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ny0026979 | [
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| 2013/01/11 | Kenya: Ethnic Feud Claims More Lives | The violence plaguing the Tana River region of eastern Kenya continued on Thursday when 10 people were killed during an attack on a village, including five children, above. The attack appeared to be revenge for an assault on Wednesday in which at least seven people were killed. The authorities say there is deep-rooted hatred between the Pokomo and Orma ethnic groups, which have been fighting for years. The police say they are investigating politicians, businessmen and power brokers for instigating the violence. Kenya will hold national elections in March, and officials are working to avoid a repeat of the country’s last national vote, when interethnic violence exploded across the country, killing more than 1,000 people. Image The body of a woman and her daughter after an attack in eastern Kenya killed 10 people. Credit Ivan Lieman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | Kenya;Murders;Race and Ethnicity |
ny0221223 | [
"us"
]
| 2010/02/08 | Heads in Sand Over Long-Term U.S. Budget Fixes | WASHINGTON — Social Security “is being used as a piggy bank” for the U.S. government as retirees are asked to “pay the price for the excess of Wall Street.” “We don’t have the courage to reduce spending so we increase taxes,” the approach politicians use “every time we get into a deficit situation.” The first observation was from former Representative Barbara B. Kennelly, a Connecticut Democrat, who is now a lobbyist for senior citizens. The other is from Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate. These charges share commonalities: they were made in opposing the creation of an advisory bipartisan panel to make deficit-reduction proposals, and substantively range somewhere between hyperbole and distortion. Any real deficit reduction won’t principally be borne by the elderly, nor will it be limited to tax increases. The Kennelly-Kyl axis, however, demonstrates the bipartisan lack of will to deal with a chronic and potentially disastrous long-term federal budget deficit. “We hear a lot of talk from lawmakers in both parties about the need to reduce deficits, but it’s just talk,” says Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “All talk and no action is exactly why the public is so fed up with Washington.” The numbers are stunning. Over the next 10 years, under President Barack Obama’s budget, the total deficit would be $8.5 trillion; by 2020, the interest payments on the debt would be almost as much as projected spending on all discretionary domestic programs and as much as Medicare outlays that year. The national debt would be approaching $20 trillion in 2020; nice symmetry, horrifying economics. Most Democrats, including the administration, offer only lip service to addressing this crisis. It would be foolish to cut spending or raise taxes with unemployment at close to 10 percent; the long-term efforts, however, are timid. The president’s budget slices some nickel-and-dime programs, while avoiding major eliminations. On entitlements, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the Obama budget is largely silent. These account for 38 percent of this year’s budget, rising to 46 percent of projected 2020 outlays. In the separate struggle over the health care legislation, it is the Democrats in the House of Representatives who are vehemently opposed to a Medicare commission that would make recommendations on cost controls. More than a few Democrats say deficits can be taken care of on the tax side. Some Congressional Budget Office analyses might give pause. By 2020, balancing the budget by taxes alone would require a 30 percent increase in revenue. That means the middle class would get clobbered. The top 5 percent of U.S. wage earners today already pay about 50 percent of federal taxes; unfortunately for these Democrats, there aren’t enough of the rich to soak. The Democrats’ record on deficits looks good only in comparison with the Republicans’. When the Senate voted the other day on establishing that independent fiscal commission, seven lawmakers who had been supporters, including Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, switched and voted against it. Mr. Kyl suggested the commission would foist huge tax increases on an unsuspecting Congress. What it really would have done was establish an 18-member commission of Democrats and Republicans and require that any recommendation to Congress would have to be supported by at least half of the members of each party. Then Congress could reject any recommendations. It wasn’t too tough, but too toothless. Mr. McConnell says it all should be done on the spending side. To go to 2020, the projected $1.3 trillion deficit could be almost wiped out if all discretionary, nonsecurity domestic programs, including aid to education, the National Institutes of Health and air-traffic controllers, were eliminated. Or if Mr. McConnell wanted to go the entitlements route, he could cut in half the outlays for Social Security, which is the national pension fund; and Medicare and Medicaid, which provide medical insurance for the elderly and the poor, respectively. In a meeting with the president 10 days ago, House Republicans rightly complained they get a bum rap for not having any ideas. One of the brainiest members, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has a comprehensive budget and tax proposal. It, for sure, would cut spending, eliminating Medicare and Medicaid and replacing them with voucher systems or block grants to the states, and partially privatizing Social Security. More than a few poor people and disabled people would get less health care support. On Social Security privatization, Mr. Ryan doesn’t talk much of the severe losses some senior citizens would have suffered over the past two years. On the tax side, the Ryan proposal envisions the most sweeping changes in U.S. history. He would retain President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy at a cost of $700 billion over the next decade. His plan also would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, with the bulk of the benefits going to those earning more than $1 million a year, and would cut the corporate tax rate while adding an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. “This would be the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy that we’ve ever seen,” says Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. The most delicious part of the sweeping Ryan proposal is his assertion that it is budget friendly, a claim he makes by citing a Congressional Budget Office analysis that even with massive tax cuts, revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product would be at 19 percent in 2030. How could that be? Simple, the office’s analysis makes clear: It’s because Mr. Ryan’s staff instructed them what it would be, not based on any analyses of what changes the tax cuts really would produce. Or take a look at the poster child for conservative Republicans this political season, Marco Rubio, a candidate for the Senate from Florida. Mr. Rubio supports the $700 billion extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; cutting taxes on capital gains and dividends and the corporate tax rate; and bolstering defense spending. He also favors a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. He doesn’t tell voters how he would get there. He might consult Mr. Ryan, who has discovered the elusive remedy to the deficit dilemma. Voilà! Just say it’s cured. | Federal Budget (US);Congressional Budget Office;National Debt (US) |
ny0284545 | [
"us"
]
| 2016/09/02 | Hurricane Hermine, Landing in Florida, Batters Tiny Towns | SUWANNEE, Fla. — The first hurricane to hit Florida in 11 years, Hermine, made landfall early Friday, touching down as a Category 1 Gulf Coast storm in the northwestern part of the state before weakening and heading to Georgia. The National Hurricane Center said the storm made landfall at 1:30 a.m. near the tiny town of St. Marks, 30 minutes south of Tallahassee, with winds of 80 miles per hour. It is now a tropical storm again, but hurricane center warnings remained in effect for parts of Florida, Georgia and up to the Carolinas. A watch was in effect up into New Jersey. The storm, now over South Georgia, is expected to soak that state and the Carolinas today and over the weekend. As the hurricane swept over St. Marks, it brought with it major storm surges, widespread power losses from Tampa to Tallahassee and beyond, and downed trees. More than 100,000 people were without power in the Tallahassee area, where hundreds of trees were toppled to the ground. But it was the small coastal cities that bore the brunt of the storm early Friday. At Cedar Key, a historic Gulf village of 700 people two hours north of Tampa that is popular with tourists, the police chief, Virgil Sandlin, said the town had been “devastated” by the wind, rain and a nine-foot storm surge that coincided with high tide. Map of Tropical Storm Hermine’s Path Live map of Hermine's forecasted path. Many houses lost walls as the wind pried them loose or trees crashed down, and floodwaters invaded many homes and businesses. City Hall flooded, and the town’s main thoroughfare, Dock Street, was seriously damaged. Cleaning it up, Chief Sandlin said, will require substantial work. “I’ve been here 34 years and I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “In my view, we got the worst damage. It’s devastating, almost breathtaking to see what wind and water has done compared to some of the other systems that have come through here.” Some of the businesses looked too badly damaged to repair, he said. “There will be a lot of them that will be fixable, and some of them no,” the chief said. To the north, in St. Marks, home to 300 people, houses and businesses flooded also as the hurricane came ashore. To the south, in Taylor County, the county administrator, Dustin Kinkle, said the coast had “sustained severe damage.” In Hernando Beach, residents were using boats to evacuate their houses. The storm had been expected to bring storm surges of three to 12 feet in certain counties and drop as much as 20 inches of rain. The Tampa area received almost two feet of rain in the past few days. Gov. Rick Scott, who declared emergencies for 51 Florida counties, had urged people from Jacksonville to Tampa to seek shelter and to ensure that their phones were charged and that they had sufficient food, water and medicine. He said 6,000 Florida National Guard troops were ready to respond. Evacuations were ordered in a handful of coastal towns, and shelters were opened across a broad area of northern Florida. “Remember, remember, remember, we cannot rescue you during a storm,” he said Thursday before the storm. “It’s your job to prepare.” Image A news reporter stood near a sea wall in Cedar Key on Thursday. Credit John Raoux/Associated Press By Friday morning, it appeared most people had heeded his advice. Few injuries have been reported so far. In this marshy fishing village, where Gulf Coast waters meet the Suwannee River, almost everyone obeyed the county’s evacuation orders. Businesses and houses, many of them on stilts, were mostly shuttered as the rain pounded their frames. About 25 miles northwest of Suwannee, in Old Town, the Suwannee Gables Motel and Marina compensated for a wave of holiday weekend cancellations by accommodating waterfront residents scrambling for lodging. At the Lighthouse Restaurant in nearby Gilchrist County, staff members stayed late to feed anyone needing a meal. Earlier Thursday, in Suwannee, a group of die-hards sat near a convenience store, glasses of cranberry and vodka in their hands, unbowed by the approaching storm. It was their version of a hurricane party. “There is really no worries for a Category 1 hurricane,” Michael Buie, 56, a contractor and resident, said. “Now, if this was a Cat. 2 or Cat. 3, we wouldn’t be here.” His friend Marvin Shealy, a 73-year-old restaurant owner, added, “This ain’t our first rodeo.” Though other tropical systems have threatened Florida in recent years, no hurricane has made landfall here since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Other states in the Southeast were preparing. “We are working together across multiple agencies throughout North Carolina to make sure we are over-prepared and underwhelmed for this storm,” said Gov. Pat McCrory, who declared emergencies for 33 counties. | Hurricanes;Florida |
ny0101643 | [
"us"
]
| 2015/12/31 | Florida: Woman Accidentally Kills Daughter, Police Say | A mother in Central Florida mistook her daughter for an intruder and shot her to death, the police said Wednesday. The mother was asleep when she heard someone enter her home late Tuesday, St. Cloud police Sgt. Denise Roberts said. The mother fired one shot and then discovered the person was her 27-year-old daughter. Sergeant Roberts said she did not know if the daughter lived in the house. St. Cloud Police officials said they were not releasing the women’s names because a person in their household was in law enforcement, and Florida law permits the withholding of identities under such circumstances. The State Attorney’s Office will decide if charges should be filed after the police complete an investigation. | Florida;Guns |
ny0103505 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2012/03/27 | Support for Afghan War Falls in U.S., Poll Finds | WASHINGTON — After a series of violent episodes and setbacks, support for the war in Afghanistan has dropped sharply among both Republicans and Democrats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll . The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old. The increased disillusionment was even more pronounced when respondents were asked their impressions of how the war was going. The poll found that 68 percent thought the fighting was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” compared with 42 percent who had those impressions in November. The latest poll was conducted by telephone from March 21 to 25 with 986 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. The Times/CBS News poll was consistent with other surveys this month that showed a drop in support for the war. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 60 percent of respondents said the war in Afghanistan had not been worth the fighting, while 57 percent in a Pew Research Center poll said that the United States should bring home American troops as soon as possible. In a Gallup/USA Today poll , 50 percent of respondents said the United States should speed up the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Negative impressions of the war have grown among Republicans as well as Democrats, according to the Times/CBS News poll. Among Republicans, 60 percent said the war was going somewhat or very badly, compared with 40 percent in November. Among Democrats, 68 percent said the war was going somewhat or very badly, compared with 38 percent in November. But the poll found that Republicans were more likely to want to stay in Afghanistan for as long as it would take to stabilize the situation: 3 in 10 said the United States should stay, compared with 2 in 10 independents and 1 in 10 Democrats. Republicans themselves are divided, however, over when to leave, with a plurality, 40 percent, saying the United States should withdraw earlier than the end of 2014, when under an agreement with the Afghan government all American troops are to be out of the country. The poll comes as the White House is weighing options for speeding up troop withdrawals and in the wake of bad news from the battlefield, including accusations that a United States Army staff sergeant killed 17 Afghan civilians and violence set off by the burning last month of Korans by American troops. The poll also follows a number of high-profile killings of American troops by their Afghan partners — a trend that the top American commander in Afghanistan suggested on Monday was likely to continue. “It is a characteristic of this kind of warfare,” Gen. John R. Allen , the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference . He said that in a counterinsurgency conflict like the one in Afghanistan, where American forces are fighting insurgents while training Afghan security forces, “the enemy’s going to do all that they can to disrupt both the counterinsurgency operation, but also disrupt the integrity of the indigenous forces.” American commanders say that the Taliban have in some cases infiltrated Afghan security forces to attack Americans, but that most cases are a result of personal disputes between Afghans and their American trainers. In follow-up interviews, a number of poll respondents said they were weary after more than a decade of war in Afghanistan, and impatient with the slow progress of Afghan security forces. “I think we should speed up when we’re bringing our troops home,” said Melisa Clemmons, 52, a Republican and a coordinator for a wireless carrier system from Summerville, S.C. “If we’ve been there as many years as we’ve been there, what’s another two years going to get us?” she asked, adding, “These Afghanistan people are turning around and shooting our people. Why is it taking this long for the Afghan troops to be policing themselves?” Paul Fisher, 53, a Republican from Grapevine, Tex., who works in the pharmaceutical business, said the United States should no longer be involved in the war, although he opposed setting a specific timetable. “After a while enough is enough, and we need to get out and move on and let Afghanistan stand on its own merits,” he said. Peter Feaver of Duke University , who has long studied public opinion about war and worked in the administration of President George W. Bush , said that in his view there would be more support for the war if President Obama talked more about it. “He has not expended much political capital in defense of his policy,” Mr. Feaver said. “He doesn’t talk about winning in 2014; he talks about leaving in 2014. In a sense that protects him from an attack from the left, but I would think it has the pernicious effect of softening political support for the existing policy.” The drop in support for the war among Republican poll respondents mirrors reassessments of the war among the party’s presidential candidates, traditionally more hawkish than Democrats. Newt Gingrich declared this month that it was time to leave Afghanistan, while Rick Santorum said that one option would be to withdraw even earlier than the Obama administration’s timeline. Mitt Romney has been more equivocal, although he said last summer that it was “time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can, as soon as our generals think it’s O.K.” Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution who is close to American commanders in Afghanistan, said that the opinion polls reflected a lack of awareness of the current policy, which calls for slowly turning over portions of the country to Afghan security forces, like the southern provinces, where American troops have tamped down the violence. “I honestly believe if more people understood that there is a strategy and intended sequence of events with an end in sight, they would be tolerant,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “The overall image of this war is of U.S. troops mired in quicksand and getting blown up and arbitrarily waiting until 2014 to come home. Of course you’d be against it.” Among poll respondents, 44 percent said that the United States should withdraw sooner than 2014, while 33 percent said the administration should stick to the current timetable, 17 percent said the United States should stay as long as it would take to stabilize the current situation and 3 percent said the United States should withdraw now. | Afghanistan War;Polls;Afghanistan;US Politics;US Military;Murders;US Foreign Policy;Quran,Koran;Islam |
ny0273852 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2016/05/22 | A Heated Linguistic Debate: What Makes ‘Redskins’ a Slur? | Growing up as a member of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, Brian Howard attended an elementary school that was within the boundaries of Phoenix and beyond those of his reservation. There, in the third grade, he was first called “redskin.” Did the white classmate intend it as a term of endearment, akin to buddy? Or was it used as a verbal fist, intended to hurt and to sting? “A slur,” said Mr. Howard, 28, a legislative associate for the National Congress of American Indians. “Oh, yeah. Yes.” But the widespread acceptance of the term as a pejorative — “now considered by many to be an offensive term,” according to Webster’s New World College Dictionary — has apparently been tossed into linguistic uncertainty by a recent Washington Post poll that centers on the name of a certain Washington-based professional football team. Suddenly, the poll seems to suggest, “redskin” is not so bad after all, raising the question of how society should decide what constitutes a slur. After all, if the would-be victims of the term are not offended, then. … According to the poll, nine of 10 Native Americans said they took no offense in the name of the Washington Redskins, a contentious, litigious issue that has pitted so-called anti-name advocates against the team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, and Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League. In addition, the poll — a survey of 504 people across the country — found that more than 70 percent of those questioned said they did not consider “redskin” to be disrespectful to Native Americans. What’s more, 80 percent said they would not be offended if called that name by someone who was not an American Indian. (An interesting follow-up might be to spend a day or two at, say, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, walking up to random members of the Oglala Lakota community and calling them “redskin” — and recording how well that goes over.) The poll’s results have been interpreted as some kind of vindication for Mr. Snyder. It also led to a humbling admission by Robert McCartney , a longtime Washington Post journalist who had written many opinion articles calling on his favorite football team to drop the name, which he considered a racial slur. While acknowledging that he remains “deeply uncomfortable” with the term, Mr. McCartney said that “it’s unsettling to learn now that I vented all that energy and passion on behalf of such a small fraction of the Native American population.” The connotation of words can evolve over time. Not long ago, for example, “queer” was considered a pejorative for gays and lesbians; now it has become what linguists call a reclaimed epithet — a word adopted by a group in empowering defiance. In addition, accepted use might depend on the circumstances: The sharing of a certain racial slur among African-Americans does not entitle white people to use that term, so freighted is its ignominious history. Things can change in a mere generation. As a boy in Boston in the 1970s and early 1980s, Eugene Chay identified himself as Oriental, or Oriental-American. It was the accepted term. “I grew up using ‘Oriental’ and being referred to as ‘Oriental,’” recalled Mr. Chay, who is a senior staff lawyer for a civil rights organization called Asian-Americans Advancing Justice. Image Fans in January. “These terms make it easier for people to think of us Indians as not really Americans,” she said. Credit Patrick Smith/Getty Images But by the mid-1980s, Mr. Chay had become aware of a shift in the language — of the growing sentiment that “Oriental” was geocentric, ethnocentric, and disparaging to Asians. It was a rhetorical tool of separation and otherness, he said. “We didn’t refer to people in the West as Occidental,” he said. “I eventually reached a point in my teens where I did not want to be referred to as Oriental, and where I took to task people who referred to me as Oriental. I asked to be referred to as Asian.” But redskin? Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as an expert for Native Americans petitioning to have the federal government cancel the Washington Redskins organization’s trademark registration, said the term was a qualified form of a reclaimed epithet. Some scholastic teams in Indian country have nicknames that include Redskins and Braves, he said, sort of as a way to say, “If you want redskin savages, then we’ll give you redskin savages.” “It’s used in those schools in that reclaimed way,” Mr. Nunberg said. “But that doesn’t license its use by third parties.” The term has come to be associated with hostility, and savagery, and a mélange of popular culture stereotypes that include “F Troop” and “Davy Crockett,” removed in some way from the fact of sustained genocide and mistreatment. “A word can be offensive simply because of its history,” Mr. Nunberg said. “You can’t pluck this term out of its history and say, ‘Because my intentions are honorable, it’s O.K.’” Debra Krol, a journalist in Arizona and an enrolled member of the Xolon Salinan Tribe, on the central coast of California, characterized the opposition to the term as symptomatic of the broader movement by blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans to “strip our language of these terms that are offensive, demeaning.” “These terms make it easier for people to think of us Indians as not really Americans,” she said. “Kind of like three-fifths of a person that blacks used to be under the U.S. Constitution.” Ms. Krol also said there was disagreement among American Indians about the seriousness of the issue. “There are a lot of people out there who have a problem with it,” she said. “But there are a lot of other people who really don’t care either way — who say we have bigger problems to worry about than a sports team’s mascot and a name.” But Tara Houska, a tribal lawyer and a member of the Couchiching First Nation in Canada, along the Minnesota border, pointed out that during the American Indian Movement of the 1960s, tribal leaders across the country cited mascots and team names like the Redskins and the Cleveland Indians as racist and dehumanizing. “This goes back long before I was born,” said Ms. Houska, 32, who helped organize a protest in Minneapolis in 2014 against the appropriation of Indian culture for team names and mascots. She questioned the methodology of the Post poll — which mirrored the results of a poll conducted in 2004 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center — saying that a survey of 504 people could hardly represent the feelings of 5.2 million Native Americans. She also said that those who clung to family lore — of, say, being part Cherokee on their mother’s side — had experiences profoundly different from those who actually lived the Native American life, whether on or off a reservation. And, she said, the damage has been documented. A decade ago, the American Psychological Association recommended the immediate retirement of Native American mascots and symbols, in part because they appear “to have a negative impact on the self-esteem of American Indian children.” Ms. Houska, who lives in Washington, said she was bracing for all the people who would be waving the poll in her face — “the poll, the poll, the poll” — and saying she had no right to be offended by the name of the local football team. That the matter is even up for debate baffles her. “It’s a straight-up slur,” she said. “It’s a dictionary-defined racial slur. It should be a no-brainer — but somehow, it’s not.” | Football;Native Americans;Discrimination;Organizational Names;Polls;Mascot;Redskins |
ny0171040 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
]
| 2007/11/05 | Olson Takes Leave for Personal Matter | TUCSON, Nov. 4 (AP) — Arizona Coach Lute Olson is taking a leave of absence for unspecified personal reasons. In a statement issued by his public relations firm Sunday, Olson said the matter was not health related. “For the past 25 years, I have always given 110 percent to the team and this job,” said Olson, a 73-year-old Hall of Fame coach. “In light of this personal matter, I feel it is in the best interest of the team and the University of Arizona to take a leave of absence.” Olson said he wanted to “reassure everyone that this isn’t a health scare, but rather a personal matter that needs my undivided attention.” The specific reason was not given. “I want to thank everyone in advance for their support and prayers and request that the media respect my family’s privacy during this time,” he said. The assistant coach Kevin O’Neill will assume Olson’s duties in his absence. O’Neill, a former Olson assistant who returned to the program this off-season, has been a head coach at Marquette, Tennessee and Northwestern. “Lute will be back coaching our team shortly,” O’Neill said Sunday before 17th-ranked Arizona defeated Concordia of Canada, 68-50, in an exhibition game. “He has been a great ambassador of the game. He has led our team for 25 years, and he will continue to lead our team for a long time.” Olson has a 780-280 record in 34 seasons as a major college coach. In 24 years at Arizona, he is 589-187, with 23 consecutive appearances in the N.C.A.A. tournament. His Wildcats have won 11 Pac-10 championships, reached the Final Four four times and won the N.C.A.A. title in 1997. Olson took an extended leave of absence in 2001 when his wife, Bobbie, was terminally ill with cancer. He eventually returned and led that Arizona team to the Final Four. Olson has since remarried. “We will allow Lute this time that he needs,” said Jim Livengood, Arizona’s athletic director. “That time schedule has not been set. He will be the person who will determine that.” | College Athletics;University of Arizona;Olson Lute |
ny0162713 | [
"business",
"media"
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| 2006/02/16 | Icahn Expected to Step Up Time Warner Campaign | Carl C. Icahn will try to escalate his fight to break up Time Warner today by proposing a slate of directors that includes Dale M. Hanson, the former chief executive of a powerful pension fund, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, according to people involved in the plan. Mr. Icahn is expected to name a handful of other executives and corporate governance experts as candidates for the board, possibly including a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, these people said. It was unclear last night whether Mr. Icahn would propose a full slate of 14 directors. Mr. Icahn is hoping that the announcement of new names joining his campaign will provide some momentum to his efforts. He recently named Frank J. Biondi Jr., a former chief executive of Viacom and Universal Studios, to run his slate and act as chief executive should it win. Mr. Hanson, a vocal corporate governance advocate who helped make Calpers one of the most influential and outspoken pension funds in the nation in the late 1980's and early 1990's, is expected to add some heft to Mr. Icahn's campaign. Mr. Hanson now runs a venture capital fund called the American Partners Capital Group. Mr. Hanson could not be reached for comment last night. Time Warner declined to comment. So far, investors have reacted to Mr. Icahn's efforts with some trepidation. Time Warner's stock has not moved much since Mr. Icahn began his fight. Its shares closed yesterday at $17.97, down 20 cents. Mr. Icahn, however, may have gained an ally in Richard Greenfield, a research analyst with Pali Research, who yesterday issued a report titled, "We Would Vote for Icahn Unless TWX Moves Aggressively." In his report, he said: "Condensing Carl Icahn's proposal into a single question, he is essentially asking investors, 'Do you want things to stay the same or change?' If it boiled down to that level of simplicity, we favor change (and we think investors will too)." But Mr. Greenfield quarrels with Mr. Icahn's plans, saying that while he supports change, "just not as far as Icahn, his investor group, Lazard and Frank Biondi are trying to push Time Warner." | AOL;TIME WARNER INC;CALIFORNIA PUBLIC EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT SYSTEM;HANSON DALE M;ICAHN CARL C;BIONDI FRANK J JR;MERGERS ACQUISITIONS AND DIVESTITURES;BOARDS OF DIRECTORS |
ny0058736 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2014/08/20 | Next Leader May Echo Maliki, but Iraqis Hope for New Results | BAGHDAD — The last time the United States pushed Iraqis to choose a new prime minister who could unite the country to confront a sectarian civil war was in 2006, and the Iraqis chose Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The result was another civil war. This time, with the country again on the edge of collapse, they have chosen Haider al-Abadi. Both men come from the same Shiite Islamist movement whose members, after decades of clandestine opposition to Saddam Hussein and the Sunni elite that dominated his rule, were asked to govern Iraq in an inclusive way that accommodated the Sunnis they considered their former tormentors. So far, that has proved elusive, but this time hope rests on a belief that Mr. Abadi is a different type of Islamist: one whose education, big-city upbringing and decades of living in Britain can surmount what have seemed the reflexive positions of Iraqi Shiite Islamists to be suspicious of Sunni ambitions and to see conspiracies around every corner. In some ways, though, he is solidly in line with the traditional sectarian views held by Shiite Islamists in Iraq. Mr. Abadi, who was nominated last week to be Iraq’s new prime minister and still must form a government before he takes power, insisted a few years after Shiites took power during the American occupation that they could not soon be expected to support a reconciliation program with the country’s Sunni minority. Before Iraq’s national elections in 2010, Mr. Abadi fretted anew that Baathists, Mr. Hussein’s old ruling party, were “building new coalitions” to restore their power. And speaking to an American diplomat in Baghdad, Mr. Abadi worried that if the Iraqi public did not benefit fully from Iraq’s new democracy, then army officers might “launch a coup d’état.” These sentiments, illustrated in several American diplomatic cables that were made public by WikiLeaks, reflect the scarred psyche of the Shiite Islamist movement that shaped much of Mr. Abadi’s life. For his political activities, Mr. Abadi was driven to exile in Britain, and two of his brothers were executed by Mr. Hussein’s administration. Whether Mr. Abadi can now overcome this history will help determine whether he can establish partnerships with Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds and forge a more inclusive government. President Obama has demanded a less divisive leader as the price of more robust support to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which threatens to break the country apart. There is little in Mr. Abadi’s political history to suggest that he harbors views at odds with the Dawa Party establishment. Even so, interviews with Iraqi political leaders and foreign diplomats paint a more nuanced portrait, with some holding out hope that he could break the mold of Iraq’s recent leaders. Mr. Abadi’s rise to the cusp of becoming Iraq’s new leader is almost as improbable as that of the man he is replacing, Mr. Maliki, who said last week that he would give up power . Mr. Maliki, like Mr. Abadi, was a lawmaker when he was chosen in 2006 to replace another man from his own Shiite Islamist Dawa Party, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari was seen as too sectarian and indecisive and not capable of uniting the country in the face of civil war. Now Mr. Maliki, who initially seemed eager to take the fight to Shiite militias in Basra and Sadr City and who cooperated with the United States during the American troop surge, has been replaced, mostly for the same reasons. And again, the political class has plucked its choice for a new prime minister from the Dawa Party, which won the most seats in April’s national elections. American diplomats and Iraqis say that Mr. Abadi and Mr. Maliki, despite a common political heritage, have important differences, including that Mr. Abadi has been much more exposed to the West than Mr. Maliki was. But some also acknowledge the risk that history will repeat itself, with a new Shiite leader unwilling or unable to knit the country back together. Zalmay Khalilzad, who was the American ambassador to Iraq in 2006 and played a decisive role in urging Mr. Maliki to seek the position of prime minister, said he thought Mr. Abadi would be “more pragmatic because of his Western technical background.” But he also noted that Mr. Abadi had been a core member of the Dawa party, which has governed Iraq for more than eight years and shown itself incapable of establishing durable alliances with Sunnis. “He is more open, more worldly, but he is going to have a very difficult task being able to bridge the gaps that exist and then confront the I.S.,” he said, using the abbreviation for the Islamic State, which ISIS now calls itself. “He also comes from that hard-core Dawa, which is Shia Islamist.” Mr. Khalilzad said. “Not only does he have to evolve further himself, but bringing the rest of the Shia Islamists to the kind of power-sharing needed will be a tall order for him.” After insurgents took Mosul in June, Iraqi leaders came under intense pressure, much of it from the United States, to quickly form a new government and replace Mr. Maliki with someone seen as more inclusive. For weeks, leaders considered many candidates, but Mr. Abadi did not emerge as a viable alternative until almost the end of the process. Video The goals of of the three main groups in Iraq — Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish — as the country threatens to split apart along sectarian lines. Credit Credit Reuters When Mr. Abadi was chosen by Dawa leaders as a compromise candidate, Iran at first refused to accept him. Iran was said to be worried about his Western background, and Iranian leaders have not had the close working relationship with Mr. Abadi that they have had with other Iraqi Shiite leaders over the years. In addition, Mr. Maliki refused to step aside. But Iran, Western officials believe, eventually backed Mr. Abadi after it became clear that Mr. Maliki’s attempt to retain power through legal channels would probably fail. “He was someone not afraid to step up to Maliki and take a chance, so there’s a fair amount of leadership right there,” said a Western official, referring to Mr. Abadi. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about political negotiations. Although Mr. Maliki and Mr. Abadi come from the same Islamist movement, they have quite different backgrounds. Mr. Maliki, 64, grew up in a village, spent his time in exile in Syria and Iran, speaks no foreign languages and is deeply hostile to the West. Mr. Abadi, 62, is considered more urbane and sophisticated. He comes from a wealthy family in Baghdad, was educated abroad, lived for decades in London and speaks English. His father was a well-known doctor who is remembered even today in Karada, the upper-middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad where Mr. Abadi grew up. In Britain, Mr. Abadi earned a doctorate in engineering, and he later ran the company that serviced elevators at the building where the BBC World Service was located, earning a decent living while he also worked in the turbulent world of Iraqi opposition politics. He is married and has three children, and his family still lives in London. He joined the Dawa Party at age 15, just before the Baathists consolidated power in the country in 1968. In the late 1970s he moved to Britain to pursue his graduate studies, and while he was there Mr. Hussein’s government began targeting Dawa operatives for assassination, and so he stayed abroad. Ali al-Alaq, a longtime Dawa leader, noted Mr. Abadi’s background as a scion of a wealthy family and said he would “have a new touch in Iraqi politics.” In the opposition days, Mr. Abadi was involved in Dawa’s political affairs, working in Britain, while Mr. Maliki, operating largely from Damascus, Syria, was in charge of clandestine military operations against Mr. Hussein’s government. “He is a man who considers things,” said Salman al-Jumaili, a Sunni and former member of Parliament, where he worked with Mr. Abadi. “And my opinion is that he is not as aggressive because he doesn’t have a background in the security services of the Dawa Party.” After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Abadi returned there. He was briefly communications minister, and for eight years has been a member of Parliament, where he has focused on economic issues and earned a reputation as an able technocrat, not an ideologue. While some of the diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks showed him resistant to efforts at national reconciliation, others showed a willingness to work with Sunnis. Robert S. Ford, a former American diplomat who served extensively in Iraq and was most recently the ambassador to Syria, said he felt that Mr. Abadi’s temperament was well suited for leadership. “Abadi was very relaxed in dealing with Iraqis from other political blocs,” Mr. Ford said. “He is outgoing, and sometimes in meetings when they were discussing something contentious like an election law, he would tell little jokes and get everybody to chuckle a little bit and lighten the atmosphere.” Even so, Mr. Abadi has not broken from the party’s orthodoxy, which is geared toward securing the political dominance of Iraq’s long-suppressed Shiite majority. Many of the things people are now saying about Mr. Abadi — that he is not overly sectarian — are similar to what was said about Mr. Maliki eight years ago. Mr. Abadi could run into difficulties dealing with the Kurds, too. As the head of Parliament’s finance committee, he took a leading role in cutting off budget payments this year to the Kurdish region in response to the Kurds’ demands to sell their own oil without the Iraqi government’s approval. “We know that there is no difference between Maliki and Abadi with respect to the suspended issues between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government,” said Adel Nuri, a Kurdish lawmaker. Mr. Abadi has not spoken to the country in a national address, but he has communicated over Twitter. In one message, he wrote: “I will stand with the persecuted against oppressors & be the voice of the weak & destitute. Lord take us not to task should we forget or err.” | Haider al-Abadi;Iraq;Nuri Kamal al-Maliki;Shiite;Sunnis;Kurdish;Islamic Dawa Party;Saddam Hussein;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State |
ny0024020 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2013/08/27 | Almost 5 Months Old, Bronx Native Makes Zoo Debut | A 17-pound snow leopard, born this spring at the Bronx Zoo, is now on display, the first son of an orphaned snow leopard from Pakistan. The cub, still unnamed, is the offspring of Leo, who was brought to the zoo after his mother and siblings were killed in 2005 in Pakistan. Snow leopards are tricky to breed in captivity since there is a brief window of fertility each year. Leo’s first attempt was not successful. But earlier this year, zoo officials paired him with Maya, a proven breeder, and the match took. The new cub was born on April 9; officials at the zoo wanted to make sure that he was healthy and well adjusted before officially putting him on display. Until now, the cub and Maya have been kept out of public view. (In the wild, snow leopard fathers leave the scene after mating and play no role in rearing their young; so Leo, who weighs 83 pounds, is in a separate enclosure in the same exhibit, Himalayan Highlands.) On Friday, ignoring a reporter, the cub tumbled over a rocky outcropping, playfully stalked his 66-pound mother and rubbed his face against a log. The cub is still nursing, but he has started eating solid food, primarily raw chicken. “We let the mother do all the work,” said Lacy Martin, a senior wild animal keeper. “She’s doing an excellent job, so there’s no reason to interfere. He’s gotten much more brave and has a lot of spunk.” Nadeem Hotiana, the press attaché at the Pakistani embassy in Washington, said in a telephone interview that the country had decided to send Leo to the Bronx Zoo because Pakistan lacked an “appropriate facility” to care for the orphaned cub. The Bronx Zoo is the acknowledged leader in snow leopard care and husbandry. In 1903, it was the first zoo in North America to exhibit snow leopards. Since then the zoo has bred more than 70 of them. They are among the planet’s most endangered large cats, with a range limited to the remote mountains of Central Asia and parts of Bhutan, China, India, Mongolia and Russia. The Bronx Zoo now has 10 snow leopards in its collection, a sizable fraction of the total of 137 snow leopards in accredited zoos in North America. The cub’s birth is part of the Species Survival Plan, a cooperative breeding program meant to maintain genetic diversity and demographic stability in zoo populations of threatened and endangered animals. Patrick Thomas, the zoo’s general curator and associate director, said the birth represented a “significant boost to the genetics” of the snow leopard program. In the wild, snow leopard cubs stay with their mothers for about two years. “Right now that cub’s whole world revolves around its mother,” said Dr. Thomas, who was part of the team that traveled to retrieve Leo from the Naltar Valley in Pakistan in 2006. “He relies on her for food and companionship.” In Pakistan, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoo, has worked with local officials on a number of conservation efforts, training more than 100 rangers to monitor snow leopards and other wildlife and to stop deforestation and poaching. “While Leo is on loan to the Bronx Zoo, we hope that his presence in the United States and ongoing bilateral cooperation on conservation efforts will help deepen the links between the people of Pakistan and the United States,” Richard G. Olson, the United States ambassador to Pakistan, said in a statement. Dr. Asad M. Khan, Pakistan’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, also issued a statement: “It’s heartening to learn that Leo had his own cub, a male, this summer. Leo has served as a symbol of deep friendship and abiding good will between our two countries.” | Bronx Zoo;Leopard;Breeders;Pakistan |
ny0062491 | [
"technology"
]
| 2014/01/26 | Michaels Stores Is Investigating Data Breach | SAN FRANCISCO — In what may be the latest in a continuing spate of cyberattacks on American retailers, Michaels Stores said Saturday that it was investigating a potential security breach involving customers’ credit card information. Michaels, an arts and crafts retailer based in Irving, Tex., said it was looking into reports of fraudulent activity on credit cards belonging to its customers. But the company said it had not yet confirmed a breach, and did not say how many credit cards were potentially compromised. The retailer operates more than 1,000 stores in the United States and Canada. The Secret Service is investigating the breach, and is conducting separate inquiries of recent breaches at Neiman Marcus and Target. “Although the investigation is ongoing, based on the information the company has received and in light of the widely reported criminal efforts to penetrate the data systems of U.S. retailers, Michaels believes it is appropriate to let its customers know a potential issue may have occurred,” the company said in a statement. If the breach is confirmed, Michaels will be the third major retailer — after Target and Neiman Marcus — to confirm that its systems were compromised after an investigation by Brian Krebs, a security blogger, who first reported on Saturday that Michaels had potentially experienced a breach. The recent breach at Neiman Marcus may have compromised more than a million of its customers’ payment cards, while the Target breach affected 70 million to 110 million people. In both cases, malware was installed on the retailers’ systems, feeding customers’ payment details back to criminals’ computer servers. The breaches at Neiman Marcus and Target are believed to have been perpetrated by the same group of criminals in Eastern Europe, and to be part of a broader cyberattack directed at as many as six other retailers, according to two people investigating the breaches who were not authorized to speak publicly. | Retail;Hacker (computer security);Credit card;Michaels Stores |
ny0186340 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2009/03/12 | France Will Take Full NATO Membership Again, With Greater Military Role | PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Wednesday that France intended to become a full member of NATO , 43 years after Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of the alliance’s military command and threw NATO, and American forces, out of the country. “Because it is in her interest and because it is her choice, France will take her full place, that of an ally both free and in solidarity, independent but engaged, a country that assumes all its responsibilities, everywhere and speaking to everyone, at the service of our values and of peace,” Mr. Sarkozy said. France is already a major contributor of money and troops to the alliance, but now it will reintegrate into NATO’s military command structure. Several hundred French officers will take up NATO jobs, and France is expected to get two important commands: the Allied Command Transformation project in Virginia, examining a more modern alliance, and the regional command headquarters in Lisbon, which is in charge of NATO’s rapid response force. The issue has been politically delicate, with some in Mr. Sarkozy’s own center-right party, as well as on the left, criticizing the move as limiting France’s freedom of action in a world dominated by the United States. Some say they believe that the decision will hurt the chances for Europe to develop its own military capacity. Martine Aubry, the Socialist Party leader, said Wednesday that “nothing today justifies returning to NATO’s military command,” adding, “There’s no hurry, no fundamental need, except this Atlanticism that’s becoming an ideology.” “Atlanticism” is a code word for pro-Americanism. In 1966, though, the precursor to the Socialist Party moved a censure motion in Parliament after de Gaulle pulled out of the NATO military command that year. Mr. Sarkozy will write to other NATO members next week, after a parliamentary debate next Tuesday on the decision. Mr. Sarkozy, as president, can decide on his own, but his government will face a no-confidence vote, which it is expected to survive. Speaking in Paris, Mr. Sarkozy repeated his arguments for reintegration, saying that the world had changed, threats had changed and NATO had changed. “European defense will be stronger” when France rejoins the NATO military command, Mr. Sarkozy said. “The Americans understand perfectly well that having weak allies serves nothing.” NATO “is the only international organization where France doesn’t seek to be present and influential,” he said. “The moment has come to put an end to this situation, since it is in the interest of France and of Europe.” | France;North Atlantic Treaty Organization;Sarkozy Nicolas;Defense and Military Forces |
ny0022193 | [
"us"
]
| 2013/09/07 | Texas: Split Ruling Over Political Maps | A federal court said Friday that it would not delay Texas’ primary elections and ordered the state to temporarily use political maps drawn by the Legislature while the judges sort out a complex lawsuit. The three-judge panel in San Antonio said the court would not draw its own map for the 2014 elections, as civil rights groups wanted, but it did not throw out the lawsuit, as Attorney General Greg Abbott requested. The issue is whether the Legislature illegally drew maps that intentionally diminish minorities’ voting power. Mr. Abbott’s office has argued that Republicans who control the Legislature drew maps to enhance their party’s chances, which is legal, and that if it hurts minorities who mostly vote Democratic, it is not a civil rights violation. (AP) | Texas;Primaries;Lawsuits;Republicans;Minorities;Greg Abbott;US Politics;Redistricting and Reapportionment;gerrymandering |
ny0262347 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2011/06/22 | Cost of Wars a Rising Issue as Obama Weighs Troop Levels | WASHINGTON — President Obama will talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan when he makes a prime-time speech from the White House on Wednesday night. But behind his words will be an acute awareness of what $1.3 trillion in spending on two wars in the past decade has meant at home: a ballooning budget deficit and a soaring national debt at a time when the economy is still struggling to get back on its feet. As Mr. Obama begins trying to untangle the country from its military and civilian promises in Afghanistan, his critics and allies alike are drawing a direct line between what is not being spent to bolster the sagging economy in America to what is being spent in Afghanistan — $120 billion this year alone. On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors made that connection explicitly, saying that American taxes should be paying for bridges in Baltimore and Kansas City, not in Baghdad and Kandahar. The mayors’ group approved a resolution calling for an early end to the American military role in Afghanistan and Iraq , asking Congress to redirect the billions now being spent on war and reconstruction costs toward urgent domestic needs. The resolution, which noted that local governments cut 28,000 jobs in May alone, was the group’s first anti-war vote since it passed a resolution four decades ago calling for an end to the Vietnam War. And in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Senator Joe Manchin III , Democrat of West Virginia , said: “We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.” Demonstrators describing themselves as “angry jobless citizens” said they would picket the Capitol on Wednesday to urge members of Congress to use any savings from Mr. Obama’s troop reductions to create more jobs. The group sponsoring the demonstration, the Prayer Without Ceasing Party, said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “urging the masses to call their congressmen and the president to ensure that jobs receive a top priority when the troops start returning to America.” Spending on the war in Afghanistan has skyrocketed since Mr. Obama took office, to $118.6 billion in 2011. It was $14.7 billion in 2003, when President George W. Bush turned his attention and American resources to the war in Iraq. The increase is easy to explain. When Mr. Obama took office, he vowed to aggressively pursue what he termed America’s “war of necessity” (Afghanistan) and to withdraw from America’s “war of choice” (Iraq). He has done so; the lines on Iraq and Afghanistan war spending crossed in 2010, when the United States spent $93.8 billion in Afghanistan versus $71.3 billion in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the White House is keenly aware that the president is heading into a re-election campaign; with the country’s jobless rate remaining high, topping 9 percent, his poll numbers on his handling of the domestic economy have plummeted. “Do we really need to be spending $120 billion in a country with a G.D.P. that’s one-sixth that size?” asked Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, a policy group with close ties to the Obama administration. “Most Americans would be shocked to know that we’re spending that kind of money for jobs programs for former Taliban , and would wonder where are our jobs programs for Detroit and Cleveland?” In 2010, Congress — at the Obama administration’s request — set aside $100 million to support programs in Afghanistan aimed at moving former insurgents off the battlefields and into the country’s mainstream economy. Those efforts — similar to what the Bush administration did in Iraq — have yet to bear much fruit; the 1,700 fighters who have enrolled in the reintegration program represent only a fraction of the estimated 20,000 to 40,000 Taliban insurgents, The New York Times reported Monday. Most American aid bypasses the Afghan government and goes to international companies, a practice that, according to a June 8 report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, can undercut the Afghan government and lead to redundant and unsustainable donor projects. But Obama administration officials complain that the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has, thus far, been unwilling to tackle corruption in any meaningful way, making it hard to argue that it should get more money directly. In Washington, the argument over whether the United States should be building bridges in Kandahar or Cleveland is bound to grow even louder as the 2012 election campaign heats up. After Senator Manchin made his speech on Tuesday calling for an end to nation-building in Afghanistan, Senator John McCain , Republican of Arizona , took to the floor to rebuke him, calling Mr. Manchin’s remarks characteristic of the “isolationist-withdrawal-lack-of-knowledge-of-history attitude that seems to be on the rise.” But in Mr. McCain’s own Republican Party , which has historically been more supportive of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than Democrats, there is clearly some queasiness about war spending during a period of economic distress. Four years ago, Representative Ron Paul of Texas was the only Republican presidential candidate raising concerns about the costs of the Afghanistan or Iraq wars. But last week, Mr. Paul was joined explicitly by another contender, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. , the former governor of Utah and the Obama administration’s former ambassador to China , who said that the cost of a continued military presence was a leading factor in his belief that a major troop drawdown should begin in Afghanistan. “Very expensive boots on the ground may be something that is not critical for our national security needs,” Mr. Huntsman said. Even when Mr. Obama does withdraw the bulk of troops from Afghanistan, Americans will still be footing the bill for years, argued William R. Keylor, an international relations professor at Boston University . “The total cost of the war, the longest in American history and one that was paid for by borrowing rather than by increased taxation, should not be measured solely by the costs of financing the troops and the extensive aid programs administered by the State Department,” Mr. Keylor said. “It should also include long-term costs of the war, primarily veterans’ benefits for the returning soldiers, who will require medical and mental health services for many years to come. Long after the last troops depart from the country, that hidden part of the bill will come due.” | US Military;Afghanistan War;US National Debt;US Economy;US Politics;Barack Obama |
ny0048098 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2014/11/07 | In Jerusalem Unrest, Signs of a ‘Run-Over Intifada’ for the 21st Century | JERUSALEM — One cartoon circulating on social networks on Thursday depicted a car as the barrel of an automatic weapon , captioned in Arabic, “Revolt and resist, even by your car.” Another showed an odometer with the slogan, “Oh, revolutionary, use more gasoline, so we can have Palestine back.” A third simply had a vehicle in the red, white and green of the Palestinian flag hitting two men with Jewish stars on their black hats. The new campaign called for a “run-over intifada,” apparently inspired by episodes Wednesday and last month in which Palestinian drivers plowed into Israeli pedestrians, killing three and injuring more than 20. It intensified discussion of whether the violence that has gripped East Jerusalem in recent weeks, fueled by a struggle over a site in the Old City sacred to both Jews and Muslims, amounted to a third intifada, or uprising, by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation. Most Israeli and Palestinian leaders and commentators deny there is a new intifada, because the current unrest lacks the coordinated leadership, momentum and mass participation of the stone-throwing protests of the late 1980s or the suicide bombings of the early 2000s. But others say the whole question of whether it is or is not an intifada distracts from the roots and dynamics of a new generation’s rage and hopelessness. “We are sometimes using the tools of the 20th century to analyze a phenomenon of the 21st century,” said Shimrit Meir, the Israeli editor of an Arabic news site, The Source, who monitors Palestinian social media. “The way I see it is kind of a postmodern intifada. So we might see periods of intense violence followed by long periods of containment and calm.” The literal meaning of intifada is “shaking off.” Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, defined it as a way “to reject the status quo and to seek to change it through concrete and meaningful steps,” and he said it has come to stand for “a history-making event, a turning point.” “Could the current conditions escalate to become a ‘turning point?’ I do not see it yet taking that route,” Mr. Shikaki said in an email interview. “For it to become that, it needs a major spark. Is the ground fertile for a ‘turning point?’ The answer is yes.” The Area That Was Closed by Israel in the Old City The holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City, which Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, has long been a flash point in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The spark that lighted the first intifada came on Dec. 8, 1987, when an Israeli military truck hit cars carrying Palestinian workers returning to the Gaza Strip, killing four. Funerals that night exploded into a huge demonstration, and within days a new organization, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, was issuing leaflets calling for general strikes, civil disobedience and boycotts. Most experts say the second intifada was set off by a visit to the holy site by Ariel Sharon, then a candidate for prime minister, on Sept. 28, 2000. The site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is the same revered plateau at the heart of the current conflict. The ensuing years of violence were directed by the Palestinian Authority president, Yasir Arafat. About 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis had been killed by 2005, a trauma still raw in both societies. There have been several potential inflammatory episodes in recent months, including the July 2 burning alive of a Palestinian 16-year-old from East Jerusalem, a revenge attack for the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank. But Ingrid Jaradat Gassner of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem said the underlying conditions had fundamentally changed. Former grass-roots leaders are now entrenched in the Palestinian Authority or nongovernmental organizations, Ms. Gassner said, with mortgages and other middle-class trappings that make them less willing to take to the streets. Political parties are disconnected from the populace. The separation barrier Israel built after the second intifada, and security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, hamper mobilization. “People are not willing to take risks and to sacrifice and to leave their daily lives if they do not think that they can accomplish something,” Ms. Gassner said. “It’s more like an outburst of frustration and anger than really an uprising that at the end has to have some coordination and some leadership, which we don’t have right now.” President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said clearly in an Israeli television interview last week, “We are not interested in an intifada.” But Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council and a leader of the first intifada, issued a news release the next day saying the third one had already begun. “To me, when I say intifada, I mean a general status of public opinion and public readiness to engage in resistance actions,” Mr. Barghouti said in an interview on Thursday. “If we follow that definition, we are definitely at a new stage.” Image The Dome of the Rock, on a site sacred to Jews and Muslims. Credit Ammar Awad/Reuters Analysts on both sides agree that the most dangerous accelerant is the tension around the holy site, which is revered by Jews as the place where ancient Jewish temples once stood, and by Muslims as the site of Al Aqsa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock. Right-wing Jews — including several Parliament members — have been agitating against Israel’s prohibition of non-Muslim prayer. Muslim worshipers have clashed frequently with Israeli security forces around Al Aqsa Mosque, a focal point of the “run-over intifada” social-media campaign. “This is the one thing that could change the analysis,” said Ehud Yaari, a Jerusalem-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and co-author of a book on the first intifada . “In order to have an intifada you need scale, you need it to be spread, you need to see participation of many, many sectors of the population. Al Aqsa, because of its sensitivity, it could propel wider sections of the population into a cycle of violence.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel reiterated Thursday that he would not change the status quo at the site. At the same time, Israel continued its crackdown on East Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents have complained about roadblocks to their neighborhoods and an increase in parking tickets and other fines. The authorities on Thursday added concrete barriers around light-rail stations, two of which were the sites of the deadly vehicular attacks. The Palestinian driver of a van that injured three Israeli soldiers on Wednesday night in the West Bank turned himself over to the Israeli authorities on Thursday; officials said they had not determined if the crash had been an accident or an attack. An extra 1,000 officers are patrolling Jerusalem’s streets, and observation balloons now hover over Arab neighborhoods where about 800 youths have been arrested since July for throwing stones, gasoline bombs and fireworks. The Israeli cabinet this week increased the punishment for such offenses to 10 or 20 years in prison. Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, said these measures might well contain the violence but would do nothing to address Jerusalem’s deep challenges. Israelis and Palestinians both claim the city as their capital. Of its 800,000 residents, a third are ultra-Orthodox Jews who mostly do not work or serve in the military, and a third are Palestinians who, to protest Israeli annexation of their neighborhoods, refuse to vote in municipal elections. “It’s a symptom of the dysfunctionality of this place, people don’t have any hope here, this is the most poor and intolerant city,” Mr. Pfeffer, whose five siblings have all moved out of Jerusalem, said of the unrest. “We don’t have a viable group of people who actually are invested in the city’s future, getting together and saying how can we build a city that our kids can live in.” | Israel;Palestinians;East Jerusalem;Temple Mount,Nobel Sanctuary;Palestinian Authority |
ny0070293 | [
"sports"
]
| 2015/03/05 | American Cup Headed to Newark | The 2016 American Cup will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark. The invitational is considered the kickoff of the run-up to the Olympic Games. Gabby Douglas posted the highest score in the 2012 American Cup and later went on to win the all-around title at the 2012 London Games. This is the first time since 2000 that the American Cup will not be held at Madison Square Garden in an Olympic year. The 2015 American Cup will be held at AT&T Stadium outside Dallas on Saturday. | Gymnastics;Newark NJ;Prudential Center;American Cup Gymnastics;Gabby Douglas |
ny0030296 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2013/06/17 | Bloomberg Plan Aims to Require Food Composting | Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting. Dozens of smaller cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have adopted rules that mandate recycling of food waste from homes, but sanitation officials in New York had long considered the city too dense and vertically structured for such a policy to succeed. Recent pilot programs in the city, though, have shown an unexpectedly high level of participation, officials said. As a result, the Bloomberg administration is rolling out an ambitious plan to begin collecting food scraps across the city, according to Caswell F. Holloway IV, a deputy mayor. The administration plans to announce shortly that it is hiring a composting plant to handle 100,000 tons of food scraps a year. That amount would represent about 10 percent of the city’s residential food waste. Anticipating sharp growth in food recycling, the administration will also seek proposals within the next 12 months for a company to build a plant in the New York region to process residents’ food waste into biogas, which would be used to generate electricity. “This is going to be really transformative,” Mr. Holloway said. “You want to get on a trajectory where you’re not sending anything to landfills.” The residential program will initially work on a voluntary basis, but officials predict that within a few years, it will be mandatory. New Yorkers who do not separate their food scraps could be subject to fines, just as they are currently if they do not recycle plastic, paper or metal. Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, leaves office at the end of the year, and his successor could scale back or cancel the program. But in interviews, two leading Democratic candidates for mayor, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, expressed strong support for the program — including the plan to eventually make it mandatory. Sanitation officials said 150,000 single-family homes would be on board voluntarily by next year, in addition to more than 100 high-rise buildings — more than 5 percent of the households in the city. More than 600 schools will take part as well. The program should expand to the entire city by 2015 or 2016, the sanitation officials said. Under the program, residents collect food waste — like stale bread, chicken bones and potato peels — in containers the size of picnic baskets in their homes. The contents are then deposited in larger brown bins on the curb for pickup by sanitation trucks. Residents of apartment buildings dump pails of food scraps at central collection points, most likely in the same places they put recyclable material. It remains to be seen whether New Yorkers will embrace the program, given that some may cringe at keeping a container of potentially malodorous waste in a typically cramped urban kitchen, even if it is supposed to be emptied regularly. The city has historically had a relatively mediocre record in recycling, diverting only about 15 percent of its total residential waste away from landfills. In the latest 12-month period recorded, the Sanitation Department issued 75,216 summonses to home and building owners for failing to recycle. Officials expected that more summonses will be issued in the current fiscal year, because the department has redeployed personnel to recycling enforcement. Still, the residential food-waste program would represent the biggest expansion of recycling efforts since the city began separating paper, metal and glass in 1989. “It’s revolutionary for New York,” said Eric A. Goldstein , a senior lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental group. “If successful, pretty soon there’ll be very little trash left for homeowners to put in their old garbage cans.” The city spent $336 million last year disposing of residential trash, exporting most of it to landfills in Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Image The building provides food waste containers and bins are kept in the trash rooms on each floor. Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times Food waste and other organic materials account for almost a third of all residential trash, and the city could save about $100 million a year by diverting it from landfills, said Ron Gonen, who was hired last year as deputy sanitation commissioner for recycling and sustainability , a new job at the department. Experts have long criticized recycling as a weak spot in Mr. Bloomberg’s environmental record. But he appears to want to close out his tenure with a push to improve the program. In his State of the City address in February , Mr. Bloomberg called food waste “New York City’s final recycling frontier.” “We bury 1.2 million tons of food waste in landfills every year at a cost of nearly $80 per ton,” he said. “That waste can be used as fertilizer or converted to energy at a much lower price. That’s good for the environment and for taxpayers.” The city does not handle commercial waste — businesses must hire private carters. But the administration intends to propose legislation that would require restaurants and food businesses to recycle their food waste. A central question for the next mayor and City Council will be when to make residential recycling of food waste mandatory, with violators subject to fines. Garbage disposals remain relatively rare in the city. Mr. de Blasio called diverting trash from landfills “crucially important to the environment and the city’s fiscal health” and said he would like to have a mandatory program within five years. Ms. Quinn said the City Council would take up a bill this summer to require pilot programs across the city to ensure that voluntary recycling of food waste continues, regardless of who is mayor. She said a mandatory program should be in place by 2016. “We’re going to lock it in,” she said. “When New York makes composting part of everyday life, every other city will follow through. This is going to create an urban trend.” Sanitation officials said they had been heartened by recent pilot programs. At the Helena, a 600-unit building on West 57th Street in Manhattan, bins are kept in the trash rooms on each floor and emptied daily by workers. The building’s owner, the Durst Organization, said the weight of the compostable material had been steadily rising, to a total of 125 pounds daily. In the Westerleigh section of Staten Island, the city offered 3,500 single-family homes brown bins, kitchen containers and compost bags last April. Residents were told to separate out all foods, and even soiled paper like napkins and plates. Already 43 percent are placing their bins out on the curb for weekly pickups, said Mr. Gonen, the senior sanitation official. Ellen and Thomas Felci, neighborhood residents, said they were eager to take part in the program — “for the good of the city,” Mrs. Felci said. Everything now goes into the brown bin: things like corn husks and broccoli stems, but not meat (because Mr. Felci, 65, said he feared raccoons). Mrs. Felci, 62, said that a week into the tryout she noticed a bad smell coming from the container, which she had placed next to the sink in the kitchen. She solved the problem by dumping the contents into the bin outside more regularly and putting baking soda in the bottom. But across the street, Joe Lagambina, 58, shunned the program. He said that recycling plastic and metal was already a burden, and that he would not separate food unless it was required by the city. He said his three daughters often mixed trash with recyclables. “I’m the one who has to separate everything,” he said. “I go outside and there’ll be regular garbage in the blue can. It’s a pain.” “I have enough work,” he said. | Compost;Waste management;Recycling;NYC;Mike Bloomberg |
ny0219622 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/05/13 | Outcomes Differ After Videos of Police and Cyclists | A video of a New York City police officer shoving a bicyclist to the ground in Times Square became a viral presence on the Internet. A video of a similar encounter in Times Square, recorded about a year earlier, also found its way online. In each video, a bicyclist is sprawled on the ground; both videos seem to offer visual evidence contradicting police descriptions of the confrontations. The cyclists in the episodes, taking part in group rides called Critical Mass , eventually received settlements from the city. But for the officers involved — one in July 2008, the other in March 2007 — the outcomes were vastly different. Officer Patrick Pogan, who resigned from the force shortly after the clash on July 25, 2008, was convicted two weeks ago of a felony for lying about the confrontation in a criminal complaint. Sgt. Timothy Horohoe did not face serious sanctions over what happened on March 30, 2007 , even though a review board concluded that he had pushed a man from his bicycle. While the board found that Sergeant Horohoe had also lied about his role and was untruthful about other arrests he helped make that night, prosecutors did not bring charges against him. And he was allowed to keep his job. The differing results in the cases of Mr. Pogan and Sergeant Horohoe may speak to the weight of sensational video evidence. In Mr. Pogan’s case, the camera clearly captured him approaching the cyclist, Christopher Long, and lowering his shoulder as Mr. Long rode past. After impact, Mr. Long flew off his bicycle and landed on a subway grate. Sergeant Horohoe, however, was out of the camera’s view until a split second before the cyclist, Richard Vazquez, went down, making it hard to tell what, if any, contact there was between the two men. The ensuing fracas, in which the police made several arrests, is also difficult to follow on the footage, which was recorded by cyclists that night. Sergeant Horohoe’s role in those arrests was at the center of the accusations against him. Mr. Vazquez and four other people arrested that night sued the Police Department, claiming they had been harassed. The city settled for $98,000. Wylie Stecklow, a lawyer who represented Mr. Vasquez and the four others arrested, noted the differences in the two videos. “Pogan, it’s 15 seconds,” Mr. Stecklow said. “You see that boom; it’s not hard for anybody to look at that for 15 seconds and think they understand what happened. That’s why I think that took off and became viral. The Horohoe case, there’s a lot of nuance you have to understand.” A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Pogan, declined to comment on Sergeant Horohoe. But there are clear indications that a criminal case against the sergeant would have been difficult to execute. For one, Sergeant Horohoe did not file any arrest reports or criminal complaints from that evening. Instead, he had subordinates file the reports, so there was no physical evidence that directly linked the sergeant to false statements. After prosecutors declined to file charges, the Civilian Complaint Review Board determined that Sergeant Horohoe gave subordinate officers exaggerated or false information to put in the reports. But much of what the review board said the sergeant had lied about was in his interview with the board, after there was no longer a threat of criminal prosecution. In a blunt 29-page report, the review board said Sergeant Horohoe had used inappropriate force against Mr. Vazquez and had tried to cover it up by lying to the board’s investigators. The sergeant told the board that he saw Mr. Vazquez riding through a red light and ordered him to stop, according to the report. Sergeant Horohoe said that when he put up his hands, Mr. Vazquez bicycled into his outstretched palms. The sergeant said he did not knock Mr. Vazquez off his bike; rather, he said, Mr. Vazquez dismounted on his own and tried to flee from the police. “Given the available video footage,” the report said, “this account is rather absurd on its face.” Sergeant Horohoe’s story, the report said, “suggests malicious intent on his part but also, and more importantly, demonstrates that he knew his actions to be improper under the circumstances.” The review board also found that Sergeant Horohoe lied about parts of the arrest that night of another cyclist, Christian Gutierrez. Although the board could not determine whether the sergeant had probable cause to arrest Mr. Gutierrez, it wrote that he “not only exaggerated Mr. Gutierrez’s behavior, but he gave an account of the incident that was entirely contradicted by video evidence.” Two officers under Sergeant Horohoe’s command told the board they had not observed events that they wrote about in their arrest reports and summonses and had relied on the sergeant’s account. The Internal Affairs Bureau of the Police Department investigated the review board’s finding that Sergeant Horohoe had lied to them and found that he made no false statements, said Inspector Edward Mullen, a spokesman for the department. Inspector Mullen said the bureau determined that the sergeant’s testimony was confused because questioning by the board’s investigators was inconsistent. | Pogan Patrick;Bicycles and Bicycling;Critical Mass;Long Christopher;Horohoe Timothy;Vazquez Richard;New York City;Police Brutality and Misconduct;Recordings and Downloads (Video) |
ny0085686 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2015/07/18 | Mets’ Rally Falls Short; Collins Is Ejected in 7th | ST. LOUIS — When Jacob deGrom took the field early Friday afternoon, his Mets teammates stopped and applauded him. After having watched his electric three-strikeout inning in the All-Star game, they felt proud, the way parents might when their children ventured out and flourished. Now, over their next 10 games, the rest of the Mets’ rotation will have a chance to do the same. They open the second half against the Cardinals, the Nationals and the Dodgers — all first-place teams. “Guys who are scared won’t be here long,” Manager Terry Collins said. Noah Syndergaard stymied the Cardinals through the first five innings Friday, pumping 96-mile-per-hour fastballs at will, matching Cardinals starter Lance Lynn, who gave up a home run to Curtis Granderson in the first inning. But in the sixth, Syndergaard allowed a run when Kolten Wong singled, stole second, advanced to third on a throwing error and scored on a groundout by Matt Carpenter. Jhonny Peralta then hit a tiebreaking solo home run. Syndergaard pitched seven strong innings, giving up five hits and striking out six, but the Mets still lost, 3-2. As the Mets’ offense continued to stall, Collins was ejected from the dugout for commenting on a ball-strike call. Collins rushed onto the field, yelling and pointing in the face of the home-plate umpire Chad Fairchild. The Mets rallied in the ninth, scoring one run as Lucas Dudas, Kevin Plawecki and Ruben Tejada singled. But with the tying run on third base and the go-ahead run on first, John Mayberry Jr. struck out swinging to end the game. As much as these games are a chance for the Mets to highlight their strengths, they could expose weaknesses, too. “If you’re going to play the game,” Collins said before the game, “this is how you should play it — in the pennant race, against the three best teams. Let’s go. See where we end up.” | Baseball;Noah Syndergaard;Terry L Collins;St. Louis Cardinals;Mets |
ny0061305 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2014/01/04 | Madagascar: Election Results Released | A former finance minister, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, won Madagascar’s first presidential election since a coup in 2009, but his closest rival said the vote had been rigged, raising concerns the nation could remain mired in political turmoil. The electoral commission said Friday that Mr. Rajaonarimampianina, the candidate backed by the departing president, who took power nearly five years ago, won 53.5 percent of the Dec. 20 vote. His opponent, Jean Louis Robinson, who ended up with 46.5 percent, has demanded a recount. Mr. Robinson’s camp has filed almost 300 complaints to the electoral court, which has to rule on the commission’s provisional result by Jan. 19. If Mr. Rajaonarimampianina, above, is officially declared the winner, he will be the head of state with the longest family name, at 19 letters, according to a survey by the British newspaper The Guardian. His full name is Hery Martial Rakotoarimanana Rajaonarimampianina. | Election;Madagascar;Jean Louis Robinson;Hery Rajaonarimampianina |
ny0184691 | [
"business",
"economy"
]
| 2009/03/27 | Battles Over Reform Plan Lie Ahead | WASHINGTON — Outlining a far-reaching proposal on Thursday to rebuild the nation’s broken system of financial regulation, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner , fired the opening salvo in what is likely to be a marathon battle. “Our system failed in fundamental ways,” Mr. Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee . “To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.” On the surface, both the lawmakers who listened to the Treasury secretary and the financial industry’s lobbying groups made it sound as if they completely agreed with Mr. Geithner’s call for what he described as “better, smarter tougher regulation.” But in fact industry groups are already mobilizing to block restrictions they oppose and win new protections they have wanted for years. Even though Mr. Geithner carefully avoided specific details, laying out mostly broad principles for overhauling the system, financial industry groups are identifying issues they plan to pursue and lining up well-connected lobbyists and publicists to help make their cases. If history is any guide, Mr. Geithner’s proposals will start an equally intense battle among the regulatory agencies themselves — including the alphabet soup of banking regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve — to stay in business and enhance their authority. It took years to complete past efforts to overhaul regulation of the financial industry — replacing the Depression-era laws that separated commercial banks from investment banks, for example, and knocking down barriers between the telephone and cable television industries. And those efforts were in some ways easier than the task confronting President Obama and Congress today. Many of the past overhauls were really about deregulation, knocking down legal barriers that had prevented different segments of an industry from competing with each other. By contrast, Mr. Geithner’s plan marks the first attempt in decades to drastically tighten the restrictions on industry. It would create a new still-unidentified “systemic risk regulator” that would have the authority to scrutinize and second-guess the operations of bank holding companies like Citigroup or JPMorgan Chase , insurance conglomerates like the American International Group and other financial institutions that are deemed too big to fail. Hedge funds and private equity funds, which have been almost entirely unregulated, would have to register with the S.E.C. and tell it about their risk-management practices. Many financial derivative instruments, like credit-default swaps , would come under supervision for the first time. Mr. Geithner’s most specific proposal, which Democratic lawmakers hope to pass in the next few weeks, would allow the federal government to seize control of troubled institutions whose collapse or bankruptcy might jeopardize the broader financial system. In the months ahead, Mr. Geithner said, he will unveil more detailed proposals to set up a new regime for tighter regulation of most segments of the financial services industry. He has also said the government should more actively regulate executive compensation , not just at companies that are receiving federal bailout money, but at all companies that might be providing incentives for excessive risk-taking. “The days of light-touch regulation are over,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts , chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Mr. Frank said the financial and economic catastrophes of the last 18 months had created a new political consensus in favor of tighter financial supervision. Mr. Frank said he hoped to pass a bill “very soon” to give the federal government “resolution authority” to seize control, restructure and shut down troubled financial institutions. And he said he hoped to pass a much broader bill along the lines of Mr. Geithner’s plan by the end of this summer. But administration officials acknowledged that enacting broad financial reforms would provoke political battles that are almost certain to drag on for months, if not years. President Obama and his economic team are already trying to navigate between the deep popular anger over reckless financial practices and the pragmatic need to coax support from the financial industry for regulations they almost reflexively oppose. On Friday, Mr. Obama will meet with executives from the nation’s biggest financial institutions. Bank executives said they expected Mr. Obama to try to sell them on his ideas, and perhaps to encourage them to keep participating in the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program , or TARP. Goldman Sachs has signaled that it wants to return the government’s money that the Treasury loaned it under that program. On Thursday, most industry lobbying groups held their fire and reacted to Mr. Geithner’s proposals as if they agreed with him entirely. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said on Thursday that it “has been advocating for many of the same reforms” and that it “looks forward” to developing specific legislation. The Private Equity Council, which represents firms like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Carlyle Group , praised the Obama administration for its “plan to comprehensively address systemic risk.” The American Insurance Association declared that “we agree with Secretary Geithner” that the new rules should “encourage high standards and a race to the top.” But industry lobbying groups are pushing their own agenda. Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association, said he hoped to use the meeting with Mr. Obama to make the case for relaxing mark-to-market rules, which require financial institutions to value their investment securities at current market prices. Banks have argued that the rules are hurting their financial positions. Many insurance companies, for their part, are hoping to free themselves from the oversight of 50 separate state insurance regulators. Lobbyists for the retailing and restaurant industry, meanwhile, are hoping to use the banner of financial reform to persuade Congress help reduce the fees that credit card companies charge for processing customer transactions. | null;Regulation and Deregulation;Hedge fund;Timothy F Geithner |
ny0109024 | [
"sports"
]
| 2012/05/17 | Staples Center Gets No Rest With Lakers, Clippers and Kings in Playoffs | There will be blood — and sweat and pucks and balls and spokes and triumph and anguish and a bit of Thunder — all on a single street corner, all in a frantic and fascinating 72 hours in downtown Los Angeles. Lakers and Clippers will mix with Kings and Coyotes, while 120,000 screaming fans descend, in waves, on Staples Center, the city’s gleaming downtown arena. Starting Thursday night, the building will host six playoff games in four days: two by the N.H.L.’s Kings and two each the N.B.A.’s Lakers and Clippers, with doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday. Before it is all over, 120 cyclists competing in the Tour of California will race across a finish line not far from the blue line. It might be the most intense concentration of elite competition in a single arena in modern history — or “any building in the history of the world,” quipped Michael Roth, the Staples Center spokesman. The joyful madness begins Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific time, when the Kings host the Phoenix Coyotes in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals. The next night, at 7:30 p.m., the Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder will play Game 3 of a Western Conference semifinal series. Then things get truly hectic. The Clippers begin an all-basketball doubleheader on Saturday at 12:30 p.m., when they host the San Antonio Spurs in Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinal. The Lakers and the Thunder tip off again at 7:30 that night. On Sunday, the Kings and Coyotes drop the puck at noon, just seven and a half hours before the Clippers and Spurs play again. “Unprecedented,” Lee Zeidman, the arena’s general manager, said of the schedule. “It could never be duplicated anywhere else.” Of course, no other arena is home to three major professional teams. A moment like this became possible, but not really imaginable, when the Kings, the Lakers and the Clippers became Staples Center roommates 13 years ago. While the Lakers are annual title contenders and the Kings are occasionally decent (six playoff runs in 13 years), the Clippers bear the unfortunate burden of being the Clippers: “one of the worst franchises in modern-day sports,” said the broadcaster Al Michaels, who lives in Los Angeles. “You always knew that the Lakers were going to uphold their end of the bargain,” Michaels said. “That was a 90 percent given. For the other guys, with such checkered history and such misery, to have them all ascend simultaneously, it’s pretty good.” Until this season, the Clippers had made the playoffs five times in 36 years, and just once since moving to Staples Center. They rose to prominence this season after acquiring point guard Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets. The Kings were considered a lost cause before Darryl Sutter took over as the coach at midseason, guiding them to a 25-13-11 record in the final months. Not even the most ardent fan envisioned a run at the Stanley Cup. “I’m in a state of disbelief right now,” said Michaels, who has owned Kings season tickets for 20 years. It took other extreme circumstances, including the N.B.A. lockout, to create this virtual orgy of sports. As part of the compressed season, the league scheduled back-to-back games in the second round of the playoffs. So the Lakers are playing Friday and Saturday, while the Clippers are playing Saturday and Sunday. Zeidman said Staples will bring in 2,200 to 2,500 employees this weekend, up from the usual 1,500 to 1,700 needed for an event. Changing over the arena is typically the easy part — an hour or so to switch from Clippers to Lakers, a little more than 2 hours to convert from hockey to basketball — but it takes up to three hours to get the building cleaned, emptied and ready for the next crowd of 20,000 fans. Staples has hosted 127 doubleheaders, of every combination. The oddity this weekend, and the cause for the most stress, was the N.B.A.’s and N.H.L.’s decision to schedule the Kings game first on Sunday. If the Kings and Coyotes go into overtime, or worse, multiple overtimes, it could create havoc for the Clippers and the Spurs. Every overtime period requires about an hour, Zeidman said. If the Kings were to win the conference title Sunday, the trophy presentation could take another 30 to 40 minutes. In the worst case, Zeidman said, the Clippers and the Spurs could tip off at 11 p.m. “Those are the things that are keeping me up at night,” he said. For all Los Angeles sports fans, it will be a weekend of anxiety and excitement. “This is the perfect storm that came together,” Zeidman said. “I just hope it doesn’t take that next wave after that perfect storm.” | Staples Center;Los Angeles Lakers;Los Angeles Clippers;Los Angeles Kings;Hockey Ice;Basketball;Playoff Games |
ny0048598 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2014/11/06 | Egypt Elevates an Official Hostile to U.S. | CAIRO — President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is appointing a national security adviser who two years ago spearheaded criminal charges that nonprofit groups were acting as agents of an American conspiracy to weaken and destabilize Egypt. The new adviser, Fayza Abul Naga , provoked one of the biggest crises in Cairo’s 35-year-old alliance with Washington. The case forced the son of an American cabinet secretary to hide in the United States Embassy for weeks for fear of arrest. It elicited personal threats and appeals by President Obama to Egypt’s top generals. And it culminated in the reported payment of as much as $4.6 million in forfeited bail and the secretive flight of a half dozen United States citizens on a charter jet to Cyprus. Analysts said Ms. Abul Naga’s return underscored the Sisi government’s persistent disregard for its alliance with Washington, as well as a darkly suspicious view of civil organizations. “The fact that she is such a recognizable face clearly makes this an obvious slap in the face to the United States, but it is in keeping with the way that this government has handled the bilateral relationship,” said Michael Wahid Hanna , an Egyptian-American researcher at the Century Foundation, based in New York. And domestically, he said, “this is just confirmation of what we already know about the government: Its approach to civil society is unbridled hostility, and there is a real possibility that the sector is going to be squelched and shut down completely in the coming months.” Ms. Abul Naga served for many years as minister in charge of international cooperation under President Hosni Mubarak, who relied on her to haggle with Washington for control of the roughly $250 million in annual nonmilitary American aid. After Mr. Mubarak was ousted in February 2011, she was one of the few of his cabinet ministers retained in the military-led transitional government. It was at the end of that year that Ms. Abul Naga led the criminal case against three American nonprofit groups chartered by Congress to promote democracy: the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House. The police raided their offices, seized computers and documents, and placed travel bans on their employees — including Sam LaHood of the International Republican Institute, the son of Ray LaHood, then secretary of transportation. To avoid arrest, Sam LaHood and at least two other Americans camped out in the offices of the American Embassy. Prosecutors accused the organizations’ employees, including dozens of Egyptians, of violating a strict but seldom-enforced ban on receiving unauthorized financing from abroad, charges punishable by prison time. But in court papers and the state news media, Ms. Abul Naga further accused the organizations of participating in a scheme by the American government to stir unrest in the streets. “The United States and Israel could not directly create and sustain a state of chaos, so they used direct funding, especially American, as the means to reach those goals,” Ms. Abul Naga told investigators before the raids, in testimony later reported in the state news media. “Evidence shows the existence of a clear and determined wish to abort any chance for Egypt to rise as a modern and democratic state with a strong economy,” she continued, “since that will pose the biggest threat to American and Israeli interests, not only in Egypt but across the whole region.” The International Republican Institute, she said, served the “right wing” agenda of the Republican Party. And she called Freedom House a tool of the “Jewish lobby.” Sixteen American defendants were out of the country when the case came to trial; all, including Mr. LaHood, were convicted in absentia. Dozens of Egyptian staff members were convicted and given suspended sentences. Ms. Abul Naga disappeared from the public eye with the election in 2012 of President Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist later deposed by the military. Her return as national security adviser coincides with new signs that the government may be cracking down again on nonprofit groups. Most rights groups and many other nonprofits here have operated for years in a kind of legal twilight, more or less openly violating the unenforced prohibition on receiving foreign financing without government authorization and oversight. But the government recently announced a deadline of Nov. 10 for full compliance with the old laws. Several rights advocates have left the country for fear of arrest. Many who remain say they fear their organizations may soon be shuttered. In many ways, “the rest of the government has caught up with her,” Mr. Hanna said. With the Egyptian press “awash in conspiracy-addled discourse” like her charges two years ago, he said, “she is not even an outlier.” Scott Mastic, regional director for the International Republican Institute, said, “Beyond the outrageous nature of her actions, how should we take it seriously that they are turning a page when they are returning to personalities from the past that have been so damaging to U.S.-Egypt strategic relations?” | Egypt;Nonprofit;Fayza Abul Naga;Abdel Fattah el-Sisi;US |
ny0274451 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2016/02/02 | Drummond and Pistons Outlast Nets; Suns Fire Hornacek | Reggie Jackson was nearly on the bench, his coach believing he was being beaten by cramps. Instead, Jackson battled through the issue to help the Detroit Pistons defeat the Nets, 105-100, on Monday night in Brooklyn. Andre Drummond had 21 points and 18 rebounds and Jackson scored 19 points for the Pistons. Jackson had been listed as questionable to play because of dehydration, but he started and logged 31 minutes, making huge plays as the game wore on. “I was about to take him out before that stretch at the end because he just looked like he was about dead,” Coach Stan Van Gundy said. “I was about to take him out, and then he made every play down the stretch.” Drummond fell just shy of an N.B.A.-high sixth 20-point, 20-rebound game of the season but delivered the tiebreaking basket on a dunk with 1 minute 30 seconds remaining on a pass from Jackson. Jackson added a couple of clutch jumpers as the Pistons avoided a third straight loss. The Pistons were coming off losses to Cleveland and Toronto, the top two teams in the Eastern Conference, but were just good enough to get by the Nets, one of the worst. Nets center Brook Lopez scored 27 points. Andrea Bargnani added 18 off the bench for the Nets, who had lost of four in a row and were outscored 28-7 on second-chance points. “That was the game,” the Nets interim coach Tony Brown said. “Drummond is a load. That was one area where we fell short tonight.” The Nets led by 3 before Jackson tied it with a 3-pointer with 2 minutes 5 seconds to go. Jackson finished with six assists, and Ersan Ilyasova scored 16 points. In a game that featured 21 lead changes and 12 ties, the Nets led by 63-58 early in the third quarter before Detroit answered with a 17-2 run, capped by Drummond’s slam on a lob from Brandon Jennings, to take a 75-65 lead. Drummond made all five of his third-quarter shots and had 10 points and 8 rebounds in the period. THUNDER 114, WIZARDS 98 Russell Westbrook had his seventh triple-double of the season, and Oklahoma City prevailed over visiting Washington. Westbrook had 17 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists and got the best of his matchup with Wizards point guard John Wall. It was the 26th career triple-double for Westbrook, who has two straight and four in his past 10 games. Kevin Durant scored 28 points, and Serge Ibaka added 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Thunder, who have won 11 of 12. Bradley Beal came off the bench to score 18 points for the Wizards, and Marcin Gortat had 17. Wall had 17 points and 8 assists. Wizards Coach Randy Wittman missed the game after his brother’s death Friday. SPURS 107, MAGIC 92 LaMarcus Aldridge scored a season-high 28 points, and San Antonio remained undefeated at home by beating Orlando. Aldridge shot 9 of 13 from the field as the Spurs picked up their 26th straight home victory to open the season. Patty Mills matched a season high with 22 points. Nikola Vucevic led Orlando with 20 points and 10 rebounds. Victor Oladipo added 19 points, and Aaron Gordon had 12 points and 16 rebounds. CAVALIERS 111, PACERS 106 Kyrie Irving scored 25 points, and LeBron James had 24 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists to lead Cleveland to an overtime win at Indiana. James scored only 7 points after halftime, but it was enough to help the Cavaliers record their fifth straight win under their new coach, Tyronn Lue — and their first win in Indianapolis in six years. George Hill matched his season high with 23 points for Indiana, while Myles Turner had 14 points and 10 rebounds. GRIZZLIES 110, PELICANS 95 Zach Randolph had 22 points and 12 rebounds, and Memphis won at New Orleans for its 10th victory in 12 games. Jeff Green scored 24 points for the Grizzlies, and Vince Carter added 13, including two backbreaking 3s in the last three minutes. Anthony Davis had 23 points for the Pelicans, who lost for just the third time in 10 games. HAWKS 112, MAVERICKS 97 Jeff Teague scored a season-high 32 points, Kyle Korver added 16, and host Atlanta ended a three-game skid by outplaying Dallas. Teague shot 12 of 15 from the field, with a career-high five 3-pointers. Atlanta entered the game having lost five of six to drop to fifth place in the East. Deron Williams, coming off a 27-point performance in Dallas’s home win Sunday over Phoenix, left the game early in the second quarter with a bruised hip. Chandler Parsons had 19 points and 11 rebounds, and Dirk Nowitzki scored 18 points for the Mavericks. SUNS FIRE COACH The Phoenix Suns, mired in one of the worst stretches in their history, fired Jeff Hornacek as coach and promoted Earl Watson to interim coach. Watson was selected after interviews were conducted with all three Suns assistants. Watson, 36, was an N.B.A. point guard for 13 seasons and was in his first season as a Suns assistant after a year as an assistant coach of the Austin Spurs of the N.B.A. Development League. He retired as a player in 2014 after appearing in 878 games for Portland, Seattle/Oklahoma City, Memphis, Denver, Indiana and Utah. | Basketball;Reggie Jackson;Andre Drummond;Phoenix Suns;Jeff Hornacek;Earl Watson;Pistons;Brooklyn Nets |
ny0173471 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2007/10/04 | Bombs Kill 2 and Wound Polish Envoy in Baghdad | BAGHDAD, Oct. 3 — Poland ’s ambassador to Iraq was wounded and two people were killed — an Iraqi civilian and a member of the ambassador’s security detail — in what appeared to be a coordinated roadside bomb attack on Wednesday morning in downtown Baghdad, Polish and Iraqi officials said. The ambassador, Gen. Edward Pietrzyk, survived with burns to his head and hand, said Polish officials and witnesses at the scene of the attack. It occurred about 10 a.m. about 100 yards from the Polish Embassy compound in the upscale Karada section of eastern Baghdad, outside the fortified Green Zone. About 900 Polish troops are working in Iraq, mostly to train Iraqi security forces. The Polish government extended the military mission here until the end of this year but has not announced a definite withdrawal date. Robert Szaniawski, a spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry, said the ambassador was in stable condition. The Associated Press quoted the Polish deputy ambassador, Waldemar Figaj, as saying General Pietrzyk was “going to be fine” after treatment for burns covering 20 percent of his body and would return to Poland later Wednesday. Mr. Szaniawski, in a telephone interview from Warsaw, said that the ambassador’s driver, Bartosz Orzechowski, had been killed by the blast. “Almost all of his body was burned; there was no way he could survive,” he said. Four other Poles assigned to the ambassador’s security detail were slightly injured, Mr. Szaniawski added. Several Iraqi bystanders were also injured; the identity of the Iraqi person killed in the attack was unclear. Separately, in a troubling development for the American military’s effort to cooperate with Sunni tribes, Iraq’s largest Shiite political bloc has thrown its weight against the new American practice of using local sheiks to increase the number of Sunni police officers, stating in clear, sharp language that Sunnis from militant backgrounds should not be allowed into the police forces. The United Iraqi Alliance, the largest political bloc in Parliament and a group whose members control the government, said that the American military’s recruiting of Sunnis in areas in and around the capital amounted to empowering men with histories of militancy, and must be stopped “before it’s too late.” “The American forces armed the terrorist groups, which were the reason for the bad security situation,” said the statement, dated Sept. 30. “We refuse and denounce giving protection to those terrorists who committed hideous crimes against the Iraqi people and allowing them to be responsible for security.” The statement was the first broad public criticism by the country’s most powerful Shiite group of the American effort to change the course of the war by setting local Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners. The recruitment effort has been largely successful in Anbar, a vast desert province in western Iraq that is almost exclusively Sunni, and senior Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, have proudly showcased the cooperation. But now the military is beginning to recruit Sunnis in the capital, the center of political and economic power and a city that contains nearly a quarter of Iraq population, a development that is deeply upsetting to Shiites, who fear that supporting Sunnis with militant pasts will allow the war to spread and will threaten the power balance in Baghdad that has come to favor Shiites. Mr. Maliki offered an opposing opinion on Wednesday, saying in a news conference that the government had control over the recruitment process, and that “there is no delivery of arms beyond the control of the state.” After the bombing attack near the Polish Embassy compound, Iraqi and American officials said the ambassador and others were evacuated to a combat hospital in the Green Zone by helicopters operated by Blackwater USA, the private military contractor under scrutiny for killing civilians in an episode last month. Blackwater provides security to State Department officials in Baghdad. Accounts from several witnesses to the attack and its immediate aftermath suggest that two or three roadside bombs detonated within fractions of a second of each other as three white sport utility vehicles, one carrying the Polish ambassador, emerged from the embassy compound. Bombs destroyed two of the three vehicles, leaving only mangled husks of metal. The bomb that struck the ambassador’s vehicle, though, seemed to bear hallmarks of the particularly deadly type of roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator, which sends a molten shot of copper into vehicles, incinerating it and its occupants. The American military has said these weapons come from Iran. The ambassador’s vehicle, for example, had a hole blasted in the armored glass of the driver’s side window, leaving the window behind it intact, a pattern of destruction inconsistent with roadside bombs that use artillery shells or other types of metal fragments to inflict casualties. Ahmed Riadh Abed, who was standing near the ambassador’s home when the attack occurred, said the bombing unleashed a 15-foot-high fireball. “A Polish P.S.D., dressed in a military uniform and fully equipped, ran to me and he was bleeding from his mouth, and there was big cut on his cheek.” P.S.D. stands for personal security detail, a phrase used to describe armed security guards in Iraq. Guards hustled General Pietrzyk, a former commander of ground forces in Poland who became ambassador to Iraq in April, to a nearby home, where they bandaged his head and hands, witnesses said. A helicopter then flew him and others, including the mortally wounded Polish guard, to a hospital. How the roadside bombs could have been planted undetected, so close to the embassy compound and only about 130 yards from an Iraqi Army checkpoint, also raised questions on Wednesday. In response to the bombing, the Polish security guards fired their weapons, wounding a taxi driver, said a witness, Specialist Sadiq Saber of the Iraqi Army. | Iraq;Bombs and Explosives;Poland;Foreign Service;United States Armament and Defense |
ny0041589 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
]
| 2014/05/02 | For the Rangers, an Unfavorable History Against the Penguins | The Rangers have faced the Pittsburgh Penguins four times in the postseason, and each series ended badly. Mario Lemieux and Company swept the Rangers in 1989, knocked them out in six games in 1992 and ousted them in five in 1996. In 2008, Sidney Crosby was at the controls as the Rangers fell in five . That’s a 4-16 playoff record against the Penguins. No wonder fans in Pittsburgh were so glad to draw that Rangers in the second round instead of the Philadelphia Flyers, the Penguins’ tormentors. The schedule also seems stacked against the Rangers. The Penguins closed out their series against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday in Game 6 as the Rangers were stretched to seven games by the Flyers, closing with back-to-back Games 6 and 7 on Tuesday and Wednesday. With the series starting Friday in Pittsburgh and no day off between Games 2 and 3, the Rangers will have played six times in nine days when Game 3 ends Monday at Madison Square Garden. “On paper, Pittsburgh’s one of the best teams in the league,” Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said Wednesday, noting that the Penguins (109 points) finished well ahead of the Rangers (96) in the regular season. “We’re going to have our hands full.” Still, this series could be a lot closer than those previous playoff meetings. Here is a look at the matchups. FORWARDS Take your pick of slumping stars. For the Rangers, Rick Nash has not scored a goal in 10 consecutive playoff games, including last season; for the Penguins, Crosby has not scored in 11 straight. Nash, at least, has not been booed at Madison Square Garden, but the fans at Consol Energy Center, frustrated by postseason disappointment since the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009, have started booing Crosby. The Rangers’ four lines are rolling well, providing needed depth during this busy stretch of games. Martin St. Louis, Derek Stepan, Brad Richards and Mats Zuccarello are looking great, and role players like Dominic Moore, Brian Boyle and Daniel Carcillo are contributing useful shifts nightly. Still, Crosby and James Neal are likely to break out of their slumps, and Evgeni Malkin and Chris Kunitz already have. The Penguins averaged a league-high 36.5 shots on goal in the first round. Edge: Penguins DEFENSE Pittsburgh’s defensemen score by the bushel. Matt Niskanen and Paul Martin have 8 points each to lead defensemen in the postseason, and Kris Letang, who returned last month from a stroke, could regain his scoring touch any minute. Still, they are leaky defensively and have been partly responsible for the team’s early-round failures in recent years. Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi had a spotty first round trying to shut down the Flyers’ top line, allowing 6 points to Claude Giroux. McDonagh and Girardi were minus 2 and minus 1. But the good news is the play of the No. 2 pairing: Marc Staal went plus 6 and Anton Stralman plus 3. The two pairs are capable of handling any Crosby-Malkin permutations that Penguins Coach Dan Bylsma employs. The Rangers allowed 25.6 shots a game in the first round, the league’s second-lowest average. Edge: Rangers Image Penguins forward Sidney Crosby. Credit Justin K. Aller/Getty Images GOALTENDING Marc-Andre Fleury (.908 playoff save percentage) is much better than he was last year, but he is still prone to gaffes, like the ones that cost the Penguins Game 4 against Columbus. Against Philadelphia, Henrik Lundqvist (.919) was not as dominant as usual, but was still solid. And he has a big fan in Malkin. “Lundqvist is my favorite goalie,” Malkin told reporters Thursday. “I like him a lot. He can stop every shot, you know.” Edge: Rangers SPECIAL TEAMS Sure, the Rangers’ power play went 0 for their last 22 against Philadelphia, and their penalty killing fell apart. The same was largely true for the Penguins against Columbus. But as is most often the case, it did not matter as much as what happened at even strength, where the Rangers outscored the Flyers by 16-10 and the Penguins outscored Columbus by 13-8. Edge: Even SEASON SERIES The Rangers and Penguins split the season series, but they have not played each other since the Olympics. Pittsburgh has won 10 of the last 13 meetings between the teams. NOV. 6: RANGERS 5, PENGUINS 1 With the Rangers in a hole after opening with a dismal trip west, this victory over the Penguins, who were leading the East, was an early-season highlight. It was the Rangers’ fourth win in five games and only their second over a team with a winning record. Nash was sidelined by a concussion, but the Rangers got goals from McDonagh, Stepan, Boyle, Ryan Callahan and Derick Brassard, and 28 saves from a resurgent Henrik Lundqvist. DEC. 18: PENGUINS 4, RANGERS 3 (SO) Struggling during a nine-game home stand, the Rangers rallied from a 3-1, third-period deficit when Zuccarello and Brassard scored to force overtime, but they lost in a shootout. “We came back from two goals late; we haven’t done too much of that,” Vigneault said. “And we had a chance to win it. We were real strong in many areas tonight.” JAN. 3: PENGUINS 5, RANGERS 2 In the Rangers’ first game of 2014, Crosby had a goal and two assists, and Jussi Jokinen and Kunitz had two goals each for Pittsburgh. The Penguins jumped to a 4-0 lead before the Rangers notched two third-period goals. “It was just too easy for them to create big chances,” Lundqvist said. FEB. 7: RANGERS 4, PENGUINS 3 (SO) In their final game before the Olympic break, the Rangers bounced back from a home loss to last-place Edmonton to win in Pittsburgh. Benoit Pouliot scored twice in regulation for the Rangers, and Richards and Zuccarello scored in the shootout. “We deserved this win with the way that we played the whole game,” Lundqvist said. “I don’t know if it was desperation, but we understood how important this game was.” | Ice hockey;Playoffs;Rangers;Pittsburgh Penguins;Rick Nash;Sidney Crosby |
ny0043798 | [
"business",
"retirementspecial"
]
| 2014/05/15 | Volunteers Provide Backup to the Uniformed Ranks | DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — BERNARD ZARETSKY, 82, co-coordinator of the Delray Beach Police Department’s Volunteer Program, devotes about 100 hours a month to preventing discord in the resort community, but his duties have the added benefit of keeping the peace in his nearly 60-year-long marriage. “You get on each other’s nerves if you are around too often,” Mr. Zaretsky said in his office, chuckling. He continued, over the squawk of a police scanner, “Having worked since I’m 8 years old, I couldn’t sit around doing nothing.” Ninety percent of the roughly 330 volunteers in the Delray Beach program are retirees, Mr. Zaretsky, a former manufacturing executive, estimates. Like most volunteer law enforcement officers, they are armed only with police radios. Volunteers patrol neighborhoods in official cars, but are not permitted to leave the vehicles and must call for backup from full-time officers if the need arises. They perform other tasks too, including issuing parking tickets, directing traffic and educating older people about swindles. They are among the legions of retirees nationwide who enlist in what might be called the unarmed forces of the uniformed ranks. They are welcomed as volunteers by the Civil Air Patrol (an affiliate of the Air Force), the Coast Guard Auxiliary, and many police departments. Retirees make up 10 to 20 percent of the reserve and auxiliary police officers in the country, whose ranks range from 250,000 to 750,000, said David M. Rayburn, president of the Volunteer Law Enforcement Officer Alliance, a nonprofit. A 2013 survey of 226 police departments found that about 83 percent reported having older volunteers, said Elizabeth C. Bartels, author of “ Volunteer Police in the United States: Programs, Challenges and Legal Aspects. ” Aside from altruism, the motivations of the volunteers, retired or not, are varied. Many cite the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as inspiring their service, some are veterans seeking an encore engagement, and others regret missing out on the military when they were younger. Still others consciously or unconsciously hope to recapture a lost sense of authority after retirement. In military parlance, volunteers are “force multipliers,” said Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., commandant of the United States Coast Guard. “Given our worldwide responsibilities, we get spread pretty thin,” he said. “So when you have 30,000-plus volunteers who step forward wherever they can — any organization would love to have a similar group that size and that talented.” The Coast Guard Auxiliary was formally established in 1939 and mobilized recreational boaters during World War II. Its members hunted for enemy submarines, spotting a few, according to John A. Tilley, author of “The United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, 1939-1999.” Now, auxiliary members cook on ships, make ice-spotting flights in winter and do courtesy inspections of private boats, among other tasks. They do the “the dirty work that nobody really wants to do,” Mr. Tilley said. Peter Lombardo, 58, of Deer Park, N.Y., an aircraft commander in the Coast Guard Auxiliary and a semiretired electrical contractor, typically transports active-duty personnel in the twin-engine Piper Seneca he owns. After TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island in 1996, he flew a Navy captain over the wreckage site and then was invited into the hangar where the plane was being reconstructed . “I got to see a lot of firsthand stuff,” he recalled. After Sept. 11, he picked up chaplains arriving at East Coast airports, on their way to ground zero to perform rites. Though Mr. Lombardo is reimbursed for some expenses, he pays for many flight costs out of pocket. Volunteers even have to pay for uniforms, and formal benefits are few. “I have become a philanthropist to the U.S. government,” Mr. Lombardo said. He estimates his volunteer work saves the Coast Guard $2,300 an hour in flight costs. “That is your tax dollars,” said Mr. Lombardo. January Parker, a retired flight attendant from Atlanta, regretted being “one of the only members of my family that didn’t go into the military.” She yearned to become a fighter pilot, but at the time the military barred female pilots from combat, a policy that ended in 2003. Ms. Parker’s flight attendant work, however, paid for training as a private pilot and flight instructor. The Sept. 11 attacks prompted her to join the Civil Air Patrol. “I had been a flight attendant for United. I could have been on one of those flights,” she said. Formed just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Civil Air Patrol “filled a massive gap in the nation’s coastal defenses” during World War II, said Frank A. Blazich, the organization’s senior historian. Like the volunteer boaters, pilots were on the lookout for German submarines and proved a “powerful deterrent”; the sight of even small airplanes caused U-boats on the surface to dive immediately and cut patrols short. After the war, the organization turned to search-and-rescue operations, cadet programs and aerospace education. Ms. Parker occasionally searches for missing aircraft and assesses hurricane damage from the air. But she spends most of her time with the Civil Air Patrol in “very intense” war games in a program called Green Flag Training , in which she pilots Cessnas to imitate Predator drones above a battlefield. “We fly with the F-16s,” she said in an email. “What we train them to do saves the lives of our American kids.” But she has met resistance while volunteering, occasionally encountering a lack of respect from male pilots. “When you are the little demure submissive, everybody loves you,” Ms. Parker, who declined to give her age, said. She does not advertise her past as a flight attendant to colleagues, to avoid belittlement. “It’s their sandbox,” she explained. In Delray Beach, Mr. Zaretsky said crime had gone down 82 percent in the Lake Ida neighborhood from 2009 to 2011 since volunteers started patrolling. He wears navy pants and a royal blue short-sleeve shirt with rows of multicolored military-style decorations above the right pocket. An Army sergeant during the Korean War, he now holds the rank of volunteer major, though some subordinates call him simply “Chief.” He contrasts his challenging unpaid work with the pastime of neighbors who sit by swimming pools and chatter about “doctors and restaurants and the problems in the community that they don’t want to do anything about.” Some volunteers become enamored with the military trappings: ribbons, and rank. “Sometimes you get a wannabe who wants to be a police officer,“ said Martin Tencer, 78, a retired car dealer and Korean War veteran who oversees the Delray Beach program with Mr. Zaretsky. “We can’t tolerate that.” Dilip V. Jeste, a psychiatrist and director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, understands why volunteer jobs that confer power (and a uniform) might attract some retirees. Retirement, particularly when forced, can inflict “a serious injury to one’s ego,” he said in an email. “This may be equivalent to a total loss of self-esteem for some people. One way to get that sense of self-esteem back is to return to a position of perceived authority.” Though Mark Elkins voluntarily retired from his job as a computer engineering professor at the City University of New York, he acknowledges that the loss of his professional status contributed to his choice of a volunteer career. He now serves as board president of the New York City Parks Enforcement Patrol Mounted Auxiliary Unit and occasionally maintains order from atop a sizable draft horse. “Maybe it explains why I have spent eight years as board president. Or at least why I picked a volunteer position that had an ‘authority’ image to it,” said Mr. Elkins, 68. Though some might dismiss retirees in police and paramilitary roles as fantasists, they take real risks, as Mr. Elkins knows firsthand. One of his horses, Monty, accidentally rolled on him several years ago. “Cost me five ribs,” said Mr. Elkins. Volunteer officers who suffer catastrophic injuries are eligible for the Justice Department’s Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Programs , while death in the line of duty qualifies survivors for benefits. The blog of the Officer Down Memorial Page , a nonprofit, offers another sobering reminder of the dangers in volunteer policing: a list of 131 volunteers killed in the line of duty under the title , “Auxiliary Officers: Making the Ultimate Sacrifice for $0 Per Year.” | Retirement;Volunteering,volunteers,community service;US Coast Guard;Police;Civil Air Patrol;Volunteer Law Enforcement Officer Alliance;Coast Guard Auxiliary |
ny0140005 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
]
| 2008/02/21 | Put Another File in the Jukebox, Baby | IT’S only a mild case of audiophilia, according to the professionals, but it’s causing me significant discomfort. Until recently I had considered my appreciation of good-sounding music more boon than bane, but the moment my wife and I decided to move, I acquired a harsh new perspective. I possess a fairly nice stereo (not a problem) and some 2,500 CDs (a significant problem, according to my wife), but the biggest problem is the custom-built cabinet I commissioned to house my music. It sits on an astounding 20 percent of the usable space in our living room. I’m unwilling to subject our new house to that sort of treatment. I have resisted converting my CDs to the MP3 digital format for two reasons. The thought of feeding discs into my computer, one by excruciating one (I believe this was the ninth labor of Hercules), not to mention organizing it once it is digitized, is painful just to contemplate. More important, I’m entirely unwilling to sacrifice sound quality in return for less clutter. Recently, however, trends have been working in my favor. Data storage prices are in perpetual free fall — at 50 cents a gigabyte, even giant hard drives are within most budgets — and the FLAC (free lossless audio codec) audio format has gained widespread embrace by mainstream media hardware manufacturers. Like MP3, FLAC is a compression standard for music files, but unlike MP3, it is lossless, meaning it doesn’t degrade sound quality. With it, I could fit 3,000 CDs in a terabyte of storage. These are details about which my wife does not care. What she is passionate about is floor space. I set about seeing how to help us both. First stop was Logitech in Mountain View, Calif. Logitech recently bought Slim Devices, which makes the Squeezebox, a handy little $299 unit about half the size of my desktop keyboard. It relays music from computer to stereo system and then, if the user so wishes, around the rest of the house. It’s a viable solution, but it still puts me back at my computer, ripping my CDs while I grind my teeth down to the nerve. Even if I outsource the job, with ripping services like Ready to Play ( www.readytoplay.com ) and Riptopia ( www.riptopia.com ) that charge about $1.60 or so for each disc, that’s an extra $2,500. Logitech makes three products — the Squeezebox, the $399 Squeezebox Duet and the $1,999 Transporter — which do more or less the same thing at varying levels of quality. The first two items are extremely compact. The Duet receiver is just two-thirds the size of the Squeezebox. The Transporter offers a higher quality of sound from a typical size stereo component. All three connect wirelessly to the server — in most cases, a computer — and must be run through an amplifier or powered speakers. A similar wireless audio-streaming device is the Zone Player 100 ($499) from Sonos, based in Santa Barbara, Calif. Unlike the Logitech devices, it has an integrated amplifier, so all one needs is an audio source and a pair of speakers. For those who prefer to power their music through an existing stereo system, the Zone Player 80 ($349) is an amp-free alternative. Each unit is commanded through a feature-laden remote control ($399), complete with scroll wheel and full-color screen. While Sonos does a capable job of retrieving one’s own stored music, the company is banking on users obtaining music online, both from services like Rhapsody and Napster — which are essentially fee-based online jukeboxes — and Internet radio. But I did not build a CD collection just to ignore it. More exploration was in order. Second stop was the high-end test drive. There is little argument that McIntosh makes among the best — and most expensive — audio components. So when the company came out with the MS750 last year, my ears perked up. Knowing much of the $6,000 price tag was going toward a level of sound quality that may well be lost on my good-but-not-great stereo system, I proceeded with caution. From an ease-of-use standpoint, the McIntosh was exactly what I was looking for. A simple interface allows for automatic CD ripping (into FLAC or a variety of other formats) in about four minutes. “I have people write in all the time and say, ‘You know, I could do the same thing with a $400 computer and this program or that program,’ ” said Ron Cornelius, a McIntosh project manager. “And they’re absolutely right — they can. But try to use it every day. If you’re not a computer geek, forget it. It’s just not a friendly portal.” The MS750 is named for its 750-gig hard drive, big by most measures but still only enough to handle about two-thirds of my music in FLAC format. And this is where my dreams of a McIntosh began to evaporate. I could buy another MS750, the pair connecting wirelessly as if they were a single machine. Clearing a $6,000 piece of machinery with my wife will be tough enough; doubling that price tag would be akin to asking for a divorce. The fact that the MS750 needs a video screen to use its navigation fully — it can be run through a TV or a laptop, but I would more realistically have to buy a devoted L.C.D. screen — adds to the cost. Third stop was Olive Media Products, San Francisco. At first blush, Olive’s product line is not dissimilar from the McIntosh — internal hard drives, easy ripping of CDs and high-end circuitry. Like the others, Olive’s highest-capacity machine, the Opus N°5, comes with a 750-gig drive. Unlike the others, however, it has a U.S.B. 2.0 port with which to attach an external hard drive, letting users more than double its capacity for less than $200. Why doesn’t every system have this? Additionally, the front-panel display is fully navigable, without need for an additional screen. The Opus connects to the Internet, allowing not only for online radio, but giving users remote control once its included software is installed on a touch-screen P.D.A. The main downside is that Olive does not offer a device to deliver music into additional rooms, though industry whispers hint that could change within the year. Perhaps the biggest bonus is that Olive will rip my CDs for me. The first 300 are included in the price of the machine, and the rest can be done for as little as 50 cents each. I can send my CDs to Olive and the machine I order will be delivered with my music already on it. If there’s anything closer to my pipe dream, I can’t imagine what it is. With the Opus N°5 priced at $3,999, even if I choose to outsource my ripping I can still be home free at just over $5,000. Seems like a small price to pay for a happy marriage and a bigger living room. | Recordings and Downloads (Audio);Computers and the Internet;Storage;Logitech International SA |
ny0222917 | [
"us"
]
| 2010/11/28 | Former Justice John Paul Stevens Criticizes Death Penalty | WASHINGTON — In 1976, just six months after he joined the Supreme Court , Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment after a four-year moratorium. With the right procedures, he wrote, it is possible to ensure “evenhanded, rational and consistent imposition of death sentences under law.” In 2008, two years before he announced his retirement, Justice Stevens reversed course and in a concurrence said that he now believed the death penalty to be unconstitutional. But the reason for that change of heart, after more than three decades on the court and some 1,100 executions, has in many ways remained a mystery, and now Justice Stevens has provided an explanation. In a detailed, candid and critical essay to be published this week in The New York Review of Books , he wrote that personnel changes on the court, coupled with “regrettable judicial activism,” had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria. The essay is remarkable in itself. But it is also a sign that at 90, Justice Stevens is intent on speaking his mind on issues that may have been off limits while he was on the court. In the process, he is forging a new model of what to expect from Supreme Court justices after they leave the bench, one that includes high-profile interviews and provocative speeches. He will be on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. Earlier this month, he weighed in on the controversy over the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in a speech to the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation . During World War II, Justice Stevens served as a Navy cryptographer at Pearl Harbor for more than two years. On returning to Hawaii in 1994, he said he had an emotional reaction to seeing Japanese tourists at a memorial there. “We shouldn’t allow them to celebrate their attack on Pearl Harbor,” he remembered thinking. He added that he understood why some New Yorkers would have a similar reaction to the proposed Islamic center near ground zero. “But then, after a period of reflection, some of those New Yorkers may have second thoughts, just as I did,” he went on. “The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago; the Muslims planning to build the mosque are not responsible for what an entirely different group of Muslims did on 9/11.” The two other retired justices have been active, too, but they have largely limited their public comments to more traditional matters like judicial independence and constitutional interpretation. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who is 80, speaks frequently on what she says are the problems inherent in electing state court judges. Justice David H. Souter, 71, in a commencement address in May at Harvard, gave a detailed critique of the mode of constitutional interpretation associated with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who rely on the text and original meaning of the Constitution. Justice Souter said those tools are inadequate given the “open-ended language” in the Constitution, which, moreover, “contains values that may well exist in tension with each other.” But that sort of abstract discussion is nothing like the blow-by-blow critique in Justice Stevens’s death penalty essay, which will be published in The New York Review’s Dec. 23 issue and will be available on its Web site on Sunday evening. The essay is actually a review of the book “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition,” by David Garland, a professor of law and sociology at New York University. The book compares American and European approaches to the death penalty, and Justice Stevens appears to accept its major conclusions. Professor Garland attributes American enthusiasm for capital punishment to politics and a cultural fascination with violence and death. In discussing the book, Justice Stevens defended the promise of the Supreme Court’s 1976 decisions reinstating the death penalty even as he detailed the ways in which he said that promise had been betrayed. With the right procedural safeguards, Justice Stevens wrote, it would be possible to isolate the extremely serious crimes for which death is warranted. But he said the Supreme Court had instead systematically dismantled those safeguards. Justice Stevens said the court took wrong turns in deciding how juries in death penalty cases are chosen and what evidence they may hear, in not looking closely enough at racial disparities in the capital justice system, and in failing to police the role politics can play in decisions to seek and impose the death penalty. In Payne v. Tennessee in 1991, for instance, the court overruled a 1987 decision, Booth v. Maryland , that had banned statements from victims at sentencing because of their tendency to inflame juries. “I have no doubt that Justice Lewis Powell, who wrote the Booth opinion, and Justice William Brennan, who joined it, would have adhered to its reasoning in 1991 had they remained on the court,” Justice Stevens wrote. “That the justices who replaced them did not do so was regrettable judicial activism and a disappointing departure from the ideal that the court, notwithstanding changes in membership, upholds its prior decisions.” Justice Stevens did not name those new justices. One was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, lately the court’s swing justice, who replaced Justice Powell. The other was Justice Souter, who replaced Justice Brennan and in other cases generally voted with Justice Stevens and the rest of the court’s more liberal wing. Justice Stevens also had harsh words for the 5-to-4 decision in 1987 in McCleskey v. Kemp , which ruled that even solid statistical evidence of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty did not violate the Constitution. He said the decision effectively allowed “race-based prosecutorial decisions.” “That the murder of black victims is treated as less culpable than the murder of white victims provides a haunting reminder of once-prevalent Southern lynchings,” Justice Stevens wrote. Here, too, Justice Stevens wrote, the decision turned on changes in the court’s membership. Justice Potter Stewart “surely would have voted with the four dissenters,” Justice Stevens said. Justice Stewart was replaced by Justice O’Connor, who voted with the majority. The problems with the administration of capital punishment extend beyond the courthouse and into the voting booth, Justice Stevens said. “Local elections affect decisions of state prosecutors to seek the death penalty and of state judges to impose it,” he wrote. He was also critical of decisions allowing prosecutors to exclude jurors with qualms about the death penalty, tilting the legal playing field toward conviction. The better approach, he said, is one in which “a jury composed of 12 local citizens selected with less regard to their death penalty views than occurs today — in that respect, a truer cross-section of the community — would determine individual defendants’ fates.” Robert B. Silvers, the editor of The New York Review of Books, said the idea of asking Justice Stevens to contribute occurred to him after he read passages from the justice’s dissent in Citizens United , the January decision that lifted restrictions on campaign spending. “It was clear that he was a very strong writer,” Mr. Silvers said. “We simply sent him the book, and we got back a letter saying he’d be delighted to review it.” | Stevens John Paul;Supreme Court;Capital Punishment;Race and Ethnicity |
ny0039551 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2014/04/19 | Delayed Viewing Plumps Up ‘Mad Men’ Audience | Fans of “Mad Men” alarmed by the surprising ratings falloff for this season’s premiere may take some comfort in the first results of delayed viewing for the episode. AMC reported on Friday that three days of recorded viewing indicated that the show added close to 75 percent more viewers in some categories, an usually big total, which may indicate more viewers are taking their time watching “Mad Men” — not that they are rejecting it. The audience for the show, which had been down more than 30 percent from last year’s premiere, is now down only about 15 percent from last year’s premiere after three days of delayed viewing. Specifically, the total audience climbed to 3.7 million viewers from about 2.3 million — an increase of 62 percent. In terms of audience in the advertiser-preferred group of viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, “Mad Men” showed a 74 percent increase to 1.8 million viewers. | Mad Men;TV;AMC TV Network;Ratings |
ny0277792 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
]
| 2016/11/17 | Protecting Your Digital Life in 9 Easy Steps | Editors’ note: This article, originally published in November 2016, was updated May 16, 2017. There are more reasons than ever to understand how to protect your personal information. Major website hackings seem ever more frequent. A set of top-secret National Security Agency hacking tools were dumped online over the past year. In May, hackers used some of those tools to hijack computers around the world . In a Medium post , Quincy Larson, the founder of Free Code Camp , an open-source community for learning to code, detailed the reasons it might be useful for people to make their personal data more difficult for attackers to obtain. “When I use the term ‘attacker’ I mean anyone trying to access your data whom you haven’t given express permission to,” he wrote, “whether it’s a hacker, a corporation or even a government.” In an interview, Mr. Larson walked us through some of the basic steps he recommended. We added a few of our own, based on additional interviews and news events. We encourage you to send any questions or feedback about this article to [email protected] . Image Credit Ritchie B. Tongo/European Pressphoto Agency 1. Download Signal, or Start Using WhatsApp to send text messages. Encryption is just a fancy word for scrambling your data so no one can understand what it says without a key. It’s useful for protecting information on your computer, but also for making sure prying eyes can’t snoop on text messages and emails on your phone. But encryption is more complex than just switching a couple of letters around. Signal is one of the most popular apps for those who want to protect their text messages. It is free, available for iPhone and Android, and extremely easy to use, but it does depend on your friends downloading and using it along with you. And unlike Apple’s iMessage, which is also encrypted, the code it uses to operate is open source, which is easier for an independent security expert to examine without the special permission of the developer. “You can be sure by looking at the code that they’re not doing anything weird with your data,” Mr. Larson said. “In general, the idea behind the app is to make privacy and communication as simple as possible,” said Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Open Whisper Systems, the organization that developed Signal. WhatsApp , the popular chat tool, uses Signal’s software to encrypt its messaging. And in Facebook Messenger and Google’s texting app Allo, you can turn on an option that encrypts your messages. Here’s how to do that on Facebook. Here’s how to do it on Allo. 2. Be wary of clicking on unfamiliar links or documents and apply software updates. In May, cybercriminals used ransomware, a type of software that locks down people’s data and threatens to destroy it if the attacker is not paid, to hijack hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide. Such attacks are often spread through malicious email attachments and links, a practice known as phishing . So make a rule of not clicking on anything when you do not know where it will take you, even if it appears to come from someone you know. Also, make sure to update your software regularly, particularly your operating system. Frequently, software companies will release updates that patch bugs and vulnerabilities when they are discovered. But outdated or unauthorized copies of the software may still contain the security flaws. This is a particular problem with computers using Microsoft Windows, the most popular operating system in the world and therefore a big target for hackers. Finally, for those using Windows, antivirus software can go a long way toward shoring up protection. Mr. Chen recommends antivirus tools from Bitdefender or Malwarebytes. 3. Protect your computer’s hard drive with FileVault or BitLocker — and back up your data to an online backup service, external hard drive, or both. Your phone may be the device that lives in your pocket, but Mr. Larson described the computer as the real gold mine for personal information. Even if your data were password-protected, someone who gained access to your computer “would have access to all your files if they were unencrypted.” Luckily, both Apple and Windows offer means of automatic encryption that simply need to be turned on. In Apple’s macOS, FileVault can be enabled from the Security and Privacy System Preferences panel. Apple has detailed instructions to enable it here . Microsoft Windows users must be running Windows 7 Ultimate or the Professional version of Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 to use BitLocker. Here’s a guide on how to check, and how to turn it on . Similarly, keep your data backed up. If something happens to it, or you lose it all, you can recover quickly without hassle. An online backup service, like CrashPlan , a favorite of The Wirecutter , a New York Times Company, backs up your data and encrypts it at the same time. Even an external hard drive gives your files an extra layer of security. Backups will protect your photos, documents and other data not only from a technical malfunction, but from ransomware and other malicious hacking. Just make sure to test or check your backups periodically. 4. The way you handle your passwords is probably wrong and bad. You know this by now . Creating strong passwords and never using the same password across sites is one of the simplest things you can do to protect yourself from digital invasion. Not everyone agrees about frequent password changes. Most say you should use really strong passwords and no more than one password per site, THEN use the password managers. But making up new combinations all the time is irritating and inconvenient, tempting people to reuse them or make them too simple. That is one reason some experts object to frequent password changes. It’s far better to create really strong ones for every login. And new passwords can pose security risks, because it’s hard to remember complex ones, so you are tempted to write them down. That can lead to a lot of hard-to-remember passwords. To keep track of them, Mr. Larson recommends password managers , which help store many passwords, with one master password. He said he uses LastPass but knows plenty of people who use 1Password and KeePass , and he doesn’t have a strong reason to recommend one over another. As far as making passwords up goes: Don’t be precious about it. Use a random word (an object near you, for example), scramble the letters and sprinkle in numbers and punctuation marks. If you’re writing passwords down or using a password manager, you don’t have to worry about making them memorable. Image Credit Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters 5. Protect your email and other accounts with two-factor authentication. When you turn on two-factor authentication, anyone trying to sign in to your email from new devices will have to go through a secondary layer of security: a code that is sent to your phone via text message. (Though sadly, not through Signal.) Here’s a link to turn on two-factor authentication for Gmail accounts . Here’s one for Yahoo accounts , and here’s one for Outlook accounts. You should also set two-factor authentication for social media accounts and other sites where it’s available. But email is the most important account, since many sites use email for password recovery, a fact that hackers have exploited. Once they have access to your email, they can get access to banking, social media, data backups and work accounts. 6. Use a browser plug-in called HTTPS Everywhere. Mr. Marlinspike recommended this plug-in, developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation , a digital security organization. It ensures that you are using the secure form of websites, meaning that your connection to the site will be encrypted and that you will be protected from various forms of surveillance and hacking. Download HTTPS Everywhere for Chrome here. For Firefox here. Here’s a list of FAQ’s about the plug-in, including whether it is available for other browsers. And this is a good time to note that you should always find out whether the Wi-Fi network you are using is secure. Public networks — and even private networks without security keys — often are not. 7. Invest in a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. The Times’s personal tech expert, Brian X. Chen, recommends using a VPN to shield browsing information, encrypt all of the data coming to or leaving your computer or phone, and hide your location. VPNs create an encrypted “tunnel” through which all of your data is sent, meaning other computers or devices on the same network as your computer can’t make sense of it. The only people who have the “key” in this case is your computer and the VPN provider you connect to when you turn it on. This is especially useful on public Wi-Fi networks, like at the airport or coffee shop, where you don’t know who else is using the same network. Some VPNs are free, and others require monthly subscriptions. The best offer apps for your phone as well as your computer. Mr. Chen highlights three providers: Freedome by F-Secure , TunnelBear and a service called Private Internet Access . 8. Remember that incognito mode isn’t always private. This feature, available on Chrome, Safari and Firefox, among other browsers, may sound secure, but pay attention to the clear warnings. On Chrome, the second paragraph of the “incognito” home screen spells it out for you. “You aren’t invisible,” it says. “Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider or the websites you visit.” In reality, it simply keeps your computer from keeping a record of where you go. It doesn’t stop sites from tracking and collecting data on you, and doesn’t do anything to protect your online privacy or security. It does, however, keep anyone using your computer from knowing where you went. 9. Do sensitive searches in DuckDuckGo. Mr. Larson said that if people were paranoid about Google, he would strongly encourage them to use DuckDuckGo , an alternate search engine. He said, however, that he was not paranoid. “Google is built on the hacker ethic, and they have put principle above profits in some aspects,” he said. But he also acknowledged that he meets “people all the time who are extremely skeptical of any large software organization, and I think that’s reasonable.” There are trade-offs. Google’s search results are more useful and accurate than competitors’ precisely because of the ways it collects and analyzes information about its customers’ searches. A Bonus: Cover your webcam with tape. That way, if someone has found a way to compromise your computer, they cannot spy on you. And yes, this happens. Even Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook worries about it. | Computer security;Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;Privacy |
ny0076559 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2015/05/10 | Patrick Lynch, Police Union Leader, Faces Election Fight | In early January, mutiny broke out within the upper ranks of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association , the city’s largest police union. At a monthly meeting, at a catering hall in Queens, a cabal of senior delegates confronted the union’s president, Patrick J. Lynch, with a defiant declaration: It was time to end his distracting battle with Mayor Bill de Blasio and refocus his attention on his members. Mr. Lynch, who is not known for his placid personality, had by then been sniping at the mayor since the summer in an ugly public war over race, respect and the Police Department’s role in increasingly embittered community relations. As the meeting drew to an end, the rebels seized a microphone and insisted that he concentrate instead on the fact that his union had been without a contract for the past five years. The demand touched off a shouting match in which fists were raised, obscenities were hurled and a few men started shoving. After listening to, and briefly taking part in, the argument, Mr. Lynch abruptly left the hall. It was a startling affront to the longtime union boss who has run the P.B.A. for 16 years under three mayors and four police commissioners — an insult to which injury was added days later when some of the insurgents officially announced that they planned a challenge to Mr. Lynch in the union’s elections, which are coming up this month. The angry upstart who had led his troops in a revolt against City Hall was confronting a rebellion from within. “My job is to speak for the police, and I’ve been criticized for doing that many times,” Mr. Lynch said on a recent afternoon, defending himself against his challengers’ claim that he overplayed his hand against the mayor. “Was I angry this winter? I was. But so were my members. It’s not my role to be popular or liked. It’s my role to be a voice for my members.” From the moment that Mr. Lynch, 51, took over the P.B.A. in 1999, that voice has been described with a long if limited list of adjectives: coarse, loud, very loud, strident, harsh, abrasive. His impassioned outrage has more or less defined him throughout his long career, and his critics say it has finally become a liability as he moves toward his first contested election in a decade, at what is also an exceptionally fraught time for his members. Just last week, speaking about the murder of Officer Brian Moore, who died on Monday after being shot while on patrol in Queens, William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, said he had not seen “so much anti-police sentiment” since the early 1970s. Much of the rage has been fomented by the police killings of young black men across the country, leaving Mr. Lynch and his 23,000 members to grapple with the feeling among some people that they are a lawless occupying force. Both of the men who will oppose him in the election — Brian Fusco , a high-ranking P.B.A. official and 27-year department veteran, and Ronald Wilson , a 28-year veteran — contend that Mr. Lynch’s problems go beyond his antagonistic personality and are rooted in his failure over the years to uphold his members’ interests. In June 2009, they say, Mr. Lynch was unable to prevent Gov. David A. Paterson from slashing pension benefits for newly hired officers. They also claim that Mr. Lynch delayed until this year taking the current contract squabble into binding arbitration so that the matter would come to a head in the midst of the elections. A Quinnipiac University poll released around the time of the catering-hall insurrection found that nearly 80 percent of New York voters considered Mr. Lynch’s attacks on Mr. de Blasio “too extreme.” The poll, combined with some hostile editorials and comments by his colleagues — one of whom assailed him as “a throwback to Archie Bunker” — helped establish a narrative that Mr. Lynch was a petulant civil servant whose rancorous dispute with the mayor did damage to his members. What the union as a whole thinks of him has been hard to know. But soon enough, the members will have a chance to weigh in. Election ballots go out to the rank and file on May 21 and are to be tallied by June 5. Twenty years ago, the P.B.A. was in shambles. Its presidency was passed down from one boss to the next like a feudal dukedom. Its lawyers went to prison in a kickback scandal . Its members got a contract with a multiyear pay freeze — the so-called zeros for heroes — even though they had worked to dramatically lower the crime rate. Annual conventions were plagued by drunken antics: One year, someone put live swans in an elevator. Leonard Levitt, a longtime police reporter for Newsday, once wrote that the union was “but a step from organized crime.” Image Mr. Lynch has led the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association for 16 years. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times Mr. Lynch helped change all that when he took office, at 35, after running in a four-way race as a youthful reformer. He was a go-getter, sleeping outside station houses in a Winnebago camper during his campaign. His credentials were impeccable: a photogenic Irish-American from Bayside, Queens, married to his high school sweetheart, with an immigrant mother and a father who spent 30 years as a subway motorman. Mr. Lynch was a community affairs officer from Brooklyn’s 90th Precinct and not what the police would call “an active cop,” but he possessed the right bloodlines: One of his older brothers was in the department; an uncle and a great-grandfather had been, too. Even in his early days in office, Mr. Lynch was known for picking fights with city leaders. In 2004, he called for the resignation of the police commissioner , Raymond W. Kelly, after Mr. Kelly said there was “no justification” for the shooting of a black teenager by a white officer on the roof of a Brooklyn housing project. The same year, Mr. Lynch led his troops in a noisy 1 a.m. protest outside Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side townhouse when the city and the union were ensnarled in a contract dispute. But his fight with Mr. de Blasio has been deeper and more tribal. Unlike Mr. Bloomberg or his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. de Blasio ran on a platform that was critical of police tactics, and he was openly sympathetic when protests erupted this winter after a state grand jury failed to indict the Staten Island officer involved in the death of Eric Garner. Perceiving disrespect, Mr. Lynch forcefully pushed back. He called on the police to sign petitions barring the mayor from attending their funerals if they were killed on the job, and he quietly stood by as his officers engaged in a slowdown on summonses and quality-of-life arrests . In late December, the dispute reached a peak when Ismaaiyl Brinsley, an unstable man from Baltimore, fatally shot Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos as they sat in their patrol car near Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. While visiting the hospital where the officers had been taken, Mr. Lynch undertook his most infamous act, turning his back on the mayor in a hallway. He then walked out and announced to the waiting cameras that Mr. de Blasio had “ blood on the hands .” By that point, Mr. Lynch was already reviled by many, not just in the city’s liberal circles, but also in its tabloids, which are typically pro-police. Then again, neither the media nor liberals were his target audience. One should not confuse Mr. Lynch’s public communications with a desire to communicate with the public. His anger, while genuine, was also a form of strategic messaging meant to suggest that he had his members’ backs. “I don’t have opinions,” Mr. Lynch said last month. “My members have opinions.” As the war cooled down, the other chief combatants conspicuously moved on toward offering solutions. Mr. de Blasio, for instance, earmarked millions of dollars to buy bulletproof vests for the police, to expand the department’s cadet program and to provide its officers with the latest smartphones and tablets. Mr. Bratton outlined a forward-looking plan to reduce the force’s presence in high-crime neighborhoods using databases and high technology. Even the city’s four other police unions wrested something from the conflict, breaking with the P.B.A. to negotiate contracts — albeit less than ideal ones — with City Hall. All that Mr. Lynch got, according to the theory that emerged, was some bad poll numbers and two men bucking for his job. One day late last month, Mr. Lynch was at work in his office high above the financial district. The elections were a month away, but he was engaged in routine union business, having just read through a new report on how the city planned to handle lawsuits against police officers. Image Ronald Wilson, a 28-year veteran, wants to replace Mr. Lynch. Credit Andrew Renneisen for The New York Times Though he was not in the spotlight, he had on a fitted navy suit and wore his graying hair slicked back to the sleekness of a duck breast. But there was none of the jawboning, finger-pointing language he often deploys in public. In private, Mr. Lynch tends to offer a more genial persona, displaying hints of humor (“My opponents say that everything is terrible and on top of it, Lynch is short”) in the gruffly competent tones of a gunnery sergeant or a college football coach. Which raises a question: Why, if he is evidently capable of cordiality and dialogue, did he choose not to use those faculties in his fight with Mr. de Blasio? His answer is that anger brought attention to his cause. “We had a situation where police officers were under attack,” he said. “The fact that we’re even having this discussion shows that what we did was exactly correct.” Mr. Lynch maintains that his assertive stance this winter “turned the mayor’s head” — noting that Mr. de Blasio subsequently vowed to veto a City Council bill seeking to criminalize the type of chokehold that led to the death of Mr. Garner, and that the mayor in the past few months has been generally more supportive of the police. As Mr. Lynch’s spokesman, Al O’Leary, later put it, “We turned down the flames on the controversy because we were getting results.” Both of his challengers have questioned that idea, construing Mr. Lynch’s battle with the mayor as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a political stunt. “Our contract expired in 2010,” said Mr. Fusco, a former friend and ally of Mr. Lynch’s. “It’s no coincidence that after half a decade, Paddy steered things so that they’ve landed at a moment when he can say, ‘Hey, don’t change generals during the war.’ ” Furthermore, his critics say, Mr. Lynch has become complacent, intolerant of criticism and distant from his members’ daily needs. “He’s basically a dictator,” a union delegate from Mr. Fusco’s precinct, Robert Andersen, said. “It’s his way or the highway. That’s who he’s become.” By the time the P.B.A. held its annual convention last August at a Holiday Inn near Albany, it was widely known within the union that Mr. Lynch would be facing a contested election, and according to Mr. Fusco, his incitements last year were part of his campaign. “Because he was getting so much media attention, he figured he had a chance to really amp things up,” Mr. Fusco said. “He started taking advantage of every Fox interview, every interview on CNN, to bang on the drum. I remember thinking, ‘Man, is he really that self-serving?’ ” Mr. Lynch, in turn, has attacked both Mr. Fusco and Mr. Wilson as liars and opportunists, adding that everything he says and does is on behalf of his members, who are barred by law from striking. But it may be telling that none of the other leaders of police unions, who represent the department’s sergeants, lieutenants, captains and detectives, agreed to speak on his behalf. Edward D. Mullins, the president of the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association, who met with Mr. de Blasio in February over pastrami sandwiches and soda, said through a spokesman that he considered Mr. Lynch “a friend,” but added that the sergeants’ union was “able to discuss frank, difficult issues with many different constituencies to make this city better.” Image Brian Fusco, a high-ranking P.B.A. official and 27-year department veteran, is running against Mr. Lynch. Credit Andrew Renneisen for The New York Times Mr. Mullins was silent about whether Mr. Lynch could do the same. Even though he has staked his future on a reputation for aggressiveness, Mr. Lynch acknowledges that a disconnect exists between his members and the public. And yet, he argues, the present-day disdain for the police is misdirected. For the last 10 years or so, the department’s racial makeup has been more or less evenly split between white and minority officers — a striking change from when Mr. Lynch came on the force. As a street-level form of government, he said, police officers are increasingly involved in impoverished neighborhoods, called upon to handle a bewildering array of social ailments: homelessness, mental illness, domestic dysfunction. Mr. Lynch added that his members were not responsible for creating those problems, or invasive tactics like stop-and-frisk that are often used to deal with them. Indeed, he said, some of his members hate those tactics as much as people in the neighborhoods say they do. “We’re fighting a tidal wave of criticism,” Mr. Lynch said. “But that criticism should be focused on the policy makers, not on the police officers standing on the corner.” The implication of this statement is profound: that rank-and-file police officers and the minority communities in which they spend a large part of their time may have more in common than they think. In some sense, both have been affected by broader trends like gentrification and city policies that have encouraged development in struggling neighborhoods. With only slight exaggeration, one could describe this dynamic as blue-collar officers making the city safe for white-collar residents, with men like Eric Garner caught in between. “It’s ironic, but economic inequality plays a role here,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant in New York who has worked for police unions across the country. “The police are being asked to pacify areas that once they’re cleared, they could never afford to live in — and then they’re getting criticized for doing it. It creates the kind of bitterness we saw this winter and that seemed so unfathomable to so many people.” Though Mr. Lynch was largely the face of that bitterness, he is not without reasoned solutions to the problems of community policing. His first suggestion is to hire more police officers, which would, of course, increase his union’s membership, but also, he says, permit a force that now rushes from job to job to spend more time interacting positively with residents. He has also advocated doing away with arrest quotas — department officials deny they exist — to reduce the pressure on his members and, in turn, on the neighborhoods they patrol. What has been disappointing to some who know Mr. Lynch is his apparent unwillingness, or inability, to articulate that message without incendiary language. “He could have come out after Garner and said the problem’s not systemic because the department is mostly minority at this point,” said Edward W. Hayes, a prominent lawyer who helped run Mr. Lynch’s first campaign. “But instead there was all that business about blood on the mayor’s hands.” Mr. Lynch refuses to apologize for even his most divisive statements, pointing out that his fury over the Myrtle Avenue killings, for example, was merely an expression of his union’s beliefs. “I have walked into emergency rooms in hospitals when police officers were shot many times,” he said. “Sometimes it’s to deep shock. Sometimes it’s to knee-buckling sadness. This time it was to sheer anger. Because we knew it was coming, we had said it was coming, and people told us, ‘Ah, calm down, that’s just rhetoric.’ ” Stiffening with emotion, he went on: “The words I said and the actions I took, that’s exactly what the members were thinking. If you ask the members, they don’t disagree with a thing I said.” Whether that is true, of course, is precisely what the election will decide. | Patrick J Lynch;Patrolmen's Benevolent Association;NYC;Labor Unions;NYPD;Brian Fusco;Ronald Wilson;Bill de Blasio;Police;Election |
ny0075098 | [
"business"
]
| 2015/04/12 | Andy Bryant of Intel: Don’t Just Check Off Career Boxes | This interview with Andy Bryant , the chairman of the technology giant Intel , was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant . Q. Tell me about your early years. A. We lived in a small house in the Midwest. My dad was killed in the Berlin Crisis — he was a navigator on a bomber. There was no life insurance. My mom had to raise three boys. We grew up as latchkey kids. We never felt poor, but we always worked hard. I had paper routes, and in high school I actually had a night job in a factory. What kind of factory? It was a plastics molding factory. The thing I remember most is making fly swatters. This big press would make them and then it would open and the fly swatters would pop out, and you had to reach in, grab them and get your hand out before it slammed back again to make the next ones. And where did you go to college? University of Missouri for undergraduate. When I got out of school, it was 1972, and not particularly the best economic time. I got a job selling tools to stores. As an introvert, I would never have picked being a salesman as a career. I was pretty good at it, but I didn’t like it. Then I went to the University of Kansas to get an M.B.A. And your career plan then? I didn’t have a massive plan for my life. I was just going to get a good job and do meaningful work. When I was younger, I would have said maybe I’m going to coach sports in high school or teach, because I always did have a desire to teach. In my wildest dreams during grad school, I wanted to work for the Ford Motor Company. I love cars. But I didn’t think that would happen. Then, lo and behold, Ford came and interviewed at Kansas that year. It was the first time they’d been there. I was probably the fifth person the guy from Ford interviewed. I walked in and he said, “Will you move to Detroit?” I said, “Of course. Why else would I be here?” And he said, “You’re the only one who’s answered ‘yes’ to that question.” I got the job offer, and so I went to Ford. I joined Intel after five years in Detroit. What are some leadership lessons you’ve learned? The first key lesson was to be open and honest with your people. I’d seen many times that wasn’t the case. At a lot of companies, people are told, in effect, “Here’s the company line, and you have to support the company line.” And there were times I thought the company made the wrong decision. You can’t undermine the decision, but I developed an approach with my employees if they thought my way was right, but it was not what the company had decided. If they asked me about it, I’d say: “I want to give you two answers. I would have gone a different way, and here’s why. On the other hand, I want you to understand why the C.E.O. or whoever made this decision. I don’t know if I’m right and they’re wrong. What I know, though, is that they were empowered to make the decision. It’s a decision that can be defended, and our job now is to optimize that decision.” People always knew that they were going to hear what I really think. It created a good following. I also believe that you have to help people develop. In typical annual reviews, you say, “Here’s how you did, and do these four things next year.” Mine never did. I would say: “I’m going to talk about how to develop you. And so to help you develop, I have to first know what you want to do with your career. If you tell me, ‘I want to leave Intel at some point and be a C.F.O. at a small company,’ I’ll help you figure that out. We’ll talk about the skills you don’t have and how you can gain them. We can also talk about the skills I need you to develop while you’re still here, to do better work for us.” So you start with what the person’s looking for and add to it what you need, and then you get better work from the person. The point is to actually help people achieve their goals, and at the same time improve their ability to do their job. It should be about developing people, rather than listing tasks for them accomplish in the coming year. How do you hire? I’m very good at assessing talent from an M.B.A. school. I was always on our interview teams. I would ask, “Which classes were your best classes?” I knew enough about all the different subjects to find out if they learned something or if they just showed up and got a good grade. Hiring from another company is much harder because of the cultural differences. But I’ll look at your record of success and try to get a sense of whether you’ll fit in our culture, and I’ll try to make sure you understand what our culture is. I want to make sure you really want to be here. The bottom line is that if you don’t want to be here, you won’t be successful. It comes down to intellect, a track record of success and a desire to be at Intel. If I can find people who have those criteria, I can generally make it work. What career advice do you give people? People inside Intel often come to me for advice, and they might say, “I’ve got these two job offers inside the company. I don’t know which one to take.” I’ll say, “Which do you want to do?” They’ll say, “I want to do this one, but the other one is the next step up.” And I’ll say: “The thing I learned is that if you’re not doing the job you want to do, it will reflect on your performance. You’re better off to take a job you’re excited about than to do the one you think somebody wants you to do.” People are successful when they’re intellectually and emotionally engaged as opposed to when they’re checking the box. | Andy Bryant;Management;Intel;Job Recruiting and Hiring;Careers and Professions |
ny0271762 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2016/05/18 | Obama to Relax U.S. Sanctions Against Myanmar | WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials on Tuesday said they would lift a broad array of sanctions on Myanmar, removing restrictions on state-owned banks and businesses as they seek to reward a historic move toward democracy in a country dominated for decades by brutal military rule. The moves, to take effect on Wednesday, will allow American individuals, banks and companies to do business with all Burmese financial institutions, easing the flow of exports in and out of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. It will also enable United States citizens living and working there to pay rent and buy goods without running afoul of the law. The easing of restrictions is the latest effort by President Obama to use diplomacy coupled with sanctions relief to prod toward greater openness a country that the United States once isolated. That principle was at the heart of Mr. Obama’s agreement last year with Iran, which relaxed sanctions in exchange for restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. It has also been the driving force behind the opening with Cuba. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees and enforces sanctions, announced the changes related to Myanmar on Tuesday. The democratic process reached a milestone in November with elections in Myanmar and has continued to unfold in recent months with the formation of a new government. Still, Mr. Obama made it clear on Tuesday that he did not regard Myanmar’s transformation as complete or irreversible. In a notice to Congress required annually, he renewed an official government declaration related to Myanmar, calling it an “extraordinary threat.” Senior administration officials said they were still concerned about potential “spoilers” of the shift toward democracy there, particularly the military, which profited financially and politically from the old system and might seek a return to it. They said sanctions would remain on individuals and entities that are obstructing political reform in Myanmar, committing human rights abuses or propagating military trade with North Korea. “The United States wants to continue to further incentivize democratic reforms and continue to pressure targeted individuals and entities, including the military, so that the work of reforming that government continues,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. In a speech on Tuesday, Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, called efforts to encourage ties with Myanmar one of the most important foreign policy overtures of Mr. Obama’s tenure, and said rewarding Myanmar for its steps toward democratization was crucial. “We have to demonstrate that there are dividends for people who go down this road,” Mr. Rhodes said. “And if we’re not there for those people when they make the right choices, that won’t just be a problem for Myanmar.” Mr. Rhodes said that improving relations with Myanmar should not wait until that country liberalizes entirely. He said existing sanctions on Myanmar are in many ways more draconian than those that apply to neighboring countries with worse human rights records. He did not name those countries, but Myanmar borders China, Laos and Thailand. Several state-owned businesses and banks in Myanmar are to be removed from the list of sanctioned enterprises, the administration said, including timber and mining companies and gem concerns that are now owned by civilians rather than the military. But the Treasury Department will tighten sanctions on Steven Law , a Burmese business tycoon penalized by the department in 2008 for supporting the military junta. Mr. Law and his late father, Lo Hsing Han — who was once described by the United States as the “Godfather of Heroin” — prospered under the military government, which awarded them contracts to build large infrastructure projects. Their businesses have continued to thrive even with the transition to democratic rule in Myanmar. On Wednesday, the Treasury will blacklist six companies owned 50 percent or more by Mr. Law or Asia World: the Asia Mega Link Company, the Asia Mega Link Services Company, the Pioneer Aerodome Services Company, the Green Asia Services Company, the Global World Insurance Company, and the Shwe Nar Wah Company. | Myanmar,Burma;Foreign Investment;Embargoes Sanctions;US Politics;Treasury Department;Barack Obama |
ny0245705 | [
"business",
"economy"
]
| 2011/04/30 | Massachusetts House Seeks to Limit Collective Bargaining | BOSTON — Union leaders in this traditionally labor-friendly state are fuming over a plan passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives this week to curtail bargaining rights for municipal workers, a highly unusual move by Democratic lawmakers. The bill, passed late Tuesday night in advance of planned labor protests, would let local officials unilaterally set health insurance co-payments and deductibles for their employees after a monthlong discussion period with unions. Leaders of the House said it would save cities and towns $100 million in the budget year that starts in July. While Republican-controlled legislatures in Wisconsin and Ohio this year have weakened the ability of public-sector unions to bargain collectively, and Republicans in other states have pushed for a variety of curbs on unions, Massachusetts is the first state where a Democratic-led chamber has voted to limit bargaining rights. “Everybody’s pretty upset,” said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts A.F.L.-C.I.O. “It’s hard for me to understand how my good friends in the Massachusetts House, that have told me they support collective bargaining, could do this.” But the bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats. Senate President Therese Murray said Wednesday that she was pleased the House had “moved the needle” on the contentious issue of health care costs, but she has not endorsed the plan. Dave Falcone, a Senate spokesman, said Friday that Ms. Murray “has been consistent in her message that something has to be done, that there has to be savings, and that everyone should have a seat at the table.” While Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, has not pledged to sign the bill if it reaches his desk, he proposed a similar plan early this year and praised the House this week for its “important” vote. He also raised concerns about a provision of the House plan allowing towns and cities to opt out of it and said unions must not have veto power over municipal health plans. On Friday, Mr. Patrick said through a spokesman that labor must have “a meaningful role” in determining how to control health care costs, though he did not elaborate. The House voted 111-42 in favor of the plan, with 81 Democrats approving it. Representative Brian Dempsey, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he supported it — and in fact helped create it — after seeing no other way of avoiding disastrous cuts to local public safety and education budgets. The legislature had urged municipalities and their unions to curb rising health costs for several years, he said, but with no success. “We have to get a handle on this,” he said. “The fact of the matter is costs are going up and the money is not going to the areas we desperately need it to.” He acknowledged, though, that it was “certainly difficult” to hear labor’s angry response. Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that supported the plan, said the health care costs for cities and towns had been growing by about 11 percent a year and “cannibalizing” local budgets. “Yes, it’s a small curtailment of their collective bargaining powers,” Mr. Widmer said of municipal unions, “but with the corollary that it will save lots of their members’ jobs.” Under the House plan, co-payments and deductibles for municipal workers would have to be at least equal to those of state employees. And unions would retain the right to negotiate what portion of premiums their members paid. Mr. Patrick and House leaders have sought to head off comparisons with the legislation that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed earlier this year, saying the Massachusetts plan does not go nearly as far. That did not stop the Republican Party of Wisconsin from proclaiming Mr. Patrick “an ally” on Friday and congratulating him on the bill. Mr. Patrick is to speak at a Democratic Party dinner in Wisconsin on Saturday. “It’s refreshing to see that even a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts recognizes the importance of collective bargaining reform,” Mark Jefferson, the Wisconsin Republican Party’s executive director, said in a statement. | Massachusetts;Collective Bargaining;State Legislatures;Organized Labor;Law and Legislation;Health Insurance and Managed Care |
ny0165650 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2006/09/19 | Brooklyn: Man Slain | A man was fatally shot in his Brooklyn neighborhood last night, the police said. The man, Lawrence Falade, 28, was shot several times on a street in Flatbush about 8 p.m. He was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he later died. Friends said that the victim had immigrated from Nigeria and had a wife, who is pregnant. Investigators at the scene said it was unclear what the motive for shooting was. | Murders and Attempted Murders;Brooklyn (NYC) |
ny0211607 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2017/01/10 | Trump Received Unsubstantiated Report That Russia Had Damaging Information About Him | WASHINGTON — The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said. The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Details of the reports began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington. The two-page summary, first reported by CNN, was presented as an appendix to the intelligence agencies’ report on Russian hacking efforts during the election , the officials said. The material was not corroborated, and The New York Times has not been able to confirm the claims. But intelligence agencies considered it so potentially explosive that they decided Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders needed to be told about it and informed that the agencies were actively investigating it. Intelligence officials were concerned that the information would leak before they informed Mr. Trump of its existence, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly. The author of the memos is Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with MI-6, who once served in Moscow. After Mr. Steele retired in 2009, he founded a private firm called Orbis Business Intelligence in London. Former C.I.A. officials described him as an expert on Russia who is well respected in the spy world. On Tuesday night, Mr. Trump responded to the memos on Twitter: In an appearance recorded for NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway, said of the claims in the opposition research memos, “He has said he is not aware of that.” On Wednesday, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia dismissed the allegations. “The Kremlin has no compromising dossier on Trump, such information isn’t consistent with reality and is nothing but an absolute fantasy,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said at a news conference. Since the intelligence agencies’ report on Friday that Mr. Putin of Russia had ordered the hacking and leaks of Democratic emails in order to hurt his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and help Mr. Trump, the president-elect and his aides have said that Democrats are trying to mar his election victory. The decision of top intelligence officials to give the president, the president-elect and the so-called Gang of Eight — Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress and the intelligence committees — what they know to be unverified, defamatory material was extremely unusual. The appendix summarized opposition research memos prepared mainly by a retired British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm. The firm was paid for its work first by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals and later by supporters of Mrs. Clinton. The Times has checked on a number of the details included in the memos but has been unable to substantiate them. The memos suggest that for many years, the Russian government of Mr. Putin has looked for ways to influence Mr. Trump, who has traveled repeatedly to Moscow to investigate real estate deals or to oversee the Miss Universe competition, which he owned for several years. Mr. Trump never completed any major deals in Russia, though he discussed them for years. Mr. Steele, who gathered the material about Mr. Trump, is considered a competent and reliable operative with extensive experience in Russia, American officials said. But he passed on what he heard from Russian informants and others, and what they told him has not yet been vetted by American intelligence. The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future. The memos also suggest that Russian officials proposed various lucrative deals, essentially as disguised bribes in order to win influence over Mr. Trump. The memos describe several purported meetings during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump representatives and Russian officials to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta. If some of the unproven claims in the memos are merely titillating, others would amount to extremely serious, potentially treasonous acts. One of the opposition research memos quotes an unidentified Russian source as claiming that the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails was carried out “with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team.” In return, the memo said, “the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue” because Mr. Putin “needed to cauterize the subject.” Michael Cohen, a lawyer and adviser to Mr. Trump, also went to Twitter to deny a specific claim in the opposition research involving him. One of the memos claims that Mr. Cohen went to Prague in August or September to meet with Kremlin representatives and to talk about Russian hacking of Democrats. Mr. Cohen tweeted on Tuesday night: In addition, in a recent interview with The Times, one of the Russian officials named in the memo as having met with Mr. Cohen, Oleg Solodukhin, denied that he had met with Mr. Cohen or any other Trump representative. “I don’t know where that rumor came from,” Mr. Solodukhin, of the Russian organization Rossotrudnichestvo, which promotes Russian culture and interests abroad, said in a telephone interview. The Times reported before the election that the F.B.I. was looking into possible evidence of links between the Trump campaign and Russia. But the investigation surfaced again at a Senate hearing on Tuesday in a series of questions from Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, to the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. Mr. Wyden, trying to draw Mr. Comey out on information he may have heard during a classified briefing, asked if the F.B.I. had investigated the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. Mr. Comey demurred, saying he could not discuss any investigations that might or might not be underway. Mr. Wyden kept pressing, asking Mr. Comey to provide a written answer to the question before Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 because he feared there would be no declassification of the information once Mr. Trump took office. After the hearing, Mr. Wyden posted on Twitter: The F.B.I. obtained the material long before the election, and some of the memos in the opposition research dossier are dated as early as June. But agents have struggled to confirm it, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation. Allies of Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader from Nevada who retired at the end of the year, said the disclosures validated his call last summer for an investigation by the F.B.I. into Mr. Trump’s links to Russia. Democrats on Tuesday night pressed for a thorough investigation of the claims in the memos. Representative Eric Swalwell of California, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, called for law enforcement to find out whether the Russian government had had any contact with Mr. Trump or his campaign. “The president-elect has spoken a number of times, including after being presented with this evidence, in flattering ways about Russia and its dictator,” Mr. Swalwell said. “Considering the evidence of Russia hacking our democracy to his benefit, the president-elect would do a service to his presidency and our country by releasing his personal and business income taxes, as well as information on any global financial holdings.” | Donald Trump;Spying and Intelligence Agencies;US Politics;Russia |
ny0169780 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2007/04/24 | Brooklyn: Development for Former Navy Site | The site of the Navy brig, a former naval prison next to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Fort Greene, will be turned into a mixed-income housing complex with town houses, co-op apartments, rental apartments, supportive housing, a day care center and perhaps even an environmentally friendly dry cleaner, city officials said yesterday. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced that a partnership between the Dunn Development Corporation and L&M Equity Participants Ltd., two development companies specializing in low-priced housing, would redevelop the 103,000-square-foot site between Flushing and Park Avenues with 434 housing units. | Housing;Brooklyn (NYC) |
ny0203056 | [
"business",
"global"
]
| 2009/08/19 | Rio Tinto Selling Alcan Packaging Unit for $2 Billion | PARIS — After a year of tough negotiations, Amcor, the Australian packaging maker, has entered a binding offer to buy parts of Rio Tinto's Alcan Packaging unit for slightly more than $2 billion, the two companies announced Tuesday. For Amcor, the deal offers the prospect of a larger role in the global packaging industry as well as an improvement in its earnings per share. For Rio Tinto, the sale would yield funds to pay down the mining company's massive debt, which it estimated at $23.2 billion in June. Rio said Tuesday that over the past year and a half, it had struck deals to sell $6.6 billion in assets -- not including the latest sale. It has announced plans to sell yet more as it rids itself of non-core assets, many of which were acquired when it bought Alcan for about $38 billion in 2007 and took on a heavy debt load. “The divestment program continues for other assets identified for sale, including Alcan Engineered Products,’ ’the Anglo-Australian mining group said in a statement. The deal is conditional upon approval by European and U.S. regulators, and is not expected to close for several months. Rio said it would respond to the offer after consulting with European works councils, the organizations that represent employees within corporations. Amcor is financing the offer with debt and equity, combining a bank loan with a share issue worth 1.6 billion Australian dollars, or $1.3 billion, which was fully underwritten, and led by JPMorgan, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Commsec and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. UBS advised Amcor on the transaction. Amcor is already the largest packaging company in Australia, and the acquisition would make it the largest in the world for pharmaceutical and health care packaging. The company manufactures things like aluminum cans, candy wrappers and cigarette cartons. The company, based in Melbourne, reported in June that it had made 9.53 billion dollars in sales for the first half, and 360 million dollars in after-tax profit, from its operations in 34 countries. It employs about 21,000 people. Alcan Packaging, based in Paris, employs 14,000 in 28 countries. The divisions that Amcor has offered to buy generated $4.1 billion in revenue last year, and $1.8 billion in the first half of this year. Amcor shares ticked up to 5.65 dollars on Friday, when they were last traded. Rio Tinto held fairly steady Tuesday, inching down 20 Australian cents, or 0.35 percent, to 56.90 dollars at the close in Sydney. | Rio Tinto PLC;Alcan Aluminium Ltd;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures |
ny0226442 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
]
| 2010/10/31 | Wozniacki to Face Clijsters in Final in Qatar | Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki routed No. 2 Vera Zvonareva, 7-5, 6-0, to reach the W.T.A. Championships final in Doha, Qatar, against Kim Clijsters . Wozniacki took a 4-1 lead Saturday and withstood a comeback from Zvonareva in the first set. But Zvonareva was no match for Wozniacki in the second set. Wozniacki used a strong serve and aggressive net play, losing only 4 points the entire set. She will face Clijsters, the United States Open champion, on Sunday. Clijsters shook off a minor car accident en route to her semifinal and defeated Samantha Stosur, 7-6 (3), 6-1. Clijsters said on her Twitter page that she was not injured. ¶The defending champion Ivan Ljubicic beat Albert Montañés, 6-3, 7-6 (4), and will play Gaël Monfils of France in the Open Sud de France final in Montpellier. Monfils won an all-French semifinal against his Davis Cup teammate Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 7-6 (2), 2-6, 6-4. suddefrance ¶The defending champion Jürgen Melzer and Andreas Haider-Maurer advanced to the final of the Bank Austria Trophy in Vienna. The top-seeded Melzer beat Nicolas Almagro, 6-4, 6-4, and Haider-Maurer defeated Michael Berrer, 7-6 (6), 6-7 (1), 6-3, in the other semifinal to set up the first all-Austrian final of the tournament since 1988. vienna ¶Top-seeded Mikhail Youzhny of Russia reached the St. Petersburg, Russia, final by saving four match points to edge Dmitry Tursunov, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (8), in the semifinals. Youzhny will face Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan, who reached his first career ATP final with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Illya Marchenko of Ukraine. stpete | Wozniacki Caroline;Clijsters Kim;Tennis;Ljubicic Ivan |
ny0283758 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
]
| 2016/07/23 | Checking the Home Broadband Meter | Q. I can check the app on my smartphone to see if I’m getting too close to my monthly data allowance, but how can I tell if I’ve almost hit the limit for my internet provider at home? A. As unlimited monthly data service has given way to consumption-based pricing — tiered plans based on the number of gigabytes of data you think you may use each month — the need to keep an eye on the meter has become more of an issue. Tracking your data use is fairly straightforward if you are the only one using the broadband connection, but if you have a network router set up to share the service with multiple devices and other members of the household, it can be a little more complicated. Most internet service providers now have a page on their websites where you can see your current data use. For example, Time Warner Cable ( soon to be known as Spectrum when it fully merges with Charter Communications) has an internet use tracker on its site for customers, Comcast has its own data use meter and AT&T has tools to check data use for its U-verse broadband service. You need to have a user name and password with the company so you can log in and see your account information. If you have not set up a user name and password, go to your provider’s site and look for a place to sign up. (In addition to letting you manage your account online, signing up gives you the credentials you need to watch a lot of streaming content on third-party apps and devices, and you can even program your DVR remotely .) If you want to track your monthly statistics on your own without using your internet service provider’s tools, free programs like GlassWire for Windows or Bandwidth+ for Mac can give you an idea of how much your computer itself is using. To track the use by multiple devices, your network router may also be able to monitor the amount of data being used each month. Software utilities can vary based on the router model, so check your manual to see what is included. If no use-tracking features are available, installing a third-party program like DD-WRT to monitor use may also work for your model, but do so at your own risk. | Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry |
ny0125979 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2012/08/30 | In Virginia, Obama Attacks Romney’s Positions | CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — President Obama on Wednesday provided counterprogramming for a second day to the Republican National Convention, mocking its proceedings and contrasting his agenda with what he called the “backward” positions of Mitt Romney . “Pay a little attention to what’s happening in Tampa this week,” Mr. Obama told a boisterous crowd estimated at 6,500, many of them students at the University of Virginia here. When the audience loudly booed at the reference to the Republicans’ gathering, he said: “Don’t boo. Vote!” While aides have said that Mr. Obama has not watched television coverage of the convention, in his speech he called it “a pretty entertaining show” with “wonderful things to say about me.” Citing a widely debunked Republican television ad claiming that Mr. Obama gutted work requirements for welfare recipients, the president said to laughter and applause, “Sometimes they just make things up.” It was a repeat of the playful exchanges Mr. Obama had on Tuesday in similar rallies at college campuses in two other battleground states, Iowa and Colorado, as he campaigned for the support of young voters, a group that was crucial to his 2008 election. But the White House was quick to point out that in between his appearances, the president was receiving updates from federal officials on Hurricane Isaac , he and his advisers mindful especially on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina of the political perils of seeming insensitive to a natural disaster. Interrupted a few times by hecklers protesting the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama in his speech counted the winding down of that war, the end of the war in Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden among his promises kept as he made his case for re-election. He cited other achievements of his administration, focusing on policies popular with young voters and the Democratic base, and in each case telling his supporters the success was “because of you” — and at odds with Mr. Romney’s policy position. Mr. Obama spoke of a tax credit of up to $10,000 over four years for college tuition; increased tuition grants, made possible by cutting out banks as the government’s middlemen; and extension of a cap on interest rates for federal student loans . “Or you could just take my opponent’s advice and just let your parents lend you money,” Mr. Obama said. He said administration policies had helped double both the production of renewable energy and the fuel-efficiency standards for cars. “And by the way, my opponent’s against that,” he said. Mr. Obama said that Mr. Romney’s proposal for a 10-year tax cut of $5 trillion would add to the debt and mostly benefit wealthy taxpayers like him and Mr. Romney. “He needs it even less than I do,” the president added. Some of the biggest applause was in response to Mr. Obama’s statements on social issues. Speaking of Mr. Romney, the president said, “I tell you, on almost any issue he wants to go backward, sometimes to the last century.” He cited his own support for same-sex marriage , the right of openly gay Americans to serve in the military, abortion rights and contraception policies for women, and protections against deportation for young people brought to the United States as children. Telling supporters that Mr. Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office — Mr. Obama said he had “affectionately” adopted the Republicans’ term for the health care law — the president said that by doing so, “with the stroke of a pen” Mr. Romney would end insurance coverage for young people who, under the law, are covered until age 26 on their parents’ insurance policies. “I call his plan Romney Doesn’t Care,” Mr. Obama said. “The law is here to stay,” he added. “The Supreme Court has spoken. We’re moving forward. That’s what’s at stake in this election.” After his speech, the president made a guest appearance on Reddit , the popular Web site, taking questions submitted by site members in a popular format known as Ask Me Anything, or A.M.A. In advance of the president’s arrival on the site, members posted questions including “Is Internet freedom an issue you’d push to add to the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform?” and “Who’s your favorite basketball player?” The president answered several questions, including one about his administration’s position on Internet rights and one on the importance of space exploration. In response to a question about the most difficult decision he had had to make in office, he wrote a lengthy answer that began: “The decision to surge our forces in Afghanistan. Any time you send our brave men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely, and that necessarily weighs heavily on you.” At one point, a counter on the Reddit A.M.A. site said that there were more than 30,000 people visiting the page. The site seemed to buckle under the load, with many people complaining on Twitter that they were unable to access it. | Presidential Election of 2012;Republican National Convention;Obama Barack;Romney Mitt;University of Virginia;Charlottesville (Va) |
ny0097682 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
]
| 2015/06/11 | British Government Begins Sale of Remaining Royal Mail Stake | LONDON — The British government said on Wednesday that it had begun the process of selling its remaining stake in the Royal Mail, which went public less than two years ago. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will sell 150 million shares, or about a 15 percent stake, to institutional investors in a secondary offering that is expected to price on Thursday. The government holds a 30 percent stake after an initial public offering of stock for Royal Mail, which operates Britain’s postal service, in October 2013. The government’s stake is estimated to be worth about 1.5 billion pounds, or about $2.3 billion. The Treasury announced plans last week to sell the remaining stake. It will hold a 15 percent interest after the latest sale. “Current market conditions represent a good opportunity to achieve value for the taxpayer,” a Department for Business representative said in a news release . The government is expected to use the proceeds to reduce its debt. George Osborne, chancellor of the Exchequer, announced measures last week to reduce the government’s debt by £4.5 billion. The government raised £1.98 billion in the I.P.O. in October 2013, which was 24 times oversubscribed. But it has been criticized for taking a cautious approach in the sale and not achieving a higher price after shares jumped 38 percent on the first day of trading. Separately, Mr. Osborne said on Wednesday that the government planned to award up to an additional 1 percent of Royal Mail’s shares to its employees, who received 10 percent of the company’s shares when it went public. “We’re also going to make sure that there is a special bonus for the work force who have done such a great job turning Royal Mail around,” Mr. Osborne said in a speech on Wednesday night. “Thanks to them, Royal Mail’s share price has risen; so we’re going to give more of the shares to the staff.” Shares of Royal Mail closed about 57 percent above its I.P.O. price of 330 pence in London on Wednesday. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are serving as bookrunners on the offering. Rothschild is advising the government on the sale. | IPO;Royal Mail Holdings;Great Britain |
ny0209858 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
]
| 2009/12/30 | Matthews Arena, the Ice Rink That Changed Boston Hockey | BOSTON — Just one mile from Fenway Park, the venerable baseball stadium where the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers will play outdoors in a New Year’s Day celebration of hockey’s roots, there stands a building that is even older and far more deeply entwined with the origins of the game. Matthews Arena , an unassuming brick structure on the campus of Northeastern University distinguished from the outside only by the vaguely Moorish facade at its entrance, opened in April 1910 and has been a home to Boston hockey ever since. It is so old that it was the original home of the Bruins, predating the now-vanished Boston Garden. It is so old that it was the first indoor site for hockey in all of Boston. It is, in fact, the world’s oldest indoor hockey arena still in use. “I’ve been there a lot,” said Stephen Hardy, who skated there as a visiting player in high school and college in the 1960s and has returned often in three roles — as a fan, a hockey administrator and a historian of the sport . “It still gives me shivers to walk through the lobby and think that Hobey Baker walked through there almost a century ago.” For the first 72 years of its life, Matthews was known as Boston Arena. It was the starting point for the development of hockey in Boston, a culturally distinct branch of the game that has always lived in a self-contained world, separate from the larger Canadian game, and home to many of the best players the United States has produced. “This building has seen a lot of history,” said Jack Grinold, the sports information director at Northeastern since 1962. The Bruins began their existence in 1923 as the N.H.L.’s first American franchise beneath the arena’s peaked, truss-supported roof. The New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association played their first games there before they became the Hartford Whalers and, eventually, the Carolina Hurricanes. Boston Arena, with a current capacity of 5,400, was where the hockey programs of Northeastern, Boston College, Boston University and other local colleges started. It was also the first home of the Beanpot Tournament. “The thing I found about hockey in Boston is that everyone has played with and against each other in high school, in college, and it goes back generations,” said Jim Madigan, a scout for the Pittsburgh Penguins who came to Northeastern from Toronto in 1981 as a player and went on to coach the Huskies from 1986 to 1993. “They all know each other, and they all have their stories about the Boston Arena or Matthews.” One such story was offered by Ben Smith, who played in the building with Gloucester High School and Harvard and later coached Northeastern. “Back in the 1950s and ’60s, the ice surface at the arena was short, and it was shaped kind of like a football,” Smith said. “So we’d come in and play B.U., back when they were using the arena as their home ice, and I’d go back to touch the puck for icing, and here comes little Jack Parker from B.U. chasing after me. And I’d get my stick stuck in the boards in those narrow corners, and it’d stab me in the stomach and knock the wind out of me. Everyone thought Jack, who weighed 150 pounds, had knocked me out. I weighed about 200.” Parker is the longtime coach at B.U.; Smith lives down the street from him. Through the first decade of the 20th century, hockey in New England was played outside, on frozen ponds and rivers. The opening of the arena galvanized Boston hockey. The game had moved indoors in Canada and in scattered areas of the United States like New York and Pittsburgh several years earlier. Moving it indoors in Boston was like bringing a wild plant into a greenhouse and watching it grow. “It was like a gift from heaven,” Fred Hoey, a Boston Herald sportswriter, wrote a few years later. “The hope and ambition of every Greater Boston hockey player was realized — players and coaches could now count on a schedule of ice.” Within a couple of years, a wide array of schoolboy teams and amateur programs arose. Harvard no longer had to travel to St. Nicholas Arena on West 66th Street and Broadway in Manhattan to play against Yale and Princeton. Now the games could be played at Boston Arena, shifting the locus of Eastern hockey to Boston from New York. Amateur senior teams formed. One winter around 1917, a young Red Sox player named Babe Ruth scrimmaged with the Arena A.C. team. “Finally he said, ‘You guys are crazy,’ and quit,” Grinold said. The Bruins came to the building and were so successful that a bigger rink, Boston Garden, was built for them. The team’s defense corps included Myles Lane from nearby Melrose, Mass., and the patrician George Owen, a multisport star at Harvard. Thus began a long Bruins tradition of employing Boston boys, sometimes justly famous, sometimes justly obscure. On Tuesday, the Northeastern Huskies men’s team was practicing at Matthews beneath a modern scoreboard installed in the most recent of the building’s many renovations. But there was no mistaking the arena’s age. Old brick archways recalled late-19th-century factory design; fixtures for gas lamps still hung on an entryway wall; a wooden ticket kiosk stood near a side entrance; metal railings of the kind once used in English soccer grounds studded the end zones of the balcony, which the Bruins added to the building in 1926 to increase its capacity. The arena is mostly known as a hockey rink, but it has strong ties to other sports. The Celtics made their first home here, and it was also a noted boxing site. Today, there are more than a dozen hockey arenas around Boston, including TD Garden, where the Bruins now play, all spawned in one way or another by the old arena. And on New Year’s Day, Boston hockey will have yet another rink, the one at Fenway, baseball’s oldest stadium yet two years younger than Boston Arena. “Maybe it’s just my age, but why should I freeze watching a game in the cold?” Grinold said of the Fenway game. “I can just stay here at Matthews and watch the men or women play, and stay warm doing it.” That is what Bostonians have been doing for nearly 100 years. | Stadiums and Arenas;Hockey Ice;Boston (Mass);Boston Bruins |
ny0220524 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2010/02/11 | Brooks Thomas, Harper & Row Publisher, Dies at 78 | Brooks Thomas, who led Harper & Row Publishers during a period of turmoil and consolidation in the publishing industry and who was its chief executive when it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 1987, died Friday in San Diego. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan; Essex, Conn.; and Vail, Colo. The cause was complications of a brain injury after a fall several weeks ago, Sari Roboff, a friend, said. Mr. Thomas, a lawyer, joined Harper & Row in 1968 and at one point, in 1986 and 1987, held the titles of president, chief executive and chairman. It was a chaotic time for independent publishers, as large multinational companies went on acquisition sprees, swallowing up smaller publishers, and many independent firms became units of media giants. Such was the case with Harper & Row, a nearly 200-year-old company that once published Mark Twain. After acquiring J. B. Lippincott and other properties, it became the object of a bidding war begun by a shareholder. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich entered its own bid, but Mr. Murdoch took the prize with an offer of $300 million. In the executive shuffle that followed, Mr. Thomas found himself out of a job. Benjamin Brooks Thomas was born on Nov. 28, 1931, in Philadelphia. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1953. After receiving his law degree from Yale in 1956, he enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served as an air intelligence officer aboard the aircraft carrier Essex. In 1960 he joined the Manhattan law firm Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts, which he left in 1968 to become secretary and general counsel at Harper & Row, a client. “I felt if I stayed in a law firm I’d spend my life knowing more and more about less and less,” he later said. His first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Kiono Tucciarone. At Harper & Row, Mr. Thomas rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a vice president after a year, chief operating officer in 1977, president in 1979 and chief executive in 1981. In 1978, when The Minneapolis Star and Tribune announced that it planned to sell its one-third stake in Harper & Row, Mr. Thomas devised a plan to keep the company independent. He dissolved Harper & Row’s pension plan, used the money to buy back the Minneapolis shares and gave the stock to employees as their pension benefits for the next five years. It was a lucrative deal for employees that became even better when the company was sold to the News Corporation. In 1979, Mr. Thomas took an aggressive legal stand against The Nation when it published excerpts from President Gerald R. Ford’s forthcoming memoir, “A Time to Heal,” from Harper & Row. Mr. Thomas filed suit against the magazine, and the case reached the Supreme Court. “The Nation claims it was publishing news, but there is an interface between what is news and what is protected material,” Mr. Thomas said when the suit was filed. “We want to see that adjudicated. We believe that even a public person like Gerald Ford has rights.” In 1985 the court ruled, 6 to 3, against The Nation, stating that its 300-word excerpt from the memoir violated fair use as intended in copyright law, despite Ford’s status as a public figure and the public interest in his pardon of President Richard M. Nixon, the subject of The Nation’s article. After leaving Harper & Row, Mr. Thomas devoted himself to several charities, notably Outward Bound, the educational organization that promotes self-discovery in the outdoors. He became a trustee of Outward Bound U.S.A. in 1980, serving as its chairman from 1984 to 1987. He was a trustee of Outward Bound International from 1997 to 2003, and in 2000 he became a trustee of Outward Bound’s Expeditionary Learning Schools. At his death, he was on his way to San Francisco to attend an Outward Bound board meeting. He was also active in Young Audiences, a national organization that provides arts programs to schools, and chairman of the Vail Valley Institute, which holds seminars on public issues. | Thomas Brooks;Books and Literature;Book Trade;Deaths (Obituaries);Copyrights and Copyright Violations;Nation The |
ny0187227 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
]
| 2009/04/11 | Universities’ Compliance Officers Play Good Cop, Bad Cop | Earlier this week, the University of North Carolina completed an impressive run to the Division I men’s basketball national championship. Wayne Ellington was named the most outstanding player of the Final Four, but the unsung M.V.P. for the Tar Heels’ athletics department was a 5-foot-8 mother of two who never took a shot. Amy Herman was back in Chapel Hill with her 7-month-old and 3-year-old daughters. As the university’s director of compliance, Herman speaks to coaches every other day. She sees the players each month when they pick up scholarship checks. “I’ve actually got to the point where I’ve got a decent relationship with each of them, so I totally felt that I was a part of it,” she said. At a time when the bar for committing major violations seems lower than ever, Herman and her associates across the country walk a fine line. They are paid by their athletic department, but their overriding responsibility is to protect the university’s interests. In a highly scrutinized world of big-time intercollegiate athletics, where one violation of the rules can embarrass a university and cause head coaches to lose their jobs and players their eligibility, compliance officers have become an athletics department’s most important employee. Also the most resented. Theirs is a cordial but often contentious relationship. “There will always be that inherent tension; really, it’s probably better that way for the protection of the institution,” Herman said. “If that tension were to go away, I think you would have trouble.” The role of the compliance officer became a heightened source of interest last month during the West Region of the N.C.A.A. tournament, when Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun was being grilled about accusations of recruiting violations. Specifically, whether a former UConn student-manager who became a professional sports agent was functioning as a representative of the university during the recruitment of Nate Miles. Calhoun wondered how he was expected to be familiar with the entire N.C.A.A. manual. “Do you think every N.C.A.A. investigator knows what’s in every one of those 508 pages?” he asked. The manual is 427 pages long. Herman said: “We don’t expect them to know all the rules because we don’t know all the rules, and we deal with it on a daily basis. What we expect of them is that they know enough of the rules to know when to ask. If they have a question about something or if something raises even a tiny red flag, that they know to pick up the phone and make the call to us.” Nicole Green, the assistant athletic director at Memphis, tells coaches that they should ask before they act. “When in doubt, let us figure it out,” Green said. Last week, the Kentucky men’s coach, John Calipari, set up a meeting with a high school senior who had signed with Kentucky. “I had to ask, could I meet Daniel Orton, who had signed already, at the school,” he said. “They told me: ‘No. You have to meet him away from the school.’ So I had to go off campus. “If I would have met him at the school, it’s a secondary violation and I would have had to turn it in and it would have been crazy. People would have said, There he goes, that’s what we thought.” Every N.C.A.A. coach is required to take an annual recruiting certification exam, and cannot recruit off campus until they pass the test. The second part of the UConn investigation revolves around N.C.A.A. rules that limit how often a coach can call a recruit. Judy Van Horn, the associate athletics director and senior woman administrator at Michigan, wants to abolish rules about phone calls she feels are unenforceable. “If you have a coach who is intent on cheating, all they have to do is not give you all the phone numbers,” said Van Horn, who is also president of the National Association for Athletics Compliance. Van Horn’s idea is to put the power into the hands of the student-athletes. Athletes who are inundated by calls or have coaches contacting them from universities they are not interested in attending would be able to go to the N.C.A.A.’s online eligibility center and pull up a list and click on those programs with which they no longer wanted to be associated. An e-mail message would be sent to compliance officers at those universities and the coaches would be told to stop calling. If the calls continued, the recruit could report it to the N.C.A.A. Such a process would empower the recruit and free the compliance officer. Van Horn said, “I don’t have to worry about whether a coach gives me all the phone numbers or whether there is a disposable phone or whether my coaches are disadvantaged because they are following the rules and I know these coaches out there are not.” The coaches’ eternal quest for the great player and the competitive edge continues — under the sharp eye of the compliance officers. For all the talk of being on the same team, the compliance director’s primary responsibility is the university’s best interests. Seasons may end, but the N.C.A.A.’s internecine game of cops and robbers never will. | University of North Carolina;Basketball;College Athletics;Draft and Recruitment (Sports);Colleges and Universities;NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men);Athletics and Sports;Interscholastic Athletics;Calhoun Jim;National Collegiate Athletic Assn |
ny0063438 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2014/01/15 | Nigeria: Rights Chief Assails Law as Roundup of Gays Begins | The United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay sharply condemned as “draconian” an antigay marriage law that took effect in Nigeria last week, saying Tuesday it violated fundamental rights and risked provoking a surge of antigay violence. Nigeria had already criminalized same-sex relationships, but the new law “makes an already bad situation even worse,” she said in a statement. The law provides for jail terms of 14 years for anyone entering a same-sex union and 10 years for anyone who aids or witnesses such a union or who supports the operation of gay groups. “Rarely have I seen a piece of legislation that in so few paragraphs directly violates so many basic, universal human rights,” Ms. Pillay said. A roundup of gay men, accused of belonging to a gay organization, has begun in Bauchi State, rights activists and officials said, though they disagreed over how many had been arrested, The Associated Press reported. Dorothy Aken’Ova, director of Nigeria’s International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, said the police detained four gay men last month and tortured them until they named others. The police have since arrested 38 men and were looking for 168 others, Ms. Aken’Ova told The A.P. Mustapha Baba Ilela, chairman of the Bauchi State Shariah Commission, told the agency that 11 gay men had been arrested, and he denied that any had been mistreated. | Navi Pillay;Nigeria;Homosexuality;Human Rights;Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage;UN |
ny0188750 | [
"business"
]
| 2009/04/14 | Cuomo Tries to Enforce Notification to Debtors | It may be the consumer nightmare of the moment: You try to get cash from an A.T.M. and discover that your money is gone, seized under a court order that you never knew about. This has happened to thousands of people across New York — and potentially tens of thousands more across the country — because companies that were supposed to notify them of collections proceedings had failed to do so, the New York attorney general’s office is charging. The attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo , plans to file a civil suit Tuesday against one such company, American Legal Process of Lynbrook, N.Y., according to officials in the office who insisted on anonymity because the investigation was continuing. Mr. Cuomo’s office also has the power to file criminal charges. American Legal is one of the nation’s largest companies in the business of giving notice to debtors of collections proceedings. A lawyer for the company did not return a call on Monday. A man who answered the phone said he did not know anything about an investigation and declined to answer questions. For a person who owes money, getting notice of a lawsuit seeking to collect on the debt is essential; otherwise, a debtor has no opportunity to challenge creditors, who can obtain a default judgment from the court. Perhaps in part because they are not notified, people sued in New York City often fail to appear in court to protect their interests, according to a study released last year by MFY Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm in New York. MFY found that just seven law firms filed nearly one-third of all the cases seeking to collect $25,000 or less in New York City’s civil courts. Fewer than 10 percent of the defendants in those cases appeared to defend themselves. “Then there are these high number of default judgments rates,” said Carolyn E. Coffey, a staff lawyer at MFY and an author of the study. She said she was mystified that problems with getting notice could go unaddressed. “Part of the problem is the business model of these debt collection lawsuits,” Ms. Coffey said. Creditors often have bought the loans from another financial company, she said, and then hired companies that specialize in collections to notify people of lawsuits. The payment for delivering notice of a lawsuit may be just $5 for each successful assignment, Ms. Coffey said, creating an incentive to engage in “sewer service,” where the delivery person simply tosses the court notice in the sewer and claims that the defendant was notified. Maryann Dorrian, one of the people interviewed by investigators in Mr. Cuomo’s office, said she had never learned of legal proceedings against her to collect $2,000 until she had tried to withdraw money from an A.T.M. last April. Her account balance had dropped below zero because the full amount of the debt was withdrawn, she said. Ms. Dorrian said that a debt settlement company had already begun negotiating a payment plan for the credit card debt. “They never left anything at my door, I was never aware,” said Ms. Dorrian, who lives in Middletown, N.Y. She added that her husband worked at night, so he was home on weekdays to receive any notice. She ended up having to pay her credit card debt along with fees for checks that had bounced unexpectedly, Ms. Dorrian said. Since then, she has cut up her credit cards, she said. A person who does not get notice of a legal proceeding can challenge an adverse judgment, said Ms. Coffey, the lawyer. “You go back to court and show that you were not served properly,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have to do that.” | Cuomo Andrew M;Suits and Litigation;Collection Agencies;American Legal Process;Search and Seizure;New York State |
ny0267857 | [
"science"
]
| 2016/03/12 | This Week’s Other Solar Eclipse | Wednesday’s solar spectacle over the Pacific Ocean wasn’t the only eclipse to happen this week. More than 22,000 miles above Earth, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory , or SDO, watched the sun blackout every day for nearly a month. The SDO is a 6,600-pound spacecraft that was designed to stare at the sun and investigate its magnetic fields and solar winds. Normally the ship’s gaze goes completely undisturbed as it orbits the Earth. But twice a year, around the equinoxes, it enters what NASA calls “eclipse season.” For three weeks, the Earth blocks the device’s view of the sun once each day. This year starting on Feb. 19, the spacecraft began experiencing ephemeral blackouts that lasted only a few minutes. The obstructions gradually grew and by the beginning of March they peaked with a 72-minute eclipse. On Thursday it was back at around a few minutes, and by March 12 the SDO will return to its uninterrupted solar marathon. | Eclipse;Solar Dynamics Observatory;NASA;Sun |
ny0208134 | [
"world",
"americas"
]
| 2009/06/23 | President of Mexico Urges Action on Emissions | JIUTEPEC, Mexico (Reuters) —President Felipe Calderón warned governments on Monday not to let the economic crisis derail efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking at a meeting of representatives of the world’s biggest economies on how to tackle climate change , Mr. Calderón said the world was running out of time to take serious action to address global warming. “The finger-pointing has gone on for more than a decade without humanity taking a single step forward in the fight against climate change,” Mr. Calderón said at the meeting, which was held in the town of Jiutepec in a picturesque valley near Mexico City. He said the global recession could make talks over emission goals even more complicated. “If it is hard in boom times to agree to steps that have an economic cost, it will be even harder during a recession,” he said. World leaders are expected to sign a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December that will introduce binding emissions targets for fast-growing developing nations, but rich and poor countries disagree on how far to cut emissions. Mr. Calderón said that failure to reach an agreement would produce a deterioration of the environment that would cost nations more than if they spent now to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate change will cost Mexico more than 6 percent of our gross domestic product, which is many times more than we are investing in the fight against climate change,” he said. Emissions need to be reduced by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided, according to the United Nations’ Climate Panel . China, India and other developing countries are calling on industrialized nations to agree to deep cuts of 40 percent or more in their emissions of greenhouse gases, saying that rich countries need to take climate change more seriously before they ask developing and poor nations to shoulder some of the burden. | Calderon Felipe;Greenhouse Gas Emissions;Global Warming;Recession and Depression;Subprime Mortgage Crisis |
ny0056461 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2014/09/28 | Hartford Stage Opens the Season With ‘Ether Dome’ | How much pain relief do doctors owe their patients? And how unorthodox can the remedies be? These could be up-to-the-minute talking points in a discussion of medical marijuana; they are also the questions animating the characters in Elizabeth Egloff’s play “Ether Dome,” about the 19th-century physicians, frauds and cranks who pioneered surgical anesthesia. The opening production of Hartford Stage’s new season, “Ether Dome” started out there in 2005, when Michael Wilson, then the artistic director, received a state grant for a play about Connecticut history. He went to Ms. Egloff with his idea about Horace Wells , a Hartford dentist who gave his patients laughing gas before pulling their teeth, and William T. G. Morton , Dr. Wells’s pupil and colleague, who later claimed — and received — credit for inventing anesthesia. Mr. Wilson didn’t know at the time that Ms. Egloff’s father is a psychiatrist or that her family tree is crowded with healers. “He thought of this subject for me because I grew up in Farmington and Hartford,” Ms. Egloff said — not because her father had once taken her to the hospital where he had been an intern, Massachusetts General, to visit the Ether Dome , the surgical amphitheater where on Oct. 16, 1846, Dr. Morton administered ether while Dr. John Warren cut out a tumor, ushering in the age of pain-free surgery. “It hadn’t been cleaned up and turned into a sanitary, antiseptic museum back then,” she recalled. “Much of the equipment was still there, old gurneys and wheelchairs randomly pushed into the corner. It really felt haunted.” Ms. Egloff, 60, pointed out that the amphitheater was four stories above the street, to try to spare passers-by the bloodcurdling screams of patients. Writing the play, she needed to convey the horror of surgery in the days before anesthesia without inducing screams in the audience. In a previous production, she expressed qualms about the gore. “I really don’t want people leaving,” she told the special effects designer, who replied: “Don’t worry. People never leave for violence. They leave for sex, but they won’t leave for violence.” Ms. Egloff said it proved true. “There isn’t enough sex in ‘Ether Dome’ for anyone to leave,” she said. | Theater;Ether Dome;Hartford Stage;Elizabeth Egloff;Michael Wilson;Hartford Connecticut |
ny0245185 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2011/04/28 | Heat Closes Out 76ers and Gets Set for Celtics | For the first time since 2006, the Miami Heat has won a playoff series — and, finally, it can start thinking in earnest about another showdown with the Boston Celtics. Dwyane Wade scored 26 points, Chris Bosh added 22 points and 11 rebounds, and the Miami Heat advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals by topping Philadelphia, 97-91, on Wednesday night and ousting the visiting 76ers in five games. Mario Chalmers scored 20 points off the bench and LeBron James finished with 16 points, 10 rebounds and 8 assists for Miami. Joel Anthony made two free throws with 16.8 seconds left for the Heat, which will face Boston starting Sunday afternoon in Miami. It was the first series win for the Heat since the 2006 N.B.A. finals. Andre Iguodala and Elton Brand each scored 22 points for Philadelphia, which got 13 from Thaddeus Young, 12 from Jodie Meeks and 10 from Jrue Holiday. And like four of the other five games in this series, it was not easy for the Heat, who saw a double-digit lead cut to a point in the final minute before hanging on. Philadelphia had a chance to tie with 1 minute 10 seconds left, but Evan Turner’s baseline jumper bounced off the rim and James grabbed his 10th rebound — marking the first time the Heat had three double-digit rebounders in the same playoff game since the title-clinching Game 6 of the 2006 N.B.A. finals at Dallas. SPURS 110, GRIZZLIES 103 Gary Neal caught an inbounds pass with 1.7 seconds left and forced overtime with a 3-point heave as time expired, and host San Antonio staved off elimination by stunning Memphis in Game 5. Neal’s straightaway 3-pointer was the second of two remarkable San Antonio baskets in the final 2.2 seconds of regulation. Manu Ginobili, who scored 33 points, hit the other with a long corner jumper while falling out of bounds to keep top-seeded San Antonio alive. The basket was originally ruled a 3-pointer that would have tied the score, but the officials went to video review and ruled Ginobili’s toe was on the line. The eighth-seeded Grizzlies lead the best-of-seven series, 3-2, and will host the Spurs on Friday night. Only eight teams in N.B.A. history have ever come back from a 3-1 deficit. The Spurs, who were the N.B.A.’s winningest team for most of the season, are desperate to join that list in what could be their last good shot to win a fifth championship in the Tim Duncan era. Zach Randolph led Memphis with 26 points and 11 rebounds. He scored 18 points in the fourth quarter and overtime, but Tony Parker of the Spurs scored 6 of his 24 points in overtime to help ensure there would be a Game 6 in Memphis. WARRIORS FIRE SMART The Golden State Warriors parted ways with Coach Keith Smart, the first major fallout from a new ownership group that has promised sweeping changes. The Warriors went 36-46, a 10-game improvement from the previous season but not enough to appease the owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber. | Basketball;Playoff Games;Miami Heat;Philadelphia 76ers |
ny0112152 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
]
| 2012/02/09 | Android Phones Go on a Power Trip - State of the Art | You know the old techie joke, right? If you don’t like the Android phones on the market, just wait a minute. There are dozens of Android phones, and newer, better ones appear every few months. Google subscribes to the Microsoft Windows scheme: write the software, and let other companies build the phones. The result is a lot of choice, but also a lot of fragmentation. There is no one Android phone. Some models can be updated to new Android software, some can’t. A certain app might or might not run on your particular version. That master plan differs quite a bit from the iPhone ’s. Apple designs “the whole widget,” as Steve Jobs used to say: both the software and the phone. The result is clean, reliable and consistent — but you’re limited to the features Apple wants to give you. For example, if you want a 4G phone (one that runs on the new, very fast Internet networks in big cities), you’re out of luck. And a new iPhone, accompanied by a major software release, comes out only once a year, or less often. In any case, there’s a lot of news in Androidland. The three biggest players are Samsung, Motorola and HTC, and all three are offering beautiful marquee Android phones. All three are Verizon 4G phones. These phones are whopping big; that’s the trend these days. You can almost fit an entire iPhone in just the screen area of these Android monsters. Big is great for maps, movies, photos and Web sites — less so for holding up to your ear on a call. All three phones have front and back cameras, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. Each can serve as a portable Wi-Fi hot spot for your laptop, for an added monthly fee. On the other hand, they come preinstalled with Verizon promotional apps that you can hide, but can’t remove. The HTC Rezound ($200 with two-year contract) comes with a pair of Dr. Dre Beats in-ear headphones. Those, plus matching software, give music playback extra clarity and bass. This thickish phone was the first in the United States with a true high-definition screen (1280 by 720 pixels, 4.3 inches) — sharper than even the iPhone’s Retina screen. Even the front-facing camera can film 720p high-def video, which is a rarity. The rest of the specs are the usual on high-end phones these days: 8-megapixel rear camera, 10 gigabytes of built-in storage for your apps and a memory-card slot if you need more room (a 16-gigabyte card comes with the phone). Then there’s the expansive Motorola Droid Razr Maxx ($300), whose claim to fame is its beefy battery. This may be the first 4G phone that gets you through a full day, or even longer, on a single charge. Yet it’s still as thin as an iPhone. The non-Maxx Droid Razr is nearly identical — but it’s even thinner and its battery doesn’t last nearly as long. The screen isn’t hi-def (960 by 540 pixels), but the storage is ample: 11.5 gigabytes inside, plus a 16-gig memory card. Motorola continues to think outside the hardware and software boxes: you can buy a 10- or 14-inch laptop to accompany this phone, which becomes the brain and the storage when you connect it. And the Smart Actions app is pure brilliance: it lets you set up battery-saving rules like “dim the screen when the battery gets low” or “turn off GPS if I forget to plug you in at nighttime.” You can also set up convenience rules like “set the ringer to vibrate after 10 p.m.,” or “display my kids’ photo as the wallpaper whenever I’m at home.” It’s pretty wonderful. But the Samsung Galaxy Nexus ($300) might be the most interesting phone. Not because of the phone itself, although it’s fine: 32 gigabytes of storage (no card slot), fast processor, removable battery, 1280 x 720-pixel hi-def screen, so-so 5-megapixel camera. (Confusion alert: Google sells a different phone also called the Nexus. Apparently, any phone can be called Nexus if it offers “the pure Google experience”— no tweaks or overlays like the ones that Motorola and HTC have put onto Android. How bizarre, then, that the Nexus doesn’t work with Google Wallet, Google’s own swipe-to-pay app.) No, the Nexus is significant because it’s the first phone to come with Android 4.0, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, or I.C.S. (Google names its Android versions after sugary treats.) There’s a lot of excitement in this new software. I.C.S. phones don’t have a row of physical navigation buttons anymore (like Home, Back and Menu); instead, they’re images on the screen. That eats away at the screen space, of course, but they disappear when you need the room — say, when watching movies or taking photos. And they rotate with the phone now, too, so they are always upright. The Motorola and HTC phones reviewed here will get upgrades to I.C.S. later this year. Plenty of I.C.S. features play iPhone catch-up. Now, for example, you can fire up the camera directly from the Lock screen. There’s a Dock at the bottom of the screen for your most-used apps. You can edit photos and videos right on the phone. The e-mail apps show the first few words of the message bodies. A spelling checker underlines questionable words. You can create folders by dragging one app atop another. The new address-book app collects your friends’ information from Twitter , LinkedIn and Google Plus (although not Facebook , weirdly enough). All of their photos and news blurbs rest in one handy place, just as on Windows Phone and Palm/HP phones. The Web browser lets you save Web pages for reading later when you’re offline; offers a stealth mode that leaves no History list; and lets you request the full version of a site if a subpar cellphone version is being forced on you. Android’s speech recognition isn’t as accurate as Siri on iPhone, and it’s still best for dictation — it doesn’t take Siri commands like “What does my schedule look like a week from tomorrow?” But now the words fly onto the screen as you’re saying them; you no longer have to wait until you stop talking for the transcription to appear. The Camera app is a marvel. It offers zero shutter lag, face recognition and special effects like buggy eyes and background replacement. You can take a still photo while you’re recording video. Best of all, there’s a Panorama mode like the one on Sony cameras. You slowly swing the phone in an arc around you, and the phone creates a seamless superwide photo. Then there’s Face Unlock, which instantly unlocks the phone when the front camera recognizes you. It’s cool, but it will thwart only the laziest bad guys; it’s easily fooled by a photo of you, or a blood relative. The Beam feature lets you share an app, a video, an address-book card, map directions or a Web address, just by holding your phone back-to-back with another I.C.S. phone and tapping O.K. If it catches on, Beam will be a real hero. That’s really only the tip of the ice cream sandwich. When the new software arrives on superphones like the Motorola Razr Maxx, it will be a truly delicious combination. Android still feels disjointed in spots. Why do we still have to use different apps for Gmail and all other e-mail? And there’s no standard connector in a standard spot, so there’s no universe of docks, alarm clocks, car adapters as there is with the Apple gadgets. Still, Android is coming on strong; all manufacturers considered, it’s outselling the iPhone. Android’s latest surge toward power and polish should thrill almost everyone. The possible exception: anyone whose three-month-old Android phone is suddenly obsolete. | Android;HTC;Smartphone;Samsung;Motorola Solutions |
ny0288732 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
]
| 2016/08/12 | Snapping a Flurry of Photos | Q. I sometimes look in the Photos app on my iPhone and see multiple versions of the same shot clumped together. What is this? A. You are most likely looking at a batch of pictures taken in Burst Mode , which was introduced a few years ago in iOS 7 . While pressing the shutter button quickly in the native iOS Camera app takes one photo, pressing and holding the shutter button makes the app capture a “burst” of about 10 images a second until you lift your finger. Burst Mode can be helpful in taking pictures of sporting events, sprightly toddlers and fast-moving pets. An onscreen counter shows how many pictures are piling up as you hold the shutter button down. When you open the Photos app to find the pictures, the Burst Mode session looks like a set of thumbnails stacked behind the first shot. Tap it to open the stack. The number of shots in the burst is shown at the top of the screen. Next, tap the Select button at the bottom of the screen to see all the photos in the series. You can swipe through to see each image. A small strip of thumbnails at the bottom of the screen shows the whole sequence in order. Gray dots under certain pictures in the thumbnail strip indicate which shots in the collection the app suggests keeping. If you want to save a specific shot out of the burst collection to the Photos app, tap the circle in the lower-right corner; a blue check mark confirms your selection. When you are finished browsing and saving pictures in the burst, the Photos app asks if you want to keep or delete the rest of the images. Burst Mode works on the 5s and later iPhones (as well as recent iPad models ). The rapid-fire shots are not a feature that is unique to Apple devices. They can be found in other gear, including some Google Android hardware and apps like Fast Burst Camera . | Mobile Apps;Photography;iPhone |
ny0104415 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2012/03/09 | For the Knicks, Distraction by Addition | The optics are troubling for any Knicks fan who has spent a moment poring over the standings or pondering the counterintuitive influence of Carmelo Anthony . The Knicks are 2-5 since Anthony rejoined the lineup, after going 6-1 without him. They have lost three consecutive games for the first time since January. Their offense is deteriorating, their cohesion is withering and Jeremy Lin is slipping. Every whispered fear that Anthony might ruin the Lin renaissance has gained visual traction. The truth is more complicated. The schedule has been much tougher since Anthony returned, with the Knicks (18-21) losing road games in Miami, Boston, Dallas and San Antonio. And the rotation has undergone a drastic overhaul, with Anthony, J. R. Smith and Baron Davis joining the fray over the last two weeks. The sudden abundance of talent, which may ultimately be an asset, for now looks like a burden, with Coach Mike D’Antoni trying to assimilate too many players and placate too many egos. The Knicks were at their best last month with a tight eight-man group, with narrowly defined roles. The rotation is now 10 deep, with fewer minutes and fewer shots for everyone. “A little bit of a transition,” D’Antoni said earlier this week, “but it’s a good transition.” The hope is that more talent means fresher legs and more production across 48 minutes. But it does not always work out that way in the N.B.A. This may be a case where more is less. Lin is trying to maintain his head of steam — against increased defensive pressure — while balancing the need to keep Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tyson Chandler and Smith involved and active. It is a heavy responsibility for a virtual rookie who has been starting for only the past 15 games. The logjam at shooting guard, where Landry Fields is now splitting time with Smith and Iman Shumpert, seems to be diminishing all of them, Fields in particular. Overlooked amid the tumult, and the intense focus on the Anthony-Lin dynamic, is that Davis and Smith have mostly been horrible. Smith is shooting 38 percent from the field, and 27 percent on 3-pointers, which are supposed to be his strength. Davis has been worse, shooting .237 from the field and a horrific .150 from beyond the arc (3 of 20). Both players have lived up to their reputations as free shooters who are liable to break the offense at any moment to launch a 26-footer. D’Antoni has been patient, knowing that he will need Davis’s playmaking and big-game experience in the spring, and that Smith is favored by top team officials. They could pay dividends in the playoffs, but their erratic play is hurting the Knicks in the short term. Then again, it is early for both players. Davis is still regaining his form, after taking nearly 10 months to recover from a herniated disk. Smith was playing in China four weeks ago. And then there is Anthony. After a 6-point, 2-of-12 night in Dallas on Tuesday, he flatly admitted that he was having trouble adjusting to an offense in which Lin is the primary ball-handler and playmaker. “I think anytime you go from the early part of the season, just having the ball and me just having the ball and being the distributor, and now just running the wings and waiting for the ball to come to me, that’s quite an adjustment for myself,” Anthony said. The results so far are discouraging. In the 240 minutes that Lin and Anthony have shared the court, the Knicks’ offense has produced a rating of 97.8 points per 100 possessions, according to an analysis by Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com . When Lin plays without Anthony (394 minutes), the rating shoots up to 105.2. When Anthony plays without Lin (719 minutes), the rating is 98.7. Anthony’s player-efficiency rating — a formula that tries to quantify every contribution — is 21.7 when Lin is on the bench. When Lin plays, Anthony’s rating drops to 13.2, according to Haberstroh. The sample sizes are small, and the relationship between Anthony and Lin is still developing. Their chemistry could improve over the final seven weeks. It has to for the Knicks to get anywhere in the playoffs. Anthony is the Knicks’ most dynamic player and their franchise star. But there is little chance that D’Antoni will take the ball out of Lin’s hands now. The Knicks’ offense ranked in the bottom third of the league with Anthony as the primary ball-handler. It has been at its best since Lin became the everyday point guard. So the Knicks are coping with yet another midseason upheaval, mirroring the struggles after the trade for Anthony last year. In the N.B.A., stability is critical to success. The Spurs — still dominating with a lineup led by Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker — provided a vivid reminder while routing the Knicks on Wednesday. Those three have been together for 10 years. Stoudemire and Anthony have been teammates for 12 tumultuous months, with Chandler arriving in December and Lin (effectively) in February. The rotation today bears little resemblance to the one in January. Twenty-seven games is not much time to make a move in the standings. But it should be enough for the Knicks to reshape their identity in a season of constant change. | Basketball;New York Knicks;Anthony Carmelo;Lin Jeremy;D'Antoni Mike;Davis Baron;Smith J R |
ny0211496 | [
"us"
]
| 2017/01/17 | Suspect Arrested in Orlando Officer’s Killing | A suspect wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of an Orlando, Fla., police officer was arrested on Tuesday after eluding the authorities for more than a week. When the suspect, Markeith Loyd, was captured at an abandoned house in Orlando, he was wearing body armor and carrying two handguns, including one with a 100-round drum, the Orlando police chief, John W. Mina, said at a news conference on Tuesday night. At first, Mr. Loyd tried to escape through the back of the house but then came out the front, the chief said. He said Mr. Loyd’s associates had ties to the house but would not specify how the authorities had known to look for him there. The chief said it was unclear how long Mr. Loyd had been there. Here's what Markeith Loyd looks like now. @WFTV pic.twitter.com/tNOosaGq2T — Daralene Jones (@DJonesWFTV) January 18, 2017 The officer who was killed, Master Sgt. Debra Clayton , was shot outside a Walmart in Orlando on Jan. 9 after she approached Mr. Loyd, who was wanted for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Sade Dixon, in December, officials said. An Orange County sheriff’s deputy spotted Mr. Loyd fleeing in Sergeant Clayton’s police vehicle after he shot her, the authorities said. He pulled into an apartment complex, fired at the deputy — who was not hurt — and stole another vehicle, which was later found abandoned nearby, the police said. Sergeant Clayton, a member of the Police Department for 17 years, was posthumously promoted to lieutenant . The department described her as a hero who was “deeply committed to the community and to police work.” She was married with one son. A deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office also died on the day of the shooting during the search for Mr. Loyd after his motorcycle was hit by a van. Chief Mina said Mr. Loyd had been placed into custody wearing Lieutenant Clayton’s handcuffs. Hundreds of law enforcement officers had been searching for him, many of them living in their vehicles during the manhunt, the chief said. “They were finally able to cry, and wept because it was finally over,” he said of investigators. The United States Marshals Service put Mr. Loyd on its list of most-wanted fugitives on Tuesday and added $25,000 to a $100,000 reward for information that led to his arrest. It was not clear whether the reward would be awarded. The chief said the arrest had not come from a tip. Three people have been charged with being accessories to first-degree murder after the fact in Ms. Dixon’s death. The chief said he “absolutely” expected arrests of others who might have helped Mr. Loyd elude the authorities. Referring to Mr. Loyd, the Orange County sheriff, Jerry L. Demings , said, “Our entire community will breathe a sigh of relief and sleep better tonight because this maniac, if you will, is off the streets.” | Attacks on Police;Markeith Loyd;Debra Clayton;Murders and Homicides;Orlando |
ny0214166 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
]
| 2010/03/21 | Kansas State Overcomes Slow Start to Beat B.Y.U. | OKLAHOMA CITY — Brigham Young had the audacious Jimmer Fredette and several other players who can shoot from outside, but that did not help much when it came to stopping Jacob Pullen, the stocky, resourceful and ambitious Kansas State junior guard. The 6-foot, 200-pound Pullen chugged around the Cougars for 34 points, and the second-seeded Wildcats overcame a sluggish start and several letdowns to outlast ninth-seeded B.Y.U. in a West Region second-round game, 84-72, at Ford Center. Pullen’s smooth 3-point basket with less than four minutes remaining enabled Kansas State (27-8) to withstand a late push by B.Y.U. (30-6). The Wildcats also made shooting tougher for Fredette, who scored 21 points on 5-of-13 shooting. Kansas State started slowly, missing its first three shots and tumbling into a 10-point hole less than two and a half minutes into the game. Frank Martin, the Wildcats’ coach, called a timeout and glowered at his players as they approached him on the sideline. They shot much better after the timeout, but B.Y.U. was already warmed up. With 9 minutes 13 seconds left in the first half, following a 3-pointer by Jonathan Tavernari, the Cougars led by 23-13. But the Wildcats began pushing the ball up the floor and scoring quickly. After two free throws by Curtis Kelly with 5:33 in the half, the Wildcats had pulled to a 25-25 tie. Later, the Wildcats burst out to a 41-31 lead, treating their fans, who had replaced the dejected Kansas fans in the lower bowl, to the type of basketball they have become accustomed to. | Basketball;Kansas State;BYU;Frank Martin |
ny0005231 | [
"us"
]
| 2013/04/24 | Judge Throws Out Some Charges Against Dr. Kermit Gosnell | PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday threw out three of seven murder charges against a Philadelphia doctor charged with killing viable fetuses while performing abortions. The judge, Jeffrey P. Minehart of Common Pleas Court here, granted motions for acquittal on the charges against the physician, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who ran the Women’s Medical Center, a West Philadelphia abortion clinic. Judge Minehart also granted a motion for acquittal in five charges of abuse of corpse against Dr. Gosnell, who according to prosecutors killed fetuses that were alive after they were aborted by plunging scissors into their necks. Dr. Gosnell, 72, was also acquitted on one charge of infanticide. The judge gave no reason for his decision, which came on the fifth week of the trial and preceded the start of defense arguments, which had been scheduled to begin on Tuesday afternoon but are now expected to start Wednesday. The trial has become a cause célèbre for some anti-abortion activists, a few of whom were seated in the courtroom on Tuesday. Before the judge announced his decision, an officer of the court instructed those present to remain silent. Bryan Kemper , youth outreach director for Priests for Life, an anti-abortion group, said he was “obviously frustrated” with the judge’s decision. Mr. Kemper, who traveled from Ohio to attend the trial, said he was convinced that Dr. Gosnell had deliberately killed live fetuses. “It makes no sense to me that he could snip the back of the neck of a baby that was not alive,” Mr. Kemper said during a break in the hearing. Dr. Gosnell still faces four charges of first-degree murder and one of third-degree murder in connection with the death of a patient at the Women’s Medical Center. If found guilty on the remaining charges, he could face the death penalty. Eight workers at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic have pleaded guilty in the case, including three to third-degree murder. Dr. Gosnell’s lawyer, Jack J. McMahon, argued that none of the seven fetuses his client is accused of killing were alive when they were removed from their mothers because they had been given a drug that killed them in utero. Therefore, there was no validity to the charges of murder, infanticide or abuse of corpse, he said. “There is not one piece of real scientific evidence that any one was born alive,” Mr. McMahon told the judge, who heard the acquittal motions without a jury present. Mr. McMahon dismissed prosecutors’ arguments that an arm movement by one of the fetuses, known as Baby C, indicated that it was alive. He said that the movement was “one spasm” but that the fetus was not breathing. Baby C had been one of the three fetuses for which the judge dismissed the murder charge. But on Wednesday morning the judge said the dismissal of the charge related to Baby C was done mistakenly, as a result of a “clerical error.” That charge was reinstated, and the charge related to Baby F was dismissed. In addition, the judge acquitted Dr. Gosnell of killing Baby B, which Mr. McMahon said was not breathing when it was removed from its mother, and of the death of Baby G, whose age and viability were both unknown, according to the lawyer. But Edward Cameron, an assistant district attorney, said that Baby C responded and “pulled back” when touched by medical staff. “That’s voluntary movement, and that’s all the law requires,” Mr. Cameron said. “That baby was alive.” Mr. Cameron also opposed the motion to acquit Dr. Gosnell on the abuse of corpse count, which stemmed from the jars of the severed feet of fetuses that were discovered in the clinic when it was raided by law enforcement officers in February 2011. Aborted fetuses should be treated as human beings, Mr. Cameron argued. “When you have got jars of feet that this man was keeping on the shelves of his office, that would offend anybody,” he said. “When the fetuses leave the mother, they are due the respect of any human being.” Mr. Cameron also highlighted the case of Baby D, which he said was 10 to 15 inches long and had a head “as big as a pancake.” It was moving when it was delivered into a toilet, Mr. Cameron said. | Abortion;Decisions and Verdicts;Kermit Gosnell;Philadelphia |
ny0018518 | [
"business"
]
| 2013/07/29 | Penske Will Pay $200 Million for Australian Truck Company | The Penske Automotive Group said on Sunday that it planned to buy a business that distributes trucks, spare parts and related services across Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Penske, based outside Detroit in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said it signed a deal to buy Western Star Trucks Australia from Transpacific Industries Group. Western Star Trucks distributes heavy- and medium-duty trucks through independent dealers under its own name and for the Germany-based MAN Truck and Bus, which is majority-owned by Volkswagen, and for Dennis Eagle, which makes vehicles for waste collection. The Western Star truck brand is an affiliate of Daimler Trucks North America. Penske said it expected to pay about $200 million for the business. It said the purchase would reduce third-quarter results by 2 cents a share. But excluding those costs, it expects the purchase to add 10 cents to 14 cents a share to annual earnings. Penske sells new and used vehicles and also does vehicle maintenance and repair. The sale is expected to close by the end of September. Penske is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings results on Wednesday. Penske’s shares closed Friday at $34.25, up about 14 percent since the start of the year. | Mergers and Acquisitions;Penske Automotive Group;Western Star Trucks;Transpacific Industries Group |
ny0112325 | [
"science",
"earth"
]
| 2012/02/01 | Map of Earthquake Risks Is Updated | A new map detailing all known geologic faults east of Denver was issued Tuesday by the government and a nonprofit electric research group, opening the way for nuclear power plants in the United States to embark on a broad re-evaluation of their vulnerability to earthquakes. It was the first major update of the map since 1989. While researchers began the computer modeling for the map long before the earthquake and tsunami that caused last year’s Fukushima Daiichi plant disaster in Japan, that calamity lent urgency to a renewed effort to assess the American plants. Further concerns were raised by a quake last summer near Mineral, Va., that shook a twin-reactor plant there beyond the extent that its designers anticipated, resulting in its shutdown for safety checks. The study does not calculate the risk of damage from an earthquake or even specify what amount of ground motion is likely at the reactor sites, leaving that to their owners. “The model is the first step,” said Scott Brunell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The computer model was developed by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium, with help from the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. | Earthquakes;Nuclear Energy;Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (2011);Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan);Electric Power Research Institute;Maps |
ny0049596 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2014/10/04 | At Least 30 Killed in Stampede at Religious Festival in India | NEW DELHI — At least 30 people were killed and 25 were injured in the eastern state of Bihar on Friday evening in a stampede during a celebration of the Hindu festival of Dashahara, officials said. Tens of thousands of people had gathered to celebrate the festival at Gandhi Maidan, said Kundan Krishnan, the police inspector general in the Patna district. Manish Kumar Verma, the top civilian official in Patna, said it was not clear what had caused the stampede, but he said that “it seems too many people were trying to get out of the ground’s exit at the same time.” The Dashahara festival celebrates the victory of good over evil. Three effigies representing evil are burned, a sight that attracts thousands of people each year. After the stampede, weeping survivors searched for family members. Unclaimed slippers, shoes and items of clothing littered the ground. “My son was here with me, and suddenly separated from me in seconds,” said an unidentified woman quoted on a television news broadcast who was looking for her 10-year-old son. Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to relatives of the dead and also announced a compensation package of 200,000 rupees, or about $3,333, for families of the victims. Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is from Bihar, called it an “unfortunate and shameful incident,” and he questioned the state government about its security arrangements. Stampedes at India’s social and religious gatherings are common because of inadequate crowd-control measures to handle large gatherings in small areas. | India;Stampede;Narendra Modi;Bihar |
ny0018514 | [
"business"
]
| 2013/07/29 | Siemens to Oust Chief After String of Setbacks | FRANKFURT — The supervisory board of Siemens, one of Germany’s largest companies, said that it would fire its chief executive at a meeting on Wednesday and replace him with an insider following a string of problems that led to a profit warning last week. Peter Löscher, an Austrian who has been chief executive of the electronics and engineering giant since 2007, is taking the blame for a series of missteps that have plagued the company during the last year, including a late delivery of high-speed trains for the German national railroad and delays in completing offshore wind turbine projects. The German news media reported that Joe Kaeser, a member of Siemens’s managing board and its chief financial officer, would be most likely to replace Mr. Löscher, but a company spokesman said on Sunday that he could not confirm the reports. In a statement Saturday, Siemens, based in Munich, said its supervisory board would name another member of the company’s executive board as chief executive, but it did not say who. Siemens’s fortunes have consequences for the German economy as a whole because it is one of the country’s largest employers, with about 120,000 workers, and because it is something of a bellwether for the country’s industrial sector. Along with automobiles, the German economy is based on the production of high-priced goods that are sold to governments and corporations. Siemens’s broad array of products includes gear for power generation, trains and other transportation equipment, and medical devices like X-ray scanners. Problems at Siemens are potentially a bad omen for the country. On Thursday, Siemens shares plunged 6 percent after the company said it would not meet its profit goals for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Siemens did not give a detailed explanation for the expected shortfall, attributing it to “lower market expectations.” But it appeared to reflect a combination of weaker-than-expected economic growth in crucial markets as well as management mistakes. Image Joe Kaeser, left, Siemens’s chief financial officer, is expected to replace Peter Löscher, right. Credit Lennart Preiss/Getty Images The profit warning fed concern that demand for German exports from China and other developing markets may no longer be strong enough to compensate for the weak European economy. Sales in the United States, where Siemens has 60,000 employees, also appear to be falling short of expectations despite the recovering growth in America. Germany has weathered the euro zone crisis better than other countries because its machinery and engineering divisions have been able to tap developing markets, especially China. But recently the Chinese economy has been cooling, while Europe remains in recession. Siemens had already reported a 7 percent decline in sales during the first three months of 2013, to 18 billion euros, or about $24 billion. On Thursday, the company is scheduled to announce earnings for the quarter that ended June 30. Mr. Kaeser, reported as the likely replacement for Mr. Löscher, is a 56-year-old Siemens veteran credited with keeping the company on a steady course after the previous chief executive, Klaus Kleinfeld, resigned under pressure in 2007. Mr. Kleinfeld is now chief executive of the aluminum producer Alcoa. Mr. Löscher, 55, was the latest in a line of Siemens chiefs who have tried to focus the sprawling company on its most profitable businesses and make it easier to manage. Under Mr. Löscher, Siemens spun off its Osram lighting unit, and this month it sold its half of a joint venture with Nokia that supplies equipment for mobile telecommunication networks. Those moves raised money and simplified the company but were not enough to compensate for other problems, including delays in delivering high-speed ICE trains to Deutsche Bahn, the German railway. Members of the supervisory board met informally on Saturday and will make the management changes formal at a regular meeting scheduled for Wednesday. | Appointments and Executive Changes;Siemens;Peter Loscher |
ny0295149 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2016/12/20 | Access to Donald Trump, for $500,000: Pitfalls for Presidents’ Families | The invitation made an extraordinary offer: Donors willing to write a check for $500,000 to $1 million would be granted access to Donald J. Trump the day after he is sworn in as president, along with the opportunity to participate in a multiday hunting or fishing trip with his oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. But on Tuesday, the Trump Organization put out a statement distancing the family from the fund-raiser, saying the event had “not been approved or pursued by the Trump family,” even though legal documents show that Eric Trump served on the board of directors of the recently formed charity behind it, the Opening Day Foundation. The event is still scheduled, but references to the hunting trip have been removed, and Eric Trump said late Tuesday that neither he nor his brother would attend. The abrupt turnabout was the latest example of the ethical thicket the president-elect and his family face as he prepares to take the oath of office. It highlights the need for Mr. Trump to clearly define what roles his adult children will play in his administration, according to former senior White House advisers who have served the last six presidents. “I am seeing insensitivity to what is ahead,” said Michael H. Cardozo, who worked in the White House counsel’s office under President Jimmy Carter. The Carter administration struggled with the activities of the president’s brother, Billy, who had business dealings with Libya while Mr. Carter was in office. In the weeks since Mr. Trump’s election, three of his four adult children, who are serving on his transition committee, have been a near-constant presence . One or more of them have participated in a meeting with the prime minister of Japan , joined in on a phone call with the president of Argentina, and sat at the conference table where Mr. Trump met with leaders of major technology companies. Donald Jr. also played a role in choosing Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the interior . Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump has discussed an advisory role in his administration, and Mr. Trump has also mentioned her husband, Jared Kushner, as a possible adviser . Eric and Donald Jr. have said they plan to stay with the family businesses. “I just think you borrow trouble when you put your children in government meetings, whether it is legal or not,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary to President George W. Bush. Peter J. Wallison, who served as White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, added: “Actions the president is going to be taking are already going to be controversial. If there are questions as to why he made a particular decision and how it might impact his family, that is not good. They need to be thinking about this.” The history of trouble from presidential families is long. Billy Carter, Jeb Bush, Roger Clinton and Tony Rodham are just a few of the family members of recent presidents who have generated unwanted headlines, even as White House officials took pains to prevent them. “They have to understand that they are under the microscope, just like their parents,” said Mark K. Updegrove, a presidential historian who has written four books on White House occupants, from George Washington to George W. Bush. “For the children, they run the risk of being made an example of, if they are not careful in how they interact with their families.” For the Trumps, the most recent potential conflict was the creation in Texas this month of the nonprofit Opening Day Foundation — presumably a reference to the first day of the hunting season — which listed Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as members of the board of directors, along with Gentry Beach, a longtime friend of Donald Jr. who helped raise money for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration. An invitation last week urged supporters of Mr. Trump to become “Bald Eagle” donors with a $1 million check or “Grizzly Bear” donors with a $500,000 payment, in exchange for an invitation to a private reception with Mr. Trump the day after his swearing-in, and a chance to go hunting at a later date with his sons. “Opening Day is your opportunity to play a significant role as our family commemorates the inauguration of our father, friend and President Donald J. Trump,” the invitation said . But by Tuesday, a new invitation had been prepared, eliminating the offer for the biggest donors to go hunting with Eric and Donald Jr. and dropping the private reception with their father. A spokesman for Opening Day also said new legal papers would be filed to remove Eric and Donald Jr. as members of the group’s board. Opening Day Invitation An invitation from Opening Day Foundation. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, sons of the president-elect, were listed as honorary co-chairmen of a fund-raising event scheduled for the day after Donald J. Trump's inauguration. “Eric and Don Jr. will support the foundation, but they will not be co-founders of it,” said Mark Brinkerhoff, the spokesman for Opening Day. “Their involvement with the foundation and with the event is purely supportive. They will not be official parties to the Opening Day Foundation.” Eric Trump said in an interview that his name had been on a “draft” that was circulated, and that he had played no role in the creation of the charity. Image Donald Trump Jr. played a key role in the selection of his father’s nominee for secretary of the interior. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times The backtracking on the Opening Day fund-raiser had strong echoes of Ms. Trump’s calling off her own fund-raising effort: an online auction that offered the winning bidder the opportunity to have coffee with her, to benefit the Eric Trump Foundation and a hospital it supports. That auction attracted a number of businessmen who said in interviews with The New York Times that their goal was to pass a message to her father on policy issues like immigration, or to gather information that might affect investments. The auction was canceled on Friday. “Families can be complicated, and big families are even more complicated,” said C. Boyden Gray, who served as White House counsel during the administration of the elder George Bush, the last president to have adult children when he entered the White House. “And the Bush families and the Trump families are both big families. So a little extra care is warranted.” Mr. Trump has said he will reveal in January his plans to prevent conflicts of interest between his presidency and his business enterprise, which has operations in at least 20 countries. A transition official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the family’s primary focus had been on addressing the potential conflicts involving the Trump business. Issues surrounding the charities have been a secondary concern, the official said, but now that two incidents have arisen, the Trumps are turning their attention to them. Under federal law, a president’s children or relations by marriage are prohibited from holding paid positions in federal agencies. The rules surrounding unpaid and advisory appointments, as well as White House jobs, are less clearly established. Mr. Trump ran for president on a promise to “ drain the swamp ” of special interests in Washington, and on harsh criticism of the Clinton family for the operations of its foundation while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state. The actions of Mr. Trump’s children — their involvement in transition business while they also use their status to raise money — threaten to undermine all of that, and several of Mr. Trump’s own advisers privately expressed concern this week about distractions involving his family. During his 1988 campaign, George Bush was sensitive to the “microscopic probing” his children were facing, particularly as the election drew near. In a letter to them in May 1988, he cautioned about the “new friends” they might encounter, suggesting that the friends would ask for things. “I know I must sound very defensive, but — believe me — every effort will be made to find some phone call, some inquiry, some letter that can be made to appear improper,” he wrote in the letter , obtained from his presidential library. It was addressed to George W. Bush, but appeared to be directed at the whole family. “Soon the election will be at hand, and then you will not have to put up with preachy letters from your father, as in this case, maybe.” Yet concerns about the business dealings of the Bush children persisted well after the election , inviting bad publicity and questions about whether the Bush name had opened doors. Barely a month after his father’s inauguration in 1989, Jeb Bush and a group of business associates went to Nigeria to promote flood and irrigation equipment. As State Department cables documented the lavish receptions hosted by governors and a meeting with the Nigerian president, Mr. Bush was put in a predicament, balancing the dual roles of businessman and diplomat. “Jeb Bush is a very pleasant, polished, and a smooth diplomat,” Princeton N. Lyman, the American ambassador to Nigeria, wrote in a cable at the time. Mr. Bush’s business partners eventually closed a lucrative deal to sell equipment to state governments in Nigeria, and while he denied making any money on the deal, the fallout dogged him for many years . “By definition, every single business transaction I am involved with may give the appearance that I am trading on my name,” Mr. Bush wrote in The Wall Street Journal during his father’s 1992 campaign, referring to questions about the Nigeria deal. “I cannot change who I am.” The encroachment of family continued into Bill Clinton’s administration, where presidential siblings — his half brother, Roger, and Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham — made headlines for business dealings that were called into question. Each of the three lobbied the administration for pardons , leading to a congressional inquiry. The siblings’ proximity to the Clintons’ public work also arose during Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign when Tony Rodham and Roger Clinton were linked to unsuccessful housing deals in Haiti, where the Clintons were helping direct recovery efforts after the 2010 earthquake. “I don’t have a choice of being first brother,” Roger Clinton said last year. “It’s not like I’ve been given the option of doing it and I could turn it down. There are times when it’s hard.” | Donald Trump;Opening Day Foundation;Conflict of interest;US Politics;Ivanka Trump;Eric Trump;Donald Trump Jr |
ny0277123 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2016/11/05 | How to Satirize This Election? Even the Onion Is Having Trouble | CHICAGO — Now that it’s almost over and we’re all thoroughly miserable, is there anything funny left to say about this dreadful election? Even the writers at the satirical website The Onion were struggling the other morning to come up with fresh avenues of amusement. Lounging around the writers’ room, they listened to the editor in chief, Cole Bolton, read from a list of potential headlines they had submitted for consideration. Some of them were pretty funny – “Trump Tells Supporters Next Stop in Movement Is Buying Luxury Condos,” for instance, and “Clinton Vows Complete Transparency for Remaining 6 Days of Campaign” — but by the end of the meeting, only three out of 48 had been selected as worthy of turning into an item for the site. A kind of comic fatigue seemed to be setting in. “We feel like we’ve passed every single stage of despair, hopelessness and rage,” Mr. Bolton said. “This last week is just us strafing to find new angles, to put into words how horrible this experience has been.” It’s not that The Onion, which began as a campus humor magazine at the University of Wisconsin in 1988 and went all-digital at the end of 2013, has not faced dismaying events before. Its specialty is finding satire even in topics seemingly impossible to satirize. “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule” was its headline for a post-9/11 article in which a despairing God rails at the moronic nature of his creation. But the 2016 campaign, with its unsavory issues, deeply unpopular candidates and underlying strains of instability, irrationality and incoherence, has proved particularly challenging to Mr. Bolton and his staff. The nominees, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton, already seem like walking parodies of themselves, and the rhetoric has been so hyperbolic and apocalyptic as to be virtually beyond satire. Image Pictures of Donald J. Trump, left, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. in The Onion’s offices in Chicago. Credit David Kasnic for The New York Times “It’s hard to turn up the volume when the speaker is already blown out and everyone’s ears are already bleeding,” the managing editor, Ben Berkley, said. Another complication is the competition from social media. In today’s Twitter instaworld, everybody’s a comedian. The Onion tries to cut through the cacophony by finding original jokes and creating what Mr. Bolton called “a strange alternative world” in which familiar people are assigned new personae. In Onion-land, for instance, Pope Francis can be found in the basement of the Vatican, frantically searching for his plastic nativity scene (“‘Oh, come on, where’s the third wise man?’ the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said.”), while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been turned into a heavy metal fan who sells weed at the Lincoln Memorial. “With Hillary, we hyperbolize her traits — her narrow-minded focus and her woodenness, and we crank it up to insane degrees,” Mr. Bolton said. But not so with Mr. Trump. Rather than presenting him as a more luridly hued, bombastically outrageous version of himself, à la Alec Baldwin on “Saturday Night Live,” The Onion has turned him into a new character: Donald Trump, sensitive loner, stuffing birdseed into his pockets and talking tenderly to the pigeons he keeps on the Trump Tower roof. Image The Onion, which went all-digital in 2013, has made a specialty of finding satire even in topics seemingly impossible to satirize. Credit David Kasnic for The New York Times “He’s a hard nut to crack,” said Chad Nackers, the head writer. “One way to do it is through his supporters or surrogates, which allows you to have crazier stuff because it’s one step away from him.” The writers also like to play around with the idea that “his brain is at war with itself,” Mr. Nackers said. Loyal readers of The Onion will be familiar with the recurring character known as “area man,” whose existence pokes fun at “resident does something”-style articles in local newspapers. Joining him in importance this election is the nation itself, a character standing in for all of us. “Nation Puts 2016 Into Perspective by Reminding Itself Some Species of Sea Turtles Get Eaten by Birds Just Seconds After They Hatch,” read a recent story. No media outlets are having an easy time financially, and in 2012, The Onion had to move to Chicago from New York. The company raises revenue in part through sponsored content and an internal division called the Onion Labs, which produces advertisements for clients. It does not make its finances public, but last year it received an infusion of money when Univision Communications bought a controlling 40 percent stake . The editorial team says Univision has not meddled in its content but has pushed to expand the company’s video output. (In addition to The Onion, the broader company — Onion Inc. — also includes ClickHole, a site that sends up mindless listicle websites, and the A.V. Club, a non-fake entertainment website. In all, it has 146 full-time employees.) A recent video series, in which some (fake) American voters demonstrate how clueless and feckless they are, is a result of that effort. It includes, for instance, a segment in which an 83-year-old voter announces that she knows exactly who she wants to vote for but that “on Election Day, I’ll misread the ballot completely.” Image A pair of socks with the faces of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in The Onion offices in Chicago. Credit David Kasnic for The New York Times In conjunction with Fusion television, which is also owned by Univision, The Onion recently produced its first television special, a 30-minute retrospective of some of the high (or low, take your pick) moments in the 2016 election. Clearly, this year’s campaign has created a pressing demand for comic relief. Lauren Pulte, an Onion spokeswoman, said the election coverage had so far generated 79 million page views, compared with 43 million views for the 2012 election. In video, she said, there have been 78 million views across all platforms, compared with 15 million in 2012. But being funny is a sobering business, and it’s hard to make a comedy writer laugh. The morning meeting the other day proved so frustrating that Mr. Bolton called a second one for the afternoon, instructing the writers to produce new headlines. A few seemed perfect, but once again, most fell by the wayside, including ‘“Is it Too Late to Register?’ Ask 19 Million Americans.” Of 1,500 or so possible headlines a week, Mr. Berkley said, maybe 30 or 40 make it into some sort of item. The mood of the nation is reflected in the writers’ room, Mr. Bolton said, and the mood at the moment is fretful. “Comedy is a good way for us to channel anxiety,’’ he said. Hence, the recent story about how the nation might soothe its jangled nerves by remembering that at least it was not eaten at birth, like the sea turtle. But if you read the item closely, it does not really offer any consolation, seeming to demonstrate that even satire (and the existential troubles of turtles) cannot soothe the nation’s woes just now. “After pondering the sea turtles’ fate for several more minutes,” the item says, the nation “started growing jealous that the turtles at least get to have everything be over with quickly.” | 2016 Presidential Election;The Onion;Comedy |
ny0221207 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2010/02/09 | After Parade Ends, the Saints Face Many Decisions | FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Sean Payton wore Mardi Gras beads and the look of a man who had channeled the Bourbon Street party after the New Orleans Saints completed their stunning resurrection for themselves and their city at the Super Bowl . Bleary-eyed and euphoric, like the thousands who flooded New Orleans’s streets Sunday night in celebration, Payton was already so at ease with being a Super Bowl champion Monday morning that he began his news conference by thanking the N.F.L. for keeping the buses running on time and ended it by throwing the Lombardi Trophy over his shoulder as if it were a windbreaker. “This thing laid in my bed next to me last night,” Payton said. “I rolled over; I probably drooled on it. Man, there’s nothing like it.” There will be plenty of time for major off-season decisions, and the Saints have loads of them. They have 29 free agents, 11 of them unrestricted, which means that all those fans drinking Hurricanes this week should enjoy their feel-good team now, because it could look drastically different when the N.F.L. hosts its opening party in New Orleans in September. Will the Saints try to re-sign the veteran safety Darren Sharper and linebacker Scott Fujita, both unrestricted free agents? Will they take an expected uncapped season as an opportunity to dump Reggie Bush, whose modest statistics do not match his escalating salary-cap figure? New Orleans is not the only team with questions. The Colts, who lost by 31-17 and cast doubt on whether they qualify as a dynasty with a lone Super Bowl championship, have to decide linebacker Gary Brackett’s future and negotiate a new contract for Peyton Manning. But the Saints may face the busiest off-season in the league, and they are already contemplating what happens when the parades end and the work begins again. “When you get back into the swing of things, it’s all about that 2010 season,” said quarterback Drew Brees , the Super Bowl’s most valuable player. “There’s 32 teams that feel like it’s going to be their year. We know what it’s like to build something from the ground up. What’s going to be fun is using the term repeat all next year.” But with Brees predicting that nobody was going to work in New Orleans this week — “or for the next month,” he added, noting that Mardi Gras is next Tuesday — the Saints were in the mood for a few more victory laps. Their season had started 13-0, but when they could not beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers late in the season, they seemed poised to reassume their old role as the Aints . Not this time. In the playoffs, the defense beat three likely Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Kurt Warner, Brett Favre and Manning, and Brees assumed a spot among the elite quarterbacks. The joy ride to the Super Bowl had been embraced by those who rooted as much for good luck to grace Saints fans as Saints players. The day after was the first time the Saints could join the indulgence unfettered of any responsibilities. “There is something about what we do that maybe allows you 24 to 48 hours before you start eyeing up the next challenge,” Payton said. “Somewhere last night, we talked about Dallas, Tex., and one of the greatest stadiums our league knows, and there’s probably never enough in regards to the challenge. When you get a quarterback like Drew Brees in the prime of his career, it’s not enough. Last night was great, and yet still there is something that burns in you to separate yourself more.” Payton might have separated himself from other coaches for one of the riskiest calls in Super Bowl history. The Saints practiced the onside kick they call Ambush for two weeks, and in their meetings before the game, Payton told his special-teams units that they were going to try it in the game; it was just a matter of when. During the long Super Bowl halftime, Payton made the decision to go for it. He was so confident in its success that he scripted the first eight plays of the drive that followed, too. A thin line separate genius and stupidity in the N.F.L. — New England Coach Bill Belichick was scorched when he made a fourth-down gamble out of respect for Manning — but Payton walked the line perfectly. Sure enough, the onside kick worked, and the Saints squeezed out a critical extra possession and a surge of momentum. “It was an unbelievably gutsy call,” Brees said. “We all believed, hey, this is going to work. At that point you felt like, O.K., the game has come to us.” And now the celebration has come to them, too. Brees said he spent Sunday night scrolling through the 500 e-mail and text messages he received from friends, families and coaches. Brees spoke movingly Monday, as he has so often in the past, about how representing a rebuilding city is not a burden but a source of strength. On Tuesday, New Orleans will throw a parade for the Saints, and it is hard to imagine that even Mardi Gras will unleash the outpouring that will engulf the team. Very early Monday morning, though, the Saints had a more private celebration. With his hands gripping the silver Lombardi Trophy again — smudged with the fingerprints of dozens of players — Payton told the story of Joe Lombardi, the Saints’ quarterbacks coach. He is the grandson of Vince Lombardi, and with his father, Vince Jr., they posed for pictures with the trophy named for Joe’s grandfather. “I just thought to myself, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Payton said. “If you believe in heaven and you believe Vince Lombardi is looking down on his grandson, it doesn’t get any better.” In heaven and at the Super Bowl, the angels and the Saints were smiling. | Football;New Orleans Saints;Payton Sean;Brees Drew;New Orleans (La);National Football League;Super Bowl |
ny0009233 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2013/02/04 | Showing Guts, 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick Falls Just Short of Glory | NEW ORLEANS — San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick slumped forward toward the microphone, his eyes aimed downward, his face blank. Reporters pressed in all around him. They wanted to know how it felt for his final drive to end 5 yards from the end zone, 5 yards from a lead in Super Bowl XLVII. Kaepernick mostly shrugged and spit out the shortest kinds of answers. He took no solace in this title game experience, in only his second season, only his 10th start. He said repeatedly that he never felt overwhelmed. He shrugged again. “We were trying to put points on the board,” he said. The last two months had unfolded as if crafted by a screenwriter, as Kaepernick went from backup to fill-in to full-time starter to N.F.L. sensation. In the fourth quarter Sunday night, he charged off left guard, up the middle, straight into Baltimore’s Ray Lewis. He lowered his shoulder, went right at Lewis, and picked up a short gain. On the next play, Kaepernick sprinted around left end and scampered into the end zone and trimmed a once-insurmountable deficit to 31-29. Here he came again. But it was the play before the touchdown that spoke more to his mentality, to the fear he lacked on the biggest stage in sports. The comeback attempt ultimately ended when Kaepernick’s fourth-down pass fell harmlessly to the turf. It was a mixed performance, with Kaepernick nearly perfect for the second half and mostly shaky in the first. Halfway through the game, Kaepernick looked frayed. His passes had sprayed all over the field, away from intended targets. His team had struggled to move the ball against Baltimore’s formidable defense, which contained and sacked and confused Kaepernick, made him look like a second-year player and not the second coming of Joe Montana. The Pistol offense that San Francisco had used since Kaepernick became the starter in late November looked more like the Water Gun. Then the third quarter started. Then most of the lights at the Superdome went out. Then Kaepernick and the 49ers’ offense came alive. “We thought we were going to win the football game,” offensive tackle Joe Staley said. Here was Kaepernick, the player who captivated the N.F.L. in December and January, the player who helped introduce to professional football the Pistol, who became the fourth quarterback in the Super Bowl era to start in the championship game in the season in which he made his first career start. Tom Brady also holds that distinction. So does Kurt Warner. What all three hold in common is a certain level of obscurity before they became household names. Kaepernick was drafted in the second round in 2011, but he came from Nevada and spent most of his first season and much of his second as a backup. Then, this. Late in the game Sunday, Kaepernick and the 49ers got the ball back, behind by 34-29. He scrambled for a first down. He found receiver Michael Crabtree for another. He watched running back Frank Gore bound up the left sideline, toward the end zone, the 49ers so close to obtaining their first lead. At the two-minute warning, Kaepernick was 5 yards from the end zone, from joining Montana and Steve Young and all the 49ers from the glory years. Already in the second half, he had thrown for one score and run for another. He had accumulated more than 300 passing yards (he finished with 302). Super Bowl Replay: Ravens 34, 49ers 31 24 Photos View Slide Show › Image Doug Mills/The New York Times The 49ers fans stood and clapped and screamed. Kaepernick rolled right, missed an open Randy Moss and threw an incompletion. On third-and-goal, Kaepernick slung a throw toward Crabtree in the right flat, and again it fell incomplete. Fourth down. Kaepernick dropped back, felt heavy pressure from his left and lobbed a fade toward the end zone. That pass also hit the ground. Coach Jim Harbaugh threw his hat in disgust and screamed at the referees. Kaepernick stood on the sideline, on top of a 49ers logo, left hand on left hip, stunned. Safety Donte Whitner later said he was “a little surprised” that the 49ers never ran the ball down there, so close to the end zone. Harbaugh said simply of his strategy, “The thinking was that we could get the touchdown.” Kaepernick and the 49ers had won seven of his first nine starts. He picked up two playoff wins. He threw 13 touchdown passes in those games and rushed for more than 400 yards. He inspired what they now call “Kaepernicking,” a kiss on the right biceps after a big play. “If Colin Kaepernick plays well in the Super Bowl, he is going to change the face of the quarterback position,” said Deion Sanders, an NFL Network analyst. The question that loomed during Super Bowl week was whether Kaepernick could handle all the accompanying pressure and hoopla and hype. Early on Sunday, the answer to that question appeared to be no. On the 49ers’ first offensive play, Kaepernick faked a handoff, rolled left and lobbed a touch pass to tight end Vernon Davis. An illegal formation penalty wiped out the completion. The first half played out along those lines. At times Kaepernick flashed the speed and arm strength and freakish physical gifts. The rest of the time he looked much more like a quarterback making his 10th start. He threw passes into double coverage and over the heads of his receivers. He seemed jittery, overwhelmed, swallowed by the moment. He locked in on Moss, forced too many throws in that direction. “We just didn’t finish our drives,” Kaepernick lamented. On the 49ers’ fourth possession, Kaepernick looked for Moss downfield. His pass sailed high, over Moss and right to safety Ed Reed. It marked another first for Kaepernick in a year filled with them: first interception by a 49ers quarterback in a Super Bowl. Later, on the podium, he tried to explain what he could not yet fully grasp, tried to put into words this magical season and the unfortunate way in which it ended. He shrugged again. Reporters continued to press in. “I don’t know,” he said. | Colin Kaepernick;49ers;Football;Super Bowl;Ravens |
ny0243713 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2011/03/15 | For Older Japanese, Tsunami’s Carnage Evokes WWII Horrors | NATORI, Japan — Hirosato Wako stared at the ruins of his small fishing hamlet: skeletons of shattered buildings, twisted lengths of corrugated steel, corpses with their hands twisted into claws. Only once before had he seen anything like it: World War II. “I lived through the Sendai air raids,” said Mr. Wako, 75, referring to the Allied bombings of the northeast’s largest city. “But this is much worse.” For the elderly who live in the villages lining Japan ’s northeastern coast, it is a return to a past of privation that their children have never known. As in so much of the Japanese countryside, young people have largely fled, looking for work in the city. The elderly who remained are facing devastation and possible radiation contamination, a challenge equal only to the task this generation faced when its defeated, despairing nation had to rebuild from the rubble of the war. In this hamlet of Yuriage, the search for survivors was turning into a search for bodies. And most of those bodies were old — too old to have outrun the tsunami. Yuta Saga, 21, was picking up broken cups after the earthquake when he heard sirens and screams of “Tsunami!” He grabbed his mother by the arm and ran to the junior high school, the tallest building around. Traffic snarled the streets as panicked drivers crashed into one another. He could measure the wave’s advance by the clouds of dust created by collapsing buildings. When they reached the school, Mr. Saga and his mother found the stairs to the roof clogged with older people who appeared unable to muster the strength to climb them. Some were just sitting or lying on the steps. As the bottom floor filled with fleeing residents, the wave hit. At first, the doors held. Then water began to pour through the seams and flow into the room. In a panic to reach the roof, younger residents began pushing and yelling, “Hurry!” and “Out of the way!” They climbed over those who were not moving, or elbowed them aside. “I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Saga said. “They were even shoving old people out of the way. The old people couldn’t save themselves.” He added, “People didn’t care about others.” Then the doors burst open, and the water rushed in. It was quickly waist level. Mr. Saga saw one older woman, without the strength or will to stand, sitting in water that rose to her nose. He said he rushed behind her, grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up the stairs. Another person on the stairs grabbed her and lifted her up to another person. The men formed a human chain, lifting the older residents and some children to the top. “I saw the ugly side of people, and then I saw the good side,” he said. “Some people only thought of themselves. Others stopped to help.” Mr. Saga said one woman handed him her infant. “Please, at least save the baby!” she pleaded as water rose above his chest. Mr. Saga said he grabbed the baby and ran up the stairs. Many of those still at the foot of the stairs were washed away. He joined about 200 people on the second floor of the building. The baby’s mother rushed upstairs, and he put the baby into her arms. From the windows, they watched uprooted homes and cars flowing by on the wave. People did not speak, he said. They just cried and moaned, a collective “Ahhhh!” as they watched the destruction unfold. He saw one of his classmates, whose parents had gone back home to get something as the wave came and did not make it to the school. His friend sat on the floor, in tears. Mr. Saga’s family was safe, including his 15-year-old brother, Ryota, who fled to the school by bicycle. On Monday, the two brothers returned to Yuriage for the first time. The house was entirely gone; just the foundation was left. When they got there, a tsunami alert sounded. They ran for higher ground, then the younger boy broke down, sobbing. “He cannot forget the memory of what happened,” Mr. Saga said. “Many of my friends are missing,” Ryota said. Hisako Tanno, 50, was working at a warehouse when the earthquake struck. She rushed home to get her 77-year-old father. As she parked in front of her home, she heard screams. She looked down the street to see a “mountain of garbage” moving down the street at her. It was the wave. “I only had time to grab my bag and run,” Ms. Tanno said. Her neighbors called to her from their home, and she ran up to their second floor. Then she remembered she had left her father. She could see her house from the window. When the wave hit, it smashed the sliding doors. Then, to her horror, she saw her father swept outside. The water was by now the height of a one-story building. She saw him grab the ironwork on her home’s second-story balcony and hold on. “He was trying to pull himself up, but he has a bad leg,” she said. As the water surged, her father was able to somehow hoist himself over the metal railing and onto the balcony. There he held onto for dear life. “I didn’t know he had it in him,” she said. “He wanted so badly to live that he found that last burst of strength.” After the earthquake, Jun Kikuchi, 33, who owns a local taxi company, drove to the homes of a half-dozen residents aged 70 or older to ask if he could take them to higher ground. They refused, saying that there was no tsunami alert, so they would stay home. He survived the wave by going to the second floor of his company office, which withstood the tsunami. The next morning, when he finally ventured out again, the homes of all six of the older residents were washed away. “The elderly can’t take care of themselves in a disaster like this,” he said. “They didn’t stand a chance.” | Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (2011);Japan;World War II (1939-45);Elderly |
ny0099509 | [
"business",
"economy"
]
| 2015/06/13 | Survey Shows Sharp Jump in Consumer Confidence | WASHINGTON — A day after a report showed a surge in retail sales last month, a survey affirmed that American consumers were growing more comfortable, on expectations that a tightening labor market would spur big wage raises. The rise in sentiment came despite higher gasoline prices, which contributed to producer prices recording their biggest increase in more than two and a half years in May. Over all, it capped off a week of strong economic data and was the latest indication that growth was regaining momentum after a sluggish start to the second quarter. Strong consumer confidence, together with the tightening labor market, the bullish retail sales and the firming inflation pressures may provide the Federal Reserve reassurance about the U.S. economic outlook amid expectations it will raise interest rates this year. The U.S. central bank’s policy-setting committee meets on Tuesday and Wednesday. “While more progress needs to be seen before the Fed feels sufficiently confident in the sustainability of the recovery, they will certainly take comfort in the fact that things are beginning to move in the right direction,” said Millan Mulraine, deputy chief economist at TD Securities in New York. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index rose to 94.6 in early June from 90.7 in May. Consumers were the most favorable about their personal financial prospects since 2007, with households expecting the largest wage gains since 2008. Consumers also expected inflation to remain low over the foreseeable future. “We could get more good news on the spending front in the coming months,” said Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York. U.S. financial markets were little moved by Friday’s data as traders seemed to be more focused on the latest twists in Greece’s debt crisis. In a separate report, the Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand increased 0.5 percent last month, the largest gain since September 2012. It followed a 0.4 percent decline in April. The data suggested an oil-driven downward drift in prices was nearing an end. The stabilization in inflation, together with tightening labor market could see inflation rise back toward the Fed’s 2 percent target. “Inflation pressures have a heartbeat and should rise further over the next year as the economy is at or very near full employment levels,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York. In the year to May, the price index fell 1.1 percent, marking the fourth straight 12-month decrease. Prices dropped 1.3 percent in the 12 months through April, the biggest fall since 2010. Last month, gasoline prices surged 17 percent, the largest increase since August 2009. Food prices rose 0.8 percent in May, the biggest gain in just over a year, snapping five straight months of declines. Higher food prices were driven by a shortage of eggs after an outbreak of bird flu led to the culling of millions of chickens. Wholesale egg prices soared a record 56.4 percent last month. Higher gasoline and food prices are likely to feed into the May consumer price index. May consumer price data will be published next week. The volatile trade services component, which mostly reflects profit margins at retailers and wholesalers, increased 0.6 percent in May after falling 0.8 percent in the prior month. May’s rise likely reflects improving profit margins at services station, which had been pressured by falling gasoline prices. A key measure of underlying producer price pressures that excludes food, energy and trade services dipped 0.1 percent last month after ticking up 0.1 percent in April. The so-called core PPI was up 0.6 percent in the 12 months through May. | US Economy;Consumer Confidence;Jobs;Federal Reserve;Price;Inflation |
ny0171904 | [
"business"
]
| 2007/11/10 | Exports Help Shrink the Trade Deficit to Lowest Level in Two Years | A surge in export sales, fueled by the dollar’s record-low value against the euro, sent the United States trade deficit to its lowest level in more than two years, the Commerce Department said yesterday. That would usually be considered good news for the economy. A narrower trade deficit signals strong demand for American goods and services, a boost for domestic businesses. But foreigners are flocking to American products for a simple reason: the dollar has hit record lows against the euro. Domestically, a weak currency can lead to higher prices on a broad range of products, clamping down on consumers’ ability to spend. All of which means that yesterday’s trade report is something of a double-edged sword. “It’s good news for U.S. producers,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at the research firm Global Insight. “And it’s bad news for U.S. consumers.” The gap between what Americans import and export shrank 0.6 percent in September, to $56.4 billion. The deficit in August was revised down, to $56.8 billion. A year ago, the deficit was $64.1 billion. The report came as cheerful news to economists who said that United States companies are more dependent than ever on foreign sales. “We absolutely, desperately need to get strength from exports,” Mr. Gault said. “It’s not going to prevent the economy from slowing down, but it may limit the damage.” Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned this week that the ailing dollar will contribute to a curbing of economic growth in the coming months. Gary C. Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he was cautiously optimistic about the trade report, but he noted that the United States may be more vulnerable to global financial shake-ups. “The way this will come back to bite us is if the rest of the world really slows down,” Mr. Hufbauer said. “I’m not at all sure that the emerging countries and Europe and Japan will stay on this nice good growth path they’re on right now.” In one good sign for the domestic economy, prices of nonenergy imports rose only 0.3 percent last month, a sign that the risk of inflation may be contained. The price of crude oil has surged in recent weeks to record levels, but the increase has not bled into other foreign products. The price of exports also rose in October by 0.9 percent, a jump from September’s tepid 0.3 percent pace, the Labor Department said. Higher-priced exports mean that American businesses are charging customers more for products, a boon for domestic companies. The trade report suggested that foreigners are traveling to the United States in large numbers, perhaps on the spending strength of the record-high euro. Export sales of food and beverages leaped 9.4 percent in September, while sales of imported foods and beverages dipped 0.4 percent in the same period. Over all, export sales rose 1.1 percent in September and are up 13.6 percent for the year. Consumer goods, semiconductors, and food and beverage items led the gains. On the domestic front, Americans bought slightly more foreign products, with sales of imports up 0.6 percent in September after a 0.7 percent decline in August. Aircraft and technology goods recovered somewhat from recent declines. | International Trade and World Market;Trade Deficit;United States;Commerce Department;Economic Conditions and Trends |
ny0016389 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
]
| 2013/10/09 | In Return to Vancouver, Schneider Duels Old Team | VANCOUVER, British Columbia — When former Canucks goaltender Cory Schneider returned here for the first time as a member of the Devils on Tuesday, it was billed as a duel with his old partner in the nets, Roberto Luongo. With Vancouver’s 3-2 overtime win, Luongo earned bragging rights and his 350th career victory. Schneider is still looking for his first win in a Devils uniform. It is the first time the Devils have not won in their first four games since 2001-2. They have lost three straight in extra time. “Against that team at home, I know firsthand how good they are,” Schneider said. “They come out hard, and they keep pressing. With Lou at the other end, you’ve got to match him save for save. He’s not going to give you much.” Jason Garrison scored the overtime winner for Vancouver at 2 minutes 18 seconds, firing a high wrist shot from the blue line past Schneider’s glove. Devils Coach Peter DeBoer praised his goalie. “I thought he was fantastic,” said DeBoer. Vancouver outshot the Devils, 32-23. The Canucks rallied from a 2-0 deficit to record their third win of the year. Jaromir Jagr and Patrik Elias had a goal and an assist apiece for New Jersey. Schneider got a polite reception from the Vancouver crowd. Any mocking chants of his name were isolated and short-lived, whereas Jagr received a full-throated razzing from the crowd. Both Luongo and Schneider looked sharp in the first period. At 18:52, Jagr gave the Devils a 1-0 lead, taking a backhand feed from Elias on the rush and snapping it home for his second goal of the season. At 7:23 of the second period, Elias put the Devils up, 2-0, with a bad-angle shot that tipped off Dale Weise’s skate through Luongo’s legs. The Canucks made the score 2-1 just 1:26 later, as Daniel Sedin’s long wrist shot from inside the blue line deflected off Anton Volchenkov and fooled Schneider. Defenseman Alexander Edler tied the score at 13:47 on a cross-ice set up from Sedin. With just over four minutes left in the second period, Schneider stopped Jannik Hansen on a clear-cut breakaway. It was the latest episode in a goaltending soap opera that’s unlikely to end until both Schneider and Luongo are retired. In Vancouver, Schneider, a native of Marblehead, Mass., and a former finance major at Boston College, fell victim to salary-cap economics. His contract, carrying a cap hit of $4 million for this season and next, was easier to move than Luongo’s. So Schneider, 27, was traded to the Devils on June 30 for the ninth overall pick at the N.H.L. draft. (The Canucks drafted center Bo Horvat from the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights.) Schneider spent years waiting his turn with Vancouver. He was drafted 26th over all in 2004 but did not make his N.H.L. debut until 2008. He played only 10 games in his first two seasons. Luongo’s all-star pedigree and hefty contract dictated that he would have the majority of starts. “If there’s one word I’ve learned to just ignore, it’s frustration,” Schneider said. “I’ve never tried to be frustrated in my career. I think it breeds bad habits and bad energy. The only thing you do have control over is how you play.” But Schneider’s star rose over time. He excelled as a backup in 2010-11 and 2011-12, giving the Canucks perhaps the league’s best goalie tandem. If there was a rivalry between Luongo and Schneider, it was a friendly one, and they remain cordial. They spoke several times over the summer. “Maybe we’ll text each other or tweet each other out there on the ice,” Schneider said jokingly. Luongo said he preferred to be friends with his backup. “You know right away with the guys who are a bit more selfish and almost rooting for you to fail so that they can do the job,” said Luongo, 34, a Montreal native. “But Cory wasn’t like that. That’s why it was so easy to become friends. Instead of going against each other, we’d push each other to be better and help our team.” Schneider finally appeared to become the Canucks’ No. 1 goalie when he replaced Luongo for Game 3 of their 2012 first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings. Although Schneider earned only one win in three tries against the eventual Stanley Cup champions, his 1.31 goals against average and .963 save percentage gave Canucks General Manager Mike Gillis the confidence to anoint him the starter. For more than a year, Luongo, a 2010 Olympic gold medalist, expected to be traded. But Gillis simply could not find a place for him, despite rumors linking Luongo to Toronto, Philadelphia and Florida, where he began his N.H.L. career. With the Devils, Schneider again finds himself splitting duties with a former Canadian Olympic star: Martin Brodeur, the N.H.L.’s career wins leader who won gold medals in 2002 and 2010. | Cory Schneider;Ice hockey;Sports Drafts and Recruits;Devils;Canucks |
ny0026436 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2013/01/04 | Lambeau Field Is Next Test for Vikings’ Rookie Kicker | EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — The first day the kicking instructor Nick Gancitano worked with a skinny teenager named Blair Walsh on a high school field near Walsh’s home in Boca Raton, Fla., Gancitano noticed something that set the young prospect apart from others. It was not Walsh’s strong right leg. It was his attention span. “Blair maintained eye contact with me when I was speaking with him,” Gancitano said in a telephone interview this week. “At that age, that’s not an easy thing to do. It’s easy to get distracted.” To Gancitano, who kicked at Penn State from 1981 to 1984 , it revealed Walsh had two of the traits imperative for kicking success: concentration and humility. Walsh wanted to be good and to learn. “If you think you already know,” Gancitano said, “the mind won’t be open when the truth does come out.” Still, even Gancitano could not have predicted Walsh’s rookie season for the Minnesota Vikings. One year after a baffling senior slump at Georgia hurt his draft standing, Walsh led the N.F.L. with 35 field goals this season, on 38 attempts. He converted 10 from 50 yards or more, a league record, without a miss. His two game-winning field goals provided bookends to a 141-point season. He punctuated his N.F.L. debut on Sept. 9 against Jacksonville with a 38-yard winner in overtime, after hitting a 55-yarder as time expired in regulation. That kick was the longest by an N.F.L. rookie in a season opener. Last Sunday his 29-yarder on the game’s final play beat Green Bay, 37-34, to put the Vikings in the playoffs. Walsh actually made that one twice; the first did not count because Packers Coach Mike McCarthy called a timeout before the play in an attempt to rattle him. “He’s beyond his years as a rookie, which is incredible,” said Cullen Loeffler, the Vikings’ veteran long snapper. “It’s hard to break into this league the way that he has. He didn’t just break in. He broke through. It’s been amazing what he’s done, and it’s been a lot of fun.” A rematch with the Packers in an N.F.C. wild-card game at Lambeau Field on Saturday night offers a fresh challenge for Walsh’s focus and nerve. He has never kicked outdoors in a game in which the temperature fell below 40 degrees. The Saturday forecast for Green Bay, Wis., according to accuweather.com, calls for a high of 26 with a low of 18. Two of the three field goals Walsh missed this season came outdoors on grass. Julius Peppers blocked a 30-yard try in Chicago on Nov. 25, which Walsh said had a low trajectory. The next week at Lambeau, Walsh pushed a 42-yarder to the right. The Vikings lost both games, though the 23-14 defeat at Green Bay irritated Walsh more. “I want to go in there and have a good showing,” Walsh said. “I remember leaving that stadium dejected from the fact that we lost, and the fact that I missed my only attempt. So I’m definitely motivated to go back in there and have a successful game this time.” Vikings Coach Leslie Frazier’s decision to practice this week inside the field house at Winter Park, even with the heat off and the doors open, limited Walsh’s exposure to the swirling winds and uncertain footing he may face Saturday. The field house has newly installed artificial turf. Walsh said he would monitor the wind Saturday in the time-honored way, repeatedly tossing up handfuls of grass. “You’ve just got to prepare to know that you’re going to be cold and you’re going to be uncomfortable, and then put it out of your mind once the game starts,” Walsh said. “You can’t be sitting there thinking about how cold it is and how miserable your body feels. You’ve got to make sure you’re staying warm, staying loose and ready to go at any point.” The 22-year-old Walsh is a Viking because the special teams coach Mike Priefer recommended the team release the reliable veteran Ryan Longwell after last season and bring in someone with a stronger leg for kickoffs. Among regular kickers, Longwell’s 19 touchbacks in 2011 ranked him near the bottom of the league. Only Atlanta and San Diego allowed more kickoff return yards than Minnesota. Priefer and the special teams assistant coach Chris White worked out collegians and veterans before settling on Walsh, a sixth-round pick who missed 14 field goals as a senior at Georgia after going a combined 40 of 45 in his sophomore and junior seasons. Priefer felt Walsh was rushing, and a minor fix to his footwork and tempo solved the problem. “We slowed him down to an incredibly slow time, and had him build back up from there,” Priefer said. “It didn’t take long. By the end of the spring, he was almost game-ready. That’s a tribute to him, his hard work and his understanding of his craft.” The big season by Walsh contrasted with the lengthy slump of Green Bay’s Mason Crosby, who missed 12 of 24 field-goal attempts from Oct. 7 to Dec. 16. McCarthy stuck with Crosby, who righted himself by going 4 of 4 the last two weeks. Walsh’s long-distance accuracy surprised Crosby, who converted only 2 of 9 attempts from 50 yards or longer, the second a 51-yarder on Sunday. “I didn’t realize he had so many kicks from over 50 yards,” Crosby said. “That’s impressive for anyone, rookie or not. “This will be a test coming to Lambeau in the playoffs with the wind and the cold. It can be tricky, but he’s handled everything so well this year.” Even with a little stubble on his face, Walsh, who is listed at 5 feet 10 inches, hardly gives off the aura of a grizzled football player. Needing a caffeine boost before Sunday’s game, Walsh, still in street clothes, walked up to the Metrodome concourse and bought a Diet Coke from a vendor for $5. He said no one recognized him. “I blend in pretty easily,” he said. | Minnesota Vikings;Lambeau Field;Packers;Football;Playoffs;Blair Walsh |
ny0140311 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2008/02/01 | Release of 1950s U.S. Grand Jury Transcripts Is Sought in Rosenberg Atomic Spy Case | After half a century of scholarly work, one might have thought that little of the famous spy story of the Rosenbergs could still be left untold. On Thursday, however, a group of historians, led by a government watchdog group, began the process of prying loose the last trove of secret documents remaining in the case. In a petition filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the historians asked for the release of thousands of pages of grand jury transcripts made in 1950 and 1951 during a federal investigation into charges that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were Soviet spies. They are hoping that the transcripts, still kept under seal by the government, will finally reveal answers to several nagging questions in what is widely considered the defining cold war-era criminal case. “Certainly after 50 years, the unique historical value of these records outweighs any secrecy rationale,” said Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, which filed the petition with support from more than a dozen scholars. The archive, based at George Washington University, is a nonprofit group that uses the Freedom of Information Act to challenge government secrecy. The petitioners also include the Rosenbergs’ sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol; and Sam Roberts, a reporter for The New York Times. The case of the Rosenbergs began in 1945 when a Soviet cipher clerk named Igor Gouzenko defected to the West and stunned intelligence officials by revealing that the Russians were engaged in extensive espionage on their former wartime allies. A spy ring was exposed, and the Rosenbergs were accused of being members. On June 19, 1953, after their appeals of their convictions were denied, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing. The transcript of the 1951 trial, which took place in Manhattan, and the documents that were introduced as evidence have been scoured ever since, and serve as the factual basis for the countless books and monographs about the case. While fragments of the grand jury testimony were quoted at the trial and were used as public evidence at other criminal proceedings, a vast majority has been kept for years under government lock and key. Grand jury testimony is prized by historians for its scope and for its candor. It is particularly revealing because the questions asked are broad and open-ended, and the answers given are typically unrehearsed and not subject to the cautions of a lawyer. The topics covered often range quite far afield from the specific allegations in the case. For that reason, grand juries are conducted in secret and their proceedings rarely see the light of day. In 1999, however, a similar petition won the release of the grand jury transcripts in the case of Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official who in 1950 was convicted of perjury, arising from his denial of having provided secret State Department documents to a confessed former Communist spy, Whittaker Chambers. The historians seeking the release of the Rosenberg transcripts claim the Hiss case as a precedent and argue that the government secrecy interests in the case “have eroded or evaporated completely” as the judge, the prosecutors and most of the witnesses who appeared before the grand jury are dead. A spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which will eventually have to decide whether to fight the petition, said she had no comment on the case. As for the historians themselves, Mr. Blanton said they reflected a wide political spectrum and held contradictory approaches to the Rosenberg case, which, according to the petition, still has the scholarly heft to define an academic career. They include John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale, and Ronald Radosh, adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and past president of the Historians of American Communism. Some of the scholars hope to find additional proof that the Rosenbergs, in fact, were guilty; some are looking for evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. Still others have surmised that the testimony will clarify the role of Ethel Rosenberg in the spy ring. There are theories that the transcripts will identify previously unknown Soviet agents at work in the United States or that Julius Rosenberg was collecting information on far more than the American atomic bomb. “There’s really only one motivation that unites everyone who filed declarations,” Mr. Blanton said: “to overcome the unnecessary secrecy that guards these records.” | Rosenberg Ethel;Rosenberg Julius;Espionage;History |
ny0007174 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2013/05/10 | Politico to Test a Pay Model With Some Readers | Politico, the news media organization that covers Washington in minute detail, said on Thursday that it would start experimenting with charging for access to its Web site. “Starting this week, we are going to test a metered system for subscriptions in a half-dozen states and internationally,” according to a memo that was signed by John F. Harris, the editor in chief; Jim VandeHei, the executive editor; and Kim Kingsley, the chief operating officer. The memo emphasized that though the change was “small” and an “experiment,” it was “a shift in our thinking.” Notably, however, the site will not be testing the model in Washington, the home of Politico’s core readers. “It’s something we do not have to do but want to do to get a better feel for readers’ willingness to pay for our journalism,” the memo said. “We believe that every successful media company will ultimately charge for its content.” Until now, Politico has thrived by being endlessly available for those obsessed enough to want updates on every tic in the body politic. But while Politico started as a Web site, it has evolved to deliver a print edition with advertising and a premium service called Politico Pro for subscribers. The question now is how avid readers of the site will feel about joining a group that pays. Politico said it was testing the waters now, ahead of what it had planned a few months earlier, because of the success of pay models at other news outlets. Pay walls, once considered anathema to online journalism, are being embraced by more newspapers and even smaller operations like The Dish , a blog run by Andrew Sullivan, as revenue from Web advertising continues to sputter. “It is increasingly clear that readers are more willing than we once thought to pay for content they value and enjoy,” the Politico memo said. Politico said it was testing the model in smaller states across the country and at different prices for at least six months and then would study the results. | Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;The Politico;Washington DC |
ny0018466 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2013/07/11 | Italian Party of Berlusconi Stops Activity in Parliament | ROME — In a sign of Italy’s political fragility, the coalition government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta came under heavy strain on Wednesday, when the main center-right party of the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, called for a timeout from Parliament to discuss an impending court ruling for Mr. Berlusconi and its political consequences. Amid protests from the opposition Five Star Movement, almost all activity stopped in both houses of Parliament for a day. Lawmakers from the People of Liberty party, known as the P.D.L., asked for time for consultation, the day after Italy’s highest court scheduled a hearing on July 30 for Mr. Berlusconi’s final appeal in a tax fraud case. This date came months earlier than expected. The decision by the court, motivated by the need to prevent the statute of limitations from expiring on one of the charges facing the former prime minister, caused a political uproar. A definitive conviction would result in a five-year ban from public office for Mr. Berlusconi. If the high court’s decision is upheld by the Court of Cassation and by Parliament, it would likely result in a political earthquake for the left-right coalition. Until that or other court decisions are made, the government is likely to remain frail, but stable, analysts say. “This government has always been hanging by many threads, Berlusconi’s several trials, the tensions within the P.D.L. and also within the Democratic Party, where many don’t like to govern with the P.D.L.,” said Gianfranco Pasquino, a political science professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna. “But I doubt that any of this will have a serious impact on the government.” While senators from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement took off their jackets and ties in protest, fellow party members in the lower house walked out on Wednesday afternoon to oppose against the parliamentary suspension. “We sit in Parliament to find solutions to the policies of the last 20 years,” Roberta Lombardi, a member of Parliament from the Five Star Movement, said, sitting in the square adjacent to Parliament. “Does the world need to stop because the court set a hearing for citizen Berlusconi?” Faced with record unemployment and a public debt of more than €2 trillion, or $2.6 trillion, the grand coalition was already under pressure for the slow pace of its reforms. The “politics of small steps,” as Mr. Letta’s action has been described, has postponed some crucial decisions until the fall and has been struggling to ease the tax burden on citizens. “This government is aware of being very exposed — it’s one of the drawbacks of any coalition government, and this case certainly did not make it stronger,” said Mr. Pasquino, the professor. “It will be stronger only if its policies lower unemployment and boost the economy.” On Tuesday, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Italy’s sovereign credit rating to just two notches above junk, because of concerns about the economy. The International Monetary Fund expects Italy’s growth to decrease by 1.8 percent this year, before slightly recovering in 2014. Mr. Berlusconi’s legal woes have been widely covered in the news and have cluttered Italy’s political life in recent months, as several trials overlapped. Last month, he was sentenced to seven years in jail for paying for sex with an underage nightclub dancer and for abusing his powers to try to cover it up. The conviction is not definitive until two appeals are made. Every time a court condemns Mr. Berlusconi, his lawmakers urge supporters to take to the streets to protest against the “leftist magistrates,” and some of these demonstrators have been calling for early elections. However, the prime minister said Tuesday night on television that the government would survive whatever happened. Above all, President Giorgio Napolitano is opposed to early elections while Italy is experiencing its worst postwar recession and before Parliament makes changes to election laws. “In a certain, convoluted way, what happened today strengthened the reason to support the government,” said Sergio Fabbrini, director of the school of government at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “As the two main parties in Italy are divided and too weak, if taken alone, none of them is capable of acting as an alternative to the current government.” | Silvio Berlusconi;Italy;Legislature;Fraud |
ny0232875 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2010/08/19 | Wood Defuses Tigers’ Rally in Contentious Win | There is not a ballpark — or, for that matter, a pitcher — capable of silencing Miguel Cabrera, a reality that struck the Yankees two times Wednesday night but not a third. His first time up, Cabrera homered. His second time up, Cabrera homered again . As the Detroit Tigers , trailing by three runs, loaded the bases in the seventh inning, Cabrera was well on the mind of Manager Joe Girardi. “Always,” Girardi said. “You have to know where he is at all times.” Cabrera crept to the top of the dugout steps, then beside the on-deck circle, but that was the closest he got to home plate. Kerry Wood recorded what he felt were his two most important outs in pinstripes; he struck out Ramon Santiago and Ryan Raburn as Cabrera became a bystander in a fizzled rally. The Yankees responded by scoring twice in the bottom of the inning to escape with a contentious 9-5 victory at Yankee Stadium , remaining in a tie atop the American League East with the Tampa Bay Rays, who completed a three-game sweep of the Texas Rangers. Hostility reigned from the first pitch Jeremy Bonderman threw, drilling Brett Gardner in the right leg, perhaps in retaliation for his hard — but clean, Tigers Manager Jim Leyland said — slide Monday night into Carlos Guillen’s left knee . It prompted warnings to both teams, and in a tense eighth inning Chad Gaudin plunked Cabrera. That led to the ejection of Leyland, who was fuming that Gaudin had not been tossed, and perhaps prompted Enrique Gonzalez to brush back Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano in the bottom of the inning. Bonderman and Leyland both said “next question,” in response to the first-inning incident, and Girardi said of the game in sum, “I just think it got ugly.” “If they want to hit me and put me on base, I’m happy with it as long as I’m not hurt,” Gardner said. Gardner scored on a two-run homer by Mark Teixeira, igniting the Yankees’ biggest output in nearly three weeks. The outburst nearly overshadowed the latest edition of stellar relief work by their bullpen, a run coinciding with the arrival of Wood. Since joining the team on Aug. 1, Yankees relievers have a 1.29 earned run average in 15 games, allowing six runs in 42 innings. Girardi is reluctant to use a reliever for three consecutive days, and Wood has given him more flexibility in how he handles Joba Chamberlain and Dave Robertson. Wood has pitched eight times, but Wednesday marked the first time he came in with the Yankees winning. Entering with a 7-4 lead, Wood allowed a single to Austin Jackson that loaded the bases, but then turned to his most reliable pitch, the cutter. He caught Santiago looking for the first out, then, with most among the crowd of 46,479 standing, zipped another cutter past Raburn. As he walked off the mound to a rousing ovation, Wood pumped his fist, a rare show of emotion. “Having him lead off an inning is the best way to have him all the time,” Girardi said of Cabrera, who also homered Monday against the Yankees. Wood has found a niche in the seventh, though Girardi turned to his bullpen earlier than desired because Dustin Moseley lasted five innings. He allowed four runs, including the two homers to Cabrera, and will continue to get regular work in the rotation. Every start of his seems to coincide with a setback for Andy Pettitte, who is out through at least the first week of September. After a magnetic resonance imaging exam Tuesday revealed a “small, persistent tear” in his left groin muscle, Pettitte has been told to take a week off, permitted only to play catch and to ride a stationary bike, with the hope that toward the middle of next week he will throw again off a mound. Pettitte has already done the math. He knows that there are six and a half weeks remaining in the season. He has time, but not an endless supply of it, and he acknowledged wondering whether he will even return. “A lot of stuff is obviously going through your head as we get to the end of the season here,” said Pettitte, who strained his groin a month ago Wednesday. “Like, how am I going to have to deal with this? But there’s no sense in worrying about that. I was riding here with my kids, and I said, ‘Help me stay positive here.’ ” Recognizing that Pettitte is still at least three weeks from returning, Girardi said he was not yet concerned about his readiness for a possible postseason start. He said he would begin to worry if Pettitte is not back by the third week of September. As of now, Pettitte is looking at two minor league rehabilitation starts, Girardi said. They will come only after he completes his necessary bullpen sessions and simulated outings without discomfort. “The last thing you would want is for him to come back and say: ‘You know what? I feel like I can only give you 60 pitches, and I didn’t think my stuff was crisp,’ ” Girardi said. “That’s not really going to help us.” What has helped is the rejuvenation of their bullpen, a surge led by Boone Logan, Robertson, a revitalized Chamberlain and Wood. Girardi has faith in a man he caught in Chicago a decade ago, and Wood is rewarding him now. “I’m pleased I’m putting up zeroes,” said Wood, who has given up one run in nine innings with the Yankees. “That’s my goal — that should be all of our goals. It’s nice to get out there and have a pretty good idea when I’m going to get in the game.” | New York Yankees;Detroit Tigers;Baseball;Wood Kerry;Cabrera Miguel |
ny0114189 | [
"us"
]
| 2012/11/10 | California: Spouse Faces Murder Charge | An Iraqi immigrant was arrested on first-degree murder charges in the beating death of his wife, a mother of five whose killing was initially feared to be a hate crime. Kassim Alhimidi, 48, was arrested on Thursday in the death of Shaima Alawadi, also an Iraqi immigrant, who was found in their home in El Cajon with an anti-Muslim note beside her body, El Cajon police said Friday. The killing shocked members of the city’s large Muslim immigrant community, some of whom feared it had been a hate crime, a possibility Mr. Alhimidi spoke about in the days after his wife’s death. Jim Redman, police chief in El Cajon, said the killing was the result of “a domestic violence incident,” not a hate crime. | El Cajon (Calif);Murders and Attempted Murders;Alawadi Shaima;Alhimidi Kassim;Domestic Violence |
ny0059105 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2014/08/29 | Baltimore Edges Tampa Bay to Extend Lead in A.L. East | J. J. Hardy drove in the tiebreaking run in the seventh inning as the Baltimore Orioles beat the visiting Tampa Bay Rays, 5-4, to lengthen their lead in the American League East. Steve Pearce homered for the Orioles, who took three of four from the sinking Rays. The victory, combined with the Yankees’ loss to Detroit , put Baltimore seven games ahead of the Yankees with 30 games remaining. With the score tied in the seventh, Nelson Cruz doubled off Kirby Yates (0-2). After Chris Davis was intentionally walked, Hardy hit a looping opposite-field ball to right that gave the Orioles their first lead. Andrew Miller (4-5) pitched one and two-thirds hitless innings and Zach Britton worked a perfect ninth for his 29th save of the season. Evan Longoria homered and drove in two runs for the Rays. ASTROS 4, RANGERS 2 Jason Castro hit a grand slam, Collin McHugh threw seven solid innings, and host Houston beat Texas. McHugh (7-9) earned his third straight win, allowing two runs and eight hits while striking out six. In his six August starts, McHugh has given up eight runs over 37 2/3 innings. Castro snapped an 0-for-20 slump with a single in the second. In the fifth, his grand slam erased a 2-0 Texas lead. GIANTS 4, ROCKIES 1 Yusmeiro Petit set a major league record when he retired his 46th batter in a row as host San Francisco beat Colorado for its third straight win. Petit (4-3) retired the first eight hitters, establishing the record by striking out Charlie Culberson. That broke Mark Buehrle’s record of 45 straight with the Chicago White Sox in 2009. The string ended two pitches later when the next batter, Rockies starter Jordan Lyles, doubled to left field. Charlie Blackmon followed with a single to drive in Colorado’s only run. Petit allowed four hits, struck out nine and walked none. REDS 7, CUBS 2 Billy Hamilton stole his 51st base of the season, and Cincinnati had six stolen bases in all to beat visiting Chicago. The last time the Reds stole at least six bases was in 2006 against Washington. The Reds had all of their steals in the first four innings, using six hits and four walks to build a 6-0 lead against Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta (7-5). Dylan Axelrod (1-0) pitched five scoreless innings of two-hit ball for the Reds and struck out eight. | Baseball;Orioles;Tampa Bay Rays |
ny0170286 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2007/05/24 | Giambi Meets Baseball Officials Over Steroids | Jason Giambi was still wearing a Yankees uniform last night, he was still their designated hitter and he was still immersed in a maelstrom about what he might or might not have put into his muscular body to help him as a player. But after Giambi met with representatives from the commissioner’s office yesterday in New York to discuss his tacit admission of steroid use in a USA Today article last week, he seemed a bit relieved. Giambi emphasized how he agreed to the meeting and how he hoped his cooperation would produce a positive outcome. “I was willing to go in there and talk to them, and hopefully good things will come out of it,” he said. “But I don’t know. We’re waiting for a response.” It remained unclear if the commissioner’s office would attempt to punish Giambi for his remarks, which were more forthcoming than anything he had previously said about steroids. Giambi told the newspaper, “I was wrong for doing that stuff,” and added, “What we should have done a long time ago was stand up — players, ownership, everybody — and said, ‘We made a mistake.’ ” Since any steroid use that Giambi may have been referring to occurred before baseball began penalizing players for positive tests, it seems doubtful that he will be suspended. Jason Grimsley of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who, like Giambi, never failed a steroid test, was suspended for 50 games last year after admitting to federal authorities that he used steroids. “We asked questions, he gave answers,” said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations and human resources. “I’m not going to say what we asked him.” When Manfred was asked if he thought Giambi would be disciplined, he said, “That’s a commissioner’s decision.” In addition to Giambi’s comments to USA Today, the controversy surrounding him thickened yesterday, when The Daily News reported that he tested positive for amphetamine use in the past year. The News did not identify its sources. Arn Tellem, Giambi’s agent, refused to discuss the article, and Giambi said, “I don’t know anything about that.” When Giambi was told that he would know if he had failed a test, he said, “I can’t give you an accurate, I guess, explanation.” When Giambi was told that if he had not failed a test, he could say he had not, he was noncommittal. “That’s in a perfect world,” Giambi said. “But there’s a lot of talk with the commissioner and going to the commissioner. They didn’t want me to speak on anything until further.” If Giambi did test positive for amphetamines, he would join Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants as the only two players whose failed tests had been publicized since amphetamines were banned for the first time last season. Bonds never challenged a report in The Daily News in January saying that he had tested positive for amphetamines. If a player tests positive for amphetamines, he receives follow-up testing, and the failed test is not supposed to be publicized. After a second positive test, a player would receive a 25-game suspension. Johnny Damon, one of Giambi’s teammates, was irked that the results of tests may have been disclosed. “I’m upset with the fact of how we found out about Barry Bonds’s positive test a few months ago and now Jason’s,” Damon said. “It doesn’t seem like the guidelines of the drug testing is being done correctly when anybody can go around leaking something, if it’s true or not, and we’re not supposed to know until they get in trouble a second time.” Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman and Manager Joe Torre said the team was unaware of any of Giambi’s test results. Cashman said the Yankees were not trying to trade Giambi, who has a no-trade clause and is in the sixth year of a seven-year, $120 million deal. Cashman added that the Yankees had not taken any action regarding trying to void Giambi’s contract. “The commissioner is investigating the situation, as he should be,” Cashman said. “It’s a very serious issue.” Michael Weiner, a lawyer for the players union, said the commissioner’s office requested the meeting with Giambi to discuss his comments to USA Today. Weiner would not say if any other topics were raised, but the interview was probably solely focused on Giambi’s remarks to the newspaper. Giambi was accompanied by Tellem; Brian O’Neill, a lawyer who represented Giambi in the Balco case; and Weiner. The commissioner’s office was represented by Manfred; Frank Coonelly, one of baseball’s labor lawyers; and Howard Ganz, an outside lawyer. According to Weiner, the parties agreed not to discuss the content of the meeting. Baseball executives presumably wanted to learn from Giambi what kind of performance-enhancing drugs he may have used and when he may have used them. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in December 2004 that Giambi had told a federal grand jury investigating Balco, a steroid distribution ring, that he had used steroids and human growth hormone before signing with the Yankees in December 2001 and while with them in 2002 and 2003. Baseball’s drug-testing policy started in 2003, but players were not suspended for a first offense until 2005. Still, Giambi, 36, would have broken the law because it is illegal to use steroids without a prescription. Giambi said it was a positive step for him to go to baseball’s headquarters on Park Avenue and discuss his situation. He said the decision enabled him to get “it out of the way so it won’t be there.” But, actually, it is still there. “It’s more or less now wait and see,” Giambi said. | Steroids;Baseball;New York Yankees;Major League Baseball;USA TODAY;New York Daily News;Giambi Jason;Tellem Arn |
ny0173106 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
]
| 2007/11/14 | Chinese Prices Surge Again, Despite New Controls | GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 13 — Consumer prices unexpectedly surged again last month in China despite price controls on a wide range of industries, and this month holds the prospect of even higher inflation. For years, flat or falling prices for Chinese goods helped restrain inflation in the United States. But now rising costs for American imports from China are complicating the task of the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been cutting interest rates to help weak housing and credit markets in the United States, but has been wary that low rates might permit inflation to creep back into the economy. Prices were 6.5 percent higher in October than a year earlier, accelerating from 6.2 percent in September, China’s statistical agency announced on Tuesday. The October inflation rate matched an increase of 6.5 percent in August, China’s highest inflation rate in nearly 11 years. Rising prices are an especially dangerous problem for China, where public acceptance of one-party rule depends to a considerable extent on ever-rising prosperity. With food prices increasing the fastest — they were up 17.6 percent in October from a year earlier — many poor and working-class families are struggling to make ends meet. Just this past Saturday in Chongqing, people began lining up before dawn when a Carrefour store offered a discount on large jugs of cooking oil, an essential for a lot of Chinese cooking. When the doors opened, a stampede ensued, killing 3 people and injuring 31. China’s commerce ministry responded on Monday by ordering a ban on limited-time sales promotions. China’s leaders are clearly concerned. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited the needy in a district of Beijing on Monday and promised to stabilize prices, according to the official news agency Xinhua. “Prices have been on the rise these days, and I’m aware that even a one-yuan increase in prices will affect people’s lives,” said Mr. Wen, referring to a sum of Chinese currency equal to about 13 cents. Inflation accelerated in October even though the government issued a ban on Sept. 19 on all price increases for a long list of regulated industries, from airlines to electric utilities to energy companies. The main culprit in October was rising food prices, while nonfood prices climbed just 1.1 percent. But prices will probably go considerably higher in November. The price controls prevented refiners from passing on high world crude oil prices in October, so many refiners cut back their output of gasoline and diesel, resulting in long lines at service stations. The government quickly gave in, announcing an increase of nearly 10 percent in the regulated price of gasoline and diesel that took effect on Nov. 1. Truckers at a rest stop here in Guangzhou in southeastern China said that the price increase had not been enough to erase the shortages and that they were still being forced to wait hours to buy as little as five gallons of diesel. Not only energy prices may be higher in November. Mr. Wen also urged employers on Monday to be more generous in giving raises to employees and to be especially careful to follow minimum wage laws. If his appeals are heeded, that could push up manufacturing wages and prices. At a market early this afternoon in Shenzhen in southeastern China, clerks and customers complained about rising prices for everything from pork to Chinese cabbage — although egg prices had fallen slightly in the last month. But prices remain low in dollar terms, with some vegetables selling for as little as 12 cents a pound. That low price in dollar terms is a result of a very low exchange rate for China’s currency, known as the yuan or the renminbi. China’s central bank has been buying foreign currency, mainly dollars, at a pace of $1 billion a day so as to slow the rise of its currency. American companies buying from China face a double blow: not only are prices rising in terms of China’s currency but China has also quietly begun allowing the yuan to rise at a faster pace against the dollar. The annualized pace of appreciation of the yuan has climbed to 6 percent in the last week. This will make it a little cheaper in yuan terms for Chinese companies to import raw materials, which tend to be priced in dollars. But it is still slower than many members of Congress have sought. China’s competitiveness has not diminished yet, either. On Monday, China posted another record monthly trade surplus: $27 billion in October. China now exports more to the European Union than to the United States, and exports to Europe have been growing strongly. The yuan has actually been losing value against the euro because China has set the appreciation rate of the yuan in terms of the dollar, which has been falling steeply. Many manufacturers, as well as retailers of manufactured goods, have not yet raised prices, hoping to hold on to market share even as China’s production capacity keeps growing. Pan Xishen, a business development manager at Tayohya, a home decoration chain with 370 franchised stores across China, said the company had resisted raising prices even though raw material costs had climbed 5 to 8 percent in the last year. “It’s reducing the margin” of profits, he said on Tuesday at the Global Sources Franchising China trade show here. “We’re controlling the price to the consumer.” | China;International Trade and World Market;Economic Conditions and Trends |
ny0018757 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2013/07/28 | Pierre-Paul, Free of Back Pain, Is Taking a Cautious Approach | EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — For Jason Pierre-Paul, the pain in his lower back was nearly continual. It hurt to drive a car. It hurt to stand. And most noticeably, it hurt to get in his stance as a defensive lineman, something he did hundreds of times in an average week during the regular season. As for exploding off the line of scrimmage to take on two opponents, using the core muscles of his lower back to power through blockers and fight toward the quarterback, well, that hurt the most of all. “I didn’t complain, but it held me back a lot,” Pierre-Paul said Saturday before the Giants’ first training camp practice. The wunderkind on the fearsome front line that powered the Giants to a Super Bowl victory two seasons ago, Pierre-Paul faltered in 2012. The initial off-season medical advice recommended that he strengthen his core muscles to alleviate the back pain, but when his back got worse, he opted for surgery June 4 to repair a herniated disk. On Saturday, Pierre-Paul said he was free of pain. But he would not promise that he would be ready for the regular-season opener at Dallas on Sept. 8. “Back pain is a really, really horrible pain to have,” Pierre-Paul said. “And you don’t want to rush back. I’m not concentrated on the first game, second game, third game, fourth game, fifth game, sixth game — I’m just trying to come back when I feel like I’m ready to come back.” Those may not be the most heartening words for Giants fans eager to see Pierre-Paul back and playing as he did when he dominated opposing offensive lines and had 16 ½ sacks in 2011. But Pierre-Paul, whose sack total fell to six and a half last season, is 24 years old, and the Giants are being cautious. Coach Tom Coughlin declined to put a timetable on the recovery of Pierre-Paul, who is on the physically unable to perform list and cannot participate in the standard part of Giants practices. “He’s done very well and he’s worked very hard at it,” Coughlin said. “He’s progressing and we’ll leave it at that.” On Saturday, a jovial and smiling Pierre-Paul bounced, squatted and jumped through a series of sideline exercises. “I can do anything, and the discomfort is gone,” said Pierre-Paul, who estimated that he was 75 percent of the way to a complete recovery. “When I’m standing up, I don’t have that pain. I can stand up straight. I am doing pretty good.” With regard to the defense, end Justin Tuck said that he thought that the Giants had become too focused on getting sacks instead of thinking about the total effect of a strong pass rush. “I think where we’ve kind of made our mark is the times when we don’t get sacks and the QB is throwing the ball fast, or they are max protected and we’re still after the quarterback,” Tuck said. “We kind of got away from that and got so caught up in ‘my sack numbers aren’t up.’ Quarterbacks feel pressure throughout the game, and that’s when you start seeing them get rattled in the pocket. It’s not necessarily about the sack numbers. It’s about the pressure, the hits and things of that nature. We’ve got to get back to doing that.” COUNTING IT DOWN General Manager Jerry Reese announced that he was going to put a countdown scoreboard-like device in the locker room that would remind the team of the number of days remaining until the 2014 Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium. “It’s 190 days, which isn’t that far away,” Reese said. “When you see that number, the sense of urgency jumps out at you. So I want our guys to see how urgent it is to be prepared to go every week.” The other number Reese discussed was one. “We’ve had one playoff team in the last four years,” he said. “And that is just below our standards.” STARTING POSITIONS Linebacker Aaron Curry, the former first-round draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks, has lost 15 pounds since the Giants signed him in May. He practiced with the first-team defense with his fellow linebackers Mark Herzlich and Keith Rivers. On the offensive line, the battle for the starting job at right tackle began with the incumbent David Diehl on the first team. The first-round draft pick Justin Pugh worked with the second unit. | Football;Giants;Jason Pierre-Paul;Jerry Reese |
ny0036551 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2014/03/21 | Time Inc. May Join Media Exodus to Lower Manhattan | Time Inc., with its stable of magazines, lavish offices and steady profits, has been a fixture in Midtown Manhattan for more than 75 years and the nation’s premier magazine publisher. But the company is now close to a deal to move its namesake Time magazine and 20 other brands downtown, joining a growing list of media corporations in or coming to the area, including Condé Nast , American Media Inc., HarperCollins, The Village Voice, The Daily News and XO Group. Real estate and media executives familiar with the negotiations note that Time Inc. has not signed a lease yet and the deal could still collapse. But they say the company has focused its search for a new home on 225 Liberty Street, in the Brookfield Place office complex at Battery Park City, bypassing other possible locations, including 4 World Trade Center and 85 Broad Street. In a reflection of the changes underway in Lower Manhattan, Time Inc. would move Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Essence, Fortune, Travel+Leisure and its other magazines into a 44-story tower once occupied by the investment bank Merrill Lynch, which was bought by Bank of America during the 2008 financial crisis. “There is a new vibrancy and an old logic to Lower Manhattan,” said Jessica Lappin, the president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. “There isn’t a better connected part of the city when it comes to transportation, access to the waterfront and the growing food and retail revolution going on down here.” Lower Manhattan has recently become a lower-cost alternative to Midtown for tech, advertising and media companies, as well as law firms. The average asking rent downtown is $25 less per square foot, a saving of about $2.5 million a year on a lease for 100,000 square feet. In addition, tax breaks and other subsidies are available to many tenants who make the leap to Lower Manhattan. Still, considerable space is available in the downtown area, once dominated by the financial industry. Many of the investment banks, which used to drive the construction of office towers, have migrated to Midtown and Jersey City. Image The publisher would join a growing list of corporations attracted to lower-cost alternatives in downtown. Credit Richard Drew/Associated Press The banks have been replaced by a remarkable array of companies, although they generally do not require large blocks of spaces. Many office buildings have been converted to apartments, to serve a population that has nearly tripled since 2000, in a neighborhood that once felt deserted after dark. But the Time Inc. that moves downtown will be a much leaner company than the one that presided over Midtown. The publisher, which was founded by Henry R. Luce in 1922, moved to Rockefeller Center 15 years later as Time magazine made its mark. Nelson A. Rockefeller announced in 1956 that he would build a new tower for the company, across the Avenue of the Americas from Radio City Music Hall, between 50th and 51st Streets. The Time & Life Building was the first Rockefeller Center tower on the west side of the avenue. “Each magazine had its own floor or two,” said John Manners, who worked for Time Inc. in the 1980s. “Every writer, reporter and editor had their own office. Life had champagne parties after every closing on Fridays.” By 1999, Time Inc. — by then part of Time Warner — had swelled to occupy 2.6 million square feet in the tower at 1271 Avenue of the Americas and an adjoining building. But in recent years, Time Inc., like other magazine companies, has struggled with the transition to a digital world as advertising revenue and newsstand sales declined. Joseph A. Ripp, Time Inc.’s chief executive, recently announced a restructuring of the company, eliminating 500 jobs. Time Warner, which is in the process of spinning off Time Inc. as a separate company, hired Studley, a real estate broker, to assess the needs of both companies. In January, Time Warner announced its own plans to move its headquarters from Columbus Circle to a new skyscraper on the Far West Side of Manhattan. If Time Inc. moves downtown, it will occupy about 650,000 square feet, or roughly a quarter of what it once had at Rockefeller Center, real estate executives said. If Time Inc. departs, the owner of the Time & Life tower would renovate it and presumably offer a new tenant naming rights. Teri Everett, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., said, “We haven’t made a final decision yet.” The shrinkage is also part of a fast-moving trend, in which companies are squeezing more employees into less space. The average amount of space per office worker has dropped to 150 square feet, from 225 in 2010, according to CoreNet Global, a commercial real estate association. Even the banks that remain downtown are shrinking. Bank of New York Mellon, for instance, is selling its 1.1-million-square-foot headquarters on Wall Street and looking for a far smaller space, about 350,000 square feet. | Commercial Real Estate;Rockefeller Center Manhattan;Battery Park City Manhattan;Relocation;Manhattan |
ny0255139 | [
"us"
]
| 2011/09/29 | I.C.E. Crackdown on Criminal Immigrants Brings 2,901 Arrests | WASHINGTON — The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced on Wednesday that it had arrested 2,901 immigrants who have criminal records, highlighting the Obama administration’s policy of focusing on such people while putting less emphasis on deporting illegal immigrants who pose no demonstrated threat to public safety. Officials from the agency portrayed the seven-day sweep, called Operation Cross Check, as the largest enforcement and removal operation in its history. It involved arrests in all 50 states of criminal offenders of 115 nationalities, including people convicted of manslaughter, armed robbery, aggravated assault and sex crimes. “These are not people who are making a positive contribution to their communities,” said the agency’s director, John Morton. “They are not the kind of people we want walking our streets.” More than 1,600 of those arrested had been convicted of a felony. The remainder had a misdemeanor conviction for matters like theft, forgery and driving while intoxicated, the agency said. Those arrested included illegal immigrants and lawful resident noncitizens who had been convicted of crimes that made them eligible to be deported. The agency did not release the names of all the people arrested. But a sampling that showed the geographical breadth of the operation included one person from the New York City area: Virgilio Lopez-Ruiz, a 54-year-old Dominican who was living in the Bronx. He had been convicted on Nov. 16, 1988, of second-degree attempted murder, it said. It did not provide his immigration status. Mr. Morton issued a memo in June suggesting that the agency should place a priority on deporting noncitizen criminals like drug dealers and gang members, as well as people who have flagrantly violated immigration laws, for example by ignoring deportation orders or re-entering the country after being removed. Under that approach, it would give less emphasis to removing illegal immigrants who are not a public safety or national security threat. In August, the White House essentially ratified that approach, announcing that the Department of Homeland Security would, on a case-by-case basis, suspend deportation proceedings against people who posed no public safety threat. The policy shift has been criticized by some Republicans as a backdoor form of the so-called Dream Act — a bill, which has stalled in Congress, that would provide relief to illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and who want to attend college or join the armed forces. But Mr. Morton said Wednesday that there were far more illegal immigrants in the United States than the agency has the resources to remove. He said that the agency has been deporting about 390,000 people annually for the past several years, a record level, and that the question is who those people should be. In 2008, he said, about a third were criminal offenders, but this year about half have been, and the majority of the remainder have been flagrant violators of immigration law. | Illegal Immigrants;Crime and Criminals;Deportation;Immigration and Customs Enforcement (US);Obama Barack |
ny0036274 | [
"technology"
]
| 2014/03/10 | Tech Incubators Focus on Keeping Europe Green | LONDON — Early last year, Mathijs de Meijer had an idea, one that started as a joke and turned into a company. After a construction mishap knocked out the heating system in the home of his friend, Boaz Leupe, on a cold day, Mr. de Meijer stopped by to visit, a laptop under his arm. He said “‘Hey, why don’t we go to Dell.com, buy 100 laptops and then we’ll have some nerd heat,”’ Mr. Leupe recalled. “We had a bit of a laugh about that, and then we realized it wasn’t a bad idea.” Now, Nerdalize, based in Delft, the Netherlands, is ramping up its plan to replace home radiators with disguised computer servers and sell data processing time to remote users while the excess heat warms the house for free. The company is valued at between 2 million and 3 million euros, or about $2.7 million and $4 million. Along the way, Mr. de Meijer, Mr. Leupe and the company’s third co-founder, Florian Schneider, have gotten a helping hand from YES!Delft, a small-business incubator that, like others across Europe, offers advice, office space and connections to help environmentally focused tech start-ups get off the ground. The incubators, many of them backed by government funding, are seeking both economic and environmental returns. At the same time, they hope to keep Europe competitive in the global sector known as cleantech, an area that includes everything from electric cars and “smartgrid” power transmission systems to high-capacity batteries and technologies to harvest energy from new sources like waves and tides. Would-be entrepreneurs “come in with a nice technology,” said Frans Nauta, deputy director of entrepreneurship at Climate-KIC, a European Commission-funded effort that supports environment-focused tech start-ups through incubators at universities. “To get them in 18 months to the point where they know their stuff so well that an investor can be comfortable to invest a million, that’s my work.” Between 60 and 70 incubators across Europe offer support to cleantech companies, said Stephan van Dijk, innovation program manager at the Delft University of Technology, who is researching the role of cleantech incubators for a European Union study. Most do so as part of a program aimed at promoting tech start-ups in general, he said. The incubators often rent space to young companies in buildings that house dozens of start-ups, so the entrepreneurs can chat over coffee or meet in the hallways and exchange ideas. Often linked to a university — Climate-KIC’s sites include Imperial College in London, the Paris Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Berlin — they offer access to coaches who help with business issues, scientists with a wide range of technical expertise and networks of contacts, including suppliers, potential customers and private investors. At YES!Delft, where about 20 of the 70 start-ups are cleantech-focused, Mr. Leupe, of Nerdalize, said the offices were brimming with energy and creativity. “You do get engineers running through the building shaking their hands in victory every once in a while,” Mr. Leupe said. “Recently, we had the entire executive board of one of the largest energy companies in Europe” in the office, sipping coffee, Mr. Leupe said. “It adds a lot of network, it adds a lot of knowledge.” The cleantech sector, particularly its renewable energy segment, has been through a bumpy few years, particularly in the United States, where enthusiastic investors jumped in in droves in the mid-2000s, then took losses as falling prices and scaled-back government support hurt many companies. Many investors are now more cautious about a sector in which up-front capital requirements can be high, development periods long and technologies risky and complicated. Image Credit Raquel Marín Progress has been smoother in Europe, where the cleantech frenzy was never as fevered as in California’s Silicon Valley, Mr. Nauta said. But because the Continent lacks the rich environment of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that characterize start-up hotspots like Silicon Valley or New York, many incubators still depend on government funding, he said. “It’s very hard to run a privately run business incubator in Europe and be profitable,” said Oriol Pascual, a cleantech consultant whose firm, Enviu Barcelona, works with two incubators in the Spanish city. In the United States, he said, “every time you have a new round, you have 300 candidates, you pick 20” new companies. In Europe, “if you get 30 or 40 or 50, you are lucky,” he said, perhaps because risk-taking is less a part of the business culture. The cleantech sector is changing, though, as expensive projects like big solar arrays and windfarms have been joined by a new, lower-cost area known as cleanweb, whose companies make use of software or Internet applications to more efficiently manage resources. Many cleanweb companies focus on energy and water, and on making smart use of the troves of data generated in an increasingly digital world. Those are all important themes at this week’s CeBIT information technology trade fair in Hanover, Germany. Unlike the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, which is more consumer oriented, CeBIT focuses on the tech needs of businesses. In Copenhagen, cleantech start-ups benefit from the Danish government’s strong commitment to renewable energy. Denmark, whose current strength in the manufacture of wind energy equipment stems from a government decision to back the sector in the 1970s, now plans to wean itself from fossil fuels entirely by 2050. Entrepreneurs are responding, and Copenhagen has become an important hub of new cleantech activity. At the Green Entrepreneur House, more than 70 companies seek advice from professors at the Technical University of Denmark and make use of the school’s sophisticated testing and demonstration facilities to try out new energy technologies. A model energy system, complete with wind turbines, battery-charging stations and houses that mimic consumer habits, helps start-ups hone new smartgrid applications, said Kristine Garde, head of cleantech innovation at Scion DTU, the university-linked technology park that runs the green incubator. The effort is backed by more than €2 million in government funds, Ms. Garde said. In Britain, the Carbon Trust, a group focused on fighting climate change, works with about 300 start-ups across Europe in efforts that have been backed by the European Commission, the British government and General Electric. “The gaps that each venture has, the problems, differ from one venture to the next, they differ according to the stage the company’s at or the particular challenge that venture faces,” said David Aitken, head of the trust’s incubation efforts. A big part of an incubator’s value is “the external sounding board, someone saying, ‘We think your gaps are here and here, and we’ll help you address them.”’ Among the companies the Carbon Trust has supported is SenseLogix, whose product combines sensors with software to tailor buildings’ energy use to occupants’ needs, an approach it says can cut consumption by as much as a third. With companies around the world pushing forward on cleantech, Europe must be on top of its game to stay competitive, said Mr. Aitken. And in such a technologically complex sector, incubators can play a key role in helping companies get products to market. “They don’t do it for you,” said Wouter Robers, whose company Epyon, which makes fast-charging batteries for electric vehicles, was bought by the Swiss power technology firm ABB in 2011. But the help he got from YES!Delft “was pretty instrumental,” he said. The biggest testimony to the role played by the incubator? Mr. Robers has a new start-up venture, using three-dimensional printing to make prototypes for companies designing new products, and he is back at YES!Delft again. | Startup;Environment;Science and Technology;Europe;Entrepreneurship |
ny0024676 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2013/08/19 | Postal Service Applies Old Promise to New Priority | THE Postal Service is identified with a promise that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night would stay its couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But the Internet? Don’t ask. Although ways to communicate online have made untold billions of pieces of first-class mail vanish, costing the Postal Service untold billions of dollars in revenue, there is a silver lining: strong growth in delivering packages that consumers order through e-commerce. Reflecting that, the Postal Service has been devoting more attention to its delivery services, including changes announced last week in Priority Mail that were described as major upgrades. So it is no surprise that the first round of advertising for the Postal Service from its new creative agency, McCann Erickson Worldwide, is being devoted to Priority Mail. The campaign, which will include commercials, print and online ads, direct marketing and a presence in social media, seeks to elevate itself beyond peddling products by introducing a theme, “Priority: you,” that evokes the unofficial Postal Service “Neither ... nor” creed . The initial commercial, scheduled to begin on Monday, even shows postal employees making deliveries in, yes, snow and rain. “Staying warm and dry has never been our priority,” an announcer declares. Scenes of deliveries in rural areas are accompanied by the announcer’s assertion that “catering to the conveniently located has never been our priority.” “Our priority is, was and always will be serving you, the American people,” he continues, adding, “We get to see everyone in America, almost every day, and we’ve noticed you’re sending and receiving more packages than ever.” That is a nice segue to the Priority Mail message, which promotes upgrades that include free, improved tracking; free insurance, valued at $50 or $100; and specified delivery dates of one, two or three days. The goal of the campaign is to focus on “one of the bright spots in the Postal Service’s future,” said Nagisa Manabe, executive vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at the Postal Service in Washington, rather than “our challenging situation” as a result of problems like falling mail volume and revenue. Ms. Manabe acknowledged how the migration to online is a doubled-edged sword for the Postal Service. Because “the Internet giveth and taketh away,” she said, “the growth in our package business is really mission critical, and it’s very important to continually improve our reliability.” That responds to “a very clear trend in the marketplace,” she added, of “rising expectations from consumers” for the products and services they buy. The commercial addresses that with phrases from the announcer like “Don’t just take our word for it” and “We’ll never stop delivering for every person in this country.” The prominent role in the campaign for postal workers — the men and women in the commercial, and the announcer, are actual employees — is based on research that showed how positively the public regards them, Ms. Manabe said. Leslie Sims, executive creative director at the McCann Erickson New York division of McCann Erickson Worldwide, elaborated. “The idea is to hear from the Postal Service rather than the critics, to let the dedicated work force speak for themselves,” she said, and help convey that “it’s not just about mail anymore, it’s also shipping.” Ms. Sims summarized what the Postal Service wants to get across in the campaign: “We need people to trust us to send the things that matter. Nobody knows America like we know America, because we see you every day, and that informs every innovation. Priority Mail is a competitive product, and user-friendly.” The “Priority: you” theme was “staring at us from the box,” Ms. Sims said, referring to Priority Mail packaging, and asserts that the Postal Service’s priority “is the American people, compared with our competitors, whose priority is their shareholders.” (FedEx and United Parcel Service, which are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, are “frenemies” with the Postal Service — the Postal Service has delivery contracts with them, and vice versa.) The Postal Service decided four months ago to select McCann Erickson Worldwide, part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies, as its creative agency, replacing another Interpublic agency, now known as Lowe Campbell Ewald, after more than 10 years. The Postal Service also works with other units of the McCann Worldgroup and Interpublic, including Casanova Pendrill, for ads aimed at Hispanic consumers; Draftfcb, for retail marketing; MRM Worldwide, for direct and digital marketing; Universal McCann, for media services; and Weber Shandwick, for public relations and social media. “We won the business” with the “Priority: you” campaign, Ms. Sims said, and Ms. Manabe confirmed that it “was part of the original pitch” made by McCann Erickson to the Postal Service in a review for the account. The Postal Service spent about $75 million on advertising last year, compared with $91 million in 2011. Plans call for the ads devoted to Priority Mail to be followed by the Postal Service’s annual holiday campaign, Ms. Manabe said, a crucial initiative because that is “the busiest time of the year for packages and mail.” Asked if the Postal Service had considered a campaign that would directly address its financial woes, Ms. Manabe said, “We’re not sure there’s much to be gained from ads of that type.” Ms. Sims, riffing on a suggestion that actors who played postal workers in sitcoms like “Cheers” and “Seinfeld” could be hired for such ads, said, laughing: “Don’t think that hasn’t been thrown around. And don’t think you may never see that.” | Postal Service;advertising,marketing;Delivery Services;E Commerce |
ny0012197 | [
"world",
"africa"
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| 2013/11/20 | Police Station Is Attacked by the Shabab in Somalia | MOGADISHU, Somalia — Attackers from the Shabab militant group assaulted a police station in a Somali town north of Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving at least 28 people dead and scores more wounded. Witnesses said a Toyota pickup truck tried to pass through the gate of a police station in the town of Beledweyne, near the Ethiopian border, but the truck was blocked by African Union forces. The attackers then detonated explosives inside the vehicle. After the explosion, witnesses said, armed Shabab fighters entered the station and engaged in a shootout with the police. A Somali government spokesman, Abdirahman Omar Osman, said that in all, 11 officers and 7 civilians were killed in the attack, along with 10 militants who died either in the explosion or in the ensuing gun battle. A spokesman for the Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack. Just two months ago, the group said it was behind the deadly siege at the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, which left more than 60 people dead and thrust the Somali militants back into focus as a dangerous, cross-border threat. International efforts to combat the group have only escalated since then. The United States military carried out a missile strike against a top Shabab operative in Somalia last month. Shortly thereafter, the Kenyan military also conducted airstrikes against a militant training camp run by the group. Last week, the United Nations Security Council authorized an increase of more than 4,000 peacekeepers to aid in the fight against the Shabab, which will bring the total number of African peacekeepers in Somalia to more than 22,000 while expanding logistical support for the force. The scene Tuesday was reminiscent of a devastating attack on the United Nations compound in Mogadishu in June, in which armed gunmen stormed the building after a bomb blast in a pickup truck. The assault on the police station came just a month after the Shabab attacked a cafe in Beledweyne frequented by African Union soldiers. One witness to Tuesday’s attack, Abdi Ali, said he saw at least 10 bodies inside the police station. Another witness, Abdullahi Mose, said he saw at least four other bodies outside the police station killed by the explosion of the truck. The Shabab rose to power as a nationalist movement resisting the United States-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 . It claimed control of large areas of the country, including Mogadishu, but Somali troops and African Union forces have forced it back in recent years. Both African Union peacekeepers and Somali forces “have paid a heavy price for their brave role in stabilizing Somalia,” President Hassan Sheik Mohamud said in a statement after the attack. “We are making great progress while our enemies are on the back foot and reduced to sporadic and self-defeating attacks with no regard to life,” he said. A spokesman for the Shabab, Abdiaziz Abu Musab, said in a telephone interview that the attackers “were told to enter the building and basically took over the building and there were a lot of casualties.” Mr. Musab said 18 African Union soldiers from Djibouti and 23 Somali officers were killed but no civilians. The Shabab often give higher death tolls in the wake of such attacks than the numbers cited by Somali or African Union officials. “Whenever we get a chance to attack anytime, we’re going to do it,” Mr. Musab said. “There’s an enemy in the area. This is our country. This is our land. We have to banish them.” | Al Shabab;Somalia;Bombs;Terrorism;Attacks on Police |
ny0061340 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2014/01/05 | A Review of ‘Land of the Rising Sun: Art of Japan’ at Hofstra | “Land of the Rising Sun: Art of Japan,” the current exhibition at the David Filderman Gallery of Hofstra University Museum , does not lack for ambition. Its 41 works, all from the museum’s permanent collection, explore the cultural evolution of Japan from the 16th to the 20th century. But the idea for the show had to do with practical considerations as well as with the curatorial urge to assemble and enlighten, according to Karen T. Albert, associate director of exhibitions and collections. Ms. Albert included one of the show’s hanging scrolls in a different exhibition in 2012. “And I thought, wow, that scroll looks amazing in this case. It fit perfectly,” said Ms. Albert, who led a recent tour of the show alongside Beth E. Levinthal, the museum’s executive director. “The idea sort of germinated that we could show off a lot of scrolls in this space.” Other reasons to focus on the art of Japan also germinated, Ms. Levinthal said. “There’s a growing demographic of Japanese and other Asian communities in our area,” she said. “And because of the nature of our collection, we can really focus on the different cultural aspects of the world in a strong and powerful way. We thought it was time to address Japan.” The Hofstra University Museum’s permanent collection includes 5,000 works from six continents. The diversity stems from donors “who either collected from those regions of the world, or who know that we have works from those regions and wanted to add to it,” said Ms. Levinthal. Around 150 pieces in the collection are of Japanese origin. The 41 chosen for the show were selected both for their quality and for how effectively they illustrate Japan’s artistic evolution, Ms. Levinthal said. “Japan was a fairly isolated island nation for a very long time,” she said. The exhibition shows how, “over centuries, through other nations coming into their space, they’ve interpreted these influences from the outside, and assimilated them, and made them their own,” Ms. Levinthal said. That includes the hanging scrolls, or kakemono, some more than six feet tall, that fit so well in the gallery’s broad glass case. The show displays seven, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. “The format of the scrolls comes from China. The Chinese version came with a lot of text, which was Buddhist scripture. That’s how they carried the religion around with them,” Ms. Albert said. “But the Japanese reinterpreted. They developed it as an art form by adding imagery and making them much more visual.” Three dominant themes emerged in the Japanese scroll paintings, Ms. Albert said: animals, women and landscapes. Examples of each, such as a haboku-style horse painting from the 18th century, are included in the case. So is a wall text panel that instructs visitors how to “read” the pieces. While the scrolls have attracted the most visitor attention since the show opened at the end of September, a series of 19th-century woodblock prints (ukiyo-e, in Japanese) are also drawing appreciation for their vivid colors. “A lot of people have seen Japanese woodblock prints from the same era. But for whatever reason — maybe they were in a family collection, maybe they weren’t well cared for — they don’t look as fresh as these,” Ms. Levinthal said. Pleasing aesthetics aside, the woodblocks also illustrate the values of the Japanese Edo period (1615-1868), when the popularity of the prints soared. “This was the time of the shogun and the samurai,” Ms. Albert said. “There was a certain stability, a growing middle class. Woodblock prints were generated fairly inexpensively, for people to have in their homes. They were not high art. If you wanted high art, you got a scroll painting.” Themes of the 14 woodblock prints by seven artists hanging in the show include theater, beautiful women and landscapes. The theater-themed prints are akin to modern-day dorm-room posters, Ms. Albert said, in that the Japanese “were depicting their celebrities, popular actors from Kabuki theater.” “Art of Japan” also includes several wood sculptures. Warriors celebrated in 16th- and 17th-century Japan are represented through carvings such as one of Marishi-ten, a deity and fierce combatant. Despite Marishi-ten’s dangerous-looking appearance in sculpture form — he is perched on boar back, his arsenal of weapons attached — “he was the bringer of light in Japanese mythology,” said Ms. Albert. A sculpture that may be more familiar is the museum’s pair of Shishi, or guardian lions. “Shishi were the guardians of the temple,” said Ms. Albert. The exhibition’s pair dates to the 17th century. Lacquered masks and ceramics, including a 19th-century glazed bottle Ms. Albert believes was once a sake vessel, are part of the show, too. But the breadth of objects may be best represented by a pair of 16th-century iron tsuba — the traditional decorative finials between the sheath of a sword and its handle. “People are surprised by the quality of works we have,” Ms. Levinthal said. “You don’t often find pieces as rare as these at a Long Island institution.” | Art;Museum;Hofstra;Japan;Long Island;Karen T Albert;Beth E Levinthal |
ny0141763 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
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| 2008/11/29 | Tennessee’s Bench Players Too Much for Georgetown | Tennessee came at Georgetown in waves. The 12th-ranked Volunteers rallied past No. 21 Georgetown, 90-78, on Friday in the semifinals of the Old Spice Classic in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Tyler Smith’s 21 points led four players in double figures, and Tennessee’s reserves outscored Georgetown’s by 37-12. “Our five are good, but our 10 are what makes us better,” Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl said. “We go to the bench and we don’t fall off. That’s what helps in tournament play.” Pearl will be seeking his 400th career victory Sunday when the Volunteers (5-0) play Gonzaga for the championship. Chris Wright had 18 points for the Hoyas (3-1), who had five players in double figures. Cameron Tatum, a substitute, made 5 of 6 3-point attempts and finished with 17 points for the Volunteers, who rallied from a 9-point deficit in the last 10 minutes. MICHIGAN ST. 94, OKLA. ST. 79 Raymar Morgan scored 29 points as No. 5 Michigan State (3-1) rebounded from its first loss with a convincing win in a losers’ bracket game at the Old Spice Classic. Terrel Harris scored 21 for Oklahoma State (4-2). DUKE 95, DUQUESNE 72 Lance Thomas scored a career-high 21 points to help No. 7 Duke rout visiting Duquesne. The Blue Devils (7-0), who had not shot better than 48.5 percent this season, shot a season-high 54.7 percent. GONZAGA 81, MARYLAND 59 Josh Heytvelt had 22 points for No. 9 Gonzaga (4-0) in the semifinals of the Old Spice Classic. Greivis Vasquez had 16 points for Maryland (4-1). VILLANOVA 64, TOWSON 47 Scottie Reynolds scored 14 points and Dante Cunningham and Antonio Pena each had 12 for No. 20 Villanova (5-0) in the Philly Classic. MARQUETTE 73, N. IOWA 43 Wesley Matthews scored 17 points and No. 15 Marquette used a 20-0 first-half run to rout Northern Iowa in the Chicago Invitational Challenge. IN OTHER GAMES Jeff Teague scored 29 points, leading No. 19 Wake Forest to an 82-79 win against Texas El-Paso in the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif. ... Cole Aldrich had a career-high 23 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lift No. 22 Kansas to its 27th straight home victory, 85-53 against Coppin State. Women NORTH CAROLINA 98, PACIFIC 62 Italee Lucas scored 25 points for No. 2 North Carolina in the Junkanoo Jam in Freeport, Bahamas. Jessica Breland added 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Tar Heels (7-0). Jasmine Dana scored 18 points for Pacific (1-2). CALIFORNIA 68, TEXAS TECH 54 Ashley Walker scored 30 points to help No. 3 California rout Texas Tech (4-2) in the Paradise Jam in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. California (5-0) has won its first five games for only the second time in program history. STANFORD 78, PURDUE 70 Jayne Appel scored 8 consecutive points in overtime to lift No. 5 Stanford (4-1) over No. 19 Purdue (3-1) in the Waikiki Beach Marriott Classic in Honolulu. Appel was 2 for 11 in the first half, but finished with 26 points. BAYLOR 62, VILLANOVA 57 Jessica Morrow scored 13 of her 17 points in the first half, and No. 6 Baylor (6-0) edged Villanova in the Paradise Jam. IN OTHER GAMES Takia Starks scored 20 points for No. 8 Texas A&M in a 61-57 win against Penn State in the first round of the Timeout 4 H.I.V./AIDS tournament in Malibu, Calif. ... Marissa Coleman scored 17 points to help No. 10 Maryland top Illinois, 79-52, in the Caribbean Challenge in Cancun, Mexico. ... Angel McCoughtry led No. 7 Louisville with 28 points in a 73-56 win against Alabama in Reno, Nev. | Basketball;College Athletics |
ny0240747 | [
"world"
]
| 2010/12/15 | Holbrooke Death Leaves Washington Scrambling | WASHINGTON — When President Obama turned to Richard C. Holbrooke during a White House meeting on Afghanistan last year, Mr. Holbrooke spoke gravely of the historic challenge the two men faced, likening it to when Clark M. Clifford advised Lyndon B. Johnson about what to do in Vietnam. “Richard,” an impatient Mr. Obama interrupted him, “do people really talk like that?” That strained exchange helps explain why Mr. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was an awkward fit in the Obama administration. A man of high drama and an acute sense of his own role, he ruffled feathers in a White House that prides itself on team-playing and a lack of drama. With Mr. Holbrooke’s death on Monday, the administration has lost one of its most resonant voices, just as it completes its latest review of its Afghan war strategy. His death confronts the White House and State Department with some difficult questions, starting with how to replace a larger-than-life statesman in a post that was created for him and which he built from scratch. For now, Mr. Holbrooke’s deputy, Frank J. Ruggiero, will replace him on an acting basis, said the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. But Mr. Ruggiero, a well-regarded diplomat who was previously the senior civilian official in southern Afghanistan, is unlikely to be a permanent successor. “We’re not going to pretend that you can easily replace someone of Richard Holbrooke’s stature or personality,” Mr. Crowley said. “But, you know, we will continue to pursue the policy as Richard would want us to do.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to keep together the team that Mr. Holbrooke recruited, which includes more than 40 diplomats, intelligence analysts, military officers, and experts from the Treasury, agriculture, and other departments. They function as a sort of diplomatic SWAT team, operating out of cramped offices near the State Department cafeteria. Mr. Holbrooke liked to point out that many countries named their own special representatives for Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the State Department on Monday, Mr. Obama paid tribute to Mr. Holbrooke as “simply one of the giants of American foreign policy.” His spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Tuesday that the White House wanted to focus on celebrating his diplomatic achievements rather than on who should replace him. For all the encomiums, though, Mr. Holbrooke was on tenuous footing with the White House. He was left off Air Force One on Mr. Obama’s last two trips to Afghanistan and was increasingly marginalized in policy debates. He held on to his job, several officials said, mainly because Mrs. Clinton protected him. Mr. Holbrooke, like other senior American officials, had an up-and-down relationship with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke insisted that those tensions were overblown, and after Mr. Holbrooke fell ill on Friday, Mr. Karzai telephoned his wife, Kati Marton, to offer best wishes for his recovery. Some of Mr. Holbrooke’s colleagues hoped that the negotiating skills he displayed in brokering the Dayton peace accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, could be put to use in the reconciliation talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But Mr. Holbrooke deflected the idea, warning that any settlement must be led by Afghans. Instead, Mr. Holbrooke turned much of his attention to Pakistan, raising funds for flood relief and organizing high-level meetings that brought together officials from Pakistan and the United States. Mr. Holbrooke also championed issues, like stopping the illicit flow of ammonium nitrate from Pakistan to Afghanistan, where insurgents use it as an ingredient to make roadside explosives. His enthusiasm for helping Afghan farmers find alternatives to poppy cultivation, notably pomegranates, led Mrs. Clinton to dub the New York City-born diplomat “Farmer Holbrooke.” “His pushing of the civilian surge, and his emphasis on agriculture, gave reality to something which had been theoretical,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence official who ran the administration’s first Afghanistan review. Mr. Riedel also credited Mr. Holbrooke with popularizing the idea of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a linked problem. Now, however, Mr. Riedel said, the administration ought to reconsider the idea of an emissary for the two countries, saying it wrongly excludes India. In his forthcoming book, “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad,” Mr. Riedel wrote that “Pakistan cannot be effectively assisted without dealing with the issue that dominates Pakistan’s strategic calculus: as always, India.” For the administration, the biggest challenge may not be bureaucratic but personal: finding another Richard Holbrooke. Even when he was heavily sedated, his intensity was on vivid display, in the wry banter he had with his doctors as he was being wheeled into emergency surgery for a torn aorta last Friday. Told that he needed to relax, Mr. Holbrooke said he could not because he was “worried about Afghanistan and Pakistan,” according to an account given by Mr. Crowley on Tuesday. One doctor told Mr. Holbrooke that they would take care of Afghanistan and Pakistan while he was undergoing surgery. Mr. Holbrooke shot back, “Yeah, see if you can take care of that, including ending the war.” | Holbrooke Richard C;United States International Relations;Obama Barack;Afghanistan;Afghanistan War (2001- ) |
ny0060522 | [
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
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| 2014/08/24 | College Football Preview: Florida’s Will Muschamp Is on the Hot Seat | GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It is so hot at football practice here in August that even the referees wear shorts. Partly because of the sweltering weather, Florida Coach Will Muschamp, who is facing enormous pressure to succeed, was persuaded to move most camp workouts to early morning or late afternoon. After all, health is a top priority in Gainesville this season given the experience of the last, when more than two dozen Gators were injured. Most significant, the team’s starting quarterback, Jeff Driskel, broke his right leg in the third game, and Florida finished 4-8, ending the season on a seven-game skid that included losses at home to Vanderbilt and Georgia Southern. When Florida last had a record that poor — an 0-10-1 campaign in 1979 — Muschamp was an 8-year-old Gators die-hard living near Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, well before the future coach Steve Spurrier christened it the Swamp. For Muschamp, 43, this is his highest-stakes season yet. It is the fourth since he was hired to fix what his predecessor, Urban Meyer, who won two national championships with Florida, called a broken program. Muschamp and Meyer are not exactly on friendly terms, but even Meyer could sympathize with Muschamp’s predicament. “I wish them well,” Meyer, now Ohio State’s coach, said last month. “I hope they stay healthy.” Muschamp may have one of the most enviable jobs in football, but he is also at the top of most everyone’s list of coaches on the hot seat — those likely to be fired should the season not go well. A savant on defense, he has coached that side of the ball at Auburn; under Nick Saban at Louisiana State and with the Miami Dolphins; and at Texas, which announced that he would eventually succeed Mack Brown as head coach. (Muschamp left for Florida before Brown stepped down.) He has all the tools for success and few excuses for going 4-8 again. “If this offense doesn’t take major strides in 2014, not only will Florida not compete for an SEC title, but Muschamp could find himself out of work,” Athlon Sports wrote in its season preview . On message boards, fans share similar sentiments with less politesse. At the Swamp restaurant near campus, a digital clock counts down to kickoff — 25 days 20 hours 52 minutes 10.4 seconds, it read recently — also ticking away how much time Muschamp has left to get it right. While last season seemed to end on a forgiving note, with major programs like Michigan (Brady Hoke) and Nebraska (Bo Pelini) choosing to retain their embattled coaches, that is definitely not the norm around college football. “I don’t think there’s an un-hot seat,” said Robert Boland, a sports management professor at New York University. Image Injuries decimated Muschamp’s Florida team last season, costing the Gators their starting quarterback, among others. But Muschamp said injuries were only part of the problem in a 4-8 finish. Credit Rob C. Witzel for The New York Times Part of the problem is that fans can point to the nearly instant success that Saban and Gus Malzahn achieved as coaches at Alabama and Auburn and to Pete Carroll’s speedy resuscitation of Southern California a decade ago. Higher revenues also raised the temperature of coaching seats, Boland said, with universities more willing to buy out contracts. (Muschamp’s salary is nearly $3 million a year, but if he is fired without cause, his contract will net him $2 million for each year afterward through the 2017 season.) If a coach does not immediately flourish, he encounters a nagging paradox: The things he might do to win the next game are not always the same things he would do to build a sustainable program. Does he install a new offense that will take a year to jell? Start a promising but raw quarterback over a milquetoast veteran? Jeremy Foley, Florida’s athletic director, denied there was a “magic number” of victories Muschamp needed to reach to keep his job. Instead, the Gators’ 2014 campaign, which includes tough games against Alabama and Louisiana State, will be a fascinating test case in balancing the competing imperatives of winning now and cultivating a sustainable program. “Sometimes you hire a coach, and you win the press conference — everyone says that’s the greatest hire ever,” Foley said. “We’re not in the business of worrying about the press conference. We’re in the business of worrying where we’re going to be five years from now.” Pointing out his office window toward campus, he added, “Nobody wants to hear that five-year timetable.” MUSCHAMP HAS HIS own history of injuries, including the one he sustained last year when he punched a chalkboard during halftime of a 19-14 loss to South Carolina. While playing left field for Darlington School in Rome, Ga. — where his father, Larry, a former high school football coach, was the lower school principal — he collided with the shortstop on a pop-up, fracturing his tibia and fibula. As a freshman walk-on at Georgia — on the team’s first day in pads, no less — he broke his collarbone. Afterward, his parents found him lying in his dorm, forlorn. His father told him: “It’s O.K. Something good will come of this.” Larry Muschamp was right. Being sidelined for the year because of his collarbone gave Will Muschamp time to allow his leg to heal further. By his senior year, he was a Georgia captain. Now, Muschamp enters his first season during which he cannot consult with his father, who died in May. “You’d have a hard time finding anyone who didn’t like him,” Muschamp said of his father, who played football at North Carolina. “He said what was on his mind, but he had a certain way of saying it. Most people like that — like me — rub a lot of people the wrong way.” Muschamp is the youngest of three boys, five years younger than the middle brother, Pat, who played at Army and has a son who is being recruited by several Division I programs. Muschamp’s oldest brother, Mike, is a high school football coach in Atlanta. Mike Muschamp said Will picked fights with his older brothers as though he were their size. That fiery demeanor later earned Will Muschamp the nickname Coach Boom; his sideline chest-bumps with players have been known to bloody his face. But several people described a calmer individual, with people skills reminiscent of his father’s. Image Kurt Roper, Muschamp's new offensive coordinator, once coached Eli Manning at Mississippi. Credit Rob C. Witzel for The New York Times “Last year, when I was coming in as a freshman, he wasn’t yelling at me for stuff I was doing wrong; he was teaching me,” cornerback Vernon Hargreaves said. Now, Hargreaves added, “he knows I know the defense, so he can yell at me more.” Dan Quinn, the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive coordinator, who worked under Muschamp for two seasons at Florida, said: “Will has a really unique ability to connect with coaches and players. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s going to have his team tight and close.” THE CONSENSUS AUTOPSY of last season is that Florida lost many key players (above all, its quarterback) and that was the ballgame. Florida still had a top defense — eighth in the Football Bowl Subdivision in yards per game and 15th in points per game. “Last year, I said the most important player in the SEC was Jeff Driskel,” said Gary Danielson, a lead college football analyst for CBS. “When he got hurt, you could see it being a disastrous season.” But Muschamp had a slightly different take. “I think if you just blame it on injuries, you’re naïve,” he said. The team, he added, “needed to be more desperate.” In that context, it is hard not to notice that Florida actually won the game in which Driskel left or that the caliber of Florida’s offensive players has slipped during Muschamp’s tenure, with only four being picked in the last three N.F.L. drafts. Whether the program used the time afforded by those injuries — the lost season, the off-season of reflection — to improve in a long-term manner, the way Muschamp did as a player at Georgia, will be seen in the coming weeks. The biggest change Muschamp made was to his offense. Looking around the Southeastern Conference, Muschamp saw more spread and fast-paced offenses. Dallas Cowboys Coach Jason Garrett, who was the quarterbacks coach for the Dolphins the year Muschamp was there, explained to Muschamp that it was advantageous for college quarterbacks to run more plays from the shotgun — that it let them see the plays and that it was what they were used to, from high school and endless summer seven-on-sevens. Muschamp tapped Kurt Roper, previously Duke’s offensive coordinator, to install such a system. “Speed and space,” Roper, who earned his stripes as a quarterback whisperer, his most famous charge being Eli Manning at Mississippi, told his passers at a recent meeting. “Speed and space.” Roper’s goal is to get the ball into the hands of players who can make defenders miss in the open field. The outcome, it is hoped, will be explosive plays, defined as runs of 10 or more yards and passes of 16 or more. Perhaps the most-used word at the meeting was “bubble” — a type of screen play for a speedy receiver. It helps that Roper’s offenses are relatively simple. A play designed to be a handoff, for example, will include one receiver running a route for a bubble screen and another running a hitch; if the quarterback sees a cornerback or a safety cheating toward the run, he will throw a pass to one of the receivers without even calling an audible. From there, it is speed and space. THE DOOR TO Florida’s football office complex requires a key fob. A side door in Muschamp’s personal office, however, lacks such security and opens behind the desk of Foley, the athletic director. Image Muschamp, the son of a high school football coach, grew up a Gators fan. Credit Sally Muschamp Muschamp’s job may not be safe, but Foley’s is. He started as an intern in Florida’s athletics department in 1976 and became the A.D. in 1992. In addition to presiding over the football team’s three national titles, Foley has kept the accomplished basketball coach Billy Donovan in Gainesville while leading a department that excels in sports like volleyball, baseball and swimming. Foley said he expected Muschamp to be Florida’s football coach for “a long, long time.” “He’s a winner,” Foley said. But Foley’s trigger finger has been prone to itchiness before: A decade ago, Ron Zook, who had been on Spurrier’s staff in the 1990s, was sent on his way after three underwhelming but winning seasons as head coach. “I’ve been here long enough to know when things are totally going south,” Foley said. “You get a sense. You get a feel. I didn’t feel that a year ago, even though it wasn’t what we wanted, and I certainly don’t feel that way now.” Muschamp said he valued the closeness of their relationship — the literal open-door policy, with Foley checking in every day. “You’re graded on Saturday afternoon as a coach,” Muschamp said. “But when you see how far the program has come, from his standpoint, and then you also understand the circumstances we were under, that makes the decision he made make sense.” Football has extremely small data sets for judging teams, though. Coaches might buy into Vince Lombardi’s dictum that teams make their own luck because to believe the alternative is too horrifying — admitting that they are substantially powerless. Still, wins remain the currency. Those around Muschamp are aware of how precarious the situation could turn. At the quarterbacks meeting, Roper spoke about his graduate assistant Matthew Symmes, who had come with him from Duke. “Symmes has done more for me than I’ll ever be able to do for him,” Roper said. There was an awkward pause and some laughter because Symmes, sitting at the end of the table, quietly compiling notes, clearly needs Roper to help him climb the coaching ladder. But Roper quickly reminded those in attendance that they were all on the hot seat — not just Muschamp. “Everyone in this room’s got to play good, or Symmes and I will be packing our bags and going down the road,” Roper said. “Wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Symmes?” Even with that in mind, Muschamp is striving to balance the counter-motives: winning now versus winning in the future, doing everything you can while acknowledging there is only so much you can do. “I’m really worried about pleasing Jeremy Foley, Bernie Machen”— Florida’s president — “my wife, my mom and my family,” Muschamp said, adding, “I spend zero time worrying about anything other than what I can control.” | College football;University of Florida;Will Muschamp;Urban Meyer |
ny0097148 | [
"business"
]
| 2015/06/05 | Chief of State Farm Is to Step Down | State Farm said that its chief operating officer, Michael Tipsord, would become its next chief executive, succeeding Ed Rust Jr., who has led the private company since 1985. State Farm, an insurance and financial company, said in a news release that Mr. Tipsord would take over in September. Mr. Rust, 64, will remain chairman of the company’s board. “Michael has a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges emerging in our rapidly changing marketplace,” Mr. Rust told employees on Thursday. Mr. Tipsord joined the company in 1988, and became a vice president in 2002. State Farm has about 65,000 employees and is ranked No. 41 on the 2014 Fortune 500 list of largest companies. | State Farm Insurance;Michael Tipsord;Edward B Rust Jr;Appointments and Executive Changes |
ny0106034 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2012/04/27 | Newt Gingrich Is Quitting the Race (Just Give Him a Little Time) | MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Newt Gingrich arrived at the Penske Racing plant here on Thursday accompanied by a large security detail protecting him from a big threat — of rain. Otherwise, Mr. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and presumptive campaign dropout, pretty much had the run of the place. He was unbothered by persuadable voters, supporters or media fuss. His staff consisted of a young traveling aide. He appeared exhausted, his hair sticking up in the back as he walked with a weary stutter step — literally limping to the finish. Yet Mr. Gingrich still retained a sense of childlike fascination that has been as much a hallmark of his campaign as his bombastic statements, staff dysfunction and debate star turns. “I am learning about cars,” Mr. Gingrich explained to a lone reporter on the fringe of an entourage that otherwise included local Republican officials, Penske executives and about 12 people wearing earpieces. “It’s pretty amazing,” he marveled. “Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve learned something new and different about how complex this country is. This is part of the reason we’re doing this.” The rest of his rationale for still campaigning is unclear, especially since he indicated after getting trounced in five more primaries this week that he would leave the race. “The campaign will go bye-bye,” he said definitively at a luncheon here Thursday. But not just yet. He had committed himself to several events in North Carolina, he said. He wanted to honor those and not disappoint anyone who had planned to see him. What’s a few more days? In financial terms, it costs taxpayers about $40,000 a day to pay for Mr. Gingrich’s Secret Service detail. His campaign was $4.3 million in debt as of the end of March, according to filings. There is also the intangible cost to Mr. Gingrich’s stature and the threat to party unity behind the inevitable nominee, Mitt Romney — whom, Mr. Gingrich says, he will support and campaign for. Mr. Gingrich seems not to care in the least about the stature and party unity thing. On Thursday, he cared about cars. “This is absolutely astonishing,” he said, transfixed while caressing a gray engine block in a prototyping lab. He walked slowly across a factory floor that resembled one of those blinding white rooms in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The place was largely vacant, as many employees had decamped to Brazil for a big race this weekend. Mr. Gingrich gave a thumbs-up to a guy driving by on a maintenance cart and popped his head into an office. “Hi, I’m Newt,” he said to the startled occupant, Felicia Thomas. “I know who you are,” she said. He lingered, in no rush at all. One of the quirky indulgences of modern campaigns is that candidates announce their intent to run for president on multiple occasions — essentially, stunts to milk media attention. They announce the formation of exploratory committees, announce that they intend to run, announce that they are actually running, etc. Ever the innovator, Mr. Gingrich has applied that ritual to quitting. While he has had no realistic chance of overtaking Mr. Romney for several weeks, he maintained until recently that he would stay in the race all the way to the Republican National Convention . But at some point, Mr. Gingrich started referring to the race in the past tense. He shed nearly all of his staff members. He pinned his hopes on Tuesday’s primary in tiny Delaware, saying that he would reassess if he lost — which he did, by almost 30 points. On Wednesday, Mr. Gingrich indicated that he would suspend the campaign next week with a speech. He will offer some form of official endorsement of Mr. Romney. A familiar analogy is to the Japanese soldiers who turned up in remote areas long after August 1945 and had no idea that World War II had ended. But Mr. Gingrich knows that his war is over, and while not exactly fighting, he is not surrendering yet, either. His wife, Callista, was appearing at events nearby. How would he characterize his current status? “I am a citizen,” he said. “And I will continue to be a citizen.” (As a practical matter, Mr. Gingrich is a citizen who is being protected by that taxpayer-supported Secret Service detail. His campaign spokesman, R. C. Hammond, said, “It is at the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security when they will cease protecting the candidate.” That was expected to occur Thursday night.) Befitting his citizenship, Mr. Gingrich then headed to a lunch with fellow citizens at the Charles Mack Citizen Center in downtown Mooresville, a few doors from the Anything’s Possible tattoo parlor. He pulled up in a caravan of four S.U.V.’s, two North Carolina state trooper patrol cars and other unmarked vehicles. About 20 people showed up inside, many of them the same local dignitaries and party officials who were at the Penske plant. Again, Mr. Gingrich appeared completely unbothered. “It’s a small enough group that we can really chat,” he said, and proceeded to do nearly all of the chatting for close to an hour. He stood in front of a Gingrich 2012 sign and delivered the same kind of Newt-ian stemwinder that he used to deliver in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. That was back in the zestful days when Mr. Gingrich suddenly found himself at the center of the national conversation. Back when important voters were still listening to him. At the citizen center Thursday, Mr. Gingrich zigzagged forth on a diverse set of topics: the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner , bladder transplants, his fascination with the human brain, shale gas, the threat of “cyberpenetration,” his visit Wednesday to two impressive charter schools and a few other things. Near the end, he mentioned something about Mr. Romney. But enough about him. Mr. Gingrich had some final points to make before departing to a small but hearty standing ovation. He said he planned to spend the next few months staying active as a citizen, doing what he could to defeat President Obama. He planned to spend next week working the phones, thanking donors and no doubt hitting some of them up to help him retire his campaign debt. He then has to make some money himself. “It’s been a long and expensive two years,” he said. “But it’s been fun.” | Gingrich Newt;Presidential Election of 2012;Primaries and Caucuses;Republican Party;Romney Mitt |
ny0024714 | [
"sports",
"rugby"
]
| 2013/08/19 | Back to the Drawing Board for Australia | WELLINGTON — Ewen McKenzie’s honeymoon period as Australia’s coach lasted all of 80 minutes as his side was thrashed, 47-29, by New Zealand in the opening match of the Rugby Championship. Hopes had been high heading into the test in Sydney that, under McKenzie, the Wallabies would finally end years of Bledisloe Cup misery against their arch-rivals. The two countries battle for the cup every year over three tests, two of which also count as Rugby Championship matches. Australia last had the Bledisloe Cup in 2002, and it must now win two matches in New Zealand — in Wellington next weekend and in Dunedin on Oct. 19 — to reclaim the trophy from the All Blacks. But based on the Wallabies’ performance at ANZ Stadium on Saturday, that looks like a forlorn hope. They were outscored six tries to two by a ruthless New Zealand side that finished just 3 points shy of the record 50-point haul it got at the same venue in 2003. The result left McKenzie, who replaced the New Zealander Robbie Deans after Australia failed to win the British and Irish Lions series in June, with plenty to ponder heading into the Wellington test on Saturday. Australia’s rookie flyhalf, Matt Toomua, had a mixed debut. While he was solid enough on defense, he never really got his back line firing on attack. It was not until he was replaced by Quade Cooper for the final 18 minutes that the Wallabies’ attack became less predictable. McKenzie has promised a more entertaining and attacking style of rugby than the Wallabies showed in the final years of Deans’s reign. And there were glimpses of it. There was less kicking from the backs as they looked to keep the ball and try to find ways through the New Zealand defense. But the straight running — from forwards and backs — achieved little penetration, and attacking moves or changed angles to stretch the New Zealanders and create holes were few and far between. Center Adam Ashley-Cooper was the one exception for Australia. His hard-running style got him across the gain line a couple of times. The first in the opening quarter should have resulted in a try, but there were no support runners. The back three, Jesse Mogg, James O’Connor and Israel Folau, were also underwhelming. Mogg, in his first test start, had a difficult match. He struggled with his clearing kicks, failing to get much height or distance. Another kick that missed touch eventually resulted in Richie McCaw’s try for New Zealand. Mogg’s defense was also susceptible, and his missed tackle on Conrad Smith let the New Zealand center in for the All Blacks’ fourth try. Folau was largely anonymous on the right wing. Play just never seemed to go his way, and when it did, he was quickly wrapped up by New Zealand defenders. O’Connor’s defense was also shaky. In his first game on the wing after a short, unsuccessful stint at flyhalf against the Lions, O’Connor was often out of position. He got sucked in early when All Blacks winger Ben Smith got the first of his three tries, and McCaw’s five-pointer was also in O’Connor’s corner. Australian mistakes contributed to every All Blacks try. In addition to the errors by Mogg and O’Connor, Christian Leali’ifano had a clearing kick charged for Aaron Cruden’s try. A poor scrum by the Wallabies allowed New Zealand blindside flanker Steven Luatua to steal the ball and set up Ben Smith for his second try. Then in the closing stages of the match, the Wallabies lost the ball at a ruck, and Smith scooped it up to race away for his third to hammer the final nail in the coffin. “You’ve got to respect possession,” McKenzie said after the match. “We had possession there at times where we did some good things. We made a bunch of line breaks, but we didn’t treasure the ball enough, and they are very good on the counterattack. “We knew that before the game that they score a lot of points from turnovers,” he said. “We didn’t control the ball, and they were able to play and do some of the things they are good at, and you pay a price for that.” Australia has certainly paid the price in its last two tests. It gave up 41 points in the decisive final test against the Lions, and now 47 against the New Zealanders. “You go back to the drawing board, you can’t be happy with the score line,” McKenzie said. “There’s stuff, there’s little processes that we can tighten up. “I’ve been around the rugby scene a long time, and you’ll see 70-point turnarounds in seven days,” he said. “We’re not going to sit here and get bogged down and spin our wheels. We’ll concentrate on the positives and tidy up some of the things we need to.” One positive was the performance of openside flanker Michael Hooper. He competed well at the breakdown against McCaw, who was playing in his first test after a six-month sabbatical. Hooper also gathered an All Blacks overthrow at a lineout to set up Will Genia for his 70-meter run to the try line. That, and O’Connor’s 80th-minute consolation try, was the only time the All Blacks’ try line was breached. For All Blacks Coach Steve Hansen, the only concerns will be a few errant lineouts and injuries to Luke Romano (groin) and Cruden (bruised knee). But he vowed that there would be no complacency from his players, despite their having one hand on the Bledisloe Cup. “There’s still some stuff we need to tidy up, and until we win two games, we don’t own the Bledisloe Cup,” he said. “I was obviously very, very happy with the performance. It’s not every day that you can come here and get 40-odd points.” Argentina joined Australia in getting a reality check in its opening Rugby Championship match against South Africa; South Africa ran in nine tries in the 73-13 thumping at Soccer City in Johannesburg. | Rugby;Tri-Nations Rugby;New Zealand;Australia |
ny0065702 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2014/06/09 | Fatal Encounter Near Drunken Monkey Is Under Investigation | Closing time was approaching early Sunday morning at the Drunken Monkey, a Staten Island bar with a reality television claim to fame, when a group of stragglers began fighting. As a bouncer tried to throw the group out around 3:30 a.m., one of the bar’s weekend regulars, a 46-year-old man from Senegal, moved to help. In the chaos, a punch connected. The patron, Abdou Cisse, fell backward, his head fatally striking the pavement on Forest Avenue, the police said. He died there a short time later. “One punch, one punch,” said the owner of the bar, Sallyann Lombardi. “He was my friend. He was a good friend and a wonderful customer.” The nature of the death — a strike followed by a fatal fall — recalled a similar sudden death in Union Square in September, that of a 62-year-old man who hit his head on the pavement after a random punch by a stranger . It rattled those at the well-known Staten Island bar, made famous by Angela Raiola, a.k.a. Big Ang of the reality TV show “Mob Wives,” who regularly appears there. “We’re all shaken up; we’ve got police all over,” said Ms. Lombardi, who is Ms. Raiola’s cousin. “I’m sick to my stomach.” She said Mr. Cisse could be seen most Friday and Saturday nights, arriving by cab and leaving in one as well. “I know he worked hard,” she said, adding that he would often tell her, referring to the bar, “This is my home.” Ms. Raiola was “heartbroken” by Mr. Cisse’s death, a spokeswoman for Ms. Raiola, Robyn Santiago, said. Before the deadly altercation early Sunday, the bar had been relatively slow, Ms. Lombardi said. The police said the fight appeared to involve at least four people; it was not immediately clear why it began. What is clear is that Mr. Cisse tried to break it up. Detectives were searching for two suspects in their 20s who fled together in a dark-colored car, the police said. Elsewhere in the city, the police were searching for a gunman in Brooklyn who shot and killed a 21-year-old man with a recent history of drug and assault arrests and shot and wounded two teenage girls. The shooting erupted just before 1 a.m. at a barbecue in Bedford-Stuyvesant that had stretched into early Sunday morning, the police said. The two women, 17 and 19, were hospitalized in stable condition; the man, Cornell Clarke, died a short time after. In the Bronx, Dakim Blacknall, 25, was fatally shot around 6:30 p.m. on Saturday after he and his 20-year-old brother confronted a neighborhood man on the street and the man pulled a gun and began firing, the police said. The brothers ran and made it back to their apartment, on Creston Avenue in the Fordham section, but then Mr. Blacknall collapsed, from a gunshot wound to his back. He died a short time later at St. Barnabas Hospital. | Murders;Staten Island;Angela Raiola;NYC;Falling;bars,nightclubs;Assault |
ny0090399 | [
"business"
]
| 2015/09/24 | Starbucks Falls Short After Pledging Better Labor Practices | Last year, Starbucks vowed to provide store employees with more consistent schedules from week to week, and to post their schedules at least 10 days in advance. The company said it would stop asking workers to endure the sleep-depriving ritual known as a “clopening,” which requires them to shut down a store at night only to return early the next morning to help open it. But Starbucks has fallen short on these promises, according to interviews with five current or recent workers at several locations across the country. Most complained that they often receive their schedules one week or less in advance, and that the schedules vary substantially every few weeks. Two said their stores still practiced clopenings. The complaints were documented more widely in a report released on Wednesday by the Center for Popular Democracy , a nonprofit that works with community groups, which gathered responses from some 200 self-identified baristas in the United States through the website Coworker.org . “We’re the first to admit we have work to do,” said Jaime Riley, a company spokeswoman. “But we feel like we’ve made good progress, and that doesn’t align with what we’re seeing.” Ms. Riley maintained that all baristas now receive their schedules at least 10 days in advance. Starbucks, whose chief executive, Howard Schultz, has long presented the brand as involving its customers and employees in something more meaningful than a basic economic transaction, has drawn fire for its workplace practices. But its struggles to address the concerns of its employees also open a window into a much larger problem. In the last two years, the combination of a tight labor market and legal changes — from a rising minimum wage to fair-scheduling legislation that would discourage practices like clopenings — has raised labor costs for employers of low-skill workers in many parts of the country. To help companies navigate this new landscape, a number of academics and labor advocates have urged a so-called good-jobs or high road approach, in which companies pay workers higher wages and grant them more stable hours, then recover the costs through higher productivity and lower turnover. Even in service sectors where stores compete aggressively on price, “bad jobs are not a cost-driven necessity but a choice,” concluded Zeynep Ton, who teaches at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. “Investment in employees allows for excellent operational execution, which boosts sales and profits.” And yet, as Professor Ton is careful to point out, it is easy to underestimate the radical nature of the change required for a company to reinvent itself as a good-jobs employer, even when the jobs it provides are not necessarily so bad. The example of Starbucks illustrates the point. Some of the company’s actions reflect an impulse to treat its workers as more than mere cogs in a giant coffee-serving machine. Starbucks allows part-timers who work a minimum of 20 hours a week to buy into its health insurance plan after 90 days. In April, it pledged to pay the full cost of tuition for them and full-time workers who pursued an online degree at Arizona State University. And workers promoted to shift supervisor — about one for every four to eight baristas — typically earn a few dollars an hour more than minimum wage. On the question of scheduling, the company, like many large retail and food service operations, uses state-of-the-art software that forecasts store traffic and helps managers set staff levels accordingly, while trying to honor workers’ preferences regarding hours and availability. Charles DeWitt is vice president for business development at Kronos, one of the leading scheduling software makers, which has worked with Starbucks. He said that using the software to schedule workers three weeks in advance typically was not much less accurate than using it to schedule workers one week in advance. “The single best predictor of tomorrow is store demand a year ago, though other factors can come into play,” Mr. DeWitt said. “If it’s Monday, then you want to look at Monday this week a year ago.” (Mr. DeWitt and others involved with such software concede that there are exceptions, like stores that are growing or declining rapidly, and that predictions often get substantially better very close to the target date.) But there has long been a central obstacle to change: the incentives of store managers, who are encouraged by company policies to err on the side of understaffing. This makes it more difficult to build continuity into workers’ schedules from week to week. It often turns peak hours into an exhausting frenzy that crimps morale and drives workers away. “The mood lately has not been superpositive; they’ve been cutting labor pretty drastically,” said Matthew Haskins, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Seattle. “There are many days when we find ourselves incredibly — not even a skeletal staff, just short-staffed.” Working Anything but 9 to 5 Increasing numbers of low-income mothers and fathers are at the center of a new collision that pits workplace scheduling technology against the routines of parenting. Mr. Haskins said that his store’s manager received an allotment of labor hours from her supervisor, and that the manager frequently exceeded it. But in the last month or so, she announced that she would make an effort to stay within the allotment. “From what I understand, probably someone higher up said, ‘You need to stick to that,’ ” Mr. Haskins said. “I know it’s got her stressed out, too.” Benton Stokes, who managed two separate Starbucks stores in Murfreesboro, Tenn., between 2005 and 2008, described a similar dynamic. “We were given a certain number of labor hours, and we were supposed to schedule only that number in a given week,” Mr. Stokes said. “If I had to exceed my labor budget — and I was careful not to — I would have had to have a conversation” with the district manager. “If there were a couple of conversations, it would be a write-up,” he added. The understaffing ethos sometimes manifests itself in company policies. For example, Starbucks stores are not required to have assistant managers, and many do without them. Ciara Moran , who recently quit a job as a barista at a high-volume Starbucks in New Haven, Conn., complained of a “severe understaffing problem” that she blamed on high turnover and inadequate training. She partly attributed this to the store’s lack of an assistant manager. “We had issues that we’d try to take to her” — the store manager — “but she had so much on her plate we let it go,” Ms. Moran said. “Problems would escalate and become a big thing.” In other cases, the scheduling and staffing problems at Starbucks appear to arise from the way individual managers handle their tight labor budgets. Some of the baristas said that clopenings were virtually unheard-of at their stores, but LaTranese Sapp, a Starbucks barista in Lawrenceville, Ga., said clopenings occurred at her store because the manager trusted only a handful of workers to close, limiting scheduling options. Ms. Riley, the Starbucks spokeswoman, said the store’s scheduling software required at least eight hours between shifts, but that workers could close and open consecutively if the shifts were more than eight hours apart. There are alternatives to help avoid such results, according to Professor Ton’s research. One of the most promising is to create a mini work force of floating relief employees who call a central headquarters each morning, as the QuikTrip chain of convenience stores common in parts of the Midwest and South has done. Because store operations are standardized, relief employees can step in seamlessly. “If a worker gets sick, what happens is you’ve lost a quarter of your work force,” Professor Ton said of companies with small stores that lack such contingency plans. “Now everybody else has to scramble to get things done.” (Starbucks employees are often responsible for finding their own replacements when they are sick. “A lot of times when I’m really sick, it’s less work to work the shift than to call around everywhere,” said Kyle Weisse, an Atlanta barista.) Starbucks, which vowed to improve workers’ quality of life after The New York Times published an account of a barista’s erratic schedule in 2014, is far from the only chain that has faltered in the effort to adjust from low road to high road. In many cases, the imperative to minimize labor costs has been so deeply ingrained that it becomes difficult to sway managers, even when higher executives see the potential benefits. Marshall L. Fisher, an expert on retailing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, recalled working on a consulting assignment for a large retailer and identifying a few hundred stores where the company could benefit by adding labor. Executives signed onto the change, but managers essentially refused to execute it. “The managers were afraid to use their hours,” he said. “They were so used to being judged on ‘Did they stay within a budget?’” In many cases companies end up going out of business rather than adapting. Economists Daniel Aaronson, Eric French and Isaac Sorkin studied the response to large increases of the minimum wage in states like California, Illinois and Oregon in the 2000s. In most states, employment barely budged two years after the higher wage kicked in. But that masked dozens of suddenly uncompetitive stores that went under, and a roughly equal number of new stores that opened. The fact that the defunct stores were replaced by new ones suggests that, in principle, they could have evolved. But they simply were not capable of pulling it off. | Starbucks;Working Hours;Jobs;Minimum wage;Restaurant |
ny0172687 | [
"technology"
]
| 2007/11/24 | French Pact Aims to Fight Unauthorized Downloading | PARIS, Nov. 23 (Reuters) — Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web access under a new antipiracy system unveiled on Friday. The three-way pact among Internet service providers, the government and owners of film and music rights was drafted by a commission led by the chief executive of FNAC, a big music and film retailer in France. The industry has called for action against illicit downloads, which are cutting into its sales. Under the agreement, service providers will issue warning messages to customers downloading files illegally. If users ignore those messages, their accounts could be suspended or closed altogether. “We run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a speech endorsing the deal. He added that the Internet must not become a high-tech Wild West, “a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity. And on whose backs? On artists’ backs.” An independent authority, supervised by a judge, will be set up and put in charge of deciding when to issue electronic warning messages to Internet users. The deal also creates obligations for film and music companies to make their works available online more quickly and to remove technical barriers like those that make music tracks unreadable on certain platforms. The international recording industry hailed the move. “This is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far,” said John Kennedy, head of the industry’s trade body IFPI. “President Sarkozy has shown leadership and vision. He has recognized the importance that the creative industries play in contemporary Western economies,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. Consumer groups and politicians in France, however, have said the deal, which was signed by several companies on Friday, is too restrictive. The consumer group UFC Que Choisir said in a statement that the deal was “very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, antieconomic and against digital history.” The group argued that tough antipiracy penalties were already in place. Mr. Sarkozy said that it would take time for the effects of the new system to become clear, but that it would achieve its aims. “If it works, we will carry on the same way,” he said. “If it does not work well enough, we will take the measures to obtain results.” | Recordings and Downloads (Audio);France;Paris (France);Computers and the Internet |
ny0195695 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2009/10/02 | Tourists in Vietnam Venture Out Again | HOI AN, Vietnam — The chest-high waters in this carefully preserved little town are receding, and as the roads dry they are filling up again with tourists who had been trapped in their hotels. “We were in our room for three days,” said Sandra Hudspith, 62, a sociologist from Australia. “All we had to eat was noodles, and if I never see another noodle again, I’ll be happy.” Tony Boyle, also from Australia, peered into shops where people were using brooms and mops to sweep out the muck the flood left behind. “You feel ghoulish, like you shouldn’t be here,” he said. “But they need the money. They’re lovely, lovely people.” This old trading town, which is now one of the country’s premier tourist attractions, was one of the hardest hit areas in the typhoon that battered central Vietnam two days ago, killing 92 people by the latest count. The storm , Typhoon Ketsana, also killed 277 people in the Philippines and 14 in Cambodia, and more storms were forecast for the Philippines. Typhoon Parma, with winds gusting up to 130 miles per hour, was expected to make landfall on Saturday north of Manila, and heavy rains had already begun in some parts of the country on Thursday evening. The authorities warned of mudslides and heavy flooding, and said the strength of the storm could surpass that of Ketsana, which last week caused Manila’s worst flooding in four decades. Low-lying parts of Hoi An’s old town, with its mustard yellow walls and curved tile roofs, remained flooded Thursday, and some people were still trapped on upper floors. Small wood skiffs piled high with produce delivered food and water to them. Some boatmen engaged in what the people of Hoi An have learned to excel at — tourism — ferrying visitors up and down the flooded streets for a look. “Come visit our gallery!” called Hoang Thi Thao from the flooded Thanh Lich Gallery to a passing skiff as she washed down her muddied walls. “Maybe tomorrow.” In the To To Boutique, on slightly higher ground, the bottom shelves were empty where bolts of cloth had been removed up to the flood’s high-water mark. A male mannequin stood at the front of the shop, naked from the chest down. Its trousers had been removed and its shirt had been tied at the chest, where the rising water stopped. Le Thi Ngoc Anh, 35, the shop owner, said she would probably put its pants back on tomorrow. Around the corner in another clothing shop, the owner, Do Thi Nga, 47, argued with a tour guide who had come to pick up clothing ordered by her clients. The flood had stopped the work of the tailors, and the tourists were leaving now after making a two-thirds down payment. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said the tour guide, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, as she climbed back onto her bicycle. Another shop nearby was a shambles, with broken crockery and soaked piles of clothing lying around. “We’ve lost everything, a hundred percent,” cried the owner, Ha Thi De, 55, her lips quivering, as she collected muddy bits of broken crockery and dumped them into a bucket. Her husband sat on a plastic stool at the open shop front, staring into the street. “He’s helping me to clean up,” Ms. De said. Bit by bit, Hoi An was returning to life as it has come to know it. The sun was shining, and groups of tourists ambled down the streets with cameras and shopping bags. A former trading town that was one of the country’s main ports in precolonial times, and then a ruin during and after the Vietnam War, Hoi An has been turned into a tourism showpiece. It was designated a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1999, and local officials project that 1.2 million tourists will visit it this year and that the number will more than double over the next six years. Provincial officials have begun to worry that it is all happening too fast. The Quang Nam Provincial Peoples Committee issued a report recently saying development was threatening to overwhelm the character of the town. In the Milan fabric shop, which also sells the richly filled moon cakes of the harvest festival, Vuong Huu Khoi, 55, said his family had retreated with its merchandise to the second floor, eating some of the cakes to get through the flood. The slow pace of business gave him a chance to light a cigarette and consider what his town had become. “They used to call it the forgotten town,” said Mr. Khoi, who was born here and left only to fight in the 1970s as a soldier for South Vietnam. Now, this is the place visitors come to see the real unspoiled Vietnam. | Vietnam;Typhoons;Hoi An (Vietnam);Travel and Vacations |
ny0000754 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2013/03/29 | Defense Department Cuts Some Furlough Days for Civilians | WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of Defense Department civilian employees will get a partial reprieve from the work furloughs imposed by the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester, with their number of unpaid days off reduced to 14 from 22 between now and October. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the announcement at a Pentagon news conference on Thursday, when he made clear his pleasure at being able to lessen the fiscal penalty on a civilian work force of about 800,000 people. Up to 80 percent of those employees could fall under the reduced furloughs. But the defense secretary also warned that remaining budget reductions still threaten military readiness. The decision to decrease the furlough days was made possible by a compromise spending bill negotiated on Capitol Hill and signed this week. The budget gives the Defense Department and the military more freedom to shift money within Pentagon accounts to more efficiently manage the automatic cuts. Mr. Hagel said the Pentagon’s reductions under the new bill would be about $41 billion, down from the previous estimates of $46 billion. Even so, the Defense Department’s accounts for military operations and maintenance will face a shortage of at least $22 billion this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. “We’re going to have to deal with that reality, and that means we’re going to have to prioritize and make some cuts and do what we got to do,” Mr. Hagel said. Image Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, left, and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the Pentagon on Thursday. Credit Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press To meet the spending decrease, he said, the Pentagon will sharply cut payments for operating its bases in the United States as well as reduce training for troops — but only for those troops not preparing to deploy overseas into combat. At the same news conference, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that the spending reductions being imposed on the Pentagon are not the deepest in history, but they are the swiftest because they are being imposed halfway through the fiscal year. “It’s the steepest decline in our budget ever,” General Dempsey said. He said that by Monday, the Defense Department will have spent 80 percent of its operating funds under the reduced spending plan. “We don’t yet have a satisfactory solution to that shortfall, and we’re doing everything we can to stretch our readiness out,” General Dempsey said. He described a process in which the Defense Department “will have to trade, at some level and to some degree, our future readiness for current operations.” In layman’s terms, that means that to support the fighting force today, money will have to be diverted from preparing for conflict in the years ahead. “It will cost us more eventually in both money and time to recover in the years to come,” General Dempsey said. “We’ll be trying to recover lost readiness at the same time that we’re trying to reshape the force. We can do it, but that’s the uncomfortable truth.” | Pentagon;Federal Budget;Civil service;Chuck Hagel;Martin E Dempsey;US Military |
ny0287352 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
]
| 2016/08/11 | Greek Crisis, the Book. Or Actually Several of Them. | In May last year, James K. Galbraith, a left-leaning American economist, sent an email to Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, in which he argued that an exit from the eurozone would benefit Greece. Mr. Galbraith, who was advising Mr. Varoufakis at the time, made the case that a new currency would wash away the country’s debts, solve Greece’s competitiveness problem and ultimately create what he called a “good society.” Though the step was opposed by most Greeks, he had drawn up a contingency plan for Greece under Mr. Varoufakis’s direction, in the event the country was forced to leave the currency zone by its creditors. In the end, there was not a so-called Grexit. One year ago this month, after the polarizing finance minister left his post, Greece agreed to its third bailout with Europe, accepting yet another round of brutal austerity measures as the price for a new round of loans. Mr. Galbraith’s vision of a sun-kissed utopia of powerful unions, small businesses and cultural exchanges was published in June in his book of essays, speeches and assorted memorandums (“ Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice ”; Yale University Press) describing the five months he spent as an unofficial member of Mr. Varoufakis’s inner policy circle. A starry-eyed embrace of all that Mr. Varoufakis said and did, the book also highlights the extent to which unorthodox, if not unrealistic, economic thinking reached the highest levels of the Greek government as it battled with its creditors last summer. As the anniversary of Greece’s bailout deal approaches, there have been several memoirs, essays, a blistering critique of the International Monetary Fund’s policies in Europe and even a book of poetry that, from various perspectives, examine Greece’s torturous struggle to avoid bankruptcy. The history of Greece in the eurozone is by no means complete, and the latest financial rescue package is still being worked out . But the accounts do offer up a number of piquant revelations on that nation’s crisis, including outright policy mistakes, dubious conduct, personal agendas and tragedies. And as the negotiations between Greece and its creditors slowly press on, these works serve as a reminder that an agreement allowing Greece to pay off its debts without strangling its economy is unlikely to be reached any time soon. “There is a fog-of-war atmosphere here that inhibits good policy making,” said Paul Blustein, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of “Laid Low: Inside the Crisis that Overwhelmed Europe and the I.M.F.,” which will be out in October. “But there are no villains — just people fighting their corner and kicking the can down the road.” Besides Mr. Galbraith’s work, Mr. Varoufakis and George Papaconstantinou, the finance minister during the saga’s early days, have come out with books. Nick Papandreou, the brother of former prime minister George Papandreou, has written a searing personal essay about the Greek press attacking his family. And a collection of poems, “Austerity Measures,” examines the crisis. Without question though, the most comprehensive examination has been a series of papers put out as a report by the International Monetary Fund’s internal watchdog — the Independent Evaluation Office. The report reveals how I.M.F. staff members operated outside official channels, kept sensitive papers in personal files, withheld crucial documents from the watchdog agency and did not keep the fund’s board fully informed during the crisis. The secrecy was such, I.M.F. board members said, that at times they learned more of what was going on in Greece from media reports than their own staff. The I.M.F. has a mandate to serve as an objective lender of last resort to troubled economies. The report by the watchdog agency, which also examines the crises in Ireland and Portugal, highlights just how difficult it was for the fund to fulfill its mission in developed Europe as opposed to the emerging world where it usually operates. I.M.F. economists did not foresee the crisis in Europe — from bank blowups in Spain and Ireland to sovereign bankruptcy in Greece — because of “groupthink and intellectual capture,” the report said. The I.M.F., after all, has always been run by a European, and many of its top executives, hailing from Italy, Spain, France and Portugal, had complete trust in the sanctity and strength of the euro. It was not until mid-2010, the watchdog points out, when the Greek crisis was in full swing, that I.M.F. economists first accepted that excessive borrowing by smaller countries using the euro — Greece and Ireland — could have a destabilizing effect on the currency zone. Time and again, the review highlights this unwillingness of the fund to challenge European officials as a persistent flaw in its policies, leading to its highly controversial decision to lend money to Greece in 2010, even though economists at the fund believed that the near-bankrupt country had little chance of paying the money back. In blunt language, Susan Schadler, a former top official at the I.M.F., writes that the I.M.F. was too easily swayed by European officials who argued that not lending to Greece, or requiring it to restructure its debt, would create a systemic panic in the markets. In a response to the watchdog agency’s report, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of I.M.F., called the fund’s involvement in Europe a qualified success. She said Greece’s problems were unique and that the bottom line was that the country had remained in the euro. Explaining Greece’s Debt Crisis European authorities have agreed to disburse $8.4 billion in fresh funds to Greece, allowing the country to keep paying its bills in the coming months. But Ms. Schadler has a different view, seeing the decision and the secretive way it was handled as damaging to the fund’s reputation. “By not following an open, transparent process, the fund created the perception that a decision made in Europe had been imposed on it,” she wrote in her paper. A self-published memoir by George Papaconstantinou, the Greek finance minister at the time, looks at why the I.M.F. had to lend to Greece in the first place in 2010. Mr. Papaconstantinou bills his chronicle (“ Game Over: The Inside Story of the Greek Crisis ”) as a political thriller, and for those interested in who was saying what to whom as Greece fell apart, his account is a valuable one. One tends to forget just how absurd Greek finances were when he took over. One example: The Greek Finance Ministry spent 35,000 euros a month on buying newspapers alone. And there are some juicy vignettes, such as a warning from Jean-Claude Trichet, then the head of the European Central Bank, that a restructuring of Greek debt would have the same effect on global markets as allowing Lehman Brothers to fail. Mr. Papaconstantinou also relates how he came to be seen as a scapegoat for Greece’s ills. He was personally blamed for the austerity measures and brought to trial on what turned out to be spurious charges relating to how he handled sensitive files about Greek taxpayers. Mr. Papandreou’s essay, “Taming the Dogs of War,” which he presented in April at a conference on media pressures from business and government, covers some similar ground. Image The former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in 2015. His experiences battling with I.M.F. officials over Greece’s debt will be published in a book next year. Credit Louisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images He recounts how the newspapers in Greece, which are controlled by powerful businessmen, attacked him as well as his brother, the former prime minister, accusing him of hoarding money overseas and driving him to the brink of suicide. Mr. Varoufakis also has a book out, which asks: “ And The Weak Suffer What They Must? ” For the many who are waiting for his promised tell-all about his experiences battling with European and I.M.F. officials over Greece’s debt, this is not that book. Fans of Mr. Varoufakis will lap up his fiery criticisms of European and American economic policy making, but other readers will prefer to wait until next summer when his blow-by-blow account is scheduled to be published. | Greece;Euro Crisis;Economy;Debt;Books;Euro;James K Galbraith;Yanis Varoufakis;George Papaconstantinou |
ny0009229 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2013/02/04 | For Ray Lewis, Amid All the Contradictions, Another Championship | NEW ORLEANS For a month, Ray Lewis had spoken quite a bit about his so-called last ride, and the first question posed to him here Monday was whether he had found himself thinking about the end: his last game, his last speech, his last pregame prayer, his last question about a double murder and distractions. He said that he hadn’t, that he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t. But only Lewis knows where his mind meandered Sunday night while he spit fury at his teammates; while he sat alone on the edge of the Ravens’ bench with his head bowed; while he chased after San Francisco receivers who ran him ragged across the middle of the field; while the 49ers spun a 22-point deficit into a dazzling comeback that expired at the Baltimore 5-yard line. Even in this festive city, the mood all week for Lewis’s retirement party had been subdued. The celebration began anew after the Ravens eked out a 34-31 victory in Super Bowl XLVII, sending Lewis out in style, as a champion for the second time. From his podium afterward, Lewis called out to running back Ray Rice, seated across the interview area: “Raymond! We made it!” “I can think about myself a little bit now,” Lewis said. “What better way to go out?” Two of his sons soon joined him, and a group of relatives waited nearby. They waited for dad, son, nephew, a man who preaches and preens, steers and struts. Lewis is victim and hypocrite, community pillar and obstructer of justice, a God-fearing man who fathered six children with four women. “I don’t know anybody, honestly, who has lived a perfect life,” Lewis said. No one does, and no one has. Taking the measure of any man is complicated, but even more so when all his fortes and foibles are on such public display, of such public interest. The temptation is to draw an overarching conclusion, because it is convenient to do so, when in truth Lewis — and, to be fair, for different reasons — is perhaps more polarizing than another professed Christian, Tim Tebow. Image Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis before the Super Bowl, which he said would be the final game of his 17-year N.F.L. career. Credit Jed Jacobsohn for The New York Times So far, Tebow has not been linked to any performance-enhancing substances. Twice last week, Lewis strongly rebuffed an article by SI.com stating that he had taken a deer antler extract that contained IGF-1, an insulinlike growth hormone banned by the N.F.L., to help him recover from a torn triceps. The implication agitated him, but Lewis said he was “too blessed to be stressed.” He refrained then from quoting Scripture, to him a pastime as common as karate, cycling, swimming or any of his other cross-training pursuits. “I never got to a point that I stayed the same,” Lewis said. “Every year, I was always getting different, climbing, climbing and climbing.” Lewis arrived in Baltimore in 1996, the year the franchise relocated from Cleveland. He has seen the Ravens reach two Super Bowls and four A.F.C. championship games in nine playoff appearances. He has also seen them finish 4-12 and 5-11 and 6-10. A lot happens in 17 years. One day, he is the snarling leader of an ascending defense. The next, at 24, he is accused of murder. Two people dead. Future uncertain. Reputation stained. Perception altered, then and evermore. Lewis eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, serving no time in prison, paying a $250,000 fine levied by the N.F.L. But that night in January 2000 is no less a part of his legacy than his two defensive player of the year awards. It is the equivalent of an armpit birthmark — out of view but always there. Image The Ravens’ Ray Lewis, playing in his second Super Bowl, closing in on 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in the first quarter of Sunday’s game. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “I live with that every day,” Lewis said. “You maybe can take a break from it. I don’t. I live with it every day in my life.” The episode strengthened his faith. It also turned into one of those accessible redemption narratives the next season, when the Ravens won the Super Bowl and Lewis was selected as the game’s most valuable player. He is different now, he said. Less of a follower. More of a leader. “He just wanted us all to feel what it feels like to win this thing,” quarterback Joe Flacco said after Sunday’s victory. “He felt it, and of course, he wanted us to feel it again.” Lewis’s influence on his teammates is genuine, as is their veneration of him. Rice calls him Mufasa, after the strong and courageous father from “The Lion King.” Terrell Suggs, when asked whether the deer antler accusations had distracted the Ravens, bristled, then said of Lewis, “We know our general.” Suggs, a loquacious linebacker, shared his first interaction with the 6-foot-1, 245-pound Lewis at a commercial shoot before Suggs was drafted in 2003. “I thought Ray Lewis was 6-foot-6, 275 pounds, all muscle,” Suggs said, adding, “I was like, ‘Oh, you’re not that tall.’ It’s just something about the guy.” After 17 Seasons, Lewis Retires 19 Photos View Slide Show › Image Patrick Smith/Getty Images That something — mystique and magnetism to some, arrogance and self-importance to others — has trailed Lewis from that first day of practice 17 years ago to Sunday’s kickoff. “I was here long enough to see the beginning and actually feel the end,” Lewis said. “I’ve watched people’s careers end totally differently. I’ve watched injuries take out people, and I’ve watched the sad stories. I always said that I never wanted to go out that way.” Every day, Lewis said, teammates try to persuade him to play another season. Ed Reed is not convinced. “Ain’t no telling,” Reed said. “He might make a comeback. He may play 10 games next year.” Maybe, maybe not. The attention of a return would flatter him, but Lewis stressed that he was done. He wants to tend to his family and his community. “And,” he said, “I have run my course in the game.” The 49ers, no doubt, respect Lewis, but they do not fear him. They picked on him early and often, exposing his coverage skills in the open field. First, Michael Crabtree, then Vernon Davis, exploited him for long gains. Lewis was on the field for the Ravens’ late stand, but he neither undermined them nor boosted them to victory; he just played. His career could have ended a month ago in Baltimore, wrapped in the embrace of an adoring city. Or in chilly Denver or blustery Foxborough, Mass., where the Ravens toppled the top seeds. It did not. Instead it ended in the Superdome on Sunday, in a victory in the final game of the N.F.L. season, the most important on its calendar, the ultimate stage for the ultimate showman, like him or not. | Ray Lewis;Ravens;Football;Super Bowl |
ny0182905 | [
"business"
]
| 2007/12/26 | Qantas Polishes Outlook as Industry Retrenches | SYDNEY, Australia — Just months ago, Geoff Dixon, the chief executive of Qantas Airways, was battling to restore his reputation after supporting a failed private equity bid for the airline. But today, Mr. Dixon’s standing — and that of the company he runs — could not be more solid. Qantas is poised to outhustle its competitors, which face the headwinds of a slowing global economy, soaring fuel prices and volatile exchange rates that can wreak havoc on business plans. Two weeks ago, Mr. Dixon sharply raised his earnings forecast for the 2008 fiscal year, predicting a 40 percent increase in pretax profit from the 1.03 billion Australian dollars, or just less than $1 billion, it earned in 2007. Previously, Mr. Dixon anticipated only a 30 percent increase. The new outlook is in sharp contrast to the airline industry as a whole. This month, the International Air Transport Association reduced its forecast for industry profits in 2008 by more than one-third, to $5 billion from the $7.8 billion it had predicted in September. It was the industry’s second sharp earnings revision in less than six months, after a profit forecast of $9.6 billion for 2008 made in June. Qantas is benefiting from an economic boom in Australia as it supplies the expanding China with raw materials. In addition, Mr. Dixon is pursuing some of the ideas suggested by the private equity group in an effort to unlock value for shareholders and to become more competitive. The bid of 11 billion Australian dollars by a consortium of private equity firms that included the Texas Pacific Group and Macquarie Bank of Australia collapsed in May after prolonged wrangling. Both Macquarie, which failed to persuade even 50 percent of shareholders to back the offer, and the board, which had supported the deal, were damaged in the fallout. “It was exciting, it was disconcerting for some people, it was unsettling for some of the staff,” Mr. Dixon said in a recent interview. “But I think it has had a beneficial effect on Qantas. I certainly don’t think it has had a negative effect on the staff, and the markets have looked at Qantas in a different light since then.” Margaret Jackson, Qantas’s chairwoman, and James Packer, a board member and scion of the late media magnate Kerry Packer, resigned from the board in the aftermath, and there were question marks on the future of Mr. Dixon, but his track record was strong enough to protect him. “I think he was scarred, but not to the same extent as Margaret Jackson,” said Brent Hall, a transportation analyst at Shaw Stockbroking in Melbourne. But if the takeover bid was a traumatic experience, Qantas learned from the process, said Peter Harbison, chief executive of the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation in Sydney. “It’s done them a lot of good: it focused attention on how you could unlock value in the airline.” Dire warnings from the supporters of the bid that Qantas could not survive without the injection of private equity cash have proved to be off the mark. The airline has continued to thrive and follow its plan to expand into the Asian low-cost carrier market. It is a story told in part by the share price. When the consortium initiated its bid last December with an offer of 5.45 Australian dollars a share, it was seen as high: just five months earlier Qantas shares had been trading at 2.90 Australian dollars, and the 12-month average was 3.61 Australian dollars. But despite warnings from institutions like Grant Samuel and Deutsche Bank that the share price would fall back below 5 Australian dollars if the bid failed, it has powered ahead. Shares rose 1.3 percent Thursday to 5.48 Australian dollars. Mr. Dixon said in the interview that the company was executing some of the plans suggested by the private equity group, including a more aggressive strategy to make its assets work harder: It is planning a share buyback and raising the amount of debt the company is carrying, and it intends to sell its planes to a wholly owned subsidiary and lease them back. “I think they saw an opportunity to release more value from Qantas by setting up a leasing operation and using the fleet in a different way, and that is what we look like we will do, too,” Mr. Dixon said. He said he would most likely reorganize the company, spinning off key parts of its infrastructure and assets into separate companies. He hoped that the frequent flier program and cargo operations would make their debut as separate entities when the company reports its semiannual results in February. Mr. Dixon said that the new entities could eventually be sold, floated or operated as joint ventures. Whatever happens, he said the move would give a clearer picture of the value of these assets to the markets. “We believe the market has never valued some of these elements to the level we believe they are worth,” he said. Mr. Dixon pointed out that Aeroplan, the frequent flier program spun off by Air Canada in 2002, is now worth twice as much as its parent. The overhaul could free up assets and manpower for the company’s aggressive protection of its domestic routes and its expansion into Asia using its Jetstar low-cost subsidiary. Qantas owns 30 percent of Pacific Airlines in Vietnam and is working to lower that airline’s costs. Mr. Harbison, the analyst, expects Pacific Airlines to be rebranded with the Jetstar name. Qantas is also in the midst of expanding its fleet. Qantas is Boeing’s largest customer for its new 787 long-haul airliner. Mr. Dixon said the company has confirmed its orders for 65 of the planes. It has also ordered 20 of the new Airbus A380 superjumbos. And Qantas said last month that it would acquire up to 188 aircraft, mostly Boeing 737-800s and Airbus A320s, worth 35 billion Australian dollars at list prices, although given the size of the order it would receive a substantial discount. One source of tension for Qantas, however, is labor. Qantas is a large employer in Australia, and the threat that some ancillary operations might be moved to cheaper sites overseas riled the unions during the takeover bid and turned much of public opinion against it. Mr. Dixon has restored much of the damage to the company’s relations with the unions, but his warnings of moving some operations is still causing concern among workers. “We’re concerned that the entire 380 heavy maintenance program might be done outside Australia,” said Stephen Purvinas, the federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association. He said the union was in a battle with Qantas. “If they decide to offshore the 380 program, we wouldn’t be impressed and would have to show the public why it shouldn’t be done,” he said, adding that they were a long way from contemplating action. | Qantas Airways;Airlines and Airplanes;Stocks and Bonds;Australia |
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