’t know when I’m going to be back in the World Series. So I have to give everything I have right now.” If this is his last Fall Classic, he has certainly made the most of it. Through four games, he was almost a one-man show. He was 8 for 11, with 2 home runs, 5 runs batted in, 5 runs scored and 4 walks. He had raised his career World Series batting average to .410. He had hit five home runs this postseason, most, if not all, at opportune times. When the Tigers’ Max Scherzer stifled the Red Sox for seven innings, Ortiz hit a grand slam off a reliever. When the Cardinals’ Michael Wacha seemed invincible, Ortiz took him deep. Through five innings in Game 4 on Sunday, the Red Sox had two hits, both by Ortiz. Then, before the sixth inning, Ortiz gathered his teammates in the dugout and gave an impassioned speech, reminding them how precious this moment was. The Red Sox scored three runs that inning, aided by a two-out walk by Ortiz. “Hey, remember, the World Series is not in months,” he said. “It’s about 10 days. You’ve got to bring your A game every day. It’s like I told my teammates, you think you’re going to come to the World Series every year — you’re wrong. Especially playing in the A.L. East. You know how many people we beat up to get to this level? A lot of good teams. A lot of good teams. That doesn’t happen every year. “I told them, it took me five years to get back to this stage, and we had better teams than what we have right now — and we never made it. So take advantage of being here.” He teammates had huddled around him and leaned in to listen. John Farrell, the Red Sox manager, said that Ortiz is the figure everyone on the team looks up to. He is the one with two World Series rings. It seems unlikely now that he will get too many good pitches to hit this series. He has done much damage already, the Cardinals are well aware. So maybe his role as leader will be more crucial. Maybe the hero role will fall on Dustin Pedroia or Jacoby Ellsbury or Mike Napoli, or Jonny Gomes. If Ortiz can inspire his teammates as he did Sunday, Boston may be all right. A CRITICAL MISTAKE On baseball’s biggest stage, the Cardinals’ Kolten Wong made the worst mistake of his young career. He was near tears, standing at his locker taking questions, after he was picked off to end Game 4. He was asked, over and over, what was he thinking, how was he feeling, what had happened. “When I turned to get back,” he said, “my back foot slipped out.” It was that simple and, for Wong, that terrible. “The moment just got the best of him,” Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny said. “And, yeah, it affected him because he’s human and he cares.” The Cardinals came to Wong’s defense, saying that he was too good a player to be known for a mistake like that. The Cardinals drafted him in the first round in 2011 as a polished second baseman out of the University of Hawaii. He accelerated through the Cardinals’ system, made his debut in the majors this August, and made their postseason roster, to be used primarily as a pinch-runner. When he was called out Sunday, he slammed his helmet in disgust. “There’s nothing wrong with sitting on it for a while, too, and that’s what he was doing last night,” Matheny said. “I think that’s healthy. You realize and you go back through your mind and you figure out what happened and what you’d like to have done differently, and then you learn from it and you move on.” | Baseball;David Ortiz;World Series;Red Sox;St. Louis Cardinals |
ny0232029 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2010/08/04 | Insurgents Attempt Attack of Afghan NATO Base | KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents attacked the main NATO military base near the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday with rockets, ground fire and suicide bombers, according to Afghan officials, but there were no reports of serious casualties among the defenders. The attack began around 10 a.m. with rockets fired into the sprawling base at the Kandahar Airfield that wounded two civilians, followed by a ground assault on the base’s north side, said Zalmy Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor’s office. Six of the attackers were killed, including two wearing suicide vests, and an unspecified number fled, Mr. Ayoubi said, crediting quick reaction by soldiers from the international force inside the base. “Witnesses who were inside the base said they have heard four heavy explosions, and alarms went off, so everyone was evacuated to safe shelter,” he said. “Light small-arms fire was also heard.” A spokesman for the Taliban in the south, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, interviewed by cellphone, claimed that the attack was led by seven suicide bombers who managed to breach the perimeter of the base so that a tractor loaded with explosives could enter and explode, while fighters dispersed around the base. He also claimed that 11 foreigners had been killed. ¶ Also on Tuesday, six guards at a branch of the Kabul Bank in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif were killed by robbers who made off with about $300,000, according to Shir Jan Durani, a spokesman for the provincial police chief. The robbers had been the guests of the bank guards the night before and doctored their food, then stabbed the guards to death after they fell unconscious, Mr. Durani said. It was not clear why they were visiting the guards. | Kandahar (Afghanistan);Afghanistan War (2001- );Taliban;North Atlantic Treaty Organization |
ny0188667 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2009/04/13 | Plan to Change Student Lending Sets Up a Fight | WASHINGTON — The private student lending industry and its allies in Congress are maneuvering to thwart a plan by President Obama to end a subsidized loan program and redirect billions of dollars in bank profits to scholarships for needy students. The plan is the main money-saving component of Mr. Obama’s education agenda, which includes a sweeping overhaul of financial aid programs. The Congressional Budget Office says replacing subsidized loans made by private banks with direct government lending would save $94 billion over the next decade, money that Mr. Obama would use to expand Pell grants for the poorest students. But the proposal has ignited one of the most fractious policy fights this year. Because it would make spending on Pell grants mandatory, limiting Congressional control, powerful appropriators are balking at it. Republicans say the plan is proof that Mr. Obama is trying to vastly expand government. Democrats are divided, with lawmakers from districts where lenders are big employers already drawing battle lines. At the same time, the private loan industry, which would have collapsed without a government rescue last year, has begun lobbying aggressively to save a program that has generated giant profits with very little risk. “The administration has decided that it wants to capture the profits of federal student loans,” said Kevin Bruns, executive director of America’s Student Loan Providers, a trade group that is fighting Mr. Obama’s plan. To press its case, the nation’s largest student lender, Sallie Mae , has hired two prominent lobbyists, Tony Podesta, whose brother, John, led the Obama transition, and Jamie S. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. For lenders, the stakes are huge. Just last week, Sallie Mae reported that despite losing $213 million in 2008, it paid its chief executive more than $4.6 million in cash and stock and its vice chairman more than $13.2 million in cash and stock, including the use of a company plane. The company, which did not receive money under the $700 billion financial system bailout and is not subject to pay restrictions, also disbursed cash bonuses of up to $600,000 to other executives. Sallie Mae said that executive compensation was lower in 2008 than 2007 and that the stock awards were worthless in the current market. Critics of the subsidized loan system, called the Federal Family Education Loan Program, say private lenders have collected hefty fees for decades on loans that are risk-free because the government guarantees repayment up to 97 percent. With the government directly or indirectly financing virtually all federal student loans because of the financial crisis , the critics say there is no reason to continue a program that was intended to inject private capital into the education lending system. Under the subsidized loan program, the government pays lenders like Citigroup, Bank of America and Sallie Mae, with both the subsidy and the maximum interest rate for borrowers set by Congress. Students are steered to the government’s direct program or to outside lenders, depending on their school’s preference. Private lenders say they still provide valuable service, marketing, customer relations, billing, default prevention and collection of delinquent loans. The lenders say the budget savings could be achieved without ending their role and are pushing to keep the system in place, including an arrangement approved by Congress last year by which they are paid to originate loans but can resell them to the government. Martha Holler, a spokeswoman for Sallie Mae, said the company wanted a compromise. “To be clear, there are those who are fighting to preserve the historic financing structure for federal student loans,” she wrote in an e-mail message following up on a telephone interview. “Sallie Mae is not among them. In fact, we support constructive alternatives that would generate a similar level of taxpayer savings to achieve the administration’s important goals.” Lenders are also emphasizing the jobs they provide. Sallie Mae’s chief executive, Albert L. Lord, held a town-hall-style meeting last week at the company’s loan center in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with two Democrats, Senator Bob Casey and Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, to announce the return of 2,000 jobs that were sent overseas in 2007. Mr. Lord, in his opening speech, insisted that Mr. Obama’s proposal offered new opportunities, but he said he would fight to keep the current system mostly intact. “We can either meet or beat the budget savings that are in the president’s budget with the exact same system that we have got working now with maybe a few tweaks,” he said. But to preserve a profitable role for private lenders and still achieve Mr. Obama’s savings seems extremely difficult if not impossible; initial projections put forward by Sallie Mae could reach only 82 percent of the president’s goal over five years. Last year, to keep education financing from drying up, Congress expanded the government’s role, including the repurchase of loans, which Sallie Mae and some other lenders say should be mandatory going forward. “When you add that all up, a very legitimate question to ask is why do we even need private lenders,” said Representative Timothy H. Bishop, Democrat of New York and a former provost of Southampton College. For Mr. Bishop and many other education advocates, Mr. Obama’s plan to expand the existing direct loan program used by more than 1,500 schools is obvious and long overdue. But the administration has a fight on its hands. “The president’s proposal,” Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida, said in a floor speech, “could be detrimental to thousands of employees who serve in the current student loan industry throughout this country, 650 of which are located in Panama City, Florida.” In some states, student loans are administered by quasi-governmental agencies that benefit the same as private lenders. To appeal to these states, the administration has proposed $500 million a year for financial literacy programs and other services the agencies provide. Political opposition may be harder to overcome. Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, the senior Republican on the education committee, said Democrats should not cut out lenders. “A government-run, one-size-fits-all program is not the answer,” he said. But some lawmakers have no sympathy for an industry now kept afloat by taxpayers. “If the banks complain that they are getting cut out,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, “too bad.” At the Wilkes-Barre event, Mr. Lord of Sallie Mae acknowledged his industry’s reliance on the government. “I don’t see private capital financing student loans, certainly any time soon,” he said. Even as lenders fight the president’s plan, Sallie Mae and others are bidding for work that will remain if it is adopted — contracts for loan servicing and other back office operations. The president’s plan would use the money from direct lending to help increase Pell grants and make them mandatory, with annual increases tied to inflation, providing a much-needed measure of certainty for students. That would limit Congressional control over the grants, an idea appropriators are not keen on, but the White House and Congressional leaders say they are open to negotiation. Anticipating a ferocious legislative battle, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the education committee, is weighing all options. “Chairman Miller’s priority is to make our federal student loan programs as reliable, sustainable and efficient as possible for students, families and taxpayers,” his spokeswoman, Rachel Racusen, said. | Federal Budget (US);Student Loans;Obama Financial Stability Plan;Pell Grants;United States Politics and Government;Banks and Banking;Budgets and Budgeting;Scholarships and Fellowships;SLM Corp;Obama Barack |
ny0195341 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2009/11/22 | Enthusiasm for Palin, and Echoes of 2008 Divide | FORT WAYNE, Ind. — When tickets to see Sarah Palin in Michigan ran out, people drove to her appearance here, three hours away. Thousands had lined up overnight, starting nearly 24 hours before she was to begin signing books, camping out in 39-degree weather for a moment with the woman many see as the great conservative hope, a role model, “one of us.” They brought their sleeping bags, their children, homemade chocolate Cheerios bars, and balloons to twist into animal shapes and hats for the crowd. And they brought their anger — about bailouts, jobs and health care. If Sarah Palin was the star attraction, Barack Obama was a constant presence in the clutches of conversation along the lines snaking to meet her. “It may not be this year, it may not be next year, but we’re going to take our country back,” said Sherry Haner, 54, who was standing in the cold on Wednesday outside a mall in Grand Rapids, Mich., hoping to make it into the overflow crowd after failing to get one of the 1,000 bracelets Barnes & Noble had handed out as tickets to the signing. “My goal is to make him a half-term president,” said Chris Schwartz, waiting inside with her daughter and friends, who had pitched tents outside the previous evening to get tickets. “We need to get enough people in Congress to stop him in his tracks. One term is too long.” Ms. Palin’s tour to promote her book, “Going Rogue,” has led to reams of publicity and high-profile television appearances, including interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. But Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor, has skipped the big cities authors usually visit in favor of smaller places in areas, not coincidentally, where she and Senator John McCain of Arizona performed well on last year’s Republican presidential ticket. As the tour stopped in the political battleground states of the Midwest, on a campaign-like bus emblazoned with a billboard-size picture of her, it rekindled much of last year’s political rancor. “He isn’t governing, he’s still campaigning,” said Joe Miller, a lab technician who had taken a vacation day to wait in line Thursday at a Meijer superstore in Fort Wayne. “He’s trying to convince us that he’s doing a good job. He hasn’t done anything, except spend money.” Kevin Witzigreuter, 38, a Fort Wayne firefighter waiting in line next to Mr. Miller, chimed in: “And he can’t even make a simple decision about what to do in Afghanistan. We’ve got men and women fighting overseas. Either man up and fight the war to win it, or get out.” Camped out in a mall and in the aisles of the superstore, decorated for Christmas, the fans created a carnival atmosphere, one where intense political discussions were interrupted with shouts of “Dollar burger, anybody?” by a waitress wandering out of Bar Louie. Starbucks employees worked the line with urns of coffee, while fans passed around a life-size cutout of Ms. Palin so people could pose with her. On a table set out to receive gifts for her, someone had left red sweatshirts embroidered: “In God We Trust, and in Sarah, and in De USA.” The crowds included stray disaffected Obama voters, as well as hard-core conspiracy theorists insisting that the president is a Communist who wants to send everyone to re-education camps. But mostly, people were upset about ballooning budget deficits and health care. “I was willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt, but the spending is out of control,” said Gloria Taylor, 54, as she waited in line in Grand Rapids. “It’s going to be our downfall.” She and her sister-in-law, Robin Pintar, said they had liked Mr. Obama’s campaign promises for their transparency. But they said they were suspicious now, after a government Web site claimed jobs had been created in Congressional districts that do not exist. And they were bothered by health care proposals that seem obscured in thousands of pages of legislation. “You hear snippets,” Ms. Pintar said, “but you don’t know what the big picture is, except the price, and that’s terrifying.” Few people in the lines were reading Ms. Palin’s book, despite having hours to wait. “It’s more fun talking politics with people who agree with you,” said Lucy Vigmostad, who was celebrating her 18th birthday by being first in line in Grand Rapids. Not so much for Wyn Eck, an Obama voter who had come at 2:15 a.m. “for the spectacle.” Ms. Eck was well rewarded, with a balloon sculpture hanging around her neck with a piece of yarn from a new friend knitting in the pop-up chair next to hers. She had tried a truth-squad approach with her new friends: When they repeated the book’s claim that Mr. McCain’s campaign had billed Ms. Palin for $50,000 in legal costs to vet her for the vice-presidential nomination, Ms. Eck pointed out that Mr. McCain had said that was not true. (The bill, he said, was for an ethics investigation involving Ms. Palin that had started before the campaign.) “It got a little icy for a few minutes,” Ms. Eck said. As she signed a book in Grand Rapids, Ms. Palin told one man that Michigan was “a microcosm of America.” The places she visited were also ones where unemployment runs high, and many in the crowds that have turned out to see Ms. Palin said they had lost jobs, knew someone who had, or were working two or three jobs as they looked for one good one. “There’s a lot of talkers out there, that’s what we’re seeing now,” said LeAnn Knudsen, 41, who had waited since 5 a.m. with her daughter, 10. “This hope and change, hope and change, what hope? And if this is change, God help us.” As they wondered whether Ms. Palin would run for president, people here could not say exactly what they thought she would do differently to get the country out of its messes. But, they argued, she has common sense and understands how to run a family and a state. That seemed to be enough. “I’m looking forward to her giving me hope,” said Cheryl Geraty, waiting in the rain in Grand Rapids. That sounded something like Mr. Obama, who had effectively started his own campaign for the White House on a book tour in 2006. No, Ms. Geraty said, shaking her head and smiling, “It’s a different kind of hope.” | Palin Sarah;Books and Literature;Going Rogue (Book);United States Politics and Government |
ny0138876 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2008/02/04 | Fighting Rages for Second Day in Chad’s Capital | CASABLANCA, Morocco — Fighting raged for a second day in the capital of Chad on Sunday, with the government making an all-out attempt to beat back rebels who had overrun the capital on Saturday, Chadian officials said. The country’s president, Idriss Déby, remained defiant in the presidential palace and directed counterattacks, the officials said. The Chadian military struggled to regain control of the capital, Ndjamena, using tanks and helicopter gunships, officials said. Rebels fought back with automatic weapons, truck-mounted machine guns and artillery, witnesses said. French military officials said there was open fighting across the city, and news agency photos showed bodies in the streets. On Sunday evening, the interior minister, Mahamat Bashir, said the capital was “entirely under control.” “The savage mercenaries are fleeing, and our forces of defense and security are at their heels,” he said on Radio France International. “They tried to attack, but they were pushed back with the last energy, and we put them off-track once again.” Chad’s minister of mines, Gen. Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, said earlier that Chadian rebels and Sudanese forces had attacked the eastern border town of Adré. Speaking on R.F.I., he called the attack a “declaration of war” by Sudan. A rebel spokesman, Henchi Ordjo, said that Adré had been “liberated” and that rebels had also captured the northern town of Faya Largeau, Reuters reported. Another rebel spokesman, Abderaman Koulamallah, said that Mr. Déby was trapped at his presidential palace, surrounded by tanks and armored vehicles, and that the rebels controlled the rest of the capital after two days of fierce fighting, The Associated Press reported. Neither rebel claim was able to be independently verified. Diplomats and analysts in the region worried that the escalating violence could lead to a civil war in Chad and a war between Chad and Sudan. Either possibility would be devastating to a region that was already suffering one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises, with more than 2.5 million Sudanese and Chadians displaced by the conflict in Darfur and its reverberations in Chad. “It is a very tense moment, and nobody knows how this will play out,” said David Buchbinder, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who specializes on Chad. The French military evacuated more than 500 foreigners from Ndjamena, flying them to Libreville, Gabon, and it provided protection to the American ambassador, Louis J. Nigro Jr., and the German ambassador, Helmut Rausch, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said. The State Department reported Sunday evening that the American Embassy had “sustained indirect fire,” but there were no reports of American casualties. Karl Duckworth, a spokesman, said that all American officials had been accounted for and that 100 had been evacuated. Mr. Nigro and a small staff remained at the airport to help Americans leave, he said. About 1,000 foreigners remained in Ndjamena, several hundred of them at five French military camps and the rest at their homes, according to French officials. Thousands of Chadians have fled to neighboring Cameroon, crossing the Chari River in cars and on foot, Chadian officials said. The French government said that Mr. Déby planned to remain in the capital, and that there had been no discussion with French officials about evacuating him. With telephone lines down in the capital and state radio off the air, little concrete information was available about the state of battle. Reports trickled out from aid workers and witnesses using satellite phones, French military officials in communication with their forces in the country and government and rebel officials speaking outside of the country. “Small arms continue to fill the air with sounds of battle,” wrote an American aid worker, Gabriel Stauring, who was trapped in Le Méridien Chari hotel, on a blog updated via satellite phone. “Every so often we can hear a helicopter and then their guns firing upon the rebels who have now taken almost the entire city.” A French national who had been evacuated told R.F.I. that “things shook, there were a lot of shots, bullets whizzing by.” French officials said the fighting eased after dark on Sunday, as it had the previous night. They said the number of casualties among Chadian troops, rebels and civilians was unclear. Fighting has prevented many people from getting to hospitals, and a cellphone blackout has made getting casualty estimates all but impossible. Several civilian targets have come under attack, including Le Méridien in Ndjamena, where about 50 foreigners were extricated by French soldiers and taken to a military base to be evacuated. The aid group Doctors Without Borders said that it had treated 50 wounded people in the past two days, mostly civilians, and that the Chadian Red Cross had sent 150 more victims to other hospitals in the capital. In El Fasher, Sudan, the United Nations Special Representative for Darfur, Rodolphe Adada, said in a statement that aid workers in the region had been attacked and that the attacks had “led to the crippling of humanitarian activities” there. He said that most of the United Nations staff had been evacuated from the town of Guéréda in eastern Chad. Mahamat Assileck, a spokesman in Paris for the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development, one of the three rebel groups, told Agence France-Presse on Sunday that the fighters planned to attack the Ndjamena airport within the next 24 hours. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which has colonial ties to Chad, said the 1,500 French troops in Chad were not taking part in the fighting, although the Chadian government said French forces protecting the airport allowed it to be used as a base for Chadian helicopters. In Brussels, European Union officials decided Sunday to delay sending a peacekeeping force to Chad. Last month, the union said it would send 3,700 troops to Adré to protect civilians from the violence spreading from Darfur. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and said in a statement that he was “profoundly alarmed by the dangerous situation in Chad.” | Chad;Demonstrations and Riots;Deby Idriss;International Relations |
ny0204069 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2009/08/13 | Billy Wagner Nearly Back for Mets; Delgado Isn’t | PHOENIX — In yet another curious turn in the Mets ’ already strange season, it appears likely that Billy Wagner will return to the team before Carlos Delgado does. Barring a setback in his next two minor league appearances, Wagner, the left-handed relief pitcher, is expected to join the Mets for Sunday’s game against San Francisco at Citi Field . Wagner pitched a scoreless fifth inning Wednesday night for the rookie league Gulf Coast Mets. He is scheduled to pitch Friday for Class A St. Lucie. John Ricco, the Mets’ assistant general manager, said the team was still evaluating Wagner’s status and would map out more of a schedule after Friday’s outing. But Ricco also indicated that Wagner, 11 months removed from reconstructive elbow surgery, would not be required to pitch on consecutive days before being activated. While Wagner has progressed, Delgado, a first baseman, had a setback this week when he strained his right oblique muscle in Florida. He was examined on Wednesday at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. He has been recovering from hip surgery in May, and this recent injury puts his return this season in question. “It’s unfortunate that this has popped up,” Ricco said. “As we talked about earlier, the season is getting shorter, so we’re going to run out of days at some point.” Delgado will not resume baseball activities until he is pain free. He will remain in New York working with a physical therapist at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Wagner’s 30-day rehabilitation window expires Aug. 29. He has pitched six scoreless innings, retiring 18 of 21 batters. Manager Jerry Manuel would probably use him as a situational reliever. With Wagner’s contract set to expire after this season, the Mets can showcase him for a possible trade. | Baseball;New York Mets;Wagner Billy;Delgado Carlos |
ny0243982 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2011/03/14 | Bahrain’s Financial Center Sealed Off by Protesters | CAIRO — Thousands of antigovernment protesters in Bahrain blocked access to the financial district in Manama, the capital, on Sunday, preventing workers from getting to their offices and pushing back police officers who tried to disperse them. It was the most serious challenge to the royal family that rules Bahrain since protests began last month. Witnesses said the police used tear gas and fired on the protesters with rubber bullets. “This was a very, very big day,” Mohammed al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights , said by telephone from Pearl Square, the epicenter for protests in central Manama. “Now the protesters control these streets. There are walls of rubble keeping out the police and armed groups. People say they will not sleep tonight.” There were also clashes at the campus of the main university, where protesters contended that the security forces were protecting armed vigilantes accused of fomenting tensions between the 70 percent of the population that is Shiite Muslim and the Sunni ruling family and elite. The latest protests occurred a day after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stopped in Bahrain and warned the Khalifa family, which has ruled Bahrain for two centuries, that it must go beyond the “baby steps” of reform to meet the economic and political demands sweeping much of the Arab world. The White House issued a statement on Sunday that said the United States strongly condemned violence that had occurred in Bahrain and Yemen, and added, “We urge the government of Bahrain to pursue a peaceful and meaningful dialogue with the opposition rather than resorting to the use of force.” Bahrain, a kingdom on the Persian Gulf, is home to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet and is a crucial American ally. The Obama administration has supported the Khalifa family through the unrest, unlike the policy it adopted in seeking to remove the leaders of Libya and, to a lesser extent, Egypt. But the White House has tried to push Bahrain’s government to meet many of the protesters’ demands, worried that Iran, which is overwhelmingly Shiite, could exploit the unhappiness of Shiites in Bahrain. “I expressed the view that we had no evidence that suggested that Iran started any of these popular revolutions or demonstrations across the region,” Mr. Gates told reporters after his visit on Saturday. “But there is clear evidence that as the process is protracted, particularly in Bahrain, that the Iranians are looking for ways to exploit it and create problems.” He added, “Time is not our friend.” The demonstrations on Sunday occurred on King Faisal Highway at the entrance to Manama’s financial district. In a statement, the government said the violence began when “a group of protesters attacked unarmed police officers, resulting in one police officer being stabbed and another sustaining a serious head injury.” “Police then sought to disperse approximately 350 protesters by using tear gas in order to clear the road,” the government said. “The Ministry of Interior is currently undergoing operations to reopen the King Faisal Highway.” By Sunday evening, witnesses said, the highway remained essentially closed to traffic and was in the hands of demonstrators. “It is like a ghost town with the highway closed and the financial district closed,” Hussein Muhammad, a bookstore owner and activist, said by telephone. “Thousands of people came all morning, and hundreds were injured.” Two demonstrators suffered serious head injuries, witnesses said. Last month, Obama administration officials said that Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, listened when President Obama asked him to pull back his security forces after seven people were killed at the start of the protests. The demonstrators have grown frustrated that they have been allowed to hold on to Pearl Square, a traffic circle, but have not achieved their political goals. That is why, they said, they chose to move on the financial center in a country that prizes its business-friendly policies. And there is growing concern that the pro-democracy movement is deteriorating into a Sunni-Shiite split. “We want a new constitution, fair and free elections and a government elected directly by the people,” Mohammad Mattar, an engineer and member of the Waad pro-reform movement, said by telephone. “These are not sectarian demands, but political ones. We want a constitutional monarchy, a clear relationship between the ruling family and society. But the security forces are trying to create a sectarian divide.” Bahrain’s crown prince, Sheik Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, meanwhile, renewed a call for national dialogue on Sunday, promising that the talks would address proposals to increase the power of Parliament, Reuters reported. “We have worked actively to establish contacts to learn the views of various sides,” he said in a statement that was read on Bahrain TV, “which shows our commitment to a comprehensive and inclusive national dialogue." Mr. Gates said on Saturday that he told the king and crown prince that change “could be led or it could be imposed.” He added, “Obviously, leading reform and being responsive is the way we’d like to see this move forward.” | Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Bahrain |
ny0191912 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2009/02/28 | European Leaders to Meet Amid Economic Divisions | BRUSSELS — European leaders have called an emergency summit meeting for this weekend to grapple with increasing disarray in their own ranks about how to rescue the hardest-hit economies in the 27-nation European Union . With Europe’s economies in varying degrees of trouble, there is little consensus on what should be done or who should pick up the tab to help a handful of struggling nations to the east, or to support countries like Ireland and Greece within the euro zone that also are at risk. As leaders congregate in Brussels for a series of meetings on Sunday, it is clear that gaps between old and new member nations, and between the historic core of the union and the periphery in the east, are reopening with a vengeance. There are worries that Europe’s vast single market will splinter under the pressures of beggar-thy-neighbor actions aimed at protecting specific industries and jobs within individual nations. “Where is the European leadership?” asked Karel Lanoo, chief executive of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “I am getting more and more concerned that the whole thing is falling apart.” Fears are growing that the financial crisis in Eastern Europe could spark wider economic turbulence across Western Europe because of the close Eastern European connections to Scandinavian, German and Austrian banks. The main European Union summit meeting on Sunday is intended to show that the bloc is both active and united — two qualities lately in doubt. There are sharply differing agendas for the session, and some diplomats are questioning whether the “emergency” meeting of the union, called by the Czech Republic, which holds the organization’s presidency, can achieve much amid those divisions. Mirek Topolanek, prime minister of the Czech Republic, wrote in a letter to fellow European leaders, “We need to stress the vital role played by the single market in making the European economy more resilient.” Meanwhile Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is calling for a pan-European plan to aid the struggling automobile sector. Mr. Sarkozy has already criticized the European Commission’s more limited plans for the auto sector, which are intended to maintain a level playing field in the European Union’s internal market of almost 500 million people. Unveiling plans to help the French auto sector, Mr. Sarkozy warned that he did not expect companies receiving aid to move a factory “to the Czech Republic or elsewhere.” That provoked a direct accusation of protectionism from Mr. Topolanek. To add to the tensions, some Eastern European nations are eager to speed up entry into the euro zone, those countries that use the euro, which has provided a shield for weaker economies like Greece and Ireland. That might increase the burden on richer, older countries if bailouts have to take place. Germany, the biggest contributor to the European Union, is at pains to limit the scope of any pan-European bailouts and to prevent a major deterioration of public finances. Relations between Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Topolanek remain strained. Though Mr. Sarkozy has never publicly criticized the Czechs, officials in Prague blamed his administration for a blizzard of French news articles complaining about the inaction of the current European Union presidency and attacking the European Commission, the executive arm. | European Union;Economic Conditions and Trends;Europe;France;Czech Republic;International Relations |
ny0185547 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2009/03/09 | Pakistan Regains Control of Remote Area, for Now | INAYAT KALAY, Pakistan — After a six-month campaign, the Pakistani military is claiming victory over the Taliban in Bajaur, a northern sliver of the tribal areas, saying the militants have suffered heavy losses and have been pushed over the border into Afghanistan. As evidence, the military this month showed off the once-busy, mile-long marketplace here, captured from the militants and pulverized to bits of concrete and mounds of dust. A tank was still parked in the remains of a shop. “The resistance has been broken down. We control the roads,” said Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, the inspector general of the Frontier Corps , the paramilitary force responsible for security in the tribal regions. “They have lost.” Already, Pakistani officials are hailing Bajaur as a landmark turn in the battle against Islamic militants and are trying to persuade the 300,000 people displaced by the fighting here to return, aided by a $19 million program financed by the United States. But beyond the bounds of a tightly guarded tour of Bajaur for reporters, the larger battle against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, whose fighters are deeply entrenched across northwestern Pakistan, seems unsettled. Residents and Western military experts, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the political situation, said it was likely that rather than being finally uprooted from this slice of Bajaur and a nearby stronghold in Loe Sam, the bulk of the Taliban forces had retreated to mountain enclaves, waiting to return, as they have so often, when the military eases off. At the same time, a recent truce between the Pakistani government and Taliban forces who have seized the Swat Valley, an area just east of here, has called into question the military’s ability and the government’s willingness to take on the militants with finality. The heavy bombardment and troop concentration, cited by the military as its winning formula here, have alienated much of the population, according to interviews with residents and refugees from this area. The joint Pakistani and American plan to keep this area free of the Taliban hinges on meeting the tough challenge of rapidly winning the support of these displaced people. “If the government doesn’t build and attract tribesmen back quickly, and do things to put money in their pockets, there is every likelihood of a reversion to the militants,” said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province, who is working on the Pakistani-American effort for Bajaur. Among other things, he said, the displaced need agricultural help. “The economy doesn’t exist now,” he said. Under the joint program to bring refugees back here, essential services like electricity and water would be repaired, damaged homes rebuilt, and cash-for-work programs started, the representative of the federal government in Bajaur, Shafirullah Wazir, said. The plan envisions creating a new civilian volunteer force, backed by the paramilitary Frontier Corps, to help keep order, an American official said. But many obstacles must be overcome, including convincing disaffected tribal elders who have been singled out by the Taliban and abandoned by the government that it is in their interest to return, the officials said. One of them is Idrees Khan, a tribal elder from Inayat Kalay who with his four brothers owns most of the properties in the ruined marketplace. He said he had been asked by the government to return now that the military campaign was over. But now, he said, he has conditions. A natural ally of the government, whose duty as a tribal leader is to act as a broker between the militants and the authorities, Mr. Khan said he left Inayat Kalay two months ago when it was clear that the military was planning to attack. He left with bad feelings and remains bitter, he said. The family tried under tremendous odds to stave off the Taliban in December, he said. When the militants attacked one of their houses near the market and his brother called for help, the army showed up late and was of little help, he said. A helicopter gunship came after the Taliban had fled, but it shot at the family house anyway, severely damaging it, he said. “The government betrayed my brother,” he said in an interview in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province. “We want compensation for the structures that have been demolished,” Mr. Khan said, “and we want accountability from the government and the Taliban.” Despite the government’s assurances, many refugees said they were not convinced that it was safe to return. In a camp for the displaced near Peshawar, families from Bajaur complained that they had received no offers of aid from the government. Others said they had little information. Several residents of Inayat Kalay said they were nervous about security because they had tried to raise a volunteer army against the Taliban last fall, but had received inadequate backing from the authorities. “What’s going on is very secretive,” said Nawab Khan, a laborer from Inayat Kalay. “It’s like being in the dark where you can’t see.” He said he was reluctant to return, in part because he had no confidence in the Pakistani government. “When we returned in November they shelled us,” he said. “We don’t want to repeat that.” General Khan, in a briefing of reporters invited by the army to Bajaur, said that 1,600 militants had been killed in the six-month campaign. But residents said they did not believe that claim, and Western military officials said it was impossible to gauge how many Taliban fighters had been killed because the army had not shown any bodies. Mr. Khan, the tribal leader, was outraged that the main compound of Fakir Mohammed, a senior Taliban leader in Bajaur, appeared to go completely unscathed. “Fakir Mohammed is sitting in Damadola,” Mr. Khan said. “Why don’t they hit his house?” General Khan acknowledged that none of the Taliban’s top leaders had been killed. He blamed weak intelligence. In Mohmand, the neighboring tribal area to the south of Bajaur, the Pakistani military is also claiming success against the Taliban. The Frontier Corps escorted reporters to Qandharo, a village on flatlands where a boys’ high school that served as a military headquarters of Mohmand’s Taliban leader, Abdul Wali, was now controlled by the Frontier Corps. An Islamic court run by the Taliban is no longer operating, officers of the Corps said. But the day before the reporters’ visit, militants shot and killed three Frontier Corps members in Mohmand, and three government security men were killed on patrol when their truck hit a land mine. And on Saturday, in a sign that the militants can still create havoc in Mohmand, 14 paramilitary recruits, known as levies, were killed by the Taliban in the Yaka Ghund area, the authorities said. The levies, the most lightly armed of the paramilitary troops in the tribal area, were killed after trying to come to the rescue of a tribal elder whose house had been surrounded by the militants. The Taliban apparently singled out the elder because he had been visited by a senior government official. A doctor from Mohmand, who was interviewed in Peshawar but spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his family’s safety, said the militants had been weakened in Mohmand and were no longer able to roam freely. Instead of traveling in large groups and convoys of many cars, they must now travel furtively, he said. But he said the militants were regrouping in the mountains around the villages of Mitai and Chinarai. In Mitai, a considerable number of Arab men, with their wives and children, recently arrived, he said. Even if the military victory in Bajaur and Mohmand holds, some Pakistani and American officials cautioned that it might not mean much in the larger picture. Though strategically placed, they are relatively small pockets of the tribal belt, with relatively educated populations and benign terrain. Much tougher challenges would face the Pakistani military, the officials said, if it decided to take on the harsh territory and entrenched Taliban and Qaeda forces in South and North Waziristan. | Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Pakistan);Taliban;Pakistan;United States Defense and Military Forces |
ny0015445 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2013/10/11 | Malawi: President Dismisses Her Cabinet | President Joyce Banda dissolved her cabinet on Thursday in the wake of the arrests of several officials in recent weeks on suspicion of stealing state funds. The government was forced to shut down its payment system last week so that it could investigate reports that more than $4 million was missing. The police said that about 10 government officials had been arrested so far on graft charges, and that tens of thousands of dollars in cash had been recovered from the officials’ cars and homes. Last week, envoys from eight Western nations, whose aid has accounted for about 40 percent of the state budget, asked Ms. Banda to find ways to reduce corruption, which poses a risk to “Malawi’s stability, rule of law and reputation.” | Malawi;Joyce Banda;Corruption;Politics;Robbery;Embezzlement |
ny0202703 | [
"us"
]
| 2009/08/29 | Doris Walker, Leader of Angela Davis’s Defense, Is Dead at 90 | Doris Brin Walker, a radical lawyer who pursued her goal of keeping “the road clear of legal roadblocks” for revolutionaries by helping to defend Angela Davis against murder and kidnapping charges in the 1970s, died on Aug. 13 in San Francisco. She was 90. The cause was a stroke, Dan Feldman, her son-in-law, said. Ms. Walker was a principal defense lawyer when Ms. Davis was tried in 1972 on charges of helping to kill a California judge. A jury acquitted her. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School, said in a seminar in 2005 that the defense team had broken ground in using consultants during jury selection. Ms. Walker also represented John W. Powell, a journalist who had been charged with sedition after asserting in print that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War. A mistrial resulted, after which the government added the more serious charge of treason. But it could not produce two eyewitnesses to the same overt act, a legal requirement in proving treason. “The reason they don’t have the witnesses is that they just never existed,” Ms. Walker was quoted as saying by The New York Times. “The reason is that they have committed no crime. It’s that simple.” A United States commissioner, the forerunner of today’s federal magistrate, ordered the treason charges dropped in 1959. Two years later, the government dropped the sedition counts. Doris Lorraine Brin was born in Dallas on April 29, 1919, and attended the University of Texas before transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she joined the Communist Party and earned a degree in English. She was the only woman enrolled as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, from which she graduated in 1942. After being fired from a law firm in 1946, she was fired by a succession of canneries for union organizing. She joined Cutter Laboratories in San Francisco, makers of antibiotics and serums. Cutter fired her, in part, for being a Communist, but a unit of the National Labor Relations Board and a California state court ordered her reinstatement. In 1955, the California Supreme Court reversed the lower court, holding that Communists would be presumed to be dedicated to the practice of sabotage. The United States Supreme Court upheld the California high court, on the narrow ground that the issue was not a federal matter. Justice William O. Douglas, in a dissent, addressed a broader issue. “Belief cannot be penalized consistently with the First Amendment,” Justice Douglas said. In 1957, Ms. Walker helped represent 14 Californians at a trial in which they were convicted under the Smith Act of advocating the violent overthrow of the federal government. The United States Supreme Court reversed their conviction, ruling that for the Smith Act to have been violated, a person must have advocated for a specific seditious action and not just held seditious beliefs. In 1970, Ms. Walker was elected president of the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in 1937 to counter the American Bar Association’s opposition to New Deal initiatives. Membership had fallen in the 1950s after the House Un-American Activities Committee called the group the “foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party.” The guild bounced back during Ms. Walker’s year-and-a-half term as a new generation of lawyers joined, many of them opposed to the Vietnam War and holding countercultural views. Even so, as the first woman to hold the president’s post, Ms. Walker had to overcome opposition by some women in the ranks who called her “a man in a woman’s skirt.” In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in 2008, Ms. Walker said she “must be the oldest living Communist Party member of my generation.” One of the first things she did after joining the party in the early 1940s was to invite the writer Jessica Mitford and Ms. Mitford’s husband, Robert Treuhaft (later Ms. Walker’s law partner), to enroll. “We wondered when you were going to ask us,” Ms. Mitford replied, as she recounted the episode in “A Fine Old Conflict,” a memoir. Ms. Walker contended in interviews that she had been a Communist continuously since at least 1942. But in May 1956, The New York Times printed a correction to an article the day before that had identified Ms. Walker as a Communist. In the correction, she said she was not a Communist “at present.” Ms. Walker’s first marriage, to Henry Marasse, ended in divorce. She then married George Walker, whose name she used for professional purposes. Her third husband was Mason Roberson, to whom she was married for 25 years until his death in 1977. Ms. Walker is survived by her daughter, Emily Brin Roberson; her sister, Jean Zembrosky; and a granddaughter. | Walker Doris Brin;Legal Profession;Deaths (Obituaries) |
ny0009663 | [
"business",
"economy"
]
| 2013/02/27 | Fed Chairman Defends Stimulus Efforts | WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, played down concerns about the Fed’s economic stimulus campaign on Tuesday, describing it as necessary and effective and making clear it was likely to continue for some time. In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Bernanke was relatively upbeat about the broader economy, which he said was growing again after pausing in the fourth quarter. But he said unemployment remained unacceptably high. “In the current economic environment, the benefits of asset purchases, and of policy accommodation more generally, are clear,” Mr. Bernanke said. “Monetary policy is providing important support to the recovery” even as inflation remains in check. The Fed, which has amassed almost $3 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities to promote more borrowing and lending, is expanding those holdings by $85 billion a month until it sees clear improvement in the labor market. It plans to hold short-term interest rates near zero even longer, at least until the unemployment rate falls below 6.5 percent. Other Fed officials unsettled some investors in recent weeks by raising concerns that the Fed was encouraging excessive risk-taking, or that it would be difficult to unwind the extensive purchases, which might lead the central bank to pull back. Mr. Bernanke’s remarks appeared to soothe those concerns. Stocks rose as he spoke, and stayed up. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 0.61 percent on the day. Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors, wrote that the testimony amounted to a “robust defense” of the aggressive efforts by the Federal Open Market Committee that “gives no ground to those within and without the F.O.M.C. who think asset purchases will soon need to be curtailed.” The reception on Capitol Hill was frostier, as several Republican senators challenged Mr. Bernanke’s assertion that the purchases were producing clear economic benefits, and questioned the potential costs. Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, drew Mr. Bernanke into an unusually sharp exchange. Mr. Corker, asserting that low interest rates were “throwing seniors under the bus,” by reducing returns on some kinds of investments, asked Mr. Bernanke, “Do you all ever talk about the longer-term degrading effect of these policies?” “One thing we talk about is unemployment,” Mr. Bernanke responded. He added that the best way to increase interest rates was to increase growth. Mr. Corker then accused Mr. Bernanke of insufficient concern about potential inflation, saying, “I don’t think there’s any question that you would be the biggest dove since World War II,” using the term “dove” to denote a Fed official who is more concerned about unemployment than higher inflation. Mr. Bernanke, clearly piqued, responded, “You call me a dove, but my inflation record is the best of any chairman in the postwar period.” The Fed chairman was more measured on the subject of asset bubbles. Jeremy C. Stein, a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, and some other Fed officials have expressed concern in recent months that low interest rates were encouraging excessive risk-taking by investors pursuing higher returns. Mr. Stein in a recent speech highlighted rising demand for junk bonds and certain kinds of real estate investments, and shifts in bank balance sheets, as areas of potential concern. Mr. Bernanke said the Fed took these concerns “very seriously,” noting that the central bank had significantly expanded its efforts to monitor financial markets, as well as giving greater priority to financial regulation. But he said that low interest rates also were helping to strengthen the financial system, by encouraging companies to increase reliance on long-term financing, allowing debt levels to decline and fostering growth. He added that he saw no reason to consider a change in course. “To this point we do not see the potential costs of the increased risk-taking in some financial markets as outweighing the benefits of promoting a stronger economic recovery and more rapid job creation,” Mr. Bernanke said. He also played down the concern expressed by some Fed officials and analysts that the central bank’s plans to control inflation as the economy recovers could be complicated by a political penalty because it may lose money as it sheds some of its vast holdings of Treasuries and mortgage bonds. Such losses could be large enough to prevent the Fed from transferring profits to the Treasury Department for the first time since 1934, according to a Fed analysis. Mr. Bernanke, noting that the Fed had transferred $290 billion to Treasury since 2009, said it was “highly likely” Treasury still would see a net benefit from the purchases because any losses would not exceed those profits. “Moreover,” he said, “to the extent that monetary policy promotes growth and job creation, the resulting reduction in the federal deficit would dwarf any variation in the Federal Reserve’s remittances to the Treasury.” Much of the hearing focused on fiscal policy as Mr. Bernanke renewed his warning that short-term spending cuts have become a major impediment to faster growth. He urged Congress to make cuts more gradually. Several senators vainly pressed Mr. Bernanke to agree that the economic impact could be reduced by calibrating the cuts without altering the pace. “The near-term effect on growth would not be substantially different,” he said, although he eventually agreed that there might be modest benefits. He even offered senators a little pep talk. “I know that you’re trying,” he said, “and I hope you can find the agreement to achieve these important objectives.” | US Economy;Federal Reserve;Ben S Bernanke |
ny0288715 | [
"us"
]
| 2016/08/12 | Federal Court Rejects North Carolina Legislative Districts | RALEIGH, N.C. — Federal judges struck down nearly 30 North Carolina House and Senate districts on Thursday as illegal racial gerrymanders, but will allow General Assembly elections to be held using them this fall. The decision by a three-judge panel comes six months after another set of judges struck down North Carolina’s congressional districts for similar reasons. Thursday’s ruling covering 19 House and nine Senate districts is another blow to Republican lawmakers in North Carolina, who have seen several laws they approved partly or wholly overturned by federal courts. The United States Supreme Court announced in June that it would hear the appeals of Republican state leaders in the congressional districting case, in which two majority-black districts were thrown out. The previous map, drawn in 2011, helped give Republicans more seats within the congressional delegation in the swing state. The legislative maps, also approved in 2011, helped Republicans pad their majorities in the two chambers after they took control of the Legislature for the first time in 140 years in 2010. Writing for the panel in Thursday’s ruling , United States Circuit Judge James Wynn said that requiring lawmakers to redraw maps now would confuse voters, candidates and election officials. State lawmakers will be required to devise new plans next year. Postponing the 2016 legislative elections “would cause significant and undue disruption to North Carolina’s election process,” Judge Wynn wrote. “Nonetheless, plaintiffs, and thousands of other North Carolina citizens, have suffered severe constitutional harms stemming from defendants’ creation of 28 districts racially gerrymandered in violation of the equal protection clause.” Lawyers for the state said that racial polarization in voting still existed in North Carolina and that a 2009 Supreme Court decision said legislators could find safe harbor from federal Voting Rights Act liability when they drew majority-black districts in areas that could support them. | Redistricting and Reapportionment;gerrymandering;North Carolina;Judiciary;State legislature;Voting Rights Act;Voter registration;Discrimination |
ny0110378 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
]
| 2012/05/15 | Dale Hunter Steps Down as Capitals’ Coach | Dale Hunter quit as the coach of the Washington Capitals on Monday after less than one full season in the job, telling the team he wants to return to his family in Canada. “It was the right thing to do,” Hunter said. Hunter is the owner of the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League, a junior hockey team currently playing for the Memorial Cup. One of his three children is an assistant with the Knights, and Hunter’s brother Mark took over as the coach when Hunter left to join the Capitals in November, replacing the fired Bruce Boudreau. “I’m going home,” Hunter said a couple of hours after delivering the news to Capitals General Manager George McPhee. “I’ve got a good thing going there with the family, so I’ll stay home.” Hunter met with McPhee at the team’s practice facility Monday morning, two days after the Capitals were eliminated from the playoffs in the Eastern Conference semifinals with a 2-1 loss to the Rangers in Game 7. McPhee said he did not attempt to change Hunter’s mind, because “there’s no gray in Dale’s life.” He added, “I’d rather have him for six months than not at all.” Hunter went 30-23-7 in the regular season after agreeing to a one-year deal to take over for Boudreau, helping the Capitals squeeze into the playoffs. Playing a defense-first, possession-oriented system with an emphasis on blocking shots, Washington eliminated the Boston Bruins, the reigning Stanley Cup champion, in the first round. “He got everything out of this team that he could,” McPhee said. BLUE JACKETS RETAIN COACH Todd Richards is losing the interim label from his job title with the Columbus Blue Jackets. The team said Richards, who became the interim in January when Scott Arniel was fired, agreed to a two-year contract. | Washington Capitals;Hunter Dale;Hockey Ice;Coaches and Managers |
ny0125965 | [
"us"
]
| 2012/08/30 | Judge to Block Changes in Florida Voter Registration | MIAMI — A federal judge said on Wednesday that he planned to block provisions of a Florida measure that made it harder for organizations to register voters in the state. The measure, part of a broad and contentious 2011 election law in Florida, had a serious impact on third-party voter groups, like the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote, which filed the suit along with the Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. The groups asserted that the new requirements were onerous and made volunteers vulnerable to fines and even felony charges. Voter registration, particularly among Democratic voters, declined significantly in the past year. The Florida Times-Union reported this week that the number of registered Democrats had increased by only 11,365 from July 1, 2011, to Aug. 1, 2012, a sharply lower figure than in the same periods during the past two presidential races. In 2004, nearly 159,000 new Democrats were registered in that period. In 2008, the number was nearly 260,000. The 2011 Florida election law required groups that registered voters to turn in their completed forms within 48 hours or risk penalties. As a result, several organizations, including the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote, stopped working in the state. Previously, groups had 10 days to submit the forms. Deirdre Macnab, the president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, which suspended its operations for a year, said she was delighted with the ruling. “It sets an important precedent in Florida and nationally that gives a strong level of protection for third-party registration groups,” Ms. Macnab said. “We have been a historical part of America in reaching out to underserved communities.” But, she added, the all-volunteer voter registration groups now face an arduous task. The registration deadline for the November election is five weeks away. “We have so far now to catch up in making sure that every day Florida voices are going to be heard in a very important election with very important decisions to be made,” Ms. Macnab said. Judge Robert L. Hinkle of Federal District Court in Tallahassee said he expected to prohibit the voter registration restrictions once a federal appeals court dismissed the case. The judge had suspended the restrictions on May 31, calling them “harsh and impractical” and “burdensome.” Some voter groups restarted their registration drives after his initial ruling. Changes to the voter registration process are among several measures in Florida’s election law that are now before the courts. Critics of the law, including groups representing minorities, view it as an attempt to suppress voter registration and turnout, particularly among Democratic voters. A separate federal lawsuit that challenges the election law under the Voting Rights Act is being brought by the Justice Department. This month, a federal court ruled that a measure in the law curtailing early voting days could depress voter turnout among blacks. The court barred Florida from carrying out the changes in the five Florida counties that are covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That act requires that any changes in voting law must be approved by the Justice Department in certain states and counties with a history of racial discrimination. | Voter Registration and Requirements;Florida;League of Women Voters;Rock the Vote;Presidential Election of 2012;Voting and Voters;Hinkle Robert L |
ny0183313 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2007/12/30 | More Power for Executive: Will It Last? | In a television interview a few months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney described a sense of obligation he shared with President Bush. The two men wanted, Mr. Cheney said, “to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors.” Mr. Cheney wasn’t talking about the furniture. He was talking about power. Critics and supporters of the Bush administration can debate whether particular aspects of its efforts to combat terrorism have altered the balance between national security and civil liberties too far in one direction or the other. What almost no one disputes is that a central legacy of the Bush presidency will be its distinctively muscular vision of executive power. A year from now, Mr. Bush’s successor will have to decide whether to accept and perhaps build on that vision or — and this is never an easy matter where power is involved — to relinquish parts of it. The next president will most likely have to decide what to do with the hundreds of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, some of whom have spent six years there and none of whom have been tried for a crime. Other defining questions for the next president: How far may military and intelligence interrogators go to extract information? When is it acceptable to send people suspected of terrorism to countries that are known to use torture? What amounts to “material support” of terrorism? May American citizens be held by the military indefinitely and without charge based only on an executive branch determination that they are “enemy combatants?” And when may the government intercept the communications of people in the United States without a court warrant? Important as the Bush administration’s answers to these questions have been, the larger issue left behind is one of constitutional theory. May the president go it alone in deciding what is necessary to protect the safety of the nation? By the historical standards of wartime presidencies, the Bush administration has not taken especially radical steps in curbing the civil liberties of citizens. But Mr. Bush has proceeded alone even when Congressional authorization was almost certainly available, and he has insisted that the need for secrecy makes judicial oversight and public debate impossible. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush have surely succeeded in strengthening the power of their offices. But it is not certain that their successors will embrace every part of the legacy that awaits them. | Executive Power;Presidential Election of 2008;Bush George W;Cheney Dick;United States Politics and Government;Presidents and Presidency (US) |
ny0248234 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2011/05/07 | In Rutgers Suicide Case, Ex-Student Gets Plea Deal | NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — One of two former Rutgers University students accused of spying on another student with a webcam just days before he committed suicide will be allowed to avoid a conviction if she continues to provide information about her co-defendant, prosecutors said Friday. The former student, Molly Wei , pleaded not guilty to invasion-of-privacy charges in Superior Court here. Ms. Wei was admitted to a pretrial-intervention program, in which she must perform 300 hours of community service over the next three years, testify at any proceedings, participate in counseling to deter cyberbullying and cooperate with the authorities. If she complies, the charges against her will be dropped. The parents of the dead student, Tyler Clementi , who attended the proceeding, later said that they had advised the court to allow Ms. Wei, 19, to enter the program. But they said they favored harsher treatment for their son’s roommate, Dharun Ravi , who has been charged with streaming live images of Mr. Clementi’s intimate encounter with another man from a computer in Ms. Wei’s dormitory room in September. “We understand that Ms. Wei’s actions, although unlawful, are substantially different in their nature and their extent than those against Tyler’s former roommate,” Tyler’s father, Joseph Clementi, said outside the Middlesex County Courthouse. Standing next to his wife, Jane, Mr. Clementi said that while Ms. Wei had made a bad decision “without regards to another person’s privacy and dignity,” she deserved another chance. “We hope that Ms. Wei will become a person who makes better decisions,” he said, “a person who helps people and a person who shows kindness to those she comes into contact with.” Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, three days after Mr. Ravi and Ms. Wei were said to have spied on him. Prosecutors said Mr. Ravi used Ms. Wei’s computer to activate a webcam in the room he shared with Mr. Clementi, and then alerted others to watch. Mr. Ravi is also accused of trying to spy on Mr. Clementi again two days later. Mr. Ravi was indicted last month; the charges included a claim that he acted out of bias because Mr. Clementi was gay and that he tried to thwart an investigation. If convicted on a hate-crime charge, he could face 5 to 10 years in prison. Mr. Ravi’s lawyer, Steven D. Altman, said he welcomed the news that Ms. Wei would be required to testify in the case. “I think that’s a very positive development, because anything that she is going to have to say is going to prove and show that whatever occurred was not done with any bias,” Mr. Altman said. “It will further confirm that he is not guilty of anything.” Ms. Wei’s lawyer, Rubin Sinins, said his client’s admittance into the pretrial intervention program, was a good first step toward restoring her reputation. “We have said for seven months that Molly Wei has committed no crime,” he said. “She is a fine, upright person.” Under the program, Ms. Wei must hold a job and stay out of trouble for three years, the longest term that can be imposed for a pretrial-intervention program. Both she and Mr. Ravi withdrew from Rutgers in October and are free on bail. | Clementi Tyler;Suicides and Suicide Attempts;Wei Molly;Ravi Dharun;Rutgers The State University of New Jersey |
ny0020526 | [
"us"
]
| 2013/07/25 | Federal Judge Halts Legal Challenges in Detroit Bankruptcy Case | DETROIT — A federal bankruptcy judge on Wednesday cleared the way for Detroit’s case to go forward without legal challenges. The decision by Judge Steven Rhodes of the United States Bankruptcy Court freezes all litigation against the city, its emergency manager and Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan during Detroit’s bankruptcy process. Judge Rhodes said challenges to the city’s Chapter 9 filing, including protests by retired city employees about potential pension cuts, would be addressed in coming hearings. The federal bankruptcy court has “exclusive jurisdiction” over the case, he said. It was a dramatic beginning to the largest municipal bankruptcy case in American history. As protesters circled the courthouse downtown, the judge heard arguments about whether Mr. Snyder had overstepped his authority in forcing the city into bankruptcy. He was attempting to resolve a legal muddle that began almost immediately after Detroit filed for bankruptcy last Thursday. The next day, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina of Ingham County Circuit Court ruled that the filing violated the Michigan Constitution, which protects the pensions of retired public employees. The city, led by the state-appointed emergency financial manager, Kevyn D. Orr, is expected to seek reductions in pensions in bankruptcy as part of its broader efforts to reduce Detroit’s estimated $18 billion in debt. Judge Aquilina’s ruling was appealed by the state attorney general to the Michigan Court of Appeals, which on Tuesday issued a stay of her order pending an appellate decision. But on Wednesday, in the first hearing in the case, Judge Rhodes settled the matter by approving a motion by Mr. Orr to freeze all litigation against the city during its bankruptcy. The judge said that concentrating all legal issues in federal court increased the chances that Detroit could reorganize its debts and emerge from bankruptcy in better financial shape. “My orders enhance the likelihood of Chapter 9 reorganization, speeds the bankruptcy case and cuts costs to taxpayers,” he said. The judge also extended protection from litigation to Mr. Orr, Governor Snyder and other state officials directly involved in the bankruptcy. Mr. Orr attended the court arguments, but was not present when the judge made his decision. Afterward, a spokesman for the emergency manager, William Nowling, said he was pleased with the court’s action. “This clears the way so we can proceed in an orderly fashion with bankruptcy proceedings and restructuring Detroit,” Mr. Nowling said. Image Heather Lennox, a lawyer, presented the City of Detroit’s bankruptcy case to a judge Wednesday. Credit Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Lawyers representing retired police officers, firefighters and other city employees declined to say whether they would appeal the ruling by Judge Rhodes. Union officials gathered outside the courthouse said they expected to raise the pension issues and the constitutional questions at future hearings on whether Detroit has met all legal requirements for a bankruptcy filing. “We are going to fight this all the way,” said Edward McNeil, an official with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “We don’t believe the city should even be in bankruptcy court.” Both Mr. Snyder and Mr. Orr have said that a bankruptcy filing was the only option to reverse Detroit’s long decline, improve city services and settle its crushing debt load. But city workers, retirees, bondholders and other creditors have accused Mr. Orr of failing to negotiate deals on outstanding debts that could have averted the filing. Judge Rhodes made it clear on Wednesday that he had not ruled on whether the filing violated the state’s Constitution, or whether pensions should be protected. “All of the issues in which the court is not ruling are fully preserved,” he said. Those issues and others will be part of what is likely to be a protracted legal battle over the city’s eligibility to file for bankruptcy. Hearings will begin later this summer, and will include testimony by Mr. Orr on the dismal condition of Detroit’s finances. Mr. Nowling said the eligibility hearings were the first critical step in Mr. Orr’s road map for the city’s recovery. “One thing that was clear was that Judge Rhodes wanted an efficient and speedy process, and we think that’s essential for turning the city around,” he said. The bankruptcy filing has riveted the attention of the city and surrounding region, and spurred a small but loud group of protesters to form outside the courthouse on Wednesday. About two dozen men in red T-shirts representing the Detroit Fire Department chanted “Help us help you” as they marched down Lafayette Boulevard. Darryl Brown, a firefighter who went on disability last year, criticized Mr. Snyder and other state officials for targeting retiree pensions. “They can’t touch it; it’s protected by the Constitution,” Mr. Brown said. “But they’re still doing everything they can to figure out how to get at it.” A Detroit police officer, Rodney Fresh, said he feared the bankruptcy would gut what was left of the city’s dwindling middle-class population. He accused Mr. Snyder of failing to consider the hardship the bankruptcy would cause retirees. “I want him to look at the situation and just be fair,” Mr. Fresh said. “He’s looking at everything from his point of view.” | Detroit;Bankruptcy;Michigan;Economy |
ny0272706 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2016/05/21 | Taiwan President Takes Cautious Line on China at Inauguration | TAIPEI — Taiwan’s new president called on China to look beyond the divisions of history for the benefit of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, as she pledged in her inauguration speech on Friday to promote local industry and push the island’s global trade links to help revive a stagnant economy. But President Tsai Ing-wen’s call got a cool reception from the island’s powerful neighbor. Even before she took office, Beijing had begun putting pressure on Taiwan’s new leader, who is more skeptical of ties with China than her predecessor was. Ms. Tsai, who was elected by a large margin in January , is Taiwan’s first female president. A former law professor and trade negotiator, she won top office without the benefit of a politically powerful male relative, unlike most of Asia’s other female leaders. Her inauguration speech was closely watched around the region, particularly in Beijing, for signs of how she will lead and her stance on relations with China. Ms. Tsai offered few surprises in her address outside Taiwan’s Presidential Office in central Taipei. She emphasized domestic issues, like the need to change Taiwan’s pension, education and judicial systems, provide better job opportunities for young people, protect the environment and ensure food safety. “The people elected a new president and new government with one single expectation: solving problems,” she said. Video President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan calls on China to “set aside the baggage of history” in her inaugural speech on Friday. Credit Credit Tyrone Siu/Reuters In discussing the relationship with China, she steered a cautious line between the demands of her base in the Democratic Progressive Party, which has traditionally supported Taiwan’s independence, and China’s longstanding threats of force to block any move to formalize such a position. Chinese officials have indicated that they want Ms. Tsai to accept the so-called 1992 Consensus that Taiwan and the mainland are part of one China, each side with its own interpretation of what that means. That understanding formed the basis of the warming ties between the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party over the past eight years. Ms. Tsai acknowledged the history of discussions between the two sides on Friday, though she stopped short of endorsing the consensus. The 1992 meetings between unofficial representatives of the two sides were “done in a spirit of mutual understanding and a political attitude of seeking common ground while setting aside differences,” she said. “I respect this historical fact.” The foundations of cross-strait relations, she said, are the 1992 talks and the 20 years of negotiations that followed; the constitutional system of the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name; and the island’s democratic principles. “The two governing parties across the strait must set aside the baggage of history, and engage in positive dialogue, for the benefit of the people on both sides,” she said. In a lengthy statement released Friday afternoon by Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the country’s Taiwan Affairs Office noted Ms. Tsai’s comments but said she did not go far enough. The statement said the “Taiwan authorities’ new leader” had “adopted a vague attitude, and didn’t clearly acknowledge the ’92 Consensus.” It called her remarks “an incomplete examination paper.” Ms. Tsai has pledged to maintain the cross-strait status quo, but she is expected to take a much warier approach to relations with China than did her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party. Under Mr. Ma, trade and contacts with China expanded, but voters in Taiwan grew concerned about the mainland’s growing influence over the island. That contributed to the defeat of the presidential candidate from Mr. Ma’s Nationalist Party and its loss of control of the legislature. Taiwan has been separately governed since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island after his Nationalist forces lost China’s civil war to Mao’s Communists. Mainland China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and says they must eventually be unified. The Taiwan Strait has been a tinderbox at times over the past half-century, but the last eight years saw a period of détente, as Mr. Ma promoted deepening ties between the two sides. Still, the Pentagon warned last week that China’s military capabilities have grown dramatically and that its defense budget is now about 10 times that of Taiwan’s. Since Ms. Tsai’s election, China has taken steps indicating that it would take a much more aggressive approach to her government and renew its challenges to Taiwan’s limited international recognition. (Taiwan is recognized by 22 states, including the Vatican.) Dozens of telecommunications fraud suspects from Taiwan were deported from Kenya and Malaysia to China, eliciting protests from officials in Taiwan. China has also resumed relations with Gambia , a small state in Africa that had previously recognized Taiwan’s government. In another development that was seen here as resulting from Chinese pressure, Taiwan’s invitation to participate as an observer in the World Health Organization’s annual assembly, first extended during Mr. Ma’s initial term, came this year with an explicit reference to the principle that Taiwan and mainland China are part of “one China.” A spokesman for Ms. Tsai’s government said it would participate in the event in the interest of public health, though it does not accept the “one China” principle and said the W.H.O. was mistaken to mention it. Just days before the inauguration, China’s military conducted large-scale drills on the mainland’s southeastern coast, near Taiwan. While China’s Defense Ministry said the exercises had no particular objective, in Taiwan they were widely considered another signal to the incoming government. And finally, visits by tourists from the mainland dropped 10 percent in March from the previous month, raising concerns that China was beginning to wield its vast economic clout to punish Taiwan. Many observers expect cross-strait ties to deteriorate during Ms. Tsai’s tenure. But they note that both China and Taiwan face slowing economies and other domestic issues, giving them incentives to avoid serious damage to their relationship. “I think we’re going to have sort of a cold peace for a while,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Image Pro-independence demonstrators outside the inauguration ceremony on Friday. One analyst said she expected “sort of a cold peace for a while.” Credit Isaac Lawrence/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The inauguration ceremony on Friday was filled with evocations of the long road to democracy in Taiwan, which first directly elected its president just 20 years ago. Performances included depictions of an infamous 1947 massacre of civilians by government forces, as well as recent student-led protests. “Once again, the people of Taiwan have shown the world through our actions that we, as a free and democratic people, are committed to the defense of our freedom and democracy as a way of life,” Ms. Tsai said. Ms. Tsai said she would establish a truth-and-reconciliation commission in the presidential office to examine the legacies of Taiwan’s authoritarian era. She also said the new government would take an “apologetic attitude” in dealing with the concerns of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. But Ms. Tsai’s priority will be bolstering Taiwan’s economy, which has contracted for three consecutive quarters. Exports have fallen for 15 straight months. She cited her campaign pledge to focus on developing the biotech, green technology, advanced manufacturing and defense industries. She also said she would push for Taiwan to join trade blocs including the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But the Washington-led TPP, which already faces growing skepticism in the United States Congress , also has obstacles in Taiwan. Taiwan bans American pork from pigs treated with the veterinary drug ractopamine, and many legislators here do not support dropping that restriction to meet the trade deal’s requirements. China could also try to keep Taiwan out of regional trade agreements. “Beijing was willing to look the other way under Ma but not under Tsai,” Sean King, a senior vice president at Park Strategies, a consulting firm based in New York, said in an email. But Ms. Glaser, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said further efforts to challenge the new government would probably harm China’s long-term goal of courting the people of Taiwan, with an eye toward eventual reunification. “The Chinese seem to believe they can pursue a harsh policy towards the government here and continue to woo the hearts and minds of the people, that somehow they could have two different policies,” Ms. Glaser said. “I think they really believe that, and to me that’s complete nonsense.” | Appointments and Executive Changes;Taiwan;Democratic Progressive Party Taiwan;Tsai Ing-wen;Kuomintang,Chinese Nationalist Party;Ma Ying jeou;Communist Party of China |
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